Night Sins (38 page)

The towel fell from his hands to the floor.

“. . . not my fault,” he whimpered, trembling.

Karen pressed a finger to his lips. “Shh. Come with me.”

She led him through the kitchen and down the dark hall to the guest bedroom. They never made love in the bed she shared with Garrett. They seldom met there in her house; the risk of discovery was too great. But he made no move to stop her as she undressed him like a child, and he made no move to stop her as she undressed herself. This was what he had come for, but he made no advances. It wasn't his fault. He deserved to be comforted.

He lay on the clean peach sheets in the soft glow of the bedside lamp and allowed her to arouse him with her lips and her hands and her body. She teased with her mouth, caressed with her fingers, rubbed her small breasts against him, opened herself, and took him inside her. She moved on him slowly, murmuring to him, stroking his chest, stoking a fire of physical need that gradually burned through the haze of numbness.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her to him and rolled her beneath him. He deserved this. He needed it. Release for his body and for the anger smoldering inside him—anger with Hannah, with O'Malley, anger at the injustices that had been heaped on his life. He let it all pour out as he pumped himself in and out of another man's wife. Deeper, harder, until the thrusts were more punishment than passion.

And then in a burst it was over. The strength was gone. The power drained away. He collapsed beside Karen and stared at the ceiling, oblivious to her curling against him, oblivious to her tears, oblivious to time passing. Oblivious to everything but the insidious weakness that crawled through him.

“I wish you could stay,” Karen whispered.

“I can't.”

“I know. But I wish you could.” She raised her head and gazed at him. “I wish I could give you all the love and support you need. I wish I could give you a son.”

“Karen . . .”

“I do,” she insisted, rubbing the palm of her hand over his heart. “I'd have your baby, Paul. I think about it all the time. I think about it when I'm in your house, when I'm holding Lily. I pretend she's mine—ours. I think about it every time we're together, every time you climax inside me. I'd have your baby, Paul. I'd do anything for you.”

This was just another of life's cruel ironies, he thought as he watched her bend her head and press kisses to his chest. He had the wife he had always thought he wanted—the independent, capable Dr. Garrison—and now he wanted the kind of woman he had grown up loathing—Karen, born to serve, subjugating her needs to his, willing to be anything he wanted just to please him.

He checked the clock on the nightstand and sighed. “I have to go.”

He washed up in the guest bath while she changed the sheets. As always, there would be no evidence of their stolen time together, not so much as a scent of sex in the linens. They dressed in silence and walked in silence back down the dark hall to the kitchen, where a single light burned over the sink.

“I heard they're going to resume the ground search tomorrow,” Karen said, leaning a hip against the oak cupboards. “Will you go out?”

Paul took a glass from the drainer beside the sink and filled it. “I guess,” he said, staring at his reflection in the window.

He took a sip from the glass and dumped the rest of the water. He rinsed the glass and put it back in the drainer; blotted his mouth with the green checked towel, refolded it, and laid it back on the counter.

From beyond the laundry room came the sound of the door to the garage opening and closing. Paul's nerves jangled. Guilt gripped its fist inside of him. The kitchen door swung open and Garrett Wright walked in, tucking his gloves into the pockets of his navy wool topcoat.

“Paul!” he said, his dark eyes widening. “This is a surprise.”

He set his briefcase on the oak kitchen table and unbuttoned his coat. Karen took up her rightful place beside him, leaning up to brush a passionless kiss to his cheek. They made a pretty couple, both blond and fair with dark eyes and carefully sculpted features. The kind of couple that could have passed for brother and sister.

“I stopped by to ask Karen if she would be willing to do some extra duty at the volunteer center tomorrow,” he said. “We're resuming the ground search, regardless of the cold.”

“Yes, I heard. I didn't see your car out front.”

“I walked.”

Garrett's pale brows rose in unison. “Cold night for a walk.”

“I thought it might clear my head.”

“Yes, well,” he said, making a good show of being concerned, “you've got a lot on your mind these days. How are you holding up?”

“I'm getting by,” Paul said, trying not to sound grudging. On the occasions of his conversations with Garrett Wright he had always felt like a bug under a microscope. As if he were a potential candidate for psychoanalysis, as if Wright was, even as they spoke, analyzing his words and gestures and expressions or lack of them.

“I know you've been very active in the search,” Garrett said, slipping off his coat. The dutiful wife, Karen took it from him without a word and went to hang it in the front hall closet. “That's a healthy way of dealing with the situation, even if there are a lot of frustrations. How's Hannah doing?”

“As well as she can,” Paul said stiffly.

