But apparently they were going to keep him incommunicado for as long as they possibly could.
"I really would like to make a phone call."
The guard looked at him as if he'd been caught selling crack to kids outside Sunday school and said nothing.
He stood up and paced. The look from the guard said, Sit down. Nagle sat.
Ten long, long minutes later he heard a door open. Footsteps approached.
"Nagle."
He gazed at another guard. Bigger than the first one.
"Stand up." The guard pushed a button and the door opened. "Hold out your hands."
It sounded ridiculous, like someone offering a child some candy. He lifted them and watched the cuffs clatter around his wrists.
"This way." The man took him by the arm, strong fingers closing around his biceps. Nagle smelled garlic and cigarette smoke residue. He almost pulled away but didn't think it would be a smart idea. They walked like this, the chains clinking, for fifty feet down a dim corridor. They continued to interview room A.
The guard opened it and gestured Nagle inside.
He paused.
Theresa Croyton, the Sleeping Doll, sat at a table, looking up at him with dark eyes. The guard pushed him forward and he sat down across from her.
"Hello again," he said.
The girl looked over his arms and face and hands, as if searching for evidence of prisoner abuse. Or maybe hoping for it. She noticed the bandage on his hand, squinted and then must have remembered that he'd cut it vaulting the fence.
He knew she was only seventeen but there was nothing young about her, except the white delicacy of her skin. She didn't die in Daniel Pell's attack, Nagle thought. But her childhood did.
His anger at the killer burned hotter yet.
The guard stepped back. But he remained close; Nagle could hear his large body absorbing sounds.
"You can leave us alone," Theresa said.
"I have to be here, Miss. Rules." He had a moveable smile. Polite to her, hostile to Nagle.
Theresa hesitated, then focused on the writer. "Tell me what you were going to say in my backyard. About Daniel Pell."
"He's staying in the Monterey area for some reason. The police can't figure out why."
"And he tried to kill the prosecutor who sent him to jail?"
"James Reynolds, that's right."
"He's okay?"
"Yes. The policewoman I was telling you about saved him."
"Who are you exactly?" she asked. Direct questions, unemotional.
"Your aunt didn't tell you anything?"
"No."
"I've been speaking to her for a month now about a book I wanted to write. About you."