The Sleeping Doll (10 page)

A pause. “Control zone.”

“Con
trolled
— with an
ed
on the end — would make more sense. You’re sure that’s not it?”

He grew flustered. “Well, I don’t know. What difference does it make? We use ‘em both.”

“And you use that term for other areas too? Like the warden’s office and the guards’ locker room — would they be control zones?”

“Sure … I mean, some people use that phrase more than others. I picked it up at another facility.”

“Which one would that be?”

A pause. “Oh, I don’t remember. Look, I made it sound like it’s an official name or something. It’s just a thing we say. Everybody inside uses shorthand. I mean, prisons everywhere. Guards’re ‘hacks’; prisoners are ‘cons.’ It’s not official or anything. You do the same at CBI, don’t you? Everybody does.”

This was a double play: Deceptive subjects often try to establish camaraderie with their interrogators (“you do the same”) and use generalizations and abstractions (“everybody,” “everywhere”).

Dance asked in a low, steady voice, “Whether authorized or not, in whatever zone, have Daniel Pell and a computer ever been in the same room at the same time at Capitola?”

“I’ve never seen him on a computer, I swear. Honestly.”

The stress that people experience when lying pushes them into one of four emotional states: they’re angry, they’re depressed, they’re in denial or they want to bargain their way out of trouble. The words that Waters had just used — “I swear” and “honestly” — were expressions that, along with his agitated body language, very different from his baseline, told Dance that the guard was in the denial stage of deception. He just couldn’t accept the truth of whatever he’d done at the prison and was dodging responsibility for it.

It’s important to determine which stress state the subject is in because that allows the interrogator to decide on a tactic for questioning. When the subject is in the anger phase, for instance, you encourage him to vent until he exhausts himself.

In the case of denial, you attack on the facts.

Which was what she now did.

“You have access to the office where the computers are kept, right?”

“Yeah, I do, but so what? All the hacks do … Hey, what is this? I’m on your side.”

A typical denier’s deflection, which Dance ignored. “And you said it’s possible some prisoners would be in that office. Has Pell ever been in there?”

“Nonviolent felons are the only ones allowed in —”

“Has Pell ever been in there?”

“I swear to God I never saw him.”

Dance noted adaptors — gestures meant to relieve tension: finger–flexing, foot–tapping — his shoulder aimed toward her (like a football player’s defensive posture) and more frequent glances at the door (liars actually glance at routes by which they can escape the stress of the interrogation).

“That’s about the fourth time you haven’t answered my question, Tony. Now, was Pell ever in any room in Capitola with a computer?”

The guard grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be, you know, difficult. I just was kind of flustered, I guess. I mean, like, I felt you were accusing
me
of something. Okay, I never saw him on a computer, really. I wasn’t lying. I’ve been pretty upset by this whole thing. You can imagine that.” His shoulders drooped, his head lowered a half inch.

“Sure I can, Tony.”

“Maybe Daniel could’ve been.”

Her attack had made Waters realize that it was more painful to endure the battering of the interrogation than to own up to what he was lying about. Like turning a light switch, Waters was suddenly in the bargaining phase of deception. This meant he was getting close to dropping the deception but was still holding back the full truth, in an effort to escape punishment. Dance knew that she had to abandon the frontal assault now and offer him some way to save face.

In an interrogation the enemy isn’t the liar, but the lie.

“So,” she said in a friendly voice, sitting back, out of his personal zone, “it’s possible that at some point, Pell could’ve gotten access to a computer?”

“I guess it could’ve happened. But I don’t know for sure he was on one.” His head drooped even more. His voice was soft. “It’s just … it’s hard, doing what we do. People don’t understand. Being a hack. What it’s like.”

“I’m sure they don’t,” Dance agreed.

“We have to be teachers and cops, everything. And” — his voice lowered conspiratorially — “admin’s always looking over our shoulders, telling us to do this, do that, keep the peace, let them know when something’s going down.”

“Probably like being a parent. You’re always watching your children.”

“Yeah, exactly. It’s like having children.” Wide eyes — an affect display, revealing his emotion.

Dance nodded emphatically. “Obviously, Tony, you care about the cons. And about doing a good job.”

People in the bargaining phase want to be reassured and forgiven.

“It was nothing really, what happened.”

“Go ahead.”

“I made a decision.”

“It’s a tough job you have. You must have to make hard decisions every day.”

“Ha. Every
hour.
”

“So what did you have to decide?”

“Okay, see, Daniel was different.”

Dance noted the use of the first name. Pell had gotten Waters to believe they were buddies and exploited the faux friendship. “How do you mean?”

“He’s got this … I don’t know, power or something over people. The Aryans, the OGs, the Lats … he goes where he wants to and nobody touches him. Never seen anybody like him inside before. People do things for him, whatever he wants. People tell him things.”

“And so he gave you information. Is that it?”

