Night Sins (39 page)

“What about patients?” Megan asked. “Anyone you can think of who didn't handle the outcome of a case well? Someone who would have blamed her.”

Kathleen ran a hand back through her thick hedge of red hair as she thought. “This isn't like the city, you know. People in small towns don't sue for malpractice. They trust their doctors and have enough common sense to know everything doesn't always work out for the best and it isn't always somebody's fault.”

Megan persisted. “What about relatives of people who didn't make it? A parent who lost a child, maybe.”

“Let's see. . . . The Muellers lost a baby to SIDS last fall. Brought him in DOA. Hannah worked on him forever, but there was nothing she could do.”

“Were they angry?”

“Not with Hannah. She went above and beyond the call.” She thought some more, scanning a mental list and discarding names. “I can't think of anyone who would do this kind of thing. Hannah is an excellent doctor. She can calm people down faster than a handful of Valium. And she knows the limitations of our hospital. She doesn't hesitate to send a patient on to a better-equipped facility if she thinks it's warranted.” She pulled her feet off the coffee table and tucked them beneath her on the couch. Tugging the needle cap from between her teeth, she used it like a pointer. “I remember the time she personally drove Doris Fletcher to the Mayo Clinic for tests because her husband refused to take her.”

“Fletcher?” Megan sat up straight. “Any relation to Albert Fletcher?”

Kathleen rolled her eyes. “Deer Lake's own Deacon of Doom. The world's going to hell on a sled. Women are the root of all evil. Sackcloth and ashes as a fashion statement.
That
Albert Fletcher? Yes. Poor Doris had the misfortune to marry him before he became a zealot.”

“And he wouldn't take her to a hospital for tests?” Megan asked, incredulous.

The nurse rolled her eyes. “He thought they should have waited for the Lord to heal her. Meanwhile the Lord is throwing His hands up in heaven, saying ‘I gave you the Mayo Clinic, for crying out loud! What more do you want!' Poor Doris.”

“How did Fletcher react to Dr. Garrison taking his wife for those tests against his will?”

“He was pissed. Albert isn't big on women asserting themselves. He thinks we should all still be paying because Eve screwed up.”

“What did his wife die of?” Megan asked.

“Her whole gastrointestinal system went haywire, then her kidneys failed,” she explained. “It was sad. No one ever came up with a concrete diagnosis. I said Albert was feeding her arsenic, but nobody listens to nurses.”

When Megan didn't laugh, Kathleen gave her a look. “I was joking. About the arsenic. That was a joke.”

“Could he have killed her?” Megan asked, straight-faced.

The nurse's eyes widened. Her pale brows shot up toward her hairline. “The deacon break a commandment? The sky would turn black and the earth would shake.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

Kathleen sobered. She turned the needle cap over and over in her small hands. “No,” she said softly. “Mayo pressed for it. They couldn't stand the idea of a disease they had no research funding for. But Albert refused on religious grounds.”

Megan stared at her notes. Messages about sin. A personal vendetta. If Fletcher had somehow managed to poison his wife and get away with it, he might still be inclined to punish Hannah for interfering. If he were crazy enough, twisted enough. He had been teaching religion classes the night Josh disappeared, but if they were looking at tag-team lunatics, then all alibis were irrelevant.

“You don't really think he took Josh, do you?” Kathleen asked in a quiet voice. “I'd rather believe Olie did it and now he's roasting in hell.”

Megan heaved herself up out of the armchair. “I imagine he's roasting, but I think he's probably saving a spot for somebody. It's my job to find out who.”

The question that nagged her as she drove across town was whether or not it would still be her job by the end of the week.

She cursed office politics to hell and gone. She had come here to do a job, plain and simple. But there was nothing plain or simple about the situation into which they had all been thrust—herself, Mitch, Hannah, Paul, everyone in Deer Lake, all the people from outside the community who had come to help. One act of evil had changed all their lives. The taking of Josh had set into motion a chain of actions and reactions. Their lives had been wrested from their control and now hinged on a madman's next move.

She wondered if he knew that, whoever he was. As she stared out the windshield into the bleak shadows of the cold night, she wondered if he was thinking even now about his next move and how it would affect the unwilling players of his sick game.

