The Sleeping Doll (52 page)

This news didn’t alarm her as much as it might, considering that Daniel Pell was dead, Jennie’s hands were cuffed and Dance had found no weapons on her or in the car.

“He gave me a gun, but it’s back at the motel. Really, I’d never hurt you.”

She didn’t seem capable of it, true.

“He said no policeman had ever gotten into his mind like you had. He was afraid of you.”

Threats have to be eliminated …

“So he faked your death?”

“He cut me.” Jennie showed her a bandage on the back of her head. “Some skin and hair and blood. Your head bleeds a
lot.
” She sighed. “Then he gave me your address and your parents’. I was supposed to kill you. He knew you’d never let him get away.”

“You agreed?”

“I didn’t really say anything one way or the other.” She shook her head. “He was so hard to say no to … He just assumed I would. Because I’d always done what he wanted. He wanted me to kill you and then come live with him and Rebecca in the woods somewhere. We’d start a new Family.”

“You knew about Rebecca?”

“He told me.” In a wisp of a voice: “Did she write the emails to me? Pretending to be him?”

“Yes.”

Her lips pressed together tightly. “They didn’t sound like the way he talked. I thought somebody else wrote them. But I didn’t want to ask. Sometimes you just don’t want to know the truth.”

Amen, thought Kathryn Dance. “How did you get here? Did you follow me?”

“That’s right. I wanted to talk to you in person. I thought if I just turned myself in, they’d take me right to jail. But I had to ask: Were you there when he was shot? Did he say anything?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Oh. I was just wondering.” Her lips tightened, a kinesic clue to remorse. Then a glance at Dance. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I’ve had worse scares lately,” Dance told her. “Why didn’t you run, though? Maybe in a few weeks, when your body didn’t wash up on shore, we’d’ve wondered. But you could’ve gotten to Mexico or Canada by the time we started searching.”

“I guess I just got out from underneath his spell. I thought things’d be different with Daniel. I got to know him first — you know, not just the physical stuff — and we developed this real connection. Or I thought it was. But then I figured that was all a lie. Rebecca probably told him everything about me so he could hook me in, you know. Just like my husband and boyfriends. I used to get picked up in bars or at catering jobs. Daniel did the same thing, only he was just a lot smarter about it.”

“All my life I thought I needed a man. I’d have this idea I was like a flash–light and men were the batteries. I couldn’t shine without one in my life. But then after Daniel was killed I was in this motel room and all of a sudden I felt different. I got mad. It was weird. I could taste it, I was so mad. That, like, never happened to me before. And I knew I had to do something about it. But not moaning about Daniel, not going out and finding a new man. Which I always would do in the past. No, I wanted to do something for
me.
And what’s the best thing I could do? Get arrested.” She gave a laugh. “Sounds stupid, but it’s all my decision. Nobody else’s.”

“I think that’s a good one.”

“We’ll see. So, I guess that’s it.”

It pretty much was, Dance decided.

She escorted Jennie back to the Taurus. As they drove to Salinas, Dance mentally tallied up the charges. Arson, felony murder, conspiracy, harboring a fugitive, several others.

Still, the woman had surrendered voluntarily and appeared as contrite as they came. Dance would interview her later, if she agreed, and if Jennie was as sincere as she seemed, the agent would go to bat for her with Sandoval.

At the lockup in the courthouse Dance processed her into the system.

“Is there anybody you want me to call?” Dance asked.

She started to say something, then stopped and gave a soft laugh. “No. I think it’s best, you know, just to start over. I’m fine.”

“They’ll get you a lawyer, then maybe you and I could spend some more time talking.”

“Sure.”

And she was led down the very hallway her lover had escaped from almost one week before.

The mist carried with it the fragrance of pine, eucalyptus and flowers — gardenia, Kathryn Dance believed, but wasn’t sure. She liked plants but, like meals, she preferred to purchase them fully functional from those in the know, rather than try her own hand and risk destruction.

Standing beside one of the gardens, Dance watched Linda Whitfield being wheeled out of the front door by her brother. Roger was a slim, austere man whose age could have been anywhere from thirty–five to fifty–five. He fit Dance’s expectations, quiet and conservative, wearing pressed jeans, a dress shirt starched and ironed, and a striped tie, held in place with a bar that had a cross on it. He’d greeted Dance with a very firm handshake and no smile whatsoever.

“I’ll get the truck. Excuse me, please.”

“Are you up for the drive?” Dance asked the woman after he’d gone.

“We’ll see. We know some people in Mendocino who used to be in our church. Roger called them. We might stop there for the night.”

