The Sleeping Doll

him. It was Daniel Pell!
    She gasped.
    He had come here. He was going to finish the murders of the Croyton family.
    A smile on his face, he rose stiffly and began to walk toward her.
    Theresa Croyton began to cry.
    •    •    •
    “No, it’s all right,” the man said in a whisper, as he approached, smiling. “I’m not going to hurt you. Shhhh.”
    Theresa tensed. She told herself to run. Now, do it!
    But her legs wouldn’t move; fear paralyzed her. Besides, there was nowhere to go. He was between her and the house and she knew she couldn’t vault the six-foot chain-link fence. She thought of running away from the house, into the backyard, but then he could tackle her and pull her into the bushes, where he’d . . .
    No, that was too horrible.
    Gasping, actually tasting the fear, Theresa shook her head slowly. Felt her strength ebbing. She looked for a weapon. Nothing: only an edging brick, a bird feeder, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson .
    She looked back at Pell.
    “You killed my parents. You . . . Don’t hurt me!”
    A frown. “No, my God,” the man said, eyes wide. “Oh, no, I just want to talk to you. I’m not Daniel Pell. I swear. Look.”
    He tossed something in her direction, ten feet away. “Look at it. The back. Turn it over.”
    Theresa glanced at the house. The one time she needed her aunt, the woman was nowhere in sight.
    “There,” the man said.
    The girl stepped forward—and he continued to retreat, giving her plenty of room.
    She walked closer and glanced down. It was a book. A Stranger in the Night , by Morton Nagle.
    “That’s me.”
    Theresa wouldn’t pick it up. With her foot, she eased it over. On the back cover was a picture of a younger version of the man in front of her.
    Was it true?
    Theresa suddenly realized that she’d seen only a few pictures of Daniel Pell, taken eight years ago. She’d had to sneak a look at a few articles online—her aunt told her it would set her back years psychologically if she read anything about the murders. But looking at the younger author photo, it was clear that this wasn’t the gaunt, scary man she remembered.
    Theresa wiped her face. Anger exploded inside her, a popped balloon. “What’re you doing here? You fucking scared me!”
    The man pulled his sagging pants up as if planning to walk closer. But evidently he decided not to. “There was no other way to talk to you. I saw your aunt yesterday when she was shopping. I wanted her to ask you something.”
    Theresa glanced at the chain link.
    Nagle said, “The police are on their way, I know. I saw the alarm on the fence. They’ll be here in three, four minutes, and they’ll arrest me. That’s fine. But I have to tell you something. The man who killed your parents has escaped from prison.”
    “I know.”
    “You do? Your aunt—”
    “Just leave me alone!”
    “There’s a policewoman in Monterey who’s trying to catch him but she needs some help. Your aunt wouldn’t tell you, and if you were eleven or twelve I’d never do this. But you’re old enough to make up your own mind. She wants to talk to you.”
    “A policewoman?”
    “Please, just call her. She’s in Monterey. You can—Oh, God.”
    The gunshot from behind Theresa was astonishingly loud, way louder than in the movies. It shook the windows and sent birds streaking into the clear skies.
    Theresa cringed at the sound and dropped to her knees, watching Morton Nagle tumble backward onto the wet grass, his arms flailing in the air.
    Eyes wide in horror, the girl looked at the deck behind the house.
    Weird, she didn’t even know her aunt owned a gun, much less knew how to shoot it.
    •    •    •
    TJ Scanlon’s extensive canvassing of James Reynolds’s neighborhood had yielded no helpful witnesses or evidence.
    “No vee-hicles. No nothin’.” He was calling from a street near the prosecutor’s house.
    Dance, in her office, stretched and her bare feet fiddled with one of the three pairs of shoes under her desk. She badly wanted an ID of Pell’s new car, if not a tag number; Reynolds had reported only that it was a dark sedan, and the officer who’d been bashed with the shovel couldn’t remember seeing it at all. The MCSO’s crime scene team hadn’t found any trace or other forensic evidence to give even a hint as to what Pell might be driving now.
    She thanked TJ and disconnected, then joined O’Neil and Kellogg in the CBI conference room, where Charles Overby was