The Sleeping Doll

Chapter 58

Kathryn Dance, in a black suit and burgundy blouse-not the warmest of outfits, all things considered-was sitting outside at the Bay View Restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey.

The place lived up to its name, usually offering a postcard image of the coast all the way up to Santa Cruz, which was, however, invisible at the moment. The early morning was a perfect example of June Gloom on the Peninsula. Fog like smoke from a damp fire surrounded the wharf. The temperature was fifty-five degrees.

Last night she'd been in an elated mood. Daniel Pell had been stopped, Linda Whitfield would be all right, Nagle and his family had survived. She and Winston Kellogg had made their plans for "afterward."

Today, though, things were different. A darkness hung over her; she couldn't shake it, and the mood had nothing to do with the weather. Many things were contributing to it, not the least of which was planning the memorial services and funerals for the guards killed at the courthouse, the deputies at the Point Lobos Inn yesterday and Juan Millar too.

She sipped her coffee. Then blinked in surprise as a hummingbird appeared from nowhere and dipped its beak into the feeder hanging on the side of the restaurant, near a spill of gardenias. Another bird strafed in and drove the first away. They were pretty creatures, jewels, but could be mean as scrap-yard dogs.

Then she heard, "Hello."

Winston Kellogg came up behind her, slipped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek. Not too close to the mouth, not too far away. She smiled and hugged him.

He sat down.

Dance waved to the waitress, who refilled her cup and poured one for Kellogg.

"So I was doing some research about the area," Kellogg said. "I thought we could go down to Big Sur tonight. Some place called Ventana."

"It's beautiful. I haven't been for years. The restaurant's wonderful. It's a bit of a drive."

"I'm game. Highway One, right?"

Which would take them right past Point Lobos. She flashed back to the gunshots, the blood, Daniel Pell lying on his back, dull blue eyes staring unseeing at a dark blue sky.

"Thanks for getting up so early," Dance said.

"Breakfast and dinner with you. The pleasure's mine."

She gave him another smile. "Here's the situation. TJ finally found the answer to 'Nimue,' I think."

Kellogg nodded. "What Pell was searching for in Capitola."

"At first I thought it was a screen name, then I was thinking it might have to do with this computer game, 'Nimue' with an X, the popular one."

The agent shook his head.

"Apparently it's hot. I should have consulted the experts-my kids. Anyway, I was toying with the idea that Pell and Jimmy went to the Croytons' to steal some valuable software, and I remembered Reynolds told me that Croyton gave away all this computer research and software to Cal State-Monterey Bay. I thought maybe there was something in the college archives that Pell planned to steal. But, no, it turns out that Nimue's something else."

"What?"

"We're not exactly sure. That's what I need your help on. TJ found a folder on Jennie Marston's computer. The name was-" Dance found a slip of paper and read, "Quote 'Nimue-cult suicide in L.A.'"

"What was inside?"

"That's the problem. He tried to open it. But it's password-protected. We'll have to send it to CBI headquarters in Sacramento to crack, but frankly, that'll take weeks. It might not be important but I'd like to find out what it's all about. I was hoping you'd have somebody in the bureau who could decrypt it faster."

Kellogg told her he knew of a computer wiz in the FBI's San Jose field office-in the heart of Silicon Valley. "If anybody can break it they can. I'll get it to him today."

She thanked him and handed over the Dell, in a plastic bag and with a chain-of-custody tag attached. He signed the card and set the bag beside him.

Dance waved for the waitress. Toast was about all she could manage this morning, but Kellogg ordered a full breakfast.

He said, "Now, tell me about Big Sur. It's supposed to be pretty."

"Breathtaking," she said. "One of the most romantic places you'll ever see."

Kathryn Dance was in her office when Winston Kellogg came to collect her at five thirty for their date. He was in formal casual. He and Dance came close to matching-brown jackets, light shirts and jeans. His blue, hers black. Ventana was an upscale inn, restaurant and winery but this was, after all, California. You needed a suit and tie only in San Francisco, L.A. and Sacramento.

For funerals too, of course, Dance couldn't help but think.

"First, let's get work out of the way." He opened his attaché case and handed her the plastic evidence bag containing the computer found in the Butterfly Inn.

