Night Sins (18 page)

“At least I'm doing something.”

He might as well have slapped her. Hannah pulled back, chin up, mouth quivering as she tightened it against the sobs that ached in her throat. “Implying that I'm not?” she whispered. “I'm not in this house by choice. You want to stay here with Lily and wait for the phone to ring? I will gladly trade places with you.”

Paul rubbed a hand over his face. “That's not what I meant,” he said softly, knowing it was exactly what he had meant. He had meant to hurt her. This was all her fault in the first place. If it hadn't been for Hannah and her all-important career . . . Hannah this, Hannah that, Hannah, Hannah, Hannah . . .

Megan watched the exchange, uncomfortable with being a spectator to something that should have been private.

“Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, drawing his attention away from his wife, trying to diffuse the tension between them and get their focus back on the task at hand. “You're telling me you don't know anyone with a van that fits that general description—eighties model utility van, tan or light-colored?”

He shook his head absently. “No. If I think of anyone, I'll call Mitch.”

“Do that.” She ignored the slight. It didn't matter as long as the job got done.

Without a word to his wife, Paul turned and left. The tension hung in the air as they listened to his car start and back out of the drive. Hannah closed her eyes and pressed the heels of her hands against them. Karen Wright came in, wide-eyed. Bambi in the headlights, Megan thought. What an ugly little scene to play out in front of the neighbors.

“I know this is hard on both you and Paul,” Megan said, her attention on Hannah. “And this lead probably doesn't seem like much, as vague as it is. I can understand he feels more useful physically searching for Josh—”

“I'm sure it makes Paul feel useful,” Hannah snapped. “Just as I'm sure nothing could make anyone feel more use
less
than sitting around this house all day with people staring at them.”

Karen blinked her big doe eyes, her brows knitting into an expression of hurt. “If I'm not being a help, maybe I should just leave.”

“Maybe you should.”

Hannah regretted the words the instant they were out of her mouth. Karen meant well. Everyone who had come to the house had meant well. Josh's disappearance had touched all their lives to a certain degree. They were only trying to cope, only thought they were trying to help
her
cope. The problem was, there was no coping. She could handle a city ER, deal with the stress of juggling that career with her family life, but there were no coping skills for this. She couldn't handle it and she couldn't see beyond it. The well-meaning hands reaching out to her seemed only to trap her in this nightmare.

Karen had her coat in hand and was halfway to the hall. Hannah blew out a breath and rushed after her, the need to smooth over bad feelings overruling deeper needs.

Megan watched her go, turning all these new puzzle pieces over in her head—the tension between Hannah and Paul chief among them. The situation was acting like a pressure cooker. Megan supposed even a good relationship would be strained under the circumstances, but she would have expected the husband and wife to turn to each other for support. That wasn't happening here. The pressure was crushing down on Hannah and Paul, and their relationship seemed to be cracking like an eggshell. The page from Josh's notebook rose in her memory—angry storm clouds and scowling people.
Dad is mad. Mom is sad. I feel bad
. . . .

Her instinct was to blame Paul Kirkwood entirely. He had an aura that left a bad taste in her mouth. Selfish, self-important—like her brother Mick, she realized. But it wasn't just that similarity she disliked. She had come here to tell him they had their first real lead and he hadn't wanted to take the time to listen. He wanted to be out in the field, where the television cameras could capture the grieving father in action.

A tug on the leg of her slacks pulled Megan's mind back to the present. She looked down in surprise to see Lily Kirkwood staring up at her with huge deep blue eyes and a shy smile.

“Hi!” Lily chirped.

“Hi there.” Megan smiled, at a complete loss what to do. She knew nothing about babies. Or children, for that matter. She had once been a child, of course, but she hadn't been very good at it. Always shy, feeling out of place, in the way, unwanted; the daughter of a woman who had been a dismal failure at mothering.

Megan's own awkwardness around children never failed to make her wonder just how much of her mother's lack of skill had been passed on to her. Not that it would matter. When she looked to the future, she saw her career, not a family. That was what she wanted. That was what she was good at.

