O'Neil nodded a greeting to TJ and Sandoval.
"Any word on Juan?" Dance asked.
"Hanging in there." He and Millar worked together frequently and went fishing once a month or so. Dance knew that on the drive here he'd been in constant touch with the doctors and Millar's family.
The California Bureau of Investigation has no central dispatch unit to contact radio patrol cars, emergency vehicles or boats, so O'Neil arranged for the Sheriff's Office central communications operation to relay the information about the missing Worldwide Express truck to its own deputies and the Highway Patrol. He told them that within a few minutes the escapee's truck would be the only one not stopped at a gas station.
O'Neil took a call and nodded, walking to the map. He tucked the phone between ear and shoulder, picked up a pack of self-adhesive notes featuring butterflies and began sticking them up.
More roadblocks, Dance realized.
He hung up. "They're on Sixty-Eight, One-Eighty-Three, the One-oh-One. . . . We've got the back roads to Hollister covered, and Soledad and Greenfield. But if he gets into the Pastures of Heaven, it'll be tough to spot a truck, even with a chopper--and right now fog's a problem."
The "Pastures of Heaven" was the name given by John Steinbeck in a book of the same title to a rich, orchard-filled valley off Highway 68. Much of the area around Salinas was flat, low farmland, but you didn't have to go far to get into trees. And nearby too was the rugged Castle Rock area, whose cliffs, bluffs and trees would be excellent hiding places.
Sandoval said, "If Pell's partner didn't drive the getaway wheels, where is he?"
TJ offered, "Rendezvous point somewhere?"
"Or staying around," Dance said, nodding out the window.
"What?" the prosecutor asked. "Why'd he do that?"
"To find out how we're running the case, what we know. What we don't know."
"That sounds a little . . . elaborate, don't you think?"
TJ laughed, pointing toward the smoldering cars. "I'd say that's a pretty good word for this whole shebang."
O'Neil suggested, "Or maybe he wants to slow us up."
Dance said, "That makes sense too. Pell and his partner don't know we're on to the truck. For all they know we still think he's in the area. The partner could make it look like Pell's nearby. Maybe take a shot at somebody up the street, maybe even set off another device."
"Shit. Another firebomb?" Sandoval grimaced.
Dance called the security chief and told him there was a possibility the partner was still around and could be a threat.
But, as it turned out, they had no time to speculate about whether or not the partner was nearby. The plan about the Worldwide Express trucks had paid off. A radio call to O'Neil from MCSO dispatch reported that two local police officers had found Daniel Pell and were presently in pursuit.
*
The dark green delivery truck kicked up a rooster tail of dust on the small road.
The uniformed officer who was driving the Salinas Police squad car, a former jarhead back from the war, gripped the wheel of the cruiser as if he were holding on to the rudder of a ten-foot skiff in twelve-foot seas.
His partner--a muscular Latino--gripped the dashboard in one hand and the microphone in the other. "Salinas Police Mobile Seven. We're still with him. He turned onto a dirt road off Natividad about a mile south of Old Stage."
"Roger . . . Central to Seven, be advised, subject is probably armed and dangerous."
"If he's armed, of course he's dangerous," the driver said and lost his sunglasses when the car caught air after a run-in with a massive bump. The two officers could hardly see the road ahead; the Worldwide truck was churning up dust like a sandstorm.
"Central to Seven, we've got all available units en route."
"Roger that."
Backup was a good idea. The rumors were that Daniel Pell, the crazed cult leader, this era's Charles Manson, had gunned down a dozen people at the courthouse, had set fire to a bus filled with schoolchildren, had slashed his way through a crowd of prospective jurors, killing four. Or two. Or eight. Whatever the truth, the officers wanted as much help as they could get.
The jarhead muttered, "Where's he going? There's nothing up here."
The road was used mostly for farm equipment and buses transporting migrant workers to and from the fields. It led to no major highways. There was no picking going on today but the road's purpose, and the fact it probably led to no major highways, could be deduced from its decrepit condition and from the drinking water tanks and the portable toilets on trailers by the roadside.
