for him in the first place. He wanted some measure of forgiveness before he died, even if he had to spend a good portion of his fortune to buy it.
So what was so different between Peterson and any other troubled young man of today? Sin was sin, and God never said he only forgave the small stuff. And if somebody—anybody—asked for it, they got it.
Only that familiar sense of peace that usually settled on new Christians never seemed to come over Nelson Peterson. Instead, he became obsessed with the thought that there was some kind of curse riding on those diamonds that would take more than a five-minute prayer to get free from. That’s when he declared he would make a pilgrimage back to the place he had hidden them and turn most of the proceeds over to charity.
He would even cooperate with the Wyngate investigation, if Dee could give him a guarantee that she could get him out of the place before the story was published.
Some place safe.
Dee agreed.
Not because of the diamonds (she wasn’t sure they even existed) but because he had been an innocent victim of the corruption going on there even more than most of the patients because he had been committed there illegally. By some drug-running nephew, he told her, who was trying to blackmail him into disclosing the whereabouts of the jewels.
Everyone in authority stood by the falsified records that had landed Peterson in the asylum. His wild accusations were simply too bizarre to get past all the proper channels it took to get anyone un-committed, and for five years Peterson tried to bribe anyone who might help him get out of the place. But his extravagant promises to share the wealth only seemed to prove his insanity even more.
Until one lone doctor finally responded.
That was four months before Dee came along to interview him for a human interest piece about recovering treasures that had been hidden during World War II. She and Peterson hit it off right away. It seemed he had been quite the adventurer in his day and had more stories about globe-trotting in the post-war era than anyone she had ever met. So she decided to stretch the piece into a series. Except that somewhere between interviews, something terrible happened.
Peterson lost a perfectly good eye.
It was punishment, he said. And that’s how she got her big story. The one that began an investigation that would shortly topple this sordid little black-market ring for donor organs that had been going on there for years.
She should have felt good about it all, considering it was the biggest, most important and far-reaching story she had ever worked on. One that could affect some important changes in the entire system of state-run psychiatric hospitals. Except she didn’t.
Something was off somewhere. Something just didn’t add up. Now, she only had one week to sort everything out, before the first installment would be published. It was only the last one that Devlin hadn’t read, yet. The one she had turned in this afternoon. When he finally did read it, he was going to be in for one big surprise.
So she hadn’t exactly lied to Scott Evans...
She just hadn’t told him all the truth.
And she certainly wasn’t going to admit her plans for getting Peterson out of the place to anyone now. The poor man had been offered protective custody, but he wouldn’t take it, because their idea of protection was to place him in a similar institution under an assumed name. It seemed the District Attorney believed what was written on the commitment papers, too.
Nelson Peterson was eighty-two years old and had been of sound mind and body when he first went into Wyngate. And four weeks ago, he lost a perfectly good eye to their donor program.
Which was why Dee Parker had taken it upon herself to get him out of there and deliver him to a “safe house” until his unique case could be brought before the proper authorities.
Just because a person committed a theft (many years ago), didn’t mean they no longer deserved