Kathryn Dance Ebook Boxed Set : Roadside Crosses, Sleeping Doll, Cold Moon (9781451674217)

by Deaver, Jeffery

  He also apparently lacked any sense of survival.

  “And this is the Gals’ Wing,” he’d said, loud enough for everyone to hear, during a lunch-hour tour of HQ with a young woman he was wooing.

  Dance and Connie Ramirez made eye contact.

  That night they went on a panty-hose-buying mission and when the poor agent came to work the next day he found his entire office spiderwebbed in mesh, fishnet and glittery synthetic leg wear. Some personal hygiene products also figured in the decor. He ran whining to then–CBI head Stan Fishburne, who, bless him, could hardly keep a straight face during the inquisition. “What do you mean you only said, ‘Gals’ Wing,’ Bart? You actually said that?”

  He threatened a complaint to Sacramento, but he didn’t last long enough in the CBI to see the matter through. Ironically, after the offender’s departure, the population of that portion of the office adopted the moniker instantly and the hallway was now known to everyone in the CBI as “GW.”

  Whose undecorated hallway Kathryn Dance was walking down at the moment.

  “Maryellen, hi.”

  “Oh, Kathryn, I’m sorry to hear about Juan. We’re all going to make a donation. You know where his parents would like it to go?”

  “Michael’ll let us know.”

  “Your mother called. She’s going to stop by with the kids later, if that’s okay.”

  Dance made sure to see her children whenever she could, even during business hours, if a case was taking up a lot of time and she’d be working late. “Good. How’s the Davey situation?”

  “It’s taken care of,” said the woman firmly. The person in question was Maryellen’s son, Wes’s age, who’d been having trouble in school because of some issues with what amounted to a preteen gang. Maryellen now relayed the news of the resolution with a look of happy malice, which told Dance that extreme measures had been used to get the offenders transferred or otherwise neutralized.

  Dance believed that Maryellen Kresbach would make a great cop.

  In her office she dropped her jacket onto a chair, hitched the awkward Glock to the side and sat. She looked through her email. Only one was relevant to the Pell case. His brother, Richard Pell, was replying from London.

  Officer Dance:

  I received your forwarded email from the U.S. embassy here. Yes, I heard of the escape, it has made the news here. I have not had any contact with my brother for 12 years, when he came to visit my wife and me in Bakersfield at the same time my wife’s twenty-three-year old sister was visiting us from New York. One Saturday we got a call from the police that she’d been detained at a jewelry store downtown for shoplifting.

  The girl had been an honor’s student in college and quite involved in her church. She’d never been in any trouble in her life before that.

  It seemed that she’d been “hanging out” with my brother and he’d talked her into stealing a “few things.” I searched his room and found close to $10,000 worth of merchandise. My sister-in-law was given probation and my wife nearly left me as a result.

  I never had anything to do with him again. After the murders in Carmel in ’99, I decided to move my family to Europe.

  If I hear from him, I will certainly let you know, though that is unlikely. The best way to describe my relationship now is this: I’ve contacted the London Metropolitan Police and they have an officer guarding my house.

  So much for that lead.

  Her mobile rang. The caller was Morton Nagle. In an alarmed voice he asked, “He killed someone else? I just saw the news.”

  “I’m afraid so.” She gave him the details. “And Juan Millar died, the officer who was burned.”

  “I’m so sorry. Are there other developments?”

  “Not really.” Dance told him that she’d spoken with Rebecca and Linda. They’d shared some information that might prove to be helpful, but nothing was leading directly to Pell’s doorstep. Nagle had come across nothing in his research about a “big score” or a mountaintop.

  He had news of his own efforts, though they weren’t successful. He’d talked to Theresa Croyton’s aunt, but she was refusing to let him, or the police, see the girl.

  “She threatened me.” His voice was troubled and Dance was sure that there would be no sparkle in his eyes at the moment.

  “Where are you?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Dance filled in, “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  She glanced at the caller ID, but he was on his mobile, not a hotel or pay phone.

