The Sleeping Doll

  Earlier in the day Pell had called the Brock Company and gotten Susan Pemberton, who'd agreed to meet about planning an anniversary party. He dressed in a cheap suit Jennie'd bought in Mervyns and met the events planner at the Doubletree, where he got to work, doing what Daniel Pell did best.

  Oh, it had been nice! Playing Susan like a fish was a luxurious high, even better than watching Jennie cut her hair or discard blouses or wince when he used the coat hanger on her narrow butt.

  He now replayed the techniques: finding a common fear (the escaped killer) and common passions (John Steinbeck and jazz, which he knew little about, but he was a good bluffer); playing the sex game (her glance at his bare ring finger and stoic smile when he'd mentioned children told him all about Susan Pemberton's romantic life); doing something silly and laughing about it (the spilled cinnamon); arousing her sympathy (his bitch of an ex-wife ruining his son); being a decent person (the party for his beloved parents, his chivalry in walking her to the car); belying suspicion (the fake call to 911).

  Little by little gaining trust--and therefore gaining control.

  What a total high it was to practice his art once again in the real world!

  Pell found the turnoff. It led through a dense grove of trees, toward the ocean. Jennie had spent the Saturday before the escape doing some reconnaissance for him and had discovered this deserted place. He continued along the sand-swept road, passing a sign that declared the property private. He beached Susan's car in sand at the end of the road, well out of sight of the highway. Climbing out, he heard the surf crash over an old pier not far away. The sun was low and spectacular.

  He didn't have to wait long. Jennie was early. He was happy to see that; people who arrive early are in your control. Always be wary of those who make you wait.

  She parked, climbed out and walked to him. "Honey, I hope you didn't have to wait long." She hungrily closed her mouth around his, gripping his face in both her hands. Desperate.

  Pell came up for air.

  She laughed. "It's hard to get used to you like this. I mean, I knew it was you, but still, I did a double take, you know. But it's like me and my short hair--it'll grow back and you'll be white again."

  "Come here." He took her hand and sat on a low sand dune, pulled her down next to him.

  "Aren't we leaving?" she asked.

  "Not quite yet."

  A nod at the Lexus. "Whose car is that? I thought your friend was going to drop you off."

  He said nothing. They looked west at the Pacific Ocean. The sun was a pale disk just approaching the horizon, growing more fiery by the minute.

  She'd be thinking: Does he want to talk, does he want to fuck me? What's going on?

  Uncertainty . . . Pell let it run up. She'd be noticing that he wasn't smiling.

  Concern flowed in like high tide. He felt the tension in her hand and arm.

  Finally he asked, "How much do you love me?"

  She didn't hesitate, though Pell noted something cautious in her response. "As big as that sun."

  "Looks small from here."

  "I mean as big as the sun really is. No, as big as the universe," she added quickly, as if trying to correct a wrong answer in class.

  Pell was quiet.

  "What's the matter, Daniel?"

  "I have a problem. And I don't know what to do about it."

  She tensed. "A problem, sweetheart?"

  So it's "sweetie" when she's happy, "sweetheart" when she's troubled. Good to know. He filed that away.

  "That meeting I had?" He'd told her only that he was going to meet someone about a "business thing."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Something went wrong. I had all the plans made. This woman was going to pay me back a lot of money I'd loaned her. But she lied to me."

  "What happened?"

  Pell was looking Jennie right in the eye. He reflected quickly that the only person who'd ever caught him lying was Kathryn Dance. But thinking of her was a distraction so he put her out of his mind. "She had her own plans, it turned out. She was going to use me. And you too."

  "Me? She knows me?"

  "Not your name. But from the news she knows we're together. She wanted me to leave you."

  "Why?"

  "So she and I could be together. She wanted to go away with me."

  "This was somebody you used to know?"

  "That's right."

  "Oh." Jennie fell silent.

  Jealousy . . .

  "I told her no, of course. There's no way I'd even think about that."

  An attempted purr. It didn't work.

  Sweetheart . . .