But Daniel Pell might not know that and would assume this was a road like any other. Rather than one that ended, as this did, abruptly in the middle of an artichoke field. Ahead of them, thirty yards or so, Pell braked fast in panic and the truck began to skid. But there was no way to stop in time. The truck's front wheels dropped hard into a shallow irrigation ditch, and the rear end lifted off the ground, then slammed back with a huge crash.
The squad car braked to a stop nearby. "This is Seven," the Latino cop called in. "Pell's off the road."
"Roger, is he--"
The officers leapt out of the car with their pistols drawn.
"He's going to bail, he's going to bail!"
But nobody exited the truck.
They approached it. The back door had flown open in the crash and they could see nothing but dozens of packages and envelopes littering the floor.
"There he is, look."
Pell lay stunned, facedown, on the floor of the vehicle.
"Maybe he's hurt."
"Who gives a shit?"
The officers ran forward and cuffed and dragged him out of the space where he was wedged
They dropped him on to his back on the ground. "Nice try, buddy, but--"
"Fuck. It's not him."
"What?" asked his partner.
"Excuse me, does that look like a forty-three-year-old white guy?"
The jarhead bent down to the groggy teenager, a gang teardrop tat on his cheek, and snapped "Who're you?" in Spanish, a language that every law enforcer in and around Salinas could speak.
The kid avoided their eyes, muttering in English, "I no saying nothing. You can go fuck youself."
"Oh, man." The Latino cop glanced into the cab, where the keys were dangling from the dash. He understood: Pell had left the truck on a city street with the engine on, knowing it'd be stolen--oh, in about sixty seconds--so the police would follow it and give Pell a chance to escape in a different direction.
Another thought. Not a good one. He turned to Jarhead. "You don't think, when we said we had Pell and they called all availables for backup . . . I mean, you don't think they pulled 'em off the roadblocks, do you?"
"No, they wouldn't do that. That'd be fucking stupid."
The men looked at each other.
"Christ." The Latino officer raced to the squad car and grabbed the microphone.
Chapter 7
"A Honda Civic," TJ reported, hanging up from a call with DMV. "Five years old. Red. I've got the tags." They knew Pell was now in the Worldwide Express driver's personal car, which was missing from the company's lot in Salinas.
TJ added, "I'll let the roadblocks know."
"When they get back on site," Dance muttered.
To the dismay of the agents and O'Neil, some local dispatcher had ordered the nearby roadblocks abandoned for the pursuit of the Worldwide Express truck. His placid face registering what for O'Neil was disgust--a tightening of the lips--he'd sent the cars back on site immediately.
They were in a meeting room up the hall from Sandoval's office. Now that Pell was clearly not near the courthouse, Dance wanted to return to CBI headquarters, but Charles Overby had told them to remain at the courthouse until he arrived.
"Think he wants to make sure no press conferences escape either," TJ said, to which Dance and O'Neil gave sour laughs. "Speaking of which," came TJ's whisper. "Incoming! . . . Hit the decks."
A figure stro
de confidently through the door. Charles Overby, a fifty-five-year-old career law enforcer.
Without any greetings, he asked Dance, "He wasn't in the truck?"
"No. Local gangbanger. Pell left the truck running. He knew somebody'd snatch it, and we'd focus on that. He took off in the delivery driver's own car."
"The driver?"
"No sign."
"Ouch." Brown-haired, sunburned Charles Overby was athletic in a pear-shaped way, a tennis and golf player. He was the newly appointed head of the CBI's west-central office. The agent in charge he replaced, Stan Fishburne, had taken early retirement on a medical, much to the CBI staff's collective dismay (because of the severe heart attack on Fishburne's account--and because of who had succeeded him on theirs).
O'Neil took a call and Dance updated Overby, adding the details of Pell's new wheels and their concern that the partner was still nearby.
"You think he's really planted another device?"
"Unlikely. But the accomplice staying around makes sense."
O'Neil hung up. "The roadblocks're all back in place."
"Who took them down?" Overby asked.
"We don't know."
"I'm sure it wasn't us or you, Michael, right?" Overby asked uneasily.
