The focus remained on finding Mrs. Hansen and determining her connection to the killings. Locating Nicole Hansen and easing people’s fears were paramount. Otherwise, there was the bogeyman factor of the unknown, an invisible killer who slaughtered families and buried them in the backyard.
Linda, Lyle, and Amy stood in front of the shiny, white dry-erase board, adding details.
“The NCIC confirms the fingerprint matches the same woman,” Linda said, “but she’s been off their radar quite a while. We have DL photos of utterly different women with various names and a partial print. The shape Patterson drew was found on Nicole Hansen and Susan Patterson’s pictures but was obscured by hair in Pamela Watts’s booking photo. Let’s start at the very beginning: ‘Baby Pammy’ as she was known by social workers, was born on or around June 25, 1964 and found abandoned at the door of St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, an inner-city parish in Minneapolis.” The marker squeaked as Linda began the timeline. “She was adopted at six months by Paul and Margaret Watts, who were originally her foster parents and named her Pamela Jane Watts. Her biological parents never came forward. In 1977, at the age of thirteen, Pamela lost both of her adopted parents in a house fire, which she survived. She spent the rest of her childhood in foster care.”
Lyle’s usually lively eyes were full of sadness. “This girl spent a third of her life in foster care. And that would be a helluva thing to find out—that you had been abandoned, thrown away like a piece of garbage. That’s got to be a horrible realization that you were unwanted.”
“The foster care aspect hasn’t panned out into helpful intelligence thus far. Her criminal history as Pamela Jane Watts is short, but there’s another suspicious incident. There’s the house fire in which her parents died, orphaning her twice. The chances of that seem incredibly remote. I’ve submitted a request for the coroner’s report, but that could take months. Amy, fill us in on her criminal history.”
Amy coughed and pinched her nostrils. “Sorry, the smell of that ink gets to me. At age nineteen, Pamela was convicted of check forgery and sentenced to eighteen months at the Correctional Facility for Women in Shakopee, Minnesota. I’ve connected with Shakopee, and they’re locating her prison records. Right after her release, she got married for the first time to the prison chaplain, Reverend Gordon Sayles, a much older man.” Amy paused, scanning her notes. “This would make it 1985, when Pamela was twenty-one. They were married until 1990 when she filed for divorce. I’ve contacted the correctional facility to track down Gordon Sayles. He doesn’t appear to have been a widower, but he might help us get a sense of her personality. In 1991, using the name Susan Nichols, she hooked up with Reverend Patterson, then living in Columbia, Missouri, also a widower.”
Linda tapped the board. “The sooner we can talk to Sayles, the better. I’m thinking an older man, along father figure lines. When I interviewed Patterson, he said that after they were married, she was caught embezzling church funds. Again, she had wheedled her way into the position of bookkeeper.”
Lyle propped his arms on the desk and rested his chin in his hands. “That brings us to 1993—”
“Right,” Linda interrupted. “According to Patterson they were married barely two years, and he filed for divorce in April 1994.”
“Thirty years old with two marriages behind her,” Amy said. “She works fast.”
Linda eyed the lieutenants. “Then she meets Gregory Hansen. Let me back up. Lyle, how large was his parish?”
“Reverend Martin told me the University Place congregation serves around five hundred families, which meant a bigger budget.”
Amy picked up the conversation, her pink nail polish bright on her hands. “Now going by Nicole Allen, she meets Gregory Hansen early in 1995. I confirmed with Ms. Jordan they were married thirteen months later, in February of 1996. Their son, Jacob, was born in December 1998, and their daughter, Elizabeth, in July 2000.” She paused again to read over her notes. “Then she campaigned for the job of bookkeeper by harassing the current one into quitting.”
“It put her in contact with the money—always the money.” Linda stretched out manicured hands on her desk. “The people of Lincoln, Nebraska, want to know if and why Mrs. Hansen killed her husband and children. This will be a time-consuming investigation; but if we don’t have a suspect soon, we may run into budget and manpower issues.”
Lyle cupped a large hand under his chin. “Understood. Did Darlene say anything about the Hansens’ possessions? They were leaving the country; surely, they had to have some.”
“Good point, Lyle. I’ll see if I can reach Darlene today,” Linda said, rising and glancing at her watch. “I may be able to still catch her.”
Linda parked in the lot next to the church, but her gaze instantly found the parsonage. She was drawn to the site of the garden at the back of the house. The crime tape was gone, but the mounds of dirt unearthed by forensics were still in piles near the gaping holes where the bodies had been found. These were a father and little children. Those children were mere babies. Linda stared in mournful silence. She found it impossible to erase the memory of those little bodies dressed in their innocent Disney pajamas. I promise you I will do everything in my power to find your killer.
A gust of wind blew her hair across her face, and she hurried to the church. A chill crawled up Linda’s back as she opened the church office door. She didn’t blame Rev. Martin for moving out of the house; it was simply too sickening to live there.
“Shit!” Around the corner, Darlene cursed the copy machine.
Embarrassed by catching Darlene in an uncomfortable moment, Linda announced her presence. “Hi, Darlene. I hope I’m not coming at an inconvenient time.”
“No. I shouldn’t swear in the church, but this damned copier jammed again.”
“That’s quite all right.” Linda chuckled. “I’ve heard it before. Even in church.”
“Good.” Darlene slammed the front of the copier shut.
Linda slipped her bag off her shoulder, removing her notepad. “Thanks for agreeing to see me. I have a few additional questions.”
“Sure. Anything to help get this solved,” she said, starting the copier again.
“My colleagues and I keep coming back to the fact the Hansens were going to Africa and what they were bringing with them. Were their possessions and clothing being shipped? Or were they being held in a storage locker?”
“Neither,” Darlene said, taking a seat at her desk, while keeping a watchful eye on the copy machine. “Most of their furnishings were sold at three huge moving sales. That was another thing Gregory and Nicole argued over. She was unhappy with the prospect of doing missionary work, and she wanted their things held in storage. But Gregory thought they might be gone for ages and decided to sell most everything.”
Linda wrote furiously. “Did Gregory give any indication of how long they might be gone?”
“No, but the Disciples of Christ Global Ministries office in Cleveland, likes for people to come home every five years, so they won’t get burned out.”
“Five years in a foreign country is a long stretch,” Linda said. “Did they get paid for their work?”