“Probably like being a parent. You’re always watching your children.”
“Yeah, exactly. It’s like having children.” Wide eyes—an affect display, revealing his emotion.
Dance nodded emphatically. “Obviously, Tony, you care about the cons. And about doing a good job.”
People in the bargaining phase want to be reassured and forgiven.
“It was nothing really, what happened.”
“Go ahead.”
“I made a decision.”
“It’s a tough job you have. You must have to make hard decisions every day.”
“Ha. Every hour.”
“So what did you have to decide?”
“Okay, see, Daniel was different.”
Dance noted the use of the first name. Pell had gotten Waters to believe they were buddies and exploited the faux friendship. “How do you mean?”
“He’s got this . . . I don’t know, power or something over people. The Aryans, the OGs, the Lats . . . he goes where he wants to and nobody touches him. Never seen anybody like him inside before. People do things for him, whatever he wants. People tell him things.”
“And so he gave you information. Is that it?”
“Good information. Stuff nobody couldn’t’ve got otherwise. Like, there was a guard selling meth. A con OD’d on it. There’s no way we could’ve found out who was the source. But Pell let me know.”
“Saved lives, I’ll bet.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. And, say somebody was going to move on somebody else? Gut ’em with a shank, whatever, Daniel’d tell me.”
Dance shrugged. “So you cut him some slack. You let him into the office.”
“Yeah. The TV in the office had cable, and sometimes he wanted to watch games nobody else was interested in. That’s all that happened. There was no danger or anything. The office’s a maximum-security lockdown area. There’s no way he could’ve gotten out. I went on rounds and he watched games.”
“How often?”
“Three, four times.”
“So he could’ve been online?”
“Maybe.”
“When most recently?”
“Yesterday.”
“Okay, Tony. Now tell me about the telephones.” Dance recalled seeing a stress reaction when he’d told her Pell had made no calls other than to his aunt; Waters had touched his lips, a blocking gesture.
If a subject confesses to one crime, it’s often easier to get him to confess to another.
Waters said, “The other thing about Pell, everybody’ll tell you, he was into sex, way into sex. He wanted to make some phone-sex calls and I let him.”
But Dance immediately noticed deviation from the baseline and concluded that although he was confessing, it was to a small crime, which usually means that there’s a bigger one lurking.
“Did he now?” she asked bluntly, leaning close once again. “And how did he pay for it? Credit card? Nine-hundred number?”
A pause. Waters hadn’t thought out the lie; he’d forgotten you had to pay for phone sex. “I don’t mean like you’d call up one of those numbers in the backs of newspapers. I guess it sounded like that’s what I meant. Daniel called some woman he knew. I think it was somebody who’d written him. He got a lot of mail.” A weak smile. “Fans. Imagine that. A man like him.”
Dance leaned a bit closer. “But when you listened there wasn’t any sex, was there?”
“No, I—” He must’ve realized he hadn’t said anything about listening in. But by then it was too late. “No. They were just talking.”
“You heard both of them?”
“Yeah, I was on a third line.”
“When was it?”
“About a month ago, the first time. Then a couple more times. Yesterday. When he was in the office.”
“Are calls there logged?”
“No. Not local ones.”
“If it was long distance it would be.”
Eyes on the floor. Waters was miserable.
“What, Tony?”
“I got him a phone card. You call an eight hundred number and punch in a code, then the number you want.”
Dance knew them. Untraceable.
“Really, you have to believe me. I wouldn’t’ve done it, except the information he gave me . . . it was good. It saved—”
“What were they talking about?” she asked in a friendly voice. You’re never rough with a confessing subject; they’re your new best friend.
“Just stuff. You know. Money, I remember.”
“What about it?”
“Pell asked how much she’d put together and she said ninety-two hundred bucks. And he said, ‘That’s all?’ ”
Pretty expensive phone sex, Dance reflected wryly.
“Then she asked about visiting hours and he said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
So he didn’t want her to visit. No record of them together.
“Any idea of where she was?”
“He mentioned Bakersfield. He said specifically, ‘To Bakersfield.’ ”
Telling her to go to his aunt’s place and pick up the hammer to plant in the well.
“And, okay, it’s coming back to me now. She was telling him about wrens and hummingbirds in the backyard. And then Mexican food. ‘Mexican is comfort food.’ That’s what she said.”
“Did her voice have an ethnic or regional accent?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Was it low or high, her voice?”
“Low, I guess. Kind of sexy.”
“Did she sound smart or stupid?”
“Jeez, I couldn’t tell.” He sounded exhausted.
“Is there anything else that’s helpful, Tony? Come on, we really need to get this guy.”
“Not that I can think of. I’m sorry.”
She looked him over and believed that, no, he didn’t know anything more.
“Okay. I think that’ll do it for the time being.”
He started out. At the door, he paused and looked back. “Sorry I was kind of confused. It’s been a tough day.”