Power. That was what this was all about. The power to play God. The power to break people until they begged for mercy. The rush of showing how much smarter he was than everyone else.

“It's easy to win the game when you're the only one who knows the rules,” Megan muttered. “Give us a clue, jerk. Just one lousy clue. Then we'll see what's what.”

Soon
. It had to happen soon. She could feel her time running out. DePalma's ultimatum hung over her head like an anvil—
make something good happen.

She turned onto Simley Street a block west of St. E's, killed the headlights, and let the Lumina roll for half a block before pulling in along the curb. There was no life on Simley Street at ten o'clock. Residents of the neat, boxy houses were all glued to the news—with the notable exception of Albert Fletcher. There was no light in the living room window of 606 Simley. There was no light in any window of the story-and-a-half house.

Where would a sixty-year-old Catholic deacon be at ten-fifteen on a Wednesday night? Out tripping the light fantastic with some hot widow? The image made Megan grimace.

She crossed the street and made her way down the sidewalk with a purposeful stride, as if she had every reason to be there. The trick of fitting in where you don't belong—pretend you do. She headed up the driveway of 606 and slipped around the side of the garage, taking herself out of sight of any neighbors who happened to glance out their front windows.

The snow screeched like Styrofoam beneath her boots. Even the fabric shell of her parka was stiff from the cold. Every move she made sounded like someone crumpling newspaper. She cursed herself for staying in this godforsaken deep-freeze as she fumbled in her coat pocket for a small flashlight. Mittens did not lend themselves to skills involving dexterity—one reason the number of burglaries always fell off dramatically during cold spells.

The side door of the garage was locked. Shielding the light with one hand, Megan held it up to the window and peered in, holding her breath so as not to fog the glass in the window. The only car in the garage was a sedan of indeterminate make encased in canvas sheeting, like an old couch hiding beneath a slipcover. The near stall was empty. The place was immaculate. Not so much as a grease spot on the floor.

She turned and followed the walk toward the back porch steps. She wanted to peek in the windows, but all shades were drawn. Even the basement windows were covered. The foundation of the house had been wrapped with thick, cloudy plastic, then banked with snow for insulation.

Swearing, Megan knelt down directly beneath a first-floor window and dug the snow away with her hand. She pulled off one mitten, dipped in her coat pocket for a penknife, and used it to pry loose a few of the staples from the lathe that held the plastic in place. Tugging the plastic down, she shined the flashlight into the basement. What she could see of it was swept as clean as a dance floor. No stacks of old paint cans. No piles of newspapers. No boxes of discarded clothing. No dungeon. No chamber of horrors in evidence. No little boy.

Half disappointed, half relieved, Megan sat back on her haunches and shut off the flashlight. At the same instant, headlights beamed up the driveway.

“Shit!”

She scrambled to stuff the flashlight and penknife back into her pocket, managing to stick herself in the palm with the blade in the process. Biting down on the desire to yelp, she used her good hand to scoop the snow back up against the window. The garage door began its automatic ascent. She packed the snow as best she could, slapping at it with both hands. Her eyes kept darting to the garage. Fletcher drove in without seeing her, but if he came out the side and headed for his back door, her ass was fried.

The car engine rumbled, then quit. Crouching, Megan ran up the back steps, jumped down off the stoop, and ducked around the far side of the house, running headlong into a man.

Her scream was smothered by a big gloved hand. An arm banded around her with punishing strength, pulling her hard against a man's body. Twisting around, he pinned her between himself and the side of the house. Megan lashed out with the toe of her boot, connecting with his shin. He grunted in pain, but only leaned into her harder.

“Be still!” he ordered in a harsh whisper.

A familiar whisper.

Megan stared up inside the tunnel of his hood. Even in the shadows it was impossible not to recognize Mitch's face. He slid his hand away from her mouth.

Megan didn't say a word, but struggled instead to breathe in soundless pants. The cold air felt like fists pounding her lungs, and she brought a hand up to cup around her mouth as a filter. Fletcher's car door slammed. His footsteps crunched up the packed snow toward the back door. Chances were good that he would walk up his steps and into his house as he had done a million times without noticing anything out of the ordinary, like a footprint in the snow where there should not have been one. People were creatures of habit and routine, for the most part unobservant—unless they felt they had to be on guard.

