“Fine. I won’t say anything.”
“Appreciate that,” Dance said, then asked, “Mr. Nagle, do you have any information that could help us? Where Daniel Pell might be going, what he might be up to? Who’s helping him?”
With his potbelly, wispy hair and genial laugh, Nagle seemed like a middle-aged elf. He hitched up his pants. “No idea. I’m sorry. I really just got started on the project a month or so ago. I’ve been doing the background research.”
“You mentioned you plan to write about the women in Pell’s Family too. Have you contacted them?”
“Two of them. I asked if they’d be willing to let me interview them.”
O’Neil asked, “They’re out of jail?”
“Oh, yes. They weren’t involved in the Croyton murders. They got short terms, mostly for larceny-related offenses.”
O’Neil completed Dance’s thought. “Could one of them, or both, I guess, be his accomplice?”
Nagle considered this. “I can’t see it. They think Pell’s the worst thing that ever happened to them.”
“Who are they?” O’Neil asked.
“Rebecca Sheffield. She lives in San Diego. And Linda Whitfield is in Portland.”
“Have they kept out of trouble?”
“Think so. No police records I could find. Linda lives with her brother and his wife. She works for a church. Rebecca runs a consulting service for small businesses. My impression is they’ve put the past behind them.”
“You have their numbers?”
The writer flipped through a notebook of fat pages. His handwriting was sloppy and large—and the notes voluminous.
“There was a third woman in the Family,” Dance said, recalling the research she’d done for the interview.
“Samantha McCoy. She disappeared years ago. Rebecca said she changed her name and moved away, was sick of being known as one of Daniel’s ‘girls.’ I’ve done a little searching but I haven’t been able to find her yet.”
“Any leads?”
“West Coast somewhere is all that Rebecca heard.”
Dance said to TJ, “Find her. Samantha McCoy.”
The curly-haired agent bounded off to the corner of the room. He looked like an elf too, she reflected.
Nagle found the numbers of the two women and Dance wrote them down. She placed a call to Rebecca Sheffield in San Diego.
“Women’s Initiatives,” the receptionist said in a voice with a faint Chicana accent. “May I help you?”
A moment later Dance found herself speaking to the head of the company, a no-nonsense woman with a low, raspy voice. The agent explained about Pell’s escape. Rebecca Sheffield was shocked.
Angry too. “I thought he was in some kind of superprison.”
“He didn’t escape from there. It was the county courthouse lockup.”
Dance asked if the woman had any thoughts on where Pell might be going, who his accomplice could be, other friends he might contact.
Rebecca couldn’t, though. She said that she’d met Pell just a few months before the Croyton murders—and she was just getting to know him and the others when they were arrested. But she added that she’d gotten a call from someone about a month earlier, supposedly a writer. “I assumed he was legit. But he might’ve had something to do with the escape. Murry or Morton was the first name. I think I’ve got his number somewhere.”
“It’s all right. He’s here with us. We’ve checked him out.”
Rebecca could offer nothing more about Samantha McCoy’s whereabouts or new identity.
Then, uneasy, she said, “Back then, eight years ago, I didn’t turn him in, but I did cooperate with the police. Do you think I’m in danger?”
“I couldn’t say. But until we reapprehend him, you might want to contact San Diego police.” Dance gave the woman her numbers at CBI and her mobile, and Rebecca told her she’d try to think of anyone who might help Pell or know where he’d go.
The agent pushed down the button on the phone cradle and let it spring back up again. Then she dialed the second number, which turned out to be the Church of the Holy Brethren in Portland. She was connected to Linda Whitfield, who hadn’t heard the news either. Her reaction was completely different: silence, broken by a nearly inaudible muttering. All Dance caught was “dear Jesus.”
Praying, it seemed, not an exclamation. The voice faded, or she was cut off.
“Hello?” Dance asked.
“Yes, I’m here,” Linda said.
