Mountaintop . . . Could that have been what he'd been looking for online in Capitola on the Visual-Earth website? Dozen of sizable peaks were within an hour's drive of the Peninsula.
There were still questions, but Dance was pleased at their progress. Finally, she felt she had some insights into the mind of Daniel Pell. She was about to ask more questions when her phone rang.
"Excuse me."
She answered it.
"Kathryn. It's me."
She pressed the phone closer to her head. "TJ, what's up?"
And steeled herself. The fact that he hadn't called her "boss" meant he was about to deliver bad news.
Chapter 29
Kathryn Dance and Winston Kellogg walked along a road covered with a thin coat of damp sand toward TJ and Michael O'Neil, who stood at the open trunk of a late-model Lexus.
Another man was there too, one of the officers from the Coroner's Division, which in Monterey County is part of the MCSO. The balding, round deputy greeted her. "Kathryn."
Dance introduced him to Kellogg, then peered into the trunk. The victim, a woman, lay on her side. Her legs were bent and her hands and mouth were duct-taped. Her nose and face were bright red. Blood vessels had broken.
O'Neil said, "Susan Pemberton. Lived in Monterey. Single, thirty nine."
"Probable COD is suffocation?"
The coroner officer added, "We've got capillary dilation and membrane inflammation and distension. That residue there? I'm sure it's capsicum oleoresin."
"He hit her with pepper spray and then duct-taped her."
The coroner officer nodded.
"Terrible," O'Neil muttered.
Dying alone, in pain, an ignominious trunk her coffin. A burst of raw anger at Daniel Pell swept through Dance.
It turned out, O'Neil explained, that Susan's was the disappearance he'd been looking into.
"We're sure it's Pell?"
"It's him," the Coroner's Division officer said. "Prints match."
O'Neil added, "I've ordered field prints tests done for every homicide in the area."
"Any idea of the motive?"
"Maybe. She worked for an event-planning company. He apparently used her to get in and tell him where all the files were. He stole everything. Crime scene's been through the office. Nothing conclusive so far, except his prints."
"Any clue why?" Kellogg asked.
"Nope."
"How'd he find her?"
"Her boss said she left the office about five last night to meet a prospective client for drinks."
"Pell, you think?"
O'Neil shrugged. "No idea. Her boss didn't know who. Maybe Pell saw them and followed."