No Way Out (2010)

by Joel Goldman

  Nardelli declined comment, and we followed suit, a lone woman pushing her way past them, reporters jostling her, holding her back. I recognized Jeannie Montgomery.

  “Let her through!” I said, brushing them aside, making room for her.

  I took her by the hand, leading her away from the reporters so we could talk without having our conversation lead the six o’clock news. Her hand was cold, the bones slipping side to side, her fingers rolling together. I eased my grip, but she tightened hers. We found a quiet spot on the side of Ellen’s house. She searched my face, still holding my hand.

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to my boy?”

  “Adam told me it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to hurt Timmy, that things got out of hand.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No. I think it’s supposed to make him feel better.”

  She nodded, my answer matching hers. “Have they found my son’s body?”

  “Not yet, but they will.”

  “What will happen to Adam?”

  “That’s up to the court, but there’s a good chance he’ll spend the rest of his life in jail or be executed.”

  “His life for my son’s. It won’t change a thing. I’d never make that trade.”

  “No one would.”

  She let go of my hand. “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “At least I know for sure.”

  “That’s something.”

  “It’s all that’s left,” she said and walked away.

  She was blind to the waiting cameras, deaf to the reporters’ shouted questions. The crowd of neighbors shrank from her, and she passed through them untouched as before.

  Nardelli tapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go. City doesn’t like paying me overtime.”

  Peggy Martin watched us from her open front door as we climbed the long flight of stairs from her driveway, a uniformed cop peering over her shoulder. She was pacing from side to side in the doorway, clutching her body and biting her lip, her eyes wide, darting from the cop to us to the floor and back to us.

  Nardelli was on point, nodding to the officer, who motioned to Peggy, leading her and the rest of us into the house. We gathered in the small living room, circling around Peggy, our reluctant, beer-soaked, scraggly-haired host. In need of a strong cup of coffee and a shower, she tottered, reaching out to Lucy, who guided her to a lumpy sofa. Kate sat next to her, and Nardelli and I stepped back, giving them room, Lucy taking the lead.

  “How are you holding up?”

  Peggy stared at the floor. “How do you think I’m holding up?”

  “I can’t imagine. I don’t know how you get through the day.”

  She raised her head. “I can’t take much more of this. I swear to God, I can’t.”

  Her speech was clear, no slurring, just a drunk’s self-pity, one thing jumping out at me. She hadn’t asked whether her kids had been found, and she hadn’t asked why Adam had been arrested.

  “Kate needs to ask you a few more questions. Are you up to that?”

  She looked at Nardelli, stiffening as if sensing a threat. Nardelli’s face was flat, making no promises. Peggy shrugged.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Peggy, we’re doing everything we can to find Evan and Cara,” Kate said. “We may have gotten an important break, and we need your help to figure out if we’re on the right track.”

  She looked at Kate, her face quivering, eyes welling. “It’s about Adam, isn’t it? About Adam and me.”

  “Yes.”

  She buried her face in her hands. “I am so sorry, so, so sorry.”

  “What are you sorry about?”

  She straightened, sniffling, taking a deep breath. “I should have told the police what Adam told me about Jimmy taking the kids, but I was too afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “I thought Jimmy took the kids just to push my buttons. I thought he’d bring them back in a day or two at the most. I never thought he’d hurt them. But I was scared he’d get custody of them if he found out about Adam and me.”

  Nardelli interrupted, unable to hide her disbelief. “Your husband was arrested for stealing. The judge won’t let him post bail because he won’t tell us a damn thing about your kids, and you kept quiet because you were afraid he’d get custody? He’ll do two to five years on the theft charge alone. You think he was going take the kids with him?”

  She winced, like she’d been slapped. “Jimmy’s the kind who gets away with everything. He got this fancy lawyer. I thought he’d get off.”

  “Peggy,” Kate asked, “what if Adam was lying about having seen Jimmy?”

  “Lying? Why would he lie?”

  “Did Adam talk to you about any problems he was having, anything he thought you could help him with?”

  “Just his mother. She drove him crazy. Why? What are you talking about? Why would Adam lie to me?” And then she understood and started to shake, terrified at what she may have done. “Oh, my God, is that why the police arrested him? Did he take my babies?”

  “We don’t know,” Kate said.

  “Then what did he do?”

  “He molested and killed Timmy Montgomery.”

  The color vanished from her face, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted before she could scream.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Kate and I waited outside while a paramedic tended to Peggy, Lucy staying by her side. Kate brushed dirt off my jacket.

  “You’re a mess.”

  “Old news.”

  “Very old. You should ride with Lucy to the Farm. And call Joy. She’s probably worried about you. I know I am.”

  Lucy and Adrienne Nardelli came out of Peggy’s house, Nardelli twirling one finger in the air, telling us to get the show on the road.

  I settled into the front seat of Lucy’s car and called Joy, leaving a message when she didn’t pick up that I was going back to the Farm with Lucy and didn’t know when I’d be home.

  “Everything okay with you and Joy?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You grimaced when she didn’t answer, and it wasn’t a happy grimace.”

