The Sleeping Doll

pause. Overby said, “Oh, you called them where they live. You didn’t say that.”
    Kathryn Dance, former reporter and jury consultant, had played in the real world for a long time. She avoided TJ’s glance and said, “You’re right, Charles, I didn’t. Sorry.”
    The CBI head turned to O’Neil. “This’s a tough one, Michael. Lots of angles. Sure glad you’re available to help us out.”
    “Glad to do what I can.”
    This was Charles Overby at his best. Using the words “help us” to make clear who was running the show, while also tacitly explaining that O’Neil and the MCSO were on the line too.
    Stash the blame  . . .
    Overby announced he was headed back to the CBI office and left the conference room.
    Dance now turned to Morton Nagle. “Do you have any research about Pell I could look at?”
    “Well, I suppose. But why?”
    “Maybe help us get some idea of where he’s going,” O’Neil said.
    “Copies,” the writer said. “Not the originals.”
    “That’s fine,” Dance told him. “One of us’ll come by later and pick them up. Where’s your office?”
    Nagle worked out of a house he was renting in Monterey. He gave Dance the address and phone number, then began packing up his camera bag.
    Dance glanced down at it. “Hold on.”
    Nagle noticed her eyes on the contents. He smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    He picked up a copy of one of his true-crime books, Blind Trust , and with a flourish autographed it for her.
    “Thanks.” She set it down and pointed at what she’d actually been looking at. “Your camera. Did you take any pictures this morning? Before the fire?”
    “Oh.” He smiled wryly at the misunderstanding. “Yes, I did.”
    “It’s digital?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Can we see them?”
    Nagle picked up the Canon and began to push buttons. She and O’Neilhunched close over the tiny screen on the back. Dance detected a new aftershave. She felt comfort in his proximity.
    The writer scrolled through the pictures. Most of them were of people walking into the courthouse, a few artistic shots of the front of the building in the fog.
    Then the detective and the agent simultaneously said, “Wait.” The image they were looking at depicted the driveway that led to where the fire had occurred. They could make out someone behind a car, just the back visible, wearing a blue jacket, a baseball cap and sunglasses.
    “Look at the arm.”
    Dance nodded. It seemed the person’s arm trailed behind, as if wheeling a suitcase.
    “Is that time stamped?”
    Nagle called up the readout. “Nine twenty-two.”
    “That’d work out just right,” Dance said, recalling the fire marshal’s estimate of the time the gas bomb had been planted. “Can you blow up the image?”
    “Not in the camera.”
    TJ said he could on his computer, though, no problem. Nagle gave the memory card to him, and Dance sent TJ back to CBI headquarters, reminding him, “And Samantha McCoy. Track her down. The aunt too. Bakersfield.”
    “You bet, boss.”
    Rey Carraneo was still outside, canvassing for witnesses. But Dance believed that the accomplice had fled too; now that Pell had probably eluded the roadblocks there was no reason for the partner to stay around. She sent him back to headquarters as well.
    Nagle said, “I’ll get started on the copies. . . . Oh, don’t forget.” He handed her the autographed paperback. “I know you’ll like it.”
    When he was gone Dance held it up. “In all my free time.” And gave it to O’Neil for his collection.

Chapter 9
    At lunch hour a woman in her midtwenties was sitting on a patio outside the Whole Foods grocery store in Monterey’s Del Monte Center.
    A disk of sun was slowly emerging as the blanket of fog melted.
    She heard a siren in the distance, a dove cooing, a horn, a child crying, then a child laughing.
    Jennie Marston thought, Angel songs.
    The scent of pine filled the cool air. No breeze. Dull light. A typical California day on the coast, but everything about it was intensified.
    Which is what happens when you’re in love and about to meet your boyfriend.
    Anticipation  . . .
    Some old pop song, Jennie thought. Her mother sang it from time to time, her smoker’s voice harsh and off-key, often slurred.
    Blond, authentic California blond, Jennie sipped her coffee. It was expensive but good. This wasn’t her kind of store (the twenty-four-year-old part-time caterer was an Albertsons girl, a Safeway girl) but Whole