Dance asked the same questions she’d put to Rebecca Sheffield.
Linda hadn’t heard from Pell in years—though they’d stayed in touch for about eighteen months after the Croyton murders. Finally she’d stopped writing and had heard nothing from him since. Nor did she have any information about Samantha McCoy’s whereabouts, though she too told Dance about a call from Morton Nagle last month. The agent reassured her they were aware of him and convinced he wasn’t working with Pell.
Linda could offer no leads as to where Pell would go. She had no idea of who his accomplice might be.
“We don’t know what he has in mind,” Dance told the woman. “We have no reason to believe you’re in danger, but—”
“Oh, Daniel wouldn’t hurt me,” she said quickly.
“Still, you might want to tell your local police.”
“Well, I’ll think about it.” Then she added, “Is there a hotline I can call and find out what’s going on?”
“We don’t have anything set up like that. But the press’s covering it closely. You can get the details on the news as fast as we know them.”
“Well, my brother doesn’t have a television.”
No TV?
“Well, if there are any significant developments, I’ll let you know. And if you can think of anything else, please call.” Dance gave her the phone numbers and hung up.
A few moments later CBI chief Charles Overby strode into the room. “Press conference went well, I think. They asked some prickly questions. They always do. But I fielded them okay, I have to say. Stayed one step ahead. You see it?” He nodded at the TV in the corner. No one had bothered to turn up the volume to hear his performance.
“Missed it, Charles. Been on the phone.”
“Who’s he?” Overby asked. He’d been staring at Nagle as if he should know him.
Dance introduced them, then the writer instantly disappeared from the agent in charge’s radar screen. “Any progress at all?” A glance at the maps.
“No reports anywhere,” Dance told him. Then explained that she’d contacted two of the women who’d been in Pell’s Family. “One’s from San Diego, one’s from Portland, and we’re looking for the other right now. At least we know the first two aren’t the accomplice.”
“Because you believe them?” Overby asked. “You could tell that from the tone of their voices?”
None of the officers in the room said anything. So it was up to Dance to let her boss know he’d missed the obvious. “I don’t think they could’ve set the gas bombs and gotten back home by now.”
A brief pause. Overby said, “Oh, you called them where they live. You didn’t say that.”
Kathryn Dance, former reporter and jury consultant, had played in the real world for a long time. She avoided TJ’s glance and said, “You’re right, Charles, I didn’t. Sorry.”
The CBI head turned to O’Neil. “This’s a tough one, Michael. Lots of angles. Sure glad you’re available to help us out.”
“Glad to do what I can.”
This was Charles Overby at his best. Using the words “help us” to make clear who was running the show, while also tacitly explaining that O’Neil and the MCSO were on the line too.
Stash the blame . . .
Overby announced he was headed back to the CBI office and left the conference room.
Dance now turned to Morton Nagle. “Do you have any research about Pell I could look at?”
“Well, I suppose. But why?”
“Maybe help us get some idea of w
here he’s going,” O’Neil said.
“Copies,” the writer said. “Not the originals.”
“That’s fine,” Dance told him. “One of us’ll come by later and pick them up. Where’s your office?”
Nagle worked out of a house he was renting in Monterey. He gave Dance the address and phone number, then began packing up his camera bag.
Dance glanced down at it. “Hold on.”
Nagle noticed her eyes on the contents. He smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
“I’m sorry?”
He picked up a copy of one of his true-crime books, Blind Trust, and with a flourish autographed it for her.
“Thanks.” She set it down and pointed at what she’d actually been looking at. “Your camera. Did you take any pictures this morning? Before the fire?”
“Oh.” He smiled wryly at the misunderstanding. “Yes, I did.”
“It’s digital?”
“That’s right.”
“Can we see them?”
Nagle picked up the Canon and began to push buttons. She and O’Neil hunched close over the tiny screen on the back. Dance detected a new aftershave. She felt comfort in his proximity.
