No Way Out (12 page)

Kessler Park stretches along the northern edge of Northeast Kansas City, beginning near the intersection of The Paseo and Independence Avenue on the west and continuing east to the intersection of Gladstone and Belmont, a rambling, undulating green border covering more than four miles. Built beginning in the 1890s as the first of the city’s ten thousand acres of parks, many of its hilly and hardscrabble wooded areas remain hard to reach. Drug dealers and prostitutes long ago replaced families out for a Sunday horse and buggy ride, plying their trade in after-dark seclusion, turning indifferent eyes to the stolen cars and dead bodies dumped and buried in the park’s shadows.

Cliff Drive snakes through the park past the Kansas City Museum, edging along limestone bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, continuing past North Terrace Lake, the Carl DiCapo Fountain, a disc golf course, and Indian Mound, a Native American gravesite. The city and local neighborhood associations have fought to reclaim the park, closing Cliff Drive to motor traffic on weekends and cracking down on illegal activity. But the park is too big, too rugged, and too thick to be tamed by traffic engineers and irate homeowners.

Lucy’s text message had said to meet her at North Terrace Lake, an irregular-shaped pond in the center of a broad, grassy basin set below street level. Cliff Drive, Chestnut Trafficway, and Lexington Avenue bordered the lake on three sides, a widening stand of thick trees and tangled underbrush rising behind the lake across the face of a steep slope. The grass was stunted, stained dull beige, ready for winter, the trees half-stripped of their leaves, those hanging on, dry, brown, and frail.

We parked on Cliff Drive at the end of a line of police cars. Two clusters of people, fifty feet apart, were gathered on the near side of the lake along a bike path. The sun was overhead, the air crisp but not cold enough to force them to huddle together for warmth though they stood hunched shoulder to hunched shoulder, larger rings circling smaller ones, a lone woman at the center of each group.

Standing on the side of the road and looking down at the lake, I recognized Peggy Martin as the solitary woman in the group farther from us. She shuffled her feet, strained to see over the heads blocking her view, and then dropped her chin, eyes on the ground, repeating the routine again and again. Even at a distance, one thing was certain. She wasn’t cold, and the people around her weren’t there to keep her warm. She was scared, and they were protecting her.

The police had established a perimeter along the outer edge of the distant trees, stretching yellow crime-scene tape trunk to trunk. A uniformed cop held the leash on a search dog, the German shepherd lying at his feet, ears pricked, tail slapping the hard ground with an impatient beat.

The woods were too thick to see what was going on inside the tape, but I knew that a forensics team was spooning away dirt and rock until whatever had been found could be identified as human and a preliminary assessment of gender and approximate age could be made. If the remains were human, they would be excavated with painstaking care, each bone and bone fragment photographed, location and position recorded, the surrounding soil sifted for clothing, bullets, and anything else that would help identify the victim and cause of death. Once the remains were tagged and bagged, the investigation would fan out in widening circles searching for more evidence.

That’s when someone would emerge from the trees and talk to the women who were waiting inside their friendship circles, too afraid of answers to ask questions. What did they find? Could it be my son, daughter, sister, brother, father, mother? Who did this?

A television news chopper hovered overhead, rotors thumping. Remote broadcast vans, satellite dishes aimed skyward, jockeyed for position as two cops directed them to a staging area. A reporter, trailed by a cameraman, approached Peggy’s circle and was rebuffed. She shrugged, signaling to the cameraman to follow her to the other group, where she found someone anxious to make the six o’clock news.

Kate and I walked down the slope from Cliff Drive toward the bike path, our route taking us past the group that welcomed the reporter. One of the women was holding a copy of the flier I’d seen tacked to the light pole on Independence Avenue near Roni Chase’s office. I couldn’t see the picture on it, but I could make out Timmy Montgomery’s name. Several other women were wearing sweatshirts screen-printed with a logo that read
Have You Seen Me?
and Timmy’s image.

The woman in the center of that circle had been waiting two years for the answers to her questions. A crack opened in the wall her friends had built around her. She was staring at the ground, rocking back and forth and hugging her body. Her hair was pulled back, her face pale and flat. A man elbowed his way toward her, hands outstretched, calling her name, “Jeannie!” She twisted away without looking at him. He dropped his hands and melted into the crowd.

“Do you think this will be the day?” Kate asked.

“For what?”

“When God decides to ease her pain.”

“You think that’s how it works?” I asked.

“I hope so.”

“I don’t think God is going to choose between these two mothers.”

“You think it’s just a matter of luck, then?”

“I don’t believe in luck, good luck, bad luck, or no luck at all.”

“What do you believe in?” Kate asked.

“A world where everyone takes his turn in the barrel.”

“Maybe they’re both in the same barrel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe the disappearances of their children are related. Maybe the same person is responsible.”

We stopped, both of us looking back and forth at the two groups and the two women at their center. Adrienne Nardelli, the detective in charge of Peggy Martin’s case, hadn’t said anything about possible links to other cases when Lucy and I met with her. We were too focused on Jimmy Martin to have asked, making the mistake of seeing the world through our client’s eyes instead of following the evidence wherever it led us.