  “Is she going to change her mind?”

  “I really doubt it. You should’ve seen her. She abandoned a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries and just ran.”

  Dance was disappointed. Daniel Pell was a mystery and she was now obsessed with learning everything she could about him. Last year when she’d assisted on that case in New York with Lincoln Rhyme, she’d noted the criminalist’s obsessive fascination with every detail of the physical evidence; she was exactly the same—though with the human side of crime.

  But there’re compulsions like double-checking every detail of a subject’s story, and there are compulsions like avoiding sidewalk cracks when you’re walking home. You have to know which are vital and which aren’t.

  She decided they’d have to let the Sleeping Doll lead go.

  “I appreciate your help.”

  “I did try. Really.”

  After hanging up, Dance talked to Rey Carraneo again. Still no luck on the motels and no reports of boats stolen from local marinas.

  Just as she hung up, TJ called. He’d heard back from the DMV. The car that Pell had been driving during the Croyton murders hadn’t been registered for years, which meant it’d probably been sold for scrap. If he had stolen something valuable from the Croytons’ the night of the murders, it was most likely lost or melted into oblivion. TJ had also checked the inventory from when the car was impounded. The list was short and nothing suggested that any of the items had come from the businessman’s house.

  She gave him the news about Juan Millar too, and the young agent responded with utter silence. A sign that he was truly shaken.

  A few moments later her phone rang again. It was Michael O’Neil with his ubiquitous, “Hey. It’s me.” His voice was laden with exhaustion, sorrow too. Millar’s death was weighing on him heavily.

  “Whatever’d been on the pier where we found the Pemberton woman was gone—if there was anything. I just talked to Rey. He tells me there’re no reports of any stolen craft so far. Maybe I was off base. Your friend find anything the other way—toward the road?”

  She noted the loaded term “friend” and replied, “He hasn’t called. I assume he didn’t stumble across Pell’s address book or a hotel key.”

  “And negative on sources for the duct tape, and the pepper spray’s sold in ten thousand stores and mail-order outlets.”

  She told O’Neil that Nagle’s attempt to contact Theresa had failed.

  “She won’t cooperate?”

  “Her aunt won’t. And she’s first base. I don’t know how helpful it’d be anyway.”

  O’Neil said, “I liked the idea. She’s the only nexus to Pell and that night.”

  “We’ll have to try harder without her,” Dance said.

  “How’re you doing?”

  “Fine,” he answered.

  Stoic . . .

  A few minutes after they disconnected, Winston Kellogg arrived and Dance asked him, “Any luck at the Pemberton crime scene, the road?”

  “Nope. The scene itself—we searched for an hour. No tread marks, no discarded evidence. Maybe Michael was right. Pell did get away by boat from that pier.”

  Dance laughed to herself. The chest-bumping males had each just conceded the other might’ve been right—though she doubted they’d ever admit it to each other.

  She updated him on the missing files from Susan Pemberton’s office and Nagle’s failure to arrange an interview wi
th Theresa Croyton. TJ, she explained, was looking for the client Susan had met with just before Pell had killed her.

  Dance glanced at her watch. “Got an important meeting. Want to come?”

  “Is it about Pell?”

  “Nope. It’s about snack time.”

  Chapter 31

  As they walked down the halls of CBI, Dance asked Kellogg where he lived.

  “The District—that’s Washington, D.C., to you all. Or that little place known as ‘Inside the Beltway,’ if you watch the pundits on Sunday-morning talk TV. Grew up in the Northwest—Seattle—but didn’t really mind the move east. I’m not a rainy-day kind of guy.”

  The talk meandered to personal lives and he volunteered that he and his ex had no children, though he himself had come from a big family. His parents were still alive and lived on the East Coast.

  “I’ve got four brothers. I was the youngest. I think my parents ran out of names and started on consumer products. So, I’m Winston, like cigarettes. Which is a really bad idea when your last name is cornflakes. If my parents had been any more sadistic my middle name’d be Oldsmobile.”

