Roadside Crosses

everything we can to save him. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.” She displayed a picture of Greg Schaeffer, a copy from his DMV picture. “Have you ever seen him? Maybe following you? Talking to neighbors?”
    Sonia pulled on battered glasses and looked at the face for a long time. “No. I can’t say I have. So he’s him. The one done it, took my boy?”
    “Yes.”
    “I told you no good would come of that blog.”
    Her eyes slipped toward the side yard, where Sammy was disappearing into the ramshackle shed. She sighed. “If Travis is gone, telling Sammy . . . oh, that’ll destroy him. I’ll be losing two sons at once. Now, I’ve got to put the laundry away. Please go now.”
    DANCE AND O’NEIL stood next to each other on the pier, leaning against the railing. The fog was gone, but the wind was steady. Around Monterey Bay you always had one or the other.
    “Travis’s mother,” O’Neil said, speaking loudly. “That was tough, I’ll bet.”
    “Hardest part of it all,” she said, her hair flying. Then asked him, “How was the interview?” Thinking of the Indonesian investigation.
    The Other Case.
    “Good.”
    She was glad O’Neil was running the case, regrettedher jealousy. Terrorism kept all law enforcers up nights. “If you need anything from me let me know.”
    His eyes on the bay, he said, “I think we’ll wrap it in the next twenty-four hours.”
    Below them were their children, the four of them, on the sand at water’s edge. Maggie and Wes led the expedition; being grandchildren of a marine biologist, they had some authority.
    Pelicans flew solemnly nearby, gulls were everywhere, and not far offshore, a brown curl of sea otter floated easily on its back, inverted elegance. It happily smashed open mollusks against a rock balanced on its chest. Dinner. O’Neil’s daughter, Amanda, and Maggie stared at it gleefully, as if trying to figure out how to get it home as a pet.
    Dance touched O’Neil’s arm and pointed at ten-year-old Tyler, who was crouching beside a long whip of kelp and poking it cautiously, ready to flee if the alien creature came to life. Wes stood protectively near in case it did.
    O’Neil smiled but she sensed from his stance and the tension in his arm that something was bothering him.
    Only a moment later he explained, calling over the blast of wind, “I heard from Los Angeles. The defense is trying to move the immunity hearing back again. Two weeks.”
    “Oh, no,” Dance muttered. “Two weeks? The grand jury’s scheduled for then.”
    “Seybold’s going all-out to fight it. He didn’t sound optimistic.”
    “Hell.” Dance grimaced. “War of attrition? Keep stalling and hope it all goes away?”
    “Probably.”
    “We won’t,” she said firmly. “You and me, we won’t go away. But will Seybold and the others?”
    O’Neil considered this. “If it takes much more time, maybe. It’s an important case. But they have a lot of important cases.”
    Dance sighed. She shivered.
    “You cold?”
    Her forearm was docked against his.
    She shook her head. The involuntary ripple had come from thinking of Travis. As she’d been looking over the water, she’d wondered if she was also gazing at his grave.
    A gull hovered directly in front of them. The angle of attack of his wings adjusted perfectly for the velocity of the wind. He was immobile, twenty feet above the beach.
    Dance said, “All along, you know, even when we thought he was the killer, I felt sorry for Travis. His home life, the fact he’s a misfit. Getting cyberbullied like that. And Jon was telling me the blog was just the tip of the iceberg. People were attacking him in instant messages, emails, on other bulletin boards. It’s just so sad it’s turned out this way. He was innocent. Completely innocent.”
    O’Neil said nothing for a moment. Then: “He seems sharp. Boling, I mean.”
    “He is. Getting the names of the victims. And tracking down Travis’s avatar.”
    O’Neil laughed. “Sorry, but I keep picturing you going to Overby about a warrant for a character in a computer game.”
    “Oh, he’d do the paperwork in a minute if hethought there was a press conference and a good photo op involved. I could’ve beaned Jon, though, for going to that arcade alone.”
    “Playing hero?”
    “Yep. Save us from amateurs.”
    “He married, have a family?”
    “Jon? No.” She laughed. “He’s a bachelor.”
    Now there’s a word you haven’t heard for . . . about a