Bringing Adam Home (5 page)

On that day, “that kind of thing” went on for almost seven hours. Prompted by Matthews, Walsh said that if ten were tops, then his father, a hardworking war hero he had idolized, was probably a twelve in his eyes. Walsh and his mother had what he considered a normal relationship. There were typical mother-son issues between them, but he loved her, and she had always been supportive of him. Give her an eight.

Matthews and Walsh did get around to a discussion of college, though it took a while. He was an English major at the University of Buffalo in New York when he met Revé, though he’d been stunned to discover she was still in high school at the time. Even though she was five years younger than he was, he’d found her so poised, and so intelligent. From the moment they met there had been no one else for him, Walsh told Matthews. They’d been married for ten years, since July 1971.

Walsh also told Matthews a story from his days as a pool manager and lifeguard at the Diplomat Hotel out on Hollywood Beach. He was keeping watch at the pool one afternoon when he saw a group of kids rushing toward him from the nearby jetty. Frantic, they told him that one of their friends was in trouble out by the jetty’s end, where a massive discharge pipe emptied runoff water into the ocean. They’d been playing near the mouth of the pipe when the tide shifted in and trapped their pal, lodging him in a crevice against the rocks. The boys had tried, but they couldn’t get him out. The force of the incoming tide was just too strong.

John ran out to the end of the jetty and scrambled down the rocks to find matters just as the boys said. Indeed there was a kid lodged between the rocks and the mouth of the pipe, the waters rising inexorably toward his chin. And as if it could be worse, he realized that he knew this child. It was John Monahan Jr., son of the Diplomat’s chief executive, trapped there in the rising waters. He’d given the boy a series of scuba lessons earlier that summer.

He managed to get young John calmed somewhat, then tried pulling him out of the crevice by the arms, but it wasn’t working. The water was close to the boy’s chin when John called to the kids watching from the top of the jetty for help, but they couldn’t understand what he wanted.

“You’ve got to hang on,” he said, turning to young Monahan. “I’m coming right back.” Then he bounded up the rocks and back to the pool storage shack, where the diving equipment was stored. He kicked the door open, found a tank, mask, and regulator, and raced back along the jetty to Monahan. “We’re going to do it just like we did it in the pool a hundred times,” he assured the boy, helping him into the gear as the waters rose over his head.

Once the boy had been reassured and was breathing in a passable way, Walsh slipped under the water and put his arms around Monahan’s chest. He pushed hard with his feet, levering against the rocks, and suddenly, as if a cork had popped from a bottle, the boy was free.

Needless to say, the incident made John Walsh far more than a trusted employee at the Diplomat. When Walsh and Revé got married, Monahan’s father insisted on paying for a honeymoon trip to Europe for the couple, and the Walshes and the Monahans had remained friends ever since.

It was a captivating story, but it was the sort of thing that Matthews encouraged for other reasons. “You get someone talking about emotional things they haven’t thought about in ten or twenty years, you establish a good baseline,” he says. “When you finally get around to asking about some crime they may or may not have been involved in just the other day, you can judge any little changes in body language, in rate of speech or eagerness to respond and so on, and know you may be onto something.”

As for the polygraph instrument itself, Matthews says, “It’s not infallible. It’s just a tool that helps validate the information that is gathered during the interview. The polygraph can indicate deception, but only a confession establishes guilt.”

At the end of his time with Walsh, and following the administration of the polygraph exam itself, Matthews felt he had his unequivocal answer, however. “It is the examiner’s opinion that Mr. Walsh was not criminally involved nor has he guilty knowledge as to who is responsible for the abduction of his son Adam.”

On the other hand, Matthews did come across one item of interest during his interview, one that would affect the investigation irrevocably. As they talked, Walsh brought up a name that had surfaced nowhere else in the course of the investigation: it was that of Jimmy Campbell, a man Walsh identified as Adam’s godfather.

Campbell was a younger man whom Walsh had gotten to know at the Diplomat Hotel in his lifeguarding days. Campbell was a pool boy, a decent, hardworking kid who’d never had much of a home life or any chance for a college education, and Walsh had always liked him and felt sorry for him—“Dudley Do-Right,” he nicknamed him. When the Walshes started to move up in the world and he and Revé bought a house, Walsh and his wife invited Campbell to live in one of the spare rooms. He was to help out around the place and get himself into the community college. As long as he stayed in school, he could stay with the Walshes, but if Campbell quit school or flunked out, he’d have to leave. That was the deal. Unfortunately, Jimmy
had
dropped out of school a few months ago, Walsh told Matthews during their interview. And Walsh had been true to his word.

“So where is this Jimmy Campbell now?” Matthews asked, casually enough, after their exam had ended.

“Dudley?” Walsh shrugged, clearly still disappointed with his former ward. “He’s out there helping with the search.”

Matthews took another look at Hoffman’s list of subjects to be examined, which Hynds had passed along. No Jimmy Campbell among them. A guy living in the Walsh house until a few months ago, intimately connected to the family, and he’s not on the list? He glanced back at Walsh.

“You got this Campbell’s phone number?”

Walsh was puzzled, but he was already reaching into his pocket for his address book. Matthews jotted down the information, and by 9:00 p.m. that evening, Jimmy Campbell was in the examining room at Hollywood PD, and Joe Matthews was hard at work on his next subject.

Hollywood, Florida—August 8, 1981

I
n the wee hours of Saturday morning Matthews finished his work with Jimmy Campbell. He was tired, and what he had learned during his interview with Campbell had wearied him even more. He completed his notes on the examination and took a walk down the hall to Detective Hoffman’s desk.

