She found herself thinking that she'd been treating Wes's attitude all along as an aberration, a flaw to be fixed.
Parents tend to feel that their children raise valid objections about potential stepparents or even casual dates. You can't think that way.
But now Dance wasn't so sure. Maybe they do raise real concerns at times. Maybe we should listen to them, and as carefully and with as open a mind as if interviewing witnesses in a criminal investigation. Maybe she'd been taking him for granted all along. Sure, Wes was a child, not a partner, but he still should have a vote. Here I am, she thought, a kinesic expert, establishing baselines and looking for deviations as signals that something's not right.
With Winston Kellogg, was I deviating from my own baseline?
Maybe the boy's reaction was a clue that she had.
Something to think about.
Dance was halfway through a Paul Simon song, humming the melody, not sure of the lyrics, when she heard the creak of the gate below the Deck.
The instrument went silent as she glanced over to see Michael O'Neil breach the stairs. He was wearing the gray and maroon sweater she'd bought for him when she'd been skiing in Colorado a year ago.
"Hey," he said. "Intruding?"
"Never."
"Anne's got an opening in an hour. But I thought I'd stop by here first, say hi."
"Glad you did."
He pulled a beer from the fridge and, when she nodded, got another for her too. He sat down next to her. The Becks snapped open crisply. They both sipped long.
She started playing an instrumental transcribed for guitar, an old Celtic tune by Turlough O'Carolan, the blind, itinerant Irish harpist.
O'Neil said nothing, just drank the beer and nodded with the rhythm. His eyes, she noticed, were turned toward the ocean--though he couldn't see it; the view was obscured by lush pines. She remembered that once, after seeing the old Spencer Tracy movie about Hemingway's obsessed fisherman, Wes had called O'Neil the "Old Man of the Sea." He and Dance had laughed hard at that.
When she finished playing, he said, "There's a problem with the Juan situation. Did you hear?"
"Juan Millar? No, what?"
"The autopsy report came in. The Coroner's Division found secondary causes. Labeled them suspicious. We've got a file started at MCSO."
"What happened?"
"It wasn't infection or shock he died of, which is usually what happens in a bad burn. It was from an interaction of morphine and diphenhydramine--that's an antihistamine. The morphine drip was open wider than it should've been and none of the doctors had prescribed an antihistamine. It's dangerous to mix with morphine."
"Intentional?"
"Looks like it. He couldn't do it himself. We're probably looking at murder."
Dance heard her mother's whispered report of Millar's words.
Kill me . . .
She wondered who might've been behind the death. Mercy killings were among the most difficult, and emotional, cases to investigate.
Dance shook her head. "And after all his family's been through. Whatever we can do, let me know."
They sat in silence for a moment, Dance smelling wood-fire smoke--and another dose of O'Neil's aftershave. She enjoyed the combination. She started to play once again. Elizabeth Cotten's finger-picking version of "Freight Train," as infectious a melody as ever existed. It would rattle around in her brain for days.
O'Neil said, "Heard about Winston Kellogg. Never would've called that one."
Word travels fast.
"Yep."
"TJ gave me all the gruesome details." He shook his head and gestured for Dylan and Patsy. The dogs bounded over to him. He handed out Milk Bones from a cookie jar that sat beside a bottle of dubious tequila. They took the treats and raced off. He said, "Sounds like it'll be a tough case. Pressure from Washington to drop it, I'll bet."
"Oh, yeah. Uphill all the way."
"If you've interested, we might want to make some calls."
"Chicago, Miami or L.A.?"
O'Neil blinked, then gave a laugh. "You've been considering it too, hm? What's the strongest?"
Dance replied, "I'd go with the suspicious suicide in L.A. It's in state, so CBI's got jurisdiction and Kellogg can't claim that the cult leader died during a takedown. And that's the file that Kellogg destroyed. Why else would he do that, if he wasn't guilty?"
She'd decided that if Kellogg got off the hook on the Pell killing, which was a possibility, she wouldn't let the matter rest there. She'd pursue the case against him in other venues.
And apparently she wasn't going to do it alone.
