Roadside Crosses

sacred. Rumors are not the truth. . . . Now, good-bye.”
    He inhaled deeply and looked at his wife.
    Schaeffer was satisfied. The man had done a good job. He paused the webcam and checked the screen. Only Chilton was in the image. The wife wasn’t. He didn’t want an image of her death, just the blogger’s. He pulled back a bit so the man’s entire torso was visible. He’d shoot him once, in the heart, and let him die on camera, then upload the post to a number of social networking sites and to other blogs. Schaeffer estimated it would take two minutes for the video to appear on YouTube and would be viewed by several million people before the company took it down. By then, though, the pirate software that allowed the downloading of streaming videos would have captured it and the footage would spread throughout the world like cancer cells.
    “They’ll find you,” Chilton muttered. “The police.”
    “But they won’t be looking for me. They’ll be looking for Travis Brigham. And, frankly, I don’t thinkanybody’s going to be looking very hard. You’ve got a lot of enemies, Chilton.”
    He cocked the gun.
    “No!” Patrizia Chilton wailed desperately, frantic. Schaeffer resisted a tempting impulse to shoot her first.
    He kept the gun steady on his target and noted a resigned and, it seemed, ironic smile crossing James Chilton’s face.
    Schaeffer hit the “Record” button on the camera again and began to pull the trigger.
    When he heard, “Freeze!”
    The voice was coming from the open office doorway. “Drop the weapon. Now!”
    Jolted, Schaeffer glanced back, at a slim young Latino man in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up. Pointing a weapon his way. A badge on his hip.
    No! How had they found him?
    Schaeffer kept the gun steadily on the blogger’s chest and snapped to the cop, “ You drop it!”
    “Lower the weapon,” was the officer’s measured reply. “This is your only warning.”
    Schaeffer growled, “If you shoot me, I’ll—”
    He saw a yellow flash, sensed a tap to his head and then the universe went black.

Chapter 36
    THE DEAD ROLLED , the living walked.
    The body of Greg Ashton—it was really Greg Schaeffer, Dance had learned—was wheeled down the stairs and over the lawn on the rickety gurney to the coroner’s bus, while James and Patrizia Chilton walked slowly to an ambulance.
    Another casualty, everyone was horrified to learn, was the MCSO deputy who’d been guarding the Chiltons, Miguel Herrera.
    Schaeffer, as Ashton, had stopped at Herrera’s car. The guard had called Patrizia and been told that the man was expected. Then Schaeffer had apparently shoved the gun against Herrera’s jacket and fired twice, the proximity to the body muting the sound.
    The deputy’s supervisor from the MCSO was present, along with a dozen other deputies, shaken, furious at the murder.
    As for the walking wounded, the Chiltons didn’t seem too badly hurt.
    Dance was, however, keeping an eye on Rey Carraneo—who’d been the first on the scene, spotted the dead deputy, and raced into the house after calling for backup. He’d seen Schaeffer about to shoot Chilton.Carraneo gave the killer a by-the-book warning, but when the man had tried to negotiate, the agent had simply fired two very efficient rounds into his head. Discussions with gun-toting suspects only occur in movies and TV shows—and bad ones, at that. Police never lower or set down their weapons. And they never hesitate to take out a target if one presents itself.
    Rules number one, two and three are: shoot.
    And he had. Superficially the young agent seemed fine, his body language unchanged from the professional, upright posture he wore like a rented tux. But his eyes told a different story, revealing the words looping through his mind at the moment: I just killed a man. I just killed a man.
    She’d make sure he took some time off with pay.
    A car pulled up and Michael O’Neil climbed out. He spotted Dance and joined her. The quiet deputy wasn’t smiling.
    “I’m sorry, Michael.” She gripped his arm. O’Neil had known Miguel Herrera for several years.
    “Just shot him down?”
    “That’s right.”
    His eyes closed briefly. “Jesus.”
    “Wife?”
    “No. Divorced. But he’s got a grown son. He’s already been notified.” O’Neil, otherwise so calm, with a facade that revealed so little, looked with chilling hatred at the green bag containing Greg Schaeffer’s body
    Another voice intruded, weak, unsteady.