The writer scrolled through the pictures. Most of them were of people walking into the courthouse, a few artistic shots of the front of the building in the fog.
Then the detective and the agent simultaneously said, “Wait.” The image they were looking at depicted the driveway that led to where the fire had occurred. They could make out someone behind a car, just the back visible, wearing a blue jacket, a baseball cap and sunglasses.
“Look at the arm.”
Dance nodded. It seemed the person’s arm trailed behind, as if wheeling a suitcase.
“Is that time stamped?”
Nagle called up the readout. “Nine twenty-two.”
“That’d work out just right,” Dance said, recalling the fire marshal’s estimate of the time the gas bomb had been planted. “Can you blow up the image?”
“Not in the camera.”
TJ said he could on his computer, though, no problem. Nagle gave the memory card to him, and Dance sent TJ back to CBI headquarters, reminding him, “And Samantha McCoy. Track her down. The aunt too. Bakersfield.”
“You bet, boss.”
Rey Carraneo was still outside, canvassing for witnesses. But Dance believed that the accomplice had fled too; now that Pell had probably eluded the roadblocks there was no reason for the partner to stay around. She sent him back to headquarters as well.
Nagle said, “I’ll get started on the copies. . . . Oh, don’t forget.” He handed her the autographed paperback. “I know you’ll like it.”
When he was gone Dance held it up. “In all my free time.” And gave it to O’Neil for his collection.
Chapter 9
At lunch hour a woman in her midtwenties was sitting on a patio outside the Whole Foods grocery store in Monterey’s Del Monte Center.
A disk of sun was slowly emerging as the blanket of fog melted.
She heard a siren in the distance, a dove cooing, a horn, a child crying, then a child laughing.
Jennie Marston thought, Angel songs.
The scent of pine filled the cool air. No breeze. Dull light. A typical California day on the coast, but everything about it was intensified.
Which is what happens when you’re in love and about to meet your boyfriend.
Anticipation . . .
Some old pop song, Jennie thought. Her mother sang it from time to time, her smoker’s voice harsh and off-key, often slurred.
Blond, authentic California blond, Jennie sipped her coffee. It was expensive but good. This wasn’t her kind of store (the twenty-four-year-old part-time caterer was an Albertsons girl, a Safeway girl) but Whole Foods was a good meeting place.
She was wearing close-fitting jeans, a light pink blouse and, underneath, a red Victoria’s Secret bra and panties. Like the coffee, the lingerie was a luxury she couldn’t afford. But some things you had to splurge on. (Besides, Jennie reflected, the garments were really a gift in a way: for her boyfriend.)
Which made her think of other indulgences. Rubbing her nose, flick, flick, on the bump.
Stop it, she told herself.
But she didn’t. Another two flicks.
Angel songs . . .
Why couldn’t she have met him a year later? She’d’ve had the cosmetic work done by then and be beautiful. At least she could do something about the nose and boobs. She only wished she could fix the toothpick shoulders and boyish hips but fixing those was beyond the talents of talented Dr. Ginsberg.
Skinny, skinny, skinny . . . And the way you eat! Twice what I do and look at me. God gave me a daughter like you to test me.
Watching the unsmiling women wheeling their grocery carts to their mommy vans, Jennie wondered, Do they love their husbands? They couldn’t possibly be as much in love as she was with her boyfriend. She felt sorry for them.
Jennie finished her coffee and returned to the store, looking at massive pineapples and bins of grain and heads of funny-shaped lettuce and perfectly lined up steaks and chops. Mostly she studied the pastries—the way one painter examines another’s canvas. Good. . . . Not so good. She didn’t want to buy anything—it was way expensive. She was just too squirrelly to stay in one place.
That’s what I should’ve named you. Stay Still Jennie. For fuck’s sake, girl. Sit down.
Looking at the produce, looking at the rows of meat.
Looking at the women with boring husbands.
