Night Sins (13 page)

“Yeah, it is.”

“Do your best and keep your head down.”

Mitch's words echoed in her mind as she hung up the phone and sank down into Leo's battered chair—
my best wasn't good enough . . . again.
She couldn't allow herself to wonder what he had meant by
again
. Their collective best had to be good enough for Josh.

The line from the note came back to her. She found a clear spot on the blotter between the coffee stains and phone numbers for local takeout restaurants and printed the message out in ink:
ignorance is not innocence but SIN.
Ignorance of what? Of whom? The quote was from Robert Browning. Was that significant? Her mind shuffled possibilities like a deck of cards. Ignorance, innocence, sin, poetry, literature— Books. She stopped on that card as the memory came and a dozen other questions rapidly branched off from it.

Her brain buzzing, she grabbed the phone and punched out the number for BCA records division. Sandwiching the receiver between her shoulder and her ear, she dug through her briefcase for the printout of known offenders and began scanning the list of names and addresses.

“Records. This is Annette speaking, how may I help you?”

“Annette, it's Megan O'Malley. Can you run one for me yesterday?”

“Anything for our conquering heroine. What's the grease spot's name?”

“Swain. Olie Swain.”

T
he morning was an endless barrage of phone calls and impromptu appointments. As predicted, Mitch had the town council members calling and Don Gillen, the mayor, in his office, all of them expressing their horror, their outrage, and their blind faith in Mitch's ability as chief of police to make it all better.

With the start of Snowdaze just a day away, there was much discussion over whether the event should be cancelled or postponed. On the one hand, it seemed ghoulish to proceed with the festivities. On the other were economic considerations, courtesies to the high school bands bussing into Deer Lake and the tourists who had already booked the hotels and B&Bs full. If they cancelled the event, would they be surrendering to violence? If they went on, would it be possible to use the event to the benefit of the case by amassing fresh volunteers and holding rallies to show support and raise money?

After twenty minutes with the mayor, Mitch washed his hands of those decisions. Don was a good man, capable, concerned. Mitch appreciated his problems but made it clear that his time had to be spent on the case.

In addition to Josh's disappearance, there were daily duties that couldn't be ignored—rounds of the jail, logs to review, paperwork to be dealt with, an ongoing investigation into a series of burglaries, a bulletin from the regional drug task force, a call from the administrator at Harris College about the criminology course Mitch was to help teach this semester. The tasks were the ordinary daily course of life for a small-town police chief. Today each one felt like a stone in an avalanche, all coming down on him at once.

Natalie stormed in and out of his office, relieving him of as much of the menial stuff as she could. He could hear her phone ringing almost without cease and silently blessed her for passing through only the most pressing of the calls to him. At twelve-fifteen she delivered a takeout bag from Subway. At two-fifteen she scolded him for not having opened it.

“You think the calories are going to jump out that bag and be absorbed into your body through the air?” she demanded, snapping a pen against the bag. “You and my Troy ought to get together. He thinks just being in the same room with his advanced algebra book will be enough to make him into a mathematical genius. You all could start a club—the Osmosis Gang.”

“Sorry, Nat.” Mitch rubbed a hand across his eyes as he paged through six months' worth of reports of prowlers and Peeping Toms, looking for anything that might connect to Hannah or Paul or Josh or children in general. “I just haven't had two seconds.”

“Well, take two now,” she ordered. “You won't get through this day running on empty.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“And share some of those potato chips with
Agent
O'Malley,” she said, pulling the door open. Megan stood waiting on the other side. “She looks like a stiff wind would blow her to Wisconsin.”

“I brought my own, thanks,” Megan said, holding up a banana.

Natalie rolled her eyes. “A whole banana? How will you ever finish it?”

“I'll be lucky if I get to peel it, let alone take a bite,” she muttered, slumping down into the visitor's chair. She dropped a sheaf of computer paper onto the desk and deposited the banana on top of the pile.

“A little light reading?” Mitch asked, digging a turkey sandwich out of the Subway bag. He took a big bite and chewed aggressively, his eyes on Megan.

