So, McPhillips didn’t know one of his shots had captured the blur of a shirt. And he must not have heard about the evidence introduced at the probable cause hearing. I decided I needed to proceed as if McPhillips didn’t have a clue as to how his photographs boosted the prosecutor’s case.
I glanced around the restaurant. No one paid us any attention. “I need you to promise not to say where you heard this.”
Again, he leaned over the table until we were less than a foot apart. “I’m a journalist. I protect my sources.”
I nodded as if I actually believed him. My personal philosophy was never tell a journalist anything you don’t want spread across the front page the next day.
“Here’s what I know,” I said. “One of the photos shows the blur of a Hawaiian shirt as Molly’s body rolls over the wall of the bridge.”
His eyes widened. “Donaldson wears Hawaiian shirts.”
“Yeah. But so do a lot of people.”
“In Asheville? In October?”
“He had a jacket over it. Does it make sense he would take the jacket off out in the rain?”
McPhillips thought a moment. “Yes, if he didn’t want to get his jacket dirty and wet. Then he could zip the clean, dry jacket up over his damp shirt without anyone noticing.”
Probably the argument D.A. Carter would make, I thought. “But you don’t remember seeing a shirt in your frame?”
“No. But I wasn’t looking at the top of the bridge. I was expecting Molly to walk out of the darkness from underneath.”
“Well, the word I heard was the photo was yours. It was the only one taken vertically. All the others were horizontal shots and didn’t include the top of the bridge.”
McPhillips opened his mouth to say something but then stopped.
“What?” I prompted.
“Nothing.” He paused a moment. “Did the police talk to Angela again?”
“Not that I know. Should they?”
“Just that she was right behind me and had the same angle.”
“Are you still collaborating?”
“On what? I’ve got no pictures. She claims she’s going to write some magazine article. If there’s a trial, I’m sure she’ll wait for that.”
“A trial means photographs outside the courthouse, doesn’t it?”
He couldn’t restrain a smile. “I guess it does.”
Our order came and the conversation shifted to McPhillips asking me about some of my more interesting cases, both in the military and the agency. Breakfast ended with a pitch.
We stood and McPhillips picked up his camera case. “You know, I take damn good photographs under any conditions. I wouldn’t turn down a little surveillance work now and then.”
“Give me a card,” I said. “In my business, you never know.”
I walked back to our office thinking how McPhillips had good instincts. Of all the photographers shooting Helen’s Bridge, he’d been the only one to frame for its full height.
Chapter Sixteen
“Did you learn anything?” Nakayla asked the question from the floor where she sat still sifting through the files from the Duncan trial.
I held up Collin McPhillips’ business card. “A source to use when I don’t want an all-night stakeout at a sleazy motel.”
“McPhillips couldn’t add anything about the shirt photo?”
“He didn’t even know it was in the frame. Claimed it was a lucky shot because he held his camera vertically.” I gave a quick glance around. “Where’s Peterson?”
“He took transcripts back to the Jackson Building.” Nakayla nimbly rose, clutching a few folders in her right hand. “I’ve got some bio info on Kyle Duncan that might help me locate him. Social security number, last known Asheville address, that kind of thing.”
“What do you think about Peterson?” I asked.
“As a suspect? Well, he certainly knew all the plans. But I thought you said Efird saw video of his van at the Grove Park when Molly’s body dropped from the bridge.”
“He did. Newly also interviewed him. Peterson had gone into the Grove Park looking for Lenore when we were trying to reach Molly or he would have left sooner. The bartender at the Sunset Terrace remembered him. I meant is Peterson up to the task?”
She carried the files to the sofa and sat. I took the chair opposite.
“Well, based solely on his performance as Clyde Atwood’s lawyer, I’d say no. He was easily lured into the D.A.’s traps.”
“Hewitt’s traps,” I reminded her.
“Okay, but so far he’s been insightful in working Hewitt’s case. Maybe he’s just hardwired to think like a prosecutor. In that sense, he could prove to be a real asset.”
“I was thinking the same thing, particularly since Hewitt told him to focus on the prosecution.”
“I think he’s a good guy,” Nakayla said. “And I think he’s good for Cory.”
“You think they’re serious?”
“Cory doesn’t take relationships lightly. They seem to click, both personally and professionally.”
I knew Cory had broken up with her FBI boyfriend about six months ago. He’d been transferred to San Francisco and romance couldn’t endure the distance. “Who knows? Maybe Cory gets a new partner and Hewitt gets a new partner. Stranger things have happened.”
Nakayla laughed. “Oh, yeah? Name one. But I asked Peterson to put together a list of possible persons of interest. Meanwhile I’ll go with the obvious ones like Marie Roddey’s relatives and the status of Kyle Duncan himself.”
“Give me his bio. I’ll run him down. Then I’ll check with Newly to see if the lab has determined whether the garage lock was picked.”
She handed me a single sheet of paper, yellowed with age, that was little more than a list of vital statistics. Kyle Duncan was twenty-seven at the time of his arrest. He’d be close to fifty now. As a detective agency, we subscribed to databases with more extensive resources than Google or the various people locators populating the Internet.
