Ten minutes later, George Sheedy and Stuart Dance joined her.
She asked her father, "It went okay?"
"Yes," he answered in a hollow voice.
"How soon will she be out?"
Stuart looked at Sheedy, who said, "Ten minutes, maybe less."
"Thank you." He shook the lawyer's hand. Dance nodded her gratitude to Sheedy, who told them he was returning to the office and would get started on the defense immediately.
After he'd gone, Dance asked her father, "What did they take from the house, Dad?"
"I don't know. The neighbor said they seemed most interested in the garage. Let's get out of here. I hate this place."
They walked out into the hallway. Several reporters saw Dance and approached. "Agent Dance," one woman asked, "is it troubling to know your mother's been arrested for murder?"
Well, there's some cutting-edge interviewing. She wanted to fire back with something sarcastic, but she remembered the number-one rule in media relations: Assume everything you say in a reporter's presence will appear on the six o'clock news or on tomorrow's front page. She smiled. "There's no doubt in my mind that this is a terrible misunderstanding. My mother has been a nurse for years. She's devoted herself to saving lives, not taking them."
"Did you know that she signed a petition supporting Jack Kevorkian and assisted suicide?"
No, Dance didn't know that. And, she wondered, how had the press come by the information so fast? Her reply: "You'll have to ask her about that. But petitioning to change the law isn't the same as breaking it."
It was then that her phone sounded. It was O'Neil. She stepped away to take the call. "Michael, she's getting out on bail," she told him.
There was a moment's pause. "Good. Thank God."
Dance realized he was calling about something else, and something that was serious. "What is it, Michael?"
"They've found another cross."
"A real memorial, or with a future date?"
"Today. And it's identical to the first one. Branches and florist wire."
Her eyes closed in despair. Not again.
Then O'Neil said, "But, listen. We've got a witness. A guy who saw Travis leave it. He might've seen where he went or saw something about him that'll tell us where he's hiding. Can you interview him?"
Another pause. Then: "I'll be there in ten minutes."
O'Neil gave her the address. They disconnected.
Dance turned to her father. "Dad, I can't stay. I'm so sorry."
He turned his handsome, distraught face toward his daughter. "What?"
"They found another cross. The boy's going after somebody else, it looks like. Today. But there's a witness. I have to interview them."
"Of course you do." Yet he sounded uncertain. He was going through a nightmare at the moment--nearly as bad as her mother's--and he'd want his daughter, with her expertise and her connections, nearby.
But she couldn't get images of Tammy Foster out of her mind, lying in the trunk, the water rising higher.
Images of Travis Brigham's eyes too, cold and dark beneath their abundant brows, as he gazed at his father, as if his character in a game, armed with knife or sword, was debating stepping out of the synth world and into the real, to slaughter the man.
She had to go. And now. "I'm sorry." She hugged her father.
"Your mother will understand."
Dance ran to her car and started the engine. As she was pulling out of the parking lot she glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her mother emerge from the door to the lockup. Edie stared at her daughter's departure. The woman's eyes were still, her face revealing no emotion.
Dance's foot slipped to the brake. But then she pressed down once more on the accelerator and hit the grille flashers.
Your mother will understand. . . .
No, she won't, Dance thought. She absolutely won't.
Chapter 14
AFTER ALL THESE years in the area Kathryn Dance had never quite grown used to the Peninsula fog. It was like a shape-shifter--a character out of the fantasy books that Wes liked. Sometimes it was wisps that hugged the ground and swept past you like ghosts. Other times it was smoke squatting in depressions of land and highway, obscuring everything.
Most often it was a thick cotton bedspread floating several hundred feet in the air, mimicking cloud and ominously darkening everything below it.
This was the breed of fog today.
The gloom thickened as Dance, listening to Raquy and the Cavemen, a North African group known for their percussion, drove along a quiet road running through state land between Carmel and Pacific Grove. The landscape was mostly woods, untended, filled with pine, scrub oak, eucalyptus and maple, joined by tangles of brush. She drove through the police line, ignoring the reporters and camera crews. Were they here for the crime, or because of her mother? Dance wondered cynically.