Her heart gave a traitorous thump as Josh Kirkwood's baby sister stretched her arms up. “Lily up!”

“Lily, sweetheart, come to Mama.”

Hannah scooped the baby up and pressed a fierce kiss against her cheek, hugging her tight, then turned to Megan. “I'm sorry about . . .” She shook her head. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The first words out of everyone's mouth these days.”

“Sorry, Mama,” Lily murmured, tucking her head beneath her mother's chin.

“Why don't I pour us both a cup of coffee?” Megan offered. The pot was still on the table, along with an assortment of clean mugs sitting in a cluster, waiting for the endless parade of cops and friends and neighbors.

“That sounds great.” Hannah sank down on the chair McCaskill had vacated earlier, her cheek pressed against the top of Lily's head. Lily traced a miniature forefinger around the D of Duke on her mother's sweatshirt.

“Would you like something to eat? We have every kind of sweet roll and doughnut and muffin known to man.” She gestured to the countertops that were lined with pans and plates and baskets heaped with baked goods. “All of them homemade except the Danish from Myrna Tolefsrud, who has sciatica on account of Mr. Tolefsrud's wild polka dancing at the Sons of Norway lodge.” She repeated the stories she had taken in by rote. “Of course, according to Myrna's sister-in-law, LaMae Gilquist, Myrna has always been a poor cook and lazy to boot.”

Megan smiled as she chose a tray of cinnamon rolls with thick creamy frosting and brought it to the table. “There's a lot to be said for small-town life, isn't there?”

“Usually,” Hannah murmured.

“Chief Holt and I are encouraged about the lead. We're pursuing it very enthusiastically.” Megan dug a roll out of the pan, plopped it on a paper plate, and set the plate in front of Hannah—directly on top of the newspaper article about herself.

Lily twisted around on her mother's lap and attacked the treat with both hands, ripping off a chunk and plucking out the raisins to be set aside in a little pile.

“I know,” Hannah said. “I'm sure Paul knows, too. He's just—”
What?
Ten years of marriage and he was more a stranger to her now than he had ever been. She didn't know what or who Paul was anymore. “You're not exactly catching us at our best.”

“In this line of work, I seldom catch anyone at their best.”

“Me, neither,” Hannah admitted quietly, her mouth twisting at the irony. “I'm not used to being on the other side of it. The victim. This might sound stupid, but I don't know how to behave. I don't know what's expected of me.”

Megan licked frosting off her finger, her eyes on Hannah's. “No, that's not stupid. I know exactly what you mean.”

“I've always been the one people turned to. The strong one. The one who knew how to get things done. Now I don't know what to do. I don't know how to let people take care of me. And I don't think they know what to do, either. They come here out of duty and then they sit around and look at me out the corner of their eye like they've just figured out I'm human and they don't like it.”

“Don't worry about them,” Megan said. “It doesn't matter what they think or what they want. Concentrate on getting through this any way you can. Make yourself eat; you need what strength you can get. Make yourself sleep. Prescribe something for yourself if you need to.”

Hannah dutifully put a scrap of the demolished sweet roll in her mouth and chewed without tasting. Lily looked up at her, annoyed. Megan dug another roll out of the pan, put it on another plate, and slid it across the table. Without asking. Like a friend, Hannah thought. What an odd time to make a friend.

“What I need,” she said, “is to
do
something. I know I have to be here, but there has to be something I can
do
.”

Megan nodded. “Okay. The volunteers at the command post are labeling fliers to be mailed out across the country. Thousands of them. I'll send someone over with a stack for you to work on. In the meantime, how about thinking on this lead? Do you know anyone with a van that even vaguely matches the description? Have you seen one parked someplace that struck you as strange? Near the school or the hospital or the lake.”

“I don't pay attention to cars. The only van I can think of is an old clunker Paul used to have when he was going through his manly-hunter phase.”

“When was this?” Megan asked, tensing automatically.

Hannah shrugged. “Four or five years ago. When we first moved out from the Cities. He had an old white van to haul his hunting buddies and their dogs, but he sold it. Hunting was too disorderly for Paul.”

“Do you know who he sold it to? Someone you know?”

