Chapter 45 chapter Five

Dance walked across the yard toward Donald and Lily Hawken.Lightweight grasshoppers bounced away from where her feet landed. The couple stand on the porch steps of their holiday home in Chilton.Hawken's face looked pained.This betrayal hurt him to the marrow. "Did James really do it?" he whispered. "I'm afraid so." He thought again, "My God, what if the kids were here? Would he...?" He didn't finish. His wife stared at the dusty yard, wiping sweat from her brow.Hollister is far from the sea, and the summer air, surrounded by mountains, becomes terribly hot by noon.

"It's actually the second time he's tried to murder you," Dance said. "The second time?" Lily whispered. "You mean at our house? When we were unpacking and tidying up?" "Yeah. Chilton did that too, in one of Travis' hoodies." "But... is he crazy?" Hawken asked in a daze, "Why did he kill us?" "I'm not 100 percent sure, but I think he killed your first wife too," Dance said. He gasped in shock, opened his eyes wide, with an expression of disbelief, "What?" Lily looked up and turned to Dance. "But she died in an accident, swimming in La Jolla."

"I'll get some specifics from San Diego and the Coast Guard for verification. But there's a good chance I'm not wrong." "It's impossible for him to do it. Sarah and James are very..." Hawken didn't finish his sentence. "Intimate?" Dance asked. He shook his head, "No, it's impossible." But he blurted out angrily, "You mean they have an affair?" She paused, and then said: "I think yes, that's right. I will get some evidence in the next few days, including travel records, phone calls." Lily put her arms around her husband's shoulders. "Honey," she whispered.

Hawken said: "I remember when I was out they always liked to be together. Sarah was a little bit lumpy when I was with me. I travel a lot, maybe two or three days a week, but not too long. She would say sometimes that I didn't care about her. I thought it was a joke—didn't take it too seriously. But maybe she meant it, and James stepped in to fill the gap. Sara was always difficult." In Dance's view, the last sentence was incomplete, missing the words "in bed". She added: "I guess Sarah wants Chilton to leave Patria and marry her." He smiled wryly, "He didn't agree?"

Dance shrugged, "I think so." Hawken thought for a while, and said in a pale tone: "Rejecting Sarah will cause trouble." "I did the math. You moved to San Diego about 3 years ago. Patria's dad died around that time. She inherited a lot of money. That meant he could keep blogging — at the time He started doing it full time. I think he started to realize that he was on a mission to save the world, and the money that Patria inherited would keep him going. So, he cut off his relationship with your wife personal affair." Hawken asked: "So Sarah threatened him that if she didn't divorce Patria, she would reveal their affairs?"

"I think she's going to unmask James Chilton, the moral voice of the country, about his relationship with his best friend's wife." Dance believes Chilton lied to Sarah about agreeing to a divorce and met her in San Diego.He might suggest a picnic, romance, and a swim in a scenic coastal sanctuary in a deserted, secluded spot in La Jolla.Then something happens—he punches her on the head, or pins her under the water. "But why did he kill us?" Lily asked, looking back at the house in shock. Dance to Donald Hawken: "Hasn't you guys been in touch for a while?"

"After Sara died I was very depressed and bored and stopped seeing all my friends. I spent most of my time with the children. I went into seclusion... until I met Lily and that's when I started to get back to go in life." "So you decided to move back." "Yes, I came back after selling the company." Hawken said affectionately, "Of course, of course. Lily and I want to be back with James and Patria and other friends here. We are nostalgic sometimes. There was a time before Sarah died that James used to be in Southern California. He must have lied to Patria; it was only a matter of time before he would be found out." Hawken turned his head to the house, eyes He opened his eyes wide, "The oil painting of "The Blue Swan"... Got it!"

Dance looked up. "I told James I was going to give him one of my ex-wife's favorite paintings. I remember his eyes staring at that painting when he came to accompany me after Sarah died." He sneered, "I bet this one The painting turned out to be James's. He probably bought it years ago. Sarah was at his house one day and said she wanted it. Maybe he told Patria who he sold it to. If she looked When she sees this painting, she will wonder why Sarah has it." This explains Chilton's desperation - why he takes the risk of killing people.This gentleman-like blogger is talking about morality in front of the world, but his personal relationship is about to be exposed—it is still an affair with a dead woman.That way he would arouse suspicion and be investigated.The most important thing in his life—his blog—would be completely over.He must eliminate this hidden danger.

