Night Sins (11 page)

Crazy thoughts. Irrational thoughts, the department psychiatrist had told him. Logically, he knew it wasn't his fault. Logically, he knew he could not have prevented what happened. But logic had little to do with feeling.

Leaning back against the sink, he squeezed his eyes shut and saw his son. Kyle was six. Bright. Quiet. Wanted a two-wheeler for Christmas. Took his dad to school during job week and beamed while Mitch told the first grade about being a policeman.

“Policemen help people and protect them from the bad guys.”

He could hear the words, could look out on the small sea of little faces, his gaze homing in on Kyle's expression of shy pride. So small, so full of innocence and trust and all those things the world had ground out of his father.

“Policemen help people and protect them from the bad guys.”

A hoarse, tortured sound wrenched out of Mitch's throat. The feelings ripped loose, the bars of their cage weakened by fatigue and memory and fear. He clamped a hand over his mouth and tried to swallow them back. His whole body shook with the effort. He couldn't let them loose; he would drown in them. He had to be strong. He had to focus. He had a job to do. His daughter needed him. The excuses came one after another. Deny the feelings. Ignore them. Put them off. His town needed him. Josh Kirkwood needed him.

He forced his eyes to open. He stared out the kitchen window at the velvet gray of the day before dawn, and still in his memory he could see Kyle. His vision doubled, the image splitting, the face of the second body going out of focus and coming back as Josh.

God, please no. Don't do that to him. Don't do that to his parents.

Don't do that to
me.

Shame washed through him like cold water.

Across the alley a light came on in the Strauss kitchen. Six
A.M.
Jurgen was up. He had been retired from the railroad for three years, but kept his schedule as regular as if he were still going down to the Great Northern switching yard every day. Up at six, start the coffee. Drive down to the Big Steer truck stop on the interstate to pick up the
StarTribune
because paperboys were unreliable. Home for coffee and a bowl of hot cereal while he read the paper. His quiet time before Joy emerged from their bed to begin the recitation of her daily litany—a deceptively soft, deceptively mild running commentary on all that was wrong with the world, the town, the neighbors, her home, her health, her son-in-law.

As badly as Mitch wanted to avoid his in-laws, the sudden need to see Jessie was stronger. To look at her and hold her and see that she was real and alive and warm and sweet and safe. He stepped back into his boots and trudged outside without bothering to lace them.

Jurgen came to the back door of the neat Cape Cod house in his daily uniform of jeans and a flannel shirt, neatly tucked in. He was a stocky man of medium height with piercing Paul-Newman-blue eyes and military-cropped gray hair.

“Mitch! I was just making the coffee. Come on in,” he said, his expression a mix of surprise and annoyance at having his regimen interrupted. “Any word on the Kirkwood boy? Cripes, that's a terrible business.”

“No,” Mitch replied softly. “Nothing yet.”

Jurgen swung the basket out on the coffeemaker and dumped in a scoop of Folger's. Too much, as usual. Joy would comment on it being too strong, as always, then drink it anyway so she could later complain about the heartburn it gave her.

“Have a seat. You look like hell. What brings you over at this time of day?”

Mitch ignored the chairs arranged neatly around the kitchen table. “I came to see Jessie.”

“Jess? It's six o'clock in the morning!” The older man glowered at him.

“I know. I've only got a little time,” Mitch mumbled. Going into the dining room and up the stairs, he left Jurgen to think what he wanted.

Jessie had the room her mother had grown up in. The same bed, same dresser, same ivory wallpaper strewn with mauve tea roses. Jessie, being Jessie, had, of course, added her own touches—stickers of the Little Mermaid and Princess Jasmine from
Aladdin
. Joy had scolded her, but the stickers were the variety that did not peel off without a fight, and so they had remained. Because she spent so much time there, the dresser drawers were filled with her clothes. On the toy shelves, the place of honor was given over to figurines of Disney characters—Mickey and Minnie, Donald Duck and nephews, a broken alarm clock with Jiminy Cricket perched on top with his cricket hands clamped over his ears.

The clock had been Kyle's. Seeing it never failed to bring Mitch a stab of pain.

He crept into the room, closed the door softly behind him, and leaned back against it. His daughter slept in the middle of the old double bed, her arms curled around her teddy bear. She was the picture of childhood lying there asleep, dreaming sweet dreams. Her long brown hair was plaited in a thick loose braid that disappeared beneath the covers. The frilly collar of her flannel nightgown framed her face and her dark lashes curled against her cheek. Her plump little mouth was pursed in a perfect O as she breathed deeply and regularly.

