Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses

Who was about as far from George Clooney as one could be.

Meaningful announcement…

Dance composed a lengthy memo, giving the details of Greg Schaeffer's plan, how they'd learned of his identity and his death. She included information about the murder of Miguel Herrera, the deputy with the MCSO guarding the Chilton house, and the update on the all-out search for Travis.

She sent the memo off via email, hitting the mouse harder than usual.

TJ stuck his head in the door of her office. "You hear, boss?"

"About what in particular?"

"Kelley Morgan's regained consciousness. She'll live."

"Oh, that's so good to hear."

"Be a week or so in therapy, the deputy over there said. That stuff screwed up her lungs pretty bad, but she'll be okay, eventually. Looks like there won't be any brain damage."

"And what'd she say about ID'ing Travis?"

"He got her from behind, half strangled her. He whispered something about why'd she posted things about him? And then she passed out, woke up in the basement. Assumed it was Travis."

"So Schaeffer didn't want her to die. He set it up to make her think it was Travis but never let her see him."

"Makes sense, boss."

"And Crime Scene-at Schaeffer's and Chilton's? Any leads to where the boy might be?"

"Nothing yet. And no witnesses around the Cyprus Grove."

She sighed. "Keep at it."

The time was now after 6:00 p.m. She realized she hadn't eaten since breakfast. She rose and made for the lunchroom. She needed coffee and wanted something indulgent: homemade cookies or doughnuts. Maryellen's well in the Gals' Wing had run dry. At the least she could enter a negotiation with the temperamental vending machine: a rumpled dollar in exchange for a packet of toasted peanut butter crackers or Oreos.

As she stepped into the cafeteria she blinked. Ah, luck.

On a paper plate full of crumbs sat two oatmeal raisin cookies.

More of a miracle, the coffee was relatively fresh.

She poured a cup, added 2 percent milk and snagged a cookie. Exhausted, she plunked herself down at a table. She stretched and fished her iPod out of her pocket, mounting the ear buds and scrolling through the screen to find solace in more of Badi Assad's arresting Brazilian guitar.

She hit "Play," took a bite of cookie and was reaching for the coffee when a shadow hovered.

Hamilton Royce was looking down at her. His temporary ID was pinned to his shirt. The big man's arms hung at his sides.

Just what I need . If thoughts could sigh, hers would have been clearly audible.

"Agent Dance. Can I join you?"

She gestured to an empty chair, trying not to look too invitational. But she did pull out the ear buds.

He sat, the chair squeaking, plastic and metal in tension under his frame, and leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands clasped in front of him. This position generally signifies directness. She noted his suit again. The blue didn't work. Not dark enough. Or, alternatively, she thought unkindly, he should be wearing a sailor's hat with a shiny brim.

"I heard. The case is over, correct?"

"We've got the perp. We're still searching for the boy."

"For Travis?" Royce asked, surprised.

"That's right."

"But he's dead, don't you think?"

"No."

"Oh." A pause. "That's the one thing I regret," Royce said. "That's the worst of it all. That innocent boy."

Dance noted that this reaction, at least, was honest.

She said nothing more.

Royce offered, "I'll be headed back to Sacramento in a day or two. Look, I know we had some problems earlier… Well, disagreements. I wanted to apologize."

Decent of him, though she remained skeptical. She said, "We saw things differently. I didn't take any offense. Not personally."

But, professionally, she thought, I was totally pissed you tried to flank me.

"There was a lot of pressure from Sacramento. I mean, a lot. I got carried away in the heat of the moment." He looked away, partly embarrassed. And partly deceptive too; he didn't feel that bad, Dance noticed. But she gave him credit for trying to make nice. He continued, "Not often that you're in a situation like this, is it? Where you have to protect somebody as unpopular as Chilton." He didn't seem to expect an answer. He gave a hollow laugh. "You know something? In a funny way I've come to admire him."

"Chilton?"

A nod. "I don't agree with much of what he says. But he's got moral character. And not a lot of people do nowadays. Even in the face of a murder threat, he stayed the course. And he'll probably keep right on going. Don't you think?"

"I assume so." She said nothing about the possible termination of The Chilton Report.

That wasn't her business, or Royce's.

"You know what I'd like to do? Apologize to him too."

"Would you?"

"I tried his house. Nobody was answering. Do you know where he is?"

"He and his family're going to their vacation home in Hollister tomorrow. Tonight, they're staying at a hotel. I don't know where. Their house is a crime scene."

"Well, I suppose I could email him at his blog."

She was wondering if this would ever happen.

Then, silence. Time for my exit , Dance thought. She snagged the last cookie, wrapped it in a napkin and headed for the lunchroom door. "Have a safe drive, Mr. Royce."

"Again, I'm truly sorry, Agent Dance. I look forward to working with you in the future."

Her kinesic skills easily fired off a message that his comment had contained two lies.

Jonathan Boling, looking pleased, was walking up to Dance in the lobby of the CBI. She handed him a temporary pass.

"Thanks for coming in."

"I was beginning to miss the place. I thought I'd been fired."

She smiled. When she'd called him in Santa Cruz she'd interrupted a paper-grading session for one of his summer school courses (she'd wondered if she would catch him prepping for a date) and Boling had been delighted to abandon the job and drive back to Monterey.

In her office, she handed him his last assignment: Greg Schaeffer's laptop. "I'm really desperate to find Travis, or his body. Can you go through it, look for any references to local locations, driving directions, maps…anything like that?"

"Sure." He indicated the Toshiba. "Passworded?"

"Not this time."

"Good."

He opened the lid and began to type. "I'll search for everything with a file access or creation date in the past two weeks. Does that sound good?"

"Sure."

Dance tried not to smile once more, watching him lean forward enthusiastically. His fingers played over the keys like a concert pianist's. After a few moments he sat back. "Well, it doesn't look like he used it for much of his mission here, other than to research for blogs and RSS feeds, and emails to friends and business associates-and none of them have anything to do with his plot to kill Chilton. But those are just the undeleted records. He's been deleting files and websites regularly for the past week. Those, I'd guess, might be more what you're interested in."

"Yep. Can you reconstruct them?"

"I'll go online and download one of Irv's bots. That'll roam the free space on his C: drive and put back together anything he's deleted recently. Some of it will be only partial and some will be distorted. But most of the files should be ninety percent readable."

"That'd be great, Jon."

Five minutes later Irv's bot was silently roaming through Schaeffer's computer, looking for fragments of deleted files, reassembling them and storing them in a new folder that Boling had created.

"How long?" she asked.

"A couple of hours, I'd guess." Boling looked at his watch and suggested they get a bite of dinner. They climbed into his Audi and headed to a restaurant not far from CBI headquarters, on a rise overlooking the airport and, beyond that, the city of Monterey and the bay. They got a table on the deck, warmed with overhead propane heaters, and sipped a Viognier white wine. The sun was now melting into the Pacific, spreading out and growing violently orange. They watched it in silence as tourists nearby snapped pictures that would have to be Photoshopped to even approximate the grandeur of the real event.