“What do we do now?”
“What put you on to him?” I asked.
“I spoke to the foster care agency in Denver. I was hoping they’d share any records they might have after Eileen or Timothy turned eighteen and were no longer minors. I said I knew they’d already had inquiries, but we had information we only wanted to confirm.”
“And they knew nothing about any inquiries,” I said.
“Exactly. Peterson never asked.”
“Of course not. Hewitt handed him a gift when he assigned Peterson the responsibilities for finding the Pendleton kids—the area where he was most vulnerable for being discovered. He’s got to be Timothy Pendleton and we have to prove it.”
Nakayla’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God. I connected something earlier to Angela but completely missed the relevance to Peterson.”
“What?”
She pointed to a stack of printouts on her desk. “I reviewed all the stories about the Pendleton murder and the sex scandal. The papers identified Sandy Pendleton’s late husband as P.D. Pendleton. I did a further check. His full name was Peter Douglas Pendleton. Angela Douglas.”
“And Tom Peterson. Peter’s son. And he went into the military like his father.”
“He went as Tom Peterson so the name change had to happen in college.”
“Or before,” I suggested. “I wonder why it didn’t show up?”
Nakayla hurried to her computer. “Because Colorado only allows you to change your name in the county in which you’re a resident. Angela still lived in Denver, but if Tom had moved, it would be in the records of a different county.”
“Hit the counties of the state universities. I’m calling Newly.”
“Sam, he’s got Hewitt.”
“I know. We don’t have much time.”
As I speed-dialed Newly, I heard Nakayla’s fingers typing furiously on her keyboard. The phone rang until I went to voicemail. “Call me now,” I said. I immediately redialed. Again, voicemail. I dialed a third time.
“What?” Newly shouted. “We’re executing a search warrant at Junior’s.”
“You won’t find a thing. It’s Tom Peterson and he’s taken Hewitt.”
“What?” This time the word wasn’t angry but astonished.
I quickly detailed what I’d learned from Hank and what Nakayla discovered in Denver. “He had to be the one who tipped Angela. He was there this morning when I got the call from Collin about her. Neither he nor Hewitt have been seen since.”
“How the hell did he manage to be at the Grove Park and the bridge at the same time?”
“Newly, we can’t worry about that now. Whatever they were planning is going to be accelerated.”
If it hasn’t been already, I thought.
“All right,” Newly said. “I’ll issue a BOLO, send officers to his home and office, and put a watch on the airport and bus station. I already have men looking for Angela.”
“Found it!” Nakayla ran to my door. “El Paso County. He changed his name from Timothy Pendleton to Tom Peterson in the county of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs three years before Angela.”
I repeated the information for Newly.
“I’m headed back to the station,” he said. “Ask Nakayla to look for any background she can. Does he own a cabin, have a favorite vacation spot, bank accounts in other states? I’ll put our people on it, but she’s already up to speed.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “But first I think she should tap another source.”
I looked up at Nakayla. She frowned because she knew where I was going.
“What?” Newly asked.
“His girlfriend. Cory DeMille.”
I hung up with the promise to call Newly immediately if we learned anything.
Nakayla wiped tears off her cheeks. “You’re right. We have to find out what Cory knows. But she’s going to be devastated.”
“I think you should be one-on-one with her. She can cry or scream or whatever.”
Nakayla smiled in spite of her tears. “You’re just chicken.”
I stood. “I am. But I’m not totally taking myself off the hook. While you talk here to Cory, I’ll break the news to Shirley.”
Nakayla stepped close and embraced me so hard I couldn’t breathe. But we stayed that way for a moment, infusing each other with courage.
I broke away first. “Your brave soldier’s going to hide around the corner of the hall until you get Cory to come see you. Then I’ll stay with Shirley until either Cory returns or you call me.”
“Okay. Once I get her through the initial shock I’ll try to glean any information I can as to where they might have taken Hewitt.”
I stayed out of sight on the far side of the elevator, but not so distant that I couldn’t hear Cory’s heels clicking on the hardwood floor. As soon as our door closed, I trod as softly as I could to Hewitt’s office.
Shirley sat at her desk, staring blankly at the wall. It took a second for her to register that I’d entered.
“Did you speak to Efird?” she asked cautiously.
“No. But I do have some information.” I tapped my left knee. “I’d be more comfortable in the conference room if that’s okay.”
Shirley wet her lips. “Nakayla called for Cory. Something happened to Hewitt and Tom, didn’t it?”
“Let’s just go to the conference room.”
Her black eyeliner started running into the white makeup like ink spilling across parchment. I led the way and then stepped aside when we reached the round table, pointing for her to take the nearest chair. I sat next to her.
“Nakayla and I have found the children of Sandra Pendleton.”
“The woman murdered in Durango?”
“Yes. They are Angela Douglas and Tom Peterson.”
Shirley gasped, and then threw her hand to her mouth to stifle a sob.
There was no sense holding back. The faster it all came out, the better. “We believe they’ve abducted Hewitt.”
Her shoulders shook like electricity ran through them. “Oh, God. They’ll kill him. You’ve got to find him, Sam.”