She parked, greeted the deputies nearby and joined Michael O'Neil. They began walking toward the cordoned-off shoulder, where the second cross had been found.
"How's your mother doing?" O'Neil asked.
"Not good."
Dance was so glad he was here. Emotion swelled like a balloon within her, and she couldn't speak for a moment, as the image of her mother in handcuffs, and the run-in with the social worker about her children, surfaced.
The senior deputy couldn't help but give a faint smile. "Saw you on TV."
"TV?"
"Who was the woman, the one who looked like Oprah? You were about to arrest her."
Dance sighed. "They got that on camera?"
"You looked"--he searched for a word--"imposing."
"She was taking the kids to Social Services."
O'Neil looked shocked. "It was Harper. Tactics. He nearly got his flunky collared, though. Oh, I would've pushed the button on that one." She added, "I've got Sheedy on the case."
"George? Good. Tough. You need tough."
"Oh, and then Overby let Harper into CBI. To go through my files."
"No!"
"I think he was looking to see if I suppressed evidence or tinkered with the files about the Juan Millar case. Overby said he went through your office's files too."
"MCSO?" he asked. Dance could read his anger like a red highway flare. "Did Overby know Harper was making a case against Edie?"
"I don't know. At the least he should've thought: What the hell is this guy from San Francisco prowling around in our files for? 'Caseload evaluations.' Ridiculous." Her own fury swelled again and, with effort, she finally managed to bank it.
They approached the spot where the cross was planted, on the shoulder of the road. The memorial was like the earlier one: broken-off branches bound with wire, and a cardboard disk with today's date on it.
At the base was another bouquet of red roses.
She couldn't help but think: Whose murder would this one represent?
And ten more waiting.
This cross had been left on a deserted stretch of barely paved road about a mile from the water. Not highly traveled, this route was a little-known shortcut to Highway 68. Ironically, this was one of the roads that would lead to that new highway that Chilton had written about in his blog.
Standing on a side road near the cross was the witness, a businessman in his forties, to look at him, into real estate or insurance, Dance guessed. He was round, his belly carrying his blue dress shirt well over a tired belt. His hair had receded and she saw sun freckles on his round forehead and balding crown. He stood beside a Honda Accord that had seen better days.
They approached and O'Neil said to her, "This is Ken Pfister."
She shook his hand. The deputy said he was going to supervise the crime scene search and headed across the street.
"Tell me what you saw, Mr. Pfister."
"Travis. Travis Brigham."
"Did you know it was him?"
A nod. "I saw his picture online when I was at lunch about a half hour ago. That's how I recognized him."
"Could you tell me exa
ctly what you saw?" she asked. "And when?"
"Okay, it was around eleven this morning. I had a meeting in Carmel. I run an Allstate agency." He said this proudly.
Got that one right, she thought.
"I left about ten-forty and was driving back to Monterey. Took this shortcut. It'll be nice when that new highway's open, won't it?"
She smiled noncommittally, not a smile really.
"And I pulled off onto that side road"--he gestured--"to make some phone calls." He gave a broad smile. "Never drive and talk. That's my rule."
Dance's lifted eyebrow prodded him to continue.
"I looked out my windshield and I saw him walking along the shoulder. From that direction. He didn't see me. He was kind of shuffling his feet. It seemed like he was talking to himself."
"What was he wearing?"
"One of those hooded sweatshirts like the kids have."
Ah, the hoodie.
"What color was it?"
"I don't remember."
"Jacket, slacks?"
"Sorry. I wasn't paying much attention. I didn't know who he was at that point--I hadn't heard about the Roadside Cross stuff. All I knew was that he was weird and scary. He was carrying that cross, and he had a dead animal."
"An animal?"
A nod. "Yeah, a squirrel or groundhog or something. It had its throat cut." He gestured with his finger at his own neck.