Linda’s eyes were unfocused and she’d been giving giddy laughs at nothing in particular; Dance deduced that the painkiller she’d taken was really, really good.

“I’d vote for stopping. Take it easy. Be coddled.”

“Coddled.” She laughed at the word. “How’s Rebecca? I haven’t asked about her.”

“Still in intensive care.” A nod at the hospital. “Probably not too far from where you were.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“They think so.”

“I’ll pray for her.” Another laugh. It reminded Dance of Morton Nagle’s signature chuckle.

Dance crouched down beside the chair. “I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I know it was hard. And I’m so sorry you were hurt. But we couldn’t’ve stopped him without you.”

“God does His work, life goes on. It’s all for the good.”

Dance didn’t follow; it was like one of Charles Overby’s nonsequiturs.

Linda blinked. “Where will Daniel be buried?”

“We called his aunt in Bakersfield, but she doesn’t even remember her own name. His brother — Richard? He’s not interested. He’ll be buried here after the autopsy. In Monterey County, for indigent funerals, the body’s cremated. There’s a public cemetery.”

“Is it consecrated?”

“I don’t know. I’d suppose so.”

“If not, could you find a place for him? A proper resting place. I’ll pay.”

The man who’d tried to kill her?

“I’ll make sure.”

“Thank you.”

It was then that a dark blue Acura careened recklessly up the driveway and skidded to a stop nearby. The car’s arrival was so abrupt that Dance crouched in alarm and her hand dropped to her pistol.

But the agent relaxed immediately, seeing Samantha McCoy emerging from the driver’s seat. The woman joined Dance and Linda. She asked, “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m on pills right now. I think I’ll be pretty sore tomorrow. Well, probably for the next month.”

“You were leaving without saying good–bye?”

“My, why would you think that? I was going to call.”

The deception was easily spotted by Dance. Probably by Samantha as well.

“You look good.”

Another slurred chuckle was the response.

Silence. Deep silence; the fog swallowed up whole any ambient noise.

With her hands on her hips, Samantha looked down at Linda. “Strange few days, huh?”

The woman gave a curious laugh, both groggy and cautious.

“Linda, I want to call you. We could get together.”

“Why? To psychoanalyze me? To save me from the clutches of the church?” Bitterness bled from the words.

“I just want to see you. It doesn’t have to be about more than that.”

With some mental effort Linda offered, “Sam, we were different people eight, nine years ago, you and me. We’re even more different now. We have nothing in common.”

“Nothing in common? Well, that’s not true. We went through hell together.”

“Yeah, we did. And God helped us through it and then sent us in different directions.”

Samantha crouched and carefully took the woman’s arm, mindful of the wound. She was well within Linda’s personal proxemic zone. “Listen to me. You listening?”

“What?” Impatient.

“There was a man once.”

“A man?”

“Listen. This man was in his house and there was a bad flood, really bad. The river filled his first floor and a boat came by to rescue him but he said, ‘No, go on, God’ll save me.’ He ran to the second floor, but the water rose up there too. Another rescue boat came by but he said, ‘No, go on, God’ll save me.’ Then the river kept rising and he climbed to the roof and a helicopter came by but he said, ‘No, go on, God’ll save me.’ And the helicopter flew away.”

Words slurred from the medication, Linda asked, “What’re you talking about?”

Sam continued, unfazed. “Then the water sweeps him off the roof and he drowns. Next thing he’s in heaven and he sees God and he says, ‘God, why didn’t you save me?’ And God shakes his head and says, ‘Funny, I don’t understand what went wrong. I sent you two boats and a helicopter.”

Dance chuckled. Linda blinked at the punch line and, the agent thought, wanted to smile but forced herself not to.

“Come on, Linda — we’re each other’s helicopters. Admit it.”

The woman said nothing.

Sam thrust a card into the woman’s hand. “Here’s my number.”

Linda said nothing for a long moment, staring at the card. “Sarah Starkey? That’s your name?”

Samantha smiled. “I can’t change it back at this point. But I am going to tell my husband. Everything. He’s on his way here now with our son. We’re going to spend a few days in the area. That’s what I’m hoping. But after I tell him, he might just get back in the car and head home.”

Linda gave no response. She flicked the card with her thumb, slipped it into her purse and looked up the driveway as a battered silver pickup truck approached. It stopped and Roger Whitfield climbed out.

Samantha introduced herself to Linda’s brother, using her original name, not “Sarah.”

The man greeted her with a raised eyebrow and another formal handshake. Then he and Dance helped Linda into the car, and the agent closed the door.

Samantha stepped up on the running board. “Linda, remember: helicopters.”