I laid my hand on top of hers. “We’re doing everything we can. Detective Newland is all over it. Nakayla’s talking to Cory for any hint of helpful information she might have, whether she’s aware it’s valuable or not.”
She took a deep breath. “He murdered Molly and Lenore and then sat in this room and pretended he was helping us, helping to find their killers, helping Hewitt. And all the while he was framing him.” Her dark eyes fixed on mine. “What kind of person does that?”
The answer came to my mind, not in my voice, but the voice of Horace Brooks talking about his destroyed family.
I could take comfort in their love, but only after I’d discarded the hatred I held for the person who had taken them from me.
“A person who never let go of their hatred, Shirley. A person to whom life dealt only tragedy, and so they fed on it, and on each other, until Hewitt and Lenore became the embodiment of everything evil that happened. Not imagined things. Real things.”
“But Hewitt was just doing his job. Lenore was serving her civic duty, and Molly was what? Just Lenore’s friend.”
“Better to let ten guilty persons go free than one innocent suffer? And when those ten go on to kill again, who are the innocent that suffer? A boy and a girl whose lives are upended and then dumped into a system that betrays them. They’re not right and they don’t have the right to do what they’re doing. But I understand. It’s their sense of justice, the specter of justice that’s haunted them all their lives.”
“And they’ll execute him,” Shirley whispered.
“No. Because we’re going to stop them.”
While Nakayla and Shirley dug into Peterson’s college and law school days, Cory followed up on anything she coul
d from what he’d shared as personal history. She’d been distraught when confronted with Peterson’s duplicity, but her concern for Hewitt rapidly transmuted that despair into anger. However, she soon discovered everything he told her about himself was a complete fabrication, and she was left with little to do except keep coffee going and be the liaison with Detective Newland and the police.
I’d been on the phone crisscrossing the country, backtracking Tom Peterson’s military career. To find any information of value meant we had to look where he didn’t want us to look. He’d tried to be the interface between our team and the search into Junior Atwood’s military career. I took that as a sign he didn’t want his name popping up in a general inquiry.
I first went to a former colleague and chief warrant officer stationed at Fort Bragg. He didn’t know Peterson, but he passed me along to a JAG officer who worked in assignments. That led to several former commanders who all said the same thing: Tom Peterson had been a tenacious prosecutor and a half-hearted defender.
My last conversation was with a Captain Michelson at Fort Hood, Peterson’s last assignment before discharge. Michelson said Peterson was like a pit bull who took criminal behavior as a personal affront. “It was like he was judge and jury,” Michelson said. “As a former chief warrant officer, you understand the Uniform Code of Military Justice is different from civilian proceedings, but Captain Peterson pulled every lever he could for a conviction. The man wasn’t a prosecutor, he was a crusader. And he had a backup plan for every case.”
“Did he ever prosecute a murder?” I asked.
Michelson laughed. “He lived for them. He told me his favorite part was the sentencing and if the Army had the guts to carry out executions, he’d volunteer to be a member of a firing squad, to slip the noose around a neck, or push the plunger for lethal injection. It didn’t matter which, as long as the public saw justice being done.”
Shadows were lengthening across Pack Square when I finally hung up the phone. Michelson’s words, “As long as the public saw justice being done,” rang in my ear.
Nakayla came to the door. She shook her head slowly.
“I know,” I said. “I haven’t had any luck either.”
“Cory, Shirley, and I talked about grabbing something to eat downstairs. We figure it’s going to be a long night. You want to come?”
“Thanks. I’m not hungry. You go on. I just want to think a little.”
She bent down and kissed my lips. “You did everything you could.”
When the door had closed and I sat alone in the shadows, I thought, you did everything you could, Sam, but it wasn’t enough. Tom Peterson bested you. He beat all of us. His and his sister’s crusade won. They got their public display of justice.
If that were true, then Hewitt wouldn’t be killed on some backwoods mountain road or buried in some shallow grave. Hewitt had been targeted for more than execution. He’d been set up for public humiliation. Murder charges to destroy his life before his death. But how could Peterson be sure of a conviction? What was the backup plan he always carried into action?
I picked up a pen and the printout sheets Nakayla had given me summarizing the evidence against Hewitt. I reviewed all of it. I didn’t find a backup plan, but I did see an incomplete plan and a possible ending. The one ending that terminated Hewitt while tarnishing his reputation forever. Suicide. A man driven by guilt to despair. And Tom Peterson and Angela Douglas would have walked away clean.
If I were correct, the end game would be the final link connecting Hewitt to Molly and Lenore.
I walked to the window and looked over Pack Square to Beaucatcher Mountain. Lights were sprinkled across the dark ridge as dusk approached night. There was no time to rally backup, not when stealth was my only option.
I went to my desk, retrieved the Kimber forty-five, slammed one of two magazines home, and loaded a cartridge in the chamber.
On the way out, I dropped a note with three words on Nakayla’s keyboard.
I love you.
Chapter Twenty-six
I kept my low beams on as I drove up the back of Windswept Drive to the condominiums atop the ridge. I wanted to keep the headlights from sweeping through the trees, but descending fog also made the low beams more practical.
