Roadside Crosses

Sammy appeared, as before, big, moving quickly, gri

"Travis!" He charged toward his sibling. "Did you bring me M's?"

"Here you go." Travis dug into his pocket and handed the boy a packet of M &M's.

"Yea!" Sammy opened the package carefully, looked inside. Then gazed at his brother. "The pond was nice today."

"Was it?"

"Yeah." Sammy returned to his room, clutching the candy in his hand.

Travis said, "He doesn't look good. Did he take his pills?"

His mother looked away. "They…"

"Dad wouldn't get the prescription refilled because the price went up. Right?"

"He doesn't think they do that much good."

"They do a lot of good, Mom. You know how he gets when he doesn't take them."

Dance glanced into Sammy's room and saw that the boy's desk was covered with complicated electronic components, parts of computers and tools-along with toys for children much younger. He was reading a Japanese graphic novel as he slouched in a chair. The boy glanced up and stared at Dance intently, studying her. He gave a faint smile and nodded toward the book. Dance smiled back at the cryptic gesture. He returned to reading. His lips moved.

She noticed on a hall table a laundry basket filled with clothes. She tapped O'Neil's arm and glanced at a gray sweatshirt sitting on the top. It was a hoodie.

O'Neil nodded.

"How are you feeling?" Dance asked Travis. "After the accident?"

"Okay, I guess."

"It must've been terrible."

"Yeah."

"But you weren't hurt bad?"

"Not really. The airbag, you know. And I wasn't going that fast… Trish and Van." A grimace. "If they'd had their seat belts on they would've been fine."

Sonia repeated, "His father should be home anytime now."

O'Neil continued evenly, "Just have a few questions." Then he stepped back to the corner of the living room, leaving the questioning to Dance.

She asked, "What grade are you in?"

"Just finished junior year."

"Robert Louis Stevenson, right?"

"Yeah."

"What're you studying?"

"I don't know, stuff. I like computer science and math. Spanish. Just, you know, what everybody's taking."

"How's Stevenson?"

"It's okay. Better than Monterey Public or Junipero." He was answering agreeably, looking directly into her eyes.

At Junipero Serra School, uniforms were required. Dance supposed that more than stern Jesuits and long homework assignments, the dress code was the most hated aspect of the place.

"How're the gangs?"

"He's not in a gang," his mother said. Almost as if she wished he were.

They all ignored her.

"Not bad," Travis responded. "They leave us alone. Not like Salinas."

The point of these questions wasn't social. Dance was asking them to determine the boy's baseline behavior. After a few minutes of these harmless inquiries, Dance had a good feel for the boy's nondeceptive mode. Now she was ready to ask about the assault.

"Travis, you know Tammy Foster, don't you?"

"The girl in the trunk. It was on the news. She goes to Stevenson. She and me don't talk or anything. Maybe we had a class together freshman year." He then looked Dance straight in the eye. His hand occasionally strayed across his face but she wasn't sure whether it was a blocking gesture, signifying deception, or because he was ashamed of the acne. "She posted some stuff about me in The Chilton Report. It wasn't true."

"What did she say?" Dance asked, though she recalled the post, about his trying to take pictures of the girls' locker room after cheerleading practice.

The boy hesitated, as if wondering if she was trying to trap him. "She said I was taking pictures. You know, of the girls." His face grew dark. "But I was just on the phone, you know, talking."

"Really," his mother interjected. "Bob'll be home any minute now. I might rather wait."

But Dance felt a certain urgency to keep going. She knew without doubt that if Sonia wanted to wait for her husband, the man would put a fast end to the interview.

Travis asked, "Is she going to be okay? Tammy?"

"Looks like it."

He glanced at the scarred coffee table, where an empty but smudged ashtray rested. Dance didn't think she'd seen an ashtray in a living room for years. "You think I did it? Tried to hurt her?" How easily his dark eyes, set deep beneath those brows, held hers.

"No. We're just talking to everybody who might have information about the situation."

"Situation?" he asked.

"Where were you last night? Between eleven and one?"

Another sweep of the hair. "I went to the Game Shed about ten-thirty."

"What's that?"

"This place where you can play video games. Like an arcade. I kind of hang there some. You know where it is? It's by Kinko's. It used to be that old movie theater but that got torn down and they put it in. It's not the best, the co

Dance noted the rambling. She asked, "You were alone?"

"There were, like, other kids there. But I was playing alone."

"I thought you were here," Sonia said.

A shrug. "I was here. I went out. I couldn't sleep."

"At the Game Shed were you online?" Dance asked.

"Like, no. I was playing pinball, not RPG."

"Not what?"

"Role-playing games. For shooter and pinball and driving games you don't go online."

He said this patiently, though he seemed surprised she didn't know the distinction.

"So you weren't logged on?"

"That's what I'm saying."

"How long were you there?" His mother had taken on the interrogation.

"I don't know, an hour, two."

"What do those games cost? Fifty cents, a dollar every few minutes?"

So that was Sonia's agenda. Money.

"If you play good, it lets you keep on going. Cost me three dollars for the whole night. I used money I made. And I got some food too and a couple of Red Bulls."

"Travis, can you think of anybody who saw you there?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I'll have to think about it." Eyes studying the floor.

"Good. And what time did you come home?"

"One-thirty. Maybe two. I don't know."

She asked more questions about Monday night and then about school and his classmates. She wasn't able to decide whether or not he was telling the truth since he wasn't deviating much from his baseline. She thought again about what Jon Boling had told her about the synth world. If Travis was mentally there, not in the real world, baseline analysis might be useless. Maybe a whole different set of rules applied to people like Travis Brigham.

Then the mother's eyes flickered toward the doorway. The boy's too.

Dance and O'Neil turned to see a large man enter, tall and broad. He was wearing workmen's overalls streaked in dirt, Central Coast Landscaping embroidered on his chest. He looked at everybody in the room, slowly. Dark eyes still and unfriendly beneath a fringe of thick, brown hair.

"Bob, these are police-"

"They're not here with the report for the insurance, are they?"

"No. They-"

"You have a warrant?"

"They're here to-"

"I'm talking to her." A nod at Dance.

"I'm Agent Dance with the California Bureau of Investigation." She offered an ID he didn't look at. "And this is Senior Deputy O'Neil, Monterey County Sheriff's Office. We're asking your son a few questions about a crime."

"There was no crime. It was an accident. Those girls died in an accident. That's all that happened."

"We're here about something else. Someone who'd posted a message about Travis was attacked."

"Oh, that blog bullshit." He growled. "That Chilton is a danger to society. He's like a fucking poisonous snake." He turned to his wife. "Joey, down at the dock, nearly got hisself popped in the mouth, the stuff he was saying about me. Egging on the other boys. Just 'cause I'm his father. They don't read the newspaper, they don't read Newsweek. But they read that Chilton crap. Somebody should…" His voice faded. He turned toward his son. "I told you not to say anything to anybody without we have a lawyer. Did I tell you that? You say the wrong fucking thing to the wrong person, and we get sued. And they take the house away and half my paycheck for the rest of my life." He lowered his voice. "And your brother goes into a home."