The Sleeping Doll

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