  “Well, she isn’t happy that Kate is working on this case.”

  “Do you blame her?”

  “No, but it’s not my fault.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If I lost Simon, all I’d think about is how much I want him back, and, if I got him back, I’d never stop worrying that I’d lose him again.”

  “Trouble is, that gate swings both ways.”

  “You and Kate?”

  “Yeah. We both thought we’d moved on, but neither of us has moved on as far as we’d like to believe.”

  “Forget it, Jack. I like Kate, but you can’t do that to Joy, not after what she’s been through and what she’s looking at.”

  “I’m not doing anything to Joy. I’m doing my job, and right now, Kate’s part of the job, but that’s all she is. The rest will work itself out.”

  “That’s a half-baked commitment to doing the right thing.”

  “I’m glad you’re so certain about what’s right for Joy, Kate, and me. Soon as I figure it out, I’ll be all over it.”

  Lucy grasped the wheel with both hands, biting her lip.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, and I’m sorry about what I said about you knowing better than anyone what it’s like to lose a child. That was really, really stupid.”

  “Except you were right about that. I do know better.”

  “Even so, I shouldn’t have said it. Look what it did to you.”

  I waved off her concern. “Comes with the territory. If I stopped talking to everyone who made me shake, I’d have to take a vow of silence. I can handle it if you can.”

  She put the car in gear and fell in line behind Adrienne Nardelli and Kate. “So, what about Peggy? Do you think she killed her kids?”

  “After that performan
ce, no way. But if it turns out that Adam killed them, she’ll drown in a bottle before she turns forty.”

  “Either way, the press will crucify her,” Lucy said. “They don’t give anybody a break because they don’t think anyone can change, turn their life around.”

  “Like you did.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, like I did.”

  “Is that why you get your back up every time someone takes a shot at Peggy? You think she’s getting a raw deal?”

  “Maybe. I guess. Probably. Look, just because she’s poor and her marriage fell apart and her husband stole so they could pay the mortgage doesn’t mean she or her kids deserve any of this.”

  “It’s not about who deserves what. It’s about what happens when things go wrong and what you do about it. Besides, look at Joy and me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We had it made. We were both college graduates. I had a good job. Joy wanted to stay home with the kids. We had a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and none of that mattered. One day we let a neighbor give Kevin a ride, thinking we could trust him when all we did was deliver our son to the devil, and nothing, I mean nothing, was ever the same again. Wendy lived another twenty years, but the day we lost Kevin was the day she started to die. So zip code and tax brackets don’t have a damn thing to do with it, and if we don’t find Evan and Cara alive, Peggy Martin won’t make it either.”

  “Is that why you went after Adam on your own?”

  I thought of Jeannie Montgomery drifting through the crowd.

  “We don’t need any more ghosts.”

  Ethan Bonner was waiting for us with the jail superintendent, Annette Fibuch, when we arrived at the Farm. She had arranged for us to meet with Jimmy in the Women’s Recreation Area, just as before.

  “There’s too many of us,” Kate said. “We’ll overwhelm him, and he won’t tell us his name, let alone anything else.”

  “Kate can go in on her own, but I’m not letting Detective Nardelli in there without me,” Bonner said.

  “I’ve got a better chance if I talk to him on my own,” Kate said.

  “That’s not happening,” Nardelli said. “I don’t want you helping him get his story straight.”

  “Fine,” Kate said. “Do it yourself. You’ve done a great job with him so far.”

  “Detective, you can watch and listen from our security center,” the superintendent said, confirming my suspicion that our meeting with Jimmy had been monitored.

  “Tell you what, Detective,” Bonner said. “Give Kate first crack at him. We’ll watch from the security center. You don’t like the way it goes, you can have the second crack.”

  “You’re pretty confident,” Nardelli said.

  “I like my team.”

  A corrections officer took Kate to meet with Jimmy, and the superintendent took the rest of us to the security center where three officers were monitoring a dozen screens displaying every part of the Farm.

  “Gene, Mike, and Cheryl,” the superintendent said to the officers. “Sorry to barge in on you. Do me a favor and pull up the Women’s Recreation Area.”

  We watched the center screen on the top row, a black-and-white monitor feeding us video of Kate and Jimmy. The camera angle was distant and wide, better suited to capturing inmates dealing drugs. Facial expressions were blurred, and the audio was scratchy. Jimmy’s wrists and ankles were shackled when an officer led him into the room with Kate.

  Bonner turned to the superintendent. “Annette, what’s with the restraints? Jimmy’s not dangerous.”

  “He’s suspected of kidnapping and killing his children. He’s not our typical nonviolent, homeless resident. I’m not leaving him alone with a woman,” she said.

  Kate said something to the officer we couldn’t make out and pointed to the restraints, the officer shaking his head, Kate pressing him, pointing to the two-way radio on his hip. The officer picked up his radio, his voice coming through a speaker on the security console.

  “She wants me to take off the restraints,” the officer said.

  “Absolutely not,” the superintendent said.

  Kate grabbed the radio from the officer. “Keep him shackled and I’m wasting my time. Leave the officer outside. Leave the door open if that will make you feel better, but take off the restraints or I’m walking.”

