The Sleeping Doll (42 page)

The art of interviewing isn’t only about analyzing the subjects’ answers and their body language and demeanor; it’s also about asking the right questions.

The facts about the Croytons’ murders and every moment afterward had been documented by police and reporters. So Kathryn Dance decided to inquire about the one period of time that no one had apparently ever asked about:
before
the murders.

“Tare, I want to hear about what happened earlier.”

“Earlier?”

“Sure. Let’s start with earlier that day.”

Theresa frowned. “Oh, I don’t even remember much about it. I mean, what happened that night, it kind of shoved everything else away.”

“Give it a try. Think back. It was May. You were in school then, right?”

“Yeah.”

“What day of the week?”

“Um, it was Friday.”

“You remembered that pretty fast.”

“Oh, because on a lot of Fridays Dad’d take us kids places. That day we were going to the carnival rides in Santa Cruz. Only everything got messed up because I got sick.” Theresa thought back, rubbing her eyes. “Brenda and Steve — my sister and brother — and I were going, and Mom stayed at home because she had a benefit or something on Saturday she had to work on.”

“But plans got changed?”

“Right. We were, like, on our way but … ” She looked down. “I got sick. In the car. So we turned around and went home.”

“What did you have? A cold?”

“Stomach flu.” Theresa winced and touched her belly.

“Oh, I just hate that.”

“Yeah, it sucks.”

“And you got back home about when?”

“Five thirty, maybe.”

“And you went straight to bed.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” She looked out the window at the gnarled tree.

“And then you woke up, hearing the TV show.”

The girl twined a brown strand of hair around a finger. “Quebec.” A laughing grimace.

At this point, Kathryn Dance paused. She realized she had a decision to make, an important one.

Because there was no doubt that Theresa was being deceptive.

When she’d been making casual conversation and, later, talking about what Theresa had overheard from the TV room, the girl’s kinesic behavior was relaxed and open, though she obviously was experiencing general stress — anyone who’s talking to a police officer as part of an investigation, even an innocent victim, experiences this.

But as soon as she started talking about the trip to the Santa Cruz boardwalk she displayed hesitations of speech, she covered parts of her face and ear — negation gestures — and looked out the window — aversion. Trying to appear calm and casual, she revealed the stress she was experiencing by bobbing her foot. Dance sensed deception stress patterns and that the girl was in the denial response state.

Everything Theresa was telling her was presumably consistent with facts that Dance could verify. But deception includes evasion and omission as well as outright lying. There were things Theresa wasn’t sharing.

“Tare, something troubling happened on the drive, didn’t it?”

“Troubling? No. Really. I swear.”

A triple play there: two denial flag expressions, along with answering a question with a question. Now the girl was flushed and her foot bobbed again, an obvious cluster of stress responses.

“Go on, tell me. It’s all right. There’s nothing you have to worry about. Tell me.”

“Like, you know. My parents, my brother and sister … They were
killed.
Who wouldn’t be upset?” A bit of anger now.

Dance nodded sympathetically. “I mean before that. You’ve left Carmel, you’re driving to Santa Cruz. You’re not feeling well. You go home. Other than being sick, what was there about that drive that bothered you?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

That sentence, from a person in a denial state, means: I remember perfectly well but I don’t want to think about it. The memory’s too painful.

“You’re driving along and —”

“I —” Theresa began, then she fell silent. And lowered head to hands, breaking into tears. A torrent, accompanied by the sound track of breathless sobbing.

“Tare.” Dance rose and handed her a wad of tissues as the girl cried hard, though quietly, the sobs like hiccups.

“It’s okay,” the agent said compassionately, gripping her arm. “Whatever happened, it’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“I … ” The girl was paralyzed; Dance could see she was trying to make a decision. Which way would it go? the agent wondered. She’d either spill everything, or stonewall — in which case the interview was now over.

Finally she said, “Oh, I’ve wanted to tell somebody. I just couldn’t. Not the counselors or friends, my aunt … ” More sobbing. Collapsed chest, chin down, hands in her lap when not mopping her face. The textbook kinesic signs that Theresa Croyton had moved into the acceptance stage of emotional response. The terrible burden of what she’d been living with was finally going to come out. She was confessing.

“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault they’re dead!”

Now she pressed her head back against the couch. Her face was red, tendons rose, tears stained the front of her sweater.

“Brenda and Steve and Mom and Dad … all because of me!”

“Because you got sick?”

“No! Because I
pretended
to be sick!”

“Tell me.”

“I didn’t want to go to the boardwalk. I couldn’t stand going, I hated it! All I could think of was to pretend to be sick. I remembered about these models who put their fingers down their throats so they throw up and don’t get fat. When we were in the car on the highway I did that when nobody was looking. I threw up in the backseat and said I had the flu. It was all gross, and everybody was mad and Dad turned around and drove back home.”

So that was it. The poor girl was convinced it was her fault her family’d been slaughtered because of the lie she told. She’d lived with this terrible burden for eight years.

One truth had been excavated. But at least one more remained. And Kathryn Dance wanted to unearth this one as well.

