And so Amy Grabe had called the Seattle field office of the Bureau and sent two agents to Sally Docking’s apartment in a working-class section of the city. They brought with them a very expensive laptop, which incorporated a high-definition webcam.
Dance was in a conference room in the sheriff’s office, the overhead lights off but a desk lamp not far from her face. She’d adjusted the illumination carefully; she needed Sally to see her very clearly—and under ominous lighting. Sally was lit by ambient rays but the lens and software rendered the image perfectly.
“It looks like a nice apartment, Sally.” Dance wore her pink-rimmed glasses, the nonthreatening ones, unlike the steel-or black-rimmed predator specs she put on when she wanted to present an aggressive image.
“It’s okay, I guess. I like it. Rent’s cheap.”
Dance asked a number of other questions about the girl, her family, her job, as she drew a baseline of the woman’s behavior. She caught only one microburst of stress, when Sally said she didn’t mind the commute to her job at a mall fifteen miles from where she lived.
Good, she was getting a feel for the woman, who tended to appear nervous and uncertain even when she was being asked simple questions and answering truthfully.
After ten minutes of this, Dance said, “Now, I’d like to talk to you about Edwin some more.”
“Everything I told you was true!” Her eyes bored into the camera.
This was awkward: a blunt denial quickly delivered. Dance couldn’t over-or underreact; it might tip her hand. “It’s just routine. We often follow up to get more information when there’s been a change in developments.”
“Oh.”
“We need your help, Sally. See, the situation down in Fresno’s … difficult. Edwin may have been more involved in a crime than it originally seemed. I’m worried that he might be going through a bad phase and could hurt somebody. Or hurt himself.”
“No!”
“That’s right.” Dance had made certain that not a single soul leaked to the public the news that Edwin had snatched Kayleigh. Sally Docking wouldn’t know. “And we need to find him. We need to know where he might go, places that are important to him, other residences he might have.”
“Oh, I don’t know anywhere like that.” Her eyes whipped to the computer screen.
A baseline variation. It confirmed that she did have some ideas. But dislodging this nugget would take some work.
“Well, you might know more than you think, Sally.”
“But I haven’t heard from him for a long time.”
Nonresponsive. And the vague adjective didn’t mask the fact that this was probably a lie but Dance let it go for now. “Well, not necessarily someplace he wanted to move to. Just someplace he mentioned when you were together.”
“No.”
“No?”
Sally was thinking quickly. “I mean, he was pretty much into Seattle. He didn’t travel much. He was, like, a homebody kind of guy.”
“Never mentioned anything, really?” A glance at the sheet in front of her.
Sally caught the glance.
As long as you tell the truth …
“I mean, he talked about going on vacations some. You know. But I didn’t think that’s what you meant.”
“Where did he want to go?”
“Nashville was one place. The Grand Ole Opry. And then maybe New York, so he could go to some concerts.”
Edwin Sharp probably did say that but he was not going to run off to Nashville or Manhattan with Kayleigh Towne and set up housekeeping, however skewed his sense of reality.
But Dance said, “Good, Sally. That’s just the sort of thing we’re looking for. Can you think of any other places? Maybe you were watching a TV show and he said, ‘Hey, that looks neat.’ Something like that?”
“No, really.” Eyes on the web camera.
Lie.
Dance grimaced. “Well, I appreciate you trying. I don’t know what I’m going to do. You were really the only person we can turn to.”
“Me? I broke up with him a while ago. Uhm, nine months. About that.”
“I just mean you had a very different relationship with Edwin than some people. You won’t believe it but he can be very abusive and obsessive.”
“No, really?”
Dance’s heart tapped faster. She was on the trail of her prey and closing in. Still, easy as could be, she continued, “That’s right. When people reject him, that pushes a button. Edwin has issues about abandonment and rejection. He clings to people. Since he broke up with you, you’re not a negative in his life. In fact, he told me he still feels bad about the breakup.”
“You were talking about me with Edwin? Like, recently?” Delivered fast, like spilled water.
“That’s right. Funny, you could get the impression, from what he said, that he kind of misses you.” Dance crafted her sentences very carefully. She never intentionally deceived her subjects but sometimes let them do it for her. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was curious what you’re up to.”
Sally swallowed and, with tentative fingers tipped in blue polish, she brushed at her long hair—an echo of Kayleigh’s, though not as long, not as fine. When she tilted her head Dance noticed the roots; she was not a natural blonde. The young woman asked in a slightly higher pitch—a stress tone: “What did he want to know?”
“Just general things.” Intentionally evasive.
She swallowed again.
Dance glanced down at a blank sheet of paper then up once more. She noted a faint glistening of sweat on Sally’s forehead as she strained to see it.
The FBI has some really good equipment.
Dance again glanced down at the sheet and Sally’s eyes dropped toward the desk in front of her as if the paper were two feet from her. Dance asked, “Your brother in Spokane? And your mother in Tacoma?”
“I just … my brother, my mother?”
“Edwin was close to them?”
The stalker had not said more than one or two sentences about Sally Docking and nothing at all about her family. Dance had looked up the details through Washington state and federal records, after she suspected the true relationship between the two.
“Did he say anything about them?” Sally asked.
“They were friendly, weren’t they? Close?”