Jeffery Deaver - XO

Now Dance and Dennis Harutyun were listening to Madigan having a conversation with the Crime Scene Unit boss. Finally he grunted and slammed the receiver down. “Backyard of Edwin’s, Charlie’s folks found some human bones and some tools. Buried deep, so CSU wouldn’t find them when they searched the other day. You were right, Kathryn; he made those guitar picks himself, outa that file sharer’s hand.”

Dance rocked back and forth in a cheap swivel chair in Madigan’s office. A cup of ice cream soup sat coagulating beside his phone. And she thought again, How did I miss? What’d gone wrong? She hadn’t been able to read his deception but she’d known that body language analysis of someone like Edwin Sharp would be difficult if not impossible.

So she’d looked at the facts he’d mentioned, tried to analyze not his kinesics but his verbal content. Well, think about it. Was there anything that might help them find where Edwin would go with his love?

And what would happen when they got there?

Dance believed she knew the answer to that question and she did not want to consider it.

Harutyun asked, “Why didn’t he just snatch her a few days ago?”

Dance gave her thoughts. “Oh, he didn’t want to snatch her at all. It’s why he set up Alicia as the killer. So he could rescue Kayleigh and win her over with his heroism. Like some arsonists-they set fires and then rescue people, to be heroes. Which is exactly what he did.

“He probably pitched his case to her at lunch, reminding her that he’d saved her life, why didn’t they go out on a date, or something like that. She said no. That was his last chance to be close to her in private so he did what he had to, kidnapped her. But it’s not impulsive. Believe me, he’s known this was a possibility and he’d had it all planned out as a last resort.”

Something was eating away at her. Something elusive. Facts again… verbal content. Facts were not meshing.

What is it?

She sighed. The thought vanished before it solidified. Then:

Wait… Yes! That’s it!

She grabbed the phone and placed a call to her friend and colleague, Amy Grabe, FBI Special Agent in Charge, San Francisco.

The woman’s low, sultry voice said, “Kathryn, saw the wire-kidnapping and possible interstate flight.”

“That’s why I’m calling.”

“It’s really the singer Kayleigh Towne?”

“I’m afraid so. A stalker.”

“Well, what can we do? You think he’s headed this way?”

“That’s not why I’m calling. What I need are a couple of field agents in the Seattle area. I have to conduct an interview with a witness and I don’t have time to get up there. It’s got to happen now.”

“Can’t you do it over the phone?” the SAC asked.

“I tried that. It didn’t work.”

WELL, THOUGHT KATHRYN Dance, staring at the computer screen. Look at this.

The woman she was gazing at, presently in Seattle and connected via Skype, could have been Kayleigh Towne’s sister.

Not an identical twin but real close. Straight, blond hair, a petite frame, a long, pretty face.

Edwin’s former girlfriend, Sally Docking, stared nervously at the computer screen. Her voice broke as she said, “These people, I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything wrong.” There were two FBI agents behind her in the living room of her Seattle apartment.

Dance smiled. “I just needed them to bring one of their computers so you and I could have another chat.”

Actually they were there because she didn’t think Sally would voluntarily go onto Skype for a second conversation.

Dance’s voice was casual, despite the urgency she felt. “You’ll be all right. Provided you tell me the truth.”

Not “tell me the truth this time. ” That was too confrontational.

“Sure.”

A discrepancy had occurred to Kathryn Dance-certain facts were not lining up. Now that Edwin Sharp had been revealed to be the perp, his behavior with Sally Docking didn’t ring true. Her earlier account of life with Edwin had been more or less credible over the phone but a kinesic expert needs to see her subject, not just hear, to spot deception.

And so Amy Grabe had called the Seattle field office of the Bureau and sent two agents to Sally Docking’s apartment in a working-class section of the city. They brought with them a very expensive laptop, which incorporated a high-definition webcam.

Dance was in a conference room in the sheriff’s office, the overhead lights off but a desk lamp not far from her face. She’d adjusted the illumination carefully; she needed Sally to see her very clearly-and under ominous lighting. Sally was lit by ambient rays but the lens and software rendered the image perfectly.

“It looks like a nice apartment, Sally.” Dance wore her pink-rimmed glasses, the nonthreatening ones, unlike the steel- or black-rimmed predator specs she put on when she wanted to present an aggressive image.

“It’s okay, I guess. I like it. Rent’s cheap.”

Dance asked a number of other questions about the girl, her family, her job, as she drew a baseline of the woman’s behavior. She caught only one microburst of stress, when Sally said she didn’t mind the commute to her job at a mall fifteen miles from where she lived.

Good, she was getting a feel for the woman, who tended to appear nervous and uncertain even when she was being asked simple questions and answering truthfully.

After ten minutes of this, Dance said, “Now, I’d like to talk to you about Edwin some more.”

“Everything I told you was true!” Her eyes bored into the camera.

This was awkward: a blunt denial quickly delivered. Dance couldn’t over- or underreact; it might tip her hand. “It’s just routine. We often follow up to get more information when there’s been a change in developments.”

“Oh.”

“We need your help, Sally. See, the situation down in Fresno’s… difficult. Edwin may have been more involved in a crime than it originally seemed. I’m worried that he might be going through a bad phase and could hurt somebody. Or hurt himself.”

“No!”

“That’s right.” Dance had made certain that not a single soul leaked to the public the news that Edwin had snatched Kayleigh. Sally Docking wouldn’t know. “And we need to find him. We need to know where he might go, places that are important to him, other residences he might have.”

“Oh, I don’t know anywhere like that.” Her eyes whipped to the computer screen.

A baseline variation. It confirmed that she did have some ideas. But dislodging this nugget would take some work.

“Well, you might know more than you think, Sally.”

“But I haven’t heard from him for a long time.”

Nonresponsive. And the vague adjective didn’t mask the fact that this was probably a lie but Dance let it go for now. “Well, not necessarily someplace he wanted to move to. Just someplace he mentioned when you were together.”

“No.”

“No?”

Sally was thinking quickly. “I mean, he was pretty much into Seattle. He didn’t travel much. He was, like, a homebody kind of guy.”

“Never mentioned anything, really?” A glance at the sheet in front of her.

Sally caught the glance.

As long as you tell the truth…

“I mean, he talked about going on vacations some. You know. But I didn’t think that’s what you meant.”

“Where did he want to go?”

“Nashville was one place. The Grand Ole Opry. And then maybe New York, so he could go to some concerts.”

Edwin Sharp probably did say that but he was not going to run off to Nashville or Manhattan with Kayleigh Towne and set up housekeeping, however skewed his sense of reality.