Roadside Crosses

look. He got spooked and ran. Travis got him halfway down the hill.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Lyndon Strickland. He’s a lawyer. Lives nearby.”
    Dance squinted. “Wait. Strickland? I think he posted something on the blog.”
    Boling opened his backpack and pulled out a dozen sheets of paper, copies of the blog pages. “Yep.But not in ‘Roadside Crosses.’ He posted a reply about the desalination plant. He’s supporting Chilton.”
    He handed her the printout:
    Reply to Chilton, posted by Lyndon Strickland.
    I have to say you’ve opened my eyes on this issue. Had no idea that somebody’s ramrodding this through. I reviewed the filed proposal at the County Planning Office and must say that, though I am an attorney familiar with environmental issues, it was one of the most obfuscatory documents I’ve ever tried to wade through. I think we need considerably more transparency in order to have meaningful debate on this matter.
    Dance asked, “How did Travis know he’d be here? It’s so deserted.”
    Boling said, “These are jogging trails. I’ll bet Strickland posted to a bulletin board or blog that he likes running here.”
    We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much.
    O’Neil asked, “Why would the boy kill him ?”
    Boling seemed to be considering something.
    “What, Jon?” Dance asked.
    “It’s just a thought but remember that Travis is into those computer games?”
    Dance explained to O’Neil about the massively multiplayer online role-playing games that Travis played.
    The professor continued, “One aspect of the game is growth. Your character develops and grows, your conquests expand. You have to do that, otherwise you won’t succeed. Following that classic pattern, I thinkTravis might be expanding his pool of targets. First, it was people who directly attacked him. Now he’s included somebody who supports Chilton, even if he has nothing to do with the ‘Roadside Crosses’ thread.”
    Boling cocked his head, looking at the bits of meat and the claw marks in the sandy ground. “That’s an exponential increase in the number of possible victims. It’ll mean dozens more are at risk now. I’ll start checking out the Internet addresses of anyone who’s posted anything even faintly supportive of Chilton.”
    More discouraging news.
    “We’re going to examine the body now, Jon,” Dance said. “You should head back to the car.”
    “Sure.” Boling looked relieved that he didn’t have to participate in this part of the job.
    Dance and O’Neil hiked through the dunes to where the body had been found. “How’s the terrorist thing going? The Container Case?”
    The senior deputy gave a wan laugh. “Moving along. You get Homeland Security involved, FBI, Customs, it’s a quagmire. What’s that line, you rise to the level of your own unhappiness? Sometimes I’d like to be back in a Police Interceptor handing out tickets.”
    “It’s ‘level of incompetence.’ And, no, you’d hate being back in Patrol.”
    “True.” He paused. “How’s your mother holding up?”
    That question again. Dance was about to put on a sunny face, but then remembered to whom she was speaking. She lowered her voice. “Michael, she hasn’t called me. When they found Pfister and the second cross, I just left the courthouse. I didn’t even say anything to her. She’s hurt. I know she is.”
    “You found her a lawyer—one of the best on the Peninsula. And he got her released, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve done everything you can. Don’t worry about it. She’s probably distancing herself from you. For the sake of this case.”
    “Maybe.”
    Eyeing her, he laughed again. “But you don’t believe that. You’re convinced she’s mad at you. That she thinks you’ve let her down.”
    Dance was remembering times in her childhood when, at some affront, real or imagined, the staunch woman would turn cold and distant. It was only in partial humor that Dance’s father occasionally referred to his wife as “the staff sergeant.”
    “Mothers and daughters,” O’Neil mused out loud, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking.
    When they reached the body, Dance nodded at the men from the coroner’s office, who were setting a green body bag beside the corpse. The photographer had just finished up. Strickland lay on his belly, in jogging attire, now bloody. He’d been shot from behind. Once in the back, once in the head.
    “And then there’s this.” One of