Guilty as Sin (55 page)

"Is that your unbiased opinion, or do you know something the rest of us don't?"

"Yes, Ellen, I am not only trying to acquit a guilty monster, I am also in on the conspiracy to kill you. Christ, can't you take anything I say to you at face value?"

"The fact that you have at least two faces complicates the issue."

He shook his head. "You always took it too personally," he said almost to himself. "The job is the job, Ellen. Just because we stand on opposite sides of the courtroom doesn't mean we can't set it aside when we walk out the door."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you, Tony," she sneered. "You're never off the job. As far as you're concerned, there are twenty-four billable hours to a day. No situation, no relationship, is exempt. Don't even try to argue with me on that score, and don't delude yourself into thinking you can win me over. I know just what lengths you'll go to."

Their past hung between them, dense with complicated facts and feelings and fears that had never been proved true or false.

"Be careful, Ellen," he said at last. "While you're busy watching for me to strike, there's a real snake out there."

"And his name is probably already in your Rolodex."

"Your imagined accomplice?"

"Technically, I believe I would be correct in calling him your accomplice."

"In your delusions of vengeance." He buttoned his jacket and tugged it straight, preparing himself for the cameras. "Nice try, siccing the BCA after me, getting Wilhelm to make noise about a warrant for my phone records. Sadly, it's just another example of how this investigation is being botched—which is what I'll have to point out to the press."

"Point away, Tony," Ellen said with a knife-edge smile. "All the press needs is a suspicion of your involvement and they'll be digging like badgers. Who knows what they might turn up? I know I'll be standing right there to see what crawls out of your lair."

She jerked the door open and stepped out into the hall, eager for once to upstage him in front of the cameras.

"I don't know how much help I can be to you, Mr. Brooks," Christopher Priest said without apology. His expression was as neutral as his voice, his face the blank oval of a mannequin's.

His office was exactly what Jay had imagined: a claustrophobic little cube crowded with books and file cabinets. A computer monitor on the desk displayed an endless repetition of starbursts. The room was filled with the stuff of academia—textbooks and reference books and student papers—but with none of the personal bric-a-brac that would have given a flavor of the man whose name was on the small placard outside the door. The desk was too neat, the office as devoid of personality as the professor himself.

"Some of my students and I were involved with the volunteer effort to find Josh," he said, seating himself with prim precision. "We set up computer stations at the volunteer center and went on-line to disperse and receive information through the various networks. That's the extent of my connection."

Jay voiced his skepticism. "That's a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think, Professor? You volunteered to help with the investigation, then one of the cops involved was attacked in your own front yard, then your best friend was arrested. . . . You must be feeling like this whole thing is sucking you in like a tar pit."

"It's been a little overwhelming, yes," he conceded.

"And Dr. Garrison is a friend of yours, right?"

"I know Hannah," he admitted. "I admire her. She's an extraordinary woman."

Jay took in the hint of color that touched the professor's pale cheeks when he spoke of Hannah. "Man, if I had all that buzzing around me, I'd be feeling downright dizzy. Now the cops are looking for that student— Todd Childs—and looking at the Sci-Fi Cowboys. You must feel almost as if you're under attack."

Priest stared at him like an owl from behind his oversize glasses. "I had nothing to do with any crime. Neither did the Cowboys."

"Circumstances suggest otherwise where the boys are concerned.".

"Circumstances aren't always what they seem. The Sci-Fi Cowboys are a very select group of young men, Mr. Brooks. Handpicked for their talents and potential."

"Aren't most of their talents against the law?"

"Academic talents," Priest specified, unamused. "They are very bright young men who deserve a chance to prove they can be productive members of society."

"And they're no doubt grateful for the opportunity," Jay said. "Giving a kid a gift like that inspires loyalty. Kids with the kind of backgrounds the Cowboys have might express that loyalty in, shall we say, inappropriate ways."

"I stand behind the Cowboys," Priest said flatly. "I've said all I'm going to say about the subject to the police and to the press—and to you, Mr. Brooks. If you came here hoping for an admission of guilt, there's no point in continuing this conversation."

"No, no, not at all—"

"I know what you told the police about the encounter with Tyrell and the other two boys Saturday night," he said in a strangely quiet voice, as if it were a lurid secret.

"I simply told them what happened, Professor. I'm not taking sides."

"Aren't you?" His thin lips pressed together. "You're not . . . aligning yourself with Ms. North?"

"What would make you think I was?"

"The two of you had words at the benefit. You followed her out."

And he had been watching from his post beside Garrett Wright's wife. The idea stirred a strange sense of violation.

"Ms. North has a philosophical objection to my work," Jay said with a well-rehearsed sardonic smile. "She has managed to equate the writing and publishing of true crime with the Romans selling tickets to watch Christians being devoured by lions."

Priest considered the response. "An interesting correlation. The readers of your work are, of course, insulated from the immediate horror of the violence, but perhaps the two do share a common attraction."

"Not for me."

"Hmm, well, it's all in our perception, isn't it?" he said. "And perception is dependent upon what? You can present the same set of facts and circumstances to five different people, and they may give you five different interpretations—which is why many seasoned courtroom attorneys will tell you there is nothing so unreliable as an eyewitness. The opinions we form are based on individual perceptions, something science has yet to fully understand.