“I haven't seen her on the news—except in the paper last Sunday. She collapsed, didn't she?” Garrett shook his head. Frowning gravely, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his dark pleated pants and rocked back on his heels. “The loss of a child is a terrible strain on the parents.”

“I'm well aware of that,” Paul said tightly.

Garrett gave a little jolt of realization, his dark eyes widening with contrition. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound patronizing, Paul. I just wanted to say if either of you feel a need to talk to someone, I can recommend a friend of mine in Edina. He specializes in family therapy.”

“I've got better things to do,” Paul said, his jaw rigid.

“Please don't take offense, Paul.” Wright reached a hand out toward him. “I only meant to help.”

“If you want to help, then show up at Ryan's Bay tomorrow morning. That's the kind of help we need, not some overpriced shrink in Edina.” He turned his attention to Karen. “I'll see you tomorrow at the center.”

Karen nodded, her gaze on the floor. “I'll be there.”

She stood there, holding her breath until she heard the door to the garage open and close.

“That wasn't very sensitive of you, Garrett,” she admonished her husband softly.

“Really? I think it was extremely generous of me, all things considered.”

He went to the sink and ran a finger down the side of the water-dotted glass in the drainer. He picked up the neatly folded green checked towel, dried the glass, and refolded the towel.

“You should be more careful where you leave things,” he said, holding up the towel.

The towel Paul had taken from her. The towel with which he had drawn her to him, his fists wrapping tighter and tighter into the cloth.

The towel he had dropped on the floor in the laundry room.

Karen said nothing. Garrett set the towel aside on the counter and walked away.

CHAPTER 28

D
AY
8
9:03
P.M.
         -30°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -55°

M
itch stared at the message board on the war room wall until the messages from the kidnapper began to swirl together. Elbows on the table, he put his face in his hands and tried to rub the weariness from his eyes. A futile effort. The fatigue went far deeper. It beat at him relentlessly, a cold, black club that struck again and again to loosen his hold on his logic, his objectivity. It stung his temper, made him feel mean and dangerous. It cracked the hard protective shell of control and allowed guilt and uncertainty to seep in like a toxic ooze.

Guilt. He'd seen the look on Hannah's face when Paul had hurled his accusation at her with the same violence that had sent the fireplace poker hurtling into the wall. A burst of pain, but beneath it guilt. She blamed herself as much as Paul blamed her. He knew exactly how that felt—the constant, pointless self-punishment, the pain that became so familiar that in a perverse way you almost didn't want to let it go.

“You should probably put something on those knuckles,” Megan said quietly. “God knows what kind of cooties might be running around in Steiger's bodily fluids. I'm on my way to the hospital. Wanna ride along?”

Mitch jerked his hands from his face and slapped them palms-down on the tabletop. He didn't know how long she had been standing there, leaning against the door frame, while he wrestled with his inner demons. She came into the conference room with her eyelids at half mast as she rubbed at the tension in the back of her neck.

“I'm fine,” he said, glancing at the hand he had skinned breaking Steiger's nose. “I've had my tetanus shot.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of rabies or maybe hoof-and-mouth disease,” she said dryly, perching a hip on the tabletop across from him.

“Why are you going to the hospital?”

“Trolling for suspects. I know we've questioned everyone down there, but I want to dig a little more. Hannah doesn't think any of her patients or their families could have been driven to something like stealing Josh, but I think it's worth checking out again. Hannah might not be aware of any animosity toward her, but I'm willing to bet the nursing staff will come up with a name or two. Everybody is hated by somebody.”

“Cynic.”

“Realist,” Megan corrected him. “I've been on the job long enough to know that people are basically selfish, bitter, and vindictive, if not out and out nuts.”

“And then there's our guy.” Mitch rose from his chair, his eyes on the message board. His gaze passed over each line, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. “Evil.”

Evil. The thing all of them had feared from the beginning. A kidnapping for ransom was about greed; greed could be dealt with, greed could be tricked. Mental illness was dangerous and unpredictable, but sickos usually screwed up somewhere along the line. Evil was cold and calculating. Evil played games with unknown rules and hidden agendas. Evil planted evidence, then calmly walked to a neighbor's house and asked for help finding his victim's dog.

The composite drawing of Ruth Cooper's early morning visitor was pinned to the cork bulletin board. A man of indeterminate age with a lean face that seemed almost devoid of features. The eyes were hidden behind a pair of high-tech sport sunglasses. The hair might have been any color beneath the dark cap. Not even his ears were visible. The hood of a black parka created a tunnel around his face, making him seem like a specter from another dimension.

