Jeffery Deaver - The Sleeping Doll

"I looked back at the Pell case. Michael O'Neil was upset that you wanted a takedown at the Sea View, rather than surveillance. And I wondered why you wanted to be first through the door. The answer is so that you'd have a clear shot at Pell. And yesterday, at the beach at Point Lobos, you got him on his knees. And then you killed him."

"That's your evidence that I murdered him? His posture? Really, Kathryn."

"And MCSO crime scene found the bullet of the slug you fired at me on the ridge."

He fell silent at this.

"Oh, you weren't shooting to hit me, I understand. You just wanted to keep me where I was, with Samantha and Linda, so that I wouldn't interfere with your chance to kill Pell."

"It was an accidental discharge," he said matter-of-factly. "Careless of me. I should've owned up to it but it was embarrassing. Here I am, a professional."

Lie…

Under her gaze, his shoulders dipped slightly. His lips tightened. Dance knew there'd be no confession-she wasn't even after that-but he did shift into a different stress state. He wasn't a completely emotionless machine, it seemed. She'd hit him hard, and it hurt.

"I don't talk about my past and what happened with my daughter. I should've shared more with you, maybe, but you don't talk about your husband much either, I notice." He fell silent for a moment. "Look around us, Kathryn. Look at the world. We're so fragmented, so shattered. The family's a dying breed, and yet we're starving for the comfort of one. Starving…And what happens? Along come people like Daniel Pell. And they suck the vulnerable, needy ones right in. The women in Pell's Family-Samantha and Linda. They were good kids, never did anything wrong, not really. And they got seduced by a killer. Why? Because he dangled in front of them the one thing they didn't have: a family.

"It was only a matter of time before they, or Jennie Marston, or somebody else under his spell started killing. Or maybe kidnapping children. Abusing them. Even in prison, Pell had his followers. How many of them went on to do the same thing he'd done, after they were released?…These people have to be stopped. I'm aggressive about it, I get results. But I don't cross the line."

"You don't cross your line, Winston. But it's not your own standards you have to apply. That's not how the system works. Daniel Pell never thought he was doing anything wrong either."

He gave her a smile and a shrug, the emblem gesture, which she took to mean, You see it your way, I see it mine. And we'll never agree on this.

To Dance it was as clear as saying, "I'm guilty."

Then the smile faded, as it had at the beach yesterday. "One thing. Us? That was real. Whatever else you think about me, that was real."

Kathryn Dance recalled walking down the hall with him at CBI when he'd made the wistful comment on the Family, implying gaps in his own life: solitude, a job substituting for a failed marriage, his daughter's unspeakably terrible death. Dance didn't doubt that, though he had deceived her about his mission, this lonely man had been trying, genuinely, to make a connection with her.

And as a kinesic analyst she could see that his comment-"That was real"-was absolutely honest.

But it was also irrelevant to the interrogation and not worth the breath to respond to.

Then a faint V formed between his brows and the faux smile was back. "Really, Kathryn. This is isn't a good idea. It'll be a nightmare running a case like this. For the CBI…for you personally too."

"Me?"

Kellogg pursed his lips for a moment. "I seem to recall some questions were raised about your conduct in the handling of the interrogation at the courthouse in Salinas. Maybe something was said or done that helped Pell escape. I don't know the details. Maybe it was nothing. But I did hear Amy Grabe has a note or two on it." He shrugged, lifting his palms. The cuffs jingled.

Overby's ass-covering comment to the FBI, coming back to haunt. Dance was seething at Kellogg's threat but she offered no affect displays whatsoever. Her shrug was even more dismissive than his. "If that issue comes up, I guess we'll just have to look at the facts."

"I suppose so. I just hope it doesn't affect your career, long term."

Taking off her glasses, she eased forward into a more personal proxemic zone. "Winston, I'm curious. Tell me: What did Daniel say to you before you killed him? He'd dropped the gun and he was on his knees, reaching for the cuffs. Then he looked up. And he knew, didn't he? He wasn't a stupid man. He knew he was dead. Did he say anything?"

Kellogg gave an involuntary recognition response, though he said nothing.

Her outburst was inappropriate, of course, and she knew it marked the end of the interrogation. But that didn't matter. She had her answers, she had the truth-or at least an approximation of it. Which, according to the elusive science of kinesic analysis and interrogation, is usually enough.

Dance and TJ were in Charles Overby's office. The CBI chief sat behind his desk, nodding and looking at a picture of himself and his son catching a salmon. Or, she couldn't tell for sure, looking at his desk clock. It was 8:30 P.M. Two straight nights the agent in charge had been working late. A record.

"I saw the whole interview. You got some good stuff. Absolutely. But he was pretty slick. Didn't really admit anything. Hardly a confession."

"He's a High Mach with an antisocial personality, Charles. He's not the sort to confess. I was just probing to see what his defenses would be and how he'd structure the denials. He destroyed computer files when he thought they implicated him in a suspicious suicide in L.A.? He used unauthorized ordnance? His gun went off 'accidentally' in my direction? A jury'd laugh all the way to a guilty verdict. For him, the interrogation was a disaster."

"Really? He looked pretty confident."

"He did, and he'll be a good defendant on the stand- if he takes the stand. But tactically his case is hopeless."

"He was arresting an armed killer. And you're claiming that his motive is that his daughter died because of some cult thing? That's not compelling."

"I never worry too much about motive. If a man kills his wife, it doesn't really matter to the jury if it was because she served him a burned steak or he wants her insurance money. Murder's murder. It'll become a lot less soap opera when we link Kellogg to the others who've been killed."

Dance told him about the other deaths, the suspicious takedown in Chicago last week, and others, in Fort Worth and New York. The suicide in L.A. and one in Oregon. One particularly troubling case was in Florida, where Kellogg had gone to assist Dade County deputies investigating charges of kidnapping earlier in the year. A Miami man had a communal house on the outskirts of the city. The Latino certainly had a devoted following, some of them quite fanatical. Kellogg shot him when he'd apparently lunged for a weapon during a raid. But it was later discovered that the commune also ran a soup kitchen and a respected Bible study class and was raising funds for a day-care center for children of working single parents in the neighborhood. The kidnapping charges turned out to be bogus, leveled by his ex-wife.

The local papers were still questioning the circumstances of his death.

"Interesting, but I'm not sure any of that would be admissible," her boss offered. "What about forensics from the beach?"

Dance felt a pang that Michael O'Neil wasn't here to go through the technical side of the case. (Why wasn't he calling back?)

"They found the slug that Kellogg fired at Kathryn," TJ said. "It conclusively matches his SIG."

Overby grunted. "Accidental discharge…Relax, Kathryn, somebody's got to be the devil's advocate here."