Was Pell inside with her?
Dance gestured to a deputy, told him of her concern and together they stepped to the door. She rapped on it. No response.
Another knock, and slowly the door opened. A round woman with short curly hair glanced in alarm at their hands, resting on their guns, and asked breathlessly, “Yes?”
Eyes on the dim interior behind her, Dance asked, “Could you please step outside?”
“Um, sure.”
“Is anyone else in there?”
“No. What—?”
The deputy pushed past her and flicked the lights on. Dance joined him. A fast search revealed that the tiny place was unoccupied.
Dance returned to the woman. “Sorry for the disturbance.”
“No, that’s okay. This’s scary. Where did they go?”
“We’ve still searching. Did you see what happened?”
“No. I was inside. When I looked out there was the car burning. I kept thinking about the oil tank fire a few years ago. That was a bad one. Were you here for that?”
“I was. I could see it from Carmel.”
“We knew it was empty, the tank. Or pretty much empty. But we were all freaked out. And those wires.
Electricity can be pretty spooky.”
“So you’re closed?”
“Yeah. I was going to leave early anyway. Didn’t know how long the highway would be closed. Not many tourists’d be interested in saltwater taffy with a power plant on fire across the highway.”
“Imagine not. I’d like to ask why you wondered where they went.”
“Oh, a dangerous man like that? I’d hope he’d get arrested as fast as possible.”
“But you said ‘they.’ How did you know there were several people?”
A pause. “I—”
Dance gazed at her with a smile and but unwavering eyes. “You said you didn’t see anything. You looked out only after you heard the siren.”
“I think I talked to somebody about it. Outside.”
I think…
A denial flag expression. Subconsciously the woman would feel she was giving an opinion, not a deceptive statement.
“Who told you?” Dance persisted.
“I didn’t know them.”
“A man or a woman?”
Another hesitation. “A girl, a woman. From out of state.” Her head was turned away and she was rubbing her nose—an aversion/negation cluster.
“Where’s your car?” Dance asked.
“My—?”
Eyes play an ambiguous role in kinesic analysis. There’s the belief among some officers that if a suspect looks to his left under your gaze, it’s a sign of lying. Dance knew that was just an old cops’ tale; averting eyes—unlike turning the body or face away from the interrogator—has no correlation to deception; direction of eye gaze is too easily controlled.
But eyes are still very revealing.
As Dance was talking to the woman, she’d noticed her looking at a particular place in the parking lot.
Every time she did, she displayed general stress indicators: shifting her weight, pressing her fingers together. Dance understood: Pell had stolen her car and said that he or the infamous partner would kill her family if she said anything. Just as with the Worldwide Express driver.
Dance sighed, upset. If the woman had come forward when they’d first arrived, they might have Pell by now.
Or if I hadn’t blindly believed theCLOSED sign and knocked on the door sooner, she added to herself bitterly.
“I—” The woman started to cry.
“I understand. We’ll make sure you’re safe. What kind of car?”
“It’s a dark blue Ford Focus. Three years old. There’s a bumper sticker about global warming on it.
And a dent in the—”
“Where did they go?”
“North.”
Dance got the tag number and called O’Neil, who would in turn relay a message to MCSO dispatch for an announcement to all units about the car.
As the clerk made arrangements to stay with a friend until Pell’s recapture, Dance stared at the lingering cloud of smoke around the Thunderbird. Angry. She’d made a sharp deduction from Eddie Chang’s information and they’d come up with a solid plan for the collar. But it had been a waste.
TJ joined her, with the manager of Jack’s Seafood. He gave his story of the events, clearly omitting a few facts, probably that he’d inadvertently tipped off Pell about the police. Dance couldn’t blame him.
She remembered Pell from the interview—how sharp and wary he was.
The manager described the woman, who was skinny and pretty in a “mousy way” and had looked at the man adoringly throughout most of the meal. He’d thought they were honeymooners. She couldn’t keep her hands off him. He put her age at midtwenties. The manager added that they pored over a map for a good portion of the meal.
“What was it of?”
“Here, Monterey County.”
Michael O’Neil joined her, flipping closed his phone. “No reports of the Focus,” he said. “But with the evacuation it must’ve gotten lost in the traffic. Hell, he could’ve turned south and driven right past us.”
Dance called Carraneo over. The young man looked tired. He’d had a busy day but it wasn’t over yet.
“Find out everything you can about the T-bird. And start calling motels and boardinghouses from Watsonville down to Big Sur. See if any blond women checked in by themselves and listed a Thunderbird as their car on the registration form. Or if anybody saw a T-bird. If the car was stolen on Friday, she’d’ve checked in Friday, Saturday or Sunday.”
“Sure, Agent Dance.”
She and O’Neil both stared west, over the water, which was calm. The sun was a wide, flat disk, low over the Pacific, the fierce beams muted; the fog hadn’t arrived yet but the late-afternoon sky was hazy, grainy. Monterey Bay looked like a flat, blue desert. He said, “Pell’s taking a huge risk staying around here. He’s got something important to do.”
It was just then that she got a call from someone who, she realized, might have some thoughts about
what the killer might have in mind.
Chapter 17