Nardelli turned to her with a narrowed gaze. “Do I know you?”
Kate offered her hand. “I’m Kate Scranton.”
Nardelli shook her hand, studying her face. “I’ve heard of you. Jury consultant, right?”
“Among other things.”
“So why do you think Jimmy Martin isn’t telling us what he knows? Except for the fact that if he killed his kids, he’ll get the death penalty and that’s not the kind of thing he’s likely to confess until he’s more afraid of his nightmares than the needle.”
Kate summarized her interview and impressions. It was easy to read Nardelli’s reaction. She did everything but smirk and spit, turning to me.
“That’s how you’ve been spending your time?”
“I’d listen to her, if I were you. The science is solid, and she’s usually right.”
“That so?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, her eyes firing up. “It is so. And if you’d consider the possibility that I know what I’m talking about, you’d spend some time with Adam Koch, the boy who found the body. He’s not telling us everything he knows either.”
“And which secret expressions of his told you that?” Nardelli asked.
“They aren’t secret. They just happen so quickly you’ll miss them unless you’re trained to see them. Adam had a gestural slip when I asked him to tell me what happened. He raised his left shoulder for a fraction of a second.”
“His left shoulder? For a fraction of a second? My, that does sound incriminating.”
Kate smiled, her expression cool and patient. “It’s a half shrug. In a full shrug, both shoulders rise, stay up and then drop. Tough questions can make a person feel helpless, especially when they’re lying, and people who do a half shrug feel helpless. He did it a couple of times. The last time was when I asked him if he’d been up in those woods before. He said no, but I’m pretty sure he was lying.”
“All because of the shrug?”
“Partly. His lips also stretched horizontally. That’s a micro-expression of fear, and it’s involuntary, just like the half-shrug. These gestures and micro-expressions are universal. They show up in every culture, and they mean the same thing. By themselves they might not mean that much, but when they happen together when he’s talking about finding a dead body, it’s very likely that he’s not telling us everything he knows.”
“So you’re like a human lie detector, is that it?”
“More like a lie catcher, and I’ve got a better track record than any lie detector.”
“Any judge ever let you testify in court that someone’s a liar?”
Kate took a deep breath. “That’s not how I work.”
Nardelli shook her head. “Course not. Why would you when you can catch people lying by watching how they shrug their shoulders?” She turned to Lucy and me. “I should have listened to Quincy Carter. I’m going back to the woods. You find something a judge will let into evidence, give me a call.”
“Hang on a second,” I said. “Any chance there’s a connection between the Montgomery and Martin cases?”
Nardelli hesitated, staring at me. “Ask your lie catcher. She’s the one with all the answers.”
Kate waited until Nardelli was out of earshot. “I’m right about Jimmy Martin and Adam Koch.”
“That’s good enough for me. We’ll talk to Adam again,” Lucy said.
“Talk to his mother too,” Kate said.
“Why?”
“I watched her when she was helping Peggy to the pickup truck. She was flashing unilateral contempt the whole way. The right corner of her lip was tight and raised. That indicates arrogance or a feeling of moral superiority. Maybe she does that all the time, but I’d bet against it. She’s helping Peggy even though she doesn’t like her.”
“Then why bother?” I asked.
“And,” Lucy added, “why doesn’t she like her?”
“All good questions,” Kate said, turning to Lucy. “What about Peggy Martin? Did she agree to let me interview her?”
Lucy nodded. “She didn’t like the idea at first since you started out working for her husband, but I convinced her.”
“How?”
“I told her that you didn’t care who hired you, you’d do the same job, and that if we were going to find her kids, we needed your help.”
“That’s all it took?” Kate asked.
“That’s all.”
“Did you tell her that I’d know if she was lying to me?”
Lucy shook her head. “No. I didn’t want to put any more pressure on her. Besides, nobody tells the truth, or all of it, all the time or all at once.”
“Then we’re all on the same page here.”
“Chapter and verse,” Lucy said.
“So let’s go talk to her,” Kate said.
I looked at my watch. “Can’t. Not till later. I’m supposed to meet Roni Chase at her house pretty soon. Quincy Carter is going to interview her again. I don’t want him to have another shot at her alone, and I need some time to prep her. She doesn’t live far from here. It won’t take long.”
“Kate and I can talk to Peggy while you go see Roni.”
“I don’t have a car.”
“Take mine. I’ll ride with Kate. You up to driving?”
The day was wearing on me, twitches and shakes coming and going like wind changing directions, but Roni’s house was close enough that I could make the drive.
“That’s not the point. I need to be there when Kate talks to Peggy.”
Lucy raised one eyebrow. “Needing and wanting isn’t the same thing, Jack,” she lectured. “Roni Chase may be your latest reclamation project, but she isn’t mine. Finding those kids is the only thing I care about. And you’re the one who told me I had to sit out the Jimmy Martin interview because three people were one too many.”
“Don’t you hate that?” Kate said, grinning. “You raise them, and then they turn on you.”
I stuck my hand out. “Keys.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
There was enough to tie the disappearances of Evan and Cara Martin together with the disappearance of Timmy Montgomery to ask whether it was possible. All three kids were of the same age and lived in the same part of town. Although they vanished two years apart, there was reason to look for other connections.
Did the families know one another? Even if they didn’t, did they have friends in common? Did their kids go to the same schools? How else might they have crossed paths?
Those questions focused on the possibility that the kids were taken by someone who knew them, but that theory didn’t suffer much scrutiny. If Jimmy Martin killed his kids to punish his wife for her real or imagined sins, it was unlikely he’d have had any reason to kidnap and kill Timmy Montgomery two years earlier. The same would no doubt be true of any member of the Montgomery family.
If there was a connection, it was more likely that the kidnapper/killer preyed on small children, indifferent to whether his victims came from happy or unhappy homes, caring only whether he could have them. And that meant he probably lived in Northeast, probably hadn’t started with Timmy and wouldn’t stop with Evan and Cara. It was an incendiary conclusion that would terrify families from one end of Northeast to the other.
Adrienne Nardelli had ducked my question about a connection, and that was enough to scare me. Regardless of why she had avoided answering me, it was clear she wasn’t going to share anything she had, at least not until I had something to offer her in return. Her lack of cooperation made my job harder but not impossible. I left a
