Childless: A Novel (29 page)

Nothing was
going to keep Matthew from getting to Bear Creek Lake by six. Not even Reverend Grandpa’s ill-timed attempt at making amends. Feeling bad for what he had said about Matthew’s mother, the old man suggested the two might grab a burger together. “My treat!” he had said with a sheepish grin.

But even if Matthew had wanted to accept some lame apology, he wouldn’t have gone. Maria Davidson had made that impossible by retracting her rejection note. Why else would she suggest a picnic dinner and say she would love to see him again? Reverend Grandpa could fend for himself for a few hours, even if it meant Matthew abandoning his post. Or losing his job.

He triple-checked the destination to confirm the precise location suggested in Maria’s mischievous note.

He looked urgently at the dashboard clock for the eighth time in as many minutes. Assuming a hundred-yard walk from the parking area he should make it with time to spare. He took a deep breath while turning left onto Kumpfmiller Drive. One turn later he saw Maria in the distance. She was, as promised, easy on the eyes. Her blond hair was pulled back, revealing a lovely neck that matched lightly tanned limbs. She looked even better than he had imagined, her upper legs partially concealed behind a small picnic basket dangling from her coupled hands. She appeared to brighten when she spotted Matthew’s approaching smile.

As he slammed the car door, Matthew waved in Maria’s direction. She lifted the basket slightly as if offering evidence of her intentions, then turned onto the trail and began walking into the trees. He laughed to himself, still stunned by his sudden good fortune, before starting toward her. Then he stopped and turned back toward the car to grab the love note he had planned to send. Now he could watch her read it and, he hoped, relish her reaction.

“Maria,” he called into the trees. “Wait up. I’ve got something for you.”

No answer.

He trotted to the trailhead, where he found a path beneath the shade of unwieldy tree branches.

“Maria,” he repeated, half hoping she would continue the game of hide-and-seek.

But this time she called back. “I’m over here by the lake.”

He turned left toward the voice.

“Just beyond the clump of trees.”

Matthew’s mind raced through the possibilities. Would he find her lounging on a blanket beside two freshly poured glasses of wine? Or perhaps in a bikini with her bare toes caressing the water’s edge? Or, dare he hope, taking a plunge wearing nothing but an invitation for him to join?

“Mr. Adams?”

The male voice startled Matthew. He looked left toward an approaching stranger who somehow knew his name.

“Have we met?” Matthew asked while instinctively extending a cautious hand.

The man matched the offer with a firm shake. “My name’s Tyler Cain. I’ve been trying to track you down.”

Track me down
? Matthew thought while scanning the shore for signs of Maria. He noticed a trace of yellow and white moving quickly on the other side of a tree-lined path.

“Ms. Davidson won’t be able to join us,” Tyler explained.

“Us?” Matthew said with confusion. “What are you talking about? Maria and I arranged to meet here for…a…picnic. Who are you?”

“I’m a private investigator working with the Denver police. I’ve been investigating threats made against Judge Victor Santiago.”

Matthew cursed, once in alarm and again at Maria’s apparent betrayal. But how could she have known about the letters? Had he accidently mentioned them during their first date? No, he hadn’t.

“Threats? Against a judge?”

“That’s right.”

“What does that have to do with Maria? Or me?”

The detective reached into a backpack he had placed onto the path. Did he have a gun? Bounty hunter handcuffs? No. He pulled out a small stack of handwritten notes Matthew recognized immediately.

“What are those?”

“I was hoping you could help me figure that out,” Tyler said while offering the papers. “Like I said, I’ve been investigating a case involving the judge. But I need your help piecing together some of the clues.”

“
My
help?” Matthew felt himself start to panic. “Why me?”

“Two different people suggested I talk to you.”

“Who?” he demanded.

“Dr. Thomas Vincent from UC–Boulder, for one. He’s an expert on this word here.” Tyler pointed to the signature line at the bottom of the first note. “I’m not entirely sure how the professor pronounced it.”

“Manichean,” Matthew read without thinking. He quickly feigned ignorance. “Is that how you say it?”

“Sounds about right,” Tyler confirmed.

Matthew looked up. What to say? “Who else suggested talking to me?”

“Maria’s sister, Julia Davidson. She’s been helping me on the case and said you had signed notes to Maria using this same word.”

Of course! Sisters always share intimate love-life details. Maria must have shown Julia his messages. Matthew hated to imagine what Maria must think of him now.

