“Losers like us.”
Linda stiffened slightly. Then said, “Well, I’d say people down on their luck. Daniel was generous. Gave them food, money sometimes.”
You give a hungry man food, he’ll do what you want, Dance reflected, recalling Kellogg’s profile of a cult leader and his subjects.
They continued reminiscing but the conversation didn’t trigger any recollections of who the houseguests might’ve been. Dance moved on.
“There are some things he searched for online recently. I was wondering if they mean anything to you. One was ‘Nimue.’ I was thinking it might be a name. A nickname or computer screen name maybe.”
“No. I’ve never heard of it. What does it mean?”
“It’s a character out of the King Arthur legend.”
Rebecca looked at the younger woman. “Hey, did you read us any of those stories?”
Linda didn’t recall. Nor had they any recollection of an Alison—the other name Pell had searched for.
“Tell me about a typical day in the Family.”
Rebecca seemed at a loss for words. “We’d get up, have breakfast . . . I don’t know.”
Shrugging, Linda said, “We were just a family. We talked about what families talk about. The weather, plans, trips we were going to take. Money problems. Who was going to be working where. Sometimes I’d stand in the kitchen after breakfast, doing dishes, and just cry—because I was so happy. I had a real family at last.”
Rebecca agreed that their life hadn’t been very different from anyone else’s, though she clearly wasn’t as sentimental as her sister-in-crime.
The discussion meandered and they revealed nothing helpful. In interviewing and interrogation, it’s a well-known rule that abstractions obscure memories, while specifics trigger them. Dance now said, “Do this for me: Pick a particular day. Tell me about it. A day you’d both remember.”
Neither could think of one that stood out, though.
Until Dance suggested, “Think of a holiday: Thanksgiving, Christmas.”
Linda shrugged. “How about that Easter?”
“My first holiday there. My only holiday. Sure. That was fun.”
Linda described making an elaborate dinner with food that Sam, Jimmy and Rebecca had “come up with.” Dance spotted the euphemism instantly; it meant the trio had stolen the groceries.
“I cooked a turkey,” Linda said. “I smoked it all day in the backyard. My, that was fun.”
Prodding, Dance asked, “So there you are, you two and Samantha—she was the quiet one, you said.”
“The Mouse.”
“And the young man who was with Pell at the Croytons’,” Kellogg said. “Jimmy Newberg. Tell us about him.”
Rebecca said, “Right. He was a funny little puppy. He was a runaway too. From up north, I think.”
“Good-looking. But he wasn’t all there.” Linda tapped her forehead.
A laugh from her comrade. “He’d been a stoner.”
“But he was a genius with his hands. Carpentry, electronics, everything. He was totally into computers, even wrote his own programs. He’d tell us about them and none of us could understand what he was talking about. He wanted to get some website going—remember, this was before everybody had one. I think he was actually pretty creative. I felt bad for him. Daniel didn’t like him that much. He’d lose patience with him. He wanted to kick him out, I think.”
“Besides, Daniel was a ladies’ man. He didn’t do well with other men around.”
Dance steered them back to the holiday.
“It was a pretty day,” Linda continued. “The sun was out. It was warm. We had music going. Jimmy’d put together a real good sound system.”
“Did you say grace?”
“No.”
“Even though it was Easter?”
Rebecca said, “I suggested it. But Pell said no.”
Linda said, “That’s right. He got upset.”
His father, Dance supposed.
“We played some games in the yard. Frisbee, badminton. Then I put dinner out.”
Rebecca said, “I’d boosted some good Cabernet and we girls and Jimmy had wine—Pell didn’t drink. Oh, I got pretty wasted. Sam did too.”
“And we ate a lot.” Linda gripped her belly.
Dance continued to probe. She was aware that Winston Kellogg had dropped out of the conversation. He might be the cult expert but he was deferring to her expertise now. She appreciated that.
Linda said, “After dinner we just hung out and talked. Sam and I sang. Jimmy was tinkering with his computer. Daniel was reading something.”
The recollections came more frequently now, a chain reaction.
“Drinking, talking, a family holiday.”
“Yeah.”
“You remember what you talked about?”
“Oh, just stuff, you know . . .” Linda fell silent. Then she said, “Wait. That reminds me of one thing you might want to know about.” She tilted her head slightly. It was a recognition response, though from the focus of her eyes—on a nearby vase filled with artificial amaryllis—the thought was not fully formed. Dance said nothing; you can often erase an elusive memory by asking someone about it directly.
The woman continued, “It wasn’t Easter. It was another dinner. But thinking about Easter reminded me. Daniel and I were in the kitchen. He was watching me cook. And there was a big crash from next door. The neighbors were fighting. He said he couldn’t wait to get out of Seaside. To his mountaintop.”
“Mountaintop?”
“Yeah.”
Kellogg asked, “His?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Did he own some property?”
“He never mentioned anything specific. Maybe he meant ‘his’ in the sense that it was something he wanted to have someday.”
Rebecca knew nothing about it.
Linda said, “I remember it clearly. He wanted to get away from everybody. Just us, just the Family. Nobody else around. I don’t think he said anything about it before or after that.”
