“Nearby?”
“Usually. Alvarado.” The main street in downtown Monterey. “Or maybe Del Monte Center, Fisherman’s Wharf.”
“Any favorite watering hole?”
“No. Wherever the client wanted to go.”
“Excuse me.” Dance found her phone and called Rey Carraneo.
“Agent Dance,” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Near Marina. Still checking on stolen boats for Detective O’Neil. Nothing yet. And no luck on the motels, either.”
“Okay. Keep at it.” She disconnected and called TJ. “Where are you?”
“The emphasis tells me I’m the second choice.”
“But the answer is?”
“Near downtown. Monterey.”
“Good.” She gave him the address of Eve Brock’s company and told him to meet her on the street in ten minutes. She’d give him a picture of Susan Pemberton and have him canvass all the bars and restaurants within walking distance, as well as the shopping center and Fisherman’s Wharf. Cannery Row too.
“You love me best, boss. Bars and restaurants. My kind of assignment.”
She also asked him to check with the phone company and find out about incoming calls to Susan’s phones. She didn’t think the client was Pell; he was ballsy, but he wouldn’t come to downtown Monterey in broad daylight. But the prospective client might have valuable information about, say, where Susan was going after their meeting.
Dance got the numbers from Eve and recited them to TJ.
After they disconnected, she asked, “What would be in the files that were stolen?”
“Oh, everything about our business. Clients, hotels, suppliers, churches, bakeries, caterers, restaurants, liquor stores, florists, photographers, corporate PR departments who’d hired us . . . just everything. . . .” The recitation seemed to exhaust her.
What had worried Pell so much he had to destroy the files?
“Did you ever work for William Croyton, his family or his company?”
“For . . . oh, the man he killed . . . No, we never did.”
“Maybe a subsidiary of his company, or one of his suppliers?”
“I suppose we could have. We do a lot of corporate functions.”
“Do you have backups of the material?”
“Some are in the archives . . . tax records, cancelled checks. Things like that. Probably copies of the invoices. But a lot of things I don’t bother with. It never occurred to me that somebody would steal them. The copies would be at my accountant’s. He’s in San Jose.”
“Could you get as many of them as possible?”
“There’s so much. . . .” Her mind was stalled.
“Limit it to eight years ago, up to May of ’ninety-nine.”
It was then that Dance’s mind did another of its clicks. Could Pell be interested in something that the woman was planning in the future?
“All your upcoming jobs too.”
“I’ll do what I can, sure.”
The woman seemed crushed by the tragedy, paralyzed.
Thinking of Morton Nagle’s book The Sleeping Doll, Dance realized that she was looking at yet one more victim of Daniel Pell.
I see violent crime like dropping a stone into a pond. The ripples of consequence can spread almost forever. . . .
Dance got a picture of Susan to give to TJ and walked downstairs to the street to meet him. Her phone rang.
O’Neil’s mobile on caller ID.
“Hi,” she said, glad to see the number.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Go ahead.”
He spoke softly and Dance took the news without a single affect display, no revealed emotion.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
• • •
“It’s a blessing, really,” Juan Millar’s mother told Dance through her tears.
She was standing next to a grim-faced Michael O’Neil in the corridor of Monterey Bay Hospital, watching the woman do her best to reassure them and deflect their own words of sympathy.
Winston Kellogg arrived and walked up to the family, offered condolences, then shook O’Neil’s hand, fingers on the detective’s biceps, a gesture conveying sincerity among businessmen, politicians and mourners. “I’m so sorry.”
They were outside the burn unit of the ICU. Through the window they could see the complicated bed and its surrounding spacecraft accoutrements: wires, valves, gauges, instrumentation. In the center was a still mound, covered by a green sheet.
The same color sheet had covered her husband’s corpse. Dance recalled seeing it and thinking, frantically, But where did the life go, where did it go?
At that moment she’d come to loathe this particular shade of green.
