A Specter of Justice (25 page)

“That's what I'm counting on.”

Chapter Twenty-five

“Nakayla, I think I've broken the case.” I nearly shouted the words as I opened the office door.

No one was there. I leaned against the wall and caught my breath. I'd hoofed it so fast from the Thirsty Monk that my left leg stump was aching from pounding on the concrete sidewalk. I'd held off phoning because I wanted to see Nakayla's face when I explained my theory. Then she could unleash her computer skills to search the Internet for corroborating evidence.

Her purse was still by her chair so she couldn't have gone far. I hurried down the hall to Hewitt's office.

Nakayla and Cory stood at Shirley's desk. Shirley was seated and held the receiver of her desk phone in her hand.

“Sam. I was just about to call you. Have you seen Hewitt?”

“Yes. Earlier this morning. He and Tom came to Molly's car.”

“We haven't seen them since,” Cory said. “Tom was supposed to meet me at the D.A.'s office at noon to pick up the photocopies of Lenore's diary.”

Shirley dropped the receiver in the cradle and stood. “Hewitt had a luncheon with Nathan Armitage, but he never showed. I know he's distracted but he's not one to miss an appointment.”

Both women were clearly upset. A knot tightened in my stomach. I tried to keep calm and be reassuring.

“They probably just got tied up with the car and lost track of time.”

“But it's well after two,” Cory said. “Neither one is answering his cell.”

Nakayla gave an almost imperceptible nod toward the door. For some reason, she wanted me outside.

“Tell you what,” I said. “I'll call Efird. He was the last person with them.” I stepped out in the hall. “I'll let you know what I find.” I walked away, listening for Nakayla's footsteps to follow.

She came in the door behind me. “Sam, I'm worried about Hewitt. There's something funny about Tom Peterson.”

My mouth dropped open. “How did you know?”

“You too?”

“Yes. Wofford has nothing to do with this. He's just a beer guy from Colorado. The shoe cover at the bridge is probably from the military. Newly and Efird are going after Junior, but Peterson was in the JAG Corps and told us how much he liked working with the MPs. I just came from Hank at the Thirsty Monk. He remembers seeing Peterson with his Bells Amber Ale in the upper bar last Friday night, the night Hewitt and Nathan were downstairs. Junior said that audio background trick made the CID newsletter. JAGs read it too. Peterson saw his opportunity and made the recording. The guy's brilliant. He's exploited everything he could.”

“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 could 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.