The Sleeping Doll (12 page)

The caller was Rey Carraneo, reporting that the manager of the You Mail It franchise on San Benito Way in Salinas
did
remember a woman in the store about a week ago.

“Only, she didn’t mail anything, Agent Dance. She just asked about when the different delivery services stopped there. Worldwide Express was the most regular, he told her. Like clockwork. He wouldn’t’ve thought anything about it, except that he saw her outside a few days later, sitting on a park bench across the street. I’d guess she was checking the times herself.”

Unfortunately, Carraneo couldn’t do an EFIS image because she’d worn the baseball cap and dark sunglasses then too. Nor had the manager seen her car.

They disconnected, and she wondered again when the Worldwide Express driver’s body would be found.

More violence, more death, another family altered.

The ripples of consequence can spread almost forever.

It was just as that recollection of Morton Nagle’s words was passing through her mind that Michael O’Neil called. Coincidentally, his message was about that very driver’s fate.

From the CD player, the original Fairfield Four gospel singers did their best to distract her from the carnage of the morning: “
I’m standing in the safety zone …
”

Music was Kathryn Dance’s salvation. Policework for her wasn’t test tubes and computer screens. It was people. Her job required her to blend her mind and heart and emotions with theirs and stay close to them so that she could discern the truths they knew but hesitated to share. The interrogations were usually difficult and sometimes wrenching, and the memories of what the subjects had said and done, often horrendous crimes, never left her completely.

If Alan Stivell’s Celtic harp melodies or Natty Bo and Beny Billy’s irrepressible ska Cubano tunes or Lightnin’ Hopkins’s raw, zinging chords were churning in her ears and thoughts, she tended not to hear the shocking replays of her interviews with rapists and murderers and terrorists.

Dance now lost herself in the scratchy tones of the music from a half–century ago.

“
Roll, Jordan, roll …
”

Five minutes later she pulled into an office park on the north side of Monterey, just off Munras Avenue, and climbed out. She walked into the ground–floor garage, where the Worldwide Express driver’s red Honda Civic sat, trunk open, blood smeared on the sheet metal. O’Neil and a town cop were standing beside it.

Someone else was with them.

Billy Gilmore, the driver Dance had been sure was Pell’s next victim. To her shock, he’d been found very much alive.

The heavyset man had some bruises and a large bandage on his forehead — covering the cut that was apparently the source of the blood — but, it turned out, the injuries weren’t from being beaten by Pell; he’d cut himself shifting around in the trunk to get comfortable. “I wasn’t trying to get out. I was afraid to. But somebody heard me, I guess, and called the police. I was supposed to stay in there for three hours, Pell told me. If I didn’t he said he’d kill my wife and kids.”

“They’re okay,” O’Neil explained to Dance. “We’ve got them in protection.” He related Billy’s story about Pell’s hijacking the truck, then the car. The driver had confirmed that Pell was armed.

“What was he wearing?”

“Shorts, a dark windbreaker, baseball cap, I think. I don’t know. I was really freaked out.”

O’Neil had called in the new description to the roadblocks and search parties.

Pell had given Billy no idea where he was ultimately going, but was very clear about directions to this garage. “He knew just where it was and that it’d be deserted.”

The woman accomplice had checked this out too, of course. She’d met him here and they’d headed for Utah, presumably.

“Do you remember anything else?” Dance asked.

Just after he’d slammed the trunk lid, Billy said, he’d heard the man’s voice again.

“Somebody was with him?”

“No, it was just him. I think he was making a call. He had my phone.”

“Your phone?” Dance asked, surprised. A glance at O’Neil, who immediately called the Sheriff’s Office technical–support people, and had the techs get in touch with the driver’s cell phone service provider to set up a trace.

Dance asked if Billy had heard anything that Pell said. “No. It was just mumbling to me.”

O’Neil’s mobile rang and he listened for a few minutes and said to Dance, “Nope. It’s either destroyed or the battery’s out. They can’t find a signal.”

Dance looked around the garage. “He’s dumped it somewhere. Let’s hope nearby. We should have somebody check the trash cans — and the drains in the street.”

“Bushes too,” O’Neil said and sent two of his deputies off on the task.

TJ joined them. “He
did
come this way. Call me crazy, boss, but this isn’t on the route I
myself
would take to Utah.”

Whether or not Pell was headed for Utah, his coming to downtown Monterey was surprising. It was a small town and he’d easily be spotted, and there were far fewer escape routes than if he’d gone east, north or south. A risky place to meet his accomplice, but a brilliant move. This was the last place they’d expect him.

One other question nagged.

“Billy, I need to ask you something. Why are you still alive?”

“I … Well, I begged him not to hurt me. Practically got on my hands and knees. It was embarrassing.”

It was also a lie. Dance didn’t even need a baseline to see the stress flood through the man’s body. He looked away and his face flushed.

“I need to know the truth. It could be important,” she said.

“Really. I was crying like a baby. I think he felt sorry for me.”

“Daniel Pell has never felt sorry for a human being in his life,” O’Neil said.

“Go on,” Dance said softly.

“Well, okay … ” He swallowed and his face turned bright red. “We made a deal. He was going to kill me. I’m sure he was. I said if he’d let me live … ” Tears filled his eyes. It was hard to watch the misery but Dance needed to understand Pell, and why this man was still alive, when two others had been killed under similar circumstances.

