“Why should I believe you?”
He took a deep breath, looking away and then back at me.
“I was with Peggy the night before Evan and Cara disappeared. She called me after they went to sleep and begged me to come over. Said she needed some company. My mom had found out about us and made me promise to stay away from her, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not? The sex was too good?”
“Yeah, but not the way you think. I knew there was something wrong with me before Timmy. I couldn’t stay away from the kiddie porn. After what happened with him, I was so scared. I tried to quit the porn and leave the little kids alone, but I couldn’t.”
“A parent of one of the kids in your Sunday school class complained to the church about you.”
He hung his head.
“I know, but I never hurt that little girl. I was trying not to. I really was. You don’t know what it’s like to want to do something so bad and you know it’s a sin to do it, but you can’t stop wanting it no matter how hard you try. Then, when Peggy came on to me, well, I thought maybe if I had sex with a grown woman like her, that’d cure me. I wouldn’t get off on the kids anymore.”
“How’d that work out for you?”
His slumped, his chin on his chest, fresh tears falling off his face.
“So you went over to Peggy’s that night. What happened next?”
“What do you think happened? We did it. I wanted to go home after, but she wanted me to stay. Said she felt safer having a man around since she’d had to get a restraining order against her husband. So I did. Next morning I woke up, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if the kids were still asleep, but I didn’t want them to catch me there. I opened her bedroom door a crack, and that’s when I saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Jimmy Martin. Peggy’s bedroom is at the top of the stairs. When I opened the door, I could see down to the front door. He was on his way out with Evan and Cara, telling them to hurry up if they wanted to have ice cream for breakfast.”
“You’re sure it was Jimmy?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m sure.”
“How were the kids? Were they glad to be going, or were they upset?”
“They were laughing. Cara even said that their mom would kill them if she knew they were having ice cream for breakfast, and Jimmy said not to worry cause she’d never find out. That’s the last thing I heard, and that’s the truth.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
He looked at me, wide-eyed at my stupidity. “Are you kidding me? My mom would have killed me if she knew I was back with Peggy.”
“Did you tell Peggy?”
“Yeah. I knew she wouldn’t say anything to my mom.”
“What did she say when you told her?”
“She said she knew it had to be Jimmy, that no one else would do something like that.”
Liars work from a script, the fewer details to remember the better. Ask them what happened, and they’ll tell you the bare bones. Ask them again, and they’ll repeat it, sometimes verbatim, sticking to their story so they don’t screw it up. An honest person isn’t afraid of the truth and the more often they tell what happened, the more details they remember, adding information because they want to be helpful and have nothing to hide.
I took Adam through the events again and again. Each time he gave me more information, descriptions of what Jimmy and the kids were wearing, the wine he and Peggy had drank the night before, the music on Peggy’s iPod they’d listened to lying in bed after they had sex. He told me about coming down the stairs and peeking out the window cut into the front door, watching until Jimmy drove away in his pickup truck, remembering the first part of the truck’s license number, guessing at the rest.
All of it was helpful, some of it easy to check out, none of it conclusive proof that Jimmy had taken his kids, confessed child killers being low on the credibility pyramid. Adam had good reason to tell the truth and better reason to lie, knowing that Jimmy was in jail for refusing to talk and that the police already suspected him. Corroborating his story depended on two things that had yet to happen: Peggy telling the entire truth, and Jimmy telling anything at all.
I called Adrienne Nardelli. She was still at Ellen Koch’s house. I told her not to go anywhere, that I was bringing her a present, gift-wrapped, following that with a call to Lucy, telling her to meet me there.
“Okay, let’s go,” I told him.
“Where?”
“Home.”
“Oh, man! My mom is going to totally kill me.”
“Trust me, that will be the easy part.”
I put Adam in the backseat of Kate’s rental, pushing him to the center, belting him in, crisscrossing the shoulder straps over his chest.
“Hey,” he said, “what about my truck?”
“Don’t worry. You’re not going to need it for a long time.”
Chapter Forty-seven
“You did good,” Adrienne Nardelli said.
We were in Ellen Koch’s kitchen, Ellen sitting mute in the living room and Adam bundled in the back of a squad car. I’d spent an hour running it down for Nardelli, letting her work me the way I’d worked Adam, keeping my memory fresh, scraping all the details she could onto her notepad, pausing as successive waves of tremors and spasms ripped through me, petering out in a final soft ripple. Kate was on one side of me, Lucy on the other, each with a hand on my back when I stuttered and shook.
“Thanks.”
“But going after him the way you did wasn’t the smartest thing you could have done, you do know that?”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“Any point in me telling you to butt out of my case and not to pull another fool stunt like that again?”
I didn’t answer.
“Figured as much,” she said, turning to Kate and Lucy. “Take him home. Make sure he takes the rest of the day off.”
“After we talk to Peggy Martin,” I said.
“Wrong,” Nardelli said, “after I talk to Peggy Martin. I’ve got an officer babysitting her across the street.”
“Anyone tell her about Adam?”
“Not yet. She came home half in the bag while you were out chasing him through the woods. I had an officer escort her inside and told him to keep her off the phone and to keep the press and neighbors out of the house, but she was watching from her front window when we cuffed Adam and put him in a squad car. Won’t surprise me if the prosecuting attorney charges her with obstruction for not telling us about her husband taking her kids.”
“She did tell you,” Lucy said, “from day one.”
“But,” Nardelli countered, “she didn’t tell us that her baby boyfriend was the one who saw him do it. What kind of mother holds back something like that?”
Lucy squared off at Nardelli, hands on her hips. “So she’s not a perfect mother. So she’s not even close. She cheated on her husband, and she drinks too much. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her kids. And even if Adam is telling the truth, which is the Pikes Peak of ifs, Jimmy isn’t talking. So any bad decisions Peggy made hasn’t changed this case one damn bit.”
“There’s something else about Adam’s story,” I said. “Unless Jimmy confesses, there’s no way to prove
