"We were thinking he escaped from the murder scene by boat."

"Impossible."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

Dance excused herself for a moment, called Rey Carraneo and had him call off the search for stolen boats. She hung up, reflecting that O'Neil's theory was wrong and Kellogg's was right.

"Now, I'd like to think about his motives for staying here. What about money?" She mentioned Rebecca's comment about a big score-a robbery or break-in, a big heist. "I was thinking he might be here because he hid money or something valuable somewhere. Or has unfinished business. Something to do with the Croyton murders?"

"Money?" Samantha shook her head. "No, I don't really think that's it."

Rebecca said firmly, "I know he said it."

"Oh, no, I'm not saying he didn't," the Mouse added quickly. "Just, he might not have meant 'big' in the sense we'd use. He didn't like to commit crimes that'd be too visible. We broke into houses-"

"Well, hardly any," Linda corrected.

Rebecca sighed. "Well…we pretty much did, Linda. And you folks'd been busy before I joined you."

"It was exaggerated."

Samantha said nothing to support either woman, and seemed uneasy, as if afraid they'd call on her again to be the tiebreaker. She continued, "He said if somebody did anything too illegal, the press would cover the story and then the police got after you in a big way. We stayed away from banks and check-cashing offices. Too much security, too risky." She shrugged. "Anyway, all the stealing-it was never about the money."

"It wasn't?" Dance asked.

"No. We could've made as much doing legitimate jobs. But that's not what turned Daniel on. What he liked was getting people to do things they didn't want to. That was his high."

Linda said, "You make it sound like that's all we did."

"I didn't mean it like that-"

"We weren't a gang of thugs."

Rebecca ignored Linda. "I think he was definitely into making money."

Samantha smiled uncertainly. "Well, I just had this sense it was more about manipulating people. He didn't need a lot of money. He didn't want it."

"He'd have to pay for his mountaintop somehow," Rebecca pointed out.

"That's true, I guess. I could be wrong."

Dance sensed this was an important key to understanding Pell, so she asked them about their criminal activities, hoping it might spark some specific memories.

Samantha said, "He was good, Daniel was. Even knowing what we were doing was wrong, I couldn't help but admire him. He'd know the best places to go for pickpocketing or breaking into houses. How security worked in department stores, what designer labels had security tags and which didn't, what kind of clerk would take returns without receipts."

Linda said, "Everybody makes him out to be this terrible criminal. But it was really just a game to him. Like, we'd have disguises. Remember? Wigs, different clothes, fake glasses. It was all harmless fun."

Dance was inclined to believe Samantha's theory that sending the Family out on their missions was more about power than money.

"But what about the Charles Manson connection?"

"Oh," Samantha said. "There was no Manson connection."

Dance was surprised. "But all the press said so."

"Well, you know the press."

Samantha was typically reluctant to disagree, but she was clearly certain about this. "He thought Manson was an example of what not to do."

But Linda shook her head. "No, no, he had all those books and articles about him."

Dance recalled that she'd gotten a longer prison sentence because she'd destroyed some of the incriminating material about Manson the night of the Croyton murders. She seemed troubled now that her heroic act might have been pointless.

"The only parallels were that he lived with several women and had us doing crimes for him. Manson wasn't in control of himself, Daniel said. He claimed he was Jesus, he tattooed a swastika on his forehead, he thought he had psychic powers, he ranted about politics and race. That was another example of emotions controlling you. Just like tattoos and body piercings or weird haircuts. They give people information about you. And information is control. No, he thought Manson did everything wrong. Daniel's heroes were Hitler-"

"Hitler?" Dance asked her.

"Yep. Except he faulted him because of that 'Jewish thing.' It was a weakness. Pell said that if Hitler could suck it up and live with Jews, even include them in the government, he'd have been the most powerful man in history. But he couldn't control himself, so he deserved to lose the war. He admired Rasputin too."

"The Russian monk?"

"Right. He worked his way into Nicholas and Alexandra's household. Pell liked Rasputin's use of sex to control people." Drawing a laugh from Rebecca and a blush from Linda. "Svengali too."

"The Trilby book?" Dance asked.

"Oh," Samantha said. "You know about that? He loved that story. Linda read it a dozen times."

"And frankly," Rebecca said, "it was pretty bad."

Glancing at her notebook, the agent asked the newcomer about the keywords Pell had searched in prison.

"'Nimue'?" Samantha repeated. "No. But he had a girlfriend named Alison once."

"Who?" Linda asked.

"When he was in San Francisco. Before the Family. She was in this group, sort of like the Family."

"What're you talking about?" Linda asked.

Samantha nodded. She looked uneasily at Linda. "But it wasn't his group. He just was bumming around and met Alison and got to know some of the people in that cult, or whatever it was. Daniel wasn't a member-he didn't take orders from anybody-but he was fascinated with it, and hung out with them. He learned a lot about how to control people. But they got suspicious of him-he wouldn't really commit. So he and Alison left. They hitchhiked around the state. Then he got arrested or picked up by the police for something, and she went back to San Francisco. He tried to find her but he never could. I don't know why he'd want to try now."

"What was her last name?"

"I don't know."

Dance wondered aloud if Pell was looking for this Alison-or someone named Nimue-for revenge. "After all, he'd need a pretty good reason to risk going online in Capitola to find somebody."

"Oh," Samantha said, "Daniel didn't believe in revenge."

Rebecca said, "I don't know, Sam. What about that biker? That punk up the street? Daniel almost killed him."

Dance remembered Nagle telling them about a neighbor in Seaside whom Pell had assaulted.

"First of all," Linda said, "Daniel didn't do it. That was somebody else."

"Well, no, he beat the crap out of him. Nearly killed him."

"But the police let him go."

Curious proof of innocence, Dance reflected.

"Only because the guy didn't have the balls to press charges." Rebecca looked at Samantha. "Was it our boy?"

Samantha shrugged, avoiding their gaze. "I think so. I mean, yeah, Daniel beat him up."

Linda looked unconvinced.

"But that wasn't about revenge…See, the biker thought he was some kind of neighborhood godfather. He tried to blackmail Daniel, threatened to go to the police about something that never even happened. Daniel went to see him and started playing these mind games with him. But the biker just laughed at him and told Daniel he had one day to come up with the money.

"Next thing there's an ambulance in front of the biker's house. His wrists and ankles were broken. But that wasn't revenge. It was because he was immune to Daniel. If you're immune, then Daniel can't control you, and that makes you a threat. And he said all the time, 'Threats have to be eliminated.'"

"Control," Dance said. "That pretty much sums up Daniel Pell, doesn't it?"

This, it seemed, was one premise from their past that all three members of the Family could agree on.