Roadside Crosses

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 exactly her 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 arrested…"

"What?"

"That mercy killing. Juan Millar."

"Oh, Katie."

"I'm taking the kids to Martine's, then meet me at the courthouse in Salinas. She's going to be booked and there'll be a bond hearing."

"Sure. I…I don't know what to do, honey." His voice broke.

It cut her deeply to hear her own father-normally unflappable and in control-sounding so helpless.

"We'll get it worked out," she said, trying to sound confident but feeling just as uncertain and confused as he would be. "I'll call later, Dad." They disco

"Mom," she called through the car window, looking down at her mother's grim face. "It'll be all right. I'll see you at the courthouse."

The prosecutor said sternly, "Agent Dance, I don't want to remind you again. No talking to the prisoner."

She ignored Harper. "And don't say a word to anyone," she warned her mother.

"I hope we're not going to have a security problem here," the prosecutor said stiffly.

Dance glared back, silently defying him to make good on his threat, whatever it might be. Then she glanced at the CHP troopers nearby, one of whom she'd worked with. His eyes avoided hers. Everybody was in Harper's pocket on this one.

She turned and strode back toward her car, but diverted to the woman social worker.

Dance stood close. "Those children have cell phones. I'm number two on speed dial, right after nine-one-one. And I guarantee they told you I'm a law enforcement officer. Why the fuck didn't you call me?"

The woman blinked and reared back. "You can't talk to me that way."

"Why the fuck didn't you call?"

"I was following procedures."

"Procedures are the welfare of the child comes first. You contact the parent or guardian in circumstances like this."

"Well, I was doing what I was told."

"How long've you had this job?"

"That's none of your business."

"Well, I'll tell you, miss. There're two answers: either not long enough, or way too long."

"You can't-"

But Dance was gone by then and climbing back into her car, grinding the starter; she'd never shut the engine off when she'd arrived.

"Mom," Maggie asked, weeping with heartbreaking whimpers. "What's going to happen to Grandma?"

Dance wasn't going to put on a false facade for the children; she'd learned as a parent that in the end it was better to confront pain and fear, rather than to deny or defer them. But she had to struggle to keep panic from her voice. "Your grandmother's going to see a judge and I hope she'll be home soon. Then we're going to find out what's happened. We just don't know yet."

She'd take the children to the home of her best friend, Martine Christensen, with whom she operated her music website.

"I don't like that man," Wes said.

"Who?"

"Mr. Harper."

"I don't like him either," Dance said.

"I want to go to the courthouse with you," Maggie said.

"No, Mags. I don't know how long I'm going to be there."

Dance glanced back and gave a reassuring smile to the children.

Seeing their wan, forlorn faces, she grew all the angrier at Robert Harper.

Dance plugged in her phone's hands-free mike, thought for a moment and called the best defense lawyer she could think of. George Sheedy had once spent four hours trying to discredit Dance on the witness stand. He'd come close to wi

As her call was being transferred to Sheedy, she noticed that the cameramen continued to record the excitement, every one of them focused on the car in which her mother sat, handcuffed. They looked like insurgents firing rocket launchers at shell-shocked troops.