The Sleeping Doll

nothing. For one thing, Daniel didn’t talk a lot. Not to us, the hacks.”
    “Did he spend time in the library?”
    “Huge amount. Read all the time.”
    “Can I find out what?”
    “It’s not logged and the cons can’t check anything out.”
    “How about visitors?”
    “Nobody in the last year.”
    “And telephone calls? Are they logged?”
    “Yes, ma’am. But not recorded.” He thought back. “He didn’t have many, aside from reporters wanting to interview him. But he never called back. I think maybe he talked to his aunt once or twice. No others I remember.”
    “What about computers, email?”
    “Not for the prisoners. We do for ourselves, of course. They’re in a special area—a control zone. We’re very strict about that. You know, I was thinking about it and if he communicated with anybody on the outside—”
    “Which he had to do,” Dance pointed out.
    “Right. It had to be through a con being released. You might want to check there.”
    “I thought of that. I’ve talked to your warden. She tells me that there were only two releases in the past month and their parole officers had them accounted for this morning. They could’ve gotten messages to someone, though. The officers’re checking that out.”
    Waters, she’d noted, had arrived empty-handed, and Dance now asked, “Did you get our request for the contents of his cell?”
    The guard’s mood darkened. He was shaking his head, looking down. “Yes, ma’am. But it was empty. Nothing inside at all. Had been empty for a couple of days actually.” He looked up, his lips tight, as he seemed to be debating. Then his eyes dipped as he said, “I didn’t catch it.”
    “Catch what?”
    “The thing is, I’ve worked the Q and Soledad and Lompoc. Half dozen others. We learn to look for certain things. See, if something big’s going down, the cons’ cells change. Things’ll disappear—sometimes it’s evidence that they’re going to make a run, or evidence of shit a con’s done that he doesn’t want us to know about. Or what he’s going to do. Because he knows we’ll look over the cell with a microscope after.”
    “But with Pell you didn’t think about him throwing everything out.”
    “We never had an escape from Capitola. It can’t happen. And they’re watched so close, it’s almost impossible for a con to move on another one—kill him, I mean.” The man’s face was flushed. “I should’ve thought better. If it’d been Lompoc, I’d’ve known right away something was going down.” He rubbed his eyes. “I screwed up.”
    “That’d be a tough leap to make,” Dance reassured him. “From housekeeping to escaping.”
    He shrugged and examined his nails. He wore no jewelry but Dance could see the indentation of a wedding band. It occurred to her that, foronce, this was no badge of infidelity but a concession to the job. Probably, circulating among dangerous prisoners, it was better not to wear anything they might steal.
    “Sounds like you’ve been in this business for a while.”
    “Long time. After the army I got into corrections. Been there ever since.” He brushed his crew-cut, grinning. “Sometimes seems like forever. Sometimes seems like just yesterday. Two years till I retire. In a funny way, I’ll miss it.” He was at ease now, realizing he wouldn’t be horsewhipped for not foreseeing the escape.
    She asked about where he lived, his family. He was married and held up his left hand, laughing; her deduction about the ring proved correct. He and his wife had two children, both bound for college, he said proudly.
    But while they chatted, a silent alarm was pulsing within Dance. She had a situation on her hands.
    Tony Waters was lying.
    Many falsehoods go undetected simply because the person being deceived doesn’t expect to be lied to. Dance had asked Waters here only to get information about Daniel Pell, so she wasn’t in interrogation mode. If Waters had been a suspect or a hostile witness, she’d have been looking for stress signs when he gave certain answers, then kept probing those topics until he admitted lying and eventually told the truth.
    This process only works, though, if you determine the subject’s nondeceptive baseline behavior before you start asking the sensitive questions, which Dance, of course, had had no reason to do because she’d assumed he’d be truthful.
    Even without a baseline comparison, though, a perceptive kinesic interrogator can sometimes spot deception. Two