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“I’m not surprised, considering what he’s peddling now,” I said, thinking it through. “When did Marvin Pankey turn into Truman Steadfast?”
“About twenty years ago. I found the court documents for the official name change, though it took me for-fucking-ever. He filed the name change back in his old hometown of Gobbler Gulch. The county courthouse there doesn’t seem to have any interest in catching up to the 21st-century.”
Again, not a surprise. Good ol’ Marvin had probably even relied on that. “And Eden Steadfast? She couldn’t have been born with that name. To begin with, she’s twenty-eight years old, and Pankey became Steadfast twenty years ago.”
“Yeah, about that.” Kythe loosed a rough sigh, leaned back in his chair and laced his hands over his curly head. “You know I’m good at what I do, right? I mean, I really,reallyknow my shit. This should be a walk in the fucking park, doing a simple background check, yeah?”
Goddamn it. “You couldn’t find her.”
“Nope. I can’t even find a birth certificate to prove that Marvin Pankey ever had a daughter. Or a child of any kind.”
“What about looking under the name Truman Steadfast?” Cap suggested. “Maybe Pankey was already playing around with using that name as an alias.”
Kythe shook his head. “I thought of that, boss, but I came up dry. Eden Steadfast, according to her fingerprints, her public school records, her university transcripts, Social Security, driver’s license, passport—literally everything I can find on her, including her friggin’ Costco card—came into existence about the same time Truman Steadfast appeared in his latest iteration. And that’s why I say this woman is a bit of a conundrum. There’s ancient video of her as a wee little thing—grinning with half her baby teeth out at various shooting competitions—and guess what? She was Eden Steadfast even back then. I don’t know what name she was born with. All I do know is that she’s been Eden Steadfast for so damn long, that seems to be who she really is.”
“So where’d she come from?” Theo Nixon, or Nix, a mountain of a man that looked like he’d been carved out of a boulder, stared at Kythe. “What’d Marvin Pankey do, snatch an innocent child off a playground somewhere to use her as a prop to show what a good and honorable family man he is?”
“I’m still digging,” Kythe shrugged. “I’ll let you all know when I find something.”
“I don’t like mysteries, especially when it comes to the people we’re supposed to keep safe. Shit like that is like trying to maneuver your way through a dark room full of bear traps.” Cap picked up a couple headshots of Truman Steadfast—or Marvin Pankey—and his daughter, frowning as he studied the images. “They look enough alike. Blonde hair, green eyes, cleft chins. Without knowing anything about them, I’d take one look at them and assume they were family.”
“We could insist on getting DNA from them.” Sitting next to Steele, Nix looked about as happy as a man who’d just sucked on a lemon. “Better yet, let’s just tell these assholes we’re not going to protect jack-shit until they cough up who and what they really are. Otherwise we’re going to wind up trying to protect we-don’t-know-who from a threat that’s coming from we-don’t-know-where. That’s not how we roll.”
Cap put the photos down. “We already offered a contract.”
Nix made a sound of impatience. “Yeah, but if Eden Steadfast signs it, it wouldn’t count legally, would it? That’s probably not even her name.”
“That’s not her fault,” I pointed out. “I get what you’re saying, Nix, and I even agree with you. But the fact is, she was just a kid when the name change happened—only seven or eight.” Which meant something huge had slammed into her life around that time to create something as galvanic as a name change. That sort of thing was always confusing, especially for the young. The latest research on the subject showed children who had entered protection programs during their formative years and were forced to change their names often suffered depression due to identity confusion, to the point where they felt dislocated from the person they had once been.
That made a light go on. “What about the Witness Protection Program? Did you check with the US Marshal Service to see if the Steadfast family is one of theirs?”
Kythe blinked. “It didn’t occur to me, mainly because Papa Steadfast is livestreaming around the clock from his place up on the North Shore, spewing forth his pseudo-motivational shite so his millions of brain-dead followers can lap it up. That’s not exactly how you’re supposed to live a WPP life.”
“Nevertheless, check in with our friends at the US Marshal Service just to make sure,” Cap said, then glanced at Steele. “Speaking of what Steadfast spews, you were going to look into the House of Enlightened Greatness, yeah? What’d you find out?”
“Basically he’s selling verbal pablum to desperate and lost people. Whenever anyone calls Truman Steadfast on his shit, he squeals that his First Amendment rights are being violated. Bottom-lining it, he’s got the law on his side, so whether people like what he does or not, he’s not doing anything wrong.” Steele opened his phone and began scrolling through. “Founded roughly eighteen years ago as a charitable nonprofit organization, Tru Steadfast started out focusing on helping at-risk teens with his New Hope charity. He opened up shelters in Louisville—a mere twenty miles from Gobbler Gulch, by the way—Indianapolis, Detroit, St. Louis, Springfield and Chicago. He then branched out into being a life coach, something his daughter Eden does to this day. His motivational-speaking platform grew with the advent of livestreaming, and suddenly his few thousand regional followers exploded to over ten million worldwide. He now has an extensive line of trademark-protected merchandise, and half a dozen self-help books which have all hit the nonfiction bestseller lists. Put all this together, and you’ve got an empire worth an estimated half-billion dollars.”
Cap let out a whistle. “Talk about a profitable hustle. Our dime-store conman found his niche.”
“Wait.” I frowned at Steele, “Eden Steadfast is a life coach?”
“That’s right.” Steele once again looked to his phone. “Graduated from Northwestern University with degrees in psychology and business, she’s now state-certified to practice as a life coach.”
That was nice. I could totally see her pitching in to help people find their way… unless she was a grifter like her old man. “I have to know,” I said, keeping my voice even, while for some reason my muscles began to tighten. “Is she or her work affiliated with her father’s House of Enlightened Greatness?”
Steel shook his head. “Nope.”
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Good.”
“Good? Why good?”
Because I didn’t want the most perfect woman I’d ever seen to be an evil fucking grifter like her shitty old man. “Just thinking about logistics. Go on.”
“Right.” Steele nodded and thumbed his phone. “Eden Steadfast went her own way about three years ago. Up to that point, she had been an almost daily fixture on her father’s show, and just as magnetic when it came to bringing in the viewers, especially the younger demographic. The reason given for Eden’s departure from HEG was the generic ‘exploring new horizons and we wish her the best’ kind of bullshit. I dug around, but there are no rumors to suggest there was anything acrimonious about the split.”
“There was,” I said with absolute certainty, and reached over to snag up Tru Steadfast’s photo. “I don’t know what did it, but something massive blew apart the Steadfast family three years ago.”
Kythe slanted an irritated glance my way. “You don’t know that.”