He couldn't look at her like this—when she seemed most precious, most vulnerable—without having emotion kick him in the belly with all the strength of a mule. She was everything to him. She was the reason he had never given in to the desperate wish to end his pain after Allison and Kyle had been taken from him. His love for her was so deep, so fierce, it sometimes scared him. Scared him to think what he would do if he ever lost her, too.

Carefully he lifted the layer of blankets and quilt and eased himself down, resting his back against the carved oak headboard. Jessie's eyes blinked open and she looked up at him, smiling a sleepy smile.

“Hi, Daddy,” she murmured. She wriggled herself and her bear onto his lap and snuggled against him.

Mitch tugged the covers up beneath her chin and kissed the top of her head. “Hi, cuddlebug.”

“Whatcha doing here?”

“Loving you up. Is that okay?”

She nodded, burrowing her face into the thick cotton sweater that spanned his chest. Mitch just wrapped his arms around her and held her, listening to her breathe, breathing deep the scents of warm child and Mr. Bubble.

“Did you find the lost boy, Daddy?” she asked in a drowsy voice.

“No, honey,” he whispered around the ache in his throat. “We didn't.”

“That's okay, Daddy,” she assured him, hugging him tight. “Peter Pan will bring him home.”

J
OURNAL ENTRY
D
AY
2

Act I: Chaos and panic. Predictable and pathetic. We watched, amused by their pointless sense of urgency. Going nowhere at a breakneck pace. Grasping at the dark. Finding nothing but their own fear.

But is there any comfort to be found?
Man . . . loves what vanishes;
What more is there to say?

CHAPTER 9

D
AY
2
7:30
A.M.
         12°

T
he old fire hall in downtown Deer Lake was overflowing with law enforcement officers, volunteers, media people, and locals who had come out of fear and morbid curiosity. Mitch arrived, freshly showered and shaved and running on a giant mug of coffee grabbed at Tom Thumb and drunk en route.

He had expected the place to be in a state of chaos, had wondered where he was going to find the patience to deal with it, but there seemed to be a sense of order to the madness. The command post had been set up in one of the two community rooms used mainly for the senior citizens card club and 4-H meetings since the fire department had been moved into snazzier quarters on Ramsey Drive. The hotline telephones had been set up—six of them spaced apart on a long bank of tables. Two of the phones were already manned and busy. Copy and fax machines sat along the opposite wall. At another long table volunteers were stacking up the fliers that had been run off during the night with Josh's picture and vital statistics.

Mitch moved on to the room down the hall where those who would be resuming or joining the search milled around, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. This room would serve as meeting place and makeshift media center. The walls were painted a moldy shade of green—a clearance color from Hardware Hank in 1986. The sickly hue went well with the musty smell of old linoleum and dust. Two dozen dismembered construction-paper hands decorated the wall behind the podium at the front of the room, the 4-H pledge scrawled on them in crayon. Each macabre masterpiece was signed by the artist and marked with his or her age.

Already the room was crowded with reporters and photographers and cameramen from newspapers, radio and television stations all around the state. A photographer stood three feet back from the wall, killing time taking artsy shots of the hands. A television reporter stood along another wall, beside the wall plaque of Boy Scout knots, staring gravely into the lens of a video camera as he oozed platitudes about Norman Rockwell towns and all-American families.

The ranks of those who had come to document the tragedy would only grow as the search continued. At least for the next week—if it lasted that long. While the search was at its most intense, they would be constantly underfoot, looking for a scoop, an exclusive, an angle no one else had.

Damn bunch of parasites, Mitch thought as he shouldered his way through the throng of reporters, scowling and snarling in answer to their shouted questions.

At the front of the room Megan was overseeing the setup for the press conference, directing the placement of the podium, a screen and overhead projector. Her small mouth set in a tight line, she wheeled on a reporter who ventured too near.

“For the sixty-ninth time, Mr. Forster, the press conference will not begin until nine,” she said sharply. “Our first concern is to find Josh Kirkwood. If he is still in the vicinity, that means we have to get these people organized and resume the search.”

A reporter for the
StarTribune
since the days of Linotype, Henry Forster had the face of a bulldog, a balding head adorned with liver spots, and long, weedy strands of gray hair he wore in a classic horizontal comb-over. His trademark dirty horn-rimmed bifocals sat crooked beneath a pair of bushy eyebrows that should have had their own zip code. He was a big old warhorse with hips that had splayed out in his later years to provide a good base for his medicine-ball belly. Megan would have guessed he had slept in his brown trousers and cheap white dress shirt, but she knew from past acquaintance Henry always looked that unkempt.

The eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “Does that mean you think the boy has been taken out of this area?”

Two of his cohorts perked up and inched forward away from the wall, like rats venturing forth to sniff at some promising crumb.

Megan stopped them in their tracks with a look that had incinerated humans. She turned the look on Henry, who stood close enough that the fumes of his Old Spice burned her nasal linings. He didn't retreat. He kept staring at her as if he fully expected an answer.

No doubt he did, Megan thought. Forster had seniority and a track record that had littered his office with awards, which he allegedly used as paperweights and ashtrays. Politicians cowered at the mention of his name. The BCA brass cursed the day he was born—one of the original seven. Henry Forster had been the man who'd blown the lid off the sexual harassment charges in the bureau the previous fall. He was the last man Megan wanted sniffing after her heels. The pressure of this case would be enough without Henry Forster's grimy bifocals magnifying her every move.

Show no fear, O'Malley
.
He can smell fear—even through that aftershave.

“That means Officer Noga is going to escort you out of this room if you don't get out of the way,” she told him without flinching.

She turned her back on Forster as he snorted his affront. One of the other reporters who had been standing in his considerable shadow hoping for a scrap muttered, “Little bitch.” Megan wondered if they would dare make slurs behind Noga's broad back. She caught hold of the patrolman's sleeve and he looked down at her, his dark eyes bloodshot and bleary.

“Officer Noga, would you please herd these press weasels out of the way before I rip out their windpipes and have them for breakfast?”

He scowled at the reporters. “You got it, Miss—Agent.”

“No offense,” Mitch muttered, easing into the spot Noga vacated, “but I don't think you have much of a shot at Miss Congeniality today.”

“Miss Congeniality is a wimp,” Megan returned. “Besides, neither one of us is beauty pageant material. You look like I feel.”

Mitch made a face. “Gender confusion. Don't let the boys from the
Pioneer Press
hear that.”

“I think they already have their theories.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

The question seemed perfunctory. It looked to Mitch like she had gone through the same minimal morning routine as he had. She had changed into a pair of snug black ski pants and a heavy Irish fisherman's sweater over a turtleneck. Her dark hair was clean and brushed back into a utilitarian ponytail. Her makeup was scant and did nothing to hide the violet smudges beneath her eyes.

She shot him a look. “Who needs sleep when you can take an ice cold shower? I have an apartment with no utilities. I shaved my legs by lantern light, fed my cats, and came back here. How about you?”

“I have a dog and hot water,” he said, moving around the end of the table. “And I'll keep my legs hairy, thanks. Has anything come in from your people?”

“Besides ten pages of known pedophiles? No.”

Mitch shook his head, his stomach turning at the idea that there were so many scumballs preying on children within a hundred miles of his town—and his daughter. Christ, the world was turning into a cesspool. Even out in rural Minnesota he could feel the muck seeping up around his shoes. It was as if overnight someone had opened the floodgates on the sewer.

He looked out over the crowd as he stepped behind the podium—men from his own office and the sheriff's department, volunteer firemen, concerned citizens, Harris College students who had stayed in town for their winter break. What he saw in their faces was determination and fear. One of their own had been taken and they were there to get him back. Mitch wanted to believe they would do it, but in his experience hope didn't get the job done.

Still, he drew himself up and put on the game face. He addressed the troops and issued orders and sounded like a leader. He narrowed his eyes against the glare of the television sun-guns and thought he probably looked determined and purposeful instead of blind.

The cameras rolled film, not willing to wait for the official press conference, not wanting to miss out on any of the drama. Flash strobes went off at irregular intervals as the newspaper photographers shot stills of the cops and the crowd. The reporters scribbled. In one of the front row chairs Paige Price sat with her long legs crossed and a notebook on her lap. She gazed up at Mitch with an earnest expression while her cameraman knelt at her feet and got a reaction shot of her. Business as usual.

A map of Park County went up on the projection screen, the area cut into sections by red lines Mitch and Russ Steiger had drawn at five
A.M.
Teams of searchers were numbered and assigned areas. Instructions were given as to technique, what to look for, what to call to the team leader's attention. Mitch gave the mike over to Steiger, who added orders and details for the SO deputies, the mounted posse volunteers and snowmobile club members who would be searching the fields and densely wooded areas outside of town.