  "And Susan got mad. She said she was going to the police. She'd turn us both in." Pell's face contorted with pain. "I tried to talk her out of it. But she wouldn't listen."

  "What happened?"

  He glanced at the car. "I brought her here. I didn't have any choice. She was trying to call the police."

  Alarmed, Jennie looked up and didn't see anybody in the car.

  "In the trunk."

  "Oh, God. Is she--"

  "No," Pell answered slowly, "she's okay. She's tied up. That's the problem. I don't know what to do now."

  "She still wants to turn you in?"

  "Can you believe it?" he asked breathlessly. "I begged her. But she's not right in the head. Like your husband, remember? He kept hurting you even though he knew he'd get arrested. Susan's the same. She can't control herself." He sighed angrily. "I was fair to her. And she cheated me. She spent all the money. I was going to pay you back with it. For the car. For everything you've done."

  "You don't have to worry about the money, sweetheart. I want to spend it on us."

  "No, I'm going to pay you back." Never, ever let a woman know you want her for her money. And never, ever be in another human being's debt.

  He kissed her in a preoccupied way. "But what're we going to do now?"

  Jennie avoided his gaze and stared into the sun. "I . . . I don't know, sweetheart. I'm not . . ." Her voice ran out of steam, just like her thoughts.

  He squeezed her leg. "I can't let anything hurt us. I love you so much."

  Faintly: "And I love you, Daniel."

  He took the knife from his pocket. Stared at it. "I don't want to. I really don't. People've been hurt yesterday because of us."

  Us. Not me.

  She caught the distinction. He could sense it in the stiffening of her shoulders.

  He continued, "But I didn't do that intentionally. It was accidental. But this . . . I don't know." He turned the knife over and over in his hand.

  She pressed against him, staring at the blade flashing in the sunset. She was shivering hard.

  "Will you help me, lovely? I can't do it by myself."

  Jennie started to cry. "I don't know, sweetheart. I don't think I can." Her eyes were fixed on the rump of the car.

  Pell kissed her head. "We can't let anything hurt us. I couldn't live without you."

  "Me too." She sucked in breath. Her jaw was quivering as much as her fingers.

  "Help me, please." A whisper. He rose, helped her to her feet and they continued to the Lexus. He gave her the knife, closed his hand around hers. "I'm not strong enough alone," he confessed. "But together . . . we can do it together." He looked at her, eyes bright. "It'll be like a pact. You know, like a lovers' pact. It means we're bonded as close as two people can be. Like blood brothers. We'd be blood lovers."

  He reached into the car and hit the trunk-release button. Jennie barked a faint scream at the sound.

  "Help me, lovely. Please." He led her toward the trunk.

  Then she stopped.

  She handed him the knife, sobbing. "Please . . . I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, sweetheart. Don't be mad. I can't do it. I just can't."

  Pell said nothing, just nodded. Her miserable eyes, her tears reflecting red from the melting sun.

  It was an intoxicating sight.

  "Don't be mad at me, Daniel. I couldn't stand it if you were mad."


  Pell hesitated for three heartbeats, the perfect length of time to hatch uncertainty. "It's okay. I'm not mad."

  "Am I still your lovely?"

  Another pause. "Of course you are." He told her to go wait in the car.

  "I--"

  "Go wait for me. It's okay." He said nothing more and Jennie walked back to the Toyota. He continued to the trunk of the Lexus and looked down.

  At Susan Pemberton's lifeless body.

  He'd killed her an hour before, in the parking lot of her building. Suffocated her with duct tape.

  Pell had never intended Jennie help him kill the woman. He'd known she'd balk. This whole incident was merely another lesson in the education of his pupil.

  She'd moved a step closer to where he wanted her. Death and violence were on the table now. For at least five or ten seconds she'd considered slipping the knife into a human body, prepared to watch the blood flow, prepared to watch a human life vanish. Last week she'd never have been able to conceive of the thought; next week she'd consider it for a longer period.