An awkward silence. Then O'Neil said, "No, Charles."
"Who was it?"
"We're not sure."
"We should find that out."
Recrimination was such a drain. O'Neil said he'd look into it. Dance knew he'd never do anything though, and with this comment to Overby the finger pointing came to a close.
The detective continued, "Nobody's spotted the Civic. But the timing was just wrong. He could've gotten through on Sixty-eight or the One-Oh-One. I don't think Sixty-eight though."
"No," Overby agreed. The smaller Highway 68 would take Pell back to heavily populated Monterey. The 101, wide as an interstate, could get him to every major expressway in the state.
"They're setting up new checkpoints in Gilroy. And about thirty miles south." O'Neil stuck monarch butterfly notes in the appropriate places.
"And you've got the bus terminals and airport secure?" Overby asked.
"That's right," Dance said.
"And San Jose and Oakland PD're in the loop?"
"Yep. And Santa Cruz, San Benito, Merced, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and San Mateo." The nearby counties.
Overby jotted a few notes. "Good." He glanced up and said, "Oh, I just talked to Amy."
"Grabe?"
"That's right."
Amy Grabe was the SAC--the special agent in charge--of the FBI's San Francisco field office. Dance knew the sharp, focused law enforcer well. The west-central region of the CBI extended north to the Bay area, so she'd had a number of opportunities to work with her. Dance's late husband, an agent with the FBI's local resident agency, had too.
Overby continued, "If we don't get Pell soon, they've got a specialist I want on board."
"A what?"
"Somebody in the bureau who handles situations like this."
It was a jailbreak, Dance reflected. What kind of specialist? She thought of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.
O'Neil too was curious. "A negotiator?"
But Overby said, "No, he's a cult expert. Deals a lot with people like Pell."
Dance shrugged, an illustrator gesture--those that reinforce verbal content, in this case, her doubts. "Well, I'm not sure how useful that'd be." She had worked many joint task forces. She wasn't opposed to sharing jurisdiction with the Feds or anyone else, but involving other agencies inevitably slowed response times. Besides, she didn't see how a cult leader would flee for his life any differently than a murderer or bank robber.
But Overby had already made up his mind; she knew it from his tone and body language. "He's a brilliant profiler, can really get into their minds. The cult mentality is a lot different from your typical perp's."
Is it?
The agent in charge handed Dance a slip of paper with a name and phone number on it. "He's in Chicago, finishing up some case, but he can be here tonight or tomorrow morning."
"You sure about this, Charles?"
"With Pell we can use all the help we can get. Absolutely. And a big gun from Washington? More expertise, more person power."
More places to stash the blame, Dance thought cynically, realizing now what had happened. Grabe had asked if the FBI could help out in the search for Pell, and Overby had jumped at the offer, thinking that if more innocents were injured or the escapee remained at large, there'd be two people on the podium at the press conference, not just himself alone. But she kept the smile on her face. "All right then. I hope we get him before we need to bother anybody else."
"Oh, and Kathryn? I just wanted you to know. Amy wondered how the escape happened, and I told her your interrogation had nothing to do with it."
"My . . . what?"
"It's not going to be a problem. I told her there's nothing you did that would've helped Pell escape."
She felt the heat rise to her face, which undoubtedly was turning ruddy. Emotion does that; she'd spotted plenty of deception over the years because guilt and shame trigger blood flow.
So does anger.
Amy Grabe probably hadn't even known that Dance had interrogated Pell, let alone suspected she'd done something careless that facilitated the escape.
But she--and the San Francisco office of the bureau--sure had that idea now.
Maybe CBI headquarters in Sacramento did too. She said stiffly, "He escaped from the lockup, not the interrogation room."
"I was talking about Pell maybe getting information from you that he could use to get away."
Dance sensed O'Neil tense. The detective had a strong streak of protectiveness when it came to those who hadn't been in the business as long as he had. But he knew that Kathryn Dance was a woman who fought her own battles. He remained silent.
She was furious that Overby had said anything to Grabe. Now she understood: that was why he wanted CBI to run the case--if any other agency took charge, it would be an admission that the bureau was in some way responsible for the escape.
