Roadside Crosses

them. Three dozen or so. And they’d been joined by two more news crews.
    Also, she noticed, they were boisterous, waving their placards and crosses like sports fans. Smiling, chanting. Dance noticed that the Reverend Fisk was being approached by several men, shaking his hands in sequence. His red-haired minder was carefully scanning the parking lot.
    And then Dance froze, gasping.
    Walking out the front door of the hospital were Wes and Maggie—faces grim—accompanied by an African-American woman in a navy blue suit. She was directing them to one of the unmarked sedans.
    Robert Harper, the special prosecutor she’d met outside Charles Overby’s office, emerged.
    And behind him walked Dance’s mother. Edie Dance was flanked by two large uniformed CHP troopers, and she was in handcuffs.
    DANCE JOGGED FORWARD .
    “Mom!” twelve-year-old Wes shouted and ran across the parking lot, pulling his sister after him.
    “Wait, you can’t do that!” shouted the woman who’d been accompanying them. She started forward, fast.
    Dance knelt, embracing her son and daughter.
    The woman’s stern voice resounded across the parking lot. “We’re taking the children—”
    “You’re not taking anybody,” Dance growled, then turned again to her children: “Are you all right?”
    “They arrested Grandma!” Maggie said, tears welling. Her chestnut braid hung limply over her shoulder, where it had jumped in the run.
    “I’ll talk to them in a minute.” Dance rose. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
    “No.” Lean Wes, nearly as tall as his mother, said in a shaky voice, “They just, that woman and the police, they just came and got us and said they’re taking us someplace, I don’t know where.”
    “I don’t want to leave you, Mommy!” Maggie clung to her tightly.
    Dance reassured her daughter, “Nobody’s taking you anywhere. Okay, go get in the car.”
    The woman in the blue suit approached and said in a low tone, “Ma’am, I’m afraid—” And found herself talking to Dance’s CBI identification card and shield, thrust close to her face. “The children are going with me,” Dance said.
    The woman read the ID, unimpressed. “It’s procedure. You understand. It’s for their own good. We’ll get it all sorted out and if everything checks out—”
    “The children are going with me.”
    “I’m a social worker with Monterey County Child Services.” Her own ID appeared.
    Dance was thinking that there were probably negotiations that should be going on at the moment but still she pulled her handcuffs out of her back holster in a smooth motion and swung them open like a large crab claw. “Listen to me. I’m their mother. You know my identity. You know theirs. Now back off, or I’m arresting you under California Penal Code section two-oh-seven.”
    Observing this, the TV reporters seemed to stiffen as one, like a lizard sensing the approach of an oblivious beetle. Cameras swung their way.
    The woman turned toward Robert Harper, who seemed to debate. He glanced at the reporters and apparently decided that, in this situation, bad publicity was worse than no publicity. He nodded.
    Dance smiled to her children, hitching the cuffs away, and walked them to her car. “It’s going to be okay. Don’t worry. This is just a big mix-up.” She closed the door, locking it with the remote. She stormed past the social worker, who was glaring back with sleek, defiant eyes, and approached her mother, who was being eased into the back of a squad car.
    “Honey!” Edie Dance exclaimed.
    “Mom, what’s—”
    “You can’t talk to the prisoner,” Harper said.
    She whirled and faced Harper, who was exactlyher height. “Don’t play games with me. What’s this all about?”
    He regarded her calmly. “She’s being taken to the county lockup for processing and a bail hearing. She’s been arrested and informed of her rights. I have no obligation to say anything to you.”
    The cameras continued to pick up every second of the drama.
    Edie Dance called, “They said I killed Juan Millar!”
    “Please be quiet, Mrs. Dance.”
    The agent raged at Harper, “That ‘caseload evaluation’? It was just bullshit, right?”
    Harper easily ignored her.
    Dance’s cell phone rang and she stepped aside to answer it. “Dad.”
    “Katie, I just got home and found the police here. State police. They’re searching everything. Mrs. Kensington next door said they took away a couple of boxes of things.”
    “Dad, Mom’s been