Roadside Crosses

murdered two of them and was fully prepared to kill more.
    The truth was nothing to him. He’d lied over and over again.
    No, the answer was simple: Like the players in DimensionQuest, like so many people lost in the synthworld, James Chilton was an addict. Addicted to his messianic mission. Addicted to the seductive power of spreading the word—his word—to the minds and hearts of people throughout the world. The more who read his musings, his rants, his praise, the more exquisite the high.
    She leaned down, close to his face. “James. I will do everything possible to make sure that whatever prison you go to, you will never be able to get online ever again. Never in your life.”
    His face turned livid and he began screaming, “You can’t do that! You can’t take my blog away. My readers need me. The country needs me! You can’t!”
    Dance closed the door and nodded to the deputy behind the wheel.

Chapter 45
    THE FLASHING LIGHTS— on personal business—were against regulations, but Dance didn’t care. The emergency accessories were a wise idea, given that she was speeding at twice the limit down Highway 68 back to Salinas from Hollister. Edie Dance was being arraigned in twenty minutes, and she was going to be there, front and center.
    She was wondering when her mother’s trial would happen. Who would testify? What exactly would the evidence show?
    Again she thought, dismayed: Will I be called to the stand?
    And what would happen if Edie was convicted? Dance knew California prisons. The population was largely illiterate, violent, their minds ruined by drugs or alcohol or simply damaged from birth. Her mother’s heart would wither in a place like that. The punishment would be the death penalty, after all—capital punishment for the soul.
    And she was furious with herself for writing that email to Bill, the one commenting on her mother’s decision to put down one of her ailing pets. Years ago, an offhand comment. Out of proportion to thedevastating effect it could have on her mother’s fate.
    Which put her in mind of The Chilton Report. All of those postings about Travis Brigham. All wrong, completely wrong . . . yet they would be in existence, on servers and in the hearts of individual computers, forever. People might see them five or ten or twenty years from now. Or a hundred. And never know the truth.
    Dance was shaken out of her troubling meditation by the buzz of her phone.
    It was a text message from her father.
    I’m at the hospital with your mother. Get here as soon as you can.
    Dance gasped. What was this about? The arraignment was supposed to be starting in fifteen minutes. If Edie Dance was in the hospital it was only for one reason. She was ill or injured.
    Dance immediately punched her father’s mobile number, but it went right to voice mail. Of course, he’d shut it off in the hospital.
    Had she been attacked?
    Or had she tried to kill herself?
    Dance shoved the accelerator down and drove faster. Her mind tumbling, out of control now. Thinking that if her mother had tried to kill herself, it was because she knew Robert Harper had a solid case against her, and that it would be futile to fight it.
    So her mother had committed murder. Dance recalled the damning comment, revealing Edie’s knowledge of the ICU corridors at the time Juan Millar died.
    There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors. . . .
    She sped past Salinas, Laguna Seca and the airport. Twenty minutes later she was pulling into the circular drive of the hospital. The car skidded to a violent stop, breaching the handicapped space. Dance leapt out and sprinted to the main entrance door and wedged through before the automatic panels had fully opened.
    At the admissions station, an alarmed receptionist looked up and said, “Kathryn, are you—?”
    “Where’s my mother?” the agent gasped.
    “She’s downstairs and—”
    Dance was already pushing through the doorway and downward. Downstairs meant only one thing: the intensive care unit. Ironically the very place where Juan Millar had died. If Edie was there, at least she was alive.
    On the bottom floor she shoved through the door, hurrying toward ICU, when she happened to glance into the cafeteria.
    Breathing hard, Dance pulled up fast, a stitch in her side. She looked through the open doorway and saw four people sitting at a table, coffee in front of them. They were the director of the hospital, the