"Oh, you've got it already?" she asked. "The mystery of Nimue is about to be solved."

He grimaced. "Afraid not, sorry."

"Nothing?" she asked.

"The file was either intentionally written as gibberish or it had a wipe bomb on it, the bureau tech guys said."

"Wipe bomb?"

"Like a digital booby trap. When TJ tried to open it, it got turned to mush. That was their term too, by the way."

"Mush."

"Just random characters."

"No way to reconstruct it?"

"Nope. And, believe me, they're the best in the business."

"Not that it matters that much, I suppose," Dance said, shrugging. "It was just a loose end."

He smiled. "I'm the same way. Hate it when there are danglers. That's what I call them."

"Danglers. I like that."

"So are you ready to go?"

"Just a second or two." She rose and walked to the door. Albert Stemple was standing in the hallway. TJ too.

She glanced at them, sighed and nodded.

The massive, shaved-head agent stepped into the office, with TJ right behind him.

Both men drew their weapons-Dance just didn't have the heart-and in a few seconds Winston Kellogg was disarmed, cuffs on his hands.

"What the hell's going on?" he raged.

Dance provided the answer, surprised at how serene her voice sounded as she said, "Winston Kellogg, you're under arrest for the murder of Daniel Pell."

Chapter 59

They were in room 3, one of the interrogation rooms in CBI's Monterey office, and it was Dance's favorite. This was a little bigger than the other (which was room 1, there being no number 2). And the one-way mirror was a little shinier. It also had a small window and, if the curtains were open, you could see a tree outside. Sometimes, during her interrogations, she'd use the view to distract or draw out the interviewees. Today the curtain was closed.

Dance and Kellogg were alone. Behind the sparkling mirror the video camera was set up and running. TJ was there, along with Charles Overby, both unseen, though the mirror, of course, implied observers.

Winston Kellogg had declined an attorney and was willing to talk. Which he did in an eerily calm voice (very much the same tone as Daniel Pell's in his interrogation, she reflected, unsettled at the thought). "Kathryn, let's just step back here, can we? Is that all right? I don't know what you think is going on but this isn't the way to handle it. Believe me."

The subtext of these words was arrogance-and the corollary, betrayal. She tried to push the pain away as she replied simply, "Let's get started." She slipped her black-framed glasses on, her predator specs.

"Maybe you've gotten some bad information. Why don't you tell me what you think the problem is and we'll see what's really going on?"

As if he were talking to a child.

She looked Winston Kellogg over closely. It's an interrogation just like any other, Dance told herself. Though it wasn't, of course. Here was a man she'd felt romantic toward and who had lied to her. Someone who had used her, like Daniel Pell had used…well, everyone.

Then she forced aside her own emotion, hard though that was, and concentrated on the task in front of her. She was going to break him. Nothing would stop her.

Because she knew him well by now, the analysis unfolded quickly in her mind.

First, how should he be categorized in the context of the crime? A suspect in a homicide.

Second, does he have a motive to lie? Yes.

Third, what's his personality type? Extroverted, thinking, judging. She could be as tough with him as she needed to be.

Fourth, what is his liar's personality? A High Machiavellian. He's intelligent, has a good memory, is adept at the techniques of deception and will use all those skills to create lies that work to his advantage. He'll give up lying if he's caught, and use other weapons to shift the blame, threaten or attack. He'll demean and patronize, trying to unnerve her and exploit her own emotional responses, a dark mirror image of her own mission as an interrogator. He'll try to get information to use against me later, she reminded herself.

You had to be very careful with High Machs.

The next step in her kinesic analysis would be to determine what stress response state he fell into when lying-anger, denial, depression or bargaining-and to probe his story when she recognized one.

But here was the problem. She was one of the best kinesics analysts in the country, yet she hadn't spotted Kellogg's lies, which he'd dished up right in front of, and to, her. Largely his behavior was not outright lying but evasion-withholding information is the hardest type of deception to detect. Still, Dance was skilled at spotting evasion. More significant, Kellogg was, she decided, in that rare class of individuals virtually immune to kinesic analysts and polygraph operators: excluded subjects, like the mentally ill and serial killers.

The category also includes zealots.

