Roadside Crosses

Dance said, "Oh, nothing that long. A few hours. A day at the most."

Eyes brightening again. "I'd love to. Puzzles are an important food group to me… Now, what would I be looking for?"

"Any clues as to the identity of Tammy's attacker."

"Oh, Da Vinci Code."

"Let's hope it's not as tricky and that whatever we find won't get us excommunicated… I'm interested in any communications that seem threatening. Disputes, fights, comments about stalkers. Would instant messages be there?"

"Fragments. We can probably reconstruct a lot of them." Boling plugged the drive back into his computer and leaned forward.

"Then social networking sites," Dance said. "Anything to do with roadside memorials or crosses."

"Memorials?"

She explained, "We think he left a roadside cross to a

"That's pretty sick." The professor's fingers snapped over the keys. As he typed, he asked, "Why do you think her computer's the answer?"

Dance explained about the interview with Tammy Foster.

"You picked up all that just from her body language?"

"That's right."

She told him about the three ways humans communicate: First, through verbal content-what we say. "That's the meaning of the words themselves. But content is not only the least reliable and most easily faked, it's actually only a small portion of the way we send messages to each other. The second and third are much more important: verbal quality-how we say the words. That would be things like pitch of voice, how fast we talk, whether we pause and use 'uhm' frequently. And then, third, kinesics-our body's behavior. Gestures, glances, breathing, posture, ma

He was smiling. Dance lifted an eyebrow.

Boling explained, "You sound as excited about your work as-"

"You and your flash memory."

A nod. "Yep. They're amazing little guys…even the pink ones."

Boling continued to type and scroll through page after page of the guts of Tammy's computer, speaking softly. "Typical rambling of a teenage girl. Boys, clothes, makeup, parties, a little bit about school, movies and music…no threats."

He scrolled quickly through various screens. "So far, negative on the emails, at least the ones for the past two weeks. I can go back and check the earlier ones if I need to. Now, Tammy's in all the big social networking sites-Facebook, MySpace, OurWorld, Second Life." Though Boling was offline, he could pull up and view recent pages Tammy had read. "Wait. wait… Okay." He was sitting forward, tense.

"What is it?"

"She was almost drowned?"

"That's right."

"A few weeks ago she and some of her friends started a discussion in OurWorld about what scared them the most. One of Tammy's big fears was drowning."

Dance's mouth tightened. "Maybe he picked the means of death specifically for her."

In a surprisingly vehement tone, Boling said, "We give away too much information about ourselves online. Way too much. You know the term 'escribitionist'?"

"Nope."

"A term for blogging about yourself." A grimacing smile. "Tells it pretty well, doesn't it? And then there's 'dooce.' "

"That's new too."

"A verb. As in 'I've been dooced.' It means getting fired because of what you posted on your blog-whether facts about yourself or your boss or job. A woman in Utah coined it. She posted some things about her employer and got laid off. 'Dooce' comes from a misspelling of 'dude,' by the way. Oh, and then there's pre-doocing."

"Which is?"

"You apply for a job and the interviewer asks you, 'You ever write anything about your former boss in a blog?' Of course, they already know the answer. They're waiting to see if you're honest. And if you have posted anything bad? You were knocked out of contention before you brushed your teeth the morning of the interview."

Too much information. Way too much…

Boling continued to type, lightning fast. Finally he said, "Ah, think I've got something."

"What?"

"Tammy posted a comment on a blog a few days ago. Her screen name is TamF1399." Boling spun the computer around for Dance to look at.

Reply to Chilton, posted by TamF1399.

[The driver] is effing weird, i mean dangerous. 1 time after cheerleader practice he was hanging out outside our locker room, like he was trying to look inside and get pictures on his phone. I go up to him and I'm like, what're you doing here, and he looks at me like he was going to kill me. He's a total fr33k. i know a girl who goes to [deleted] with us and she told me [the driver] grabbed her boobs, only she's afraid to say anything because she thinks he'll come get her or start shooting people, like in Virginia Tech.

Boling added, "What's interesting is that she posted that in a part of the blog called 'Roadside Crosses.' "

Dance's heart rate pumped up a bit. She asked, "Who's 'the driver'?"

"Don't know. The name's deleted in all the posts."

"A blog, hmm?"

"Right." Boling gave a brief laugh and said, "Mushrooms."

"What?"

"Blogs are the mushrooms of the Internet. They're sprouting up everywhere. A few years ago everybody in Silicon Valley was wondering what would be the next big thing in the dot-com world. Well, it turned out to be not a revolutionary new type of hardware or software, but online content: games, social networking sites…and blogs. You can't write about computers now without studying them. The one Tammy posted to was The Chilton Report."

Dance shrugged. "Never heard of it."

"I have. It's local but it's well known in blogging circles. It's like a California-based Matt Drudge, only more fringe. Jim Chilton's a bit of a character." He continued to read. "Let's go online and check it out."

Dance got her own laptop from her desk. "What's the URL?" she asked.

Boling gave it to her.

http://www.thechiltonreport.com

The professor tugged his chair closer and together they read the homepage.

THE CHILTON REPORT™

THE MORAL VOICE OF AMERICA. A COLLECTION OF MUSINGS ABOUT WHERE THIS COUNTRY'S GOING WRONG…AND WHERE IT'S GOING RIGHT.

Dance chuckled. "'Where it's going right.' Clever. He's Moral Majority, conservative, I take it."

Boling shook his head. "From what I know he's more cut-and-paste."

She lifted an eyebrow.

"I mean that he picks and chooses his causes. He's more right than left but he'll take on anybody who falls short of his standards of morality or judgment or intelligence. That's one of the points of blogs, of course: to stir things up. Controversy sells."

Below was a greeting to the readers.

Dear Reader…

Whether you've ended up here because you're a subscriber or a fan or simply because you happened to be browsing the Web and stumbled across The Report, welcome.

Whatever your positions on political and social issues, I hope you'll find something in my reflections here that, at the very least, makes you question, makes you doubt, makes you want to know more.

For that is what journalism is all about. -James Chilton

Below that was: "Mission Statement."

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

We can't make judgments in a vacuum. Will business, will government, will corrupt politicians and criminal and debauched individuals be honest about what they're up to? Of course not. It's our job in The Report to shine the light of truth into the shadows of deceit and greed-to give you the facts you need to make informed decisions about the pressing issues of the day.

Dance also found a brief biography of Chilton, then a section about personal news. She glanced over the listings.