“Are callsthere logged?”
“No. Not local ones.”
“If it was long distance it would be.”
Eyes on the floor. Waters was miserable.
“What, Tony?”
“I got him a phone card. You call an eight hundred number and punch in a code, then the number you want.”
Dance knew them. Untraceable.
“Really, you have to believe me. I wouldn’t’ve done it, except the information he gave me…it was good.
It saved—”
“What were they talking about?” she asked in a friendly voice. You’re never rough with a confessing subject; they’re your new best friend.
“Just stuff. You know. Money, I remember.”
“What about it?”
“Pell asked how much she’d put together and she said ninety-two hundred bucks. And he said, ‘That’s all?’”
Pretty expensive phone sex, Dance reflected wryly.
“Then she asked about visiting hours and he said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
So he didn’t want her to visit. No record of them together.
“Any idea of where she was?”
“He mentioned Bakersfield. He said specifically, ‘To Bakersfield.’”
Telling her to go to his aunt’s place and pick up the hammer to plant in the well.
“And, okay, it’s coming back to me now. She was telling him about wrens and hummingbirds in the backyard. And then Mexican food. ‘Mexican is comfort food.’ That’s what she said.”
“Did her voice have an ethnic or regional accent?”
“Not that I could tell.”
“Was it low or high, her voice?”
“Low, I guess. Kind of sexy.”
“Did she sound smart or stupid?”
“Jeez, I couldn’t tell.” He sounded exhausted.
“Is there anything else that’s helpful, Tony? Come on, we really need to get this guy.”
“Not that I can think of. I’m sorry.”
She looked him over and believed that, no, he didn’t know anything more.
“Okay. I think that’ll do it for the time being.”
He started out. At the door, he paused and looked back. “Sorry I was kind of confused. It’s been a tough day.”
“Not a good day at all,” she agreed. He remained motionless in the doorway, a dejected pet. When he didn’t get the reassurance he sought, he slumped away.
Dance called Carraneo, currently en route to the You Mail It store, and gave him the information she’d pried from the guard: that his partner didn’t seem to have any accent and that she had a low voice. That might help the manager remember the woman more clearly.
She then called the warden of Capitola and told her what happened. The woman was silent for a moment then offered a soft, “Oh.”
Dance asked if the prison had a computer specialist. It did, and she’d have him search the computers in the administrative office for online activity and emails yesterday. It should be easy since the staff didn’t work on Sunday and Pell presumably had been the only one online—if he had been.
“I’m sorry,” Dance said.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
The agent was referring not so much to Pell’s escape but to yet another consequence of it. Dance didn’t know the warden but supposed that to run a superprison, she was talented at her job and the work was important to her. It was a shame that her career in corrections, like Tony Waters’s, would probably soon be over.
Chapter 12
She’d done well, his little lovely.
Followed the instructions perfectly. Getting the hammer from his aunt’s garage in Bakersfield (how had Kathryn Dance figuredthat one out?). Embossing the wallet with Robert Herron’s initials. Then planting them in the well in Salinas. Making the fuse for the gas bomb (she’d said it was as easy as following a recipe for a cake). Planting the bag containing the fire suit and knife. Hiding clothes under the pine tree.
Pell, though, hadn’t been sure of her ability to look people in the eye and lie to them. So he hadn’t used her as a getaway driver from the courthouse. In fact, he’d made sure that she wasn’t anywhere near the place when he escaped. He didn’t want her stopped at a roadblock and giving everything away because she stammered and flushed with guilt.
Now, shoes off as she drove (he found that kinky), a happy smile on her face, Jennie Marston was chattering away in her sultry voice. Pell had wondered if she’d believe the story about his innocence in the deaths at the courthouse. But one thing that had astonished Daniel Pell in all his years of getting
people to do what he wanted was how often they unwittingly leapt at the chance to be victims, how often they flung logic and caution to the wind and believed what they wanted to—that is, whathe wanted them to.
Still, that didn’t mean Jennie would buy everything he told her, and in light of what he had planned for the next few days, he’d have to monitor her closely, see where she’d support him and where she’d balk.
They drove through a complicated route of surface streets, avoiding the highways with their potential roadblocks.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, voice tentative as she rested a hand on his knee with ambivalent desperation. He knew what she was feeling: torn between pouring out her love for him and scaring him off. The gushing would win out. Always did with women like her. Oh, Daniel Pell knew all about the Jennie Marstons of the world, the women breathlessly seduced by bad boys. He’d learned about them years ago, being a habitual con. You’re in a bar and you drop the news that you’ve done time, most women’ll blink and never come back from their next restroom visit. But there’re some who’ll get wet when you whisper about the crime you’d done and the time you’d served. They’d smile in a certain way, lean close and want to hear more.
That included murder—depending on how you couched it.
And Daniel Pell knew how to couch things.