The husband added, "Only we needed some serious cash on the table, a bunch of it--to give you losers some real incentive to betray each other."
So he went to T.G.'s hangout and asked about a hooker, figuring that the three of them would set up an extortion scam.
He chuckled. "I kept hoping you'd keep raising the bidding when you were blackmailing me. I wanted at least six figures in the pot."
T.G. was their first target. That afternoon the private eye pretended to be a hit man hired by T.G. to kill Schaeffer so he'd get all the money.
"You!" the detective whispered, staring at the wife. "You're the woman who screamed."
Shelby said, "We needed to give you the chance to escape--so you'd go straight to T.G.'s place and take care of him."
Oh, Lord. The hit, the fake Internal Affairs cop . . . It was all a setup!
"Then Ricky took you to Hanrahan's, where he was going to introduce you to the boat dealer from Florida."
The private eye wiped his mouth and leaned forward. "Hello," he said in a deeper voice. "This's Malone from Homicide."
"Oh, fuck," Schaeffer spat out. "You let me know that Ricky'd set me up. So . . ." His voice faded.
The PI whispered, "You'd take care of him too."
The cold smile on his face again, Shelby said, "Two perps down. Now, we just have the last one. You."
"What're you going to do?" the cop whispered.
The wife said, "Our son's got to have years of therapy. He'll never recover completely."
Schaeffer shook his head. "You've got evidence, right?"
"Oh, you bet. Our older son was outside of Mack's waiting for you when you went there to get T.G. We've got real nice footage of you shooting him. Two in the head. Real nasty."
"And the sequel," the private eye said. "In the alley behind Hanrahan's. Where you strangled Ricky." He added, "Oh, and we've got the license number of the truck that came to get Ricky's body in the Dumpster. We followed it to Jersey. We can implicate a bunch of very unpleasant people, who aren't going to be happy they've been fingered because of you."
"And, in case you haven't guessed, " Shelby said, "we made three copies of the tape and they're sitting in three different lawyers' office safes. Anything happens to any one of us, and off they go to Police Plaza."
"You're as good as murderers yourself," Schaeffer muttered. "You used me to kill two people."
Shelby laughed. "Semper Fi . . . I'm a former Marine and I've been in two wars. Killing vermin like you doesn't bother me one bit."
"All right," the cop said in a disgusted grumble, "what do you want?"
"You've got the vacation house on Fire Island, you've got two boats moored in Oyster Bay, you've got--"
"I don't need a fucking inventory. I need a number."
"Basically your entire net worth. Eight hundred sixty thousand dollars. Plus my hundred fifty back . . . . And I want it in the next week. Oh, and you pay his bill too." Shelby nodded toward the private eye.
"I'm good," the man said. "But very expensive." He finished the scone and brushed the crumbs onto the sidewalk.
Shelby leaned forward. "One more thing: my watch."
Schaeffer stripped off the Rolex and tossed it to Shelby.
The couple rose. "So long, Detective," the tourist said.
"Love to stay and talk," Mrs. Shelby said, "but we're going to see some sights. And then we're going for a carriage ride in Central Park before dinner." She paused and looked down at the cop. "I just love it here. It's true what they say, you know. New York really is a nice place to visit."
AFTERWORD TO "AFRAID"
I'd like to put on my professor's tweed jacket for a moment and welcome you to Fear 101, also known as "How to scare the socks off your readers in a few easy lessons." I'm going to offer some brief comments on how I incorporate fear into my writing.
I'm a suspense writer, not a philosopher or a psychiatrist. I'm concerned with fear only as it relates to storytelling. I've written "Afraid" to illustrate five essential fears that I regularly work into my writing. I'll also share several rules that enhance the effects of those fears in my audience.
The first of the five is our fear of the unknown. Throughout the story "Afraid" Marissa never knows exactly what's going to happen (and neither do we readers). At the beginning Antonio says, "It's a surprise," and I sustain the uncertainty established by that sentence for as long as I can. Marissa didn't know where they were going, what the old woman meant, who Lucia really was, what Antonio was doing at the house in Florence, what was in the wine cellar . . . . In fact, she realizes--too late--that she didn't really know Antonio at all.
Second is the fear we experience when others are in control of our lives--that is, we fear being vulnerable. Marissa is a shrewd businesswoman, intelligent and strong, and yet I've taken away all her resources. In "Afraid" Antonio is the driver and Marissa is solely a passenger, both literally and figuratively. At the end of the story, she's nearly naked, in a remote country home, without a cell phone or weapon, trapped in a sealed cell, at the complete mercy of a madman with a knife, and nobody even knows where she is. Can you be any more vulnerable than that?
The third fear is others' lacking control of themselves. When people play by society's rules, we are less afraid of them. When they don't, we are more. Psychopaths like Antonio have no control over their behavior so we can't reason with them, and they're not governed by laws and ethics. The fear is greatest when the lack of control is within someone we're close to. A random murderer or other criminal is bad enough but when people we know and are intimate with start acting strange and in threatening ways, we are particularly terrified. That's why I made my two characters lovers.