“I don't remember. It didn't concern me.” Her eyes widened as the import struck.

Mitch had steered his questions on Wednesday night in the same direction. And she had pushed aside the possibility then that someone who had been in their home, eaten from their table, been taken into their trust, could turn on them so viciously. But even as her heart rejected the idea, her mind began scanning the names and faces of everyone she knew, everyone she didn't quite like, everyone on the fringe of their circle of acquaintance.

“We can't rule it out,” Megan said. “We can't afford to rule out anything at this point.”

Hannah pulled her baby close, ignoring the sticky fingers and a face smeared with frosting and cinnamon. She stared unseeing across the room, rocking Lily. Her thoughts were on Josh—where he might be, what he might be going through. Horrors enough at the hands of a stranger, but how unspeakably terrible to suffer at the hands of someone he had known and trusted. It happened all the time. She read it in the paper, saw it on television, had been in a position to try to mend such damage to other people's children.

“My God,” she whispered. “What is this world coming to?”

“If we knew that,” Megan murmured, “maybe we could stop it before it got there.”

They sat in silence. Lily's eyes roamed the kitchen and she squirmed a little, wrenching her head out from under her mother's chin. She looked up into the beautiful face that had the answers to all of her questions and asked in a small voice, “Mama, where Josh?”

8:22
A.M.
         12°

M
egan tracked Paul Kirkwood down at a parking area on the edge of Lyon State Park, seven miles west of town. The main search party was gathered—officers from the sheriff's department, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department canine unit with a trio of barking German shepherds, volunteers from all walks of life, so many people that the lot was full and cars were hanging off the shoulder a quarter mile up and down the main road. Four TV station vans had parked where they wanted, blocking in cars. Their satellite dishes telescoped up from their roofs, shooting signals to Minneapolis and St. Paul and Rochester.

Megan parked behind the KTTC van and headed for the crowd. Russ Steiger shouted out instructions, posing for the cameras with his fists propped on his narrow hips and his feet spread wide, mirrored sunglasses hiding his squinty eyes. Paul stood fifteen feet away, looking grave, the cold wind ruffling his brown hair. Megan slipped in beside him, hoping the newspeople would be too enraptured with the sheriff to notice her.

“Mr. Kirkwood, can I have a word?” she asked quietly, turning her back to the cameras.

Paul frowned. “What now?”

“I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the van you used to have for hunting.”

“What about it?”

“For starters, why didn't you mention it to me this morning?”

“I sold it years ago,” he said irritably. “What could it possibly have to do with Josh?”

“Maybe nothing, but we want to check every possible avenue.”

She caught hold of his coat sleeve and moved away from the crowd and the ears tuned like microphones to catch any squeak of information. Paul reluctantly followed her out of the line of cameras behind a Park Service truck.

“Hannah told me you sold the van several years ago,” Megan said. “Who was the buyer? Would he have seen or met Josh at your house?”

“I don't know,” Paul snapped. “It was years ago. I put an ad in the paper and someone answered it.”

“You don't have any record of who?”

“No. He was just some guy. He paid cash, took the van, and left. It was a piece of junk. I was happy to get rid of it.”

“What about the title? You didn't go with him to transfer the title?”

He gave her a look. “Surely, you're not that naïve, Agent O'Malley.”

“No,” Megan said evenly. “I'm not naïve. But you don't strike me as the kind of man who would ignore the rules.”

“Jesus Christ.” He stepped back from her and lifted his arms out in a gesture that invited the world to share his disbelief. “I can't believe you!” His raised voice drew the attention of a number of people clustered near Steiger. “
My
son has been kidnapped and you have the gall to stand here and treat
me
like a criminal?”

Megan could see people turning their way. Tension closed bony fingers on the back of her neck. The last thing she needed was to attract more attention from the press. DePalma would yank her off this assignment and bury her so deep in the bowels of headquarters, she wouldn't be able to find her way out to University Avenue.

“Mr. Kirkwood, I'm not accusing you of anything.” She used the same low, even tone she would have used with a jumper on a ledge. “I apologize if it sounded that way.”