I entered as much specific data as I could—full name, age, race, social security number, birthplace, and the option for living and deceased. I removed all filters so that categories of news, websites, still images, and videos would be included in the search pool.
The first hit was a newspaper article with the headline, “Kyle Duncan Trial Goes To Jury.” I expected to see an Asheville Citizen-Times byline. Instead, the article appeared in the Durango Herald. Why would a town in Colorado be interested in an Asheville murder trial? Then I looked more closely.
“Nakayla. Come here.” I rolled my desk chair to one side to give her room. “Check the date on this story.”
She leaned over my shoulder. “October 21, 2000. Nearly fifteen years ago.”
Two photographs accompanied the news story. One featured a pretty dark-haired white woman who looked to be in her late thirties. The picture had been snapped outside with a portion of the Rocky Mountains behind her. Beneath, the caption read, “Sandra Pendleton, murder victim.” The second photo was the head-on mug shot of a wide-eyed Kyle Duncan. His face was leaner and more feral than the pictures in Hewitt’s files. Although the caption stated Duncan was the alleged murderer, the sneer on his lips shouted guilty.
Nakayla and I spent the next thirty minutes going through the Herald’s archives. The story was all too familiar. Sandra Pendleton was a widow with two children—Eileen, eleven, and Timothy, fourteen. Her husband, P.D. Pendleton, had been killed in Iraq in the First Gulf War. She’d returned to Durango from Denver to care for her ailing mother and to raise her children in a small town environment.
A few months before the murder, Sandra’s mother passed away and she inherited the house. There were no other living relatives.
The prosecution claimed Kyle Duncan offered to do some remodeling work. He’d come to Durango six months earlier and wor
ked construction in the area. He was a loner. Sandra advanced him money for materials and he’d started replacing some rotten wood on the back porch. On the second afternoon, the children had gotten off their school bus and discovered their mother’s body on the kitchen floor. She’d been struck in the temple with a blunt instrument. Forensics identified a crowbar as the most likely weapon.
The police picked Duncan up at his rooming house where he claimed to have spent the day in bed with a stomach bug. His tools were still at Sandra’s house, but there was no crowbar. Duncan claimed it had been there with the rest of his tools.
His public defender followed the same arguments Hewitt had used in the Asheville trial five years earlier. However, this time the prosecution had two additional pieces of evidence. A postman was half a block away and saw a man run from behind the Pendleton house and drive away in an old blue pickup. Although he couldn’t make out the man’s features, his general physique matched Duncan’s. The truck was also similar to Duncan’s Ford F-150. Unfortunately, the postman hadn’t been able to read the plate number or identify the state. Kyle Duncan had Idaho tags.
The second piece of evidence came from Sandra herself. She kept a handwritten diary. The night before her death, she recorded that the receipts from Kyle Duncan didn’t match the amount of money he claimed to have spent on materials. She dreaded a confrontation with him, but wouldn’t let the discrepancy go unchallenged. One of the receipts was found under her body.
The fact that the postman hadn’t seen the man carrying a crowbar led the police to conduct a more thorough search of the house. They found the murder weapon tossed twenty feet under the crawlspace. Traces of the victim’s blood and hair adhered to the metal. Like Hewitt, the public defender tried to make much of the fact that the crowbar struck Sandra Pendleton on the right side, an impact spot more likely to indicate a left-handed attacker. But this time, the prosecution demonstrated that Sandra’s standing position by the refrigerator would have made a swing from the right impossible. A backhanded blow could have more than enough power to crush the skull. And the blood splatter supported a backhanded grip.
The jury was out for three hours before returning a guilty verdict. Kyle Duncan was sentenced to death by lethal injection.
And there the stories stopped.
“Do you think he’s still on death row?” Nakayla asked.
“I did a quick search of an anti-capital punishment site, but Kyle Duncan’s name didn’t appear.”
“And nothing shows up in the Asheville papers?” Nakayla asked.
“Not after Duncan’s mistrial. A murder charge half a continent and five years away might not have surfaced on the radar. If the Durango prosecutor knew about the prior trial, he probably couldn’t use it. He had enough evidence without risking a tainted jury pool. And it sounds like Duncan could have been in Idaho for several years if he left Asheville right after his release. Their local paper might not have dug beyond that.”
Nakayla backed away from the computer. “So, Hewitt and Lenore let a guilty man go free.”
“Yeah. And the consequences went far beyond Asheville.”
“Jerry Wofford,” Nakayla whispered.
“The beer entrepreneur from Colorado,” I said. “Check him out.”
“What are you going to do?”
I looked at my watch. “Not too early to call Durango. I want to find out what happened to Kyle Duncan.”
Nakayla retreated to her office and I heard her fingers flying across the keyboard. I closed my door and did an online search for the number for the Durango police department.
The switchboard routed me to a Detective Tonnisen. When I told him I was interested in speaking with someone familiar with the Kyle Duncan murder case of 2000, he put me on hold. I listened to a string of police and community PR announcements that must have gone on for ten minutes.
Then a gruff voice grunted, “Detective Archer.”