"Good," O'Neil said. "Let's get together tomorrow and look over the evidence."
She nodded.
The detective finished the beer and got another one. "I don't suppose Overby'd spring for a trip to L.A."
"Believe it or not, I think he would."
"Really?"
"If we fly coach."
"And standby," O'Neil added.
They laughed.
"Any requests?" She tapped the old Martin, which resounded like a crisp drum.
"Nope." He leaned back and stretched his scuffed shoes out in front of him. "Whatever you're in the mood for."
Kathryn Dance thought for a moment and began to play.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The California Bureau of Investigation, within the state's Attorney General's Office, does indeed exist, and I hope the dedicated men and women of that fine organization will forgive me for taking the liberty of reorganizing it some, and creating an office on the picturesque Monterey Peninsula. I've tinkered a bit too with the excellent Monterey County Sheriff's Office.
Similarly, I trust the residents of Capitola, near Santa Cruz, will forgive my plopping a fictional superprison down in their midst.
Those interested in the topics of kinesics and interrogation and wishing to read further might enjoy the books I've found extremely helpful and which sit prominently on Kathryn Dance's and my bookshelves: Principles of Kinesic Interview and Interrogation and The Truth about Lying, Stan B. Walters; Detecting Lies and Deceit, Aldert Vrij; The Language of Confession, Interrogation, and Deception, Roger W. Shuy; Practical Aspects of Interview and Interrogation, David E. Zulawski and Douglas E. Wicklander; What the Face Reveals, eds. Paul Ekman and Erika Rosenberg; Reading People, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius and Mark Mazzarella; Introduction to Kinesics: An Annotation System for Analysis of Body Motion and Gestures, R. L. Birdwhitsell (the dancer turned anthropologist credited with coining the term "kinesics").
And thanks, as always, to Madelyn, Julie, Jane, Will and Tina.
(c) CHARLES HARRIS / CORBIS
JEFFERY DEAVER is the international bestselling author of the acclaimed detective Lincoln Rhyme series and numerous stand-alone thrillers; Kathryn Dance returns in his newest novel, Roadside Crosses. Nominated for six Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, he is a three-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and a winner of the British Thumping Good Read Award. He has also won a Steel Dagger and a Short Story Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association. His novel The Cold Moon won a Grand Prix from the Japanese Adventure Fiction Association and was named Book of the Year by the Mystery Writers Association of Japan. A former attorney, Deaver has been hailed as "the best psychological thriller writer around" (The Times, London). Visit www.jefferydeaver.com.
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COVER DESIGN BY JAE SONG * PHOTOGRAPHS BY (FIRE) ELVIS SANTANA, (BACKGROUND) CRAIG JEWELL, (MAN) (c) MEDIACOLOR'S / ALAMY
ALSO BY JEFFERY DEAVER
Carte Blanche
Edge
The Burning Wire*
Best American Mystery Stories 2009 (Editor) The Watch List (The Copper Bracelet and The Chopin Manuscript) (Contributor) Roadside Crosses**
The Bodies Left Behind
/>
The Broken Window*
The Sleeping Doll**
More Twisted: Collected Stories, Volume Two The Cold Moon*/**
The Twelfth Card*
Garden of Beasts
Twisted: Collected Stories The Vanished Man*
The Stone Monkey*
The Blue Nowhere
The Empty Chair*
Speaking in Tongues
The Devil's Teardrop
The Coffin Dancer*
The Bone Collector*
A Maiden's Grave Praying for Sleep
The Lesson of Her Death Mistress of Justice
Hard News
Death of a Blue Movie Star Manhattan Is My Beat
Hell's Kitchen
Bloody River Blues
Shallow Graves
A Century of Great Suspense Stories (Editor) A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime (Editor) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (Introduction) * Featuring Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs ** Featuring Kathryn Dance
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Jeffery Deaver "The Boxer"
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for the hardcover edition.
ISBN 978-1-4391-6641-3
ISBN 978-1-4165-4586-6 (ebook)
Jeffery Deaver, The Sleeping Doll
(Series: Kathryn Dance # 1)
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