“It's not exactly a photograph, is it?” Megan said dejectedly.

“No, but at least Mrs. Cooper thinks she might be able to ID him if she sees him again. She thinks she'll remember his voice.”

The rage rose inside him at the thought of the overconfidence, the contempt, the cruelty of the act this man had played out to flaunt his power and his cunning mind. Mitch's hands curled into fists at his sides. “Arrogant son of a bitch,” he muttered. “You'll take a wrong step somewhere, and when you do, I will take you down hard.”

“If we're lucky, his partner might trip him up for us,” Megan said, slipping down off the table. “I'm arranging to have Christopher Priest take a look at Olie's computers and see if he can get into the files. Olie was auditing computer courses at Harris. I figure if anyone has a chance at getting past his booby traps it's Priest. In the meantime, there's still Paul to deal with.”

Before Mitch could react, she hurried on. “You can't deny his connection to the van,” she said, ticking her points off one by one on her fingers. “You can't deny that he tried to hide it from us. His alibi for the night Josh disappeared holds as much water as a two-dollar sieve. No one knows where he was at six o'clock this morning while Ruth Cooper was meeting our mystery man. He told the agent on duty he was going out to drive around, looking for Josh. The timing seems a little coincidental, don't you think?”

“What's his motive?” Mitch demanded. “Why would he do something to his own son?”

“It happens,” Megan insisted. “You know it does. What about that case up on the Iron Range last year? What that man had done to his own daughter was unspeakable, and he showed up for the search every day, made pleas through the media, took a second mortgage on his house to put up reward money. It happened there and it could happen here.

“This is not Utopia, Chief,” she continued, her patience wearing thin with his resistance, with the situation. “It's just a town like any other town. The people are just like people everywhere—some are good and some are rotten. Even the Garden of Eden had a snake in it. Deal with it.”

The look he cut her way was dark and dangerous. “You think I'm not dealing with it?” His voice was whisper-soft and stiletto-sharp.

“I think you don't want to.”

“Well, we know you do, don't we?” he said sardonically. “All you care about is pulling your fanny out of the fire and getting a nice gold star on your evaluation sheet. Even if you have to tear up a few people on the way. The end justifies the means.”

“You can save that bullshit speech for Paige Price,” Megan snapped, jamming her hands at her waist. “You know damn well I want to get Josh back. Don't you snipe at me for telling the truth. I think it's too easy for you to put yourself in Paul Kirkwood's place, and that could cost us.”

Mitch was in no mood to have his conscience or his cop instincts poked at. Tired and frustrated, he lashed out at
her.

“In other words, Agent O'Malley, I should forget this man has lost his son and go straight for the jugular. I should get my priorities straight, like you. The job comes first. The job, the job, the fucking job!” he shouted in her face.

“The job is who I am,” Megan said, fierce pride sparking in her eyes. “If you don't like it, tough shit.”

“It's who you are because it's all you'll allow,” Mitch snarled. “God forbid you should take off the badge and be a woman for a while. You wouldn't know what to do.”

Megan jerked back as the blow landed with almost physical force. She
had
taken off the badge. She
had
been a woman. For him. Apparently, she hadn't done a very good job of it. The idea cut her to the quick.

“Oh, like you'd give me so much more?” she struck back, her tone dripping sarcasm. “What will you give me, Chief? A roll on your sofa? Yeah, that's worth throwing my career away.”

His mouth twisted in a sneer. “I don't recall you complaining when you had your legs wrapped around me.”

“Oh, no,” Megan admitted without flinching, holding the hurt deep inside a fist of control. “It was great while it lasted. Now it's over. A big relief to you, I'm sure. Those relationships that drag on for more than three or four days can put a real crimp in your martyrdom.”

“Don't!” Mitch shouted, holding up a hand in warning. His left hand. The hand that bore his wedding ring. The gold band caught the light, gleaming, giving the lie to the denial that hadn't even made it out of his mouth.

He turned away from her and blew out a long breath. Jesus, how had they gotten on to this? What did he care what Megan O'Malley would and would not allow in her life? They'd had sex. Big deal. He didn't want anything more from her and his reasons had nothing to do with penance for past sins.
This
was why he didn't want anything more from Megan O'Malley. She was bullheaded and opinionated and she provoked him and antagonized him. He couldn't control himself when he was around her, and he sure as hell couldn't control
her
.

Megan pulled the emotions back and locked them up where they belonged.
This
was why she couldn't fall for Mitch Holt. He had just proven the very rule he had coaxed her to break: no cops. Now that it was over between them, everything she had given him, every private aspect of herself she had shared, would be used against her. Now there would be this awkwardness between them. Every time they had to be in the same room together, every time they had to work together.

