Roadside Crosses

of town and O’Neil had plenty to cope with. “Thanks. He’s really looking forward to it.”
    “I’m getting a copy of the decision from L.A. I’ll email it to you.”
    She said, “I want to talk, Michael. Call me.”
    “Sure.”
    O’Neil would understand that she meant talking about him and Anne and the impending separation, not the J. Doe case.
    And Dance understood that he wouldn’t call, not while she was away with Boling. He was that kind of person.
    Dance felt a fast urge—a hungry urge—to hug the deputy again, put her arms around him, and she was about to. But for a man who remained unskilled at kinesic analysis, O’Neil instantly picked up on her intention. He turned and walked to the stairs. “Got to collect the kids. Pizza night. Bye, Jon. And, hey, thanks for all your help. We couldn’t’ve done it without you.”
    “You owe me a tin badge,” Boling said with a grin and asked Dance if he could carry anything out to the car. She pointed out the shopping bag full of soda, water, snacks and CDs for the drive north.
    Dance found herself clutching her wineglass to her chest as she watched O’Neil start down the deck stairs. She wondered if he’d turn back.
    He did, briefly. They shared yet another smile, and then he was gone.

Acknowledgments
    With thanks to Katherine Buse, whose excellent research gave me the lowdown on blogs and life in the synth world and who taught me how to survive (at least for a while) in massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Thanks too for the savvy editorial skills of Jane Davis, Jenna Dolan, Donna Marton, Hazel Orme and Phil Metcalf. My appreciation to James Chilton’s webmaster, my sister, Julie Reece Deaver, and thanks, as always, to Madelyn and to the puppies—all of them.

Read an excerpt from
    The Burning Wire
    by Jeffery Deaver
    Coming in June 2010 from Simon & Schuster

THE DRIVER EASED the M70 bus through traffic toward the stop on 57th Street near where Tenth Avenue blended into Amsterdam. He was in a pretty good mood. The new bus was a kneeling model, which lowered to the sidewalk to make stepping aboard easier, and featured a handicap ramp, great steering and, most important, a rump-friendly driver’s seat.
    Lord knew he needed that, spending eight hours a day in it.
    Today was beautiful, clear and cool. April. One of his favorite months. It was about 11:30 a.m. and the bus was crowded as people were heading east for lunch dates or errands on their hour off. Traffic was moving slowly as he nosed the huge vehicle closer to the stop, where four or five people waited beside a lamppost covered with flyers.
    He was approaching the bus stop and he happened to look past the people waiting to get on board, his eyes taking in the old, brown building behind the stop. An early-twentieth-century building, it had several gridded windows but was always dark inside; he’d never seen anybody going in or out. A spooky place, like a prison. On the front was a flaking sign in white paint on a blue background.
    A LGONQUIN C ONSOLIDATED P OWER C OMPANY
    S UBSTATION MH- 10
    P RIVATE P ROPERTY
    D ANGER . H IGH V OLTAGE . T RESPASS P ROHIBITED .
    He rarely paid attention to the place but today something had caught his eye, something, he believed, out of the ordinary. Dangling from the window, about ten feet off the ground, was a wire, about a half inch in diameter. It was covered with dark insulation up to the end. There, the plastic or rubber was stripped away, revealing silverish metal strands; it was bolted to a fitting of some kind, a flat piece of brass. Damn big hunk of wire, the driver thought.
    And just hanging out the window. Was that safe ?
    He now braked the bus to a complete stop and hit the door release. The kneeling mechanism engaged and the big vehicle dipped. The metal lower step was now just inches from the sidewalk. The driver turned his broad, ruddy face toward the door, which eased open with a satisfying hydraulic hiss. The folks began to climb on board. “Morning,” the driver said cheerfully.
    A woman in her eighties, clutching an old shabby Henri Bendel shopping bag, nodded back and, using a cane, staggered to the rear, ignoring the empty seats in the front reserved for the elderly and disabled.
    How could you not just love New Yorkers?
    Then sudden motion in the rearview mirror. Flashing yellow lights. A truck was speeding up behind him. Algonquin Consolidated. Three workers stepped outside and stood in a close group, talking among