  Then she might actually agree to help him kill someone. And later still? Maybe he could get her to the point where she'd commit murder by herself. He'd gotten the girls in the Family to do things they hadn't wanted to--but only petty crimes. Nothing violent. Daniel Pell, though, believed he had the talent to turn Jennie Marston into a robot who would do whatever he ordered, even kill.

  He slammed the trunk. Then snagging a pine branch, he used it to obscure the footprints in the sand. He returned to the car, sweeping behind him. He told Jennie to drive up the road until the car was on gravel and he obliterated the tire prints, as well. He joined her.

  "I'll drive," he said.

  "I'm sorry, Daniel," she said, wiping her face. "I'll make it up to you."

  Begging for reassurance.

  But the lesson plan dictated that he give no response whatsoever.

  Chapter 25

  He was a curious man, Kathryn Dance was thinking.

  Morton Nagle tugged at his sagging pants and sat down at the coffee table in her office, opening a battered briefcase.

  He was a bit of a slob, his thinning hair disheveled, goatee unevenly trimmed, gray shirt cuffs frayed, body spongy. But he seemed comfortable with his physique, Dance the kinesics analyst assessed. His mannerisms, precise and economical, were stress-free. His eyes, with their elfin twinkle, performed triage, deciding instantly what was important and what wasn't. When he'd entered her office, he'd ignored the decor, noted what Dance's face revealed (probably exhaustion), gave young Rey Carraneo a friendly but meaningless glance and fixed immediately on Winston Kellogg.

  And after he learned Kellogg's employer, the writer's eyes narrowed a bit further, wondering what an FBI agent was doing here.

  Kellogg was dressed quite unfederal compared with this morning--in a beige checkered sports coat, dark slacks and blue dress shirt. He wore no tie. Still, his behavior was right out of the bureau, as noncommittal as their agents always are. He told Nagle only that he was here as an observer, "helping out."

  The writer offered one of his chuckles, which seemed to mean: I'll get you to talk.

  "Rebecca and Linda have agreed to help us," Dance told him.

  He lifted an eyebrow. "Really? The other one, Samantha?"

  "No, not her."

  Nagle extracted three sheets of paper from his briefcase. He set them on the table. "My mini-opus, if that's not an oxymoron. A brief history of Daniel Pell."

  Kellogg scooted his chair next to Dance's. Unlike with O'Neil, she could detect no aftershave.

  The writer repeated what he'd said to Dance the day before: his book wasn't about Pell himself, but about his victims. "I'm looking into everybody affected by the Croytons' deaths. Even employees. Croyton's company was eventually bought by a big software developer and hundreds of people were laid off. Maybe that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't died. And what about his profession? That's a victim too. He was one of the most innovative computer designers in Silicon Valley at the time. He had dozens of copyrights on programs and patents on hardware that were way ahead of their time. A lot of them didn't even have any application back then, they were so advanced. Now they're gone. Maybe some were revolutionary programs for medicine or science or communications."

  Dance remembered thinking the same as she'd driven past the Cal State campus that was the recipient of much of Croyton's estate.

  Nagle continued, with a nod toward what he'd written. "It's interesting--Pell changes his autobiography depending on whom he's talking to. Say, he needs to form a connection with somebody whose parents died at a young age. Well, to them Pell says he was orphaned at ten. Or if he has to exploit somebody whose father was in the military, then he was the army brat of a soldier killed in combat. To hear him tell it, there are about twenty different Pells. Well, here's the truth:

  "He was born in Bakersfield, October of nineteen sixty-three. The seventh. But he tells everyone that his birthday is November twenty-second. That was the day Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy."

  "He admired a presidential assassin?" Kellogg asked.

  "No, apparently he considered Oswald a loser. He thought he was too pliable and simpleminded. But what he admired was the fact that one man, with one act, could affect so much. Could make so many people cry, change the entire course of a country--well, the world.