During my scout of the area the previous afternoon, I’d walked through the woods from the upper parking lot to Helen’s Bridge. Now I would have to traverse it without light and in total silence.
I parked the CR-V at the far end, hood facing outward, and took the shortest route to the cover of the forest. It had just swallowed me when headlights from a vehicle ascending from College Street swept the parking lot. I stepped behind a tree trunk and tucked the Kimber into my waistband to keep both hands free to gently push brush and branches away from my body.
Although the descending fog compounded problems of visibility, the dampness helped muffle my footsteps on the newly fallen leaves. I walked like I was back in Iraq, each step potentially triggering an IED.
After fifteen minutes, I estimated I would soon intersect the old carriage path headed for the bridge. Trees thinned and visibility improved as the low hanging clouds reflected the lights of Asheville burning at the foot of the mountain.
I heard a grunt. Then the sound of something being dragged across the ground. My hand clutched the grip of my semi-automatic. Then, not a grunt, but a groan.
I went into a crouch. There might be only seconds. I emerged from the forest into the clearing that spanned the final few yards to the top of Helen’s Bridge. One dark shape lay in the middle. A second figure bent over it, holding a length of rope in one hand.
“Don’t move. It’s over, Pendleton.” I waved the pistol so he would clearly see what he was facing.
The figure froze. “Sam.” Timothy Pendleton barked my name with guttural fury. “Why couldn’t you keep your goddamned nose out of this?”
I stepped onto the bridge. “Because what you’re doing is wrong, no matter how much you and your sister suffered. Lenore was only in her early twenties, not much older than a kid.”
“Yeah. And what about this son of a bitch? He used every trick he could to set scumbags like Kyle Duncan free.”
“Just like you used every trick in the book to convict anyone you prosecuted. What if you sent an innocent man to jail for life or worse? Should someone come gunning for you?”
He dropped the rope and rose slowly, holding both palms open at his side. “They were guilty. Every last one of them. Just like Clyde Atwood. You think I didn’t anticipate Hewitt Donaldson’s little stunts? I knew he was aiding the D.A. I knew you have one leg. I knew Heather’s cell phone was on and you’d heard everything Clyde was saying. I didn’t walk, I ran into those traps to make sure he was convicted.”
“And two little boys were orphaned. How’d that work out for you?”
He took a step forward, not in aggression, but as if anxious to be heard. “I’m sorry about that. I really am. But it set things in motion that I couldn’t have dreamed would happen. Every event an opportunity. Like God meant justice to be taken. Those boys will know nothing like we went through. To have your sister raped at eleven, taken back to a bedroom in what was supposed to be a loving, caring family. To hear her crying, and to later learn if she said anything, she was told I’d be killed. And that I was beaten and told to keep silent if I didn’t want my sister hurt. We lost our mother, we lost our family, we lost our childhood.” He looked down at Hewitt. “All because of this piece of shit.”
A groan came from Hewitt.
“This was supposed to be a suicide,” I said. “That’s why he’s still alive. A disgraced lawyer taking his own life. Now you can tell your story in court. It will be as much a judgment about him as about you.”
Pendleton gave a hollow laugh. “Right. My story in the hands of this spin master.”
“Spin master? And how are you spinning Mol
ly’s death? What did she ever do to you and your sister?”
“Like you said. She showed up at the wrong time and the wrong place.”
“Bullshit! Then why the double order? The receipts you tagged for Hewitt’s credit card were for two grappling hooks and twice the length of rope we found with Molly. You’re a coward. You planned to kill Molly to throw suspicion elsewhere. To save your own skin. You’ve become what you abhor. A cold-blooded killer. A monster.”
“I’m not going in.” He knelt behind Hewitt’s body, still keeping his hands in sight. “We’ll have our justice now.”
Mist blew across the ground, swirling around the two men. For a split second, I flashed to the dream and Heather’s cry, “Coming for you.” Or maybe it was something in Timothy Pendleton’s voice.
I wheeled around as a figure in a dark hood rushed at me, arms outstretched to shove me over the bridge. With that split-second warning, I stepped aside and grabbed a wrist as forward momentum carried the attacker by me and over the wall.
“Eileen!” Timothy Pendleton screamed.
Eileen dangled in the air, thirty feet above the hard blacktop. If I dropped the gun to clutch her with both hands, I’d be at the mercy of her brother. He could have had a weapon. I knew he had the grappling hook tied to the end of the noose around Hewitt’s neck.
“Do it, Timmy,” Eileen screamed. “Throw him over.”
Headlights raked over the bridge and froze. A car stopped on the ascending slope, its beams like spotlights illuminating a stage.
Timothy Pendleton scooped up Hewitt Donaldson, a man who had him by at least twenty-five pounds.
“I’ll drop her, Pendleton. I swear I will.”
Pendleton turned, using Hewitt’s body as a shield against the headlights.
“Do it, Timmy,” his sister urged even louder. “You promised!”
“Is this the justice you want?” I cried. “Your sister dead because you value revenge more than her life?”
A Specter of Justice Page 24