“
Good
information. Stuff nobody couldn’t’ve got otherwise. Like, there was a guard selling meth. A con OD’d on it. There’s no way we could’ve found out who was the source. But Pell let me know.”

“Saved lives, I’ll bet.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. And, say somebody was going to move on somebody else? Gut ‘em with a shank, whatever, Daniel’d tell me.”

Dance shrugged. “So you cut him some slack. You let him into the office.”

“Yeah. The TV in the office had cable, and sometimes he wanted to watch games nobody else was interested in. That’s all that happened. There was no danger or anything. The office’s a maximum–security lockdown area. There’s no way he could’ve gotten out. I went on rounds and he watched games.”

“How often?”

“Three, four times.”

“So he could’ve been online?”

“Maybe.”

“When most recently?”

“Yesterday.”

“Okay, Tony. Now tell me about the telephones.” Dance recalled seeing a stress reaction when he’d told her Pell had made no calls other than to his aunt; Waters had touched his lips, a blocking gesture.

If a subject confesses to one crime, it’s often easier to get him to confess to another.

Waters said, “The other thing about Pell, everybody’ll tell you, he was into sex, way into sex. He wanted to make some phone–sex calls and I let him.”

But Dance immediately noticed deviation from the baseline and concluded that although he was confessing, it was to a small crime, which usually means that there’s a bigger one lurking.

“Did he now?” she asked bluntly, leaning close once again. “And how did he pay for it? Credit card? Nine–hundred number?”

A pause. Waters hadn’t thought out the lie; he’d forgotten you had to pay for phone sex. “I don’t mean like you’d call up one of those numbers in the backs of newspapers. I guess it sounded like that’s what I meant. Daniel called some woman he knew. I think it was somebody who’d written him. He got a lot of mail.” A weak smile. “Fans. Imagine that. A man like him.”

Dance leaned a bit closer. “But when you listened there wasn’t any sex, was there?”

“No, I —” He must’ve realized he hadn’t said anything about listening in. But by then it was too late. “No. They were just talking.”

“You heard both of them?”

“Yeah, I was on a third line.”

“When was it?”

“About a month ago, the first time. Then a couple more times. Yesterday. When he was in the office.”

“Are calls
there
logged?”

“No. Not local ones.”

“If it was long distance it would be.”

Eyes on the floor. Waters was miserable.

“What, Tony?”

“I got him a phone card. You call an eight hundred number and punch in a code, then the number you want.”

Dance knew them. Untraceable.

“Really, you have to believe me. I wouldn’t’ve done it, except the information he gave me … it was good. It saved —”

“What were they talking about?” she asked in a friendly voice. You’re never rough with a confessing subject; they’re your new best friend.

“Just stuff. You know. Money, I remember.”

“What about it?”

“Pell asked how much she’d put together and she said ninety–two hundred bucks. And he said, ‘That’s all?’ ”

Pretty expensive phone sex, Dance reflected wryly.

“Then she asked about visiting hours and he said it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

So he didn’t want her to visit. No record of them together.

“Any idea of where she was?”

“He mentioned Bakersfield. He said specifically, ‘To Bakersfield.’ ”

Telling her to go to his aunt’s place and pick up the hammer to plant in the well.

“And, okay, it’s coming back to me now. She was telling him about wrens and hummingbirds in the backyard. And then Mexican food. ‘Mexican is comfort food.’ That’s what she said.”

“Did her voice have an ethnic or regional accent?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“Was it low or high, her voice?”

“Low, I guess. Kind of sexy.”

“Did she sound smart or stupid?”

“Jeez, I couldn’t tell.” He sounded exhausted.

“Is there anything else that’s helpful, Tony? Come on, we really need to get this guy.”

“Not that I can think of. I’m sorry.”

She looked him over and believed that, no, he didn’t know anything more.

“Okay. I think that’ll do it for the time being.”

He started out. At the door, he paused and looked back. “Sorry I was kind of confused. It’s been a tough day.”

“Not a good day at all,” she agreed. He remained motionless in the doorway, a dejected pet. When he didn’t get the reassurance he sought, he slumped away.

Dance called Carraneo, currently en route to the You Mail It store, and gave him the information she’d pried from the guard: that his partner didn’t seem to have any accent and that she had a low voice. That might help the manager remember the woman more clearly.

She then called the warden of Capitola and told her what happened. The woman was silent for a moment then offered a soft, “Oh.”

Dance asked if the prison had a computer specialist. It did, and she’d have him search the computers in the administrative office for online activity and emails yesterday. It should be easy since the staff didn’t work on Sunday and Pell presumably had been the only one online — if he had been.

“I’m sorry,” Dance said.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

The agent was referring not so much to Pell’s escape but to yet another consequence of it. Dance didn’t know the warden but supposed that to run a superprison, she was talented at her job and the work was important to her. It was a shame that her career in corrections, like Tony Waters’s, would probably soon be over.