“Yeah?” Hoffman asked in his normal surly fashion when Matthews approached.

“I finished with John Walsh,” Matthews said.

“It took you long enough,” Hoffman said, with a glance at his watch. “So what’s the story?”

Matthews shook his head. “He’s clean. No involvement, no guilty knowledge.”

Hoffman said nothing, but he seemed anything but pleased. “So who’s next?”

“I already did ‘next.’ A guy named Jimmy Campbell.”

Hoffman stared back, surprised. “That name’s not on the list.”

“I know,” Matthews said, and then began to explain why he had called Campbell in and what he had learned during the interview.

When he finished, Hoffman was beside himself with excitement. “That’s it. There’s our fucking guy,” he said, halfway out of his seat.

Matthews held up his hand. “What are you talking about? You’re not even listening to me.” He pointed to his notes, where everything of real importance was spelled out:

The following are the relevant questions asked of Mr. Campbell during his polygraph examination:

Concerning Adam’s disappearance, do you intend to answer all my questions truthfully?

Answer: Yes.

Do you know who took Adam?

Answer: No.

Do you know where Adam is now?

Answer: No.

Did you conspire with anyone to cause Adam’s disappearance?

Answer: No.

Are you withholding information from the police concerning Adam’s disappearance?

Answer: No.

Do you suspect anyone of taking Adam?

Answer: No.

Do you know who took Adam?

Answer: No.

Did you take Adam?

Answer: No.

“I worked him every which way. He’s not involved,” Matthews assured Hoffman.

“Bullshit,” Hoffman responded, shaking Matthews’s report between them. “You tell me the guy was living in the house, doing what you say he was, and he’s not involved in the crime somehow?”

Matthews sighed. He knew what he’d written down, what Hoffman was so worked up about. In fact, he had realized very early on in his interview with Campbell that the young man was holding something back, and it had not taken Matthews long to draw his secret out.

However, as with John Walsh, Matthews had gone to considerable lengths to determine just who he was dealing with before he got around to any pointed questions concerning the here and now. It was quickly apparent that Jimmy Campbell’s childhood had been an unfortunate one: he had never received much affection from his own parents, and he might well have taken that deprivation out on the world in turn, just as many of the miscreants Matthews dealt with on a daily basis had. Instead, Campbell turned out sweet and gentle, one of the rare ones who understood just how important a little kindness could be. It was the less common response to a lousy upbringing, but it happened, just as some abused animals come crawling for affection instead of trying to tear your face off. Sometimes, Matthews thought, you catch a break.

Campbell loved John and Revé for their kindness and generosity, and he loved being with a family who cared about each other and who clearly cared for him. With John often away on business—his company was expanding, with a major resort hotel in the Bahamas under construction, among other things—Jimmy was happy to help out around the house, doing the heavy lifting when John was away, filling in when Adam needed pointers with baseball, doing anything he could do to repay the Walshes and show his appreciation.

No way had he intended this, Campbell explained to Matthews, but over time his affection for Revé had gradually turned to something else. Obviously, she was attractive and smart and warm . . . and quite simply, he fell in love with her. And one night while John was away on an extended trip, well, something happened that shouldn’t have.

No way he could have stopped himself, Jimmy admitted. He was way too smitten for that. But however much he was attracted to Revé and however much affection she felt toward him, they realized in the aftermath that what they had done was wrong. Understandable, maybe—everyone is human—but nonetheless it was wrong.

Campbell could hardly live with himself for betraying John, his old friend and benefactor, he told Matthews. No way he could stay on in the Walsh house, that much was certain. And soon he had moved out.

All this Matthews had included in his report, of course, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, however, Jack Hoffman was fixated upon the ugly.

“It’s as clear as day,” Hoffman told Matthews excitedly, still brandishing the report. “Campbell’s banging the wife, Walsh finds out, throws his ass out, and the guy snatches the kid to get back at him.”

“Come on, Jack,” Matthews protested, but the beleaguered detective was having none of it. Almost two weeks without a thing to go on, and finally this bombshell dropped in his lap.

Hoffman snapped his fingers then, as another thought occurred to him. “Maybe Campbell still had the hots for Mrs. Walsh, and he thought getting rid of the kid would help clear the way.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Matthews said, trying to counter Hoffman’s belligerence. “We’re not writing a fucking novel here, we’re conducting an examination. He’s got a solid alibi for the day Adam Walsh went missing. And his polygraph test is absolutely conclusive. He and Revé might have made a
big
mistake. But as to Adam’s disappearance, there is no deception. Look at what I’m telling you.
Read
.”

Hoffman shook his head. “He beat the test somehow, that’s all. I want a follow-up exam.”

Matthews stared back at Hoffman for a moment. He should have been prepared for this. Clearly, Hoffman and the department as a whole were desperate. Earlier, when Matthews had asked Hoffman why the department hadn’t announced that they no longer believed in the “blue van” theory, Hoffman had simply shrugged. “Hey, that’s all we have to give the public,” the detective told him. “We have to keep something out there so they’ll stay interested in the case.”

Matthews sighed inwardly, trying to put himself in Hoffman’s shoes. “Jack,” he said patiently, “there is no need for a follow-up examination. There is no doubt here.”

Hoffman seemed about to go off at that, but he caught himself and mustered a conciliatory gaze. “Listen,” he said. “I’ll make a deal with you. You do a follow-up with Campbell, and if he passes, I’ll drop him as a suspect. You have my word.”