The Sleeping Doll

  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 Pember
ton'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."

  "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 fro
m 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 mother, 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.