The Sleeping Doll

press all the time—he not only designed most of the programs himself, he was the chief of sales too. Larger-than-life kind of guy. Work hard, play hard. Big, loud, tanned. Not the most sympathetic victim in the world. Pretty ruthless businessman, rumors of affairs, disgruntled employees. But if murder was a crime only against saints, we prosecutors’d be out of a job.
    “His company had been burglarized a couple of times in the year before the killing. The perps got away with computers and software, but Santa Clara County could never come up with a suspect. No indication that Pell had anything to do with it. But I always wondered if it could’ve been him.”
    “What happened to the company after he died?”
    “It was acquired by somebody else, Microsoft or Apple or one of the game companies, I don’t know.”
    “And his estate?”
    “Most of it went in trust to his daughter, and I think some to his wife’s sister, the aunt who took custody of the girl. Croyton’d been in computers ever since he was a kid. He had probably ten, twenty million dollars’ worth of old hardware and programs that he left to Cal State–Monterey Bay. The computer museum there’s really impressive, and techies come from all over the world to do research in the archives.”
    “Still?”
    “Apparently so. Croyton was way ahead of his time.”
    “And rich.”
    “Way rich.”
    “That was the actual motive for the killings?”
    “Well, we never knew for sure. On the facts, it was a plain-vanilla burglary. I think Pell read about Croyton and thought it’d be a cakewalk to pick up some big bucks.”
    “But his take was pretty skimpy, I read.”
    “A thousand and some jewelry. Would’ve been a small case. Except for five dead bodies, of course. Almost six—good thing that little girl was upstairs.”
    “What’s her story?”
    “Poor kid. You know what they called her?”
    “ ‘The Sleeping Doll.’ ”
    “Right. She didn’t testify. Even if she’d seen something, I wouldn’t’ve subjected her to the stand, not with that prick in the courtroom. I had enough evidence anyway.”
    “She didn’t remember anything?”
    “Nothing helpful. She went to bed early that night.”
    “Where is she now?”
    “No idea. She was adopted by the aunt and uncle and they moved away.”
    “What was Pell’s defense?”
    “They’d gone there with some business idea. Newberg snapped and killed everybody. Pell tried to stop him, they fought and Pell, quote, ‘had’ to kill him. But there was no evidence Croyton had a meeting planned—the family was in the middle of dinner when they showed up. Besides, the forensics were clear: time of death, fingerprints, trace, blood spatter, everything. Pell was the doer.”
    “In prison Pell got access to a computer. Unsupervised.”
    “That’s not good.”
    She nodded. “We found some things he searched for. Do they mean anything to you? One was ‘Alison.’ ”
    “It wasn’t one of the girls in the Family. I don’t remember anybody else connected to him with that name.”
    “Another word he searched was ‘Nimue.’ A character out of mythology. King Arthur legend. But I’m thinking it’s a name or screen name of somebody Pell wanted to get in touch with.”
    “Sorry, nothing.”
    “Any other ideas about what he might have in mind?”
    Reynolds shook his head. “Sorry. It was a big case—for me. And for the county. But, the fact is, it wasn’t remarkable. He was caught red-handed, theforensics were waterproof and he was a recidivist with a history of criminal activity going back to his early teens. I mean, this guy and the Family were on watch lists in beach communities from Big Sur to Marin. I’d’ve had to screw up pretty bad to lose.”
    “All right, James. I should get going,” she said. “Appreciate the help. If you find something in the files, let me know.”
    He gave her a solemn nod, no longer a dabbling retiree or kindly father-of-the-bride. She could see in Reynolds’s eyes the fierce determination that had undoubtedly characterized his approach in court. “I’ll do anything I can to help get that son of a bitch back where he belongs. Or into a body bag.”
    •    •    •
    They’d separated, and now, several hundred yards apart, they made their way on foot to a motel in quaint Pacific Grove, right in the heart of the Peninsula.
    Pell walked leisurely and wide-eyed, like a dumbfounded tourist who’d never seen surf outside Baywatch .
    They