The Third to Die

by Allison Brennan

  “She may have insight into her brother-in-law Zachary, as well as the son. It’s something.”

  When Catherine didn’t elaborate, Matt said, “What is?”

  “We need to know more about this family, Matt. I’ve read through the lawsuit. In Hamilton’s deposition, he blamed the Spokane hospital and specifically ER nurse Anne Banks for his wife’s death. But it was the words he used.” She shuffled papers. “He said, ‘She killed Lorna. She left her to die.’ Later, he repeated that Banks had ‘killed’ his wife, and that she ‘chose’ to save others instead of Lorna. A lot of rage there. Hamilton’s attorney should have made it clear to his client only to state the facts and the emotional impact his wife’s death had on his family. But the rage was clearly pent up, and where there’s rage, there can be the motivation to kill.”

  “Enough to kill more than a decade later?”

  “He had been in prison at one point. Maybe Banks had moved by the time he was out and he couldn’t initially find her. A series of events could have happened and by then he located her, right around the anniversary of his wife’s death—a death he believes could have been prevented.”

  “So we should talk to the sister-in-law.”

  “Do you have another suspect?”

  “No. Hell, we could be going at this all the wrong way.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know what I believe at this point, but right now this is all we have.”

  “Psychology is not a hard science. This pattern is so clear now that we’ve identified it. I agree with your assessment about Brian Maddox being the likely target because so far he’s one of only two law enforcement officers from Liberty Lake who had a run-in with Hamilton. You also need to make sure the officer who arrested Hamilton for his third drunk driving offense is covered, too. Officer—” she flipped paper “—Theresa Corrigan. That arrest led Hamilton down the path where he lost his job, his freedom, his son, then his house. That’s a lot of losses in a short period of time, on top of the rage he felt at the death of his wife just the year before. He seems to have had no other support structure besides his son and sister-in-law—both of whom lived hours away—no one else, no close friends, no church or civic organization. So he moves out of state...then disappears. You need to find him. Before he finds you.”

  “I have two agents from Seattle who came in to help. They’re working with Andy Knolls on all the arrest files from Liberty Lake to make sure we haven’t missed something, but I’ll pull them tonight to sit on Corrigan. She has a partner for the duration, but I can spare the agents.”

  “Are you on Maddox? Or local cops?”

  “Detective Quinn is staying with him. He’s sending his family out of town today, and two of his own officers are going to watch his house 24-7 for the next two days. But Corrigan has no connection to Liberty Lake—she lives in Spokane, she works in Spokane, and has never lived or worked in Liberty Lake.”

  “Except she arrested Hamilton,” Catherine said. “Remember that Manners worked in Spokane, but was killed at the lake. Ogdenburg worked in Spokane, but was killed at the lake. I don’t think you can take Officer Corrigan off the potential target list, not yet.”

  “Point taken.”

  “And remember—don’t go anywhere alone.”

  “I have Michael with me. I took your warning to heart. Now that I’m the face of the investigation, if we thwart him, he could come after me. I get it.”

  “Good to know. Be careful.”

  “I knew you cared.”

  “You’re impossible.” Catherine hung up.

  Matt grinned. I’m wearing her down.

  Michael said, “I guess we’re going to Kennewick.”

  “Yep. I’m going to call the Seattle agents and tell them they’re on Corrigan, starting at ten tonight. Andy’s people can relieve them in the morning.”

  “If I may?”

  “May what?”

  “They got here at eight in the morning. You and I have been putting in almost twenty-hour days—this is what we signed on for. Quinn has her own reasons for doing it, but most anyone else is going to balk at working more than a twelve-hour shift.”

  Matt hadn’t thought of that, maybe because he didn’t do much else except work. “I’ll have them relieve the Spokane detail in the morning.”

  “Better.”

  Matt called Andy, explained what he needed. Andy would make sure that not only was there a cop in the house with Corrigan, but that a patrol with two cops were watching her when she got home.

  “My people will relieve them in the morning. How are they working out?” Matt said.

  “Fine,” Andy said in a tone that suggested otherwise. “I wish I hadn’t made Kara mad. She’s really good at this.”

  “She decided she’s protecting Maddox.” Matt said. “I don’t think anyone, even Maddox himself, can convince her to walk away from that assignment.”

  38

  Kennewick, Washington

  3:10 p.m.

  Nadine Montclair was sixty-one and worked as an administrative assistant for a paper product company. Matt decided not to call ahead because he didn’t know what to expect, though he had verified her employment and that she was in the office. Unfortunately, he’d seen too much during his career to make any assumptions about an individual’s guilt or innocence. He also found that when he wanted straight answers, it was best not to give a potential witness or suspect too much time to think. And if Montclair was still in contact with her brother-in-law or her nephew, Matt didn’t want her giving either of them a heads-up.

  Montclair had her own office adjoining the CEO; she brought Matt and Michael inside. She was petite and casually dressed.

  “FBI?” she asked. “I must have heard that wrong.”

  Matt and Michael both showed their badges. “We won’t take too much of your time, Ms. Montclair. We’re here about your nephew, Glen Hamilton.”

