Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

"You don't have a wife?"

"No, but even if I did I'd do the cooking. I pretty good in the kitchen." Then a frown. "But I want to help. Terrible, some of the things that happen, the gangs." He closed his eyes momentarily. "Disgusting."

"You've lived in the area for a while?"

"Ten years."

"You're not married. But you have family here?"

"No, they in Bakersfield."

Foster: "Shouldn't she have looked all this up?"

Overby said, "Oh, she knows it. She knows everything about him. Well, what she could learn in the past eight hours since she got his name."

He'd observed plenty of Dance's interrogations and listened to her lecture on the topic; he was able to give the task force a brief overview of her specialty. "Kinesics is all about looking for stress indicators. When people lie they feel stress, can't help it. Some suspects can cover it up well so it's hard to see. But most of us give away indications that we're stressed. What Kathryn's doing is talking to Serrano for a while, nothing about gang activity, nothing about crime--the weather, growing up, restaurants, life on the Peninsula. She gets his baseline body language."

"Baseline." Foster, paying half attention.

"That's the key. It tells her how he behaves when he's answering truthfully. When I said earlier that kinesics doesn't work that way? I meant it doesn't work in a vacuum. It's almost impossible to meet somebody and instantly read them. You have to do what Kathryn's doing--getting that baseline. After that she'll start asking about gang activities he might've heard of, then about Guzman."

Allerton said, "So she compares his behavior then to his baseline, when she knows he's telling the truth."

"That's it," Overby replied. "If there's any variation it'll be because he's feeling stress."

"And that's because he's lying," Foster said.

"Possibly. Of course, there's lying because you just machine-gunned somebody to death. And there's lying because you don't want to get machine-gunned. His deception'll be because there's a point past which he won't want to cooperate. Kathryn'll have to make sure he does."

"Cooperation," Foster said. The word seemed to take on extra syllables as it trickled from a cynical mouth.

Overby noted that Foster was or had been a smoker--slight discoloration of his index and middle fingers. The teeth were yellowish.

Sherlock.

In front of them, in the small, sterile room, Kathryn Dance continued to ask questions, chat, share observations.

Fifteen minutes rolled past.

Dance asked, "You enjoy landscaping?"

"I do, si. It's, I don't know, I like to work with my hands. I think maybe I'd be an artist if I had some, you know, skill. But I don't. Gardening? That's something I can do."

Overby noted his nails were dark crescents.

"Now, here's what we're looking into. Not long ago a man named Hector Mendoza was killed. Shot. His nickname was Sad Eyes. He was coming out of a restaurant in New Monterey. On Lighthouse."

"Sad Eyes. Yeah, yeah. On the news. Near Baskin-Robbins, right?"

"That's it."

"Was--I no remember. Was a drive-by?"

"That's right."

"Was anybody else hurt?" He frowned. "I hate it when children, bystanders, are hurt. Those gang people, they don't care who they hurt or don't hurt."

Dance nodded, on her face a pleasant expression. "Mr. Serrano, the reason I'm asking you this is that your name came up in the investigation."