Her gaze fixed on his mouth, and a strange heat crept through her, which she put down to being overdressed. He ate like he didn't want to waste calories chewing, devouring the sandwich in huge bites. A small comma of mayonnaise punctuated his chin, shadowing his scar. He wiped it away impatiently and licked it off the pad of his thumb, an action that seemed to have too much influence over her pulse.

Disgusted with herself, she jerked her gaze away and did a quick survey of the office. Neat and tidy, it was devoid of mounted fish and bowling trophies. More curious, there was no ego wall of certificates and commendations. A cop of Mitch's stature and longevity would have accumulated a boxful by now. But the only frames that hung on the walls contained photographs of a little girl with long dark hair and a big yellow dog with an in-line skate in its mouth.

“Earth to O'Malley,” he said, waving a hand. “What's the printout?”

“The known offenders,” she replied, kick-starting her brain. “I've been trying to cross-reference with reports of recent incidents in the vicinity and DMV records when there was a vehicle sighted or involved on the off chance that something might eventually match up. Narrow down the possibilities, then if we get a break . . .”

“Find anything?”

“Not yet. I also called Records and ran a check on your boy Olie Swain—or tried to. They don't have anything on him. The guy doesn't have so much as a traffic ticket.”

Mitch took another bite out of the sandwich and wolfed it down. “Olie? He's harmless.”

“You're that close, you and Olie?” she asked, holding up crossed fingers.

“No, but he's been here longer than me and we've never had a serious complaint against him.” He washed the turkey down with warm, flat Coke and grimaced.

Megan sat up straighter. “Does that mean you've had complaints that
weren't
serious?”

He shrugged. “One of the hockey moms got a little bitchy about him hanging around the kids at the rink, but it was nothing. I mean, hell, his job is at the rink. What's he supposed to do—hide out in his cubbyhole all day and night?”

“Did she allege anything specific?”

“That Olie gave her the creeps.”

“Gee, imagine that.”

“She also accused the Cub Scout leader of the same thing, told me I ought to send someone undercover into St. Elysius because everyone knows priests are homosexual pedophiles and accused her son's second-grade teacher of subverting the minds of children by reading Shel Silverstein books aloud to the class and displaying the illustrations—which any Christian person can see are filthy with phallic symbols.”

“Oh.” She sank back down in her chair, chagrined.

“Right. The kids have never complained about Olie. The coaches have never complained about Olie. What set you off?”

“He gave me the creeps,” she said sheepishly, scowling at her banana as she peeled back the skin. She took a bite and chewed, regrouping mentally. Olie Swain still gave her the creeps. Unfortunately, that was not considered probable cause for running someone in and taking their fingerprints. “He seemed evasive last night. Nervous. I got the impression he didn't like cops.”

“Olie's always nervous and evasive. It's part of his charm,” Mitch said, practicing a few evasive maneuvers of his own, shuffling papers as an excuse to keep from watching her wrap her lips around that banana. “Besides, I ran a check on him myself when Mrs. Favre made her complaint. Olie keeps his nose clean.”

“If no other part of his anatomy.” Megan wrinkled her nose at the remembered aroma of ripe body odor. “You don't think he had anything to do with Josh disappearing?”

“He'd never have the balls to steal a kid, then stand there and look me in the eye and tell me he didn't know anything about it.”

“He looked you in the eye? With his real eye or the fake one?”

He shook his head at her as he leaned over to hit the button on the buzzing intercom. “Yes?”

“Christopher Priest to see you, Chief,” Natalie announced. “Says he might be able to help with the investigation.”

“Send him in.”

Mitch dumped the remnants of his lunch in the trash and scrubbed his hands with a napkin as he came around the desk. Megan stood, too, and tossed the last of her banana. Adrenaline shot through her at the possibility of a lead.

The man who let himself into the office didn't look like anyone's savior. He was small, slight, his body swallowed up by a blue and white varsity jacket from Harris College. Even with the jacket, no one would ever have mistaken him for a jock. Nothing short of a truckload of steroids could have delivered the professor from his computer-geek looks. Christopher Priest had the pale, fragile look of a man whose most dangerous sport was chess. Megan put him in his late thirties, five feet nine, mousy brown hair, dirt brown eyes behind a pair of glasses too big for his face. Unremarkable.