The woman said, “Good–bye, Sam. I’ll pray for you.”

With no other words or gestures, the brother and sister drove off. Samantha and Dance watched them ease down the winding drive as the tail–lights, glowing orbs in the fog, grew fainter.

After they were gone, Dance asked, “When’s your husband getting here?”

“He left San Jose an hour ago. Pretty soon, I’d guess.” Sam nodded after the pickup truck. “Think she’s going to call me?”

All of Kathryn Dance’s skill as an investigator, all of her talent as a reader of body language couldn’t answer that question. The best she could come up with was, “She didn’t throw your card away, did she?”

“Not yet,” Samantha said, offered a weak smile and walked back to her car.

Kathryn Dance was on the Deck, alone, though Patsy and Dylan were nearby, roaming the backyard, engaged in dog intrigue. She’d finished the preparations for her father’s big birthday party tomorrow night and was sipping a German beer while listening to
A Prairie Home Companion,
Garrison Keillor’s variety radio show she’d been a fan of for years. When the program concluded she shut off the stereo and heard in its stead the distant sound track of Maggie playing scales and the faint bass of Wes’s stereo.

Listening to the boy’s music — she thought it was Coldplay — Kathryn Dance debated a moment then impulsively pulled out her cell phone, found a number in the Samsung and pushed send.

“Well, hi there,” Brian Gunderson said, answering the phone.

Caller ID has created a whole new response mechanism, she thought. He’d’ve had three full seconds to figure out a game plan for the conversation, tailored specifically to Kathryn Dance.

“Hi,” she responded. “Hey, sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. I know you called a few times.”

Brian gave a laugh and she remembered the times they’d spent together, dinner, walking on the beach. He had a nice laugh. And he kissed well. “I’d say if anybody has an excuse, it’s you. I’ve been watching the news. Who’s Overby?”

“My boss.”

“Oh, the crazy one you told me about?”

“Yep.” Dance wondered how indiscreet she’d been.

“I saw a press conference and he mentioned you. He said you were his assistant in capturing Pell.”

She laughed. If TJ had heard, it was only a matter of time until she got a message for “Assistant Dance.”

“So you got him.”

“He’s got.”

And then some.

“How’ve you been?” she asked.

“Good. Up in San Fran for a few days, wheedling money out of people who were wheedling money out of other people. And I wheedled a fee. Worked out for everybody.” He added that he’d had a flat tire on the 101, returning home. An amateur barbershop quartet coming back from a gig had stopped, directed traffic and changed the tire for him.

“They sing while they changed it?”

“Sadly, no. But I’m going to one of their shows in Burlingame.”

Was this an invitation? she wondered

“How are the kids?” he asked.

“Fine. Being kids.” She paused, wondering if she should ask him out for drinks first, or go right for dinner. She figured dinner was safe, given that they had a history.

Brian said, “Anyway, thanks for calling back.”

“Sure.”

“But, never mind.”

Never mind?

“The reason I called? A friend and I’re going down to La Jolla this week.”

Friend.
What a marvelously diverse word that is.

“That’s great. You going to snorkel? You said you wanted to, I remember.” There was a huge underwater wildlife refuge there. She and Brian had talked about going.

“Oh, yeah. We’ve got that planned. I just called to see if I could pick up that book I lent you, the one about backpacking trails down near San Diego.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Not a problem. I bought another one. Keep it. I’m sure you’ll get down there some day.”

She gave a laugh — a Morton Nagle chuckle. “Sure.”

“Everything else going well?”

“Real well, yeah.”

“I’ll call you when I’m back in town.”

Kathryn Dance, kinesics analyst and seasoned interrogator, knew that people often lie expecting — even hoping — that the listener spots the deception. Usually in contexts just like this one.

“That’d be great, Brian.”

She guessed they’d never share another word together in their lives.

Dance folded up the phone and walked into her bedroom. She pushed aside the sea of shoes and found her old Martin 00–18 guitar, with a mahogany back and sides and a spruce top aged the color of taffy.

She carried it out to the Deck, sat down and, with fingers clumsy from the chill — and lack of practice — tuned up and started to play. First, some scales and arpeggios, then the Bob Dylan song “Tomorrow Is a Long Time.”

Her thoughts were meandering, from Brian Gunderson to the front seat of the CBI Taurus and Winston Kellogg.

Tasting mint, smelling skin and aftershave …

As she played, she noticed motion inside the house. Dance saw her son beeline to the refrigerator and cart a cookie and glass of milk back into his room. The raid took all of thirty seconds.

She found herself thinking that she’d been treating Wes’s attitude all along as an aberration, a flaw to be fixed.