He sounded old enough to have been around for the investigation and experienced enough to smell a bullshit story if I tried to spin one. I wished I thought through my play before placing the call.
“Detective Archer. My name’s Sam Blackman and I’m calling from Asheville, North Carolina.”
“Tonnisen said you’re asking about the Duncan case.”
“Yes, sir. There might be a connection to a cold case I’m working.”
“A cold case in Asheville?” He sounded skeptical.
“Yes. Let me say upfront I’m private. And I know what you’re thinking. That I’m running down unrelated cases to inflate my bill. I’m on my own time and I’m a former CID chief warrant officer. This is personal.”
“I’m listening.”
I grabbed a pen and flipped open my note pad. “There was a murder here twenty years back. The circumstances were similar to what I’ve read regarding your case. Kyle Duncan was in North Carolina at the time.”
“And went through a mistrial,” he said sharply. “I know all that so don’t play games with me.”
“I’m not. I just didn’t know about your case till today. You got a conviction and I’m hoping Kyle Duncan will own up to what he did here.”
“Sorry to tell you, but you’re wasting your time. Kyle Duncan’s six-feet-under.”
“Then the execution was carried out?”
“The son of a bitch cheated the needle and died of acute leukemia. Guess you could say he was bad blood through and through.”
“And he never said anything about the murder back here?”
“The D.A. had us sit tight on that info. Didn’t want to chance prejudicial evidence. And we had him dead to rights as it was.”
“Do you know if there were any relatives or friends of the victim threatening to take matters into their own hands if there wasn’t a conviction?”
Archer paused, probably pondering why I asked the question. “Sandra Pendleton was a sweet woman whose husband paid the ultimate price for his country. I’d say the entire population of Durango would have taken matters into their own hands. Fortunately, a jury gave a fair and deliberate verdict.”
“What about the kids?” I asked.
He sighed. “That’s another tragedy. They had to go into foster care. I think Denver where they could be placed together in a home. The Pendleton house was sold and the proceeds put in trust for their education. They’ve never been seen since.”
I looked at my notes. Three words. Leukemia and foster care. There was nothing else I could ask.
“Thank you, Detective Archer. You’ve been most gracious with your time.”
“Wish I could bring some closure for your family, Mr. Blackman. For what it’s worth, I’m sure Duncan was your man. He had dead eyes, you know what I mean?”
“I do. Thanks again.”
Warmth now replaced the brusque tone of his voice. “Yeah. I wish I could help. You weren’t the first to call looking for Duncan as a cold case solution. You won’t be the last.”
He hung up, and I was left debating with myself. Had I been working on my own, I would have acted immediately. But I owed it to Hewitt to run things by him.
Shirley looked up from her desk as I entered. She appeared to be cross-checking a calendar with information on her computer screen.
“Hewitt in?” I asked.
“He’s with Cory in the conference room. They’re reviewing client names in case they’re subpoenaed.”
“What are you doing?”
“Writing the acceptance speech for my Nobel Prize. What do you think I’m doing? I’m searching our credit card records for irregularities or vendors who might have appropriated the card number.”
“Did you find out the shipping information for those two orders?”
“Yes. Cory’s house.”
“Cory’s?”
“FedEx overnighted both with a ten thirty-delivery. No signature required
. Cory was at work and both FedEx and UPS know to leave packages in her carport. We figure someone watched for the truck and then took them.”
“No one knew Cory’s schedule better than Hewitt,” I said.
“So, are you turning witness for the prosecution?”
“Too crowded.” I walked past her. “I need a few moments alone with him.”
“Be my guest. I’ll buzz him to meet you in his office.”
Hewitt’s door was unlocked so I didn’t wait for him. Where the conference room looked like a tribute to sixties rock bands, Hewitt’s inner sanctum resembled something from a hundred years ago. His desk was an old partners’ style, the design with drawers either side of a large surface where partners could sit facing each other. There were law books on ceiling high shelves that Hewitt actually used. I could see bookmarks protruding above their spines. Two walls displayed framed black-and-white photographs of Asheville in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. Pack Square was populated with horse-drawn wagons. There was an iconic shot of the W.O. Wolfe monument shop where Thomas Wolfe’s father dealt in cemetery markers, the most famous of which became the starring title for Look Homeward, Angel.
I looked out the window at Pack Square and the Jackson Building now towering on that very spot Thomas Wolfe spent much of his childhood. In a few more years, it would be a hundred years old. Time. The irresistible force with no immoveable object to stop it. Twenty years ago, Kyle Duncan had gotten away with murder. Fifteen years ago, justice caught up with him, but another woman died in the process. How fast would time pass for someone seeking revenge for either of Duncan’s murders? If revenge is a dish best served cold, the execution of Lenore Carpenter certainly occurred with chilling precision. But how long ago could such a plan have been devised? Who could have foreseen the events set in motion by Clyde Atwood’s courtroom rampage? Why was Molly murdered? Did she just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Shirley said Molly was going by Lenore’s for her costume. Maybe she caught the murderer in the act.
“Shirley said we need to talk?” Hewitt motioned me to take the only guest chair and he sat behind his desk.
A Specter of Justice Page 15