’LL CARRY THE groceries,” Maggie announced as Dance’s Pathfinder squealed to a stop in front of their house.

The girl had been feeling independent lately. She grabbed the largest bag. There were four of them; after picking up the children at Martine’s, they’d stopped at Safeway for a shopping frenzy. If everyone she’d invited showed up, the dinner party would include nearly a dozen people, among them youngsters with serious appetites.

Listing under the weight of two bags gripped in one hand—an older-brother thing—Wes asked his mother, “When’s Grandma coming over?”

“In a little while, I hope…. There’s a chance she might not come.”

“No, she said she’s coming.”

Dance gave a confused smile. “You talked to her?”

“Yeah, she called me at camp.”

“Me too,” Maggie offered.

So she’d called to reassure the children she was all right. But Dance’s face flushed. Why hadn’t she called her?

“Well, it’s great she’ll be able to make it.”

They carried the bags inside.

Dance went into her bedroom, accompanied by Patsy.

She glanced at the gun lockbox. Travis was expanding his targets, and he knew she was one of the officers pursuing him. And she couldn’t forget the possible threat—the cross—in her backyard last night. Dance decided to keep the weapon with her. Ever-fastidious about weapons in a household with children, though, she locked the black gun away for a few minutes to take a shower. She stripped off her clothes energetically and stepped into the stream of hot water—trying unsuccessfully to flush away the residue of the day.

She dressed in jeans and an oversize blouse, not tucked in, to obscure the weapon, which sat against the small of her back. Uncomfortable, yet a comfort. Then she hurried into the kitchen.

She fed the dogs and put out a small brushfire between the children, who were sniping over their predinner tasks. Dance stayed patient—she knew they were upset about the incident at the hospital yesterday. Maggie’s job was to unpack the groceries, while Wes straightened up for guests. Dance continued to be amazed at how cluttered a house could become, even though only three people lived there.

She thought now, as she often did, about the time when the population was four. And glanced at her wedding picture. Bill Swenson, prematurely gray, lean and with an easy smile, looked out at the camera with his arm around her.

Then she went into the den, booted up her computer and emailed Overby about the assault on Chilton and the confrontation with Brubaker.

She wasn’t in the mood to talk to him.

Then Dance retrieved Jon Boling’s email with the names of people who’d posted comments favorable to Chilton over the past months. Seventeen.

Could be worse, she supposed.

She spent the next hour finding the numbers of those within a hundred miles and calling to warn them they might be in danger. She weathered their criticism, some of it searing, about the CBI and the police not being able to stop Travis Brigham.

Dance logged on to that day’s!!!Chilton Report.!!!Http://www.thechiltonreport.com/html/june27.html!!!

She scrolled through all the threads, noting that new posts had appeared in nearly all of them. The latest contributors to the Reverend Fisk and the desalination threads were taking their respective causes seriously—and with intensifying anger. But none of their posts compared to the vicious comments in the “Roadside Crosses” thread, most of them unleashing undiluted fury at each other, as much as at Travis.

Some of them were curiously worded, some seemed to be probing for information, some seemed to be outright threats. She got the feeling that there were clues as to where Travis was hiding—possibly even tidbits of facts that might suggest whom he was going to attack next. Was Travis actually one of the posters, hiding behind a fake identity or the common pseudonym, “Anonymous”? She read the exchanges carefully and decided that perhaps there were clues, but the answer eluded her. Kathryn Dance, comfortable with analyzing the spoken word, could come to no solid conclusions as she read the frustratingly silent shouts and mutters.

Finally she logged off.

An email from Michael O’Neil arrived. He gave her the discouraging news that the immunity hearing in the J. Doe case had been pushed back to Friday. The prosecutor, Ernie Seybold, felt that the judge’s willingness to go along with the defense’s request for the extension was a bad sign. She grimaced at the news and was disappointed that he hadn’t called to give her the news over the phone. Neither had he mentioned anything about whether he and the children would come over tonight.

Dance began to organize the meal. She didn’t have much skill in the kitchen, as she was the first to admit. But she knew which stores had the most talented prepared-food departments; the meal would be fine.

Listening to the soft braying of a video game from Wes’s room, Maggie’s keyboard scales, Dance found herself staring into the backyard, recalling the image of her mother’s face yesterday afternoon, as her daughter deserted her to see about the second roadside cross.!!!Your mother will understand.!!!No, she won’t….

