Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"I hope I can."

"Anything else?"

"No, it was about then that I guess I fell back asleep. And the next thing I knew…" She swallowed again. "There was this woman in a uniform there. A policewoman. She had me get dressed and…that was it."

Dance reflected: four hundred dollars, a car dealership, a French Canadian province.

And a third man.

Was Pell intent on heading north now? At the very least she'd call Homeland Security and Immigration; they could keep an eye on the northern border crossings.

Dance tried again, walking the girl through the events of that terrible night.

But the efforts were useless. She knew nothing more.

Four hundred dollars…Canada…What's Quebec?…used cars…Did they contain the key to the Daniel Pell conspiracy?

And then Dance had a thought that, surprisingly, involved her own family: herself, Wes and Maggie. An idea occurred to her. She ran through the facts of the murder in her mind. Impossible…But then the theory grew more likely, though she didn't like the conclusion.

She reluctantly asked, "Tare, you said this was around seven P.M. or so?"

"Yeah, maybe."

"Where did your family eat?"

"Where? The den most of the time. We weren't allowed to use the dining room. That was just for, like, formal things."

"Did you watch TV while you were having dinner?"

"Yeah. A lot. Me and my brother and sister, at least."

"And was the den near your bedroom?"

"Like, right down the stairs. How did you know?"

"Did you ever watch Jeopardy! ?"

She frowned. "Yeah."

"Tare, I'm wondering if maybe the voices you heard were from the show. Maybe somebody picking the category of geography for four hundred dollars. And the answer was 'the French-speaking province of Canada.' The question would be 'What is Quebec?'"

The girl fell silent. Her eyes were still. "No," she said firmly, shaking her head. "No, that wasn't it. I'm sure."

"And the voice talking about the dealership-could it have been a commercial? Somebody talking fast in a low voice. Like they do on car ads."

The girl's face flushed with dismay. Then anger. "No!"

"But maybe?" Dance asked gently.

Theresa's eyes closed. "No." A whisper. Then: "I don't know."

That was why Reynolds hadn't pursued the child's testimony. He too had figured out she was talking about a TV show.

Theresa's shoulders slumped forward, collapsing in on themselves. It was a very subtle movement but Dance could clearly read the kinesic signal of defeat and sorrow. The girl had been so certain that she'd remembered something helpful to find the man who'd killed her family. Now, she realized that her courageous trip here, defying her aunt…The efforts had been pointless. She was crestfallen. "I'm sorry…" Tears pooled in her eyes.

Kathryn Dance smiled. "Tare, don't worry. It's nothing." She gave the girl a Kleenex.

"Nothing? It's terrible! I wanted to help so bad…"

Another smile. "Oh, Tare, believe me, we're just getting warmed up."

In her seminars Dance told the story of the city slicker stopping in a small town to ask a farmer directions. The stranger looks at the dog sitting at the man's feet and says, "Your dog bite?" The farmer says no and when the stranger reaches down to pet the dog, he gets bitten. The man jumps back and angrily says, "You said your dog didn't bite!" The farmer replies, "Mine doesn't. This here dog's not mine."

The art of interviewing isn't only about analyzing the subjects' answers and their body language and demeanor; it's also about asking the right questions.

The facts about the Croytons' murders and every moment afterward had been documented by police and reporters. So Kathryn Dance decided to inquire about the one period of time that no one had apparently ever asked about: before the murders.

"Tare, I want to hear about what happened earlier."

"Earlier?"

"Sure. Let's start with earlier that day."

Theresa frowned. "Oh, I don't even remember much about it. I mean, what happened that night, it kind of shoved everything else away."

"Give it a try. Think back. It was May. You were in school then, right?"

"Yeah."

"What day of the week?"

"Um, it was Friday."

"You remembered that pretty fast."

"Oh, because on a lot of Fridays Dad'd take us kids places. That day we were going to the carnival rides in Santa Cruz. Only everything got messed up because I got sick." Theresa thought back, rubbing her eyes. "Brenda and Steve-my sister and brother-and I were going, and Mom stayed at home because she had a benefit or something on Saturday she had to work on."

"But plans got changed?"

"Right. We were, like, on our way but…" She looked down. "I got sick. In the car. So we turned around and went home."

"What did you have? A cold?"

"Stomach flu." Theresa winced and touched her belly.

"Oh, I just hate that."

"Yeah, it sucks."

"And you got back home about when?"

"Five thirty, maybe."

"And you went straight to bed."

"Yeah, that's right." She looked out the window at the gnarled tree.

"And then you woke up, hearing the TV show."

The girl twined a brown strand of hair around a finger. "Quebec." A laughing grimace.

At this point, Kathryn Dance paused. She realized she had a decision to make, an important one.

Because there was no doubt that Theresa was being deceptive.

When she'd been making casual conversation and, later, talking about what Theresa had overheard from the TV room, the girl's kinesic behavior was relaxed and open, though she obviously was experiencing general stress-anyone who's talking to a police officer as part of an investigation, even an innocent victim, experiences this.

But as soon as she started talking about the trip to the Santa Cruz boardwalk she displayed hesitations of speech, she covered parts of her face and ear-negation gestures-and looked out the window-aversion. Trying to appear calm and casual, she revealed the stress she was experiencing by bobbing her foot. Dance sensed deception stress patterns and that the girl was in the denial response state.

Everything Theresa was telling her was presumably consistent with facts that Dance could verify. But deception includes evasion and omission as well as outright lying. There were things Theresa wasn't sharing.

"Tare, something troubling happened on the drive, didn't it?"

"Troubling? No. Really. I swear."

A triple play there: two denial flag expressions, along with answering a question with a question. Now the girl was flushed and her foot bobbed again, an obvious cluster of stress responses.

"Go on, tell me. It's all right. There's nothing you have to worry about. Tell me."

"Like, you know. My parents, my brother and sister…They were killed. Who wouldn't be upset?" A bit of anger now.

Dance nodded sympathetically. "I mean before that. You've left Carmel, you're driving to Santa Cruz. You're not feeling well. You go home. Other than being sick, what was there about that drive that bothered you?"

"I don't know. I can't remember."

That sentence, from a person in a denial state, means: I remember perfectly well but I don't want to think about it. The memory's too painful.

"You're driving along and-

"I-" Theresa began, then she fell silent. And lowered head to hands, breaking into tears. A torrent, accompanied by the sound track of breathless sobbing.

"Tare." Dance rose and handed her a wad of tissues as the girl cried hard, though quietly, the sobs like hiccups.

"It's okay," the agent said compassionately, gripping her arm. "Whatever happened, it's fine. Don't worry."

"I…" The girl was paralyzed; Dance could see she was trying to make a decision. Which way would it go? the agent wondered. She'd either spill everything, or stonewall-in which case the interview was now over.