Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"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.'"

O'Neil and Dance shared a troubled glance. The phrase was the title of a Beatles song, which Charles Manson was obsessed with. He had used the term to refer to an impending race war in America. It was also the title of the award-winning book about the cult leader and the murders by the man who prosecuted him.

"Then he went to Visual-Earth dot com. Like Google Earth. You can see satellite pictures of practically everywhere on the planet."

Great, Dance thought. Though it turned out not to be. There was no way to narrow down what he'd looked for.

"It could've been highways in California, it could've been Paris or Key West or Moscow."

"And what's 'Nimue'?"

"No idea."

"Does it mean anything in Capitola?"

"No."

"Any employees there named Alison?"

The disembodied voice of the techie said, "Nope. But I was going to say I might be able to find out what sites he logged onto. It depends on whether he just erased or shredded them. If they're shredded, forget it. But if they're just dumped I might be able to find them floating around in the free space somewhere on the hard drive."

"Anything you can do would be appreciated," Dance said.

"I'll get right on it."

She thanked him and they disconnected.

"TJ, check out 'Nimue.'"

His fingers flew over the keyboard. The results came up and he scrolled through them. After a few minutes he said, "Hundreds of thousands of hits. Looks like a lot of people use it as a screen name."

O'Neil said, "Somebody he knew online. Or a nickname. Or somebody's real last name."

Staring at the screen, TJ continued, "Trademarks too: cosmetics, electronic equipment-hm, sex products…Never seen one of those before."

"TJ," Dance snapped.

"Sorry." He scrolled again. "Interesting. Most references are to King Arthur."

"As in Camelot ?"

"I guess." He continued to read. "Nimue was the Lady of the Lake. This wizard, Merlin, fell in love with her-he was like a hundred or something and she was sixteen. Now that 'll guarantee you twenty minutes on Dr. Phil. " He read some more. "Merlin taught her how to be a sorceress. Oh, and she gave King Arthur this magic sword."

"Excalibur," O'Neil said.

"What?" TJ asked.

"The sword. Excalibur. Haven't you heard any of this before?" the detective asked.

"Naw, I didn't take Boring Made-up Stuff in college."

"I like the idea that it's somebody he was trying to find. Cross-check 'Nimue' with 'Pell,' 'Alison,' 'California,' 'Carmel,' 'Croyton'…Anything else?"

O'Neil suggested, "The women: Sheffield, McCoy, Whitfield."

"Good."

After several minutes of frantic typing the agent looked over at Dance. "Sorry, boss. Zip."

"Check the search terms out with VICAP, NCIC and the other main criminal databases."

"Will do."

Dance stared at the words she'd written. What did they mean? Why had he risked going online to check them out?

Helter Skelter, Nimue, Alison…

And what had he been looking at on Visual-Earth? A place he intended to flee to, a place he intended to burglarize?

She asked O'Neil, "What about the forensics at the courthouse?"

The detective consulted his notes. "No red flags. Almost everything was burned or melted. The gas was in plastic milk jugs inside a cheap roller suitcase. Sold in a dozen places-Wal-Mart, Target, stores like that. The fireproof bag and fire suit were made by Protection Equipment, Inc., New Jersey. Available all over the world but most are sold in Southern California."

"Brushfires?"

"Movies. For stuntmen. A dozen outlets. Not much to follow up on, though. There're no serial numbers. They couldn't lift any prints off the bag or the suit. Now, the additives in the gas mean it was BP but we can't narrow it down to a particular station. The fuse was homemade. Rope soaked in slow-burning chemicals. None of them're traceable either."

"TJ, what's the word on the aunt?"

"Zip so far. I'm expecting a breakthrough any moment."

Her phone rang. It was another call from Capitola. The warden was with the prisoner who claimed he had some information about Daniel Pell. Did Dance want to talk to him now?

"Sure." She hit the speakerphone button. "This is Agent Dance. I'm here with Detective O'Neil."

"Hey. I'm Eddie Chang."

"Eddie," the warden added, "is doing a five-to-eight for bank robbery. He's in Capitola because he can be a bit…slippery."

"How well did you know Daniel Pell?" Dance asked.

"Not really good. Nobody did. But I was somebody who, you know, wasn't no threat to him. So he kind of opened up to me."

"And you've got some information on him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why're you helping us?" O'Neil asked.

"Up for parole in six months. I help you, it'll go good for me. Provided you catch him, of course. If you don't, I think I'll stay in the Big C here until you do, now that I'm rolling over on him."

O'Neil asked, "Did Pell talk about girlfriends or anyone on the outside? Particularly a woman?"

"He bragged about the women he'd had. He'd give us these great stories. It was like watching a porn film. Oh, man, we loved those stories."

"You remember any names? Someone named Alison?"

"He never mentioned anybody."

After what Tony Waters had told her, Dance suspected that Pell was making up the sex stories-using them as incentives to get the cons to do things for him.

She asked, "So, what do you want to tell us?"

"I have this idea where he might be headed." Dance and O'Neil shared a glance. "Outside of Acapulco. There's a town there, Santa Rosario, in the mountains."

"Why there?"

"Okay, what it was, maybe a week ago we were sitting around bullshitting and there was a new con, Felipe Rivera, doing a back-to-back 'cause he got trigger-happy during a GTA. We were talking and Pell finds out he was from Mexico. So Pell's asking him about this Santa Rosario. Rivera'd never heard of it, but Pell's pretty anxious to find out more, so he describes it, like trying to jog his memory. It's got a hot spring and it's not near any big highways and there's this steep mountain nearby… But Rivera couldn't remember anything. Then Pell shut up about it and changed the subject. So I was figuring that's what he might've had in mind."