No way out

Chapter Thirty-four

“Well, no one is going to rescue her before she’s arraigned,” Bonner said.

Lucy jumped from her chair. “And no one is going to rescue Peggy Martin’s kids if we spend all night sitting around here talking about goddamn Roni Chase!”

“Take it easy, Lucy,” I said. “We’ve got to be able to do more than one thing at a time.”

She crossed her arms, glaring down at me. “No, we don’t, Jack. I can’t and I won’t. You don’t have to help Roni. She can find someone else to do that, and Ethan doesn’t have to represent her. The court will appoint a lawyer for her if she can’t afford one. She may be in jail, but she’s got a roof over her head and isn’t scared to death that someone is going to rape and murder her at any second. So, no, I’m not going to do more than one thing at a time until I find those kids, and I need to know that you aren’t either.”

“I’m on this case to the end, but I’ve got to help Roni too.”

“Jack, you can’t save everybody. Sometimes you have to choose.”

“Babe, we’re doing the best we can,” Simon said.

Lucy flung her arm at him. “What is that? You’re telling me this is the best we can do? We haven’t done shit! Those kids are out there somewhere, and Jack’s taking a nap while we ordering fucking room service, for Christ’s sake!”

Simon stood, taking her hands in his, his voice low and soothing. “We’re doing what we know how to do. We could run out of here screaming into the street, but we’d still have to do the same things. Dig up leads and run them down, talk to witnesses, stir things up until we get a break. If there was a faster way, we’d do it.”

They were a mismatched pair, filling each other’s gaps. She was a head taller, street savvy and full of fire. He was a round-shouldered numbers guy, a grinder sifting through digits and data looking for a thread to tug on until he unraveled the truth. She took a deep breath, leaned down, resting her forehead on the top of his head.

“They’re just babies.”

He put his arms around her. “And we’ll find them.”

She turned away and went into the bathroom, coming back a moment later, eyes red but composed. She settled into her chair, rubbing her hands on her thighs.

“So,” she said, “what’s next?”

“The video,” Kate said. She was standing next to a flat-panel television parked on top of a dresser. “This TV has a USB port. I connected my laptop so we can all watch. Let’s have a look at Peggy Martin.”

Peggy’s image filled the thirty-two-inch screen. Her face was drawn and washed out by hours spent waiting in the cold and wind at Kessler Park. We watched in silence as she talked about her children, her marriage, and her husband, Kate not offering any commentary until the video ended.

“First time through was for context,” she said. “Now let’s take a look at a few key moments. The first is when she talks about her children. See how her mouth turns down, her eyes scrunch up, and her cheeks sag? That’s agony.”

“What else would you expect?” Lucy asked. “Her husband kidnapped her kids.”

“Her kids are missing,” Ethan Bonner said. “That’s all we know for certain.”

Lucy threw him a poisonous look and started to say something, but Kate cut her off.

“The agony is important because it may indicate that she didn’t kill her children. If she had, she’d show signs of shame, like she did here.”

Kate fast-forwarded to the moment when she asked Peggy if Jimmy’s allegations that she’d had an affair were true. Peggy looked down and away, nodding her head, her voice breaking as she muttered her confession.

“Classic expression of shame,” Kate said.

“It makes sense that she’s ashamed,” Bonner said.

“Agreed. It’s not unusual for a spouse to be ashamed of cheating, no matter how big a jerk the other spouse is and, having spent an hour with Jimmy today, he is that big of a jerk. The question is whether she has other reasons for being ashamed besides her cheating heart.”

“When you asked her who she was fooling around with she wouldn’t tell you,” Bonner said. “What do you make of that?”

“My best judgment? Revealing her boyfriend’s identity would only make things worse. Could be he’s someone Jimmy knows, which would make his feelings of betrayal and her shame even worse, maybe unbearable.”

“If it was like that, if she was fooling around with Jimmy’s best friend or someone else he was close to,” Simon said, “it’s more likely that he would snap and do something to the kids to punish her.”

“Or,” Bonner said, “Maybe she’s afraid her boyfriend had something to do with her kids’ disappearance. That would give her a double dose of shame. She says she left them alone in the house while she went to the store to get some milk. Her boyfriend might have had a key. The kids might even have known him and let him in the house.”

Lucy let out a sigh. “It gets worse. Peggy says that when she left the kids that morning that she went to the Quik-Trip on Independence Avenue to buy milk. I talked to the cashier who worked that shift. He remembered her because she’s a regular. He says she bought beer, not milk.”

Bonner leaned forward in his chair, rubbing his hands together. “I like it. I like it a lot. This has the makings of a fine defense.”

Lucy sprang to her feet. “You unholy asshole! That’s all you care about! Throwing a load of shit against the wall, hoping enough of it sticks to get your fucking client off!”

Bonner leaned back in his chair. “I’m as worried about those kids as anyone in this room, but I don’t have the luxury of being self-righteous and sanctimonious like you do, Lucy. I owe my client the best defense I can give him, and that means I’ve got to make sure the jury knows that someone besides Jimmy Martin could be guilty.”

Hands on hips, she snarled at him. “This morning you were all about how Jimmy has only been charged with theft and contempt, not kidnapping and murdering his kids. So why are you trying so hard all of a sudden to defend him against something he hasn’t been charged with? Did he confess? Are you hiding behind the attorney-client privilege and just using us to build a defense when you know he’s guilty because, so help me God, if I find out you are, I’ll put you in the ground.”

Kate was studying Bonner with freeze-frame eyes, a look that could read bar codes a mile away. I needed time alone with her, to ask her what she saw in Bonner’s expressions. He ignored her, giving Lucy a tight-lipped smile.

“It’s been a while since someone threatened to kill me for doing my job. Bet it happens to you all the time. I bend a lot of rules because I think they’re bullshit, but I won’t breach my client’s confidence because if I do, he’s done and I’m done.”

“Even if it costs Evan and Cara their lives?” Lucy said.

“Let me put it this way. I won’t help Jimmy commit a crime, but I won’t turn him in for one he’s already committed.”

“I couldn’t live in your world,” Lucy said.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s step down to DEFCON Three. Bonner, I know you can’t tell us if Jimmy confessed. But if there’s a chance that Peggy’s boyfriend had something to do with this, we need to take a look at him, and if you know the boyfriend’s name, now would be a good time to tell us. At least that way, we could try to rule him in or out.”

Bonner pursed his lips, searching for the limits of the attorney-client privilege. “Okay. You don’t think I hadn’t thought of the boyfriend angle? First thing they teach you in criminal defense school is to give the jury any suspect except the defendant, and Peggy’s boyfriend, whoever he is, makes an easy target. I pushed Jimmy to tell me, but all he said was that he’d take care of it himself.”

“The guy has pride,” Simon said, “even if it’s the ugly kind.”

“So, he knows or thinks he knows,” I said. “If Kate’s right about why Peggy is so ashamed, we need to find her boyfriend, and the best place for us to start is with Jimmy’s friends, assuming he has any.”

“There was one person he mentioned several times,” Bonner said, flipping through a legal pad filled with scrawled notes, looking up from the page. “Guy’s name is Nick Staley. That name mean anything to anybody?”