“But not Utah? You both said he never mentioned that.”
“No,” Rebecca agreed. “But, wait . . . you know, thinking of that . . . I don’t know if it’s helpful, but I remember something too. Along those same lines. We were in bed one night and he said, ‘I need to make a big score. Come up with enough money just to get away from everybody.’ I remember that. He said ‘a big score.’ ”
“What did he mean? A robbery to buy some property?”
“Could be.”
“Linda?”
She had to plead ignorance and seemed troubled that he hadn’t shared everything with her.
Dance asked the obvious question: “Could the big score have been the Croyton break-in?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “He never told us that’s where he and Jimmy were going that night.”
Dance speculated: Maybe he did steal something valuable from Croyton’s house, after all. When the police were closing in, he hid it. She thought of the car he’d driven to the break-in. Had it been searched thoroughly? Where was it now? Maybe destroyed, maybe owned by someone else. She made a note to try to find the vehicle. Also, to check deeds registries to see if Pell owned any property.
Mountaintop . . . Could that have been what he’d been looking for online in Capitola on the Visual-Earth website? Dozen of sizable peaks were within an hour’s drive of the Peninsula.
There were still questions, but Dance was pleased at their progress. Finally, she felt she had some insights into the mind of Daniel Pell. She was about to ask more questions when her phone rang.
“Excuse me.”
She answered it.
“Kathryn. It’s me.”
She pressed the phone closer to her head. “TJ, what’s up?”
And steeled herself. The fact that he hadn’t called her “boss” meant he was about to deliver bad news.
Chapter 29
Kathryn Dance and Winston Kellogg walked
along a road covered with a thin coat of damp sand toward TJ and Michael O’Neil, who stood at the open trunk of a late-model Lexus.
Another man was there too, one of the officers from the Coroner’s Division, which in Monterey County is part of the MCSO. The balding, round deputy greeted her. “Kathryn.”
Dance introduced him to Kellogg, then peered into the trunk. The victim, a woman, lay on her side. Her legs were bent and her hands and mouth were duct-taped. Her nose and face were bright red. Blood vessels had broken.
O’Neil said, “Susan Pemberton. Lived in Monterey. Single, thirty nine.”
“Probable COD is suffocation?”
The coroner officer added, “We’ve got capillary dilation and membrane inflammation and distension. That residue there? I’m sure it’s capsicum oleoresin.”
“He hit her with pepper spray and then duct-taped her.”
The coroner officer nodded.
“Terrible,” O’Neil muttered.
Dying alone, in pain, an ignominious trunk her coffin. A burst of raw anger at Daniel Pell swept through Dance.
It turned out, O’Neil explained, that Susan’s was the disappearance he’d been looking into.
“We’re sure it’s Pell?”
“It’s him,” the Coroner’s Division officer said. “Prints match.”
O’Neil added, “I’ve ordered field prints tests done for every homicide in the area.”
“Any idea of the motive?”
“Maybe. She worked for an event-planning company. He apparently used her to get in and tell him where all the files were. He stole everything. Crime scene’s been through the office. Nothing conclusive so far, except his prints.”
“Any clue why?” Kellogg asked.
“Nope.”
“How’d he find her?”
“Her boss said she left the office about five last night to meet a prospective client for drinks.”
“Pell, you think?”
O’Neil shrugged. “No idea. Her boss didn’t know who. Maybe Pell saw them and followed.”
“Next of kin?”
“Nobody here, doesn’t look like,” the Coroner’s Division officer said. “Her parents’re in Denver. I’ll make that call when I get back to the office.”
“TOD?”
“Last night, maybe seven to nine. I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
Pell had left little evidence behind, except a few faint footsteps in the sand that seemed to lead toward the beach then were lost in the pale grass littering the dunes. No other prints or tread marks were visible.
What was in the files he’d stolen? What didn’t he want them to know?
Kellogg was walking around the area, getting a feel for the crime scene, maybe considering it in light of his specialty, cult mentality.
Dance told O’Neil about Rebecca’s idea that Pell was after a big score, presumably so that he could buy an enclave somewhere.
“ ‘Mountaintop’ was what Linda said. And the big score might’ve been the Croyton break-in.” She added her idea that maybe Pell had hidden something of Croyton’s in the getaway car.
“I think it was why he was searching Visual-Earth. To check the place out.”
“Interesting theory,” O’Neil said. He and Dance would often brainstorm when they were working cases together. They’d occasionally come up with some truly bizarre theories about the crimes they were investigating. Sometimes those theories actually turned out to be right.
Dance told TJ to check out the status of the vehicle Pell had been driving on the night of the Croyton murders and if there’d been an inventory of the car’s contents. “And see if Pell owns property anywhere in the state.”
“Will do, boss.”
Dance looked around. “Why’d he abandon the car here? He could’ve gone east into the woods, and nobody would’ve found it for days. It’s a lot more visible here.”
Michael O’Neil pointed at a narrow pier extending into the ocean. “The T-bird’s out of commission. He’s ditched the stolen Ford Focus by now. Maybe he got away by boat.”
“Boat?” Dance asked.
“His footsteps go that way. None head back to the road.”