“Not a good day at all,” she agreed. He remained motionless in the doorway, a dejected pet. When he didn’t get the reassurance he sought, he slumped away.
Dance called Carraneo, currently en route to the You Mail It store, and gave him the information she’d pried from the guard: that his partner didn’t seem to have any accent and that she had a low voice. That might help the manager remember the woman more clearly.
She then called the warden of Capitola and told her what happened. The woman was silent for a moment then offered a soft, “Oh.”
Dance asked if the prison had a computer specialist. It did, and she’d have him search the computers in the administrative office for online activity and emails yesterday. It should be easy since the staff didn’t work on Sunday and Pell presumably had been the only one online—if he had been.
“I’m sorry,” Dance said.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
The agent was referring not so much to Pell’s escape but to yet another consequence of it. Dance didn’t know the warden but supposed that to run a superprison, she was talented at her job and the work was important to her. It was a shame that her career in corrections, like Tony Waters’s, would probably soon be over.
Chapter 12
She’d done well, his little lovely.
Followed the instructions perfectly. Getting the hammer from his aunt’s garage in Bakersfield (how had Kathryn Dance figured that one out?). Embossing the wallet with Robert Herron’s initials. Then planting them in the well in Salinas. Making the fuse for the gas bomb (she’d said it was as easy as following a recipe for a cake). Planting the bag containing the fire suit and knife. Hiding clothes under the pine tree.
Pell, though, hadn’t been sure of her ability to look people in the eye and lie to them. So he hadn’t used her as a getaway driver from the courthouse. In fact, he’d made sure that she wasn’t anywhere near the place when he escaped. He didn’t want her s
topped at a roadblock and giving everything away because she stammered and flushed with guilt.
Now, shoes off as she drove (he found that kinky), a happy smile on her face, Jennie Marston was chattering away in her sultry voice. Pell had wondered if she’d believe the story about his innocence in the deaths at the courthouse. But one thing that had astonished Daniel Pell in all his years of getting people to do what he wanted was how often they unwittingly leapt at the chance to be victims, how often they flung logic and caution to the wind and believed what they wanted to—that is, what he wanted them to.
Still, that didn’t mean Jennie would buy everything he told her, and in light of what he had planned for the next few days, he’d have to monitor her closely, see where she’d support him and where she’d balk.
They drove through a complicated route of surface streets, avoiding the highways with their potential roadblocks.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, voice tentative as she rested a hand on his knee with ambivalent desperation. He knew what she was feeling: torn between pouring out her love for him and scaring him off. The gushing would win out. Always did with women like her. Oh, Daniel Pell knew all about the Jennie Marstons of the world, the women breathlessly seduced by bad boys. He’d learned about them years ago, being a habitual con. You’re in a bar and you drop the news that you’ve done time, most women’ll blink and never come back from their next restroom visit. But there’re some who’ll get wet when you whisper about the crime you’d done and the time you’d served. They’d smile in a certain way, lean close and want to hear more.
That included murder—depending on how you couched it.
And Daniel Pell knew how to couch things.
Yes, Jennie was your classic bad-boy lover. You wouldn’t guess it to look at her, the skinny caterer with straight blond hair, a pretty face marred by a bumpy nose, dressing like a suburban mom at a Mary Chapin Carpenter concert.
Hardly the sort to write to lifers in places like Capitola.
Dear Daniel Pell:
You don’t know me but I saw a special about you, it was on A&E, and I don’t think it told the whole truth. I have also bought all the books I could find on you and read them and you are a fascinating man. And even if you did what they say I’m sure there were extreme circumstances about it. I could see it in your eyes. You were looking at the camera but it was like you were looking right at me. I have a background that is similar to yours, I mean your childhood (or absence of childhood (!) and I can understand where you are coming from. I mean totally. If you would like to, you can write me.
Very sincerely,
Jennie Marston
She wasn’t the only one, of course. Daniel Pell got a lot of mail. Some praising him for killing a capitalist, some condemning him for killing a family, some offering advice, some seeking it. Plenty of romantic overtures too. Most of the ladies, and men, would tend to lose steam after a few weeks, as reason set in. But Jennie had persisted, her letters growing more and more passionate.
My Dearest Daniel:
Today I was driving in the desert. Out near Palomar Observatory, where they have the big telescope. The sky was so big, it was dusk and there were stars just coming out. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About how you said no one understands you and blames you for bad things you didn’t do, how hard that’s got to be. They don’t see into you, they don’t see the truth. Not like I do. You would never say it because your modest but they don’t see what a perfect human being you are.
I stopped the car, I couldn’t help myself, I was touching myself all over, you know doing what (I’ll bet you do, you dirty boy!) We made love there, you and me, watching the stars, I say “we” because you were there with me in spirit. I’d do anything for you, Daniel. . . .
It was such letters—reflecting her total lack of self-control and extraordinary gullibility—that had made Pell decide on her for the escape.
He now asked, “You were careful about everything, weren’t you? Nobody can trace the T-bird?”