  The superintendent looked at Nardelli and Bonner, both of whom nodded, though I didn’t like it, remembering too well that I’d nearly gotten Kate killed a couple of years ago when I let her talk me into taking a chance that made more sense than this one did.

  “Kate,” I said, “go out in the hall where Jimmy can’t hear us.”

  She disappeared from the monitor, popping up on another one displaying the hallway.

  “Okay. I know what you’re thinking, Jack, but this is different. I’ve had time to study Jimmy. His fight is with his wife, not me. I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll be even better if he stays shackled.”

  “Stop worrying. I know what I’m doing.”

  “Kate, this is a bad idea.”

  “Good or bad, it’s not your decision. It’s mine, and I’ve made it.”

  I looked at the superintendent. “You heard her.”

  “Okay,” the superintendent said, letting out a long sigh. “Let me talk to my officer.”

  We watched while he removed Jimmy’s handcuffs and motioned him to sit down so he could remove his ankle shackles. Jimmy smiled at Kate, and when the officer knelt at his feet and freed his legs, he clasped his hands together, raining double-fisted, rapid-fire hammerhead blows on the officer’s neck. The officer collapsed, and Jimmy jumped to his feet, kicking him in the face. Kate started to run, but he grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her, pulling a shiv from his waistband, jamming it against her cheek, and, using her as a human shield, pushed her out into the hall.

  Chapter Fifty

  I bolted for the door, Lucy and Nardelli racing behind me. It was full dark and cold, stadium lights burning the walkway from the administration building to the women’s dormitory, the Farm silent. There was no siren sounding an alarm, no flight of corrections officers toward the dorm, no hint of trouble until I yanked on the front entrance to the dorm and nearly wrenched my shoulder fighting a locked door.

  “Great,” Nardelli said, flipping her cell phone open, telling whoever was listening to send a SWAT team and a hostage negotiator.

  She snapped her phone shut and tried the door again as the superintendent and Bonner caught up to us.

  “Door’s locked,” Lucy said.

  “Of course it’s locked,” the superintendent said. “That’s called security.” She clicked on her radio. “It’s Superintendent Fibuch. Open up if you’re secure.”

  An officer swung the door open, and we stepped into a hall that ran the length of the dorm, the Women’s Recreation Area near the opposite end. There was an open sleeping area to our right where two dozen women in jail-issued jumpsuits sat on steel cots, an officer keeping them well away from the hall, the women silent, their faces lit, waiting for something to happen, not certain whom to root for. We joined another officer who was standing ten feet farther down the hall past the sleeping area, not taking his eyes off of Jimmy and Kate.

  “What’s your procedure?” Nardelli asked the superintendent, her voice quiet enough that Jimmy couldn’t hear.

  “There are officers at every exit. The building is secure. There’s no place for him to go, so we’ll wait him out.”

  “Who’s your hostage negotiator?”

  “We don’t have one. My officers and I are trained in verbal judo, how to defuse tense situations, but none of us qualify for hostage situations.”

  “I’ve got a SWAT team and a hostage negotiator on the way,” Nardelli said. “They’ll be here in less than thirty minutes. What weapons do your officers carry?” she asked.

  “Just pepper spray. Our residents are nonviolent.”

  “Except for Jimmy Martin.”

  “He
doesn’t belong here. I was forced to take him because the county jail was full.” The superintendent glanced at the gun on Nardelli’s hip. “Firearms aren’t allowed in here. I’ll have one of my officers take your gun back to the administrative building. You can pick it up when this is over.”

  Nardelli covered the butt of her gun with her hand. “You’ve got a man holding a shiv against a woman’s neck sixty feet from where we are standing. What’s the range on your pepper spray?”

  The superintendent reddened. “I run this jail, Detective, and guns are not allowed.”

  “And this is a crime scene, and I’m running it. You don’t like it, take it up with the chief of police tomorrow morning,” she said, turning to the officer who’d let us in. “What’s he doing?”

  “Not much. He yelled at us to back off or he’d kill the woman. We’re giving him plenty of space. I can’t tell for certain, but it looks like her neck’s bleeding.”

  The hallway was lit with ceiling fixtures that gave a dull yellow cast to the brown walls and checkerboard linoleum floor. Jimmy was holding Kate in a shadowy area between two fixtures, making it hard to tell if the officer was right. The poor lighting worked to Jimmy’s advantage, disguising his actions, making it more likely he could stab Kate or slit her throat before we knew he’d done it.

  “Did Jimmy know we were coming?” I asked the superintendent.

  “Ethan called me, and I told him.”

  “How’d he react?”

  “Indifferent. Same as always.”

  “Has he been in any trouble since he got here? Any reason he’d have to carry a shiv?”

  “No. Most of our residents are drug and alcohol abusers, and they’re pretty passive. If they have a history of violence or they appear likely to be violent when we do our intake evaluation, we send them somewhere else. They survive in here the same way they do on the streets, by being invisible and not threatening anyone.”

  “How has Jimmy gotten along with them?”