Dance hated any atrocities committed against animals. Still, she kept her voice even as she asked, "Had he just killed it?"
"I don't think so. There wasn't much blood."
"Okay, then what happened?"
"Then he looks up and down the road and when he doesn't see anybody he opens his backpack and--"
"Oh, he had a backpack?"
"That's right."
"What color was it?"
"Uhm, black, I'm pretty sure. And he takes a shovel out, a little one. The sort that you'd use on a camping trip. And he opens it up and digs a hole and then puts the cross in the ground. Then . . . this is really weird. He goes through this ritual. He walks around the cross three times, and it looks like he's chanting."
"Chanting?"
"That's right. Muttering things. I can't hear what."
"And then?"
"He picks up the squirrel and walks around the cross again five times--I was counting. Three and five . . . Maybe it was a message, a clue, if somebody could figure it out."
After The Da Vinci Code, Dance had observed, a lot of witnesses tended to decrypt their observations rather than just say what they'd seen.
"Anyway, he opened his backpack again and pulled out this stone and a knife. He used the stone to sharpen the blade. Then he held the knife over the squirrel. I thought he was going to cut it up, but he didn't-. I saw his lips moving again, then he wrapped the body up in some kind of weird yellow paper, like parchment, and put it in the backpack. Then it looked like he said one last thing and went up the road the way he came. Loping, you know. Like an animal."
"And what did you do then?"
"I left and went on to a few more meetings. I went back to the office. That's when I went online and saw the news about the boy. I saw his picture. I freaked out. I called nine-one-one right away."
Dance gestured Michael O'Neil over.
"Michael, this is interesting. Mr. Pfister's been real helpful."
O'Neil nodded his thanks.
"Now could you tell Deputy O'Neil here what you saw?"
"Sure." Pfister explained again about pulling over to make calls. "The boy had a dead animal of some sort. A squirrel, I think. He walked around in a circle three times without the body. Then he plants the cross and walks around it five times. He was talking to himself. It was weird. Like a different language."
"And then?"
"He wrapped the squirrel up in this parchment paper and held the knife over it. He said something else in that weird language again. Then he left."
"Interesting," O'Neil said. "You're right, Kathryn."
It was then that Dance pulled off her pale-pink-framed glasses and polished them. And subtly swapped them for a pair with severe black frames.
O'Neil caught on immediately that she was putting on her predator specs and stepped back. Dance moved closer to Pfister, well into his personal proxemic zone. Immediately, she could see, he felt a sense of threat.
Good.
"Now, Ken, I know you're lying. And I need you to tell me the truth."
"Lying?" He blinked in shock.
"That's right."
Pfister'd been pretty good at his deception, but certain comments and behaviors had tipped her off. Her suspicions arose initially because of content-based analysis: considering what he said rather than how he said it. Some of his explanations sounded too incredible to be true. Claiming he didn't know who the boy was and that he'd never heard about the Roadside Cross attack--when he seemed to go online regularly to get news. Claiming Travis was wearing a hoodie, which several of the posters to The Chilton Report had said, but not remembering the color--people tend to remember the hues of clothing far better than the garments themselves.
Pfister had also paused frequently--liars often do this as they try to craft credible deceptive lines. And he'd used at least one "illustrator" gesture--the finger at the throat; people use these subconsciously to reinforce spurious statements.
So, suspicious, Dance had then used a shorthand technique to test for deception: In determining if somebody's lying, an interviewer will ask to hear his story several times. One who's telling the truth may edit the narrative some and remember things forgotten the first time through, but the chronology of events will always be the same. A liar, though, often forgets the sequence of occurrences within his fictional narrative. This happened with Pfister in retelling the story to O'Neil; he'd mixed up when the boy had planted the cross.
Also, while honest witnesses may recall new facts during the second telling, they'll rarely contradict the first version. Initially Pfister had said that Travis was whispering and that he couldn't hear the words. The second version included the detail that he couldn't understand the words, which were "weird," implying that he had heard them.
