‘Charles was telling us,’ Allerton said.
‘But there’re a few things that signal deception on their own. One is beginning to speak more slowly, since your mind is trying to craft the lie and make sure it’ll be consistent with everything you’ve said before. The second is a slight increase in pitch – deception creates stress and stress tightens muscles, including the vocal cords. Those both registered deception when she was talking to me. I called her on it. She broke down and confessed she’d lied and she had been outside the club, from about seven thirty until the incident.’
‘What’d she see?’ Lu asked.
‘White male, over six feet, in a dark green jacket with a logo, like a construction or other worker, black cap, yellow aviator sunglasses. Medium build. Brown hair. Probably under forty. Nobody at Henderson Jobbing wears that kind of outfit. This guy parked the truck beside the club, started a fire in the oil drum and walked back to the warehouse – to drop the keys off. That was it. She stayed until the stampede happened and she took off.’
‘Afraid to come forward.’
‘She said anybody who’d do that, if he found out about her, would come back and kill her in a minute.’
‘Bring her in, grill her,’ Foster said, still looking over his notes.
‘She’s told us everything she knows.’
His look said, Has she? He said, ‘If she’s afraid, maybe she was withholding.’
‘She got unafraid when I told her we’d relocate her temporarily, get her into one of our safe houses.’
She saw Overby stiffen. She hadn’t shared this with him. Keeping witnesses alive was expensive.
Budget issues …
Foster shrugged. ‘Get the descrip out on the wire. ASAP.’
‘It is,’ Dance said. Every cop and government official on the Peninsula and in neighboring counties had the information the witness, Annette, had relayed. ‘She had no facial description – the light was too dim and she was too far away.’
‘Get it to the news too,’ Foster said.
‘No,’ Dance said.
He looked up from beneath impressive brows.
Carol Allerton lifted an eyebrow, inquiring about the topic of conversation. Dance briefed her.
Foster reiterated, ‘On the news. Go broad.’
Overby said, ‘We were debating that.’
‘What’s to debate?’ Foster asked.
Allerton said, ‘He hears, he vanishes.’
Gomez offered, ‘Yeah, what I’d do. He rabbits. He dyes his hair. Tosses the jacket, switches to pink Ray-Bans.’
Foster to Dance: ‘Did the witness think he tipped to her?’
‘No. The wit’s positive he didn’t see her.’
‘So he’s still walking around and probably still wearing the same clothes. The green jacket and all that. A thousand people could’ve seen him. Maybe the clerk in his hotel, or his dry cleaner, if he’s local. It’s standard operating procedure in my cases.’
Overby trod the tightrope. ‘Pluses and minuses on both sides.’
‘I’d vote no,’ Gomez said. Allerton nodded her agreement.
Dance turned to Overby. Her gaze lasered him briefly.
After a moment, eyes on the well-examined linoleum floor, he said, ‘We’ll keep it private for the time being. No releasing the details to the media.’
Well, score one for us, Dance thought, and made an effort not to reveal her surprise.
CHAPTER 15
‘Mom, Donnie’s got a, you know, a question.’
Dance, thinking: You know. But she rarely corrected the children in front of anyone. She’d chide them gently later. She cocked her head to her son, lean and fair-haired. Nearly as tall as she. ‘Sure. What?’
Donnie Verso, a dark-haired thirteen-year-old in Wes’s class, looked her in the eye. ‘Well, I’m not sure what to call you.’
Dusk was around the three of them as they stood on the expansive porch – known to friends and family as the ‘Deck’ – behind Dance’s Victorian-style house, which was dark green with weathered gray railings, shutters and trim, in the north-western Pacific Grove. You could, if you chose to risk a tumble off the porch, catch a glimpse of ocean, about a half-mile away.
Wes filled in: ‘He doesn’t know whether he should call you Mrs Dance or Agent Dance.’
‘Well, that’s very polite of you to ask, Donnie. But since you’re a friend of Wes’s, you can call me Kathryn.’
‘Oh, I’m not supposed to call people that. I mean adults. By their first name. My dad likes me to be respectful.’
‘I can talk to him.’
‘No, he just wouldn’t like it.’
‘Then call me Mrs Dance.’ Wes readily shared with his friends that his father had died but Dance had learned that children rarely registered the niceties of Mrs versus Miss versus Ms.
‘Cool.’ His face brightened. ‘Mrs Dance.’
With his curly hair and cherubic face, Donnie would be a girl magnet soon. Well, he probably already was, she thought. (And Wes? Handsome … and nice. A dangerous combination: already girls were starting to flutter. She was inclined to put the brakes on her own children’s growing up but knew it’d be easier to stop the surf crashing on the sand at Spanish Bay.) Donnie lived not far away, biking distance, which Dance was grateful for – as a single mother, even with a good support net like hers, anything that reduced the task of chauffeuring was a blessing. She thought Donnie’d look better not wearing hoodies and baggy jeans … but valedictorians of middle-school classes and Christian pop singers all dressed like gangstas nowadays, so who was she to judge?
Arriving from work just now, Dance had not come through the front door but through the side yard and gate – to make sure it was locked – then ascended the steps to the Deck. Which meant she hadn’t said hello to the four-legged residents of the household. They now came bounding forward for head rubs and, with any luck, a treat (alas, none today). Dylan, a German shepherd, named for the legendary singer-songwriter, and Patsy, a flat-coated retriever, in honor of Ms Cline, Dance’s favorite C&W singer.