Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"What was inside?"

"That's the problem. He tried to open it. But it's password-protected. We'll have to send it to CBI headquarters in Sacramento to crack, but frankly, that'll take weeks. It might not be important but I'd like to find out what it's all about. I was hoping you'd have somebody in the bureau who could decrypt it faster."

Kellogg told her he knew of a computer wiz in the FBI's San Jose field office-in the heart of Silicon Valley. "If anybody can break it they can. I'll get it to him today."

She thanked him and handed over the Dell, in a plastic bag and with a chain-of-custody tag attached. He signed the card and set the bag beside him.

Dance waved for the waitress. Toast was about all she could manage this morning, but Kellogg ordered a full breakfast.

He said, "Now, tell me about Big Sur. It's supposed to be pretty."

"Breathtaking," she said. "One of the most romantic places you'll ever see."

Kathryn Dance was in her office when Winston Kellogg came to collect her at five thirty for their date. He was in formal casual. He and Dance came close to matching-brown jackets, light shirts and jeans. His blue, hers black. Ventana was an upscale inn, restaurant and winery but this was, after all, California. You needed a suit and tie only in San Francisco, L.A. and Sacramento.

For funerals too, of course, Dance couldn't help but think.

"First, let's get work out of the way." He opened his attaché case and handed her the plastic evidence bag containing the computer found in the Butterfly Inn.

"Oh, you've got it already?" she asked. "The mystery of Nimue is about to be solved."

He grimaced. "Afraid not, sorry."

"Nothing?" she asked.

"The file was either intentionally written as gibberish or it had a wipe bomb on it, the bureau tech guys said."

"Wipe bomb?"

"Like a digital booby trap. When TJ tried to open it, it got turned to mush. That was their term too, by the way."

"Mush."

"Just random characters."

"No way to reconstruct it?"

"Nope. And, believe me, they're the best in the business."

"Not that it matters that much, I suppose," Dance said, shrugging. "It was just a loose end."

He smiled. "I'm the same way. Hate it when there are danglers. That's what I call them."

"Danglers. I like that."

"So are you ready to go?"

"Just a second or two." She rose and walked to the door. Albert Stemple was standing in the hallway. TJ too.

She glanced at them, sighed and nodded.

The massive, shaved-head agent stepped into the office, with TJ right behind him.

Both men drew their weapons-Dance just didn't have the heart-and in a few seconds Winston Kellogg was disarmed, cuffs on his hands.

"What the hell's going on?" he raged.

Dance provided the answer, surprised at how serene her voice sounded as she said, "Winston Kellogg, you're under arrest for the murder of Daniel Pell."

They were in room 3, one of the interrogation rooms in CBI's Monterey office, and it was Dance's favorite. This was a little bigger than the other (which was room 1, there being no number 2). And the one-way mirror was a little shinier. It also had a small window and, if the curtains were open, you could see a tree outside. Sometimes, during her interrogations, she'd use the view to distract or draw out the interviewees. Today the curtain was closed.

Dance and Kellogg were alone. Behind the sparkling mirror the video camera was set up and running. TJ was there, along with Charles Overby, both unseen, though the mirror, of course, implied observers.

Winston Kellogg had declined an attorney and was willing to talk. Which he did in an eerily calm voice (very much the same tone as Daniel Pell's in his interrogation, she reflected, unsettled at the thought). "Kathryn, let's just step back here, can we? Is that all right? I don't know what you think is going on but this isn't the way to handle it. Believe me."

The subtext of these words was arrogance-and the corollary, betrayal. She tried to push the pain away as she replied simply, "Let's get started." She slipped her black-framed glasses on, her predator specs.

"Maybe you've gotten some bad information. Why don't you tell me what you think the problem is and we'll see what's really going on?"

As if he were talking to a child.

She looked Winston Kellogg over closely. It's an interrogation just like any other, Dance told herself. Though it wasn't, of course. Here was a man she'd felt romantic toward and who had lied to her. Someone who had used her, like Daniel Pell had used…well, everyone.

Then she forced aside her own emotion, hard though that was, and concentrated on the task in front of her. She was going to break him. Nothing would stop her.

Because she knew him well by now, the analysis unfolded quickly in her mind.

First, how should he be categorized in the context of the crime? A suspect in a homicide.

Second, does he have a motive to lie? Yes.

Third, what's his personality type? Extroverted, thinking, judging. She could be as tough with him as she needed to be.

Fourth, what is his liar's personality? A High Machiavellian. He's intelligent, has a good memory, is adept at the techniques of deception and will use all those skills to create lies that work to his advantage. He'll give up lying if he's caught, and use other weapons to shift the blame, threaten or attack. He'll demean and patronize, trying to unnerve her and exploit her own emotional responses, a dark mirror image of her own mission as an interrogator. He'll try to get information to use against me later, she reminded herself.

You had to be very careful with High Machs.

The next step in her kinesic analysis would be to determine what stress response state he fell into when lying-anger, denial, depression or bargaining-and to probe his story when she recognized one.

But here was the problem. She was one of the best kinesics analysts in the country, yet she hadn't spotted Kellogg's lies, which he'd dished up right in front of, and to, her. Largely his behavior was not outright lying but evasion-withholding information is the hardest type of deception to detect. Still, Dance was skilled at spotting evasion. More significant, Kellogg was, she decided, in that rare class of individuals virtually immune to kinesic analysts and polygraph operators: excluded subjects, like the mentally ill and serial killers.

The category also includes zealots.

Which was what she now believed Winston Kellogg was. Not the leader of a cult, but someone just as fanatical and just as dangerous, a man convinced of his own righteousness.

Still, she needed to break him. She needed to get to the truth, and to do that, Dance had to spot stress flags within him to know where to probe.

So she attacked. Hard, fast.

From her purse, Dance took a digital audiotape recorder and set it on the table between them. She hit play.

The sounds of a phone ringing, then:

"Tech Resource. Rick Adams speaking."

"My name's Kellogg from Ninth Street. MVCC."

"Sure, Agent Kellogg. What can I do for you?"

"I'm in the area and have a problem on my computer. I've got a protected file and the guy who sent it to me can't remember the password. It's a Windows XP operating system."

"Sure. That's a piece of cake. I can handle it."

"Rather not use you guys for a personal job. They're cracking down on that back at HQ."

"Well, there's a good outfit in Cupertino we farm stuff out to. They're not cheap."

"Are they fast?"

"Oh, for that? Sure."

"Great. Give me their number."

She shut the recorder off. "You lied to me. You said the 'bureau tech guys' cracked it. They didn't."