“So what happened?” I asked.
“Anchorage PD claimed I’d used excessive force and dropped me like a hot potato. I waited tables for the next twenty years or so. In the meantime my dad had started this shuttle service, moving people back and forth from the airport to homes or hotels. He used nice cars when he could, but when it came to taking folks out into the boonies where all the other drivers refused to go, he used this—trusty old Maude here. Before Daddy passed, I drove for him sometimes when he was overbooked. Once he was gone, I ran the shuttle service full-time. Ended up selling out the operation for a damned fortune a few years ago, but people still know that if they’re going out into the back of the beyond or if they need to get around in rough weather, I’m the one to call. I enjoy it, too. Chauffeuring people around keeps me off the streets, and I meet some interesting folks from time to time, you included.”
I couldn’t help but be struck by the comparison between her story and Jared Danielson’s. Both had started out to become cops. Once those dreams came to nothing, they had both settled on completely different paths.
“Sounds like you haven’t done too badly for yourself,” I said.
“Nope,” she agreed. “I get to come and go as I please, and I don’t have to answer to anybody, which is just the way I like it.”
That’s probably the way your one-time FTO likes it, too, I thought.
By then we were pulling up in front of the hotel. As we turned in toward the lobby, I could see that the snow had been cleared from the parking lot’s entrance. I’d seen a weather report saying that no additional precipitation was expected for the next two days. In other words, exiting the hotel garage the next morning wouldn’t be a problem.
At the entrance I got out of the vehicle, told Twinkle Winkleman thank you for all the help, and headed inside thinking I’d never again see the Travelall or its driver. Naturally it turns out I was wrong on both counts.
Inside the lobby I found that a weekend conference of some kind was getting under way. I dodged through the crowd and made it to the bank of elevators. After that heavy-duty late lunch, I wouldn’t be needing much of a dinner that evening.
Up in my room, I was happy to shed the boots I’m not accustomed to wearing. I was also glad to ditch my smoke-drenched clothing and take a shower. Had my room had windows that worked, I might have opened one and hung my clothes on a curtain rod to air out.
I used the pod machine in the room to make myself a passable cup of coffee and raided the honor bar for a bag of peanuts. Then I turned on my iPad and read through the extensive biographical material Todd Hatcher had managed to amass on Roger Adams. He was clearly a big deal in Homer. As far as I could tell, until recently he’d been the top-rated attorney in town. Before being sent to the state legislature, he’d served on the city council and done at least one term as mayor. He was also past president of the Homer Rotary Club, to say nothing of being on the local school board.
Todd had already told me that the population of Homer was right around five thousand people. In that small pond, Eileen and Roger Adams would have been very big fish, and in a place where everyone knew everyone else’s business, having your sixteen-year-old daughter turn up pregnant by a ne’er-do-well kid would have been a terrible a blow to an overly developed ego. The professionally photographed portrait on the Roger Adams, Attorney at Law Web site showed a robust middle-aged man smiling confidently into the camera lens. Dressed in a well-cut tailored suit and sporting a headful of dark brown hair, Adams appeared to be downright urbane, far more so than I would have expected to find in small-town Alaska.
It wasn’t difficult to conclude that Roger was someone for whom appearances were everything,
And how would someone like that regard the kid who had knocked up his teenage daughter? With utter contempt. He would have seen Chris as little more than a bug on his windshield, an annoyance to be brushed off at the first opportunity. With Chris gone, Roger’s expectation most likely would have been that his daughter would shape up and come home. Instead she’d chosen to ship out.
From what Wally Olmstead had told me, I knew that Roger had looked down on his less well-to-do in-laws, so it must have driven the man nuts to know that Penny and Wally were the very people from whom Danitza had sought shelter and aid in her time of need, thus allowing her to deviate from the path her father had laid out for her and enabling her to chart her own course. As for what might have happened had Danitza knuckled under and come home? Most likely Roger would have pressured her into having an abortion or giving the baby up for adoption. In either case Christopher James Danielson would not exist.
In my years as a cop, I’ve met plenty of abusive spouses. Male or female, they show the world one face, charming the hell out of everybody lucky enough to live outside the four walls of the family home. In the Web site’s photo, Roger Adams seemed harmless enough, benevolent almost, but who was he behind closed doors? Had he simply used his money and power to manipulate Chris into leaving town, or had he resorted to something worse?
At this point most of the world still regarded Chris Danielson as a missing person. Harriet Raines and I both believed he was dead. I suspected that Roger Adams was the only person alive who knew the truth, and I wanted to be the one who confronted him with questions about it.
Would I be interfering in an AST homicide investigation by doing so? Yes, but only if there were an ongoing investigation, and at this point there wasn’t one. Until Professor Harriet Raines told me otherwise, I fully intended to keep on keeping on—including conducting a one-on-one interview with Roger Adams.
That’s how things stood when Mel called once she and Sarah got home. Over the phone I gave her a play-by-play rundown of my day’s worth of activities. It was only when I told her about my plan to drive to Homer the next morning to interview Roger that things came to a full and complete stop.
“Are you kidding me?” she demanded.
I was a bit befuddled. “Kidding about what?” I asked.
“You’re planning on going to Homer in the morning, all by your little lonesome, to have a heart-to-heart chat with the guy you think murdered Chris Danielson?”
“Well, yes,” I allowed.
“So what part of Lone Rangering don’t you understand?” Mel wanted to know. “I refuse to have you come home from Alaska in a frigging body bag. If you do, it’ll ruin Christmas for everybody.”