No way out

Chapter Forty-seven

“You did good,” Adrienne Nardelli said.

We were in Ellen Koch’s kitchen, Ellen sitting mute in the living room and Adam bundled in the back of a squad car. I’d spent an hour running it down for Nardelli, letting her work me the way I’d worked Adam, keeping my memory fresh, scraping all the details she could onto her notepad, pausing as successive waves of tremors and spasms ripped through me, petering out in a final soft ripple. Kate was on one side of me, Lucy on the other, each with a hand on my back when I stuttered and shook.

“Thanks.”

“But going after him the way you did wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done, you do know that?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“Any point in me telling you to butt out of my case and not to pull another fool stunt like that again?”

I didn’t answer.

“Figured as much,” she said, turning to Kate and Lucy. “Take him home. Make sure he takes the rest of the day off.”

“After we talk to Peggy Martin,” I said.

“Wrong,” Nardelli said, “after I talk to Peggy Martin. I’ve got an officer babysitting her across the street.”

“Anyone tell her about Adam?”

“Not yet. She came home half in the bag while you were out chasing him through the woods. I had an officer escort her inside and told him to keep her off the phone and to keep the press and neighbors out of the house, but she was watching from her front window when we cuffed Adam and put him in a squad car. Won’t surprise me if the prosecuting attorney charges her with obstruction for not telling us about her husband taking her kids.”

“She did tell you,” Lucy said, “from day one.”

“But,” Nardelli countered, “she didn’t tell us that her baby boyfriend was the one who saw him do it. What kind of mother holds back something like that?”

Lucy squared off at Nardelli, hands on her hips. “So she’s not a perfect mother. So she’s not even close. She cheated on her husband, and she drinks too much. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her kids. And even if Adam is telling the truth, which is the Pikes Peak of ifs, Jimmy isn’t talking. So any bad decisions Peggy made hasn’t changed this case one damn bit.”

“There’s something else about Adam’s story,” I said. “Unless Jimmy confesses, there’s no way to prove which one of them is lying. Peggy wasn’t there. She only knows what Adam told her. If Adam took the kids, blaming it on Jimmy would be the easiest and smartest thing for him to do.”

Nardelli pointed at Kate. “Then let your lie catcher figure it out. Pick the one that twitches the most.”

“Maybe,” Kate said, “it’s neither of them.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nardelli asked.

“It means that you’re trying to pick a winner between two people who have every incentive to lie, as if they are the only possible suspects. That’s not an investigation. It’s tunnel vision.”

“So who’s your dark horse in this race?”

Kate drew a reluctant breath. “You have to consider Peggy Martin.”

“Wait a minute!” Lucy said. “Last night at your hotel when we watched the video you took of Peggy, you said that she showed agony when you asked her about Evan and Cara and shame when you asked her about her affair. You made a big deal about that, about how she would have shown shame when you asked her about the kids if she’d killed them.”

“That’s right,” Kate said. “But like I keep telling Jack, context is everything. I was working off what we knew at the time, which didn’t include her relationship with Adam.”

“What difference does that make?” Lucy asked.

“It could make all the difference, especially if they’re in this together, which would explain why she showed such shame. She accuses Jimmy from the beginning and primes Adam with the story about seeing Jimmy take the kids. She doesn’t want Adam telling the police right away because that would mean disclosing their affair. So she keeps that in her back pocket, figuring to use it if the police find out about it. When the affair comes out, Adam’s story about Jimmy deflects attention from her and puts the spotlight back on her husband.”

“You think Peggy has that kind of a hold on Adam?” I asked.

“He admitted as much when he told you he was having sex with her to cure his pedophilia and that he kept seeing her after his mother told him to end the relationship. Plus, when she called him the night before the kids disappeared and told him to come over, he snuck out of his house. He wanted to go home after they had sex, but she made him stay. He’s young, vulnerable, and easily manipulated.”

“And,” Nardelli added, warming to the possibility, “if she knew about his pedophilia or even had an idea that he’d killed Timmy Montgomery, she knew he’d go along, and if he didn’t she could threaten to tell the police about Timmy.”

“Given all that, I’d say she could make him jump through almost any hoop,” Kate said.

“Why?” Lucy asked. “Why would a mother who loved her kids do that?”

“Nick Staley told me that Peggy is a party girl,” I said. “Maybe the kids were cramping her style.”

“That’s a crock of shit!” Lucy said. “Peggy hired us to find her kids. I’ve handled enough of these cases to know how they tear parents up, and Peggy is in shreds. I know she isn’t going to win Mother of the Year, but you can’t fake that kind of pain. No one knows that any better than you, Jack.”

My belly shook, my back bowed, and my neck arced toward the ceiling, Lucy’s last shot triggering a flurry of spasms. She turned red, covered her mouth with her hand, and looked away.

Nardelli threw up her hands. “What is it with you people? Don’t you want anybody to be found guilty?”

“Sure we do,” I said when the spasm died. “As long as they are guilty.”

“Look,” Kate said to Nardelli, “I admit it’s not the most likely explanation based on what we know. But I was right when I told you that Adam knew more than he was telling us and that he was lying when he said he hadn’t been in those woods before yesterday. I wasn’t there when Jack interviewed him, so I can’t say whether he was telling the truth about having seen Jimmy take the kids. But, if I’m right, Jimmy’s refusal to cooperate is playing right into Peggy’s hands.”

“Only now we’ve got a witness who will testify that Jimmy was the last person seen with Evan and Cara,” Nardelli said. “Once he knows that, he may open up, if only to defend himself.”

“Depends on who asks the questions and how they are asked. Come at him hard, threaten him, try to scare him, and he’ll shut down.”

“I’ve done this once or twice before,” Nardelli said.

“And you’ve gotten nothing out of Jimmy,” Kate said.

“Same as you.”

“Actually, no. I got a lot out of him.”

“Like what?” Nardelli asked.

“Like he loves his kids and is scared for them.”

“Right,” Lucy said. “That’s exactly what you told us about Peggy.”

“I should just leave you people alone and let you kill each other. Would save me a lot of trouble,” Nardelli said, letting out a long breath, studying us, and then pointing at Kate. “Okay, then. You tell Jimmy about Adam.”

“Me?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, you and me. Let’s go. And call Ethan Bonner. Tell him to meet us there. Anything comes out of Jimmy Martin’s mouth, I want to be damn sure a jury gets to hear it one day.”

“So much for going home,” I said.

“I didn’t invite you,” Nardelli said.

“The three of us,” Kate said, “are a package deal.”

“And we talk to Peggy Martin first,” I said.

Nardelli shook her head. “I should have listened to Quincy Carter and arrested all of you.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For being a pain in my ass.”