Kellogg was nodding but slowly, and the motion said, I don’t think so. “It’s a little rough, don’t you think, to dock a boat there?”
“Not for somebody who knows what they’re doing.”
“Could you?”
“Me? Sure. Depending on the wind.”
A pause as Winston Kellogg looked over the scene. Rain started coming down steadily. He didn’t seem to notice. “My thinking is that he started that way for some reason, maybe to lead us off. But then he turned and headed back over the dunes to the road, met his accomplice somewhere along here.”
Phrases like “my thinking” and “I’m of the opinion that” are what Dance called verbal anesthetic. Their purpose is to take the sting out of a speaker’s critical or contrary statement. The new kid on the block was reluctant to disagree with O’Neil but evidently felt that he was wrong about the boat.
“Why do you think that?” Dance asked.
“That old windmill.”
At the turnoff where the beach road left the main highway was an abandoned gas station, under a decorative two-story windmill.
“How long’s it been there?”
“Forty, fifty years, I’d guess. The pumps only have two windows for the price—like no one ever believed gas would ever cost more than ninety-nine cents.”
Kellogg continued, “Pell knows the area. His accomplice’s probably from out of town. He picked this place because it’s deserted but also because there’s a landmark you can’t miss. ‘Turn right at the windmill.’ ”
O’Neil wasn’t swayed. “Could be. Of course, if that was the only reason, you’d wonder why he didn’t pick someplace closer to town. Be easier to direct his accomplice to a place like that, and there are plenty of deserted areas that’d work. And think about it, the Lexus was stolen and had a body in the trunk. He’d definitely want to dump it as soon as possible.”
“Maybe, makes sense,” Kellogg conceded. He looked around, squinting in the mist. “But I’m leaning toward something else. I think he was drawn here not because of the pier but because it’s deserted and it’s a beach. He’s not a ritualistic killer but most cult leaders have a mystical bent, and water often figures in that. Something happened here, almost ceremonial, I’d say. It might’ve involved that woman with him. Maybe sex after the kill. Or maybe something else.”
“What?”
“I can’t say. My guess is she met him here. For whatever he had in mind.”
“But,” O’Neil pointed out, “there’s no evidence of another car, no evidence that he turned around and walked back to the road. You’d think there’d be some prints.”
Kellogg said, “He could’ve covered his tracks.” Pointing to a portion of the sand-covered road. “Those marks don’t look natural. He could’ve swept over them with brush or leaves. Maybe even a broom. I’d excavate that whole area.”
O’Neil went on, “I’m thinking it can’t hurt to check on stolen vessels. And I’d rather crime scene ran the pier now.”
The tennis volley continued, the FBI agent offering, “With this wind and rain . . . I really think the road should be first.”
“You know, Win, I think we’ll go with the pier.”
Kellogg tipped his head, meaning: It’s your crime scene team; I’m backing down. “Fine with me. I’ll search it myself if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Go right ahead.”
Without a look at Dance—he had no desire to test loyalties—the FBI agent returned to the area with the dubious markings.
Dance turned and walked along a clean zone back to her car, glad to leave the crime scene behind. Forensic evidence wasn’t her expertise.
Neither were strong-willed rams butting horns.
• • •
The visage of grief.
Kathryn Dance knew it well. From her days
as a journalist, interviewing survivors of crimes and accidents. And from her days as a jury consultant, watching the faces of the witnesses and victims recounting injustices and personal injury mishaps.
From her own life too. As a cop.
And as a widow: looking in the mirror, staring eye-to-eye with a very different Kathryn Dance, the lipstick hovering before easing away from the mask of a face.
Why bother, why bother?
Now, she was seeing the same look as she sat in Susan Pemberton’s office, across from the dead woman’s boss, Eve Brock.
“It’s not real to me.”
No, it never is.
The crying was over but only temporarily, Dance sensed. The stocky middle-aged woman held herself in tight rein. Sitting forward, legs tucked under the chair, shoulders rigid, jaw set. The kinesics of grief matched the face.
“I don’t understand the computer and the files. Why?”
“I assume there was something he wanted to keep secret. Maybe he was at an event years ago and he didn’t want anybody to know about it.” Dance’s first question to the woman had been: Was the company in business before Pell went to prison? Yes, it was.
The crying began again. “One thing I want to know. Did he . . .?”
Dance recognized a certain tone and answered the incomplete question: “There was no sexual assault.” She asked the woman about the client Susan was going to meet, but she knew no details.
“Would you excuse me for a moment?” Eve Brock was about to surrender to her tears.
“Of course.”
Eve headed for the ladies’ room.
Dance looked at Susan Pemberton’s walls, filled with photos of past events: weddings; bar and bat mitzvahs; anniversary parties; outings for local corporations, banks and fraternal groups; political fund-raisers and high school and college events. The company also worked with funeral homes to cater receptions after an interment.
She saw, to her surprise, the name of the mortician who had handled her husband’s funeral.
Eve Brock returned, her face red, eyes puffy. “I’m sorry.”
“Not a problem at all. So she met that client after work?”
“Yes.”
“Would they go for drinks or coffee somewhere?”
“Probably.”
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