Hovering over the containers of brisket, green beans, Caesar salad, salmon and twice-baked potatoes, Dance remembered that time three weeks ago—her mother standing in this very kitchen and reporting about Juan Millar in the ICU. With Edie’s face feeling his pain, she’d told her daughter what he’d whispered to her.

Kill me…

The doorbell now drew her from that disquieting thought.

She deduced who had arrived—most friends and family just climbed the back deck stairs and entered the kitchen without ringing or knocking. She opened the front door to see Jon Boling standing on the porch. He wore that now-familiar, comfortable smile and was juggling a small shopping bag and a large laptop case. He’d changed into black jeans and a dark striped collared shirt.

“Hi.”

He nodded and followed her into the kitchen.

The dogs bounded up. Boling crouched and hugged them as they double-teamed him.

“Okay, guys, outside!” Dance commanded. She flung Milk Bones out the back door and the dogs charged down the steps and into the backyard.

Boling stood, wiped his face from the licks and laughed. He reached into the shopping bag. “I decided to bring sugar for a hostess gift.”

“Sugar?”

“Two versions: fermented.” He extracted a bottle of Caymus Conundrum white wine.

“Nice.”

“And baked.” A bag of cookies emerged. “I remembered the way you looked at them in the office when your assistant was trying to fatten me up.”

“Caught that did you?” Dance laughed. “You’d be a good kinesic interviewer. We have to be observant.”

His eyes were excited, she could see. “Got something to show you. Can we sit down somewhere?”

She directed him into the living room, where Boling unpacked yet another laptop, a big one, a brand she didn’t recognize. “Irv did it,” he announced.

“Irv?”

“Irving Wepler, the associate I was telling you about. One of my grad students.”

So, not Bambi or Tiff.

“Everything on Travis’s laptop is in here now.”

He began typing. In an instant the screen came to life. Dance didn’t know computers could respond so quickly.

From the other room, Maggie hit a sour note on the keyboard.

“Sorry.” Dance winced.

“C sharp,” Boling said without looking up from the screen.

Dance was surprised. “You a musician?”

“No, no. But I have perfect pitch. Just a fluke. And I don’t know what to do with it. No musical talent whatsoever. Not like you.”

“Me?” She hadn’t told him her avocation.

A shrug. “Thought it might not be a bad idea to check you out. I didn’t expect you to have more Google hits as a songcatcher than a cop…. Oh, can I say cop?”

“So far it’s not a politically incorrect term.” Dance went on to explain that she was a failed folksinger but had found musical redemption in the project that she and Martine Christensen operated—a website called!!!American Tunes!!!, the name echoing Paul Simon’s evocative anthem to the country from the 1970s. The site was a lifesaver for Dance, who often had to dwell in some very dark places because of her work. There was nothing like music to pull her safely out of the minds of the criminals she pursued.

Although the common term was “songcatcher,” Dance told him, the job description was technically “folklorist.” Alan Lomax was the most famous—he’d roam the hinterland of America, collecting traditional music for the Library of Congress in the midtwentieth century. Dance too traveled around the country, when she could, to collect music, though not Lomax’s mountain, blues and bluegrass. Today’s homegrown American songs were African, Afro-pop, Cajun, Latino, Caribbean, Nova Scotian, East Indian and Asian.

American Tunes helped the musicians copyright their original material, offered the music for sale via download and distributed to them the money listeners paid.

Boling seemed interested. He too, it seemed, trekked into the wilderness once or twice a month. He’d been a serious rock climber at one time, he explained, but had given that up.

“Gravity,” he said, “is nonnegotiable.”

Then he nodded toward the bedroom that was the source of the music. “Son or daughter?”

“Daughter. The only strings my son’s familiar with come on a tennis racket.”

“She’s good.”

“Thank you,” Dance said with some pride; she had worked hard to encourage Maggie. She practiced with the girl and, more time-consuming, chauffeured her to and from piano lessons and recitals.

Boling typed and a colorful page popped up on the laptop’s screen. But then his body language changed suddenly. She noticed he was looking over her shoulder, toward the doorway.

Dance should have guessed. She’d heard the keyboard fall silent thirty seconds before.