Which was what she now believed Winston Kellogg was. Not the leader of a cult, but someone just as fanatical and just as dangerous, a man convinced of his own righteousness.

Still, she needed to break him. She needed to get to the truth, and to do that, Dance had to spot stress flags within him to know where to probe.

So she attacked. Hard, fast.

From her purse, Dance took a digital audiotape recorder and set it on the table between them. She hit play.

The sounds of a phone ringing, then:

"Tech Resource. Rick Adams speaking."

"My name's Kellogg from Ninth Street. MVCC."

"Sure, Agent Kellogg. What can I do for you?"

"I'm in the area and have a problem on my computer. I've got a protected file and the guy who sent it to me can't remember the password. It's a Windows XP operating system."

"Sure. That's a piece of cake. I can handle it."

"Rather not use you guys for a personal job. They're cracking down on that back at HQ."

"Well, there's a good outfit in Cupertino we farm stuff out to. They're not cheap."

"Are they fast?"

"Oh, for that? Sure."

"Great. Give me their number."

She shut the recorder off. "You lied to me. You said the 'bureau tech guys' cracked it. They didn't."

"I-"

"Winston, Pell didn't write anything about Nimue or suicides. I created that file last night."

He could only stare at her.

She said, "Nimue was a red herring. There was nothing on Jennie's computer until I put it there. TJ did find a reference to Nimue but it was a newspaper story about a woman named Alison Sharpe, an interview in a local paper in Montana-'My Month with Daniel Pell,' something like that. They met in San Francisco about twelve years ago, when she was living in a group like the Family and going by the name Nimue. The leader named everyone after Arthurian characters. She and Pell hitchhiked around the state but she left him after he was picked up in Redding on that murder charge. Pell probably didn't know her surname and searched the only two names he knew-Alison and Nimue-to find her and kill her because she knew where his mountaintop was."

"So you faked this file and asked me to help you crack it. Why the masquerade, Kathryn?"

"I'll tell you why. Body language isn't limited to the living, you know. You can read a lot into a corpse's posture too. Last night TJ brought me all the files in the case for the final disposition report. I was looking over the crime-scene pictures from Point Lobos. Something didn't seem right. Pell wasn't hiding behind the rocks. He was out in the open, on his back. His legs were bent and there were water and sand stains on his knees. Both knees, not just one. That was curious. People crouch when they're fighting, or at least keep one foot planted on the ground. I saw exactly the same posture in a case involving a man who'd been killed in a gang hit, forced on his knees to beg before he was shot. Why would Pell leave cover, get down on both knees and shoot at you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." No emotion whatsoever.

"And the coroner's report said that from the downward angle of the bullets through his body you were standing full height, not crouching. If it was a real firefight you would've been in a defensive stance, crouching yourself… And I remembered the sequence of the sounds. The flash-bang went off and then I heard the shots, after a delay. No, I think that you saw where he was, tossed the flash-bang and moved in fast, disarmed him. Then had him kneel and you tossed your cuffs on the ground for him to put on. When he was reaching for them, you shot him."

"Ridiculous."

She continued, unfazed. "And the flash-bang? After the assault at the Sea View you were supposed to check all the ordnance back in. That's standard procedure. Why keep it? Because you were waiting for a chance to move in and kill him. And I checked the timing of your call for backup. You didn't make it from the inn, like you pretended. You made it later, to give you a chance to get Pell alone." She held up a hand, silencing another protest. "But whether my theory was ridiculous or not, his death raised questions. I thought I should check further. I wanted to know more about you. I got your file from a friend of my husband's on Ninth Street. I found some interesting facts. You'd been involved in the shooting deaths of several suspected cult leaders during attempts to apprehend. And two cult leaders died of suicides under suspicious circumstances when you were consulting with local law enforcement agencies in their investigations.

"The suicide in L.A. was the most troubling. A woman who ran a cult committed suicide by jumping out of her sixth-story window, two days after you arrived to help out the LAPD. But it was curious-no one had ever heard her talk about suicide before that. There was no note, and, yes, she was being investigated but only for civil tax fraud. No reason to kill herself.

"So, I had to test you, Winston. I wrote the document in that file."

It was a fake email that suggested a girl with the name of Nimue was in the suicide victim's cult and had information that the woman's death was suspicious.