That report is too important to be threatened in any way... Lily asked, "What about that guy named Shaffer? That statement that James read—it mentioned Travis." "I'm sure Schaffer's plan didn't involve Travis in the first place. He'd been trying to get Chilton out for a while—probably since his brother died. But when he heard about the roadside cross attack , he changed that statement again to include Travis’s name—so no one would suspect Schaeffer himself.” Hawken asked: "How did you know that the murderer was not Shaffer but James?" Mainly, she explained, because of what wasn't said in that crime scene report that TJ provided.

"What wasn't said?" Hawken asked. "First," she explained, "there was no crucifix to foretell Chilton's death. In several other attacks the killer had placed crucifixes in public places. But no one found the final crucifix. Second, the criminals used Tra Wes's bike or his own bike left marks to frame the boy. But Schafer had no bike anywhere. And what about the gun he used to threaten Chilton? The gun wasn't The Colt pistol, stolen from Travis' father, was a Smith & Wesson pistol. No flowers in his car or hotel room at the end and no strings from the florist.

"So I realized that Greg Shaffer wasn't the roadside cross killer. He just happened to be involved in this case and decided to take advantage of it. But if it wasn't him who put the cross, who was it?" Dance went over the list of suspects.She thought that the pastor Fisk and his bodyguard might be the person with the online name "Crimson Christ".They must have been fanatics and had directly threatened Chilton in a thread on the blog.But TJ went to meet the bodyguard and the rest of the group.They all had alibi evidence at the time of the attack. She also thought of Hamilton Royce, the great mediator from Sacramento, who had been paid to figure out how to shut down that blog because Chilton had posted things on it that weren't good for the planning committee for the nuclear facility.This inference is reasonable, but the more she thinks about it, the more impossible it becomes.Royce was also too prominent a suspect, since he had already tried to shut down the blog -- in a very public way -- with the help of state troopers. Clint Avery, the owner of the construction company, might as well.But Dance learns what happened to Avery's two subsequent mysterious meetings after she left his company.One was with a lawyer on equal employment law, and the other was with two people about casual labor services.Most employers in the area have concerns about hiring too many illegal alien workers, so Avery fears he will be sued for hiring too few minorities.Danse seemed to unsettle him because he feared that she was actually there to investigate a civil rights complaint that he discriminated against Latinos. The possibility that Travis's father was a criminal was also racing through Dance's mind, and he did wonder if there was a psychological connection between the branches, the roses, and Bob Brigham's career as a gardener.She even wondered if the culprit could be Sammy—a traumatized man who was aware of what was going on around him, intelligent, and perhaps harboring a grudge against his brother. Even if there are problems with this family, they are just problems that all families have.During several of the attacks, both father and son were absolved of suspicion. Dance shrugged and said to Hawken: "I finally ruled out all the suspects, leaving only James Chilton alone." "Why?" he asked. From A to B to X... "I was thinking about what a consultant told me about blogging - how dangerous it is to talk about blogging. I asked myself: What if Chilton wanted to kill someone? What a powerful 'Chilton Report' would be. Weapons. Spread a rumor and let the internet mobs take over. No one will be surprised if the bullied victim suddenly fails." Hawken pointed out: "But James didn't say anything about Travis in the blog." "That's his cleverness; it makes Chilton look completely innocent. But he doesn't really need to mention Travis. He knows how the Internet works. Just a hint and the avenging angels will do him justice. "If Chilton is the murderer, I wonder who exactly he intends to kill. There's nothing about Tammy or Kelly to suggest he wants to kill them. There's nothing about Lynton Strickland or Mark Watson. No. The rest, of course, is your possibility. I went back to what I knew about the case. A strange thing came to my mind. You told me that Chilton had come quickly on the day your ex-wife died. To your house in San Diego. He'll be there in less than an hour." Hawken nodded, "That's right. He was in Los Angeles for a meeting. There happened to be a round-trip flight, so he rushed over." "But he told his wife he was in Seattle when he heard Sarah died," Dance said. "Seattle?" Hawken looked a little confused. "Meeting at Microsoft HQ. No, he's in San Diego. He's been there the whole time, never left since he drowned Sarah. He's waiting to hear from you, to come to your house. He needs to." "Need to do this? Why?" "You said he stayed with you and even helped you clean up?" "yes." "I think he's going to go through your house and destroy everything that would reveal their relationship." "God," Hawken muttered. She explained something else about Chilton's crimes: He was a triathlete, which meant he could ride a bicycle.Dance recalls seeing all manner of exercise equipment in Chilton's garage, including several bicycles. "As for the soil samples," she explained, finding a mismatched soil sample near one of the roadside crosses, "CSI found the same marks on Greg Shaffer's