Then Boling was smiling. “Hi, I’m Jon. I work with your mom.”

Wearing a backward baseball cap, Maggie was standing in the doorway. “Hello.”

“Hats in the house,” Dance reminded.

Off it came. Maggie walked right up to Boling. “I’m Maggie.” Nothing shy about my girl, Dance reflected, as the ten-year-old pumped his hand.

“Good grip,” the professor told her. “And good touch on the keyboard.”

The girl beamed. “You play anything?”

“CDs and downloads. That’s it.”

Dance looked up and wasn’t surprised to see twelve-year-old Wes appear too, looking their way. He was hanging back, in the doorway. And he wasn’t smiling.

Her stomach did a flip. After his father’s death, Wes could be counted on to take a dislike to the men that his mom saw socially—sensing them, her therapist said, as a threat to their family and to his father’s memory. The only man he really liked was Michael O’Neil—in part because, the doctor theorized, the deputy was married and thus no risk.

The boy’s attitude was hard for Dance, who’d been a widow for two years, and at times felt a terrible longing for a romantic companion. She wanted to date, she wanted to meet somebody and knew it would be good for the children. But whenever she went out, Wes became sullen and moody. She’d spent hours reassuring him that he and his sister came first. She planned out tactics to ease the boy comfortably into meeting her dates. And sometimes simply laid down the law and told him she wouldn’t tolerate any attitude. Nothing had worked very well; and it didn’t help that his hostility toward her most recent potential partner had turned out to be far more insightful than her own judgment. She resolved after that to listen to what her children had to say and watch how they reacted.

She motioned him over. He joined them. “This is Mr. Boling.”

“Hi, Wes.”

“Hi.” They shook hands, Wes a bit shy, as always.

Dance was about to add quickly that she knew Boling through work, to reassure Wes and defuse any potential awkwardness. But before she could say anything, Wes’s eyes flashed as he gazed at the computer screen. “Sweet. DQ!”

She regarded the splashy graphics of the!!!DimensionQuest!!! computer game homepage, which Boling had apparently extracted from Travis’s computer.

“Are you guys playing?” The boy seemed astonished.

“No, no. I just wanted to show your mother something. You know Morpegs, Wes?”

“Like, definitely.”

“Wes,” Dance murmured.

“I mean, sure. She doesn’t like me to say ‘like.’”

Smiling, Boling asked, “You play DQ? I don’t know it so well.”

“Naw, it’s kind of wizardy, you know. I’m more into Trinity.”

“Oh, man,” Boling said with some boyish, and genuine, reverence in his voice. “The graphics kick butt.” He turned to Dance and said, “It’s S-F.”

But that wasn’t much of an explanation. “What?”

“Mom, science fiction.”

“Sci-fi.”

“No, no, you can’t say that. It’s S-F.” Eyes rolling broadly ceilingward.

“I stand corrected.”

Wes’s face scrunched up. “But with Trinity, you definitely need two gig of RAM and at least two on your video card. Otherwise it’s, like…” He winced. “Otherwise it’s so slow. I mean, you’ve got your beams ready to shoot…and the screen hangs. It’s the worst.”

“RAM on the desktop I hacked together at work?” Boling asked coyly.

“Three?” Wes asked.

“Five. And four on the video card.”

Wes mimicked a brief faint.!!! “Nooooo! That is sooo sweet. How much storage?”

“Two T.”

“No way! Two tera bytes?”

Dance laughed, feeling huge relief that there wasn’t any tension between them. But she said, “Wes, I’ve never seen you play Trinity. We don’t have it loaded on our computer here, do we?” She was very restrictive about what the children played on their computers and the websites they visited. But she couldn’t oversee them 100 percent of the time.

“No, you don’t let me,” he said without any added meaning or resentment. “I play at Martine’s.”

“With the twins?” Dance was shocked. The children of Martine Christensen and Steven Cahill were younger than Wes and Maggie.

Wes laughed. “Mom!” Exasperated. “No, with Steve. He’s got all the patches and codes.”

That made sense; Steve, who described himself as a green geek, ran the technical side of!!!American Tunes.

“Is it violent?” Dance asked Boling, not Wes.

The professor and the boy shared a conspiratorial look.

