“But not Utah? You both said he never mentioned that.”
“No,” Rebecca agreed. “But, wait…you know, thinking of that…I don’t know if it’s helpful, but I remember something too. Along those same lines. We were in bed one night and he said, ‘I need to make a big score. Come up with enough money just to get away from everybody.’ I remember that. He said ‘a big score.’”
“What did he mean? A robbery to buy some property?”
“Could be.”
“Linda?”
She had to plead ignorance and seemed troubled that he hadn’t shared everything with her.
Dance asked the obvious question: “Could the big score have been the Croyton break-in?”
“I don’t know,” Rebecca said. “He never told us that’s where he and Jimmy were going that night.”
Dance speculated: Maybe hedid steal something valuable from Croyton’s house, after all. When the police were closing in, he hid it. She thought of the car he’d driven to the break-in. Had it been searched thoroughly? Where was it now? Maybe destroyed, maybe owned by someone else. She made a note to try to find the vehicle. Also, to check deeds registries to see if Pell owned any property.
Mountaintop…Could that have been what he’d been looking for online in Capitola on the Visual-Earth website? Dozen of sizable peaks were within an hour’s drive of the Peninsula.
There were still questions, but Dance was pleased at their progress. Finally, she felt she had some insights into the mind of Daniel Pell. She was about to ask more questions when her phone rang.
“Excuse me.”
She answered it.
“Kathryn. It’s me.”
She pressed the phone closer to her head. “TJ, what’s up?”
And steeled herself. The fact that he hadn’t called her “boss” meant he was about to deliver bad news.
Chapter 29
Kathryn Dance and Winston Kellogg walked along a road covered with a thin coat of damp sand toward TJ and Michael O’Neil, who stood at the open trunk of a late-model Lexus.
Another man was there too, one of the officers from the Coroner’s Division, which in Monterey County is part of the MCSO. The balding, round deputy greeted her. “Kathryn.”
Dance introduced him to Kellogg, then peered into the trunk. The victim, a woman, lay on her side. Her legs were bent and her hands and mouth were duct-taped. Her nose and face were bright red. Blood vessels had broken.
O’Neil said, “Susan Pemberton. Lived in Monterey. Single, thirty nine.”
“Probable COD is suffocation?”
The coroner officer added, “We’ve got capillary dilation and membrane inflammation and distension.
That residue there? I’m sure it’s capsicum oleoresin.”
“He hit her with pepper spray and then duct-taped her.”
The coroner officer nodded.
“Terrible,” O’Neil muttered.
Dying alone, in pain, an ignominious trunk her coffin. A burst of raw anger at Daniel Pell swept through Dance.
It turned out, O’Neil explained, that Susan’s was the disappearance he’d been looking into.
“We’re sure it’s Pell?”
“It’s him,” the Coroner’s Division officer said. “Prints match.”
O’Neil added, “I’ve ordered field prints tests done for every homicide in the area.”
“Any idea of the motive?”
“Maybe. She worked for an event-planning company. He apparently used her to get in and tell him where all the files were. He stole everything. Crime scene’s been through the office. Nothing conclusive so far, except his prints.”
“Any clue why?” Kellogg asked.
“Nope.”
“How’d he find her?”
“Her boss said she left the office about five last night to meet a prospective client for drinks.”
“Pell, you think?”
O’Neil shrugged. “No idea. Her boss didn’t know who. Maybe Pell saw them and followed.”
“Next of kin?”
“Nobody here, doesn’t look like,” the Coroner’s Division officer said. “Her parents’re in Denver. I’ll make that call when I get back to the office.”
“TOD?”
“Last night, maybe seven to nine. I’ll know more after the autopsy.”
Pell had left little evidence behind, except a few faint footsteps in the sand that seemed to lead toward the beach then were lost in the pale grass littering the dunes. No other prints or tread marks were visible.
What was in the files he’d stolen? What didn’t he want them to know?
Kellogg was walking around the area, getting a feel for the crime scene, maybe considering it in light of his specialty, cult mentality.
Dance told O’Neil about Rebecca’s idea that Pell was after a big score, presumably so that he could buy an enclave somewhere.
“‘Mountaintop’ was what Linda said. And the big score might’ve been the Croyton break-in.” She added her idea that maybe Pell had hidden something of Croyton’s in the getaway car.
“I think it was why he was searching Visual-Earth. To check the place out.”
“Interesting theory,” O’Neil said. He and Dance would often brainstorm when they were working cases together. They’d occasionally come up with some truly bizarre theories about the crimes they were investigating. Sometimes those theories actually turned out to be right.
Dance told TJ to check out the status of the vehicle Pell had been driving on the night of the Croyton murders and if there’d been an inventory of the car’s contents. “And see if Pell owns property anywhere in the state.”
“Will do, boss.”
Dance looked around. “Why’d he abandon the car here? He could’ve gone east into the woods, and nobody would’ve found it for days. It’s a lot more visible here.”
Michael O’Neil pointed at a narrow pier extending into the ocean. “The T-bird’s out of commission.
He’s ditched the stolen Ford Focus by now. Maybe he got away by boat.”
“Boat?” Dance asked.
“His footsteps go that way. None head back to the road.”