Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses

Lyndon Strickland, on the other hand, had been ecstatic.

The fog was coming up, the weather chill, and he had the jogging path to himself as he started to run.

Angry.

Strickland had read what people were saying in James Chilton's blog. Travis Brigham was a crazy boy who idolized the shooters at Columbine and Virginia Tech, who stalked girls in the night, who'd half asphyxiated his own brother, Sammy, and left him retarded, who'd intentionally driven a car off the cliff a few weeks ago in some weird suicide/murder ritual, killing two girls.

How the hell had everybody missed the danger signs the boy must've displayed? His parents, his teachers…friends.

The image of the mask he'd seen online that morning still gave him the creeps. A chill coursed through his body, only partly from the damp air.

The Mask Killer…

And now the kid was out there, hiding in the hills of Monterey County, picking off one by one the people who'd posted negative things about him.

Strickland read The Chilton Report frequently. It was on his RSS feed, near the top. He disagreed with Chilton on some issues, but the blogger was always reasonable and always made solid, intellectual arguments in support of his positions. For instance, although Chilton was adamantly opposed to abortion, he'd posted a comment against that wacko Reverend Fisk, who'd called for the murder of abortion doctors. Strickland, who'd often represented Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice organizations, had been impressed with Chilton's balanced stance.

The blogger was also opposed to the desalination plant, as was Strickland, who was meeting with a potential new client-an environmental group interested in hiring him to sue to stop the plant from going forward. He'd just posted a reply supporting the blogger.

Strickland now headed up the small hill that was the hardest part of his jog. The route was downhill from there. Sweating, heart pounding…and feeling the exhilaration of the exercise.

As he crested the hill, something caught his eye. A splash of red off the jogging path and a flurry of motion near to the ground. What was it? he wondered. He circled back, paused his stopwatch and walked slowly through the rocks to where he saw a sprinkling of crimson, out of place in the sandy soil, dotted with brown and green plants.

His heart continued to slam in his chest, though now out of fear, not exertion. He thought immediately about Travis Brigham. But the boy was targeting only those who'd attacked him online. Strickland had said nothing about him at all.

Relax.

Still, as he detoured along the trail toward the commotion and spots of red, Strickland pulled his cell phone from his pocket, ready to push 911 if there was any threat.

He squinted, looking down as he approached the clearing. What was he looking at?

"Shit," he muttered, freezing.

On the ground were hunks of flesh sitting amid a scattering of rose petals. Three huge, ugly birds-vultures, he guessed-were ripping the tissue apart, frantic, hungry. A bloody bone sat nearby too. Several crows were hopping close cautiously, grabbing a bit, then retreating.

Strickland squinted, leaning forward, as he noted something else, in the center of the frenzy.

No!…A cross had been scraped into the sandy soil.

He understood that Travis Brigham was around here somewhere. Heart trilling, the lawyer scanned the bushes and trees and dunes. He could be hiding anywhere. And suddenly it didn't make any difference that Lyndon Strickland had never posted anything about the boy.

As an image of that terrifying mask the boy had left as an emblem of his attack lodged in his mind, Strickland turned and started to flee back to the path.

He got a mere ten feet before he heard someone push out of the bushes and begin running fast his way.

Jon Boling sat in Dance's office, on her sagging couch. The sleeves of his dark blue striped shirt were rolled up and he had two phones going at once, as he stared at printouts of Chilton's blog. He was working to find the physical addresses from the Internet data that the hosting service had provided.

Crooking a Samsung between ear and shoulder, he jotted information and called out, "Got another one. SexyGurl is Kimberly Rankin, one-two-eight Forest, Pacific Grove."

Dance took the details down and phoned to warn the girl-and her parents-of the danger and to insist bluntly that she stop posting to The Report and to tell her friends to stop too.

How's that , Chilton?

Boling was studying the computer screen in front of him. Dance looked over and saw that he was frowning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"The first posts responding in the 'Roadside Crosses' thread were mostly local, classmates and people around the Peninsula. Now people from all over the country-hell, from all over the world-are chiming in. They're really going after him-and the Highway Patrol or the police too-for not following up on the accident. And they're dissing the CBI too."

"Us?"

"Yep. Somebody reported that a CBI agent went to interview Travis at home but didn't detain him."

"How do they even know Michael and I were there?"

He gestured at the computer. "The nature of the beast. Information spreads. People in Warsaw, Buenos Aires, New Zealand."

Dance returned to the crime scene report of the most recent roadside cross on a quiet road in a lightly inhabited part of north Monterey. No witnesses. And little had been found at the scene, aside from the same sort of trace discovered at the earlier scenes, linking Travis to the crime. But there was one discovery that might prove helpful. Soil samples revealed some sand that wasn't generally found in the immediate vicinity of the cross. It couldn't, however, be sourced to a particular location.

And all the while she reviewed these details, she couldn't help but think, who is the next victim?

Is Travis getting close?

And what terrible technique is he going to use this time to frighten and to kill? He seemed to favor lingering deaths, as if in compensation for prolonged suffering he'd been through at the hands of the cyberbullies.

Boling said, "I've got another name." He called it out to Dance, who jotted it down.

"Thanks," she said, smiling.

"You owe me a Junior G-Man badge."

As Boling cocked his head and bent toward his notes once more, he said something else softly. Perhaps it was her imagination but it almost sounded as if he'd started to say, "Or maybe dinner," but swallowed the words before they fully escaped.

Imagination, she decided. And turned back to her phone.

Boling sat back. "That's all of them for now. The other posters aren't in the area or they have untraceable addresses. But if we can't find them, Travis can't either."

He stretched and leaned back.

"Not your typical day in the world of academia, is it?" Dance asked.

"Not exactly." He cast a wry look her way. "Is this a typical day in the world of law enforcement?"

"Uhm, no, it's not."

"I guess that's the good news."

Her phone buzzed. She noted the internal CBI extension.

"TJ."

"Boss…" As had happened on more than one occasion recently, the young agent's typically irreverent attitude was absent. "Have you heard?"

DANCE'S HEART GAVE a bit of a flip when she saw Michael O'Neil at the crime scene.

"Hey," she said. "Thought I'd lost you."

He gave a faint startle reaction to that. Then said, "Juggling both cases. But a crime scene"-he nodded toward a fluttering ribbon of police tape-"has priority."

"Thanks."

Jon Boling joined them. Dance had asked the professor to accompany her. She'd supposed there were several ways in which he could be helpful. Mostly she wanted him here to bounce ideas off of, since Michael O'Neil, she'd believed, wouldn't be present.