“Maybe.”

Lucy waved to us from the edge of the second group, and we joined her.

“How’s Peggy?” I asked.

“Holding up, but only barely.”

“What have you found out?”

She pointed toward two people standing apart from the group. “That’s Ellen Koch, Peggy’s neighbor, the one who organized the volunteer search teams. The guy is her son, Adam. This area had been searched a couple of times, but Ellen decided to give it another try today. She brought her son and a few other people with her. She and Adam were up in the woods above the lake and stumbled across something that looked like a bone, and Ellen called the police.”

“Did you talk to the son?”

Lucy cocked her head, one eyebrow raised.

“Okay, sorry I asked. What did he tell you?”

“Not much. He’s a pretty boy, pouts a lot and looks bored. Said he was just walking along and saw something sticking out of the rocks he thought looked like a bone. He told his mother, and she called the cops.”

“What’s the mother say about her son?” Kate asked.

“She says he graduated high school last year, tried junior college but quit. She says he’s looking for a job, but the way she says it, I don’t know how hard he’s looking. She wants him to join the army, but he isn’t interested.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Kate said.

“Sure. I’ll introduce you.”

Ellen and Adam were watching the tree line, Ellen’s hands in her coat pockets, her face drawn, crow’s feet fanning out from the corners of her eyes, her mouth turned down and sour. Adam was slender and handsome, jet-black hair falling to his eyebrows, smoking a cigarette, fingers of one hand tucked inside his pants, posing like the lead singer in a boy band waiting for the girls to go crazy.

Kate didn’t wait for an introduction. “Adam, I’m Kate Scranton. I understand you and your mother found the body. That must have been something.”

He nodded and dropped his cigarette to the ground, letting it burn until his mother glared at him, then grinding it under his heel.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it?”

He squinted at her. “I already told the police.”

“Which is a great help for them but not for us.”

“And I already told her,” he said, tilting his head at Lucy.

“The more people talk about this kind of thing, the more they remember.”

He made us wait while he rolled his shoulders and breathed deep, swelling his chest.

“Okay. We were walking up in the woods, about halfway up the hill. There was some rocks, and we seen somethin’ stickin’ out didn’t look right. I pulled on it, and it come out. I could tell right away it was a bone. Looked like a leg bone. So my mom called the cops, and that’s about it.”

“Had you been in those woods before?”

He looked away. “Nah.”

Lucy interrupted, pointing toward the woods. “Here they come.”

Four paramedics carried a gurney out of the woods, a black body bag strapped to it, the bag flat, holding individually wrapped remains too sparse to give it shape or dimension. They stopped, released a wheeled frame tucked beneath the gurney, rolling it across the uneven terrain, a lone woman trailing them.

I recognized Detective Adrienne Nardelli’s stout frame and deliberate walk. She was solid and calm, naturally deadpan, saving any hidden sense of humor for off-duty hours. When Lucy and I met with her about the Martin case, she laid down two simple, non-negotiable terms: be straight with her and she’d tell us what she could; fuck with her and she’d fuck us up. She was Quincy Carter without the charm.

Both waiting groups lurched into motion, blending into a single human wave rising and cresting, rolling toward the gurney, Peggy Martin and Jeannie Montgomery squeezed together in the center of the swell. The gurney’s wheels bogged down in a soft spot, the paramedics hoisting it to their waists, setting it down when they met the crowd on the open plain. The lake was a glistening mirrored backdrop, the rumble, whine, and whir of passing traffic an everyday overture. The crowd spread out and parted, paying silent homage as the paramedics passed among them, some gasping, others crossing themselves, still others silent and weeping. The two mothers, side-by-side, hands clasped, faced Detective Nardelli.

“We found a body,” she said. “It’s definitely an adult, probably female. I’m sorry.”

Peggy let out a low moan that exploded into a guttural wail, collapsing to her knees. Jeannie hung her head, turned, and walked away, no one touching her, no one coming close. Peggy was dying. She was a ghost.

I knew from hard experience that grief born of a lost child begins as a bottomless well; that those black waters eventually dry into a thick wall separating the before and after. Then one day, if we’re lucky, we wake up and find that the wall has eroded and all that’s left is a harsh filter through which the rest of our life passes, every moment measured against what might have been and what should have been.

But when there is no end to the beginning, when we cannot clutch our child to our breast a final time, we suffocate in uncertainty, beyond rescue or comfort, and those who try trip over clumsy words and gestures before retreating to a safe distance. So it was, as Jeannie made her way alone and Peggy’s friends fell away, all except for Ellen Koch, who helped Peggy to her feet, cupping her elbow as if she were a wayward drunk, guiding her toward a pickup truck parked on Cliff Drive where her son Adam waited behind the wheel, engine running.

“Lousy deal for them,” Detective Nardelli said to us. “Stand out here half the day, get all worked up for nothing.”

“There’s nothing else they can do,” I said.

“Doesn’t make it any less lousy. You have any good news for me?”

“We took another run at Jimmy Martin this morning, but he’s sitting on whatever he knows.”

“If he knows anything,” Nardelli said.

“Oh, he knows something. That’s for certain,” Kate said.

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.”