Jeffery Deaver: The Sleeping Doll

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 unsolved 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 in Salinas, and asked CBI Agent Kathryn Dance to interview him, in hopes of a confession.

Dance now began the interrogation, asking, "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 thirty thousand, north of Monterey on Highway 1, 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." His eyes alighted on her face.

His grammar and syntax were good, she noted, ignoring his fishing expedition for information about her residence.

Dance continued to ask 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 our body's natural reaction when we do.

The baseline is a catalog of those behaviors exhibited when the subject is telling the truth. This is the standard the interrogator will compare later with 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 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 her, 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.

"How did you meet Herron?"

"You're assuming I did. But, no, never met him in my life. I swear."

The last sentence was a deception flag, 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 planted it to blame me. They wore gloves. Those rubber 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 more than ten years?"

"Being smart, I'd guess. Better to bide his time. Then spring the trap."

"But 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 jail. I'll bet the cops planted the hammer themselves."

"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, all this time 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?"

"Hm." Pell thought for a few seconds. "Okay, I'll go with number two. The police. It's a setup. I'm sure that's what happened."

She looked him in the eyes, green on blue. Nodding agreeably. "Let's consider that. First, where would the police have gotten the hammer?"

He thought. "When they arrested me for that Carmel thing."

"The Croyton murders in ninety-nine?"

"Right. All the evidence they took from my house in Seaside."

Dance's brows furrowed. "I doubt that. Evidence is accounted for too closely. No, I'd go for a more credible scenario: that the hammer was stolen recently. Where else could somebody find a hammer of yours? Do you have any property in the state?"

"No."

"Any relatives or friends who could've had some tools of yours?"

"Not really."

Which wasn't an answer to a yes-or-no question; it was even slipperier than "I don't recall." Dance noticed too that Pell had put his hands, tipped with long, clean nails, on the table at the word "relatives." This was a deviation from baseline behavior. It didn't mean lying, but he was feeling stress. The questions were upsetting him.

"Daniel, do you have any relations living in California?"

He hesitated, must have assessed that she was the sort to check out every comment-which she was-and said, "The only one left's my aunt. Down in Bakersfield."

"Is her name Pell?"

Another pause. "Yep…That's good thinking, Officer Dance. I'll bet the deputies who dropped the ball on the Herron case stole that hammer from her house and planted it. They're the ones behind this whole thing. Why don't you talk to them?"

"All right. Now let's think about the wallet. Where could that've come from?…Here's a thought. What if it's not Robert Herron's wallet at all? What if this rogue cop we're talking about just bought a wallet, had R.H. stamped in the leather, then hid that and the hammer in the well? It could've been last month. Or even last week. What do you think about that, Daniel?"

Pell lowered his head-she couldn't see his eyes-and said nothing.

It was unfolding just as she'd planned.

Dance had forced him to pick the more credible of two explanations for his innocence-and proceeded to prove it wasn't credible at all. No sane jury would believe that the police had fabricated evidence and stolen tools from a house hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. Pell was now realizing the mistake he'd made. The trap was about to close on him.

Checkmate…

Her heart thumped a bit and she was thinking that the next words out of his mouth might be about a plea bargain.

She was wrong.