Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

Recrimination was such a drain. O'Neil said he'd look into it. Dance knew he'd never do anything though, and with this comment to Overby the finger pointing came to a close.

The detective continued, "Nobody's spotted the Civic. But the timing was just wrong. He could've gotten through on Sixty-eight or the One-Oh-One. I don't think Sixty-eight though."

"No," Overby agreed. The smaller Highway 68 would take Pell back to heavily populated Monterey. The 101, wide as an interstate, could get him to every major expressway in the state.

"They're setting up new checkpoints in Gilroy. And about thirty miles south." O'Neil stuck monarch butterfly notes in the appropriate places.

"And you've got the bus terminals and airport secure?" Overby asked.

"That's right," Dance said.

"And San Jose and Oakland PD're in the loop?"

"Yep. And Santa Cruz, San Benito, Merced, Santa Clara, Stanislaus and San Mateo." The nearby counties.

Overby jotted a few notes. "Good." He glanced up and said, "Oh, I just talked to Amy."

"Grabe?"

"That's right."

Amy Grabe was the SAC-the special agent in charge-of the FBI's San Francisco field office. Dance knew the sharp, focused law enforcer well. The west-central region of the CBI extended north to the Bay area, so she'd had a number of opportunities to work with her. Dance's late husband, an agent with the FBI's local resident agency, had too.

Overby continued, "If we don't get Pell soon, they've got a specialist I want on board."

"A what?"

"Somebody in the bureau who handles situations like this."

It was a jailbreak, Dance reflected. What kind of specialist? She thought of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive .

O'Neil too was curious. "A negotiator?"

But Overby said, "No, he's a cult expert. Deals a lot with people like Pell."

Dance shrugged, an illustrator gesture-those that reinforce verbal content, in this case, her doubts. "Well, I'm not sure how useful that'd be." She had worked many joint task forces. She wasn't opposed to sharing jurisdiction with the Feds or anyone else, but involving other agencies inevitably slowed response times. Besides, she didn't see how a cult leader would flee for his life any differently than a murderer or bank robber.

But Overby had already made up his mind; she knew it from his tone and body language. "He's a brilliant profiler, can really get into their minds. The cult mentality is a lot different from your typical perp's."

Is it?

The agent in charge handed Dance a slip of paper with a name and phone number on it. "He's in Chicago, finishing up some case, but he can be here tonight or tomorrow morning."

"You sure about this, Charles?"

"With Pell we can use all the help we can get. Absolutely. And a big gun from Washington? More expertise, more person power."

More places to stash the blame, Dance thought cynically, realizing now what had happened. Grabe had asked if the FBI could help out in the search for Pell, and Overby had jumped at the offer, thinking that if more innocents were injured or the escapee remained at large, there'd be two people on the podium at the press conference, not just himself alone. But she kept the smile on her face. "All right then. I hope we get him before we need to bother anybody else."

"Oh, and Kathryn? I just wanted you to know. Amy wondered how the escape happened, and I told her your interrogation had nothing to do with it."

"My…what?"

"It's not going to be a problem. I told her there's nothing you did that would've helped Pell escape."

She felt the heat rise to her face, which undoubtedly was turning ruddy. Emotion does that; she'd spotted plenty of deception over the years because guilt and shame trigger blood flow.

So does anger.

Amy Grabe probably hadn't even known that Dance had interrogated Pell, let alone suspected she'd done something careless that facilitated the escape.

But she-and the San Francisco office of the bureau-sure had that idea now.

Maybe CBI headquarters in Sacramento did too. She said stiffly, "He escaped from the lockup, not the interrogation room."

"I was talking about Pell maybe getting information from you that he could use to get away."

Dance sensed O'Neil tense. The detective had a strong streak of protectiveness when it came to those who hadn't been in the business as long as he had. But he knew that Kathryn Dance was a woman who fought her own battles. He remained silent.

She was furious that Overby had said anything to Grabe. Now she understood: that was why he wanted CBI to run the case-if any other agency took charge, it would be an admission that the bureau was in some way responsible for the escape.

And Overby wasn't through yet. "Now, about security…I'm sure it was tight. Special precautions with Pell. I told Amy you'd made sure of that."

Since he hadn't asked a question, she simply gazed back coolly and didn't give him a crumb of reassurance.

He probably sensed he'd gone too far and, eyes ferreting away, said, "I'm sure things were handled well."

Again, silence.

"Okay, I've got that press conference. My turn in the barrel." He grimaced. "If you hear anything else, let me know. I'll be on in about ten minutes."

The man left.

TJ looked Dance over and said, in a thick southern accent, "Damn, so you're the one forgot to lock the barn door when you were through interrogating the cows. That's how they got away. I was wondrin'."

O'Neil stifled a smile.

"Don't get me started," she muttered.

She walked to the window and looked out at the people who'd evacuated the courthouse, milling in front of the building. "I'm worried about that partner. Where is he, what's he up to?"

"Who'd bust somebody like Daniel Pell outa the joint?" asked TJ.

Dance recalled Pell's kinesic reaction in the interrogation when the subject of his aunt in Bakersfield arose. "I think whoever's helping him got the hammer from his aunt. Pell's her last name. Find her." She had another thought. "Oh, and your buddy in the resident agency, down in Chico?"

"Yup?"

"He's discreet, right?"

"We bar surf and ogle when we hang out. How discreet is that?"

"Can he check this guy out?" She held up the slip of paper containing the name of the FBI's cult expert.

"He'd be game, I'll bet. He says intrigue in the bureau's better than intrigue in the barrio." TJ jotted the name.

O'Neil took a call and had a brief conversation. He hung up and explained, "That was the warden at Capitola. I thought we should talk to the supervising guard on Pell's cell block, see if he can tell us anything. He's also bringing the contents of Pell's cell with him."

"Good."

"Then there's a fellow prisoner who claims to have some information about Pell. She'll round him up and call us back."

Dance's cell phone rang, a croaking frog.

O'Neil lifted an eyebrow. "Wes or Maggie've been hard at work."

It was a family joke, like stuffed animals in the purse. The children would reprogram the ringer of her phone when Dance wasn't looking (any tones were fair game; the only rules: never silent, and no tunes from boy bands).

She hit the receive button. "Hello?"

"It's me, Agent Dance."

The background noise was loud and the "me" ambiguous, but the phrasing of her name told her the caller was Rey Carraneo.

"What's up?"

"No sign of his partner or any other devices. Security wants to know if they can let everybody back inside. The fire marshal's okayed it."

Dance debated the matter with O'Neil. They decided to wait a little longer.

"TJ, go outside and help them search. I don't like it that the accomplice's unaccounted for."

She recalled what her father had told her after he'd nearly had a run-in with a great white in the waters off northern Australia. "The shark you don't see is always more dangerous than the one you do."