More Twisted

living or dying, and readers wouldn’t be afraid for her if they didn’t care about her as a character.
    Two, I always remember that my job as a suspense writer is to make my audience afraid but never disgusted or repulsed, as happens when there’s graphic gore or violence against, say, children or animals. The emotion that fear engenders in thriller fiction should be cathartic and exhilarating. Yes, make your readers’ palms sweat, and make them hesitate to shut the lights out at night—but at the end of the ride make sure they climb off the roller coaster unharmed.

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    THE SLEEPING DOLL
    N OW A VAILABLE IN H ARDCOVER
    FROM S IMON & S CHUSTER
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    Chapter 1
    The interrogation began like any other.
    Kathryn Dance entered the interview room and found the man sitting at a metal table, shackled, looking up at her closely. Subjects always did this, of course, though never with such astonishing eyes, their color a blue unlike sky or ocean or famous gems.
    “Good morning,” she said, sitting down across from the man who eight years ago stabbed to death four members of a family for reasons he never shared.
    “And to you.” His voice soft.
    A slight smile on his bearded face, the small, sinewy man sat back, relaxed. His head, covered with long, gray-black hair, was cocked to the side. While most interrogations were accompanied by a jingling sound track of handcuff chains as subjects tried to prove their innocence with broad, predictable gestures, Daniel Pell sat perfectly still.
    To Dance, a specialist in interrogation and kinesics—bodylanguage—Pell’s demeanor and posture suggested caution, but also confidence and, curiously, amusement. He wore an orange jumpsuit, stenciled with CAPITOLA CORRECTIONAL FACILITY on the chest and INMATE unnecessarily decorating the back.
    At the moment, though, Pell and Dance were not in Capitola, but rather a secure interview room at the county courthouse in Salinas, thirty miles away.
    Pell continued his examination. First, Dance’s own eyes—a green complementary to his blue—and framed by square, black-rimmed glasses. He regarded her French-braided, dark-blond hair, the black jacket and beneath it the thick, unrevealing white blouse. He noted too the empty holster on her hip. He was meticulous and in no hurry. Interviewers and interviewees share mutual curiosity. (She told the students in her interrogation seminars, “They’re studying you as hard as you’re studying them—usually even harder, since they have more to lose.”)
    Dance fished in her blue Coach purse for her ID card, not reacting as she saw a tiny stuffed bat that either twelve-year-old Wes or his younger sister, Maggie, or both conspirators had slipped into the bag that morning as a practical joke. She thought: How’s this for a contrasting life? An hour ago she was having breakfast with her children in the kitchen of their homey Victorian house in idyllic Pacific Grove, two dogs at their feet begging for bacon, and now here she was, sitting across a very different table.
    Dance found the ID and displayed it. He stared for a long moment, easing forward. “Dance. Interesting name. Wonder where it comes from. And the California Bureau . . . what is that?”
    “Bureau of Investigation. Like an FBI for the state. Now,Mr. Pell, you understand that this conversation is being recorded.”
    He glanced at the mirror, behind which a video camera was humming away. “You folks think we really believe that’s there so we can fix up our hair?”
    Mirrors weren’t placed in interrogation rooms to hide cameras and witnesses—there are far better high-tech ways to do so—but because people lie less frequently when they can see themselves.
    Dance gave a faint smile. “And you understand that you can withdraw from this interview anytime you want and that you have a right to have an attorney present?”
    “I know more criminal procedure than the entire graduating class of Hastings Law rolled up together. Which is a pretty funny image, when you think about it.”
    More articulate than Dance had expected. More clever too.
    She wasn’t pleased to be sitting this far away from the subject, with a table separating them. Anything between interrogators and subjects gives them an added layer of defense.
    With the prisoner’s violent past, though, security took priority.
    The previous week, Daniel Raymond Pell, serving a life sentence for the 1999 murders of William Croyton, his wife, and two of their children,