“No, it’s fine. It’s interesting.”
As she fastened the buttons she glanced at the pearl dots, then the embroidery, the cuffs. She’d probably had to work a whole week to afford it.
“I’ll change later if you want.”
“No, if you like it, that’s fine,” he said, getting his tone just right, like a singer hitting a difficult note. He glanced at the garment once more, then he leaned forward and kissed her—the forehead, not the mouth, of course. He scanned the field again. “We should get back on the road.”
“Sure.” She wanted him to tell her more about the blouse. What was wrong with it? Did he hate pink?
Did an ex-girlfriend have a shirt like it? Did it make her boobs look small?
But, of course, he said nothing.
Jennie smiled when he touched her leg and she put the car in gear. She returned to the road, glancing down one last time at the blouse, which, Pell knew, she would never wear again. His goal had been for her to throw it out; he had a pretty good idea that she would.
And the irony was that the blouse looked really good on her, and he liked it quite a bit.
But offering his subtle disapproval and watching her reaction gave him a nice picture of exactly where she was. How controllable, how loyal.
A good teacher always knows the exact state of his student’s progress.
Michael O’Neil sat in a chair in Dance’s office, rocking back and forth on its rear legs, his shoes on her battered coffee table. It was his favorite way to sit.
(Kinesically Dance put the habit down to nervous energy—and a few other issues, which, because she was so close to him, she chose not to analyze in more depth.) He, TJ Scanlon and Dance were gazing at her phone, from whose speaker a computer tech from Capitola prison was explaining, “Pelldid get online yesterday, but apparently he didn’t send any emails—at least not then. I couldn’t tell about earlier. Yesterday he only browsed the Web. He erased the sites he visited but he forgot about erasing search requests. I found what he was looking up.”
“Go ahead.”
“He did a Google search for ‘Alison’ and ‘Nimue.’ He searched those together, as limiting terms.”
Dance asked for spellings.
“Then he did another. ‘Helter Skelter.’”
O’Neil and Dance shared a troubled glance. The phrase was the title of a Beatles song, which Charles Manson was obsessed with. He had used the term to refer to an impending race war in America. It was also the title of the award-winning book about the cult leader and the murders by the man who prosecuted him.
“Then he went to Visual-Earth dot com. Like Google Earth. You can see satellite pictures of practically everywhere on the planet.”
Great, Dance thought. Though it turned out not to be. There was no way to narrow down what he’d looked for.
“It could’ve been highways in California, it could’ve been Paris or Key West or Moscow.”
“And what’s ‘Nimue’?”
“No idea.”
“Does it mean anything in Capitola?”
“No.”
“Any employees there named Alison?”
The disembodied voice of the techie said, “Nope. But I was going to say I might be able to find out what sites he logged onto. It depends on whether he just erased or shredded them. If they’re shredded, forget it. But if they’re just dumped I might be able to find them floating around in the free space somewhere on the hard drive.”
“Anything you can do would be appreciated,” Dance said.
“I’ll get right on it.”
She thanked him and they disconnected.
“TJ, check out ‘Nimue.’”
His fingers flew over the keyboard. The results came up and he scrolled through them. After a few minutes he said, “Hundreds of thousands of hits. Looks like a lot of people use it as a screen name.”
O’Neil said, “Somebody he knew online. Or a nickname. Or somebody’s real last name.”
Staring at the screen, TJ continued, “Trademarks too: cosmetics, electronic equipment—hm, sex products…Never seen one ofthose before.”
“TJ,” Dance snapped.
“Sorry.” He scrolled again. “Interesting. Most references are to King Arthur.”
“As inCamelot ?”
“I guess.” He continued to read. “Nimue was the Lady of the Lake. This wizard, Merlin, fell in love with her—he was like a hundred or something and she was sixteen. Nowthat ’ll guarantee you twenty minutes onDr. Phil. ” He read some more. “Merlin taught her how to be a sorceress. Oh, and she gave King Arthur this magic sword.”
“Excalibur,” O’Neil said.
“What?” TJ asked.
“The sword. Excalibur. Haven’t you heard any of this before?” the detective asked.
“Naw, I didn’t take Boring Made-up Stuff in college.”
“I like the idea that it’s somebody he was trying to find. Cross-check ‘Nimue’ with ‘Pell,’ ‘Alison,’
‘California,’ ‘Carmel,’ ‘Croyton’…Anything else?”
O’Neil suggested, “The women: Sheffield, McCoy, Whitfield.”
“Good.”
After several minutes of frantic typing the agent looked over at Dance. “Sorry, boss. Zip.”
“Check the search terms out with VICAP, NCIC and the other main criminal databases.”
“Will do.”
Dance stared at the words she’d written. What did they mean? Why had he risked going online to check them out?
Helter Skelter, Nimue, Alison…
And what had he been looking at on Visual-Earth? A place he intended to flee to, a place he intended to burglarize?
She asked O’Neil, “What about the forensics at the courthouse?”
The detective consulted his notes. “No red flags. Almost everything was burned or melted. The gas was in plastic milk jugs inside a cheap roller suitcase. Sold in a dozen places—Wal-Mart, Target, stores like that. The fireproof bag and fire suit were made by Protection Equipment, Inc., New Jersey. Available all over the world but most are sold in Southern California.”
“Brushfires?”