Parents tend to feel that their children raise valid objections about potential stepparents or even casual dates. You can’t think that way.

But now Dance wasn’t so sure. Maybe they
do
raise real concerns at times. Maybe we
should
listen to them, and as carefully and with as open a mind as if interviewing witnesses in a criminal investigation. Maybe she’d been taking him for granted all along. Sure, Wes was a child, not a partner, but he still should have a vote. Here I am, she thought, a kinesic expert, establishing baselines and looking for deviations as signals that something’s not right.

With Winston Kellogg, was I deviating from my own baseline?

Maybe the boy’s reaction was a clue that she had.

Something to think about.

Dance was halfway through a Paul Simon song, humming the melody, not sure of the lyrics, when she heard the creak of the gate below the Deck.

The instrument went silent as she glanced over to see Michael O’Neil breach the stairs. He was wearing the gray and maroon sweater she’d bought for him when she’d been skiing in Colorado a year ago.

“Hey,” he said. “Intruding?”

“Never.”

“Anne’s got an opening in an hour. But I thought I’d stop by here first, say hi.”

“Glad you did.”

He pulled a beer from the fridge and, when she nodded, got another for her too. He sat down next to her. The Becks snapped open crisply. They both sipped long.

She started playing an instrumental transcribed for guitar, an old Celtic tune by Turlough O’Carolan, the blind, itinerant Irish harpist.

O’Neil said nothing, just drank the beer and nodded with the rhythm. His eyes, she noticed, were turned toward the ocean — though he couldn’t see it; the view was obscured by lush pines. She remembered that once, after seeing the old Spencer Tracy movie about Hemingway’s obsessed fisherman, Wes had called O’Neil the “Old Man of the Sea.” He and Dance had laughed hard at that.

When she finished playing, he said, “There’s a problem with the Juan situation. Did you hear?”

“Juan Millar? No, what?”

“The autopsy report came in. The Coroner’s Division found secondary causes. Labeled them suspicious. We’ve got a file started at MCSO.”

“What happened?”

“It wasn’t infection or shock he died of, which is usually what happens in a bad burn. It was from an interaction of morphine and diphenhydramine — that’s an antihistamine. The morphine drip was open wider than it should’ve been and none of the doctors had prescribed an antihistamine. It’s dangerous to mix with morphine.”

“Intentional?”

“Looks like it. He couldn’t do it himself. We’re probably looking at murder.”

Dance heard her mother’s whispered report of Millar’s words.

Kill me …

She wondered who might’ve been behind the death. Mercy killings were among the most difficult, and emotional, cases to investigate.

Dance shook her head. “And after all his family’s been through. Whatever we can do, let me know.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Dance smelling wood–fire smoke — and another dose of O’Neil’s aftershave. She enjoyed the combination. She started to play once again. Elizabeth Cotten’s finger–picking version of “Freight Train,” as infectious a melody as ever existed. It would rattle around in her brain for days.

O’Neil said, “Heard about Winston Kellogg. Never would’ve called that one.”

Word travels fast.

“Yep.”

“TJ gave me all the gruesome details.” He shook his head and gestured for Dylan and Patsy. The dogs bounded over to him. He handed out Milk Bones from a cookie jar that sat beside a bottle of dubious tequila. They took the treats and raced off. He said, “Sounds like it’ll be a tough case. Pressure from Washington to drop it, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, yeah. Uphill all the way.”

“If you’ve interested, we might want to make some calls.”

“Chicago, Miami or L.A.?”

O’Neil blinked, then gave a laugh. “You’ve been considering it too, hm? What’s the strongest?”

Dance replied, “I’d go with the suspicious suicide in L.A. It’s in state, so CBI’s got jurisdiction and Kellogg can’t claim that the cult leader died during a takedown. And that’s the file that Kellogg destroyed. Why else would he do that, if he wasn’t guilty?”

She’d decided that if Kellogg got off the hook on the Pell killing, which was a possibility, she wouldn’t let the matter rest there. She’d pursue the case against him in other venues.

And apparently she wasn’t going to do it alone.

“Good,” O’Neil said. “Let’s get together tomorrow and look over the evidence.”

She nodded.

The detective finished the beer and got another one. “I don’t suppose Overby’d spring for a trip to L.A.”

“Believe it or not, I think he would.”

“Really?”

“If we fly coach.”

“And standby,” O’Neil added.

They laughed.

“Any requests?” She tapped the old Martin, which resounded like a crisp drum.

“Nope.” He leaned back and stretched his scuffed shoes out in front of him. “Whatever you’re in the mood for.”

Kathryn Dance thought for a moment and began to play.