"Now, Joseph Pell, his father, was a salesman, mother a receptionist when she could keep a job. Middle-class family. Mom--Elizabeth--drank a lot, have to assume she was distant, but no abuse, no incarceration. Died of cirrhosis when Daniel was in his midteens. With his wife gone, the father did what he could to raise the boy but Daniel couldn't take anyone else being in charge. Didn't do well with authority figures--teachers, bosses and especially his old man."
Dance mentioned the tape she and Michael O'Neil had watched, the comments about his father charging rent, beating him, abandoning the family, his parents dying.
Nagle said, "All a lie. But his father was undoubtedly a hard character for Pell to deal with. He was religious--very religious, very strict. He was an ordained minister--some conservative Presbyterian sect in Bakersfield--but he never got a church of his own. He was an assistant minister but finally was released. A lot of complaints that he was too intolerant, too judgmental about the parishioners. He tried to start his own church but the Presbyterian synod wouldn't even talk to him, so he ended up selling religious books and icons, things like that. But we can assume that he made his son's life miserable."
Religion was not central to Dance's own life. She, Wes and Maggie celebrated Easter and Christmas, though the chief icons of the faith were a rabbit and a jolly fellow in a red suit, and she doled out to the children her own brand of ethics--solid, incontrovertible rules common to most of the major sects. Still, she'd been in law enforcement long enough to know that religion often played a role in crime. Not only premeditated acts of terrorism but more mundane incidents. She and Michael O'Neil had spent nearly ten hours together in a cramped garage in the nearby town of Marina, negotiating with a fundamentalist minister intent on killing his wife and daughter in the name of Jesus because the teenage girl was pregnant. (They saved the family but Dance came away with an uneasy awareness of what a dangerous thing spiritual rectitude can be.)
Nagle continued, "Pell's father retired, moved to Phoenix and remarried. His second wife died two years ago and Joseph died last year, heart attack. Pell apparently had never stayed in touch. No uncles on either side and one aunt, in Bakersfield."
"The one with Alzheimer's?"
"Yes. Now, he does have a brother."
Not an only child, as he'd claimed.
"He's older. Moved to London years ago. He runs the sales operation of a U.S. importer/exporter. Doesn't give interviews. All I have is a name. Richard Pell."
Dance said to Kellogg, "I'll have somebody track him down."
"Cousins?" the FBI agent asked.
"Aunt never married."
Tapping
the bio he'd written. "Now, Pell's later teens, he was constantly in and out of juvenile detention--mostly for larceny, shoplifting, car theft. But he has no long history of violence. His early record was surprisingly peaceful. There's no evidence of street brawling, no violent assaults, no signs he ever lost his temper. One officer suggested that it seemed Pell would only hurt somebody if it was tactically useful, and that he didn't enjoy--or hate--violence. It was a tool." The writer looked up. "Which, you ask me, is scarier."
Dance thought of her earlier assessment, killing emotionlessly whenever it was expedient.
"Now, no history of drugs. Pell apparently's never been a user. And he doesn't--or didn't--drink any alcohol."
"What about education?"
"Now that's interesting. He's brilliant. When he was in high school he tested off the charts. He got A's in independent study classes, but never showed up when attendance was required. In prison he taught himself law and handled his own appeal in the Croyton case."
She thought of his comment during the interview, about Hastings Law School.
"And he took it all the way to the California Supreme Court--just last year they ruled against him. Apparently it was a big blow. He thought for sure he'd get off."
"Well, he may be smart but not smart enough to stay out of jail." Kellogg tapped a paragraph of the bio that described maybe seventy-five arrests. "That's a rap sheet"
"And it's the tip of the iceberg; Pell usually got other people to commit the crimes. There're probably hundreds of other offenses he was behind that somebody else got nailed for. Robbery, burglary, shoplifting, pickpocketing. That's how he survived, getting people around him to do the dirty work."
"Oliver," Kellogg said.
"What?"
"Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist . . . You ever read it?"
Dance said, "Saw the movie."
"Good comparison. Fagin, the guy who ran the gang of pickpockets. That was Pell."
" 'Please, sir, I want some more,' " Kellogg said in a Cockney accent. It was lousy. Dance laughed and he shrugged.
"Pell left Bakersfield and moved to L.A., then San Francisco. Hung out with some people there, was arrested for a few things, nothing serious. No word for a while--until he's picked up in Northern California in a homicide investigation."
"Homicide?"