“Well?” she persisted.

“Not really,” Wes said.

“What does that mean exactly?” asked the law enforcement agent.

“Okay, you can sort of blow up spaceships and planets,” Boling said.

Wes added, “But not like violent-violent, you know.”

“Right,” the professor assured her. “Nothing like Resident Evil or Manhunt.”

“Or Gears of War,” Wes added. “I mean, there you can chainsaw people.”

“What?” Dance was appalled. “Have you ever played it?”

“No!” he protested, right on the edge of credibility. “Billy Sojack at school has it. He told us about it.”

“Make sure you don’t.”

“All right. I won’t. Anyway,” the boy added, with another glance at Boling, “you don’t have to use a chain saw.”

“I never want you to play that game. Or the others that Mr. Boling mentioned.” She said this in her best mother voice.

“Okay. Geez, Mom.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.” The look at Boling said, She just gets this way sometimes.

The two males then launched into a discussion of other games and technical issues whose meaning Dance couldn’t even guess at. But she was happy to see this. Boling, of course, was no romantic interest, but it was such a relief that she didn’t have to worry about conflicts, especially tonight—the evening would be stressful enough. Boling didn’t talk down to the boy, nor did he try to impress him. They seemed like peers of different ages, having fun talking.

Feeling neglected, Maggie barged in with, “Mr. Boling, do you have kids?”

“Mags,” Dance interjected, “don’t ask personal questions when you’ve just met somebody.”

“That’s all right. No, I don’t, Maggie.”

She nodded, taking in the information. The issue, Dance understood, wasn’t about possible playmates. She was really inquiring about his marital status. The girl was ready to marry off her mother faster than Maryellen Kresbach from the office (provided Maggie was “best woman”—no retro “maid of honor” for Dance’s independent daughter).

It was then that voices sounded from the kitchen. Edie and Stuart had arrived. They walked inside and joined Dance and the children.

“Grams!” Maggie called and charged toward her. “How are you?”

Edie’s face blossomed into a genuine smile—or nearly so, Dance assessed. Wes, his face glowing with relief too, ran to her as well. Though stingy with hugs for Mom lately, the boy wrapped his arms around his grandmother and squeezed tight. Of the two children, he’d taken the arrest incident at the hospital closer to heart.

“Katie,” Stuart said, “chasing down crazed felons and you still had time to cook.”

“Well, somebody had time to cook,” she replied with a smile and a glance at the Safeway shopping bags, hiding near the trash can.

Ecstatic to see her mother, Dance embraced her. “How are you?”

“Fine, dear.”

Dear… Not a good sign. But she was here, at least. That’s what counted.

Edie turned back to the children and was enthusiastically telling them about a TV show she’d just seen on extreme home makeovers. Dance’s mother was brilliant at dispensing comfort and rather than talk directly about what happened at the hospital—which would only trouble them more—she reassured the kids by saying nothing about the incident and chatting away about inconsequential things.

Dance introduced her parents to Jon Boling.

“I’m a hired gun,” he said. “Kathryn made the mistake of asking my advice, and she’s stuck with me now.”

They talked about where in Santa Cruz he lived, how long he’d been in the area and the colleges he’d taught at. Boling was interested to learn that Stuart still worked part-time at the famous Monterey Bay aquarium; the professor went often and had just taken his niece and nephew there.

“I did some teaching too,” Stuart Dance offered, when he learned Boling’s career. “I was pretty comfortable in academia; I’d done a lot of research into sharks.”

Boling laughed hard.

Wine was dispensed—Boling’s Conundrum white blend first.

But then Boling must’ve sensed a wind shift and he excused himself to head back to the computer. “I don’t get to eat unless I finish my homework. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Why don’t you go out back,” Dance told him, pointing to the deck. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

After he’d collected the computer and wandered outside, Edie said, “Nice young man.”

“Very helpful. Thanks to him we saved one of the victims.” Dance stepped to the refrigerator to put the wine away. As she did, emotion took the reins and she blurted softly to her mother, “I’m sorry I had to leave the courtroom so fast, Mom. They found another roadside cross. There was a witness I had to interview.”

Her mother’s voice revealed no trace of sarcasm when she said, “That’s all right, Katie. I’m sure it was important. And that poor man today. Lyndon Strickland, the lawyer. He was well known.”

