The Sleeping Doll (35 page)

She went through the standard routine: a check of security, a glass of Pinot Grigio, two pieces of cold flank steak left over from last night and a handful of mixed nuts enjoyed to the sound track of phone messages. Then came canine feeding and their backyard tasks and stowing her Glock — without the kids home she kept the lockbox open, though she still stashed the gun inside, since imprinted memory would guide her hand there automatically no matter how deep a sleep she awoke from. Alarms on.

She opened the window to the guards — about six inches — to let in the cool, fragrant night air. Shower, a clean T–shirt and shorts. She dropped into bed, protecting herself from the mad world by an inch–thick down comforter.

Thinking: Golly damn, girl, making out in a car — with a bench front seat, no buckets, just made for reclining with the man of the hour. She recalled mint, recalled his hands, the flop of hair, the absence of aftershave.

She also heard her son’s voice and saw his eyes earlier that day. Wary, jealous. Dance thought of Linda’s comments earlier.

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

Which was ultimately Wes’s fear. The concern was unreasonable, of course, but that didn’t matter. It was real to him. She’d be more careful this time. Keep Wes and Kellogg separate, not mention the word “date,” sell the idea that, like him, she had friends who were both male and female. Your children are like suspects in an interrogation: It’s not smart to lie but you don’t need to tell them everything.

A lot of work, a lot of juggling.

Time and effort …

Or, she wondered, her thoughts spinning fast, was it better just to forget about Kellogg, wait a year or two before she dated? Age thirteen or fourteen is hugely different from twelve. Wes would be better then.

Yet Dance didn’t want to. She couldn’t forget the complicated memories of his taste and touch. She thought too of his tentativeness about children, the stress he exhibited. She wondered if it was because he was uneasy around youngsters and was now forming a connection with a woman who came with a pair of them. How would he deal with that? Maybe —

But, hold on here, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

You were making out. You enjoyed it. Don’t call the caterer yet.

For a long time she lay in bed, listening to the sounds of nature. You were never very far from them around here — throaty sea animals, temperamental birds and the settling bed sheet of surf. Often, loneliness sprang into Kathryn Dance’s life, a striking snake, and it was at moments like this — in bed, late, hearing the sound track of night — that she was most vulnerable to it. How nice it was to feel your lover’s thigh next to yours, to hear the adagio of shallow breath, to awake at dawn to the thumps and rustling of someone’s rising: sounds, otherwise insignificant, that were the comforting heartbeats of a life together.

Kathryn Dance supposed longing for these small things revealed weakness, a sign of dependency. But what was so wrong with that? My God, look at us fragile creatures. We
have
to depend. So why not fill that dependency with somebody whose company we enjoy, whose body we can gladly press against late at night, who makes us laugh? … Why not just hold on and hope for the best?

Ah, Bill … She thought to her late husband. Bill …

Distant memories tugged.

But so did fresh ones, with nearly equal gravitation.

… afterward. How does that sound?

Her Shire, her Narnia, her Hogwarts, her Secret Garden.

Seventeen–year–old Theresa Croyton Bolling sat in the gray teak Smith & Hawken glider and read the slim volume in her hand, flipping pages slowly. It was a magnificent day. The air was as sweet as the perfume department at Macy’s, and the nearby hills of Napa were as peaceful as ever, covered with a mat of clover and grass, verdant grapevines and pine and gnarly cypress.

Theresa was thinking lyrically because of what she was reading — beautifully crafted, heartfelt, insightful …

And totally
boring
poetry.

She sighed loudly, wishing her aunt were around to hear her. The paperback drooped in her hand and she gazed over the backyard once more. A place where she seemed to spend half her life, the green prison, she sometimes called it.

Other times, she loved the place. It was beautiful, a perfect setting to read, or practice her guitar (Theresa wanted to be a pediatrician, a travel writer or, in the best of all worlds, Sharon Isbin, the famous classical guitarist).