  Dance laughed. “I’m convinced I didn’t get invited to the junior prom because nobody wanted to take a Dance to the dance.”

  Kellogg received a degree in psych from the University of Washington, then went into the army.

  “CID?” She was thinking about her late husband’s stint in the army, where he’d been a Criminal Investigations Division officer.

  “No. Tactical planning. Which meant paper, paper, paper. Well, computer, computer, computer. I was fidgety. I wanted to get into the field so I left and joined the Seattle Police Department. Made detective and did profiling and negotiations. But I found the cult mentality interesting. So I thought I’d specialize in that. I know it sounds lame but I just didn’t like the idea of bullies preying on vulnerable people.”

  She didn’t think it was lame at all.

  Down more corridors.

  “How’d you get into this line?” he asked.

  Dance gave him a brief version of the story. She’d been a crime reporter for a few years—she’d met her husband while covering a criminal trial (he gave her an exclusive interview in exchange for a date). After she grew tired of reporting, she went back to school and got degrees in psychology and communications, improving her natural gift of observation and an ability to intuit what people were thinking and feeling. She became a jury consultant. But nagging dissatisfaction with that job and a sense that her talents would be more worthwhile in law enforcement had led her to the CBI.

  “And your husband was like me, a feebie?”

  “Been doing your homework?” Her late husband, William Swenson, had been a dependable career special agent for the FBI, but he was just like tens of thousands of others. There was no reason for a specialist like Kellogg to have heard of him, unless he’d gone to some trouble to check.

  A bashful grin. “I like to know where I’m going on assignments. And who I’m going to meet when I get there. Hope you’re not offended.”

  “Not at all. When I interview a subject I like to know everything about his terrarium.” Not sharing with Kellogg that she’d had TJ scope out the agent through his friend in the Chico resident agency.

  A moment passed and he asked, “Can I ask what happened to your husband? Line of duty?”

  The thud in her belly generated by that question had become less pronounced over the years. “It was a traffic accident.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. . . . Now, welcome to Chez CBI.” Dance waved him into the lunchroom.

  They poured coffee and sat at one of the cheap tables.

  Her cell chirped. It was TJ.

  “Bad news. My bar-hopping days are over. Just as I got started. I found out where the Pemberton woman was before she was killed.”

  “And?”

  “With some Latino guy in the bar at the Doubletree. A business meeting, some event he wanted her to handle, the waiter thinks. They left about six thirty.”

  “You get a credit-card receipt?”

  “Yep, but she paid. Business expense. Hey, boss, I think we should start doing that.”

  “Anything else about him?”

  “Zip. Her picture’ll be on the news so he might see it and come forward.”

  “Susan’s phone logs?”

  “About forty calls yesterday. I’ll check them out when I’m back in the office. Oh, and statewide real estate tax records? Nope, Pell don’t own no mountaintops or anything else. I checked Utah too. Nothing there either.”

  “Good. I forgot about that.”

  “Or Oregon, Nevada, Arizona. I wasn’t being diligent. I was just trying to prolong my bar time as much as I could.”

  After they hung up she relayed the information to Kellogg, who grimaced. “A witness, hm? Who’ll see her picture on the tube and decide this is a real nice time to take that vacation to Alaska.”

  “And I can hardly blame him.”

  Then the FBI agent smiled as he looked over Dance’s shoulder. She glanced back. Her mother and children were walking into the lunchroom.

  “Hi, honey,” she said to Maggie, then hugged her son. There’d be a day, pretty soon, when public hugs would be verboten and she was storing up for the drought. He tolerated the gesture well enough today.

  Edie Dance and her daughter cast glances each other’s way, acknowledging Millar’s death but not specifically referring to the tragedy. Edie and Kellogg greeted each other, and exchanged a similar look.

  “Mom, Carly moved Mr. Bledsoe’s wastebasket!” Maggie told her breathlessly. “And every time he threw something out it went on the floor.”

  “Did you keep from giggling?”

  “For a while. But then Brendon did and we couldn’t stop.”

  “Say hello to Agent Kellogg.”