The fourth fear I use in my writing is our own lack of self-control. I mention the inexplicable drive to throw ourselves off a bridge or cliff--an urge that we've all experienced in one form or another. Marissa fears giving in to this specific impulse but in my story I use the impulse as a metaphor for a broader fear: of her loss of self-control with regard to Antonio. I also ply Marissa with drugs to further weaken her self-restraint.
The fifth fear is actually a broad category, which I call the icons of terror. These are the images (often cliches) that make us afraid either because they're imprinted into our brains or because we have learned to fear them. Some of the icons I used in this story are:
* The harbinger of evil (in Florence, the old woman with the jaundiced eyes, and the twin boys).
* The religious motifs and violent imagery in the tapestry Marissa was looking at when they met.
* The poison ring that Antonio bought for Marissa.
* The echos of evil associated with a particular locale (the Monster of Florence--a real serial killer, by the way--and the fictional torture/killings on the highway between Florence and Siena).
* The dead boy.
* Dolls. (Sorry, Madame Alexander, but they can be just plain creepy.)
* The isolated, gothic setting of the vacation house.
* The windowless cell.
* Blood.
* Various phobias (Marissa's claustrophobia, for instance).
* Darkness.
* The occult (the flowers and cross left by the stream).
These are just a few of the hundreds of icons of terror that can be used to jangle readers' nerves.
Finally I wish to mention two more rules I keep in mind when creating fear.
One, I enhance the experience of horror by making sure that my characters (and therefore my readers) stand to lose something important if the threatened calamity comes to pass. This means the people in my stories--the good characters and the bad--must be fleshed out and must themselves care about losing their lives or about suffering some loss. Marissa wouldn't be afraid if she didn't care about living or dying, and readers wouldn't be afraid for her if they didn't care about her as a character.
Two, I always remember that my job as a suspense writer is to make my audience afraid but never disgusted or repulsed, as happen
s when there's graphic gore or violence against, say, children or animals. The emotion that fear engenders in thriller fiction should be cathartic and exhilarating. Yes, make your readers' palms sweat, and make them hesitate to shut the lights out at night--but at the end of the ride make sure they climb off the roller coaster unharmed.
* * *
THE SLEEPING DOLL
NOW AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER
FROM SIMON & SCHUSTER
* * *
Chapter 1
The interrogation began like any other.
Kathryn Dance entered the interview room and found the man sitting at a metal table, shackled, looking up at her closely. Subjects always did this, of course, though never with such astonishing eyes, their color a blue unlike sky or ocean or famous gems.
"Good morning," she said, sitting down across from the man who eight years ago stabbed to death four members of a family for reasons he never shared.
"And to you." His voice soft.
A slight smile on his bearded face, the small, sinewy man sat back, relaxed. His head, covered with long, gray-black hair, was cocked to the side. While most interrogations were accompanied by a jingling sound track of handcuff chains as subjects tried to prove their innocence with broad, predictable gestures, Daniel Pell sat perfectly still.
To Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics--body language--Pell's demeanor and posture suggested caution, but also confidence and, curiously, amusement. He wore an orange jumpsuit, stenciled with CAPITOLA CORRECTIONAL FACILITY on the chest and INMATE unnecessarily decorating the back.
At the moment, though, Pell and Dance were not in Capitola, but rather a secure interview room at the county courthouse in Salinas, thirty miles away.
Pell continued his examination. First, Dance's own eyes--a green complementary to his blue--and framed by square, black-rimmed glasses. He regarded her French-braided, dark-blond hair, the black jacket and beneath it the thick, unrevealing white blouse. He noted too the empty holster on her hip. He was meticulous and in no hurry. Interviewers and interviewees share mutual curiosity. (She told the students in her interrogation seminars, "They're studying you as hard as you're studying them--usually even harder, since they have more to lose.")
Dance fished in her blue Coach purse for her ID card, not reacting as she saw a tiny stuffed bat that either twelve-year-old Wes or his younger sister, Maggie, or both conspirators had slipped into the bag that morning as a practical joke. She thought: How's this for a contrasting life? An hour ago she was having breakfast with her children in the kitchen of their homey Victorian house in idyllic Pacific Grove, two dogs at their feet begging for bacon, and now here she was, sitting across a very different table.
Dance found the ID and displayed it. He stared for a long moment, easing forward. "Dance. Interesting name. Wonder where it comes from. And the California Bureau . . . what is that?"
"Bureau of Investigation. Like an FBI for the state. Now, Mr. Pell, you understand that this conversation is being recorded."
He glanced at the mirror, behind which a video camera was humming away. "You folks think we really believe that's there so we can fix up our hair?"
Mirrors weren't placed in interrogation rooms to hide cameras and witnesses--there are far better high-tech ways to do so--but because people lie less frequently when they can see themselves.
Dance gave a faint smile. "And you understand that you can withdraw from this interview anytime you want and that you have a right to have an attorney present?"
"I know more criminal procedure than the entire graduating class of Hastings Law rolled up together. Which is a pretty funny image, when you think about it."
More articulate than Dance had expected. More clever too.
She wasn't pleased to be sitting this far away from the subject, with a table separating them. Anything between interrogators and subjects gives them an added layer of defense.
With the prisoner's violent past, though, security took priority.