She was here, not in school, at the moment because of an unplanned trip she and her aunt and uncle were going to be taking.

Oh, Tare, we’ll have fun. Roger’s got this thing he has to do in Manhattan, a speech, or research, I don’t really know. Wasn’t paying attention. He was going on and on. You know your uncle. But won’t it be great, getting away, just on a whim? An adventure.

Which was why her aunt had taken her out of school at 10:00 A.M. on Monday. Only, hello, they hadn’t left yet, which was a little odd. Her aunt explaining there were some “logistical difficulties. You know what I mean?”

Theresa was eighth in her class of 257 students at Vallejo Springs High. She said, “Yes, I do. You mean ‘logistic.’ ”

But what the girl
didn’t
understand was, since they were still not on a fucking airplane to New York, why couldn’t she stay in school until the “difficulties” were taken care of?

Her aunt had pointed out, “Besides, it’s study week. So study.”

Which didn’t mean study; what it meant was no TV.

And meant no hanging with Sunny or Travis or Kaitlin.

And meant not going to the big literacy benefit formal in Tiburon that her uncle’s company was a sponsor of (she’d even bought a new dress).

Of course, it was all bullshit. There
was
no trip to New York, there were no difficulties, logistic, logistical or otherwise. It was just an excuse to keep her in the green prison.

And why the lies?

Because the man who’d killed her parents and her brother and sister had escaped from prison. Which her aunt actually seemed to believe she could keep secret from Theresa.

Like, please … The news was the first thing you saw on Yahoo’s home page. And
everybody
in California was talking about it on MySpace and Facebook. (Her aunt had disabled the family’s wireless router somehow, but Theresa had simply piggybacked through a neighbor’s unsecured system.)

The girl tossed the book on the planks of the swing and rocked back and forth, as she pulled the scrunchi out of her hair and rebound her ponytail.

Theresa was certainly grateful for what her aunt had done for her over the years and gave the woman a lot of credit, she really did. After those terrible days in Carmel eight years ago her aunt had taken charge of the girl everybody called the Sleeping Doll. Theresa found herself adopted, relocated, renamed (Theresa
Bolling;
could be worse) and plopped down on the chairs of dozens of therapists, all of whom were clever and sympathetic and who plotted out “routes to psychological wellness by exploring the grieving process and being particularly mindful of the value of transference with parental figures in the treatment.”

Some shrinks helped, some didn’t. But the most important factor — time — worked its patient magic and Theresa became someone other than the Sleeping Doll, survivor of a childhood tragedy. She was a student, friend, occasional girlfriend, veterinary assistant, not bad sprinter in the fifty–and the hundred–yard dash, guitarist who could play Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and do the diminished chord run up the neck without a single squeak on the strings.

Now, though, a setback. The killer was out of jail, true. But that wasn’t the real problem. No, it was the way her aunt was handling everything. It was like reversing the clock, sending her back in time, six, seven, oh, God,
eight
years. Theresa felt as if she were the Sleeping Doll once again, all the gains erased.

Honey, honey, wake up, don’t be afraid. I’m a policewoman. See this badge? Why don’t you get your clothes and go into your bathroom and get changed.

Her aunt was now panicked, edgy, paranoid. It was like in that HBO series she’d watched when she was over at Bradley’s last year. About a prison. If something bad happened, the guards would lock down the place.

Theresa, the Sleeping Doll, was in lockdown. Stuck here in Hogwarts, in Middle Earth … in
Oz
…

The green prison.

Hey, that’s sweet, she thought bitterly: Daniel Pell is out of prison and I’m stuck inside one.

Theresa picked up the poetry book again, thinking of her English test. She read two more lines.

Borrrring.

Theresa then noticed, through the chain–link fence at the end of the property, a car ease past, braking quickly, it seemed, as the driver looked through the bushes her way. A moment’s hesitation and then the car continued on.

Theresa planted her feet and the swinging stopped.