But he had an even more troubling concern. What did the police believe? And what did this private investigator know?

“Listen, Mr. Cain—”

“Call me Tyler, please.”

“Tyler then. You’ve gotta believe me. I never meant any harm. I just wanted to communicate with the judge. I thought maybe—”

“No, Mr. Adams,” Tyler pounced. “You didn’t think. A thinking person doesn’t send death threats to a sitting judge. A thinking person doesn’t sign those threats with the same screwball name he uses to woo women.”

“Death threats? I never sent any death threats.”

Matthew quickly unfolded and reread the first note he had sent to the judge. Then he read two more. “I just asked the judge to correspond with me about the case. To consider the real-life impacts on people like me if he—”

Tyler took the stationery pages back from Matthew. Then he retrieved another from his pack. This one photocopied since, Matthew assumed, the original was sitting in a protective plastic bag at police headquarters. “This letter arrived yesterday, Mr. Adams,” Tyler said. He began reading aloud. “Bid your sweet wife farewell since you will die before issuing an opinion.” He stopped and looked into Matthew’s eyes. “Sounds a heck of a lot like a death threat to me.”

Matthew appeared startled as he quickly yanked the page from Tyler’s hand. He felt the color draining from his face as he read.

“I’ve never seen this letter before in my life,” he said in a voice that sounded every bit as guilty as the detective had assumed him to be.

“Yeah. And I’m the Easter bunny,” Tyler mocked.

“I’d never kill—” The image of his mom’s slumping corpse interrupted Matthew’s defense. “I’d never
murder
anyone! You’ve got to believe me.”

Tyler glanced
at the page, then back at the ball of anxiety standing before him. “Save it for the police, Mr. Adams,” he said. “My job is to follow the evidence trail wherever it leads and then hand everything over to the authorities. I’m just glad I tracked you down before you did something
really
stupid.”

“Wait!” Matthew grabbed Tyler’s wrist as if trying to keep him from leaving. “Listen to me. I didn’t write this letter. I admit I wrote those.” He pointed at Tyler’s pack. “But not this one. Look here, even the writing looks different.”

It did. A little.

“Please, Mr. Cain, I just wanted to get the judge to seriously consider the impact of his decision. I admit it was stupid. But I never intended to hurt the man. I swear I’m no assassin.”

Tyler reached into his pack to find and retrieve the letter Jennifer McKay had shown him only a few days earlier. He scanned the page until he found the damning line.

“Even if you hadn’t written this last letter,” he said, “you still threatened the judge.”

“No I didn’t!” Matthew protested.

“Then how am I supposed to interpret this line, ‘comply with my request to avoid more drastic measures’?”

A look of surrender came over Matthew’s face, as if he had forgotten about the earlier threat.

“I shouldn’t have said it like that,” he confessed.

“But you did say it like that.”

“I know,” Matthew said. “I was trying to go big.”

Tyler didn’t follow.

“Forget it.” Matthew’s head was hanging in defeat. “It doesn’t matter now anyway.”

Tyler noticed moisture forming in Matthew’s eyes. Liquid fear. As much as he wanted to believe the clear, indisputable evidence, something inside told him the guy was harmless. Dumb. Rash. Perhaps even conniving. Matthew Adams certainly fit the part of an uptight coward who would send anonymous, threatening letters. But he looked nothing like the sort who could walk into a federal courthouse and shoot to kill. With so many actual murderers walking free thanks to high-paid defense attorneys, and knowing what happens to weak men thrown in with hardened predators, Tyler would have hated to see Matthew spend a decade in a federal penitentiary.

“Do you have a lawyer?” Tyler asked.

Matthew wiped his face, then looked up self-consciously. “Not really. Just my uncle Ben. He handles my mom’s estate. We don’t get along.”

“You’ll need a good defense lawyer,” Tyler said while rummaging through his backpack. He pulled out a pad and pen, then jotted down a name and number. “Call this guy,” he said.

Matthew read the scribbling. “A friend of yours?”

“More like an enemy,” Tyler replied. “But he’s good at his job. Got several guys off I tried to put behind bars. You’ll need someone like him. Expensive. But effective.”

“I can’t afford expensive.” He looked Tyler in the eyes. “I guess I’m sunk.”

Tyler shrugged. “Maybe not. They’ll go easier on you if you come clean. You never know. You might even get a good plea bargain.”

“What’s that?”