“Tell me, Tare. Why didn’t you want to go to the pier?”

“I just didn’t. It wasn’t fun.”

Confessing one lie doesn’t lead automatically to confessing them all. The girl had now slipped into denial once again.

“Why? You can tell me. Go on.”

“I don’t know. It just wasn’t fun.”

“Why not?”

“Well, Dad was always busy. So he’d give us money and tell us he’d pick us up later and he’d go off and make phone calls and things. It was boring.”

Her feet tapped again and she squeezed the right–side earrings in a compulsive pattern: top, bottom, then the middle. The stress was eating her up.

Yet it wasn’t only the kinesics that were sending significant deception signals to Kathryn Dance. Children — even a seventeen–year–old high school student — are often hard to analyze kinesically. Most interviewers of youngsters perform a content–based analysis, judging their truth or deception by
what
they say, not
how
they say it.

What Theresa was telling Dance didn’t make sense — both in terms of the story she was offering, and in terms of Dance’s knowledge of children and the place in question. Wes and Maggie, for instance, loved the Santa Cruz boardwalk, and would have leapt at the chance to spend hours there unsupervised with a pocketful of money. There were hundreds of things for children to do, carnival rides, food, music, games.

And another contradiction Dance noted: Why hadn’t Theresa simply said she wanted to stay home with her mother before they left that Friday and let her father and siblings go without her? It was as if she didn’t want them to go to Santa Cruz either.

Dance considered this for a moment.

A to B
…

“Tare, you were saying your father worked and made phone calls when you and your brother and sister went on the rides?”

She looked down. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Where would he go to make the calls?”

“I don’t know. He had a cell phone. Not a lot of people had them then. But he did.”

“Did he ever meet anybody there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Tare, who were these other people? The ones he’d be with?”

She shrugged.

“Were they other women?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

Theresa was silent, looking everywhere but at Dance. Finally she said, “Maybe. Some, yeah.”

“And you think they might’ve been girlfriends of his?”

A nod. Tears again. Through clenched teeth she began, “And … ”

“What, Tare?”

“He said when we got home, if Mom asked, we were supposed to say he was with us.” Her face was flushed now.

Dance recalled that Reynolds hinted Croyton was a womanizer.

A bitter laugh escaped the girl’s trembling lips. “I saw him. Brenda and me, we were supposed to stay on the boardwalk but we went to an ice cream place across Beach Street. And I saw him. There was this woman getting into his car and he was kissing her. And she wasn’t the only one. I saw him later, with somebody else, going into her apartment or house by the beach.
That’s
why I didn’t want him to go there. I wanted him to go back home and be with Mommy and us. I didn’t want him to be with anybody else.” She wiped her face. “And so I lied,” she said simply. “I pretended I was sick.”

So he’d meet his mistresses in Santa Cruz — and take his own children with him to allay his wife’s suspicion, abandoning them till he and his lover were finished.

“And my family got killed. And it was my fault.”

Dance leaned forward and said, “No, no, Tare. It’s not your fault at all. We’re pretty sure Daniel Pell
intended
to kill your father. It wasn’t random. If he’d come by that night and you weren’t there, he would’ve left and come back when your dad was home.”

She grew quiet. “Yeah?”

Dance wasn’t sure about this at all. But she absolutely couldn’t let the girl live with the terrible burden of her guilt. “Yeah.”

Theresa calmed at this tentative comfort. “Stupid.” She was embarrassed. “It’s all so stupid. I wanted to come help you catch him. And I haven’t done anything except act like a baby.”

“Oh, we’re doing fine,” Dance said with significance, reflecting some intriguing thoughts she’d just had.

“We are?”

“Yep … In fact, I’ve just thought of some more questions. I hope you’re up for them.” Dance’s stomach gave a peculiar, and opportune, growl just at that moment. They both laughed, and the agent added, “Provided there’re two Frappuccinos and a cookie or two in the near future.”

Theresa wiped her eyes. “I could go for that, yeah.”

Dance called Rey Carraneo and set him on the mission of collaring some sustenance from Starbucks. She then made another call. This one was to TJ, telling him to remain in the office; she believed there’d be a change of plans.

A to B to X
…

And then, just a few seconds later, there she was, Rebecca, hurrying through the bushes with her backpack. She climbed into the car and kissed him firmly.

She sat back. “Shitty weather,” she said, grinned and kissed him again. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Nobody saw you?”

A laugh. “Climbed out the window. They think I went to bed early.”

He put the car in gear and they started up the highway.

This was Daniel Pell’s last night in the Monterey Peninsula — and, in a way, his last night on earth. Later, they’d steal another car — an SUV or truck — and head north, winding along the increasingly narrow and rugged roads of Northern California until they came to Pell’s mountain property. He’d be king of the mountain, king of a new Family, not answering to anybody, no one to interfere. No one to challenge him. A dozen young people, two dozen, seduced by the Pied Piper.

Heaven …

But first his mission here. He had to make certain his future was guaranteed.

Pell handed her the map of Monterey County. She opened a slip of paper and read the street and number as she studied the map. “It’s not too far. Shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes.”