The car could belong to anyone. Neighbors, one of the kids on break from school … She wasn’t worried — not
too
much. Of course, with her aunt’s media blackout, she had no idea if Daniel Pell had been rearrested or was last seen heading for Napa. But that was crazy. Thanks to her aunt she was practically in the witness protection program. How could he possibly find her?

Still, she’d go sneak a look at the computer, see what was going on.

A faint twist in her stomach.

Theresa stood and headed for the house.

Okay, we’re bugging a little now.

She looked behind her, back at the gap through the bushes at the far end of their property. No car. Nothing.

And turning back to the house, Theresa stopped fast.

The man had scaled the tall fence twenty feet away, between her and the house. He looked up, breathing hard from the effort, from where he landed on his knees beside two thick azaleas. His hand was bleeding, cut on the jagged top of the six–foot chain link.

It was him. It was Daniel Pell!

She gasped.

He
had
come here. He was going to finish the murders of the Croyton family.

A smile on his face, he rose stiffly and began to walk toward her.

Theresa Croyton began to cry.

Theresa tensed. She told herself to run. Now, do it!

But her legs wouldn’t move; fear paralyzed her. Besides, there was nowhere to go. He was between her and the house and she knew she couldn’t vault the six–foot chain–link fence. She thought of running away from the house, into the backyard, but then he could tackle her and pull her into the bushes, where he’d …

No, that was too horrible.

Gasping, actually tasting the fear, Theresa shook her head slowly. Felt her strength ebbing. She looked for a weapon. Nothing: only an edging brick, a bird feeder,
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.

She looked back at Pell.

“You killed my parents. You … Don’t hurt me!”

A frown. “No, my God,” the man said, eyes wide. “Oh, no, I just want to talk to you. I’m not Daniel Pell. I swear. Look.”

He tossed something in her direction, ten feet away. “Look at it. The back. Turn it over.”

Theresa glanced at the house. The one time she needed her aunt, the woman was nowhere in sight.

“There,” the man said.

The girl stepped forward — and he continued to retreat, giving her plenty of room.

She walked closer and glanced down. It was a book.
A Stranger in the Night,
by Morton Nagle.

“That’s me.”

Theresa wouldn’t pick it up. With her foot, she eased it over. On the back cover was a picture of a younger version of the man in front of her.

Was it true?

Theresa suddenly realized that she’d seen only a few pictures of Daniel Pell, taken eight years ago. She’d had to sneak a look at a few articles online — her aunt told her it would set her back years psychologically if she read anything about the murders. But looking at the younger author photo, it was clear that this wasn’t the gaunt, scary man she remembered.

Theresa wiped her face. Anger exploded inside her, a popped balloon. “What’re you doing here? You fucking scared me!”

The man pulled his sagging pants up as if planning to walk closer. But evidently he decided not to. “There was no other way to talk to you. I saw your aunt yesterday when she was shopping. I wanted her to ask you something.”

Theresa glanced at the chain link.

Nagle said, “The police are on their way, I know. I saw the alarm on the fence. They’ll be here in three, four minutes, and they’ll arrest me. That’s fine. But I have to tell you something. The man who killed your parents has escaped from prison.”

“I know.”

“You do? Your aunt —”

“Just leave me alone!”

“There’s a policewoman in Monterey who’s trying to catch him but she needs some help. Your aunt wouldn’t tell you, and if you were eleven or twelve I’d never do this. But you’re old enough to make up your own mind. She wants to talk to you.”

“A policewoman?”

“Please, just call her. She’s in Monterey. You can — Oh, God.”

The gunshot from behind Theresa was astonishingly loud, way louder than in the movies. It shook the windows and sent birds streaking into the clear skies.

Theresa cringed at the sound and dropped to her knees, watching Morton Nagle tumble backward onto the wet grass, his arms flailing in the air.

Eyes wide in horror, the girl looked at the deck behind the house.

Weird, she didn’t even know her aunt owned a gun, much less knew how to shoot it.