“Yes, he was.” Dance noted the shift of subject.

“Sued the state, I think. Consumer advocate.”

“Mom, what’ve you heard from Sheedy?”

Edie Dance blinked. “Not tonight, Katie. We won’t talk about it tonight.”

“Sure.” Dance felt like a chastised child. “Whatever you want.”

“Will Michael be here?”

“He’s going to try. Anne’s in San Francisco, so he’s juggling kids. And working on another big case.”

“Oh. Well, hope he can make it. And how is Anne?” Edie asked coolly. She believed that O’Neil’s wife’s mothering skills left a lot to be desired. And any failures there were a class-A misdemeanor to Edie Dance, bordering on felony.

“Fine, I imagine. Haven’t seen her for a while.”

Dance wondered again if in fact Michael would show up.

“You talked to Betsey?” she asked her mother.

“Yes, she’s coming up this weekend.”

“She can stay with me.”

“If it’s not inconvenient,” Edie offered.

“Why would it be inconvenient?”

Her mother replied, “You might be busy. With this case of yours. That’s your priority. Now, Katie, you go visit with your friend. Maggie and I’ll get things started. Mags, come on and help me in the kitchen.”

“Yea, Grandma!”

“And Stu brought a DVD he thinks Wes would like. Sports bloopers. You boys go put that on.”

Her husband took the cue and wandered to the flat-screen TV, calling Wes over.

Dance stood helplessly for a moment, hands at her sides, watching her mother retreat as she chatted happily with her granddaughter. Then Dance stepped outside.

She found Boling at an unsteady table on the deck, near the back door, under an amber light. He was looking around. “This is pretty nice.”

“I call it the Deck,” she laughed. “Capital D.”

It was here that Kathryn Dance spent much of her time—by herself and with the children, dogs and those connected to her through blood or through friendship.

The gray, pressure-treated structure, twenty by thirty feet, and eight feet above the backyard, extended along the back of the house. It was filled with unsteady lawn chairs, loungers and tables. Illumination came from tiny Christmas lights, wall lamps, some amber globes. A sink, tables and a large refrigerator sat on the uneven planks. Anemic plants in chipped pots, bird feeders and weathered metal and ceramic hangings from the garden departments of chain stores made up the eclectic decorations.

Dance would often come home to find colleagues from the CBI or MCSO or Highway Patrol sitting on the Deck, enjoying beverages from the battered fridge. It didn’t matter if she was home or not, provided the rules were observed: Never disrupt the kids’ studying or the family’s sleep, keep the crudeness down and stay out of the house itself, unless invited.

Dance loved the Deck, which was a site for breakfasts, dinner parties and more formal occasions. She’d been married here.

And she’d hosted the memorial service for her husband on the gray, warped timbers.

Dance now sat on the wicker love seat beside Boling, who was hunched forward over the large laptop. He looked around and said, “I’ve got a deck too. But if we were talking constellations, yours’d be Deck Major. Mine’d be Deck Minor.”

She laughed.

Boling nodded at the computer. “There was very little I found about the local area or Travis’s friends. Much less than you’d normally see in a teen’s computer. The real world doesn’t figure much in Travis’s life. He spends most of his time in the synth, on websites and blogs and bulletin boards and, of course, playing his Morpegs.”

Dance was disappointed. All the effort to hack into the computer and it wasn’t going to be as helpful as she’d hoped.

“And as for his time in the synth world, most of that is in DimensionQuest.” He nodded at the screen. “I did some research. It’s the biggest online role-playing game in the world. There are about twelve million subscribers to that one.”

“Bigger than the population of New York City.”

Boling described it as a combination of!!!Lord of the Rings, Star Wars!!! and!!!Second Life!!!—the social interaction site where you create imaginary lives for yourself. “As near as I can tell he was on DQ between four and ten hours a day.”

“A day?”

“Oh, that’s typical for a Morpeg player.” He chuckled. “Some are even worse. There’s a!!!DimensionQuest!!! twelve-step program in the real world to help people get over their addiction to the game.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yes.” He sat forward. “Now, there’s nothing in his computer about places he’d go or his friends, but I’ve found something that might be helpful.”

“What’s that?”

“Him.”

“Who?”

“Well, Travis himself.”