"I got a tap warrant on your phone, put a simple Windows password on the file and handed over the computer to see what you'd do. If you'd told me you'd read the file and what it contained, that would've been the end of the matter. You and I'd be on our way to Big Sur right now.

"But, no, you made your phone call to the tech, had the private company crack the code and you read the file. There was no wipe bomb. No mush. You destroyed it yourself. You had to, of course. You were afraid we'd catch on to the fact that your life for the past six years has been traveling around the country and murdering people like Daniel Pell."

Kellogg gave a laugh. Now, faint kinesic deviation; the tone was different. An excluded subject, yes, but he was feeling the stress. She'd touched close to home.

"Please, Kathryn. Why on earth would I do that?"

"Because of your daughter." She said this not without some sympathy.

And the fact that he gave no response, merely held her eye as if he were in great pain, was an indication-though a tiny one-that she was narrowing in on the truth.

"It takes a lot to fool me, Winston. And you're very, very good. The only variation from your baseline behavior I ever noticed was when it came to children and family. But I didn't think much of it. At first I supposed that was because of the connection between us, and you weren't comfortable with children and were wrestling with the idea of having them in your life.

"Then, I think you saw that I was curious, or suspicious, and you confessed that you'd lied, that you had had a daughter. You told me about her death. Of course, that's a common trick-confession to one lie to cover up another, related one. And what was the lie? Your daughter did die in a car accident, yes, but it wasn't exactly how you described it. You apparently destroyed the police report in Seattle-nobody could find it-but TJ and I made some calls and pieced together the story.

"When she was sixteen your daughter ran away from home because you and your wife were getting divorced. She ended up with a group in Seattle-very much like the Family. She was there for about six months. Then she and three other members of the cult died in a suicide pact because the leader told them to leave, they hadn't been loyal enough. They drove their car into Puget Sound."

There's something terrifying about the idea of being kicked out of your family…

"And then you joined the MVCC and made it your life's work to stop people like that. Only sometimes the law didn't cooperate. And you had to take it into your own hands. I called a friend in Chicago PD. You were the cult expert on the scene last week, assisting them. Their report said you claimed the perp fired at you, and you had to 'neutralize the threat.' But I don't think he did shoot. I think you killed him and then wounded yourself." She tapped her neck, indicating his bandage. "Which makes that murder too, just like Pell."

She grew angry. It hit fast, like a flash of hot sunlight as a cloud passed on. Control it, she told herself. Take a lesson from Daniel Pell.

Take a lesson from Winston Kellogg.

"The dead man's family filed a complaint. They claimed he was set up. He had a long rap sheet, sure. Just like Pell. But he never touched guns. He was afraid of the deadly-weapon count."

"He touched one long enough to shoot me."

A very faint shift of Kellogg's foot. Almost invisible, but it telegraphed stress. So, he wasn't completely immune to her interrogation.

His response was a lie.

"We'll know more after reviewing the files. And we're checking with other jurisdictions too, Winston. Apparently you insisted on helping local police all over the country whenever there was a crime involving a cult."

Charles Overby had implied that it was his own idea to bring in a federal specialist on cults. Last night, though, she'd begun to suspect that this probably wasn't what happened and she'd asked her boss point-blank how the FBI agent had come to work the Pell case. Overby hemmed and hawed but ultimately admitted that Kellogg had told the bureau's Amy Grabe he was coming to the Peninsula to consult on the manhunt for Pell; it wasn't up for debate. He'd been here as soon as the paperwork in Chicago was cleaned up.

"I looked back at the Pell case. Michael O'Neil was upset that you wanted a takedown at the Sea View, rather than surveillance. And I wondered why you wanted to be first through the door. The answer is so that you'd have a clear shot at Pell. And yesterday, at the beach at Point Lobos, you got him on his knees. And then you killed him."

"That's your evidence that I murdered him? His posture? Really, Kathryn."

"And MCSO crime scene found the bullet of the slug you fired at me on the ridge."

He fell silent at this.

"Oh, you weren't shooting to hit me, I understand. You just wanted to keep me where I was, with Samantha and Linda, so that I wouldn't interfere with your chance to kill Pell."