He hesitated. She could picture him standing in the spot where she had dug the snow away from the basement window.
Come on, Albert. Move. Move. Please.
He moved on slowly. Up the steps slowly. Megan held her breath. Was he wondering? Was he looking off the south side of the stoop? Could he make out footprints in the shadows?

The rattle of keys. The turn of a lock. The heavy door thumped shut and the storm door sighed as it settled back against the frame.

Megan let out an echoing sigh. The adrenaline rush passed, leaving her trembling. She looked up at Mitch and whispered, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” he demanded.

“Do you think we could have this argument inside a building?” she muttered. “I'm freezing my butt off.”

10:55
P.M.
         -30°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -55°

T
here wasn't much action at the Blue Goose Saloon, a hole-in-the-wall bar with blessedly poor lighting to keep the patrons from noticing the moth-eaten condition of the dead animals mounted on the walls. The bartender, a portly woman with mouse-brown curls that fit her head like a stocking cap, stood behind the bar, smoking a cigarette, and drying beer mugs with a dingy towel. She stared up at a
Cheers
rerun on the portable television, small dark eyes tucked into the fleshy folds of her face like raisins in bread dough. Her only customer at the bar was an old man with bad teeth who drank schnapps and carried on an animated conversation with himself about the sorry state of politics in Minnesota now that Hubert Humphrey was gone.

Mitch had chosen the last booth in the line before the poolroom and sat so he could see the entrance and the front window that looked out on the street. Old habits. He ordered coffee and a shot of Jack Daniel's on the side. The Jack went down in a single gulp. He sipped at the coffee while Megan told him about her conversation with Kathleen Casey, the mysterious demise of Doris Fletcher, and her husband's enmity toward Hannah Garrison for interfering.

Megan dumped her whiskey into the coffee and added fake cream. The drink was hot and potent and warmed her from the inside out, taking the edge off her shivering. She checked her hand, squinting in the dim light. The penknife had lanced her palm with a short cut now decorated with drying blood and mitten fuzz. It would need a Band-Aid but nothing more.

“Why wait three years to get revenge?” Mitch asked.

“I don't know. Maybe it took that long for the plan to ferment—or for his mind to snap.”

“He was teaching class at St. E's the night Josh disappeared.”

“Enter the ever-popular accomplice.”

On the television above the bar Cliff Claven did a manic dance as someone zapped him with jolts of electricity. The bartender's cigarette bobbed on her lip as she chuckled with malicious glee. Another shiver went through Megan and she took a long sip of her drink.

“You were at Fletcher's, too, Chief,” she pointed out. “Why are you playing devil's advocate with me?”

“Because I like it.”

“Your natural perverse tendencies aside, I have to assume you had a reason for being there.”

He gave a lazy shrug. “Just sniffing around. Fletcher's obsessed with the church. Three of the notes mention sin. Josh didn't like religion class.”

“Who could blame him with Fletcher for an instructor?” Megan said, shuddering. “Albert Fletcher would have given Vincent Price the creeps.”

“I went back over the statement he gave Noogie the night Josh disappeared,” Mitch said. He chose a peanut from the basket that sat on the table, cracked it with one hand, and tossed the nuts into his mouth. “There's nothing in it to draw suspicion.”

On the surface there was nothing about Albert Fletcher that would have drawn notice. He was a retired professional, a respected member of the community. Not what most people would consider the profile of a child predator, but there were just as many pieces that fit. Fletcher's duties with the church put him in proximity with children. His authority at St. E's translated into trust in the eyes of children and adults alike. He would hardly have been the first to abuse that trust.

“Did he know Olie?”

“I can't imagine they ran in the same circles, but we'll check it out. I'll talk to him myself in the morning.” He wished he could have run Fletcher in to the station that night, but that wasn't how things were done. He couldn't go after the man with nothing more than a hunch and some three-year-old rumors. No one had mentioned him in connection with Josh other than in his position with the church. No one had reported anything suspicious going on at Fletcher's house. Mitch had assigned a man to keep an eye on the residence through the night, just the same.