"How well did you know Daniel Pell?" Dance asked.

"Not really good. Nobody did. But I was somebody who, you know, wasn't no threat to him. So he kind of opened up to me."

"And you've got some information on him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why're you helping us?" O'Neil asked.

"Up for parole in six months. I help you, it'll go good for me. Provided you catch him, of course. If you don't, I think I'll stay in the Big C here until you do, now that I'm rolling over on him."

O'Neil asked, "Did Pell talk about girlfriends or anyone on the outside? Particularly a woman?"

"He bragged about the women he'd had. He'd give us these great stories. It was like watching a porn film. Oh, man, we loved those stories."

"You remember any names? Someone named Alison?"

"He never mentioned anybody."

After what Tony Waters had told her, Dance suspected that Pell was making up the sex stories-using them as incentives to get the cons to do things for him.

She asked, "So, what do you want to tell us?"

"I have this idea where he might be headed." Dance and O'Neil shared a glance. "Outside of Acapulco. There's a town there, Santa Rosario, in the mountains."

"Why there?"

"Okay, what it was, maybe a week ago we were sitting around bullshitting and there was a new con, Felipe Rivera, doing a back-to-back 'cause he got trigger-happy during a GTA. We were talking and Pell finds out he was from Mexico. So Pell's asking him about this Santa Rosario. Rivera'd never heard of it, but Pell's pretty anxious to find out more, so he describes it, like trying to jog his memory. It's got a hot spring and it's not near any big highways and there's this steep mountain nearby… But Rivera couldn't remember anything. Then Pell shut up about it and changed the subject. So I was figuring that's what he might've had in mind."

Dance asked, "Before that, had he ever mentioned Mexico?"

"Maybe. Can't say as I recall."

"Think back, Eddie. Say, six months, a year. Did Pell ever talk about someplace else he'd like to go?"

Another pause. "No. Sorry. I mean, no place he thought was, man, I've gotta go there because it's kick-ass, or whatever."

"How about somewhere he was just interested in? Or curious about?"

"Oh, hey, a couple times he mentioned that Mormon place."

"Salt Lake City."

"No. The state. Utah. What he liked was that you could have a lot of wives."

The Family…

"He said in Utah the police don't give you any shit because it's the Mormons who run the state and they don't like the FBI or the state police snooping around. You can do whatever you want in Utah."

"When did he tell you that?"

"I don't know. A while ago. Last year. Then maybe a month ago."

Dance glanced at O'Neil and he nodded.

"Let me call you back. Can you wait there for a minute?"

A laugh from Chang. "And where would I go?"

She disconnected, then called Linda Whitfield and, after her, Rebecca Sheffield. Neither woman knew of any interest Pell had ever expressed in either Mexico or Utah. As for the attraction of Mormon polygamy, Linda said he'd never mentioned it. Rebecca laughed. "Pell liked sleeping with several women. That's different from being married to several women. Real different."

Dance and O'Neil walked upstairs to Charles Overby's office and briefed him about the possible destinations, as well as the three references they'd found in the Google search, and the crime-scene results.

"Acapulco?"

"No. It was a plant, I'm sure. He asked about it just last week and in front of other cons. It's too obvious. Utah's more likely. But I've got to find out more."

"Well, front burner it, Kathryn," Overby said. "I just got a call from The New York Times." His phone rang.

"It's Sacramento on two, Charles," his assistant said. He sighed and grabbed the handset.

Dance and O'Neil left and just as they got into the hallway, his phone rang too. As they walked, she glanced at him several times. Michael O'Neil's affect displays-signals of emotion-were virtually invisible most of the time, but they were obvious to her. She deduced the call was about Juan Millar. She could see clearly how upset he was about his fellow officer's injury. She didn't know the last time he'd been so troubled.

O'Neil hung up and gave her a summary of the detective's condition: It was the same as earlier but he'd been awake once or twice.

"Go see him," Dance said.

"You sure?"

"I'll follow up here."

Dance returned to her office, pausing to pour another coffee from the pot near Maryellen Kresbach, who said nothing more about phone messages, though Dance sensed she wanted to.

Brian called…

This time she grabbed the chocolate chip cookie she'd been fantasizing about. At her desk she called Chang and the warden back.

"Eddie, I want to keep going. I want you to tell me more about Pell. Anything about him you can remember. Things he said, things he did. What made him laugh, what made him mad."

A pause. "I don't know what to tell you, really." He sounded confused.

"Hey, how's this for an idea? Pretend somebody was going to set me up on a date with Pell. What would you tell me about him before we went out?"

"A date with Daniel Pell. Whoa, that's one fucking scary thought."

"Do your best, Cupid."

Back in her office, Dance heard the frog croak again and she picked up her cell phone.

The caller was Rey Carraneo, reporting that the manager of the You Mail It franchise on San Benito Way in Salinas did remember a woman in the store about a week ago.

"Only, she didn't mail anything, Agent Dance. She just asked about when the different delivery services stopped there. Worldwide Express was the most regular, he told her. Like clockwork. He wouldn't've thought anything about it, except that he saw her outside a few days later, sitting on a park bench across the street. I'd guess she was checking the times herself."

Unfortunately, Carraneo couldn't do an EFIS image because she'd worn the baseball cap and dark sunglasses then too. Nor had the manager seen her car.

They disconnected, and she wondered again when the Worldwide Express driver's body would be found.

More violence, more death, another family altered.

The ripples of consequence can spread almost forever.

It was just as that recollection of Morton Nagle's words was passing through her mind that Michael O'Neil called. Coincidentally, his message was about that very driver's fate.

Dance was in the front seat of her Taurus.

From the CD player, the original Fairfield Four gospel singers did their best to distract her from the carnage of the morning: "I'm standing in the safety zone…"

Music was Kathryn Dance's salvation. Policework for her wasn't test tubes and computer screens. It was people. Her job required her to blend her mind and heart and emotions with theirs and stay close to them so that she could discern the truths they knew but hesitated to share. The interrogations were usually difficult and sometimes wrenching, and the memories of what the subjects had said and done, often horrendous crimes, never left her completely.

If Alan Stivell's Celtic harp melodies or Natty Bo and Beny Billy's irrepressible ska Cubano tunes or Lightnin' Hopkins's raw, zinging chords were churning in her ears and thoughts, she tended not to hear the shocking replays of her interviews with rapists and murderers and terrorists.

Dance now lost herself in the scratchy tones of the music from a half-century ago.

"Roll, Jordan, roll…"

Five minutes later she pulled into an office park on the north side of Monterey, just off Munras Avenue, and climbed out. She walked into the ground-floor garage, where the Worldwide Express driver's red Honda Civic sat, trunk open, blood smeared on the sheet metal. O'Neil and a town cop were standing beside it.