She wondered if the intensity she felt for her boyfriend was simply because it was all so new. Would it fade after a while? But one thing in their favor was that they were older; this wasn’t that stupid passion of your teenage years. They were mature people. And most important was their souls’ connection, which comes along so rarely. Each knew exactly how the other felt.
“Your favorite color’s green,” he’d shared with her the first time they’d spoken. “I’ll bet you sleep under a green comforter. It soothes you at night.”
Oh my God, he was so right. It was a blanket, not a comforter. But it was green as grass. What kind of man had that intuition?
Suddenly she paused, aware of a conversation nearby. Two of the bored housewives weren’t so bored at the moment.
“Somebody’s dead. In Salinas. It just happened.”
Salinas? Jennie thought.
“Oh, the escape from that prison or whatever? Yeah, I just heard about it.”
“David Pell, no, Daniel. That’s it.”
“Isn’t he, like, Charles Manson’s kid or something?”
“I don’t know. But I heard some people got killed.”
“He’s not Manson’s kid. No, he just called himself that.”
“Who’s Charles Manson?”
“Are you kidding me? Remember Sharon Tate?”
“Who?”
“Like, when were you born?”
Jennie approached the women. “Excuse me, what’s that you’re talking about? An escape or something?”
“Yeah, from this jail in Salinas. Didn’t you hear?” one of the short-haired housewives asked, glancing at Jennie’s nose.
She didn’t care. “Somebody was killed, you said?”
“Some guards and then somebody was kidnapped and killed, I think.”
They didn’t seem to know anything more.
Her palms damp, heart uneasy, Jennie turned and walked away. She checked her phone. Her boyfriend had called a while ago but nothing since then. No messages. She tried the number. He didn’t answer.
Jennie returned to the turquoise Thunderbird. She put the radio on the news, then twisted the rearview mirror toward her. She pulled her makeup and brush from her purse.
Some people got killed. . . .
Don’t worry about it, she told herself. Working on her face, concentrating the way her mother had taught her. It was one of the nice things the woman had done for her. “Put the light here, the dark here—we
’ve got to do something with that nose of yours. Smooth it in . . . blend it. Good.”
Though her mother often took away the nice as fast as shattering a glass.
Well, it looked fine until you messed it up. Honestly, what’s wrong with you? Do it again. You look like a whore.
• • •
Daniel Pell was strolling down the sidewalk from the small covered garage connected to an office building in Monterey.
He’d had to abandon Billy’s Honda Civic earlier than he’d planned. He’d heard on the news that the police had found the Worldwide Express truck, which meant they would probably assume he was in the Civic. He’d apparently evaded the roadblocks just in time.
How ’bout that, Kathryn?
Now he continued along the sidewalk, with his head down. He wasn’t concerned about being out in public, not yet. Nobody would expect him here. Besides, he looked different. In addition to the civilian clothes he was smooth-shaven. After dumping Billy’s car he’d slipped into the back parking lot of a motel, where he’d gone through the trash. He’d found a discarded razor and a tiny bottle of the motel’s giveaway body lotion. Crouching by the Dumpster, he’d used them to shave off the beard.
He now felt the breeze on his face, smelled something in the air: ocean and seaweed. First time in years. He loved the scent. In Capitola prison the air you smelled was the air they decided to send to you through the air conditioner or heating system and it didn’t smell like anything.
A squad car went past.
Hold fast . . .
Pell was careful to maintain his pace, not looking around, not deviating from his route. Changing your behavior draws attention. And that puts you at a disadvantage, gives people information about you. They can figure out why you changed, then use it against you.
That’s what had happened at the courthouse.
Kathryn . . .
Pell had had the interrogation all planned out: If he could do so without arousing suspicion, he was going to get information from whoever was interviewing him, learn how many guards were in the courthouse and where they were, for instance.
But then to his astonishment she’d learned exactly what he was doing.
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 48