shoes. But the original The source was in Chilton's front yard. That's why Schaeffer's shoes are there." Danse thought to herself that she had actually looked straight at where the dirt came from, had inspected the garden arrangement when she first visited the blogger's house. "And his pickup (actually a utility vehicle), the Nissan Quest." She told them that the witness, Ken Feist, had seen a state bus by the cross, "actually It was Chilton's own car - after he placed the second cross." She pointed to the Nissan Quest parked nearby by the blogger.The slogan on the bumper above she remembered from the first day she went to his house: If you purify sea water, you are dead. It was the last four letters that Ken Feist saw in the blogger's car as he drove by: STATE. "I reported the situation to the sheriff and got a search warrant. I sent officers to search Chilton's house in Carmel. He destroyed most of the evidence, but they found a few red rose petals and a Similar to the cardboard used on the cross. I remembered he said he was coming here with you. So I called the San Benito County Police Department and asked them to send a task force here. The only thing I didn't guess was Chilton will force Travis to shoot you." Hawken kept thanking him, and she looked at her watch and had to cut him off—he seemed about to cry, "I'm leaving now. You go home and get some rest." Lily hugged Dance.Hawken shook her hand with both hands, "I don't know what to say." Relieved, she walked over to the Monterey County Police Department patrol car, where James Chilton was sitting.His thinning hair sticks to the side of his head.He watched her coming with hurt eyes. She opened the back door and leaned on it. He said through his teeth, "I don't need leg irons. Look, it's humiliating." Dance noticed the chains, and seeing them gave her satisfaction. He continued: "They put them on me, some cops did it and they were laughing! Because they thought I put the boy in shackles too. It's all bullshit. Totally wrong. I was framed .” Danse almost laughed.In addition to the evidence, there are three witnesses to his crime - Hawken, Lily and Travis. She repeated the Miranda rights warning again. "It's already been said." "Just to make you really understand. Do you understand?" "My rights? Of course I understand. Listen, I have a gun in my house. But people are going to kill me, of course I need to protect myself. Someone framed me, as you said, on my blog with the post Those people. Seeing Travis come into the living room, I drew my first gun—I've had one with me since you told me I was in danger." She ignored his profanity and said, "You'll be taken to Monterey County for registration, James. You can call your lawyer or your wife then." "Did you hear what I said? I was framed. No matter what the boy said, he was emotionally unstable. I was playing with him, playing with his hallucinations. If he was going to kill Donald and Lily, I would shoot him. Of course I would." She leaned forward, trying to hold back her emotions. It wasn't easy. "Why did you lay hands on Tammy and Kelly, James? Two teenage girls never did anything to you." "I'm innocent," he muttered. She continued as if he hadn't spoken, "Why them? Because you don't like the attitude of teenagers? You don't want them to taint your blog with profanity? You don't like ungrammatical words?" He didn't respond, but Dance believed there was a flicker of acknowledgment in his eyes.She persisted. "Why did you kill Lynton Strickland? And Mark Watson? You killed them because they used their real names and posts, so they were easy to find, didn't you?" Chilton looked away, as if his eyes would tell. "James, did you upload the picture on your blog pretending Travis did it? Did you draw it yourself? I remember you introducing yourself in the 'report', saying you worked as a graphic designer in college teachers and art directors." He didn't say anything. She got even more angry, "You like to draw me being stabbed to death, don't you?" Still didn't speak. She stood up. "I'll meet with you sometime. You can have your lawyer present if you want." He turned to her with a begging expression, "There is one thing, Inspector Dance, please promise me." She raised her eyebrows. "I need one thing, and it's important." "What, James?" "a computer." "what?" "I need to use the computer, right away, today." "Prison all phones, no computers." "But 'reporting' ... I have to upload my story." She couldn't help laughing.He doesn't care about his wife and kids, just his precious blog. "Unfortunately, James, that's not possible." "But I have to, I have to!" Catherine Dance looked into his crazy eyes, and finally understood that readers were nothing to him.He killed two easily, and was about to kill a few more. The truth meant nothing to him.He lied again and again. No, the answer is simple: like the players of "Dimension Tracker" and like many people lost in the virtual world, James Chilton is addicted to the addiction of saving the world, and the addiction of spreading speech. The Addiction of Demagogy - Spreading his words to people all over the world.The more people read his thoughts, rhetoric, and praise, the more hypnotized he was, the more excited he was. She leaned forward, very close to his face, "James, I'm going to do everything possible to put you in jail, you can never go online again, and you can't for the rest of your life." He turned livid and started yelling, "You can't do this! You can't shut down my blog. My readers need me. This country needs me! You can't!" Dance closed the door and nodded to the officer behind the wheel.