"It was an accidental discharge," he said matter-of-factly. "Careless of me. I should've owned up to it but it was embarrassing. Here I am, a professional."

Lie…

Under her gaze, his shoulders dipped slightly. His lips tightened. Dance knew there'd be no confession-she wasn't even after that-but he did shift into a different stress state. He wasn't a completely emotionless machine, it seemed. She'd hit him hard, and it hurt.

"I don't talk about my past and what happened with my daughter. I should've shared more with you, maybe, but you don't talk about your husband much either, I notice." He fell silent for a moment. "Look around us, Kathryn. Look at the world. We're so fragmented, so shattered. The family's a dying breed, and yet we're starving for the comfort of one. Starving…And what happens? Along come people like Daniel Pell. And they suck the vulnerable, needy ones right in. The women in Pell's Family-Samantha and Linda. They were good kids, never did anything wrong, not really. And they got seduced by a killer. Why? Because he dangled in front of them the one thing they didn't have: a family.

"It was only a matter of time before they, or Jennie Marston, or somebody else under his spell started killing. Or maybe kidnapping children. Abusing them. Even in prison, Pell had his followers. How many of them went on to do the same thing he'd done, after they were released?…These people have to be stopped. I'm aggressive about it, I get results. But I don't cross the line."

"You don't cross your line, Winston. But it's not your own standards you have to apply. That's not how the system works. Daniel Pell never thought he was doing anything wrong either."

He gave her a smile and a shrug, the emblem gesture, which she took to mean, You see it your way, I see it mine. And we'll never agree on this.

To Dance it was as clear as saying, "I'm guilty."

Then the smile faded, as it had at the beach yesterday. "One thing. Us? That was real. Whatever else you think about me, that was real."

Kathryn Dance recalled walking down the hall with him at CBI when he'd made the wistful comment on the Family, implying gaps in his own life: solitude, a job substituting for a failed marriage, his daughter's unspeakably terrible death. Dance didn't doubt that, though he had deceived her about his mission, this lonely man had been trying, genuinely, to make a connection with her.

And as a kinesic analyst she could see that his comment-"That was real"-was absolutely honest.

But it was also irrelevant to the interrogation and not worth the breath to respond to.

Then a faint V formed between his brows and the faux smile was back. "Really, Kathryn. This is isn't a good idea. It'll be a nightmare running a case like this. For the CBI…for you personally too."

"Me?"

Kellogg pursed his lips for a moment. "I seem to recall some questions were raised about your conduct in the handling of the interrogation at the courthouse in Salinas. Maybe something was said or done that helped Pell escape. I don't know the details. Maybe it was nothing. But I did hear Amy Grabe has a note or two on it." He shrugged, lifting his palms. The cuffs jingled.

Overby's ass-covering comment to the FBI, coming back to haunt. Dance was seething at Kellogg's threat but she offered no affect displays whatsoever. Her shrug was even more dismissive than his. "If that issue comes up, I guess we'll just have to look at the facts."

"I suppose so. I just hope it doesn't affect your career, long term."

Taking off her glasses, she eased forward into a more personal proxemic zone. "Winston, I'm curious. Tell me: What did Daniel say to you before you killed him? He'd dropped the gun and he was on his knees, reaching for the cuffs. Then he looked up. And he knew, didn't he? He wasn't a stupid man. He knew he was dead. Did he say anything?"

Kellogg gave an involuntary recognition response, though he said nothing.

Her outburst was inappropriate, of course, and she knew it marked the end of the interrogation. But that didn't matter. She had her answers, she had the truth-or at least an approximation of it. Which, according to the elusive science of kinesic analysis and interrogation, is usually enough.

Chapter 60

Dance and TJ were in Charles Overby's office. The CBI chief sat behind his desk, nodding and looking at a picture of himself and his son catching a salmon. Or, she couldn't tell for sure, looking at his desk clock. It was 8:30 P.M. Two straight nights the agent in charge had been working late. A record.

"I saw the whole interview. You got some good stuff. Absolutely. But he was pretty slick. Didn't really admit anything. Hardly a confession."

