The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

"Hey, Officer, how you doing, you got a minute? Just like to ask you a few questions. . . . You mind saying a few words into the tape recorder? . . . Oh, sure, I understand. I'll catch you later. Sure. Good luck."

Morton Nagle had watched the helicopter swoop in low and ease to the ground to spirit away the injured cop.

He'd watched the men and women conducting the search, their strategy--and faces--making clear that they'd never run an escape.

He'd watched the uneasy crowds, thinking accidental fire, then thinking terrorists, then hearing the truth and looking even more scared than if al-Qaeda itself were behind the explosion.

As well they should, Nagle reflected.

"Excuse me, do you have a minute to talk? . . . Oh, sure. Not a problem. Sorry to bother you, Officer."

Nagle milled through the crowds. Smoothing his wispy hair, then tugging up saggy tan slacks, he was studying the area carefully, the fire trucks, the squad cars, the flashing lights bursting with huge aureoles through the foggy haze. He lifted his digital camera and snapped some more pictures.

A middle-aged woman looked over his shabby vest--a fisherman's garment with two dozen pockets--and battered camera bag. She snapped, "You people, you journalists, you're like vultures. Why don't you let the police do their job?"

He gave a chuckle. "I didn't know I wasn't."

"You're all the same." The woman turned away and continued to stare angrily at the smoky courthouse.

A guard came up to him and asked if he'd seen anything suspicious.

Nagle thought, Now that's a strange question. Sounds like something from an old-time TV show.

Just the facts, ma'am . . .

He answered, "Nope."

Adding to himself, Nothing surprising to me. But maybe I'm the wrong one to ask.

Nagle caught a whiff of a terrible scent--seared flesh and hair--and, incongruously, gave another amused laugh.

Thinking about it now--Daniel Pell had put the idea in mind--he realized he chuckled at times that most people would consider inappropriate, if not tasteless. Moments like this: when looking over carnage. Over the years he'd seen plenty of violent death, images that would repel most people.

Images that often made Morton Nagle laugh.

It was a defense mechanism probably. A device to keep violence--a subject he was intimately familiar with--from eating away at his soul, though he wondered if the chuckling wasn't an indicator that it already had.

Then an officer was making an announcement. People would soon be allowed back into the courthouse.

Nagle hitched up his pants, pulled his camera bag up higher on his shoulder and scanned the crowd. He spotted a tall, young Latino in a suit, clearly a plainclothes detective of some sort. The man was speaking to an elderly woman wearing a juror badge. They were off to the side, not many people around.

Good.

Nagle sized up the officer. Just what he wanted, young, gullible, trusting. And began slowly moving toward him.

Closing the distance.

The man moved on, oblivious to Nagle, looking for more people to interview.

When he was ten feet away, the big man slipped the camera strap around his neck, unzipped the bag, reached inside.

Five feet . . .

He stepped closer yet.

And felt a strong hand close around his arm. Nagle gasped and his heart gave a jolt.

"Just keep those hands where I can see them, how's that?" The man was a short, fidgety officer with the California Bureau of Investigation. Nagle read the ID dangling from his neck.