Everything Theresa was telling her was presumably consistent with facts that Dance could verify. But deception includes evasion and omission as well as outright lying. There were things Theresa wasn't sharing.
"Tare, something troubling happened on the drive, didn't it?"
"Troubling? No. Really. I swear."
A triple play there: two denial flag expressions, along with answering a question with a question. Now the girl was flushed and her foot bobbed again, an obvious cluster of stress responses.
"Go on, tell me. It's all right. There's nothing you have to worry about. Tell me."
"Like, you know. My parents, my brother and sister . . . They were killed. Who wouldn't be upset?" A bit of anger now.
Dance nodded sympathetically. "I mean before that. You've left Carmel, you're driving to Santa Cruz. You're not feeling well. You go home. Other than being sick, what was there about that drive that bothered you?"
"I don't know. I can't remember."
That sentence, from a person in a denial state, means: I remember perfectly well but I don't want to think about it. The memory's too painful.
"You're driving along and--
"I--" Theresa began, then she fell silent. And lowered head to hands, breaking into tears. A torrent, accompanied by the sound track of breathless sobbing.
"Tare." Dance rose and handed her a wad of tissues as the girl cried hard, though quietly, the sobs like hiccups.
"It's okay," the agent said compassionately, gripping her arm. "Whatever happened, it's fine. Don't worry."
"I . . ." The girl was paralyzed; Dance could see she was trying to make a decision. Which way would it go? the agent wondered. She'd either spill everything, or stonewall--in which case the interview was now over.
Finally she said, "Oh, I've wanted to tell somebody. I just couldn't. Not the counselors or friends, my aunt . . ." More sobbing. Collapsed chest, chin down, hands in her lap when not mopping her face. The textbook kinesic signs that Theresa Croyton had moved into the acceptance stage of emotional response. The terrible burden of what she'd been living with was finally going to come out. She was confessing.
"It's my fault. It's all my fault they're dead!"
Now she pressed her head back against the couch. Her face was red, tendons rose, tears stained the front of her sweater.
"Brenda and Steve and Mom and Dad . . . all because of me!"
"Because you got sick?"
"No! Because I pretended to be sick!"
"Tell me."
"I didn't want to go to the boardwalk. I couldn't stand going, I hated it! All I could think of was to pretend to be sick. I remembered about these models who put their fingers down their throats so they throw up and don't get fat. When we were in the car on the highway I did that when nobody was looking. I threw up in the backseat and said I had the flu. It was all gross, and everybody was mad and Dad turned around and drove back home."
So that was it. The poor girl was convinced it was her fault her family'd been slaughtered because of the lie she told. She'd lived with this terrible burden for eight years.
One truth had been excavated. But at least one more remained. And Kathryn Dance wanted to unearth this one as well.
"Tell me, Tare. Why didn't you want to go to the pier?"
"I just didn't. It wasn't fun."
Confessing one lie doesn't lead automatically to confessing them all. The girl had now slipped into denial once again.
"Why? You can tell me. Go on."
"I don't know. It just wasn't fun."
"Why not?"