Travis Brigham, she recalled, knew her name. And could easily find where she lived.
She walked in a slow circle around the cross. Were those footsteps beside it in the trampled grass? She couldn’t tell.
The uncertainty was almost more troubling than if the cross had been left as a threat.
Dance returned to the house, stuffing her weapon in the holster.
She locked up and stepped into the living room, filled with furniture as mismatched as that in Travis Brigham’s house, but nicer and homier, no leather or chrome. Mostly overstuffed, upholstered in rusts and earth colors. All purchased during shopping trips with her late husband. Dropping onto the sofa, Dance noticed a missed call. She flipped eagerly to the log. It was from Jon Boling, not her mother.
Boling was reporting that the “associate” had had no luck as yet with cracking the pass code. The supercomputer would be running all night, and he’d let Dance know the progress in the morning. Or, if she wanted, she could call back. He’d be up late.
Dance debated about calling — felt an urge to — but then decided to keep the line free in case her mother called. She then phoned the MCSO, got the senior deputy on duty and requested a Crime Scene run to collect the cross. She told him where it was located. He said he’d get somebody there in the morning.
She then showered; despite the steamy water, she kept shivering, as an unfortunately persistent image lodged in her thoughts: the mask from Kelley Morgan’s house, the black eyes, the sewn-shut mouth.
When she climbed into bed, her Glock was three feet away, on the bedside table, unholstered and loaded with a full clip and one “in the bedroom” — the chamber.
She closed her eyes but, as exhausted as she was, she couldn’t sleep.
And it wasn’t the pursuit of Travis Brigham that was keeping her awake, nor the scare earlier. Not even the image of that damn mask.
No, the source of her keen restlessness was a simple comment that kept looping over and over in her mind.
Her mother’s response to Sheedy’s question about witnesses in the ICU the night that Juan Millar was killed.
There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors.
Dance couldn’t recall for certain, but she was almost positive that when she’d mentioned the deputy’s death to her mother just after it happened, Edie had acted surprised by the news; she’d told her daughter that she’d been so busy on her own wing that she hadn’t gone down to the ICU that night.
If Edie hadn’t been in intensive care that night, as she’d claimed, then how could she be so certain it was deserted?
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 17
AT 8:00 IN the morning, Kathryn Dance walked into her office and smiled to see Jon Boling, in too-large latex gloves, tapping on the keyboard of Travis’s computer.
“I know what I’m doing. I watch NCIS. ” He grinned. “I like it better than CSI. ”
“Hey, boss, we need a TV show about us,” TJ said from a table he’d dragged into the corner, his workstation for his search for the origins of the eerie mask from the Kelley Morgan scene.
“I like that.” Boling picked up on the joke. “A show about kinesics, sure. You could call it The Body Reader. Can I be a special guest star?”
Though she was hardly in a humorous mood, Dance laughed.
TJ said, “I get to be the handsome young sidekick who’s always flirting with the gorgeous girl agents. Can we hire some gorgeous girl agents, boss? Not that you aren’t. But you know what I mean.”
“How’re we doing?”
Boling explained that the supercomputer linked to Travis’s hadn’t had any luck cracking the boy’s pass code.
One hour, or three hundred years.
“Nothing to do but keep waiting.” He pulled off the gloves and returned to tracking down the identities of posters who might be at risk.
“And, Rey?” Dance glanced at quiet Rey Carraneo, who still was going through the many pages of notes and sketches they’d found in Travis’s bedroom.
“Lot of gobbledygook, ma’am,” Carraneo said, the Anglo word very stiff in a Latino mouth. “Languages I don’t recognize, numbers, doodles, spaceships, trees with faces in them, aliens. And pictures of bodies cut open, hearts and organs. Kid’s pretty messed up.”
“Any places at all he’s mentioned?”
“Sure,” the agent said. “They just don’t seem to be on earth.”
“Here are some more names.” Boling handed her a sheet of paper with another six names and addresses of posters.
Dance looked up the phone numbers in the state database and called to warn them that Travis presented a threat.
It was then that her computer pinged with an incoming email. She read it, surprised to see the sender. Michael O’Neil. He must’ve been real busy; he rarely sent her messages, preferring to talk to her in person.
K —
Hate to say, but the container situation is heating up big time. TSA and Homeland Sec. are getting worried.
I’ll still help you out on the Travis Brigham case — ride herd on forensics and drop in when I can — but this one’ll take up most of my time. Sorry.
— M
The case involving the shipping container from Indonesia. Apparently he couldn’t put it on hold any longer. Dance was fiercely disappointed. Why now? She sighed in frustration. A twinge of loneliness too. She realized that between the Los Angeles homicide case against J. Doe and the roadside crosses situation, she and O’Neil had seen each other almost daily for the past week. That was more, on average, than she’d seen her husband.
She really wanted his expertise in the pursuit of Travis Brigham. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit that she simply wanted his company too. Funny how just talking, sharing thoughts and speculations was such an elixir. But his case was clearly important and that was enough for her. She typed a fast reply.
Good luck, miss you.
Backspaced, deleting the final two words and the punctuation. She rewrote: Good luck. Stay in touch.