"He's a High Mach with an antisocial personality, Charles. He's not the sort to confess. I was just probing to see what his defenses would be and how he'd structure the denials. He destroyed computer files when he thought they implicated him in a suspicious suicide in L.A.? He used unauthorized ordnance? His gun went off 'accidentally' in my direction? A jury'd laugh all the way to a guilty verdict. For him, the interrogation was a disaster."

"Really? He looked pretty confident."

"He did, and he'll be a good defendant on the stand-if he takes the stand. But tactically his case is hopeless."

"He was arresting an armed killer. And you're claiming that his motive is that his daughter died because of some cult thing? That's not compelling."

"I never worry too much about motive. If a man kills his wife, it doesn't really matter to the jury if it was because she served him a burned steak or he wants her insurance money. Murder's murder. It'll become a lot less soap opera when we link Kellogg to the others who've been killed."

Dance told him about the other deaths, the suspicious takedown in Chicago last week, and others, in Fort Worth and New York. The suicide in L.A. and one in Oregon. One particularly troubling case was in Florida, where Kellogg had gone to assist Dade County deputies investigating charges of kidnapping earlier in the year. A Miami man had a communal house on the outskirts of the city. The Latino certainly had a devoted following, some of them quite fanatical. Kellogg shot him when he'd apparently lunged for a weapon during a raid. But it was later discovered that the commune also ran a soup kitchen and a respected Bible study class and was raising funds for a day-care center for children of working single parents in the neighborhood. The kidnapping charges turned out to be bogus, leveled by his ex-wife.

The local papers were still questioning the circumstances of his death.

"Interesting, but I'm not sure any of that would be admissible," her boss offered. "What about forensics from the beach?"

Dance felt a pang that Michael O'Neil wasn't here to go through the technical side of the case. (Why wasn't he calling back?)

"They found the slug that Kellogg fired at Kathryn," TJ said. "It conclusively matches his SIG."

Overby grunted. "Accidental discharge…Relax, Kathryn, somebody's got to be the devil's advocate here."

"The shell casings from Pell's gun on the beach were found closer to Kellogg's position than Pell's. Kellogg probably fired Pell's weapon himself to make it look like self-defense. Oh, and the lab found sand in Kellogg's handcuffs. That means Kellogg-"

"Suggests," Overby corrected.

"Suggests that Kellogg disarmed Pell, got him into the open, tossed the cuffs down and, when Pell went to pick them up, killed him."

Dance said, "Look, Charles, I'm not saying it'll be a shoo-in, but Sandoval can win it. I can testify that Pell wasn't a threat when he was shot. The pose of the body's clear."

Overby's eyes scanned his desk and settled on yet another framed fish picture. "Motive?"

Hadn't he paid attention earlier? Probably not.

"Well, his daughter. He's killing anybody who's connected-"

The CBI chief looked up and his eyes were sharp and probing. "No, not Kellogg's motive for killing him. Our motive. For bringing the case."

Ah. Right. He meant, of course, her motive. Was it retribution because she'd been betrayed by Kellogg? "It'll come up, you know. We'll need a response."

Her boss was on a roll today.

But so was she. "Because Winston Kellogg murdered someone within our jurisdiction."

Overby's phone rang. He stared at it for four trills then answered.

TJ whispered, "That's a good motive. Better than he served you a lousy steak."

The CBI chief hung up, staring at the picture of the salmon. "We've got visitors." He straightened his tie. "The FBI's here."

"Charles, Kathryn…"

Amy Grabe took the coffee cup that was offered by Overby's assistant and sat. She gave a nod to TJ.

Dance chose an upright chair near the attractive but no-nonsense special agent in charge of the San Francisco field office. Dance didn't go for the more comfortable but lower couch across from the woman; sitting even an inch below someone puts you at a psychological disadvantage. Dance proceeded to tell the FBI agent the latest details about Kellogg and Nimue.

Grabe knew some, but not all, of the tale. She frowned as she listened, motionless, unlike fidgety Overby. Her right hand rested on the opposite sleeve of her stylish burgundy suit.

Dance made her case. "He's an active duty agent killing these people, Amy. He lied to us. He staged a dynamic entry when there was no need to. He nearly got a dozen people hurt. Some could've been killed."

Overby's pen bounced like a drumstick, and TJ's kinesics read: Okay, now, this is an awkward moment.

