Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

Escapee Hotline.

"Wouldn't it be Escap er ?" Gutierrez asked.

Susan blinked. "I don't know."

The businessman continued, "I didn't mean to be light about it. It's terrible. He killed two people, I heard." The handsome Latino sprinkled cinnamon into his cappuccino, then sipped, spilling a bit of spice on his slacks. "Oh, look at that. I'm such a klutz." He laughed. "You can't take me anywhere."

He wiped at the stain, which only made it worse. "Oh, well."

This was a business meeting. Susan, who worked for an event-planning company, was going to put together an anniversary party for his parents-but, being currently single, the thirty-nine-year-old woman automatically sized him up from a personal perspective, noting he was only a few years older than she and wore no wedding ring.

They'd disposed of the details of the party-cash bar, chicken and fish, open wine, fifteen minutes to exchange new vows and then dancing to a DJ. And now they were chatting over coffee before she went back to the office to work up an estimate.

"You'd think they would've got him by now." Then Gutierrez glanced outside, frowning.

"Something wrong?" Susan asked.

"It sounds funny, I know. But just as I was getting here I saw this car pull up. And somebody who looked a little like him, Pell, got out." He nodded at the TV.

"Who? The killer?"

He nodded. "And there was a woman driving."

The TV announcer had just repeated that his accomplice was a young woman.

"Where did he go?"

"I wasn't paying attention. I think toward the parking garage by the bank."

She looked toward the place.

Then the businessman gave a smile. "But that's crazy. He's not going to be here." He nodded past where they were looking. "What's that banner? I saw it before."

"Oh, the concert on Friday. Part of a John Steinbeck celebration. You read him?"

The businessman said, "Oh, sure. East of Eden. The Long Valley. You ever been to King City? I love it there. Steinbeck's grandfather had a ranch."

She touched her palm reverently to her chest. " Grapes of Wrath …the best book ever written."

"And there's a concert on Friday, you were saying? What kind of music?"

"Jazz. You know, because of the Monterey Jazz Festival. It's my favorite."

"I love it too," Gutierrez said. "I go to the festival whenever I can."

"Really?" Susan resisted an urge to touch his arm.

"Maybe we'll run into each other at the next one."

Susan said, "I worry…Well, I just wish more people would listen to music like that. Real music. I don't think kids are interested."

"Here's to that." Gutierrez tapped his cup to hers. "My ex…she lets our son listen to rap. Some of those lyrics? Disgusting. And he's only twelve years old."

"It's not music," Susan announced. Thinking: So. He has an ex. Good. She'd vowed never to date anyone over forty who hadn't been married.

He hesitated and asked, "You think you might be there? At the concert?"

"Yeah, I will."

"Well, I don't know your situation, but if you were going to go, you want to hook up there?"

"Oh, César, that'd be fun."

Hooking up…

Nowadays that was as good as a formal invitation.

Gutierrez stretched. He said he wanted to get on the road. Then he added he'd enjoyed meeting her and, without hesitating, gave her the holy trinity of phone numbers: work, home and mobile. He picked up his briefcase and they started for the door together. She noticed, though, that he was pausing, his eyes, through dark-framed glasses, examining the lobby. He frowned again, brushing uneasily at his moustache.

"Something wrong?"

"I think it's that guy," he whispered. "The one I saw before. There, you see him? He was here, in the hotel. Looking our way."

The lobby was filled with tropical plants. She had a vague image of someone turning and walking out of the door.

"Daniel Pell ?"

"It couldn't be. It's stupid… Just, you know, the power of suggestion or something."

They walked to the door, stopped. Gutierrez looked out. "He's gone."

"Think we should tell somebody at the desk?"

"I'll give the police a call. I'm probably wrong but what can it hurt?" He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. He spoke for a few minutes, then disconnected. "They said they'd send somebody to check it out. Didn't sound real enthusiastic. Of course, they're probably getting a hundred calls an hour. I can walk you to your car, if you want."

"Wouldn't mind that." She wasn't so much worried about the escapee; she just liked the idea of spending more time with Gutierrez.

They walked along the main street in downtown Alvarado. Now it was the home of restaurants, tourist shops and coffeehouses-a lot different from the Wild West avenue it was a hundred years ago, when soldiers and Cannery Row workers drank, hung out in the brothels and occasionally shot it out in the middle of the street.

As Gutierrez and Susan walked along, their conversation was subdued and they both looked around them. She realized the streets were unusually deserted. Was that because of the escape? Now she began to feel uneasy.

Her office was next to a construction site a block from Alvarado. There were piles of building materials here; if Pell had come this way, she reflected, he could easily be hiding behind them, waiting. She slowed.

"That's your car?" Gutierrez asked.

She nodded.

"Something wrong?"

Susan gave a grimace and an embarrassed laugh. She told him she was worried about Pell hiding in the building supplies.

He smiled. "Even if he was here he wouldn't attack two of us together. Come on."

"César, wait," she said, reaching into her purse. She handed him a small, red cylinder. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Pepper spray. Just in case."

"I think we'll be okay. But how does it work?" Then he laughed. "Don't want to spray myself."

"All you have to do is point it and push there. It's ready to go."

They continued to the car and by the time they got there, Susan was feeling foolish. No crazed killers were lurking behind the piles of bricks. She wondered if her skittishness had lost her points in the potential date department. She didn't think so. Gutierrez seemed to enjoy the role of gallant gentleman.

She unlocked the doors.

"I better give this back to you," he said, holding out the spray.

Susan reached for it.

But Gutierrez lunged fast, grabbed her hair and jerked her head back fiercely. He shoved the nozzle of the canister into her mouth, open in a stifled scream.

He pushed the button.

Agony, reflected Daniel Pell, is perhaps the fastest way to control somebody.

Still in his apparently effective disguise as a Latino businessman, he was driving Susan Pemberton's car to a deserted location near the ocean, south of Carmel.

Agony…Hurt them bad, give them a little time to recover, then threaten to hurt them again. Experts say torture isn't efficient. That's wrong. It isn't elegant. It isn't tidy. But it works real well.

The spray up Susan Pemberton's mouth and nose had been only a second in duration but from her muffled scream and thrashing limbs he knew the pain was nearly unbearable. He let her recover. Brandished the spray in front of her panicked, watering eyes. And immediately got from her exactly what he wanted.

He hadn't planned on the spray, of course; he had duct tape and a knife in the briefcase. But he'd decided to change his plans when the woman, to his amusement, handed the canister to him-well, to his alter ego César Gutierrez.

Daniel Pell had things to do in public and, with his picture running every half-hour on local television, he had to become someone else. After she'd wheedled the Toyota out of a gullible seller with an interest in a woman's cleavage, Jennie Marston had bought cloth dye and instant-tan cream, which he'd mixed into a recipe for a bath that would darken his skin. He dyed his hair and eyebrows black and used Skin-Bond and hair clippings to make a realistic moustache. Nothing he could do about the eyes. If there were contact lenses that made blue brown, he didn't know where to find them. But the glasses-cheap tinted reading glasses with dark frames-would distract from the color.