Dance stared at the body, hearing in her memory Edie Dance’s whispered words.
He said, “Kill me.” He said it twice. Then he closed his eyes. . . .
Millar’s father was inside the room itself, asking the doctor questions whose answers he probably wasn’t digesting. Still, the role of parent who’d survived his son required this—and would require much more in the days ahead.
The mother chatted away and told them again that the death was for the best, there was no doubt, the years of treatment, the years of grafts . . .
“For the best, absolutely,” she said, inadvertently offering Charles Overby’s favorite adverbial crutch.
Edie Dance, working an unplanned late shift, now came down the hall, looking distraught but determined, a visage that her daughter recognized clearly. Sometimes feigned, sometimes genuine, the expression had served her well in the past. Today it would, of course, be a reflection of her true heart.
Edie moved straight to Millar’s mother. She took the woman by the arm and, recognizing approaching hysteria, bestowed words on her—a few questions about her own state of mind, but mostly about her husband’s and other children’s, all aimed at diverting the woman’s focus from this impossible tragedy. Edie Dance was a genius in the art of compassion. It was why she was such a popular nurse.
Rosa Millar began to calm and then cried, and Dance could see the staggering horror melting into manageable grief. Her husband joined them, and Edie handed his wife over to him like a trapeze artist transferring one acrobat to another in midair.
“Mrs. Millar,” Dance said, “I’d just like to—”
Then found herself flying sideways, barking a scream, hands not dropping to her weapon but rising to keep her head from slamming into one of the carts parked here. Her first thought: How had Daniel Pell gotten into the hospital?
“No!” O’Neil shouted. Or Kellogg. Probably both. Dance caught herself as she went down on one knee, knocking coils of yellow tubing and plastic cups to the floor.
The doctor too leapt forward, but it was Winston Kellogg who got the enraged Julio Millar in a restraint hold, arm bent backward, and held him down easily by a twisted wrist. The maneuver was fast and effortless.
“No, son!” the father shouted, and the mother cried harder.
O’Neil helped Dance up. No injuries other than what would be bruises come morning, she guessed.
Julio tried to break away but Kellogg, apparently much stronger than he appeared, tugged the arm up slightly. “Take it easy, don’t hurt yourself. Just take it easy.”
“Bitch, you fucking bitch! You killed him! You killed my brother!”
O’Neil said, “Julio, listen. Your parents are upset enough. Don’t make it worse.”
“Worse? How could it be worse?” He tried to kick out.
Kellogg simply sidestepped him and lifted the wrist higher. The young man grimaced and groaned. “Relax. It won’t hurt if you relax.” The FBI agent looked at the parents, their hopeless eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Julio,” his father said, “you hurt her. She’s a policewoman. They’ll put you in jail.”
“They should put her in jail! She’s the killer.”
Millar senior shouted, “No, stop it! Your mothe
r, think about your mother. Stop it!”
Smoothly, O’Neil had his cuffs out. He was hesitating. He glanced at Kellogg. The men were debating. Julio seemed to be relaxing.
“Okay, okay, get off me.”
O’Neil said, “We’ll have to cuff you if you can’t control yourself. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand.”
Kellogg let go and helped him up.
Everyone’s eyes were on Dance. But she wasn’t going to take the matter to the magistrate. “It’s all right. There’s no problem.”
Julio stared into Dance’s eyes. “Oh, there’s a problem. There’s a big problem.”
He stormed off.
“I’m sorry,” Rosa Millar said through her tears.
Dance reassured her. “Does he live at home?”
“No, an apartment nearby.”
“Have him stay with you tonight. Tell him you need his help. For the funeral, to take care of Juan’s affairs, whatever you can think of. He’s in as much pain as everybody. He just doesn’t know what to do with it.”
The mother had moved to the gurney where her son lay. She muttered something. Edie Dance walked up to her again and whispered into her ear, touching her arm. An intimate gesture between women who’d been complete strangers until a couple of days ago.