“Go on,” she said softly.

“I said if he let me live I’d do anything for him. I meant give him money or something. But he said he wanted me to … See, he saw my wife’s picture and he liked how she looked. So he asked me to tell him about the things we did together. You know, intimate things.” He stared at the concrete floor of the garage. “Like, he wanted all the details. I mean, everything.”

“What else?” Dance prompted.

“Naw, that was it. It was so embarrassing.”

“Billy, please tell me.”

His eyes filled with tears. His jaw was trembling.

“What?”

A deep breath. “He got my home phone number. And he said he’d call me at night sometime. Maybe next month, maybe six months. I’d never know. And when he called, my wife and me were supposed to go in the bedroom. And, you know … ” The words caught in his throat. “I was supposed to leave the phone off the hook so he could listen to us. Pam had to say some things he told me.”

Dance glanced at O’Neil, who exhaled softly. “We’ll catch him before anything like that happens.”

The man wiped his face. “I almost told him, ‘No, you fucker. Go ahead and kill me.’ But I couldn’t.”

“Why don’t you go be with your family? Get out of town for a while.”

“I almost told him that. I really did.”

A medical tech led him back to the ambulance.

O’Neil whispered, “What the hell’re we up against here?”

Echoing Dance’s exact thought.

“Detective, I’ve got a phone,” an MCSO deputy called as he joined them. “Was up the street in a trash can. The battery was in another can, across the street.”

“Good catch,” O’Neil told the man.

Dance took a pair of latex gloves from TJ, pulled them on, then took the phone and replaced the battery. She turned it on and scrolled through recent calls. None had been received but five had been made since the escape. She called them out to O’Neil, who was on the phone with his tech people again. They did a reverse lookup.

The first wasn’t a working number; it wasn’t even a real exchange prefix — which meant that the call to the accomplice about Billy’s family had never occurred. It was simply to frighten him into cooperating.

The second and third calls were to another number, which turned out to be a prepaid mobile phone. It was presently off, probably destroyed; there was no signal to triangulate on.

The last two numbers were more helpful. The first was a 555–1212 call, directory assistance. The area code was Utah. The last number — the one Pell had presumably gotten from the operator — was an RV campsite outside Salt Lake City.

“Bingo,” TJ said.

Dance called the number and identified herself. She asked if they’d received a call forty minutes ago. The clerk said that she had, a man from Missouri, driving west, who was curious how much it cost to park a small Winnebago there by the week.

“Any other calls around that time?”

“My mother and two of the guests here, complaining about something or other. That was all.”

“Did the man say when he’d be arriving?”

“No.”

Dance thanked the woman and told her to call them immediately if he contacted them again. She explained to O’Neil and TJ what the RV camp manager had said and then phoned the Utah State Police — she was friends with a captain in Salt Lake City — and told him the situation. The USP would immediately send a surveillance team to the campsite.

Dance’s eyes slipped to the miserable driver, staring at the ground again. The man would live for the rest of his life with the horror he’d experienced today — perhaps less the kidnapping itself than the degradation of Pell’s deal.

She thought again of Morton Nagle; Billy had escaped with his life, but was yet another victim of Daniel Pell.

“Should I tell Overby about Utah?” TJ asked. “He’ll want to get word out.”

She was interrupted, though, by a phone call. “Hold on,” she told the young agent. She answered. It was the computer specialist from Capitola prison. Excited, the young man said that he’d managed to find one site that Pell had visited. It had to do with the Helter Skelter search.

“It was pretty smart,” the man said. “I don’t think he had any interest in the term itself. He used it to find a bulletin board where people post messages about crime and murder. It’s called ‘Manslaughter.’ There’re different categories, depending on the type of crimes. One’s ‘The Bundy Effect,’ about serial killers. You know, after Ted Bundy. ‘Helter Skelter’ is devoted to cult murders. I found a message that had been posted on Saturday, and I think it was meant for him.”

Dance said, “And he didn’t type the URL to Manslaughter dot com directly, in case we checked the computer and would find the website.”

“Right. He used the search engine instead.”

“Clever. Can you find out who posted it?”

“It was anonymous. No way to trace it.”

“And what did it say?”

He read her the short message, only a few lines long. There was no doubt it was intended for Pell; it gave the last–minute details of the escape. The poster of the message added something else at the end, but, as Dance listened, she shook her head. It made no sense.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

He did.

“Okay,” Dance said. “Appreciate it. Forward me a copy of that.” She gave her email address.

“Anything else I can do, let me know.”

Dance disconnected and stood silently for a moment, trying to fathom the message. O’Neil noticed her troubled face but didn’t disturb her with questions.

She debated and then came to a decision. She called Charles Overby and told him about the camper park in Utah. Her boss was delighted at the news.

Then, thinking about the conversation with Eddie Chang about her imaginary date with Pell, she called Rey Carraneo back and sent him on another assignment.

As the young agent digested her request he said uncertainly, “Well, sure, Agent Dance. I guess.”

She didn’t blame him; the task was unorthodox, to say the least. Still, she said, “Pull out all the stops.”

“Um.”

She deduced he hadn’t heard the expression.

“Move fast.”