"Fascinating, isn't it?" He gave his head a slight shake, as if humans were simply too much trouble, and cast an affectionate glance at his computer screen. "The human mind can be infinitely logical and pragmatic, or stubbornly irrational. A hopelessly vacant mind can hold a kernel of brilliance. A brilliant mind can be fatally flawed."

"Which would you say applies to our kidnapper?"

A slight smile touched the corners of his mouth. "I wouldn't say. Human behavior is Dr. Wright's specialty, not mine."

"But you were working on a project together, right?"

"We are working on a joint project, dealing with, as it happens, learning and perception."

"You've known each other a long time, you and Dr. Wright?"

"We both taught at Penn State."

"Yeah, but y'all knew each other before that, didn't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Priest said guardedly.

Jay feigned innocence. "Well, gee, you know, I was just doing a little digging. Background work and all. Talking to an old colleague of yours from Penn State who mentioned you all grew up in the same town."

"I grew up in Chicago."

"Huh, well, you know, I'd read that," he said, scratching his head. "Strange thing for a friend to be wrong about, wouldn't you say?"

"Nevertheless," Priest said impatiently, "I might have visited Indiana as a boy, but I didn't grow up there."

"So you didn't know Dr. Wright?"

"We became friends at Penn State."

"Good friends. The kind of friends who share things, stick up for each other, help each other out."

"Is there a point to this line of questioning, Mr. Brooks?"

Jay gave a shrug and a smile. "I'm just trolling, Professor. Looking for background. I never know what I might find or where it might lead me. For instance, you might just up and say you'd do anything for Garrett Wright. Who knows where an answer like that might lead?"

"To a dead end." Priest rose. "I'm sorry to cut this short, but I have a class to pyepare for, Mr. Brooks."

Jay checked his watch. According to the helpful young lady in the main office, Christopher Priest didn't have another class until evening.

"I guess I'll just have to check that background the hard way," he said, pushing himself to his feet. "Thank you for your time, Professor."

He turned back at the door, catching Priest staring at him with that blank face. "That student who was in the car accident the night Josh was abducted—was he working on that joint project with you and Dr. Wright?"

"Yes, he was."

"Hmm. I wonder what his perception of that coincidence would be."

"I'm afraid we'll never know," Priest said. "I received word this morning he passed away."

Jay sensed the news hit him harder than it had the professor. Death— delivered off the cuff, as an afterthought, with no more remorse than was socially required.

He stepped into the hall, his head buzzing. The car accident had set everything in motion; now the student who had been running an errand for Priest was dead. Todd Childs was a student of Wright's and Priest's. Olie Swain, the prime suspect until his jailhouse suicide, had audited classes of both men. Megan O'Malley had suspected Priest. She had been attacked in the yard of Priest's secluded country home.

Christopher Priest seemed as much a part of the story as Garrett Wright, and yet no one had anything on him. He was as clean as Teflon, visible in his efforts, first, to help in the effort to find Josh, and now, in his support of his colleague.

"We are working on a joint project. . . ."

He had passed a polygraph.

". . . it's all in our perception, isn't it?"

Priest and Wright went back a long way. It wouldn't have been a stretch to imagine them as partners in more than a school project. A pair of sharp, calculating minds. Wright, handsome and charming; Priest, socially awkward with a crush on Hannah Garrison. Motive had been an elusive creature in this crime from the first. There had been no ransom demand. No one seemed to have it in for Hannah or Paul. The taunting, the planted evidence, suggested it was all about superiority, a game of wits. But taking Josh Kirkwood had also given Christopher Priest a chance to be close to Hannah, a chance to offer his help, to call attention to himself.

And damned if it wouldn't sell books, he thought. The twisted tale of the psychopathic professors. Brilliant minds fatally flawed.

But had Priest had opportunity to take Dustin Holloman, to plant those clues? It seemed unlikely he would take that kind of chance, knowing the police had their eyes on him. And then there was Todd Childs to consider. . . .

He turned down another hall. He could take a look at Wright's office as long as he was here, see if it offered any insights. The cops would already have taken the place apart hunting for evidence, but it was still important for him to have a sense of the places the people he wrote about inhabited. To be able to describe Garrett Wright's perfectly normal office would add to the unsettling idea that anyone could be warped beneath their ordinary facades. That kind of chill brought readers back again and again. Like Romans to the Colosseum.

The door to Wright's office stood slightly ajar. Jay brought himself up short at the sight. His escapade at the Pack Rat was still fresh in his mind—in the form of a dull headache that had nagged him since the accident. He moved cautiously along the wall, determined not to be taken by surprise this time.

Sidling up to the door, he gently eased it open another fraction of an inch, expecting to see Todd Childs.

The room was awash in paper. Books had been torn from their shelves and left on the floor. The place looked as if it had been tossed by goons, and in the middle of the mess stood Karen Wright. She looked utterly lost, fragile, overwhelmed by the state of the place. And he would take advantage of that, bastard that he was.