Roadside Crosses

family would be all right; Chilton had no interest in them. But he was dead. A faint laugh eased from his throat and he felt tears sting eyes already stinging from the sunlight.
    He thought of Caitlin, her beautiful eyes and smile.
    Thought of his mother.
    Thought of Sammy.
    And of all the terrible things that people had said about him in the blog.
    Yet he’d done nothing wrong. His life was about nothing more than trying to get through school as best he could, to play a game that made him happy, to spend some time with his brother and look after the boy, to meet a girl who wouldn’t mind that he was a geek with troubled skin. Travis had never in his life hurt anybody intentionally, never dissed anyone, never posted a bad word about them.
    And the whole world had attacked him.
    Who’d care if he killed himself?
    Nobody.
    So Travis did the only thing he could. He lifted the gun to his own chin.
    Look at the luser, his life is epic FAIL!!!
    Travis’s finger slipped around the trigger of the gun. He began to squeeze.
    The explosion was fiercely loud. Windows shook, acrid smoke filled the room, and a delicate porcelain cat tumbled from the mantelpiece and shattered on the hearth into dozens of pieces.

Chapter 43
    KATHRYN DANCE’S CAR turned onto the long dirt driveway that led to James Chilton’s vacation house in Hollister.
    She was reflecting on how wrong she’d been.
    Greg Schaeffer wasn’t the Roadside Cross Killer.
    Everyone else had been misled too but Dance took no solace from that. She’d been content to assume that Schaeffer was the guilty party and that he’d killed Travis Brigham. With the man dead, there’d be no more attacks.
    Wrong . . .
    Her phone rang. She wondered who was calling, but decided it was best not to look at Caller ID as she wove up the serpentine drive, with drop-offs on either side.
    Another fifty yards.
    She saw the home ahead of her, a rambling old farmhouse that would have looked in place in Kansas if not for the substantial hills surrounding it. The yard was scruffy, filled with untended patches of grass, gray broken branches, overgrown gardens. She would have thought that James Chilton would have a nicer vacation home, considering the inheritancefrom his father-in-law and his beautiful house in Carmel.
    Even in the sun, the place exuded a sense of eeriness.
    But that was, of course, because Dance knew what had happened inside.
    How could I have read everything so wrong?
    The road straightened and she continued on. She fished the phone off the seat and looked at the screen. Jonathan Boling had called. But the message flag wasn’t up. She debated hitting “Last Received Call.” But instead picked Michael O’Neil’s speed-dial button. After four rings it went to voice mail.
    Maybe he was on the Other Case.
    Or maybe he was talking to his wife, Anne.
    Dance tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
    As she pulled close to the house, Dance counted a half dozen police cars. Two ambulances as well.
    The San Benito County sheriff, whom she’d worked with regularly, saw her and motioned her forward. Several officers stepped aside, and she drove over the uneven grass to where the sheriff was standing.
    She saw where Travis Brigham lay on a gurney, his face covered.
    Dance slammed the gearshift into park and climbed out, then walked quickly toward the boy. She noted his bare feet, the welts on his ankle, his pale skin.
    “Travis,” she whispered.
    The boy jerked, as if she’d awakened him from a deep sleep.
    He lifted the damp cloth and ice pack off his bruised face. He blinked and focused his eyes on her. “Oh, uh, Officer . . . I, like, can’t remember your name.”
    “Dance.”
    “Sorry.” He sounded genuinely contrite at the social slip.
    “Not a problem at all.” Kathryn Dance hugged the boy hard.
    THE BOY WOULD be fine, the medic explained.
    His worst injury from the ordeal—in fact, the only serious one—was from hitting his forehead on the mantel in the living room of Chilton’s house when the San Benito County SWAT team stormed the place.
    They had been conducting furtive surveillance—as they awaited Dance’s arrival—when the commander had seen through the window that the boy had entered the living room with a gun. James Chilton too had pulled a weapon. For some reason, it then appeared that Travis was going to take his own life.
    The commander had ordered his officers in. They’d launched flash-bang grenades into the room, which detonated with