"Anyway, I'd run away that weekend--no big deal, I did it all the time--and Daniel saw me near the Japanese Garden. He sat down and we started talking. Daniel has this gift. He listens to you. It's like you're the center of the universe. It's really, you know, seductive."
"And you never went back home?"
"No, I did. I always wanted to run away and just keep going. My brother did. He left home at eighteen and never looked back. But I wasn't brave enough to. My parents--we lived in San Mateo--they were real strict. Like drill instructors. My father was head of Santa Clara Bank and Trust."
"Wait, that Whitfield?"
"Yep. The multimillionaire Whitfield. The one who financed a good portion of Silicon Valley and survived the crash. The one who was going into politics--until a certain daughter of his made the press in a big way." A wry smile. "Ever met anybody who's been disowned by her parents? You have now. . . . Anyway, when I was growing up they were very authoritarian. I had to do everything the way they insisted. How I made my room, what I wore, what I was taking in school, what my grades were going to be. I got spanked until I was fourteen and I think he only stopped because my mother told my father it wasn't a good idea with a girl that age. . . . They claimed it was because they loved me, and so on. But they were just control freaks. They were trying to turn me into a little doll for them to dress up and play with.
"So I go back home but all the time I was there I couldn't get Daniel out of my head. We'd only talked for, I don't know, a few hours. But it was wonderful. He treated me like I was a real person. He told me to trust my judgment. That I was smart, I was pretty." A grimace. "Oh, I wasn't really--not either of those things. But when he said it I believed him.
"One morning my mother came to my room and told me to get up and get dressed. We were going to visit my aunt or somebody. And I was supposed to wear a skirt. I wanted to wear jeans. It wasn't a formal thing--we were just going to lunch. But she made a big deal out of it. She screamed at me. 'No daughter of mine . . . ' You get the idea. Well, I grabbed my backpack and just left. I was afraid I'd never find Daniel but I remembered he'd told me he'd be in Santa Cruz that week, at a flea market on the boardwalk."
The boardwalk was a famous amusement park on the beach. A lot of young people hung out there, at all hours of the day. Dance reflected that it'd make a good hunting ground if Daniel Pell was on the prowl for victims.
"So I hitched a ride down Highway One, and there he was. He looked happy to see me. Which I don't think my parents ever did." She laughed. "I asked if he knew a place I could stay. I was nervous about that, hinting. But he said, 'You bet I do. With us.' "
"In Seaside?"
"Uh-huh. We had a little bungalow there. It was nice."
"You, Samantha, Jimmy and Pell?"
"Right."
Her body language told Dance that she was enjoying the memory: the easy position of the shoulders, the crinkles beside the eyes and the illustrator hand gestures, which emphasize the content of the words and suggest the intensity of the speaker's reaction to what he or she is saying.
Linda picked up her tea again and sipped it. "Whatever the papers said--cul
t, drug orgies--that was wrong. It was really homey and comfortable. I mean, no drugs at all, or liquor. Some wine at dinner sometimes. Oh, it was nice. I loved being around people who saw you for who you were, didn't try to change you, respected you. I ran the house. I was sort of the mother, I guess you could say. It was so nice to be in charge for a change, not getting yelled at for having my own opinion."
"What about the crimes?"
Linda grew tense. "There was that. Some. Not as much as people say. A little shoplifting, things like that. And I never liked it. Never."
A few negation gestures here, but Dance sensed she wasn't being deceptive; the kinesic stress was due to her minimizing the severity of the crimes. The Family had done much worse than just shoplifting, Dance knew. There were burglary counts, and grand larceny, as well as purse snatching and pickpocketing--both crimes against persons, and under the penal code more serious than those against property.
"But we didn't have any choice. To be in the Family you had to participate."
"What was it like living with Daniel?"
"It wasn't as bad as you'd think. You just had to do what he wanted."
"And if you didn't?"
"He never hurt us. Not physically. Mostly, he'd . . . withdraw."
Dance recalled Kellogg's profile of a cult leader.
He'll threaten to withhold himself from them, and that's a very powerful weapon.
"He'd turn away from you. And you'd get scared. You never knew if that was the end for you and you'd get thrown out. Somebody in the church office was telling me about these reality shows? Big Brother, Survivor?"
Dance nodded.
"She was saying how popular they were. I think that's why people're obsessed with them. There's something terrifying about the idea of being kicked out of your family." She shrugged and fondled the cross on her chest.
"You got a longer sentence than the others. For destroying evidence. What was that story?"