Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

She was reluctant to answer. Then she said, "Richard was older. He and Daniel didn't get along at all. Richard was a bully. Their mother was drunk all the time and she never cleaned up, so his father insisted the boys do it. But Richard would force Daniel to do all the work. He beat him up if he didn't."

"He told you the truth?" Linda asked stiffly.

"Well, he just mentioned it."

"The Mouse scores." Rebecca laughed.

Linda said, "He told me he didn't want anybody else in the Family to know about his brother. He only trusted me."

"And I wasn't supposed to mention he was an only child," Rebecca said.

Linda's face was troubled. "We all tell fibs sometimes. I'll bet the incident with the sister-in-law-what his brother told you about-didn't happen at all, or it wasn't so bad, and his brother used it as an excuse to cut things off."

Rebecca was clearly not convinced of this.

Dance supposed that Pell had identified both Linda and Rebecca as more of a threat to him than Samantha. Linda was the mother of the Family and would have some authority. Rebecca was clearly brash and outspoken.

But Samantha…he could control her much better and knew she could be trusted with the truth-well, some truth.

Dance was glad she'd decided to come help them.

She noticed that Samantha was looking at the coffeepot.

"Like some?"

"I'm a little tired. Haven't had much sleep lately."

"Welcome to the club," Rebecca said.

Samantha half rose but Dance waved her down. "Milk, sugar?"

"Oh, don't go to any trouble. Really."

The agent noticed that Linda and Rebecca shared a faint smile at Samantha's habitual timidity.

Mouse…

"Thanks. Milk."

Dance continued, "Linda mentioned Pell might have wanted to move to the country somewhere, a 'mountaintop.' Do you have any idea what he was talking about?"

"Well, Daniel told me a bunch of times he wanted to get out to the country. Move the Family there. It was real important to him to get away from everybody. He didn't like neighbors, didn't like the government. He wanted space for more people. He wanted the Family to grow."

"He did?" Rebecca asked.

Linda said nothing about this.

"Did he ever mention Utah?"

"No."

"Where could he have had in mind?"

"He didn't say. But it sounded like he'd been doing some serious thinking about it."

Recalling that he'd possibly used a boat to escape from the Pemberton crime scene, Dance had an idea. She asked, "Did he ever mention an island?"

Samantha laughed. "An island? No way."

"Why not?"

"He's terrified of the water. He's not getting into anything that floats."

Linda blinked. "I didn't know that."

Rebecca didn't either. A wry smile. "Of course not. He'd only share his fears with his Mouse."

"Daniel said the ocean's somebody else's world. People have no business being there. You shouldn't be in a place that you can't be master of. Same thing with flying. He didn't trust pilots or airplanes."

"We were thinking he escaped from the murder scene by boat."

"Impossible."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

Dance excused herself for a moment, called Rey Carraneo and had him call off the search for stolen boats. She hung up, reflecting that O'Neil's theory was wrong and Kellogg's was right.

"Now, I'd like to think about his motives for staying here. What about money?" She mentioned Rebecca's comment about a big score-a robbery or break-in, a big heist. "I was thinking he might be here because he hid money or something valuable somewhere. Or has unfinished business. Something to do with the Croyton murders?"

"Money?" Samantha shook her head. "No, I don't really think that's it."

Rebecca said firmly, "I know he said it."

"Oh, no, I'm not saying he didn't," the Mouse added quickly. "Just, he might not have meant 'big' in the sense we'd use. He didn't like to commit crimes that'd be too visible. We broke into houses-"

"Well, hardly any," Linda corrected.

Rebecca sighed. "Well…we pretty much did, Linda. And you folks'd been busy before I joined you."

"It was exaggerated."

Samantha said nothing to support either woman, and seemed uneasy, as if afraid they'd call on her again to be the tiebreaker. She continued, "He said if somebody did anything too illegal, the press would cover the story and then the police got after you in a big way. We stayed away from banks and check-cashing offices. Too much security, too risky." She shrugged. "Anyway, all the stealing-it was never about the money."

"It wasn't?" Dance asked.

"No. We could've made as much doing legitimate jobs. But that's not what turned Daniel on. What he liked was getting people to do things they didn't want to. That was his high."

Linda said, "You make it sound like that's all we did."

"I didn't mean it like that-"

"We weren't a gang of thugs."

Rebecca ignored Linda. "I think he was definitely into making money."

Samantha smiled uncertainly. "Well, I just had this sense it was more about manipulating people. He didn't need a lot of money. He didn't want it."

"He'd have to pay for his mountaintop somehow," Rebecca pointed out.

"That's true, I guess. I could be wrong."

Dance sensed this was an important key to understanding Pell, so she asked them about their criminal activities, hoping it might spark some specific memories.

Samantha said, "He was good, Daniel was. Even knowing what we were doing was wrong, I couldn't help but admire him. He'd know the best places to go for pickpocketing or breaking into houses. How security worked in department stores, what designer labels had security tags and which didn't, what kind of clerk would take returns without receipts."

Linda said, "Everybody makes him out to be this terrible criminal. But it was really just a game to him. Like, we'd have disguises. Remember? Wigs, different clothes, fake glasses. It was all harmless fun."

Dance was inclined to believe Samantha's theory that sending the Family out on their missions was more about power than money.

"But what about the Charles Manson connection?"

"Oh," Samantha said. "There was no Manson connection."

Dance was surprised. "But all the press said so."

"Well, you know the press."

Samantha was typically reluctant to disagree, but she was clearly certain about this. "He thought Manson was an example of what not to do."

But Linda shook her head. "No, no, he had all those books and articles about him."

Dance recalled that she'd gotten a longer prison sentence because she'd destroyed some of the incriminating material about Manson the night of the Croyton murders. She seemed troubled now that her heroic act might have been pointless.

"The only parallels were that he lived with several women and had us doing crimes for him. Manson wasn't in control of himself, Daniel said. He claimed he was Jesus, he tattooed a swastika on his forehead, he thought he had psychic powers, he ranted about politics and race. That was another example of emotions controlling you. Just like tattoos and body piercings or weird haircuts. They give people information about you. And information is control. No, he thought Manson did everything wrong. Daniel's heroes were Hitler-"

"Hitler?" Dance asked her.

"Yep. Except he faulted him because of that 'Jewish thing.' It was a weakness. Pell said that if Hitler could suck it up and live with Jews, even include them in the government, he'd have been the most powerful man in history. But he couldn't control himself, so he deserved to lose the war. He admired Rasputin too."

"The Russian monk?"

"Right. He worked his way into Nicholas and Alexandra's household. Pell liked Rasputin's use of sex to control people." Drawing a laugh from Rebecca and a blush from Linda. "Svengali too."