Dance recalled that she’d gotten a longer prison sentence because she’d destroyed some of the incriminating material about Manson the night of the Croyton murders. She seemed troubled now that her heroic act might have been pointless.
“The only parallels were that he lived with several women and had us doing crimes for him. Manson wasn’t in control ofhimself, Daniel said. He claimed he was Jesus, he tattooed a swastika on his forehead, he thought he had psychic powers, he ranted about politics and race. That was another example of emotions controlling you. Just like tattoos and body piercings or weird haircuts. They give people information about you. And information is control. No, he thought Manson did everything wrong.
Daniel’s heroes were Hitler—”
“Hitler?” Dance asked her.
“Yep. Except he faulted him because of that ‘Jewish thing.’ It was a weakness. Pell said that if Hitler could suck it up and live with Jews, even include them in the government, he’d have been the most powerful man in history. But he couldn’t control himself, so he deserved to lose the war. He admired Rasputin too.”
“The Russian monk?”
“Right. He worked his way into Nicholas and Alexandra’s household. Pell liked Rasputin’s use of sex to control people.” Drawing a laugh from Rebecca and a blush from Linda. “Svengali too.”
“TheTrilby book?” Dance asked.
“Oh,” Samantha said. “You know about that? He loved that story. Linda read it a dozen times.”
“And frankly,” Rebecca said, “it was pretty bad.”
Glancing at her notebook, the agent asked the newcomer about the keywords Pell had searched in prison.
“‘Nimue’?” Samantha repeated. “No. But he had a girlfriend named Alison once.”
“Who?” Linda asked.
“When he was in San Francisco. Before the Family. She was in this group, sort of like the Family.”
“What’re you talking about?” Linda asked.
Samantha nodded. She looked uneasily at Linda. “But it wasn’t his group. He just was bumming around and met Alison and got to know some of the people in that cult, or whatever it was. Daniel wasn’t a member—he didn’t take orders fromanybody —but he was fascinated with it, and hung out with them.
He learned a lot about how to control people. But they got suspicious of him—he wouldn’t really commit. So he and Alison left. They hitchhiked around the state. Then he got arrested or picked up by the police for something, and she went back to San Francisco. He tried to find her but he never could. I don’t know why he’d want to try now.”
“What was her last name?”
“I don’t know.”
Dance wondered aloud if Pell was looking for this Alison—or someone named Nimue—for revenge.
“After all, he’d need a pretty good reason to risk going online in Capitola to find somebody.”
“Oh,” Samantha said, “Daniel didn’t believe in revenge.”
Rebecca said, “I don’t know, Sam. What about that biker? That punk up the street? Daniel almost killed him.”
Dance remembered Nagle telling them about a neighbor in Seaside whom Pell had assaulted.
“First of all,” Linda said, “Daniel didn’t do it. That was somebody else.”
“Well, no, he beat the crap out of him. Nearly killed him.”
“But the police let him go.”
Curious proof of innocence, Dance reflected.
“Only because the guy didn’t have the balls to press charges.” Rebecca looked at Samantha. “Was it our boy?”
Samantha shrugged, avoiding their gaze. “I think so. I mean, yeah, Daniel beat him up.”
Linda looked unconvinced.
“But that wasn’t about revenge…See, the biker thought he was some kind of neighborhood godfather.
He tried to blackmail Daniel, threatened to go to the police about something that never even happened.
Daniel went to see him and started playing these mind games with him. But the biker just laughed at him and told Daniel he had one day to come up with the money.
“Next thing there’s an ambulance in front of the biker’s house. His wrists and ankles were broken. But that wasn’t revenge. It was because he was immune to Daniel. If you’re immune, then Daniel can’t control you, and that makes you a threat. And he said all the time, ‘Threats have to be eliminated.’”
“Control,” Dance said. “That pretty much sums up Daniel Pell, doesn’t it?”
This, it seemed, was one premise from their past that all three members of the Family could agree on.
Chapter 34
From the patrol car, the MCSO deputy kept his vigilant eye on his turf: the grounds, the trees, the gardens, the road.
Guard duty—it had to be the most boring part of being a police officer, hands down. Stakeouts came in a close second, but at least then you had a pretty good idea that the surveillee was a bad guy. Andthat meant you might get a chance to draw your weapon and go knock heads.
You’d get todo something.
But baby-sitting witnesses and good guys—especially when the bad guys don’t even know where the good ones are—was borrrrring.
All that happened was you got a sore back and sore feet and had to balance the issue of coffee with bathroom breaks and—
Oh, hell, the deputy muttered to himself. Wished he hadn’t thought that. Now he realized he had to pee.
Could he risk the bushes? Not a good idea, considering how nice this place was. He’d ask to use one inside. First he’d make a fast circuit just to be sure everything was secure, then go knock on the door.
He climbed out of the car and walked down the main road, looking around at the trees, the bushes. Still nothing odd. Typical of what you’d see around here: a limo driving past slowly, the driver actually wearing one of those caps like they did in the movies. A housewife across the street was having her gardener arrange flowers beneath her mailbox before he planted them, the poor guy frustrated at her indecision.
The woman looked up and saw the deputy, nodded his way.