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?”

The woman’s lips grew tight. “It was stupid. I panicked. All I knew was that Daniel called and said Jimmy was dead and something had gone wrong at this house where they’d had a meeting. We were supposed to pack up and get ready to leave, the police might be after him soon. Daniel kept all these books about Charles Manson in the bedroom and clippings and things. I burned some before the police got there. I thought it’d look bad if they knew he had this thing for Manson.”

Which it had, Dance reflected, recalling how the prosecutor had used the Charles Manson theme to help him win a conviction.

Responding to Dance’s questions, Linda mentioned more about her recent life. In jail she’d become devoutly religious and, after her release, moved to Portland, where she’d gotten a job working for a local Protestant church. She’d joined it because her brother was a deacon there.

She was seeing a “nice Christian” man in Portland and was the nanny, in effect, for her brother and sister-in-law’s foster children. She wanted to become a foster parent herself—she’d had medical problems and could have no children of her own—but that was hard with the prison conviction. She added, in a tone of conclusion, “I don’t have many material things, but I like my life. It’s a rich life, in the good sense of the word.”