  “Glen?” She seemed confused. She motioned for them to sit, and she sat behind her desk. Her office was small but orderly, just enough room for two chairs, other than hers. She reached into a bowl of wrapped butterscotch candies and took one out. “Help yourself,” she said as she unwrapped hers and put it in her mouth.

  “Thank you,” Matt said, but didn’t take one. He said, “Glen moved in with you when Zachary Hamilton went to prison for drunk driving. He was fourteen at the time?”

  She nodded. “Zach would never admit that he was an alcoholic,” she said. “He drank when my sister Lorna was alive, but kept it under control. She threatened to leave him once, and he promised to do better. I think he did, for a while. He loved Lorna. It was probably his only redeeming quality. But everyone loved my sister. She was truly a kind and caring person.”

  She looked from Matt to Michael and back to Matt. “I don’t understand what you want to know. Lorna has been dead for eighteen years. She died in a car accident—in fact, the anniversary of her death was only a few days ago.”

  “We’re in the middle of an open investigation, Ms. Montclair. I can’t share many details right now, but I need to talk to your brother-in-law and nephew right away. I was hoping that you might know where I can find them.”

  “Is Glen in trouble?”

  “We just want to talk to him.”

  “My nephew has been through so much.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Not for a while. He moved to Seattle, got a good job for a computer company. He’s a smart boy.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Six, seven years? He calls me on my birthday and a couple other times a year. He’s always been quiet, reserved, a little bit of a loner. Especially after my sister, his mother, died.”

  Michael picked up a picture from her desk. “Is this you and Glen?”

  She smiled. “His high school graduatio
n.”

  Michael snapped a photo of the picture, and Ms. Montclair frowned.

  “What is it you really want from Glen?” she asked.

  Matt didn’t want to tell her that he was a possible suspect in multiple homicides, not yet—she may not believe it possible, and then decide not to talk to them. “We really need to find your brother-in-law Zachary Hamilton, and we’re hoping that Glen might be able to lead us to him.”

  “Zach?” She shook her head. “I’ve never forgiven him. I never liked him when Lorna was alive, but he was her choice and he was good to her. But after she died? He neglected Glen. Instead of taking care of him, Zach drank more, lost his job, went to jail. Even when he got out, they never talked. His son wanted nothing to do with his father, although he went up to Spokane a couple times to see him—before Zach lost the house and moved out of the area. It never went well. I’d hoped after sobering up in jail that Zach would change, but he went back to his old ways. Couldn’t keep a job. Couldn’t pay the mortgage.”

  “And Glen lived here with you until he graduated high school?”

  She nodded. “I never married, never had kids, and he was an easy teenager even given his circumstances. Never gave me any trouble. Respectful, polite, did chores for me without being asked.”

  “Can we trouble you for his phone number? Or the name of the company he works for?”

  She turned to her computer and brought up her contact list. She wrote down Glen’s information and handed it to Matt. “I doubt very much that he knows what happened to his father. And I don’t think he cares, to be perfectly honest. I never talked to Zach after Lorna’s funeral—unless I absolutely had to, usually because Glen needed something.”

  “Did Glen ever talk to you about his mother’s accident?”

  “No, that was a tough subject for us. Lorna was my only family—our parents died when Lorna was nineteen. I was a few years older so we lived together until she met Zach in Spokane. Then I got this job and moved down here.

  “I’ve been with the company for almost thirty years. Lorna had Glen. Her world revolved around her little family—her husband and son. Zach blamed everyone for Lorna’s death, but it really was just an awful accident. Whenever I talked to Glen about it, he would become so sad. I suggested that he talk to a counselor, but he didn’t want to. And I didn’t push it—time usually heals.”

  “Thank you for your help, Ms. Montclair.”

  “Of course. But Glen—he’s not in trouble, is he? He’s never been in trouble. Not so much as a fight at school, at least when he lived with me. Never had detention, all his teachers liked him because he was so polite and studious.”

  “He sounds like he was a good kid,” Matt said, noncommittal. “Again, thank you. I’ll call if I have any more questions.”

  * * *

  They walked out and Michael said, “Wasn’t Scott Peterson, the guy who killed his wife and baby, also described as a perfect son? Polite and respectful?”

  “A lot of kids are polite without turning into killers.”

  “It was just the way she was talking, Costa. Even my little brother, who was damn close to perfect, got in trouble from time to time.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “He was killed in a drive-by when he was twelve,” Michael said.

  “Man, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Michael shrugged and slid into the driver’s seat. “Long time ago. Back to Spokane?”

  “Yes. As fast as you can.”

  Matt had a few calls to make, one to Glen Hamilton’s employer. Hamilton lived in Tacoma, south of Seattle, but his employer was a major computer company in the city. It took several minutes before Matt got through to his supervisor. He learned that Glen worked remotely from home and was only in the office twice a month for staff meetings. The last time Glen had been in was the end of February. He was a valued employee who did his work well and on time, according to his boss, but had no real desire to move up or take on more responsibility even though he was capable.

