The deputy from the Monterey County Sheriff's Office-typically crew cut and with a military bearing-introduced himself and explained what had happened. A local teenager had been kidnapped from a parking lot in downtown Monterey, off Alvarado, early that morning. Tammy Foster had been bound and tossed into her own car trunk. The attacker drove her to a beach outside of town and left her to drown in high tide.

Dance shivered at the thought of what it must've been like to lie cramped and cold as the water rose in the confined space.

"It was her car?" O'Neil asked, sitting in one of Dance's chairs and rocking on the back legs-doing exactly what Dance told her son not to do (she suspected Wes had learned the practice from O'Neil). The legs creaked under his weight.

"That's right, sir."

"What beach?"

"Down the coast, south of the Highlands."

"Deserted?"

"Yeah, nobody around. No wits."

"Witnesses at the club where she got snatched?" Dance asked.

"Negative. And no security cameras in the parking lot."

Dance and O'Neil took this in. She said, "So he needed other wheels near where he left her. Or had an accomplice."

"Crime scene found some footprints in the sand, headed for the highway. Above the tide level. But the sand was loose. No idea of tread or size. But definitely only one person."

O'Neil asked, "And no signs of a car pulling off the road to pick him up? Or one hidden in the bushes nearby?"

"No, sir. Our people did find some bicycle tread marks but they were on the shoulder. Could've been made that night, could've been a week old. No tread match. We don't have a bicycle database," he added to Dance.

Hundreds of people biked along the beach in that area daily.

"Motive?"

"No robbery, no sexual assault. Looks like he just wanted to kill her. Slowly."

Dance exhaled a puffy breath.

"Any suspects?"

"Nope."

Dance then looked at TJ. "And what you told me earlier, when I called? The weird part. Anything more on that?"

"Oh," the fidgety young agent said, "you mean the roadside cross."

THE CALIFORNIA BUREAU of Investigation has broad jurisdiction but usually is involved only in major crimes, like gang activity, terrorism threats and significant corruption or economic offenses. A single murder in an area where gangland killings occur at least once a week wouldn't attract any special attention.

But the attack on Tammy Foster was different.

The day before the girl had been kidnapped, a Highway Patrol trooper had found a cross, like a roadside memorial, with the next day's date written on it, stuck in the sand along Highway 1.

When the trooper heard of the attack on the girl, not far off the same highway, he wondered if the cross was an announcement of the perp's intentions. He'd returned and collected it. The Monterey County Sheriff's Office's Crime Scene Unit found a tiny bit of rose petal in the trunk where Tammy had been left to die-a fleck that matched the roses from the bouquet left with the cross.

Since on the surface the attack seemed random and there was no obvious motive, Dance had to consider the possibility that the perp had more victims in mind.

O'Neil now asked, "Evidence from the cross?"

His junior officer grimaced. "Truth be told, Deputy O'Neil, the Highway Patrol trooper just tossed it and the flowers in his trunk."

"Contaminated?"

"Afraid so. Deputy Bennington said he did the best he could to process it." Peter Bennington-the skilled, diligent head of the Monterey County Crime Scene Lab. "But didn't find anything. Not according to the preliminary. No prints, except the trooper's. No trace other than sand and dirt. The cross was made out of tree branches and florist wire. The disk with the date on it was cut out of cardboard, looked like. The pen, he said, was generic. And the writing was block printing. Only helpful if we get a sample from a suspect. Now, here's a picture of the cross. It's pretty creepy. Kind of like Blair Witch Project, you know."

"Good movie," TJ said, and Dance didn't know if he was being facetious or not.

They looked at the photo. It was creepy, the branches like twisted, black bones.

Forensics couldn't tell them anything? Dance had a friend she'd worked with not long ago, Lincoln Rhyme, a private forensic consultant in New York City. Despite the fact he was a quadriplegic, he was one of the best crime scene specialists in the country. She wondered, if he'd been running the scene, would he have found something helpful? She suspected he would have. But perhaps the most universal rule in police work was this: You go with what you've got.

She noticed something in the picture. "The roses."

O'Neil got her meaning. "The stems are cut the same length."

"Right. So they probably came from a store, not clipped from somebody's yard."

TJ said, "But, boss, you can buy roses about a thousand places on the Peninsula."

"I'm not saying it's leading us to his doorstep," Dance said. "I'm saying it's a fact we might be able to use. And don't jump to conclusions. They might've been stolen." She felt grumpy, hoped it didn't come off that way.

"Gotcha, boss."

"Where exactly was the cross?"

"Highway One. Just south of Marina." He touched a location on Dance's wall map.

"Any witnesses to leaving the cross?" Dance now asked the deputy.

"No, ma'am, not according to the CHP. And there are no cameras along that stretch of highway. We're still looking."

"Any stores?" O'Neil asked, just as Dance took a breath to ask the identical question.

"Stores?"

O'Neil was looking at the map. "On the east side of the highway. In those strip malls. Some of them have to have security cameras. Maybe one was pointed toward the spot. At least we could get a make and model of the car-if he was in one."

"TJ," Dance said, "check that out."

"You got it, boss. There's a good Java House there. One of my favorites."

"I'm so pleased."

A shadow appeared in her doorway. "Ah. Didn't know we were convening here."

Charles Overby, the recently appointed agent in charge of this CBI branch, walked into her office. In his midfifties, tanned; the pear-shaped man was athletic enough to get out on the golf or tennis courts several times a week but not so spry to keep up a long volley without losing his breath.

"I've been in my office for…well, quite some time."

Dance ignored TJ's subtle glance at his wristwatch. She suspected that Overby had rolled in a few minutes ago.

"Charles," she said. "Morning. Maybe I forgot to mention where we'd be meeting. Sorry."

"Hello, Michael." A nod toward TJ too, whom Overby sometimes gazed at curiously as if he'd never met the junior agent-though that might have just been disapproval of TJ's fashion choices.

Dance had in fact informed Overby of the meeting. On the drive here from the Peninsula Garden Hotel, she'd left a message on his voice mail, giving him the troubling news of the immunity hearing in L.A. and telling him of the plan to get together here, in her office. Maryellen had told him about the meeting too. But the CBI chief hadn't responded. Dance hadn't bothered to call back, since Overby usually didn't care much for the tactical side of running cases. She wouldn't have been surprised if he'd declined attending this meeting altogether. He wanted the "big picture," a recent favorite phrase. (TJ had once referred to him as Charles Overview; Dance had hurt her belly laughing.)

"Well. This girl-in-the-trunk thing…the reporters are calling already. I've been stalling. They hate that. Brief me."

Ah, reporters. That explained the man's interest.

Dance told him what they knew at this point, and what their plans were.

"Think he's going to try it again? That's what the anchors are saying."