  "Now, Joseph Pell, his father, was a salesman, mother a receptionist when she could keep a job. Middle-class family. Mom--Elizabeth--drank a lot, have to assume she was distant, but no abuse, no incarceration. Died of cirrhosis when Daniel was in his midteens. With his wife gone, the father did what he could to raise the boy but Daniel couldn't take anyone else being in charge. Didn't do well with authority figures--teachers, bosses and especially his old man."

  Dance mentioned the tape she and Michael O'Neil had watched, the comments about his father charging rent, beating him, abandoning the family, his parents dying.

  Nagle said, "All a lie. But his father was undoubtedly a hard character for Pell to deal with. He was religious--very religious, very strict. He was an ordained minister--some conservative Presbyterian sect in Bakersfield--but he never got a church of his own. He was an assistant minister but finally was released. A lot of complaints that he was too intolerant, too judgmental about the parishioners. He tried to start his own church but the Presbyterian synod wouldn't even talk to him, so he ended up selling religious books and icons, things like that. But we can assume that he made his son's life miserable."

  Religion was not central to Dance's own life. She, Wes and Maggie celebrated Easter and Christmas, though the chief icons of the faith were a rabbit and a jolly fellow in a red suit, and she doled out to the children her own brand of ethics--solid, incontrovertible rules common to most of the major sects. Still, she'd been in law enforcement long enough to know that religion often played a role in crime. Not only premeditated acts of terrorism but more mundane incidents. She and Michael O'Neil had spent nearly ten hours together in a cramped garage in the nearby town of Marina, negotiating with a fundamentalist minister intent on killing his wife and daughter in the name of Jesus because the teenage girl was pregnant. (They saved the family but Dance came away with an uneasy awareness of what a dangerous thing spiritual rectitude can be.)

  Nagle continued, "Pell's father retired, moved to Phoenix and remarried. His second wife died two years ago and Joseph died last year, heart attack. Pell apparently had never stayed in touch. No uncles on either side and one aunt, in Bakersfield."

  "The one with Alzheimer's?"

  "Yes. Now, he does have a brother."

  Not an only child, as he'd claimed.

  "He's older. Moved to London years ago. He runs the sales operation of a U.S. importer/exporter. Doesn't give interviews. All I have is a name. Richard Pell."

  Dance said to Kellogg, "I'll have somebody track him down."

  "Cousins?" the FBI agent asked.

  "Aunt never married."

  Tapping
the bio he'd written. "Now, Pell's later teens, he was constantly in and out of juvenile detention--mostly for larceny, shoplifting, car theft. But he has no long history of violence. His early record was surprisingly peaceful. There's no evidence of street brawling, no violent assaults, no signs he ever lost his temper. One officer suggested that it seemed Pell would only hurt somebody if it was tactically useful, and that he didn't enjoy--or hate--violence. It was a tool." The writer looked up. "Which, you ask me, is scarier."

  Dance thought of her earlier assessment, killing emotionlessly whenever it was expedient.

  "Now, no history of drugs. Pell apparently's never been a user. And he doesn't--or didn't--drink any alcohol."

  "What about education?"

  "Now that's interesting. He's brilliant. When he was in high school he tested off the charts. He got A's in independent study classes, but never showed up when attendance was required. In prison he taught himself law and handled his own appeal in the Croyton case."

  She thought of his comment during the interview, about Hastings Law School.

  "And he took it all the way to the California Supreme Court--just last year they ruled against him. Apparently it was a big blow. He thought for sure he'd get off."

  "Well, he may be smart but not smart enough to stay out of jail." Kellogg tapped a paragraph of the bio that described maybe seventy-five arrests. "That's a rap sheet"

  "And it's the tip of the iceberg; Pell usually got other people to commit the crimes. There're probably hundreds of other offenses he was behind that somebody else got nailed for. Robbery, burglary, shoplifting, pickpocketing. That's how he survived, getting people around him to do the dirty work."

  "Oliver," Kellogg said.

  "What?"

  "Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist . . . You ever read it?"

  Dance said, "Saw the movie."

  "Good comparison. Fagin, the guy who ran the gang of pickpockets. That was Pell."