  Next Matt called the Seattle FBI field office. He asked that they send two more agents, this time down to Glen Hamilton’s residence and talk to him, then assign a car to sit on him for the next forty-eight hours. If he didn’t budge, then he wasn’t their killer. It was a four-hour drive from Spokane to Seattle. Hamilton could fly in an hour or less, which was possible but unlikely. It would leave a paper trail.

  The phone number might be the best chance of locating him, but they needed a warrant for the records or to ping it. And right now, they didn’t have enough information for a warrant. If they couldn’t get it, Matt might call the number and hope Hamilton would pick up. It was definitely worth a shot.

  Matt called Catherine and filled her in on what the aunt said.

  Catherine didn’t speak for a long minute.

  “Hey, did I lose you?”

  “I’ve been going over forensic reports,” she said, “and the timeline from the homeless men in Spokane who were stabbed to death, and the man who was stabbed to death in Bozeman. Do you realize that Glen Hamilton would have been seventeen at the time of the Spokane murders?”

  “Your point?”

  “His father was foreclosed on fifteen years ago. Glen would have been sixteen. Zach then disappeared, correct?”

  “There’s no record of him buying or renting in the Spokane Valley after that. We tracked him to Montana, up until ten years ago.”

  “But Glen went to visit his father while he still lived in Liberty Lake, correct? Before he lost the house?”

  “Yes, but I don’t have dates.”

  “My guess would be shortly after he got his driver’s license. And before his father had lost the house on Vine Street—and lost everything inside. Everything that had been his mother’s. That had been his.”

  “Okay, but I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  “His father lost the house because he lost his job because of his drinking. This was all after he lost his son because of his drunk driving arrest, correct?”

  “Yes—he went to jail and that was when Glen was sent to Kennewick. He was nearly fifteen.”

  “When the father got out of jail, he went back to his job—but couldn’t hold it down. He went back to drinking. That’s when he lost the house. Glen was sixteen. Perhaps he finally got the courage to confront his father, or perhaps he just wanted to retrieve what belonged to him or his mother. But he was too late. It was all gone. The house, the personal items, his father. He had nothing to take out his rage on...except homeless alcoholics who couldn’t fight back.”

  “That’s a stretch, and it’s going to be difficult to prove.”

  “Consider that this boy was the recipient of his father’s rage for at least two years before he went to live with his aunt. And from what you learned from the aunt, he may not have been a model father and husband even before his wife’s death.”

  “Are you saying Zachary abused his son?”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but he must have heard his father blame everyone for everything. The ER nurse for his wife dying. The school principal for him losing his job. The cop for arresting him and sending him to jail. Going to jail put him behind in his payments. Maybe the aunt helped, maybe he had savings or a life insurance policy, but not working for six months had to have hurt his finances. Everyone was to blame, except himself, Zach Hamilton.”

  This was the old Catherine—she had gotten into the killer’s head. Matt knew she would be able to do it, if she just focused and put aside all the shit that happened last summer.

  Brian Maddox wasn’t the cop who put Hamilton in prison for a year; that was Corrigan. But Brian had arrested him when the house was foreclosed on and Hamilton refused to leave. Which cop did Zachary Hamilton blame the most?

  “Are you thinking that they’re in this together?” Matt asked. “A father-son kil
ling team?”

  “No. I think Glen killed his father in Bozeman.”

  “Whoa, I am completely lost.”

  “Remember I told you earlier that there was a stabbing victim in Bozeman nine years ago? His remains were severely compromised—there wasn’t a lot to work with. Because it was obviously a homicide, and the victim was unidentified, the ME stored the body in cold storage—as required by state law. So we still have the remains to work with. And your team traced Zachary Hamilton to Montana. I’m going to contact the Bozeman medical examiner to have them send the remains of their stabbing victim to Jim Esteban. I’ll expedite it—and if I can’t, I think Esteban needs to fly to Bozeman ASAP.”

  “So you think John Doe is Zachary Hamilton.”

  “I do. If you follow the killer’s pattern—the homeless alcoholics were substitutes for his father. Glen Hamilton killed those men in a rage. I’ve viewed the autopsy results, and they indicate a lot of anger, multiple stab wounds. And the first Spokane homeless murder was only months after the father, Zachary, lost the family home and left the city. Hamilton hated his father, but at the same time, he adopted his father’s cause—the need to punish those who took from him.

  “If his mother had never died, none of this would have happened,” Catherine continued. “His rationale is that if his father wouldn’t have drank too much, he wouldn’t have lost his job, wouldn’t have lost his house. That was the final trigger. The house. Stability. Where Glen grew up. Where all the memories of his mother were. I was looking over the reports you sent—the bank put everything from the family home in storage. I followed up on that, learned that no one claimed the goods, so after 120 days, they were auctioned off. Everything that Glen had—everything that had been his mother’s—gone.”

  “Believing your theory and proving it are two different things,” Matt said.

  “That’s why we need the body from Bozeman. If we can confirm that it’s Zachary Hamilton, it will certainly give us enough for a warrant to trace Glen’s phone, search his home, travel records, credit card receipts—whatever we need.”