Roadside Crosses

office.”
    “She’s my mother.”
    “I’m sure you’re emotional about the situation. But it’s an active investigation and soon to be an active prosecution. Any interference from you is unacceptable.”
    Shaking with rage, Dance rose and started for the door.
    Harper seemed to have an afterthought. “One thing, Agent Dance. Before I move to admit that email of yours into evidence, I want you to know that I’ll redact the information about buying that lingerie, or whatever it was, at Victoria’s Secret. That I do consider irrelevant.”
    Then the prosecutor slid toward him the document he’d been reviewing when she arrived, turned it over and began reading once again.
    IN HER OFFICE Kathryn Dance was staring at the entwined tree trunks outside her window, still angry with Harper. She was thinking again about what would happen if she was forced to testify against her mother. If she didn’t, she’d be held in contempt. A crime. It could mean jail and the end of her career as a law enforcer.
    She was drawn from this thought by TJ’s appearance
    He looked exhausted. He explained he’d spent much of the night working with Crime Scene to examine Greg Schaeffer’s room at the Cyprus Grove Inn, his car and Chilton’s house. He had the MCSO report.
    “Excellent, TJ.” She regarded his bleary, red eyes. “You get any sleep?”
    “What’s that again, boss? ‘Sleep’?”
    “Ha.”
    He handed her the crime scene report. “And I finally got more four-one-one on our friend.”
    “Which one?”
    “Hamilton Royce.”
    Didn’t matter now, she supposed, with the case closed, and apologies—such as they were—delivered. But she was curious. “Go on.”
    “His latest assignment was for the Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee. Until he got here he’d been billing the nukers sixty hours a week. And by the way, he’s expensive. I think I need a raise, boss. Am I a six-figure kind of agent?”
    Dance smiled. She was glad that his humor seemed to be returning. “You’re worth seven figures in my book, TJ.”
    “I love you too, boss.”
    The implication of the information then struck her. She riffled through copies of The Chilton Report.
    “That son of a bitch.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Royce was trying to get the blog shut down—for his client’s sake. Look.” She tapped the printout.
Power to the People
    Posted by Chilton.
    Rep. Brandon Klevinger . . . Ever heard of his name? Probably not.
    And the state representative looking after some fine folks in Northern California would rather keep a low profile.
    No such luck.
    Representative Klevinger is the head of the state’s Nuclear Facilities Planning Committee, which means the bomb—oops, excuse me, the buck—stops with him on the issue of those little gadgets called reactors.
    And you want to know something interesting about them?
    No—go away, Greenies. Go whine elsewhere! I have no problem with nuclear energy; we need it to achieve energy independence (from certain interests overseas whom I’ve written about at great length). But what I do object to is this: Nuclear power loses its advantage if the price for the plants and the energy expended in the construction outweigh the advantages.
    I’ve learned that Rep. Klevinger just happens to have been on a couple of posh golfing trips to Hawaii and Mexico with his newfound “friend,” Stephen Ralston. Well, guesswhat, boys and girls? Ralston happens to have put in bids for a proposed nuclear facility north of Mendocino.
    Mendocino . . . Lovely place. And very pricey to build in. Not to mention that it seems the cost of delivering the power to where it’s needed will be huge. (Another developer has proposed a far cheaper and more efficient location about fifty miles south of Sacramento.) But a source has snuck me the Nuclear Committee’s preliminary report and it reveals that Ralston’s probably going to get the go-ahead to build in Mendocino.
    Has Klevinger done anything illegal or wrong?
    I’m not saying yes or no. I just ask the question.
    “He was lying all along,” TJ said.
    “Sure was.”
    Still, she couldn’t concentrate on Royce’s duplicity just now. There was, after all, no need to blackmail him at this point, considering he was headed home in a day or two.
    “Good work.”
    “Just dotting my j ’s.”
    As he left she hunched over the MCSO report. She was a little surprised that David Reinhold, the eager kid—the one she’d played cat-and-mouse with last