“They’ll charge you with plotting to assassinate a federal judge. A conviction would carry a long minimum sentence. If you admit to something less, perhaps violation of federal postal regulations, the judge could be much more lenient.”

“I see,” Matthew said into the air.

Tyler suddenly realized he had no script for the next scene of this drama. He had been 100 percent focused on finding and confronting Judge Santiago’s potential assassin. It hadn’t occurred to him what to do if the threat proved innocuous. Should he offer to drive Matthew to the station and hand him off to Smitty for questioning? Or should he show compassion? Let him go home to wrap up details of a life that was certain to change for the worse?

He decided to pull out his phone and point it at Matthew’s face. Matthew frowned in reaction.

“I need to know where you’ll be and how to reach you,” Tyler said. “I’ll send the information with this picture to a friend on the force. They’ll want to talk to you. Tell them what you’ve admitted to me and you’ll be OK.”

Matthew gave the information. “Do you really think they might go easy on me?”

“I do.”

But he didn’t. Courts weren’t likely to show much mercy to a guy who had threatened to murder a sitting judge. They might go light on someone who had threatened a congressman or senator. Possibly even the president. But a fellow judge? Not a chance.

“Go home, Mr. Adams,” Tyler said. “Call a lawyer and wait for the police.”

He had probably made the wrong decision. Smitty would have told Tyler to bring in the suspect personally. Immediately. “Don’t let him out of your sight!” he’d have ordered. But Tyler wanted to give Matthew time and space to think through a plausible excuse for his folly. Which is exactly what Tyler knew it had been, a series of idiotic decisions by a desperate fool. Still, to be safe, Tyler shadowed Matthew’s car from a discreet distance. He followed him to the house, then parked several hundred yards away to observe. The same routine he had used in countless stakeouts for jealous clients. As an added precaution he also placed a tiny observation camera on the rear porch. He could watch both through his car’s windshield and tablet’s screen.

Several hours of inaction gave Tyler time to think. Part of him rested comfortably in the knowledge that he had found the culprit, solved the case. But another part of him felt uneasy, as if one or two pieces of the puzzle didn’t fit. The look on Matthew’s face, for one, when Tyler showed him the final letter. He appeared genuinely surprised, as if he had no recollection of writing it. And the handwriting. There were differences, no matter how slight. Was it possible Matthew hadn’t sent the final note after all?

No. Not possible. Who else would have sent it? Matthew must have intentionally altered the script. That’s why he had been so eager to draw attention to the differences.

Tyler tapped an image on the dash menu. Three rings later he heard Smitty’s voice message accept the call.

“Hi Smitty, it’s Tyler. Great news. I found the guy who wrote the letters to Judge Santiago.” Hearing the words prompted a swell of self-congratulation. He had solved the case. He had saved the judge from possible assassination. A job well done. “He’s no real threat. I’m sending you the suspect’s picture and the information on where you can have him picked up for questioning. I would keep the security detail at the judge’s home for a few days to play it safe, but I think we can rest easy on this one.”

He ended the call. No need to mention any doubts. Smitty would trust Tyler’s assessment that it had been a one-man operation. The same man who had driven home in the still-parked car and entered the still-closed front door Tyler had grown tired of watching.

His stomach rumbled as Tyler eased away from the curb. He frowned, then smiled at the thought of rewarding his investigative genius with a double cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. A few minutes later he pulled up to the drive-through window of the only burger joint still open. He ordered value meal number six. Then he imagined Renee’s disapproving gaze.

Renee!

In all the excitement over finding and confronting Matthew Adams he had forgotten to call her to say he wouldn’t make it home in time for dinner. He quickly tapped her image on the dash.

“Tyler Cain, I’m very upset with you!” A recording made for his specific number for this specific occasion. “I don’t ask for much. Just a bit of courtesy. I made a very special meal tonight. I also bought a new nightgown. But you won’t be enjoying either. There’s a pillow and blanket in the den. I hope you get a major crick in your neck!”

The message ended abruptly. He imagined her slamming a vintage phone receiver onto the cradle in a huff.

Banished to the sofa
! So much for celebrating success with his gal, his first meaningful accomplishment since, well, since too long ago to remember.

“Did you want to add a hot cherry pie to that order?” the drive-through voice asked, short-circuiting Tyler’s pity party.

He looked at the clock. Much too late for a deep-fried indulgence sure to trigger middle-of-the-night heartburn.

Renee would definitely not approve.

“Sure!” he answered defiantly. “And top it with vanilla ice cream.”