“No. Really.”
“We have a warrant to collect his belongings.” Handing her the blue-backed document, Dance entered, Carraneo behind her. The living room was empty. She noticed both boys’ doors were open. She saw no sign of Sammy and glanced into his room, noting elaborate charts, filled with hand-drawn pictures. She wondered if he was trying to write his own comic or Japanese manga.
“Is your other son here? Sammy?”
“He’s out playing. Down by the pond. Please, do you know anything about Travis? Has anybody seen him?”
A creak from the kitchen. Her hand dropped to her gun.
Bob Brigham appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was holding a can of beer. “Back again,” he muttered. “With…” His voice faded as he snatched the warrant away from his wife and made a pretense of reading it.
He looked at Rey Carraneo as if he were a busboy.
Dance asked, “Have you heard from Travis?” Eyes swiveling around the house.
“Nope. But you can’t be blaming us for what he’s up to.”
Sonia snapped, “He didn’t do anything!”
Dance said, “I’m afraid that the girl today who was attacked identified him.”
Sonia began to protest but fell silent and futilely fought tears.
Dance and Carraneo searched the house carefully. It didn’t take long. No sign the boy had been here recently.
“We know you own a pistol, Mr. Brigham. Could you check to see if it’s missing?”
His eyes narrowed as if he were considering the implications of this. “It’s in my glove compartment. In a lockbox.”
Which California law required in a household where children under eighteen lived.
“Loaded?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked defensive. “We do a lot of landscaping in Salinas. The gangs, you know.”
“Could you see if it’s still there?”
“He’s not going to take my gun. He wouldn’t dare. He’d get a whipping like he wouldn’t believe.”
“Could you check, please?”
The man gave her a look of disbelief. Then he stepped outside. Dance motioned Carraneo to follow him.
Dance looked at the wall and noticed a few pictures of the family. She was struck by a much happier-looking, and much younger, Sonia Brigham, standing behind the counter at a booth at the Monterey County Fair-grounds. She was thin and pretty. Maybe she’d run the concession before she’d gotten married. Maybe that’s where she and Brigham had met.
The woman asked, “Is the girl all right? The one who got attacked?”
“We don’t know.”
Tears dotted her eyes. “He’s got problems. He gets mad some. But… this has to be a terrible mistake. I know it!”
Denial was the most intractable of emotional responses to hardship. Tough as a walnut shell.
Travis’s father, accompanied by the young agent, returned to the living room. Bob Brigham’s ruddy face was troubled. “It’s gone.”
Dance sighed. “And you wouldn’t have it anyplace else?”
He shook his head, avoided Sonia’s face.
Timidly she said, “What good comes of a gun?”
He ignored her.
Dance asked, “When Travis was younger, were there places he’d go?”
“No,” the father said. “He was always disappearing. But who knows where he went?”
“How about his friends?”
Brigham snapped, “Doesn’t have any. He’s always online. With that computer of his…”
“All the time,” echoed his wife softly. “All the time.”
“Call us if he contacts you. Don’t try to get him to surrender, don’t take the gun away. Just call us. It’s for his own good.”
“Sure,” she said. “We will.”
“He’ll do what I say. Exactly what I say.”
“Bob…”
“Shhhh.”
“We’re going through his room now,” Dance said.
“Is that all right?” Sonia was nodding at the warrant.
“They can take whatever the fuck they want. Anything that’ll help find him before he gets us into more trouble.” Brigham lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the ashtray, a smoking arc. Sonia’s face sank as she realized she’d become her son’s sole advocate.
Dance pulled her radio off her hip, called the deputies outside. One of them radioed back that he’d found something. The young officer arrived. He held up a lockbox in a latex-gloved hand. It had been smashed open. “Was in some bushes behind the house. And this too.” An empty box of Remington .38 Special rounds.
“That’s it,” the father muttered. “Mine.”
The house was eerily quiet.
The agents walked into Travis’s room. Pulling on her gloves, Dance said to Carraneo, “I want to see if we can find anything about friends, addresses, places he might like to hang out.”
They searched through the effluence of a teenager’s room — clothes, comics, DVDs, manga, anime, games, computer parts, notebooks, sketchpads. She noticed there was little music and nothing at all about sports.
Dance blinked as she looked through a notebook. The boy had done a drawing of a mask identical to the one outside Kelley Morgan’s window.
Even the small sketch chilled her.
Hidden away in a drawer were tubes of Clearasil and books about remedies for acne, diet and medication and even dermabrasion to remove scarring. Though Travis’s problem was less serious than with many teens, it was probably what he saw as a major reason he was an outcast.
Dance continued to search. Under the bed she found a strongbox. It was locked but she had seen a key in the top desk drawer. It worked in the box. Expecting drugs or porn, she was surprised at the contents: stacks of cash.
Carraneo was looking over her shoulder. “Hmm.”