“Professor,” Mitch said, shaking hands. “This is Agent O'Malley with the BCA. Agent O'Malley, Christopher Priest, head of the computer science department at Harris.”

They shook hands—Megan's firm and strong, a hand that could hold a Glock 9-mil semiautomatic without wavering; Priest's a thin, collapsible sack of bones that seemed to fold in on itself. She had to fight the urge to look down and make certain she hadn't hurt him. “Your name seems familiar to me,” she said, scanning her brain for filed information. “You do some work with juvenile offenders, right?”

Priest smiled, a mix of shyness and pride. “My claim to fame—the Sci-Fi Cowboys.”

“It's a great program.” Mitch motioned Priest into a vacant chair as he went back around behind his desk. “You should be proud of it. Taking kids off the wrong track and giving them a shot at getting an education and having a future is more than commendable.”

“Well, thanks, but I can't take all the credit. Phil Pickard and Garrett Wright put in a lot of time with the kids as well.” He settled into the chair, his oversize jacket creeping up around his earlobes, making him look like a cartoon turtle ready to pull his head into his shell. “I heard about Josh Kirkwood. I feel so terrible for Hannah and Paul.”

“Do you know them well?” Megan asked.

“We're neighbors of a sort. Their house is the last one on Lakeshore Drive. Mine is behind them, in a manner of speaking, a quarter of a mile or so to the north through Quarry Hills Park. Of course, I know Hannah. Everyone in town knows Hannah. We've been on several charity committees together. Has there been any word?”

Mitch shook his head. “You thought you might be able to help—in what way?”

“I heard you had set up a command post. That serves as a clearinghouse for leads and information, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I remember reading the newspaper reports during the search for that young girl in Inver Grove Heights. The police talked about the volume of information they had to deal with and how cumbersome it was. Things got left out, some jobs were repeated several times due to lack of communication, it was time-consuming to cross-reference facts and so on.”

“Amen to that,” Megan said, fanning the pages of her known-offenders printout.

“I'd like to offer a solution,” Priest said. “My department has plenty of personal computers available. With winter break, I'm short on students at the moment, but I know those who are still in town would be more than willing to help out. We can put everything you want on our computers, give you the ability to pull specific information, cross-reference, whatever you need. We can also scan in Josh's photo and send it across the United States and Canada on electronic bulletin boards. It would be a good project for my students and save you guys a lot of headaches.”

Mitch sat back and swiveled his chair as he thought. One of the things he missed most about being on a big-city police force was the access to equipment. The Deer Lake town fathers had seen a need for a pretty new building to house their jail and police department, but they were having a harder time seeing a need for up-to-date computer equipment. At present the department had half a dozen PCs from the Stone Age. Natalie brought in her own personal laptop to do her work.

“I don't know,” he said, scratching a hand back through his hair. “The students might be privy to confidential information. They're not sworn personnel. That could be a problem.”

“Couldn't you deputize them or something?” Priest asked.

“Maybe. Let me check with the county attorney and I'll get back to you.”

The professor nodded and pushed himself up out of his chair. “Just give me a call. Moving the equipment is no problem; we have access to a van. We'd be set up in no time.”

“Thanks.”

They shook hands again and Priest moved toward the door. He hesitated with his hand on the doorknob and shook his head sadly. “This has been a bad week all the way around. Josh Kirkwood abducted. Now I'm off to the hospital to visit a student who was involved in that terrible car accident yesterday. My mother always said trouble comes in threes. Let's hope she was wrong.”

“Let's hope,” Mitch murmured as the professor went out, closing the door behind him.

“It would be great to have those computers,” Megan mused. “It'd be even better if we had a lead or two to put in them.”

“Yeah. I haven't heard anything but lame excuses all day,” Mitch grumbled. “I wish I were out there myself. Sitting around here is getting old in a hurry.”