And Overby wasn't through yet. "Now, about security . . . I'm sure it was tight. Special precautions with Pell. I told Amy you'd made sure of that."
Since he hadn't asked a question, she simply gazed back coolly and didn't give him a crumb of reassurance.
He probably sensed he'd gone too far and, eyes ferreting away, said, "I'm sure things were handled well."
Again, silence.
"Okay, I've got that press conference. My turn in the barrel." He grimaced. "If you hear anything else, let me know. I'll be on in about ten minutes."
The man left.
TJ looked Dance over and said, in a thick southern accent, "Damn, so you're the one forgot to lock the barn door when you were through interrogating the cows. That's how they got away. I was wondrin'."
O'Neil stifled a smile.
"Don't get me started," she muttered.
She walked to the window and looked out at the people who'd evacuated the courthouse, milling in front of the building. "I'm worried about that partner. Where is he, what's he up to?"
"Who'd bust somebody like Daniel Pell outa the joint?" asked TJ.
Dance recalled Pell's kinesic reaction in the interrogation when the subject of his aunt in Bakersfield arose. "I think whoever's helping him got the hammer from his aunt. Pell's her last name. Find her." She had another thought. "Oh, and your buddy in the resident agency, down in Chico?"
"Yup?"
"He's discreet, right?"
"We bar surf and ogle when we hang out. How discreet is that?"
"Can he check this guy out?" She held up the slip of paper containing the name of the FBI's cult expert.
"He'd be game, I'll bet. He says intrigue in the bureau's better than intrigue in the barrio." TJ jotted the name.
O'Neil took a call and had a brief conversation. He hung up and explained, "That was the warden at Capitola. I tho
ught we should talk to the supervising guard on Pell's cell block, see if he can tell us anything. He's also bringing the contents of Pell's cell with him."
"Good."
"Then there's a fellow prisoner who claims to have some information about Pell. She'll round him up and call us back."
Dance's cell phone rang, a croaking frog.
O'Neil lifted an eyebrow. "Wes or Maggie've been hard at work."
It was a family joke, like stuffed animals in the purse. The children would reprogram the ringer of her phone when Dance wasn't looking (any tones were fair game; the only rules: never silent, and no tunes from boy bands).
She hit the receive button. "Hello?"
"It's me, Agent Dance."
The background noise was loud and the "me" ambiguous, but the phrasing of her name told her the caller was Rey Carraneo.
"What's up?"
"No sign of his partner or any other devices. Security wants to know if they can let everybody back inside. The fire marshal's okayed it."
Dance debated the matter with O'Neil. They decided to wait a little longer.
"TJ, go outside and help them search. I don't like it that the accomplice's unaccounted for."
She recalled what her father had told her after he'd nearly had a run-in with a great white in the waters off northern Australia. "The shark you don't see is always more dangerous than the one you do."
Chapter 8
The stocky, bearded, balding man in his hard-worn fifties stood near the courthouse, looking over the chaos, his sharp eyes checking out everyone, the police, the guards, the civilians.
"Hey, Officer, how you doing, you got a minute? Just like to ask you a few questions. . . . You mind saying a few words into the tape recorder? . . . Oh, sure, I understand. I'll catch you later. Sure. Good luck."
Morton Nagle had watched the helicopter swoop in low and ease to the ground to spirit away the injured cop.
He'd watched the men and women conducting the search, their strategy--and faces--making clear that they'd never run an escape.
He'd watched the uneasy crowds, thinking accidental fire, then thinking terrorists, then hearing the truth and looking even more scared than if al-Qaeda itself were behind the explosion.
As well they should, Nagle reflected.
"Excuse me, do you have a minute to talk? . . . Oh, sure. Not a problem. Sorry to bother you, Officer."
Nagle milled through the crowds. Smoothing his wispy hair, then tugging up saggy tan slacks, he was studying the area carefully, the fire trucks, the squad cars, the flashing lights bursting with huge aureoles through the foggy haze. He lifted his digital camera and snapped some more pictures.
The Sleeping Doll Page 4