Boling shrugged. He nodded to a recent posting.
Reply to Chilton, posted by BrittanyM.
Is anybody watching the news???? Somebody left a cross and then went out and attacked that girl. What's that all about? OMG, I'll bet it's [the driver]!
Subsequent postings suggested Tammy was attacked by Travis because she'd posted a critical comment in The Chilton Report. And he had become the "Roadside Cross Killer," even though Tammy had survived.
"Great. We try to keep it secret and we get outed by a teenage girl named Brittany."
"Did you see him?" Boling asked.
"Yes."
"You think he's the one?"
"I wish I could say. I'm leaning toward it." She explained her theory that it was hard to read Travis because he was living more in the synth world than the real, and he was masking his kinesic responses. "I will say there's a huge amount of anger there. How 'bout we take a walk, Jon? There's somebody I want you to meet."
A few minutes later they arrived at Charles Over by's office. On the phone, as he often was, her boss gestured Dance and Boling in, with a glance of curiosity at the professor.
The agent-in-charge hung up. "They made the connection, the press did. He's now the 'Roadside Cross Killer.' "
BrittanyM . . .
Dance said, "Charles, this is Professor Jonathan Boling. He's been helping us."
A hearty handshake. "Have you now? What area?"
"Computers."
"That's your profession? Consultant?" Overby let this hang like a balsa-wood glider over the trio for a moment. Dance spotted her cue and was about to say that Boling was volunteering his time when the professor said, "I teach mostly, but, yes, I do some consulting, Agent Overby. It's really how I make most of my money. You know, academia pays next to nothing. But as a consultant I can charge up to three hundred an hour."
"Ah." Overby looked stricken. "Per hour. Really?"
Boling held a straight face for exactly the right length of time before adding, "But I get a real kick out of volunteering for free to help organizations like yours. So I'm tearing up my bill in your case."
Dance nearly had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Boling, she decided, could have been a good psychologist; he'd deduced Overby's prissy frugality in ten seconds flat, defused it--and slipped in a joke. For her benefit, Dance noted--since she was the only member of the audience.
"It's getting hysterical, Kathryn. We've had a dozen reports of killers wandering around in backyards. A couple of people've already taken some shots at intruders, thinking it's him. Oh, and there've been a couple more reports of crosses."
Dance was alarmed. "More?"
Overby held up a hand. "They were all real memorials, apparently. Accidents that had happened in the past few weeks. None with prospective dates on them. But the press is all over it. Even Sacramento's heard." He nodded at the phone, presumably indicating a call from their boss--the director of the CBI. Possibly even his boss, the attorney general.
"So where are we?"
Dance brought him up to date on Travis, the incidents at his parents' house, her take on the boy. "Definitely a person of interest."
"But you didn't bring him in?" Overby asked.
"No probable cause. Michael's checking out some physical evidence right now to link him to the scene."
"And no other suspects?"
"No."
"How the hell is a kid doing this, a kid riding around on a bicycle?"
Dance pointed out that local gangs, centered primarily in and around Salinas, had terrorized people for years, and many of them had members much younger than Travis.