The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

Well, this is a rather spiny moment.

Dance didn't want to talk about Brian Gunderson.

r />

The trill of the conference-room phone saved her.

She answered, listened for a moment and said, "Have somebody bring him to my office right away."

Chapter 11

The large man, in a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation uniform, sat in front of her desk, a workaday slab of government-issue furniture on which lay random pens, some awards, a lamp and photos: of the two children, of Dance with a handsome silver-haired man, of her mother and father, and of two dogs, each paired with one of the youngsters. A dozen files also rested on the cheap laminate. They were facedown.

"This is terrible," said Tony Waters, a senior guard from Capitola Correctional Facility. "I can't tell you."

Dance detected traces of a southeastern accent in the distraught voice. The Monterey Peninsula drew people from all over the world. Dance and Waters were alone at the moment. Michael O'Neil was checking on the forensics from the scene of the escape.

"You were in charge of the wing where Pell was incarcerated?" Dance asked.

"That's right." Bulky and with stooped shoulders, Waters sat forward in the chair. He was in his midfifties, she estimated.

"Did Pell say anything to you--about where he's headed?"

"No, ma'am. I've been racking my brain since it happened. That was the first thing I did when I heard. I sat down and went through everything he'd said in the past week or more. But, no, nothing. For one thing, Daniel didn't talk a lot. Not to us, the hacks."

"Did he spend time in the library?"

"Huge amount. Read all the time."

"Can I find out what?"

"It's not logged and the cons can't check anything out."

"How about visitors?"

"Nobody in the last year."

"And telephone calls? Are they logged?"

"Yes, ma'am. But not recorded." He thought back. "He didn't have many, aside from reporters wanting to interview him. But he never called back. I think maybe he talked to his aunt once or twice. No others I remember."

"What about computers, email?"

"Not for the prisoners. We do for ourselves, of course. They're in a special area--a control zone. We're very strict about that. You know, I was thinking about it and if he communicated with anybody on the outside--"

"Which he had to do," Dance pointed out.

"Right. It had to be through a con being released. You might want to check there."

"I thought of that. I've talked to your warden. She tells me that there were only two releases in the past month and their parole officers had them accounted for this morning. They could've gotten messages to someone, though. The officers're checking that out."

Waters, she'd noted, had arrived empty-handed, and Dance now asked, "Did you get our request for the contents of his cell?"

The guard's mood darkened. He was shaking his head, looking down. "Yes, ma'am. But it was empty. Nothing inside at all. Had been empty for a couple of days actually." He looked up, his lips tight, as he seemed to be debating. Then his eyes dipped as he said, "I didn't catch it."

"Catch what?"

"The thing is, I've worked the Q and Soledad and Lompoc. Half dozen others. We learn to look for certain things. See, if something big's going down, the cons' cells change. Things'll disappear--sometimes it's evidence that they're going to make a run, or evidence of shit a con's done that he doesn't want us to know about. Or what he's going to do. Because he knows we'll look over the cell with a microscope after."