After a moment Edie returned to her daughter. “You want the kids to spend the night?”
“Thanks. It’s probably best.”
Dance said good-bye to the Millars and added, “Is there anything we can do? Anything at all?”
The father answered in a voice that seemed perplexed by the question. “No, no.” Then he added softly, “What else is there to be done?”
Chapter 30
The town of Vallejo Springs in Napa, California, has several claims to fame.
It’s the site of a museum featuring many works of Eduard Muybridge, the nineteenth-century photographer credited with inventing moving pictures (and—a lot more interesting than his art—he was a man who murdered his wife’s lover, admitted it in court and got off scot-free).
Another draw is the local vineyards, which produce a particularly fine strain of the Merlot grape—one of the three most famous used to make red wine. Contrary to a bad rap generated by a movie of a few years ago, Merlot isn’t your Yugo of grapes. Just look at Pétrus, a wine from the Pomerol section of Bordeaux, made almost entirely from Merlot and perhaps the most consistently expensive wine in the world.
Morton Nagle was now crossing the town limits because of Vallejo Springs’s third attraction, albeit one that was known to very few people.
Theresa Croyton, the Sleeping Doll, and her aunt and uncle lived here.
Nagle had done his homework. A month of tracking down twisty leads had turned up a reporter in Sonoma, who’d given him the name of a lawyer, who’d done some legal work for the girl’s aunt. He’d been reluctant to give Nagle any information but did offer the opinion that the woman was overbearing and obnoxious—and cheap. She’d dunned him on a bill. Once he was convinced that Nagle was a legitimate writer he gave up the town the family lived in and their new name on a guarantee of anonymity. (“Confidential source” is really just a synonym for spineless.)
Nagle had been to Vallejo Springs several times, meeting with the Sleeping Doll’s aunt in an attempt to get an interview with the girl (the uncle didn’t figure much in the equation, Nagle had learned). She was reluctant, but he believed that she would eventually agree.
Now, back in this picturesque town, he parked near the spacious house, waiting for the opportunity to talk to the woman alone. He could call, of course. But Nagle felt that phone calls—like email—were a very ineffective way of communicating. On a telephone people you’re speaking to are your equals. You have much less control and power of persuasion than if you see them in person.
They can also just hang up.
He had to be careful. He’d noticed the police cruising past the house of the Bollings, the surname the family had adopted, at frequent intervals. This in itself meant nothing—Vallejo Springs was a rich town and had a large, well-endowed constabulary—but Nagle noticed that the squad cars seemed to slow when they drove by.
He noticed too that there were far more police cars out and about now than last week. Which suggested to him what he already suspected: that Theresa was a town sweetheart. The cops would be on high alert to make sure nothing happened to her. If Nagle overstepped, they’d escort him to the town line and dump him in the dust, like an unwelcome gunslinger in some bad western.
He sat back, eyes on the front door, and thought about opening lines for his book.
Carmel-by-the-Sea is a village of contradictions, a mecca for tourists, the jewel in the crown of the Central Coast, yet beneath the pristine and the cute you’ll find the secretive world of the rich and ruthless from San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Hollywood. . . .
Hm. Work on that.
Nagle chuckled.
And then he saw the SUV, a white Escalade, pulling out of the Bollings’ driveway. The girl’s aunt, Mary, was behind the wheel, alone in the car. Good. He’d never get close if Theresa was with her.
Nagle started his car, a Buick worth the price of the SUV’s transmission alone, and followed. Theresa’s aunt made a stop at a gas station, filled the tank with premium. She chatted with a woman at a nearby pump, driving a red Jaguar S-type. The aunt seemed harried. Her gray hair wasn’t brushed and she looked tired. Even from the edge of the parking lot, Nagle could make out dark circles under her eyes.