Grabe's eyes, beneath perfect brows, scanned everyone in the room as she said, "It's all very complicated and difficult. I understand that. But whatever happened, I've gotten a call. They'd like him released."

"They-Ninth Street?"

She nodded. "And higher. Kellogg's a star. Great collar record. Saved hundreds of people from these cults. And he's going to be taking on fundamentalist cases. I mean terrorists. Now, if it makes you feel any better, I talked to them, and they'll have an inquiry. Look into the takedowns, see if he used excessive force."

"The most powerful handgun known to man," TJ recited, then fell silent under his boss's withering glance.

"Look into it?" Dance asked, her voice incredulous. "We're talking questionable deaths-fake suicides, Amy. Oh, please. It's a vendetta. Pure and simple. Jesus, even Pell was above revenge. And who knows what else Kellogg's done."

"Kathryn," her boss warned.

The FBI agent said, "The fact is he's a federal agent investigating crimes in which the perps are particularly dangerous and smart. In some instances they've been killed resisting. Happens all the time."

"Pell wasn't resisting. I can testify to that-as an expert witness. He was murdered."

Overby was tapping a pencil on his immaculate blotter. The man was a knotted ball of stress.

"Kellogg has arrested-he has arrested, you know-a lot of dangerous individuals. A few have been killed."

"Fine, Amy, we can go on and on about this for hours. My concern isn't anything other than presenting a single homicide case to Sandy Sandoval, whether Washington likes it or not."

"Federalism at work," TJ said.

Tap, tap… The pencil bounced and Overby cleared his throat.

"It's not even a great case," the SAC pointed out. She'd apparently read all the details on the trip to the Peninsula.

"It doesn't have to be a slam dunk. Sandy can still win it."

Grabe put the coffee down. She turned her placid face to Overby and leveled hard eyes at him. "Charles, they've asked that you don't pursue it."

Dance wasn't going to let them dump the case. And, all right, some of her goddamn motive was because the man who'd asked her out, who'd won a bit of her heart, had betrayed her.

…afterward. How does that sound?

Overby's eyes took in more pictures and mementos on his desk. "It's a tough situation… You know what Oliver Wendell Holmes said? He said that tough cases make bad law. Or maybe hard cases make bad law. I don't remember."

What does that mean? she wondered.

Grabe said in a soft tone, "Kathryn, Daniel Pell was a dangerous man. He killed law enforcers, he killed people you know and he killed innocents. You've done a great job in an impossible situation. You stopped a really bad doer. And Kellogg contributed to that. It's a gold star for everybody."

"Absolutely," Overby said. He set down the bouncing writing implement. "You know what this reminds me of, Amy? Jack Ruby killing Kennedy's assassin. Remember? I don't think anybody had a problem with what Ruby did, gunning Oswald down."

Dance's jaw closed, her teeth pressing together firmly. She flicked her thumb against her forefinger. Just as he'd "reassured" Grabe of Dance's innocence in contributing to Pell's escape, her boss was going to sell her out again. By declining to submit the case to Sandy Sandoval, Overby wasn't just covering his ass; he was as guilty of murder as Kellogg himself. Dance sat back, her shoulders slumping slightly. She saw TJ's grimace from the corner of her eye.

"Exactly," Grabe said. "So-"

Then Overby held up a hand. "But a funny thing about that case."

"What case?" the FBI agent asked.

"The Ruby case. Texas arrested him for murder. And guess what? Jack Ruby got convicted and sent to jail." A shrug. "I'll have to say no, Amy. I'm submitting the Kellogg case to the Monterey County Prosecutor. I'm going to recommend indictment for murder. Lesser included offense'll be manslaughter. Oh, and aggravated assault on a CBI agent. Kellogg did take a shot at Kathryn, after all."

Dance felt her heart thud. Had she heard this right? TJ glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.

Overby was looking at Dance. He said, "And I think we should go for misuse of legal process too, and lying to an investigative agent. What do you think, Kathryn?"

Those hadn't occurred to her. "Excellent." She noticed TJ's thumb subtly point upward.

Grabe rubbed her cheek with a short, pink-polished nail. "Do you really think this is a good idea, Charles?"

"Oh, I do. Absolutely."