"Okay, I've got that press conference. My turn in the barrel." He grimaced. "If you hear anything else, let me know. I'll be on in about ten minutes."
The man left.
TJ looked Dance over and said, in a thick southern accent, "Damn, so you're the one forgot to lock the barn door when you were through interrogating the cows. That's how they got away. I was wondrin'."
O'Neil stifled a smile.
"Don't get me started," she muttered.
She walked to the window and looked out at the people who'd evacuated the courthouse, milling in front of the building. "I'm worried about that partner. Where is he, what's he up to?"
"Who'd bust somebody like Daniel Pell outa the joint?" asked TJ.
Dance recalled Pell's kinesic reaction in the interrogation when the subject of his aunt in Bakersfield arose. "I think whoever's helping him got the hammer from his aunt. Pell's her last name. Find her." She had another thought. "Oh, and your buddy in the resident agency, down in Chico?"
"Yup?"
"He's discreet, right?"
"We bar surf and ogle when we hang out. How discreet is that?"
"Can he check this guy out?" She held up the slip of paper containing the name of the FBI's cult expert.
"He'd be game, I'll bet. He says intrigue in the bureau's better than intrigue in the barrio." TJ jotted the name.
O'Neil took a call and had a brief conversation. He hung up and explained, "That was the warden at Capitola. I tho
ught we should talk to the supervising guard on Pell's cell block, see if he can tell us anything. He's also bringing the contents of Pell's cell with him."
"Good."
"Then there's a fellow prisoner who claims to have some information about Pell. She'll round him up and call us back."
Dance's cell phone rang, a croaking frog.
O'Neil lifted an eyebrow. "Wes or Maggie've been hard at work."
It was a family joke, like stuffed animals in the purse. The children would reprogram the ringer of her phone when Dance wasn't looking (any tones were fair game; the only rules: never silent, and no tunes from boy bands).
She hit the receive button. "Hello?"
"It's me, Agent Dance."
The background noise was loud and the "me" ambiguous, but the phrasing of her name told her the caller was Rey Carraneo.
"What's up?"
"No sign of his partner or any other devices. Security wants to know if they can let everybody back inside. The fire marshal's okayed it."
Dance debated the matter with O'Neil. They decided to wait a little longer.
"TJ, go outside and help them search. I don't like it that the accomplice's unaccounted for."
She recalled what her father had told her after he'd nearly had a run-in with a great white in the waters off northern Australia. "The shark you don't see is always more dangerous than the one you do."
Chapter 8
The stocky, bearded, balding man in his hard-worn fifties stood near the courthouse, looking over the chaos, his sharp eyes checking out everyone, the police, the guards, the civilians.