  Maggie did. But Wes only nodded. His eyes shifted away. Dance saw the aversion immediately.

  “You guys want hot chocolate?” she asked.

  “Yay!” Maggie cried. Wes said he would too.

  Dance patted her jacket pockets. Coffee was gratis but anything fancier took cash, and she’d left all of hers in her purse in her office; Edie had no change.

  “I’ll treat,” Kellogg said, digging into his pocket.

  Wes said quickly, “Mom, I want coffee instead.”

  The boy had sipped coffee once or twice in his life and hated it.

  Maggie said, “I want coffee too.”

  “No coffee. It’s hot chocolate or soda.” Dance supposed that Wes didn’t want something that the FBI agent paid for. What was going on here? Then she remembered how his eyes had scanned Kellogg on the Deck the other night. She thought he’d been looking for his weapon; now she understood he’d been sizing up the man Mom had brought to his grandfather’s party. Was Winston Kellogg the new Brian, in his eyes?

  “Okay,” her daughter said, “chocolate.”

  Wes muttered, “That’s okay. I don’t want anything.”

  “Come on, I’ll loan it to your mom,” Kellogg said, dispensing the coins.

  The children took them, Wes reluctantly and only after his sister did.

  “Thanks,” Wes said.

  “Thank you very much,” Maggie offered.

  Edie poured coffee. They sat at the unsteady table. Kellogg thanked Dance’s mother again for the dinner the previous night and asked about Stuart. Then he turned to the children and wondered aloud if they liked to fish.

  Maggie said sort of. She didn’t.

  Wes loved to but responded, “Not really. You know, it’s boring.”

  Dance knew the agent had no motive but breaking the ice, his question probably inspired by his conversation with her father at the party about fishing in Monterey Bay. She noted some stress reactions—he was trying too hard to make a good impression, she guessed.

  Wes fell silent and sipped his chocolate while Maggie inundated the adults with the morning’s events at music camp, including a
rerun, in detail, of the trash can caper.

  The agent found herself irritated that the problem with Wes had reared its head yet again . . . and for no good reason. She wasn’t even dating Kellogg.

  But Dance knew the tricks of parenting and in a few minutes had Wes talking enthusiastically about his tennis match that morning. Kellogg’s posture changed once or twice and the body language told Dance that he too was a tennis player and wanted to contribute. But he’d caught on that Wes was ambivalent about him and he smiled as he listened, but didn’t add anything.

  Finally Dance told them she needed to get back to work, she’d walk them out. Kellogg told her he was going to check in with the San Francisco field office.

  “Good seeing you all.” He waved.

  Edie and Maggie said good-bye to him. After a moment Wes did too—only so he wouldn’t be outdone by his sister, Dance sensed.

  The agent wandered off up the hallway toward his temporary office.

  “Are you coming to Grandma’s for dinner?” Maggie asked.

  “I’m going to try, Mags.” Never promise if there’s a chance you can’t deliver.

  “But if she can’t,” Edie said, “what’re you in the mood for?”

  “Pizza,” Maggie said fast. “With garlic bread. And mint chocolate chip for dessert.”

  “And I want a pair of Ferragamos,” Dance said.

  “What’re those?”

  “Shoes. But what we want and what we get are sometimes two different things.”

  Her mother put another offer on the table. “How’s a big salad? With blackened shrimp?”

  “Sure.”

  Wes said, “That’ll be great.” The children were infinitely polite with their grandparents.

  “But I think garlic bread can be arranged,” Edie added, which finally pried a smile from him.

  • • •

  Outside the CBI office, one of the administrative clerks was on his way to deliver documents to the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office in Salinas.

  He noticed a dark car pulling into the lot. The driver, a young woman wearing sunglasses despite the fog, scanned the parking lot. She’s uneasy about something, the clerk thought. But, of course, you got that a lot here: people who’d come in voluntarily as suspects or reluctant complaining witnesses. The woman looked at herself in the mirror, pulled on a cap and climbed out. She didn’t go to the front door. Instead she approached him.