“No. I stole it from a restaurant. There was this guy I went out with a couple years ago. I mean, we didn’t sleep together or anything.” She added this too fast, and he supposed they’d spent plenty of time humping like clueless little bunnies. Not that he cared. She continued, “He worked there and when I’d hang out I saw that nobody paid any attention to the valet-parking key box. So Friday I took the bus over there and waited across the street. When the valets were busy I got the keys. I picked the Thunderbird because this couple had just went inside so they’d be there for a while. I was on the One-oh-one in, like, ten minutes.”
“You drive straight through?”
“No, I spent the night in San Luis Obispo—but I paid cash, like you said.”
“And you burned all the emails, right? Before you left?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. You have the maps?”
“Yep, I do.” She patted her purse.
He looked over her body. The small swell of her chest, the thin legs and butt. Her long blond hair. Women let you know right up front the kind of license you have, and Pell knew he could touch her whenever and wherever he wanted. He put his hand on the nape of her neck; how thin, fragile. She made a sound that was actually purring.
The swelling within him continued to grow.
The purring too.
He waited as long as he could.
But the bubble won.
“Pull over there, baby.” He pointed toward a road under a grove of oak trees. It seemed to be a driveway to an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of an overgrown field.
She hit the brakes and turned down the road. Pell looked around. Not a soul he could see.
“Here?”
“This’s good.”
His hand slid from her neck down the front of her pink blouse. It looked new. She’d bought it just for him, he understood.
Pell lifted her face and pressed his lips against hers softly, not opening his mouth. He kissed her lightly, then backed away, making her come to him. She grew more and more frantic, the more he teased.
“I want you in me,” she whispered, reaching into the back, where he heard the crinkle of a bag. A Trojan appeared in her hand.
“We don’t have much time, baby. They’re looking for us.”
She got the message.
However innocent they look, girls who love bad boys know what they’re doing (and Jennie Marston didn’t look all that innocent). She unbuttoned her blouse and leaned over to the passenger seat, rubbing the padded bra against his crotch. “Lie back, sweetie. Close your eyes.”
“No.”
She hesitated.
“I want to watch you,” he whispered. Never give them more power than you have to.
More purring.
She unzipped his shorts and bent down.
Only a few minutes later he was finished. She was as talented as he’d expected—Jennie didn’t have many resources but she exploited the ones she had—and the event was fine, though when they got into the privacy of a motel room he’d up the ante considerably. But for now, this would do. And as for her, Pell knew his explosive, voluminous completion was satisfaction enough.
He turned his eyes to hers. “You’re wonderful, lovely. That was so special.”
She was so drunk on emotion that even this trite porn-movie dialogue would have sounded to her like a declaration of love out of an old-time novel.
“Oh, Daniel.”
He sat back and reassembled his clothes.
Jennie buttoned the blouse. Pell looked at the pink cloth, the embroidery, the metal tips on the collar.
She noticed him. “You like?”
“It’s nice.” He glanced out the window and studied the fields around them. Not worried about police, more intent on her. Aware she was studying the blouse.
Hesitantly Jennie said, “It’s awfully pink. Maybe too much. I just saw it and thought I’d get it.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s interesting.”
“I’ll change later if you want.”
“No, if you like it, that’s fine,” he said, getting his tone just right, like a singer hitting a difficult note. He glanced at the garment once more, then he leaned forward and kissed her—the forehead, not the mouth, of course. He scanned the field again. “We should get back on the road.”
“Sure.” She wanted him to tell her more about the blouse. What was wrong with it? Did he hate pink? Did an ex-girlfriend have a shirt like it? Did it make her boobs look small?
But, of course, he said nothing.
Jennie smiled when he touched her leg and she put the car in gear. She returned to the road, glancing down one last time at the blouse, which, Pell knew, she would never wear again. His goal had been for her to throw it out; he had a pretty good idea that she would.
And the irony was that the blouse looked really good on her, and he liked it quite a bit.
But offering his subtle disapproval and watching her reaction gave him a nice picture of exactly where she was. How controllable, how loyal.
A good teacher always knows the exact state of his student’s progress.
• • •
Michael O’Neil sat in a chair in Dance’s office, rocking back and forth on its rear legs, his shoes on her battered coffee table. It was his favorite way to sit. (Kinesically Dance put the habit down to nervous energy—and a few other issues, which, because she was so close to him, she chose not to analyze in more depth.)
He, TJ Scanlon and Dance were gazing at her phone, from whose speaker a computer tech from Capitola prison was explaining, “Pell did get online yesterday, but apparently he didn’t send any emails—at least not then. I couldn’t tell about earlier. Yesterday he only browsed the Web. He erased the sites he visited but he forgot about erasing search requests. I found what he was looking up.”
“Go ahead.”
“He did a Google search for ‘Alison’ and ‘Nimue.’ He searched those together, as limiting terms.”
Dance asked for spellings.
“Then he did another. ‘Helter Skelter.’ ”
Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217) Page 51