The previous week, Daniel Raymond Pell, serving a life sentence for the 1999 murders of William Croyton, his wife, and two of their children, apparently approached a fellow prisoner due to be released from Capitola and tried to bribe him to run an errand after he was free. Pell told him about some evidence he'd disposed of down a Salinas well years ago and explained he was worried that these items would implicate him in the unsolved murder of a wealthy farm owner. He'd read recently that Salinas was revamping its water system. This jogged his memory of the items he'd ditched and grew concerned that the evidence would be discovered. He wanted the prisoner to find and dispose of it.
Pell picked the wrong man to enlist, though. The short-timer spilled to the warden, who called the Monterey County Sheriff's Office. Investigators wondered if Pell was talking about the murder of farm owner Robert Herron, beaten to death a decade ago. The murder weapon, probably a claw hammer, was never found. The Sheriff's Office sent a team to search all the wells in that part of town. Sure enough, they found a tattered T-shirt, a claw hammer, and an empty wallet, with the initials R.H. stamped on it. Two fingerprints on the hammer were Daniel Pell's.
The Monterey County prosecutor decided to present the case to the grand jury, and had asked CBI agent Kathryn Dance to interview him, in hopes of a confession.
Dance now asked, "How long did you live in the Monterey area?"
He seemed surprised that she didn't immediately begin to browbeat. "A few years."
"Where?"
"Seaside."
A town of about 30,000, north of Monterey on Highway One, populated mostly by young working families and retirees.
"You got more for your hard-earned money there," he explained. "More than in your fancy Carmel." And examined her closely.
His grammar and syntax were good, she noted, ignoring his fishing expedition for information about her residence.
He continued, "And now my home is beautiful downtown Capitola."
Dance continued to ask him about his life in Seaside and in prison. Observing him the whole while: how he behaved when she asked the questions and how he behaved when he answered. She wasn't doing this to get information--she'd done her homework and knew the answers to everything she asked--but was instead establishing his behavioral baseline.
In spotting lies, interrogators consider three factors: nonverbal behavior (body language, or kinesics), verbal quality (pitch of voice or pauses before answering) and verbal content (what the suspect says). The first two are far more reliable indications of deception, since it's much easier to control what we say than how we say it and how our body responds when we do.
The baseline is a catalog of these behaviors exhibited when the subject's telling the truth. This is the standard the interrogator will compare later to the subject's behavior when he might have a reason to lie. Any differences between the two suggest deception.
Finally Dance had a good profile of the truthful Daniel Pell and moved to the crux of her mission here, in this modern, sterile courthouse on a foggy morning in June. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about Robert Herron."
Eyes sweeping hers, now refining their examination: the abalone shell necklace, which her mother had made, at her throat. Then Dance's short, pink-polished nails. The gray pearl ring on the wedding band finger got two glances.
"Where were you living in January of 1996?"
"Monterey."
"What street?"
He pursed his lips. "Beats me. North part of town, I think."
Interesting. Deceptive subjects often avoid specifics, which can be checked and which you can recite back to them later if they offer a contradictory statement at trial. And it was rare not to remember where you lived. Still, his kinesic responses weren't suggesting deception.
"How did you meet Robert Herron?"
"You're assuming I did. But, no, never met him in my life. I swear."
The last sentence was a deception flag. Once again, though, his body language wasn't giving off signals that suggested
he was lying.
"But you told the prisoner in Capitola that you wanted him to go to the well and find the hammer and wallet."
"No, that's what he told the warden." Pell offered another amused smile. "Why don't you talk to him about it? You've got sharp eyes, Officer Dance. I've seen them looking me over, deciding if I'm being straight with you. I'll bet you could tell in a flash that that boy was lying."
She gave no reaction, but reflected that it was very rare for a suspect to realize he was being analyzed kinesically.
"But then how did he know about the evidence in the well?"
"Oh, I've got that figured out. Somebody stole a hammer of mine, killed Herron with it and then planted it to blame me. They wore gloves. Those rubbers ones everybody wears on CSI."
Still relaxed. The body language wasn't any different from his baseline. He was showing only emblems--common gestures that tended to substitute for words, like shrugs and finger pointing. There were no adaptors, which signal tension, or affect displays--signs that he was experiencing emotion.
"But if he wanted to do that," Dance pointed out, "wouldn't the killer just call the police then and tell them where the hammer was? Why wait over ten years?"
"Being smart, I'd guess. Better to bide his time. Then spring the trap."
"Why would the real killer call the prisoner in Capitola? Why not just call the police directly?"
A hesitation. Then a laugh. His blue eyes shone with excitement, which seemed genuine. "Because they're involved too. The police. Sure . . . The cops realize the Herron case hasn't been solved and they want to blame somebody. Why not me? They've already got me in custody. I'll bet the cops planted the hammer themselves."
"Okay. Let's work with this a little. There're two different things you're saying. First, somebody stole your hammer before Herron was killed, murdered him with it, and now, over ten years later, dimes you out. But your second version is that the police got your hammer after Herron was killed by someone else altogether and planted it in the well to blame you. Those're contradictory. It's either one or the other. Which do you think?"