Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"I-"

"Winston, Pell didn't write anything about Nimue or suicides. I created that file last night."

He could only stare at her.

She said, "Nimue was a red herring. There was nothing on Jennie's computer until I put it there. TJ did find a reference to Nimue but it was a newspaper story about a woman named Alison Sharpe, an interview in a local paper in Montana-'My Month with Daniel Pell,' something like that. They met in San Francisco about twelve years ago, when she was living in a group like the Family and going by the name Nimue. The leader named everyone after Arthurian characters. She and Pell hitchhiked around the state but she left him after he was picked up in Redding on that murder charge. Pell probably didn't know her surname and searched the only two names he knew-Alison and Nimue-to find her and kill her because she knew where his mountaintop was."

"So you faked this file and asked me to help you crack it. Why the masquerade, Kathryn?"

"I'll tell you why. Body language isn't limited to the living, you know. You can read a lot into a corpse 's posture too. Last night TJ brought me all the files in the case for the final disposition report. I was looking over the crime-scene pictures from Point Lobos. Something didn't seem right. Pell wasn't hiding behind the rocks. He was out in the open, on his back. His legs were bent and there were water and sand stains on his knees. Both knees, not just one. That was curious. People crouch when they're fighting, or at least keep one foot planted on the ground. I saw exactly the same posture in a case involving a man who'd been killed in a gang hit, forced on his knees to beg before he was shot. Why would Pell leave cover, get down on both knees and shoot at you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." No emotion whatsoever.

"And the coroner's report said that from the downward angle of the bullets through his body you were standing full height, not crouching. If it was a real firefight you would've been in a defensive stance, crouching yourself… And I remembered the sequence of the sounds. The flash-bang went off and then I heard the shots, after a delay. No, I think that you saw where he was, tossed the flash-bang and moved in fast, disarmed him. Then had him kneel and you tossed your cuffs on the ground for him to put on. When he was reaching for them, you shot him."

"Ridiculous."

She continued, unfazed. "And the flash-bang? After the assault at the Sea View you were supposed to check all the ordnance back in. That's standard procedure. Why keep it? Because you were waiting for a chance to move in and kill him. And I checked the timing of your call for backup. You didn't make it from the inn, like you pretended. You made it later, to give you a chance to get Pell alone." She held up a hand, silencing another protest. "But whether my theory was ridiculous or not, his death raised questions. I thought I should check further. I wanted to know more about you. I got your file from a friend of my husband's on Ninth Street. I found some interesting facts. You'd been involved in the shooting deaths of several suspected cult leaders during attempts to apprehend. And two cult leaders died of suicides under suspicious circumstances when you were consulting with local law enforcement agencies in their investigations.

"The suicide in L.A. was the most troubling. A woman who ran a cult committed suicide by jumping out of her sixth-story window, two days after you arrived to help out the LAPD. But it was curious-no one had ever heard her talk about suicide before that. There was no note, and, yes, she was being investigated but only for civil tax fraud. No reason to kill herself.

"So, I had to test you, Winston. I wrote the document in that file."

It was a fake email that suggested a girl with the name of Nimue was in the suicide victim's cult and had information that the woman's death was suspicious.

"I got a tap warrant on your phone, put a simple Windows password on the file and handed over the computer to see what you'd do. If you'd told me you'd read the file and what it contained, that would've been the end of the matter. You and I'd be on our way to Big Sur right now.

"But, no, you made your phone call to the tech, had the private company crack the code and you read the file. There was no wipe bomb. No mush. You destroyed it yourself. You had to, of course. You were afraid we'd catch on to the fact that your life for the past six years has been traveling around the country and murdering people like Daniel Pell."

Kellogg gave a laugh. Now, faint kinesic deviation; the tone was different. An excluded subject, yes, but he was feeling the stress. She'd touched close to home.

"Please, Kathryn. Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because of your daughter." She said this not without some sympathy.

And the fact that he gave no response, merely held her eye as if he were in great pain, was an indication-though a tiny one-that she was narrowing in on the truth.

"It takes a lot to fool me, Winston. And you're very, very good. The only variation from your baseline behavior I ever noticed was when it came to children and family. But I didn't think much of it. At first I supposed that was because of the connection between us, and you weren't comfortable with children and were wrestling with the idea of having them in your life.

"Then, I think you saw that I was curious, or suspicious, and you confessed that you'd lied, that you had had a daughter. You told me about her death. Of course, that's a common trick-confession to one lie to cover up another, related one. And what was the lie? Your daughter did die in a car accident, yes, but it wasn't exactly how you described it. You apparently destroyed the police report in Seattle-nobody could find it-but TJ and I made some calls and pieced together the story.

"When she was sixteen your daughter ran away from home because you and your wife were getting divorced. She ended up with a group in Seattle-very much like the Family. She was there for about six months. Then she and three other members of the cult died in a suicide pact because the leader told them to leave, they hadn't been loyal enough. They drove their car into Puget Sound."

There's something terrifying about the idea of being kicked out of your family…

"And then you joined the MVCC and made it your life's work to stop people like that. Only sometimes the law didn't cooperate. And you had to take it into your own hands. I called a friend in Chicago PD. You were the cult expert on the scene last week, assisting them. Their report said you claimed the perp fired at you, and you had to 'neutralize the threat.' But I don't think he did shoot. I think you killed him and then wounded yourself." She tapped her neck, indicating his bandage. "Which makes that murder too, just like Pell."

She grew angry. It hit fast, like a flash of hot sunlight as a cloud passed on. Control it, she told herself. Take a lesson from Daniel Pell.

Take a lesson from Winston Kellogg.

"The dead man's family filed a complaint. They claimed he was set up. He had a long rap sheet, sure. Just like Pell. But he never touched guns. He was afraid of the deadly-weapon count."

"He touched one long enough to shoot me."

A very faint shift of Kellogg's foot. Almost invisible, but it telegraphed stress. So, he wasn't completely immune to her interrogation.

His response was a lie.

"We'll know more after reviewing the files. And we're checking with other jurisdictions too, Winston. Apparently you insisted on helping local police all over the country whenever there was a crime involving a cult."

Charles Overby had implied that it was his own idea to bring in a federal specialist on cults. Last night, though, she'd begun to suspect that this probably wasn't what happened and she'd asked her boss point-blank how the FBI agent had come to work the Pell case. Overby hemmed and hawed but ultimately admitted that Kellogg had told the bureau's Amy Grabe he was coming to the Peninsula to consult on the manhunt for Pell; it wasn't up for debate. He'd been here as soon as the paperwork in Chicago was cleaned up.