Dance concluded without a doubt that Pfister was fabricating.
In other circumstances Dance would have handled the interrogation more subtly, tricked the witness into revealing the truth. But this was a man whose liar's personality--she assessed him as a social deceiver--and slippery personal attitude would mean a long bout of tough interviewing to get to the truth. She didn't have time. The second cross, containing today's date, meant that Travis might be planning the next attack right now.
"So, Ken, you're real close to going to jail."
"What? No!"
Dance didn't mind a bit of double teaming. She glanced at O'Neil, who said, "You sure are. And we need the truth."
"Oh, please. Look . . ." But he offered nothing for their examination. "I didn't lie! Really. Everything I told you is true."
This was different from assuring her that he'd actually seen what he said he had. Why did the guilty always think they were so clever? She asked, "Did you witness what you told me?"
Under her laser gaze, Pfister looked away. His shoulders slumped. "No. But it's all true. I know it!"
"How can you?" she asked.
"Because I read that somebody saw him doing what I told you. On this blog. The Chilton Report."
Her eyes slipped to O'Neil's. His expression matched hers. She asked, "Why did you lie?"
He lifted his hands. "I wanted to make people aware of the danger. I thought people should be more careful with this psycho out there. They should take more precautions, especially with their children. We have to be careful with our children, you know."
Dance noted the hand gesture, heard the slight hitch in his throat. She knew his liar's mannerisms by now. "Ken? We have no time for this."
O'Neil unleashed his handcuffs.
"No, no. I . . ." The head dropped in complete surrender. "I ma
de some bad business deals. My loans got called and I can't pay them. So I . . ." He sighed.
"So you lied to be a hero? Get some publicity?" O'Neil's face registered disgust as he glanced at the news crews, cordoned off, fifty yards away.
Pfister began to protest. Then his hand drooped. "Yes. I'm sorry."
O'Neil jotted something in his notebook. "I'll have to speak to the prosecutor about this."
"Oh, please . . . I'm sorry."
"So you didn't see him at all, but you knew somebody had just left the cross and you knew who it was."
"Okay, I had an idea. I mean, yes, I knew."
"Why did you wait hours before telling us?" she snapped.
"I . . . I was afraid. Maybe he was still waiting around here."
O'Neil asked in a low, ominous voice, "It didn't occur to you that telling all that crap about ritual sacrifices might've sent us in the wrong direction?"
"I thought you knew all those things anyway. The stories were in that blog. They have to be true, don't they?"
Dance said patiently, "Okay, Ken. Let's start over."
"Sure. Anything."
"Were you really in that meeting?"
"Yes, ma'am."
He was so deeply into the last stage of emotional response in interrogation--acceptance and confession--that she nearly laughed. He was now the epitome of cooperation.
"And what happened then?"
"Okay, I was driving along and I pulled off on the side road here." He pointed emphatically at his feet. "When I made the turn there wasn't any cross. I made a couple of phone calls, then turned around and drove back to the intersection. I waited for traffic and looked up the road. There it was." He pointed again. This time at the cross. "I didn't see him at all. The hoodie and everything? I got that from the blog. All I can say is that I didn't pass anybody on the shoulder, so he must've come out of the woods. And, yeah, I knew what it meant. The cross. And it scared the shit out of me. The killer had just been there, right in front of me!" A sour laugh. "I locked the doors so fast. . . . I've never done anything brave in my life. Not like my father. He was a fireman, volunteer."
This happened often with Kathryn Dance. The most important aspect of interrogation and interviewing is to be a good listener, nonjudgmental and aware. Because she honed this skill daily, witnesses--and suspects too--tended to look at her as a therapist. Poor Ken Pfister was confessing.
But he'd have to lie down on somebody else's couch. It wasn't her job to explore his demons.
O'Neil was looking into the trees. Based on what Pfister had originally told them the officers were searching the shoulder. "We better check out the woods." An ominous glance at Pfister. "At least that might be helpful." He called several deputies after him and they headed across the road to search in the forest.