Roadside Crosses

Torture…tools.

The door slammed shut, hard.

And Tammy Foster broke. She dissolved into sobs, struggling to suck in more lousy air. "No, please, please!" she cried, though the words were filtered through the tape and came out as a sort of moan.

Tammy began ru

The sea crashed. The seals hooted.

She was going to die.

"Mommy."

But then…nothing.

The trunk didn't pop, the car door didn't open again, she heard no footsteps approaching. After three minutes she controlled the crying. The panic diminished.

Five minutes passed, and he hadn't opened the trunk.

Ten.

Tammy gave a faint, mad laugh.

It was just a scare. He wasn't going to kill her or rape her. It was a practical joke.

She was actually smiling beneath the tape, when the car rocked, ever so slightly. Her smile faded. The Camry rocked again, a gentle push-pull, though stronger than the first time. She heard a splash and felt a shudder. Tammy knew an ocean wave had struck the front end of the car.

Oh, my God, no! He'd left the car on the beach, with high tide coming in!

The car settled into the sand, as the ocean undermined the tires.

No! One of her worst fears was drowning. And being stuck in a confined space like this…it was unthinkable. Tammy began to kick at the trunk lid.

But there was, of course, no one to hear, except the seals.

The water was now sloshing hard against the sides of the Toyota.

The ghost…

Somehow she had to pull the trunk release lever. She worked off her shoes and tried again, her head pressing hard against the carpet, agonizingly lifting her feet toward the glowing pull. She got them on either side of it, pressed hard, her stomach muscles quivering.

Now!

Her legs cramping, she eased the ghost downward.

A tink.

Yes! It worked!

But then she moaned in horror. The pull had come away in her feet, without opening the trunk. She stared at the green ghost lying near her. He must've cut the wire! After he'd dumped her into the trunk, he'd cut it. The release pull had been dangling in the eyelet, no longer co

She was trapped.

Please, somebody, Tammy prayed again. To God, to a passerby, even to her kidnapper, who might show her some mercy.

But the only response was the indifferent gurgle of saltwater as it began seeping into the trunk.

THE PENINSULA GARDEN Hotel is tucked away near Highway 68-the venerable route that's a twenty-mile-long diorama, "The Many Faces of Monterey County." The road meanders west from the Nation's Salad Bowl-Salinas-and skirts the verdant Pastures of Heaven, punchy Laguna Seca racetrack, settlements of corporate offices, then dusty Monterey and pine-and-hemlock-filled Pacific Grove. Finally the highway deposits those drivers, at least those bent on following the complex via from start to finish, at legendary Seventeen Mile Drive-home of a common species around here: People With Money.

"Not bad," Michael O'Neil said to Kathryn Dance as they climbed out of his car.

Through narrow glasses with gray frames, the woman surveyed the Spanish and deco main lodge and half-dozen adjacent buildings. The i

As they stood surveying the hotel, with its distant glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, Dance, an expert at kinesics, body language, tried to read O'Neil. The chief deputy in the Monterey County Sheriff's Office Investigations Division was hard to analyze. The solidly built man, in his forties, with salt-and-pepper hair, was easygoing, but quiet unless he knew you. Even then he was economical of gesture and expression. He didn't give a lot away kinesically.

At the moment, though, she was reading that he wasn't at all nervous, despite the nature of their trip here.

She, on the other hand, was.

Kathryn Dance, a trim woman in her thirties, today wore her dark blond hair as she often did, in a French braid, the feathery tail end bound with a bright blue ribbon her daughter had selected that morning and tied into a careful bow. Dance was in a long, pleated black skirt and matching jacket over a white blouse. Black ankle boots with two-inch heels-footwear she'd admired for months but been able to resist buying only until they had gone on sale.

O'Neil was in one of his three or four civilian configurations: chinos and powder blue shirt, no tie. His jacket was dark blue, in a faint plaid pattern.

The doorman, a cheerful Latino, looked them over with an expression that said, You seem like a nice couple. "Welcome. I hope you enjoy your stay." He opened the door for them.

Dance smiled uncertainly at O'Neil and they walked through a breezy hallway to the front desk.

FROM THE MAIN building, they wound through the hotel complex, looking for the room.

"Never thought this would happen," O'Neil said to her.

Dance gave a faint laugh. She was amused to realize that her eyes occasionally slipped to doors and windows. This was a kinesic response that meant the subject was subconsciously thinking about ways to escape-that is, was feeling stress.

"Look," she said, pointing to yet another pool. The place seemed to have four.

"Like Disneyland for adults. I hear a lot of rock musicians stay here."

"Really?" She frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"It's only one story. Not much fun getting stoned and throwing TVs and furniture out the window."

"This is Carmel," O'Neil pointed out. "The wildest they'd get here is pitching recyclables into the trash."

Dance thought of a comeback line but kept quiet. The bantering was making her more nervous.

She paused beside a palm tree with leaves like sharp weapons. "Where are we?"

The deputy looked at a slip of paper, oriented himself and pointed to one of the buildings in the back. "There."

O'Neil and Dance paused outside the door. He exhaled and lifted an eyebrow. "Guess this is it."

Dance laughed. "I feel like a teenager."

The deputy knocked.

After a short pause the door opened, revealing a narrow man, hovering near fifty, wearing dark slacks and a white shirt and striped tie.

"Michael, Kathryn. Right on time. Come on in."

ERNEST SEYBOLD, A career district attorney for Los Angeles County, nodded them into the room. Inside, a court reporter sat beside her three-legged dictation machine. Another young woman rose and greeted the new arrivals. She was, Seybold said, his assistant from L.A.

Earlier this month, Dance and O'Neil had run a case in Monterey -the convicted cult leader and killer Daniel Pell had escaped from prison and remained on the Peninsula, targeting more victims. One of the people involved in the case had turned out to be somebody very different from the person Dance and her fellow officers had believed. The consequences of that involved yet another murder.

Dance adamantly wanted to pursue the perp. But there was much pressure not to follow up-from some very powerful organizations. Dance wouldn't take no for an answer, though, and while the Monterey prosecutor had declined to handle the case, she and O'Neil learned that the perp had killed earlier-in Los Angeles. District Attorney Seybold, who worked regularly with Dance's organization, the California Bureau of Investigation, and was a friend of Dance's, agreed to bring charges in L.A.

Several witnesses, though, were in the Monterey area, including Dance and O'Neil, and so Seybold had come here for the day to take statements. The clandestine nature of the get-together was due to the perp's co