As fliers were passed out to all those present, media people included, Josh's photograph went up on the projection screen. The room went still. The murmured conversations died. The rustle of paper faded away. The silence was as heavy as an anvil, the soft whir of video cameras underscoring and somehow amplifying it. Every eye, every thought, every prayer, every heartbeat, was focused on the screen. Josh stared out at them with his sunny, gap-toothed smile, his hair a tangle of soft brown curls; every freckle was a mark of innocence, as much a symbol of boyhood as the Cub Scout uniform he wore so proudly. His eyes were bright with excitement for all life had to offer him.

“This is Josh,” Mitch said quietly. “He's a nice boy. A lot of you have little boys just like him. Friendly, helpful, a good student. A happy, innocent little kid. He likes sports and playing with his dog. He has a baby sister who's wondering where he is. His parents are good people. Most of you know his mother, Dr. Garrison. A lot of you know his dad, Paul Kirkwood. They want their son back. Let's do everything we can to make that happen.”

For a moment the silence hung, then in a gruff voice Russ Steiger ordered his men out and the search parties began filing from the room. Mitch wanted to go with them. The burden of rank prevented him. It was his job to deal with the press and the mayor and the city council. The position of chief often had less to do with the kind of in-the-trenches police work he had once thrived on and more to do with politics than he had ever cared for. He was a cop at heart. A damn good one once upon a time.

His gaze cut involuntarily to Paige Price. She caught the action as quickly as a trout snagging a fly, and rose gracefully, coming toward him while her colleagues remained seated, furiously jotting notes and mumbling into microcassette recorders.

“Mitch.” She reached across the podium, deftly flicking off the switch of the microphone. Her expression was perfect—contrition and regret with just the right touch of caring. “About last night . . . I don't want cross words between us.”

“I'm sure you don't,” Mitch said coldly. “Keeps you from getting an edge.”

Paige gave him the wounded look she had used to melt more than one wall of male resistance. But Mitch Holt wasn't buying and she called him a son of a bitch in her mind. Her exclusive of the night before had won her words of praise from the news director and station manager. Her agent had two words for the scoop—dollar signs. If she could keep ahead of the pack on this story, it would mean serious money, maybe even an offer from one of the larger network affiliates. She was shooting for L.A. Warm, sunny L.A. Regardless of where she went, it would beat this godforsaken icebox. But Mitch Holt stood in her way, a tarnished, battered knight upholding antiquated ideals.

“I'm sorry you think that's my only motivation,” she murmured. “I'm not a barracuda, Mitch. Yes, I want a story out of this, like every other reporter in this room. But my first concern is this poor little boy.”

Mitch didn't blink. “Save it for the Nielsen families.”

Paige bit down on the tip of her tongue. From the corner of her eye she could see Henry Forster from the
StarTribune
shoving past people to reach them. She could feel his angry stare burning into her. Forster hated nothing more than being scooped by someone in television, unless it was being scooped by a woman in television. But before Forster could intrude on her moment, Agent O'Malley stepped into the picture.

“The press conference will begin shortly, Ms. Price,” she said, steering Paige away from the podium. “Why don't you help yourself to a cup of coffee and a nice fat doughnut?”

The suggestion came with a smile etched in steel. Paige looked down at Megan O'Malley, amused that this slip of a woman was coming to the aid of a man who dwarfed her. She flicked a glance between them, speculating. Neither face gave anything away, which, to Paige's way of thinking, gave away much. She backed off toward the coffeepot, a hand raised in a false gesture of surrender.

“And may it all go straight to your hips,” Megan muttered under her breath, moving back to her position behind the front table. She caught the wry look Mitch sent her and scowled at him. “Lack of sleep makes me uncharitable.”

He raised an eyebrow, shuffled his papers, and flicked the microphone back on.

The press conference was woefully short on information. They had no suspects. They had no witnesses. They had no leads but the note the kidnapper had left behind and Mitch would not divulge the contents on the excuse that to do so might compromise the investigation later on. His official statement was that the Deer Lake Police Department, along with the other agencies involved, was taking every possible step to find Josh and apprehend his abductor.

Russ Steiger added that the sheriff's department would work around the clock. He would be overseeing the search himself in the field—a statement made with a bravado borne of self-importance. Park County attorney Rudy Stovich made the requisite statement about prosecuting to the full extent of the law. Megan gave the usual bureau line, offering investigative support, lab and records assistance at the request of the police and sheriff's departments.

Then began the feeding frenzy. The reporters clamored for attention, blurting out questions, each trying to shout the next one down.