In the jail, Pete Kelsey/John David Madsen was being held in Ten South, a cellblock reserved for suspects arrested in connection with serious crimes.
I waited in the small, pie-shaped cinder-block interview room while one of the night guards brought the prisoner from his cell. He arrived wearing his orange jumpsuit jail uniform and looking as though he’d been rudely awakened from a sound sleep.
“Detective Beaumont, what are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you, Pete. I’ve got some bad news.”
He blanched. “What is it? Has something happened to Erin?”
“No,” I said. “Erin’s safe for the moment, but your house isn’t. It burned to the ground earlier tonight. I’m here to ask you the same question your father-in-law put to me a few minutes ago. Who’s got it in for you?”
Kelsey dropped onto the only remaining plastic chair. “The house is gone?”
“Yes, completely, but Erin’s all right. I took her to her grandparents’ house. Fortunately, she wasn’t home when the fire started. If she had been…”
“She’d be dead,” Kelsey finished.
I nodded.
“Was it arson?” he asked.
“Probably, although right now it’s officially known as a fire of suspicious origin. Once the arson investigators get inside, I’m sure they’ll find all the telltale signs. So tell me, Pete, who did it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine.”
“Maybe this will throw some light on it. Erin had a call an hour or two before it happened, a threatening call from a woman who laughed all the while she was telling your daughter that you hadn’t lost everything yet, but that you would. Does that sound familiar?”
He looked at me, his electric blue eyes searching mine. “Laughing?” he asked.
I nodded. “Laughing and saying that what’s happening is payment in kind for something you did to her. So who is it, Pete? Tell me.”
“It must be the same woman then, but I’ve no idea…”
I was losing patience. “Look, let’s not play games. Someone’s out to get you, any way they can. So far your wife is dead and your home has been destroyed. If somebody’s decided to beat you out of everything, the way I figure it, there’s only one thing left for them to take away.”
I saw the stricken expression on his face and knew I’d landed a telling blow. “Erin?” he whispered.
“That’s right. Erin,” I said. “So are you going to help me or not?”
“I’ll try, but what can I do?”
“Think, man. Who’s got it in for you?”
“I don’t know. I swear to God, I don’t know.”
“You must. This is somebody with a major grudge. Maybe you’re not proud of it, maybe it’s something you never wanted to see the light of day, but it’s not something you would have forgotten.”
“Detective Beaumont, I don’t have any idea…”
“Is it something you’re afraid would be self-incriminating and could be used against you in a court of law? Would it help if I called Cal Drachman down here?”
“No, don’t do that.”
“Talk to me then. It’s someone from years ago, someone who knew all about Erin’s birth certificate.”
Pete Kelsey’s head snapped erect. “What about her birth certificate?”
“That it’s a fake, just like your name.”
“But how could someone know about that? Erin didn’t even know.”
“She does now. Tell me, Pete, what are you hiding? I’ve got to know. Erin’s life is at stake. Unless I know the whole story, I can’t help.”
He stared at me, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat. I kept quiet, knowing he was verging on spilling whatever it was.
“She’s not mine,” he said at last.
“Who’s not yours?”
“Erin. I stole her, or rather we both did. Marcia and I.”
It took a moment for that to soak in. “You stole her? You mean as in kidnapping?”
“Not exactly. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” He gave me an odd look, as though it was some kind of joke, but I wasn’t smiling. “If you’d only seen what was happening…”
“You’d better tell me about it, Pete. From the beginning.”
“Did you ever play much poker?” he asked.
“Not me. People tell me I’ve got an honest face.”
Pete Kelsey smiled hollowly. “Not me. I’ve always been a good bluffer, too good, in fact. I bluffed my way into and through West Point. My father was only second-generation American, and he wanted me to go all the way to the top. He wanted me to be a general or head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That was his idea of the great American Dream, that a farm kid from Marvin, South Dakota, could rise to the top.
“I was good at target practice, and I was good at tests-academic, personality profile, you name a test and I could pass it with flying colors. But I didn’t find out about killing until after it was too late. Oh, I could talk a good game, but I couldn’t kill worth a damn. Once I was in Nam, I froze up. I couldn’t pull the trigger, not even to kill someone who was out to kill me. And our guys were counting on me, leaning on a bent reed, so I managed to steer clear of actual combat and took off the first time I got a chance.”
“Where did you go?”
He shrugged. “All over. I knew I could never go home. My father couldn’t have stomached having a coward for a son. It was better that I simply disappear. That way he never knew.”
Pete Kelsey stopped in the middle of his story and looked at me questioningly. “How is my father, Detective Beaumont? You must have talked to him by now.”
“Your father’s dead, Pete. Both your parents are. Years ago.”
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Thank God. At least I won’t have to face them.” For a moment he buried his face in his hands. When he looked up, he seemed dazed. “Where was I?”
“You were telling about what you did after you left Vietnam.”
He nodded. “I bummed around for a while, first in Asia and then later in South America. I wanted to come home, to the States, I mean, but I didn’t dare. The closest I came was Mexico. I ended up tending bar in a little place in Baja called Puerto Penasco.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Gringos call it Rocky Point. It’s sort of a poor man’s Acapulco. Anyway, I was bartending in a little beachfront bar there. The guy who owned it thought having a gringo tend bar would pull in the money. That’s where I met Chris McLaughlin.”
“Marcia’s first husband?”
Kelsey nodded grimly. “That worthless bastard.”
“I thought they were in Canada. Is that where you met Marcia?”
“No, Marcia wasn’t there. By then she was already back home with her parents. Chris was the only one I met, although that wasn’t the name he was using at the time. I didn’t find out his real name until much later.”
“What was he doing there?”
“Buying drugs,” Pete Kelsey answered. “Buying drugs, drinking too much, letting himself run off at the mouth. One day when he was half drunk I heard him telling somebody that having the baby along made his work a piece of cake. He called her his little mule. He said he could put whatever he wanted in with that baby and carry it back and forth across the border with no difficulty because the Federales never searched her.”
“His own baby?”
“That’s right,” Kelsey answered bitterly. “Chris McLaughlin was a nice guy. A helluva nice guy.”
“So whose baby is Erin really if she wasn’t Marcia’s?”
“Chris McLaughlin and another woman’s Sonja, I think her name was. They all went to Canada together, but Marcia didn’t know that Chris and Sonja were already married. The way I heard it, he had this fantasy about starting his own patriarchy-you know, the old one-man-many-wives routine? Except it didn’t work out quite the way he planned. I think Marcia liked Sonja more than she did Chris, and I think she would have stayed if it hadn’t been