Work should have been her only focus all along.
You knew better, O'Malley. Whatever made you think you could have something more?
She swallowed down the knot of emotion in her throat and forced her mind back on track.

“We have to get Paul's fingerprints,” she said. “He owned that van; he might still have a key. If his prints are in it now, after all this time, he'll have some explaining to do. You get him in here, Chief, or I will.”

Mitch marveled at the way she slid into her cop skin so easily and ignored the emotional blood they had just drawn. He could almost feel the cold from the walls of ice that went up around her to close him off, to protect herself and the feelings he had just raked his claws through. It irked him that she had that kind of control when he felt wild inside, when he wanted to scream at her and shake her. It irritated him that he felt the slightest twinge of remorse and regret, that he felt something when she seemed to have turned her feelings off.

“Don't boss me around, O'Malley,” he warned.

Megan arched a brow. “What are you going to do about it? Tell the press you've seen me naked?” She walked away from him with her head up. “Do your job, Chief, or I'll do it for you.”

Mitch said nothing as she walked out of the war room and closed the door. He paced the room, trying to hang on to his control, trying to put his focus where it belonged.

Snarling, he wheeled around and glared at the message board. He couldn't see Paul typing out those twisted missives. He knew parents lost their tempers or their minds and committed sins that could never be atoned for. Then he thought of Kyle and what it had felt like to see his son lying dead, to live every day with the thought of how old Kyle would have been and what he would have been doing had he lived. He thought of the way it hurt every time he saw little boys playing ball, chasing up and down the street on bikes with dogs in hot pursuit. He couldn't reconcile the idea of willfully harming a child, because he still hurt so badly from having his taken from him.

I think it's too easy for you to put yourself in Paul Kirkwood's place, and that could cost us.

Easy?
No.
Easy
wasn't the right word at all.

He walked back to the table, where Josh's think pad lay. He needed a suspect. Someone who knew the Kirkwoods, knew the area, knew Josh.

He turned through the pages of doodling and games of hangman, his pride at being made co-captain of his hockey team, his sadness at the trouble between his parents.
Dad is mad. Mom is
sad. I feel bad. . . .
Marital problems didn't make Paul Kirkwood the kind of monster who could steal his own son and leave behind quotes on sin and ignorance.

Sin.

Mitch turned another page and stared hard at the drawings. Josh's interpretation of God and the devil, his opinions of religion class—mad faces and thumbs-down signs.
Sin
. In his mind's eye he could see Albert Fletcher, the St. Elysius deacon, standing on the verge of Old Cedar Road with the hood of a black parka framing his lean face.

9:57
P.M.
         -30°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -55°

I
n a perfect world, Hannah would be a candidate for sainthood,” Kathleen Casey pronounced. She sat on the sagging couch in the nurses' lounge, running shoes propped up on a blond oak Scandinavian coffee table. Dressed in green surgical scrubs and a white lab coat with the business end of a stethoscope tucked into the breast pocket, she chewed thoughtfully on a plastic needle cap as she stared unseeing at the television across the room. “All those in favor of making this a perfect world, say aye.”

Megan sank deeper into what had once been an overstuffed leather armchair. Barely stuffed was a more appropriate description. They were the only people in the lounge. Beyond the open door, the small hospital was quiet. The occasional telephone ringing. The occasional page. A far cry from the city hospitals with their codes and crises. Megan entertained thoughts of finding an empty bed and crashing. Maybe one nice shot of Demerol and then eight or ten hours of oblivion. She rubbed at her forehead and sighed.

“How do her co-workers feel toward her?” she asked, underlining the word
co-workers
on her notepad.

“Like I told the last nine cops, she's a nurse's dream. I regularly pinch myself when we're working together.” Her small bright hazel eyes showed her years of a different experience. “Sixteen years in this business. I cut my teeth on arrogant residents and chiefs of staff who swore they couldn't have a God complex because they
were
God. If those guys are in heaven when I get there, I want my visa revoked at the gate.”

“How does she get along with the other doctors?”

“Great—with the exception of our Chad Everett wannabe. Dr. Craig Lomax. He was miffed when Hannah was named head of ER. It has somehow escaped his attention that he's a lousy doctor.”

“How miffed?”

“Enough to punish us all with his sulking. Enough to challenge Hannah's authority.” She took a sip of her caffeine-free Pepsi, then replaced the needle cap between her teeth and bit down. “If you're asking me was he pissed enough to take Josh, the answer is no. He's obnoxious, not insane. Besides, he was on duty that night.”