“But you told the prisoner in Capitola that you wanted him to go to the well and find the hammer and wallet.”
“No, that’s whathe told the warden.” Pell offered another amused smile. “Why don’t you talk to him about it? You’ve got sharp eyes, Officer Dance. I’ve seen them looking me over, deciding if I’m being straight with you. I’ll bet you could tell in a flash that that boy was lying.”
She gave no reaction, but reflected that it was very rare for a suspect to realize he was being analyzed kinesically.
“But then how did he know about the evidence in the well?”
“Oh, I’ve got that figured out. Somebody stole a hammer of mine, killed Herron with it and planted it to blame me. They wore gloves. Those rubber ones everybody wears onCSI. ”
Still relaxed. The body language wasn’t any different from his baseline. He was showing only emblems—common gestures that tended to substitute for words, like shrugs and finger pointing. There were no adaptors, which signal tension, or affect displays—signs that he was experiencing emotion.
“But if he wanted to do that,” Dance pointed out, “wouldn’t the killer just call the policethen and tell them where the hammer was? Why wait more than ten years?”
“Being smart, I’d guess. Better to bide his time. Then spring the trap.”
“But why would the real killer call the prisoner in Capitola? Why not just call the police directly?”
A hesitation. Then a laugh. His blue eyes shone with excitement, which seemed genuine. “Becausethey
’re involved too. The police. Sure…The cops realize the Herron case hasn’t been solved and they want to blame somebody. Why notme ? They’ve already got me in jail. I’ll bet the cops planted the hammer themselves.”
“Let’s work with this a little. There’re two different things you’re saying. First, somebody stole your hammerbefore Herron was killed, murdered him with it and now, all this time later, dimes you out. But your second version is that the police got your hammerafter Herron was killed by someone else altogether and planted it in the well to blame you. Those’re contradictory. It’s either one or the other.
Which do you think?”
“Hm.” Pell thought for a few seconds. “Okay, I’ll go with number two. The police. It’s a setup. I’m sure that’s what happened.”
She looked him in the eyes, green on blue. Nodding agreeably. “Let’s consider that. First, where would the police have gotten the hammer?”
He thought. “When they arrested me for that Carmel thing.”
“The Croyton murders in ninety-nine?”
“Right. All the evidence they took from my house in Seaside.”
Dance’s brows furrowed. “I doubt that. Evidence is accounted for too closely. No, I’d go for a more credible scenario: that the hammer was stolen recently. Where else could somebody find a hammer of yours? Do you have any property in the state?”
“No.”
“Any relatives or friends who could’ve had some tools of yours?”
“Not really.”
Which wasn’t an answer to a yes-or-no question; it was even slipperier than “I don’t recall.” Dance
noticed too that Pell had put his hands, tipped with long, clean nails, on the table at the word “relatives.”
This was a deviation from baseline behavior. It didn’t mean lying, but hewas feeling stress. The questions were upsetting him.
“Daniel, do you have any relations living in California?”
He hesitated, must have assessed that she was the sort to check out every comment—which she was—and said, “The only one left’s my aunt. Down in Bakersfield.”
“Is her name Pell?”
Another pause. “Yep…That’s good thinking, Officer Dance. I’ll bet the deputies who dropped the ball on the Herron case stole that hammer from her house and planted it. They’re the ones behind this whole thing. Why don’t you talk to them?”
“All right. Now let’s think about the wallet. Where could that’ve come from?…Here’s a thought. What if it’s not Robert Herron’s wallet at all? What if this rogue cop we’re talking about just bought a wallet, hadR.H. stamped in the leather, then hid that and the hammer in the well? It could’ve been last month. Or even last week. What do you think about that, Daniel?”
Pell lowered his head—she couldn’t see his eyes—and said nothing.
It was unfolding just as she’d planned.
Dance had forced him to pick the more credible of two explanations for his innocence—and proceeded to prove itwasn’t credible at all. No sane jury would believe that the police had fabricated evidence and stolen tools from a house hundreds of miles away from the crime scene. Pell was now realizing the mistake he’d made. The trap was about to close on him.
Checkmate…
Her heart thumped a bit and she was thinking that the next words out of his mouth might be about a plea bargain.
She was wrong.
His eyes snapped open and bored into hers with pure malevolence. He lunged forward as far as he could. Only the chains hooked to the metal chair, grounded with bolts to the tile floor, stopped him from sinking his teeth into her.
She jerked back, gasping.
“You goddamn bitch! Oh, I get it now. Sure, you’re part of it too! Yeah, yeah, blame Daniel. It’s always my fault! I’m the easy target. And you come in here sounding like a friend, asking me a few questions.
Jesus, you’re just like the rest of them!”
Her heart was pounding furiously now, and she was afraid. But she noted quickly that the restraints were secure and he couldn’t reach her. She turned to the mirror, behind which the officer manning the video camera was surely rising to his feet right now to help her. But she shook her head his way. It was important to see where this was going.