"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 w
anted 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 phonesex 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."