Pulling out of Shell, she drove through the quaint, unmistakably Californian downtown: a street adorned with plants and flowers and quirky sculptures and lined with coffee shops, understated restaurants, a garden center, an independent bookstore, a yoga place and small retail operations selling wine, crystals, pet supplies and L.L. Bean–style clothing.
A few hundred yards along the road was the strip mall where the locals shopped, anchored by an Albertsons grocery and a Rite Aid drugstore. Mary Bolling parked in the lot and walked inside the grocery store. Nagle parked near her SUV. He stretched, longing for a cigarette, though he hadn’t smoked in twenty years.
He continued the endless debate with himself.
So far he hadn’t transgressed. Hadn’t broken any rules.
He could still head home, no moral harm done.
But should he?
He wasn’t sure.
Morton Nagle believed he had a purpose in life, which was to expose evil. It was an important mission, one he felt passionate about. A noble mission.
But the goal was to reveal evil, and let people make their own judgments. Not to fight it himself. Because once you crossed the line and your purpose became seeking justice, not illuminating it, there were risks. Unlike the police, he didn’t have the Constitution telling him what he could and couldn’t do, which meant there was a potential for abuse.
By asking Theresa Croyton to help find a killer, he was exposing her and her family—himself and his too—to very real dangers. Daniel Pell obviously had no problem killing youngsters.
It was so much better to write about human beings and their conflicts than to make judgments about those conflicts. Let the readers decide what was good or bad, and act accordingly. On the other hand, was it right for him to sit back and let Pell continue his slaughter, when he could do more?
The time for his slippery debate ended, though. Mary Bolling was walking out of Albertsons, wheeling a cart filled with groceries.
Yes or no?
Morton Nagle hesitated only a few seconds, then pulled open the door, stepped out and hitched up his pants. He strode forward.
“Excuse me. Hi, Mrs. Bolling. It’s me.”
She paused, blinked and stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I—”
“I haven’t agreed to let you talk to Theresa.”
“I know, I know . . . That’s not—”
“How dare you show up here like this? You’re stalking us!”<
br />
Her cell phone was in her hand.
“Please,” Nagle said, feeling a sudden desperation to sway her. “This is something different. I’m here doing a favor for someone. We can talk about the book later.”
“A favor?”
“I drove up from Monterey to ask you something. I wanted to see you in person.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know about Daniel Pell.”
“Of course I know.” She said this as if he were the village idiot.
“There’s a policewoman who’d like to talk to your niece. She thinks maybe Theresa can help her find Pell.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. There’s no risk. She—”
“No risk? Are you mad? You could’ve led him here!”
“No. He’s somewhere in Monterey.”
“Did you tell them where we are?”
“No, no! This policewoman’ll meet her wherever you like. Here. Anywhere. She just wants to ask Theresa—”
“No one is going to talk to her. No one is going to see her.” The woman leaned forward. “There will be very serious consequences if you don’t leave immediately.”
“Mrs. Bolling, Daniel Pell has killed—”
“I watch the fucking news. Tell that policewoman, whoever she is, that there’s not a single thing Theresa can tell her. And you can forget about ever talking to her for your goddamn book.”
“No, wait, please—”
Mary Bolling turned and ran back to the Escalade, as her abandoned shopping cart ambled in the opposite direction down the shallow incline. By the time a breathless Nagle had grabbed the cart just before it slammed into a Mini Cooper, the aunt’s SUV was spinning tires as it vanished from the lot.
• • •
Not long ago a CBI agent, now former, had once called this the “Gals’ Wing.”
He was referring to that portion of the Monterey headquarters that happened to be the home of two female investigative agents—Dance and Connie Ramirez—as well as Maryellen Kresbach and the no-nonsense office manager, Grace Yuan.
The unfortunate utterer was a fiftyish agent, one of those fixtures in offices all over the world who wake up counting the days to retirement, and who’ve done so since their twenties. He’d had his share of collars at the Highway Patrol some years back, but his move to the CBI had been a mistake. He wasn’t up to the challenges of the job.
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 67