The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

"Lovely, you keep saying that. What do you mean?"

Jennie smiled. "I do that too much. It's like a prayer, or a mantra. I say it over and over to help me feel better."

"And 'angel song' is your mantra?"

Jennie laughed. "When I was little and Mother'd get arrested--"

"For what?"

"Oh, I don't have time to tell you everything."

Pell looked around again. The area was deserted. "That bad, huh?"

"You name it, she did it. Shoplifting, menacing, stalking. Assault too. She attacked my father. And boyfriends who were breaking up with her--there were a lot of those. If there was a fight, the police came to our house or wherever we were and a lot of times they'd be in a hurry and use the siren. Whenever I'd hear it, I'd think, Thank God, they're going to take her away for a while. It's like the angels were coming to save me. I got to think of sirens like that. Angel songs."

"Angel songs. I like that." Pell nodded.

Suddenly he turned her around and kissed her on the mouth. He leaned back and looked at her face now.

The same face that had been on the motel TV screen a half-hour earlier while she'd been out shopping.

"There's been a new development in the Daniel Pell escape. His accomplice has been identified as Jennie Ann Marston, twenty-five, from Anaheim, California. She's described as about five foot five, weighing a hundred and ten pounds. Her driver's license picture is in the upper left-hand corner of your screen and the photos to the right and below show what she might look like now, after cutting and dyeing her hair. If you see her, do not attempt to apprehend. Call 911 or the hotline you see at the bottom of your screen."

The picture was unsmiling, as if she was upset that the Motor Vehicles camera would capture her flawed nose and make it more prominent than her eyes, ears and lips.

Apparently Jennie had left something in the Sea View Motel room after all.

He turned her around to face the raging ocean, stood behind her.

"Angel songs," she whispered.

Pell held her tight for a moment, then kissed her on the cheek.

"Look at that," he said, gazing at the beach.

"What?"

"That rock there, in the sand."

He bent down and unearthed a smooth stone, which weighed maybe ten pounds. It was luminescent gray.

"What do you think it looks like, lovely?"

"Oh, when you hold it that way it's like a cat, don't you think? A cat sleeping all curled up. Like my Jasmine."

"That was your cat?" Pell hefted it in his hand.

"When I was a little girl. My mother loved it. She'd never hurt Jasmine. She'd hurt me, she'd hurt a lot of people. But never Jasmine. Isn't that funny?"

"That's exactly what I was thinking, lovely. It looks just like a cat."

*

Dance called O'Neil first with the news.

He didn't pick up, so she left a message about Theresa. It wasn't like him not to answer but she knew he wasn't screening. Even his outburst--well, not outburst, okay--even his criticism earlier had been grounded in a law enforcer's desire to run a case most efficiently.

She wondered now, as she occasionally did, what it would be like to live with the cop/book-collector/seafarer. Good and bad, each in large quantities, was her usual conclusion, and she now hung up on that thought at the same time she did the phone.