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A cross lay on the ground about forty feet away from the house.
No!
Drawing the gun, she grabbed a flashlight, called the dogs to her and swept the beam into the backyard. It was a narrow space, but extended for fifty feet behind the house and was filled with monkey flowers, scrub oak and maple trees, asters, lupine, potato vines, clover and renegade grass. The only flora that did well here thrived on sandy soil and shade.
She saw no one, though there were places where an intruder could remain hidden from the deck.
Dance hurried down the stairs into the dimness and looked around at the dozen of unsettling shadows cast by branches rocking in the wind.
Pausing, then moving slowly, her eyes on the paths and the dogs, which tracked around the yard, edgy, wary.
Their tense gait and Dylan's raised hackles were unsettling.
She approached the corner of the yard slowly. Looking for movement, listening for footsteps. When she heard and saw no signs of an intruder, she shined the flashlight onto the ground.
It seemed to be a cross, but up close Dance couldn't tell if it had been left intentionally or been created by falling branches. It wasn't bound with wire and there were no flowers. But the back gate was a few feet away, which, though locked, could easily have been vaulted by a seventeen-year-old boy.
Travis Brigham, she recalled, knew her name. And could easily find where she lived.
She walked in a slow circle around the cross. Were those footsteps beside it in the trampled grass? She couldn't tell.
The uncertainty was almost more troubling than if the cross had been left as a threat.
Dance returned to the house, stuffing her weapon in the holster.
She locked up and stepped into the living room, filled with furniture as mismatched as that in Travis Brigham's house, but nicer and homier, no leather or chrome. Mostly overstuffed, upholstered in rusts and earth colors. All purchased during shopping trips with her late husband. Dropping onto the sofa, Dance noticed a missed call. She flipped eagerly to the log. It was from Jon Boling, not her mother.
Boling was reporting that the "associate" had had no luck as yet with cracking the pass code. The supercomputer would be running all night, and he'd let Dance know the progress in the morning. Or, if she wanted, she could call back. He'd be up late.
Dance debated about calling--felt an urge to--but then decided to keep the line free in case her mother called. She then phoned the MCSO, got the senior deputy on duty and requested a Crime Scene run to collect the cross. She told him where it was located. He said he'd get somebody there in the morning.
She then showered; despite the steamy water, she kept shivering, as an unfortunately persistent image lodged in her thoughts: the mask from Kelley Morgan's house, the black eyes, the sewn-shut mouth.
When she climbed into bed, her Glock was three feet away, on the bedside table, unholstered and loaded with a full clip and one "in the bedroom"--the chamber.
She closed her eyes but, as exhausted as she was, she couldn't sleep.
And it wasn't the pursuit of Travis Brigham that was keeping her awake, nor the scare earlier. Not even the image of that damn mask.
No, the source of her keen restlessness was a simple comment that kept looping over and over in her mind.
Her mother's response to Sheedy's question about witnesses in the ICU the night that Juan Millar was killed.
There were some nurses down on that wing. But that was all. His family was gone. And there were no visitors.
Dance couldn't recall for certain, but she was almost positive that when she'd mentioned the deputy's death to her mother just after it happened, Edie had acted surprised by the news; she'd told her daughter that she'd been so busy on her own wing that she hadn't gone down to the ICU that night.
If Edie hadn't been in intensive care that night, as she'd claimed, then how could she be so certain it was deserted?
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 17
AT 8:00 IN the morning, Kathryn Dance walked into her office and smiled to see Jon Boling, in too-large latex gloves, tapping on the keyboard of Travis's computer.
"I know what I'm doing. I watch NCIS." He grinned. "I like it better than CSI."
"Hey, boss, we need a TV show about us," TJ said from a table he'd dragged into the corner, his workstation for his search for the origins of the eerie mask from the Kelley Morgan scene.
