Night Sins (45 page)

Puppy Boy didn't seem to know whether he should be amused or contrite. Mitch scowled at him and backed him into the driveway. Whatever else this guy might have been, he was tenacious. He hustled alongside Mitch as he headed to the house.

“You'll have to wait for the press conference like everyone else,” Mitch snapped.

“But, Chief, you don't seem to understand. I'm not with the press. I'm with the BCA.” He dug an ID out of his coat pocket and held it up. “Agent Marty Wilhelm, BCA.”

Mitch stopped in his tracks, unease creeping along his nerve endings. “I haven't seen you on this case before.”

Puppy Boy gave him a lopsided grin that seemed wholly inappropriate considering the circumstances. “I was just assigned.”

Mitch kept his expression carefully blank.
Agent?
Megan had told him DePalma was considering sending another field agent to assist her. She said she would take it as a sign of her imminent demise.

“Well,
Agent
Wilhelm,” he said softly, tightly. “Where is Agent O'Malley? She's the one you should be dogging, not me.”

Marty Wilhelm stuffed his ID back in his coat pocket. “I wouldn't know. She's been relieved of this assignment.”

2:20
P.M.
         -16°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -32°

Y
ou get yanked off the job. You get sued for slander. You get kicked in the head with a migraine. You've just about topped your day of days here, O'Malley. And the night is young.

Megan supposed it was still afternoon, but time had ceased to mean anything to her and the living room shades were down, making the room dark. But not dark enough. Death wouldn't be dark enough to ease the pain in her eyes, or quiet enough to keep sound from piercing her brain. The refrigerator kicked on with a thump and a whine, and she whimpered and tried to curl into a tighter ball.

She still had her coat on, though her boots had come off—one by the door and one somewhere along the path between the still-unpacked boxes. The confounded gray scarf tried to choke her as she changed positions. She jerked at it with a trembling hand and wrestled it off to fling it on the floor. Her hair was still tied back. She could feel each individual strand as if some unseen hand were pulling relentlessly on her ponytail, but she couldn't concentrate hard enough to get the rubber band undone.

The pain was unrelenting, a constant high-pitched drill boring into her head, an ax splitting her skull. God, she
wished
someone would split her skull with an ax and put her out of her misery.

She should have been injecting herself with Imitrex, but she couldn't move from the couch. If she had been able to get herself upright, she didn't think she would even know where the bathroom was. She had pulled one of the few empty boxes in the apartment within puking range. Any port in a storm.

Gannon and Friday had taken up their posts on a stereo speaker box across the room, and watched her intently. They were old hands at the vigil. They never came too close or made a sound. As if they were perfectly attuned to her suffering, they lay across the room and watched her, ever diligent. Friday's white-tipped tail hung down the side of the box, the last inch twitching slowly back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum.

Megan stared at it for a while, then closed her eyes and saw it still. Back and forth, back and forth. The rhythm made her dizzy, nauseated, but she couldn't erase it from her mind. Right, left, right left. Then it picked up words:
Paige Price, Paige Price, right left, right left, Paige Price, Paige Price.

DePalma's voice came in, crackling with anger. “How could you be so stupid? How could you say that in front of twenty goddamn news cameras?”

Paige Price, Paige Price, Paige Price . . .

“. . . five-million-dollar slander suit . . .”

Paige Price, Paige Price . . .

“. . . against you and the bureau . . .”

Paige Price, Paige Price . . .

“. . . I don't care if she's the whore of Babylon . . .”

Paige Price.

“. . . you're off the case . . .”

Off the case.

Oh, God, she couldn't believe it. Couldn't stand it. Off the case. The words brought a wash of shame. Worse than that—far worse—was the fist of panic that tightened in her chest. She couldn't be off the case. She wanted it so badly. To find Josh. To catch the monster who had taken him and tormented them all. She wanted to be there to slap the cuffs on him and look him in the eye and say, “I got you, you son of a bitch.” She wanted it for herself and for Josh and for Hannah. But she was off the case and the truth of that shook her to the core.

The pain burst inside her head like a brilliant white light bulb, and she pressed her face into the couch cushion and cried.

Another wave of pain obliterated all thought. Helpless to do anything else, Megan gave herself over to it. Somewhere in the distance she could hear the beat of helicopter rotors, the sound like bird's wings thumping against her eardrums. The search went on without her. The case went on without her.

The phone rang and the machine picked up. Henry Forster wanted to talk to her about Paige.
When hell freezes over.
Which may be imminent, she thought, shivering, pulling her coat tighter around her.

The phone chirped again, making her whimper, and again the machine picked up. “Megan? It's Mitch. I just heard you got yanked. Um—I thought you might be home, but I guess not. I'll try to get you on the radio. If you get this message first, call me. We've got a situation with Fletcher.” There was a beat of silence. “I'm sorry. I know how much the job means to you.”

The apology sounded awkward and sincere, as if he didn't make many, but the ones he made counted. He was sorry. He was giving his condolences, one cop to another.
Tough luck, you're off the case. It's been nice knowing you, O'Malley.
She would become a memory, someone who had barged into his life for a week, shared a bed with him for a couple of nights, and moved on.

She couldn't expect him to feel anything deeper than physical attraction to her. She knew nothing of love or relationships, or being a woman—as Mitch had pointed out so bluntly. He had been in love enough to marry, enough to have a family, enough to still mourn the loss of that woman. She'd never had anything that came close. She only had the job and it was going down in flames.

How could she have been so stupid?

The phone seemed to ring incessantly. The press had gotten wind of the debacle. Paige, the bitch, had probably broken the news herself in a live exclusive from the steps of City Center.

Megan wondered about the “situation” with Albert Fletcher. What situation? She couldn't remember. It hurt to try. A dozen different half-remembered conversations tumbled together in her mind, all the voices talking at once in a dissonant chorus that made her ears ring and her head swim.

Please stop. Please stop.

The telephone shrilled again.

Please stop.

Tears ran down her face. Dizzy, wishing she would pass out, she slid down off the couch and crawled on her hands and knees to unplug the phone. She made it back to her barf box in time to be sick, but she couldn't muster the strength or coordination to get herself back on the couch. Beyond caring, she curled into a ball on the floor and lay there, waiting for the pain to end.

4:27
P.M.
         -20°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -38°

N
o one had seen a sign of Fletcher. He had vanished. As Josh had vanished. As Megan had vanished.

She didn't answer her telephone. She didn't answer her car radio. It seemed she had walked out of the station and disappeared off the face of the earth.

Mitch prowled the streets of town looking for any glimpse of Albert Fletcher, directing the search for their fugitive from the radio of the Explorer. The radio crackled. Positions of units. Complaints about the cold. Frustration at another dead end. A chopper passed by overhead, sweeping slowly over the rooftops of Deer Lake for a glimpse of the demented deacon.

Wicked daughter of Eve: Be sure your sin will find you out.

Megan had run into Fletcher at St. E's. He had been less than charmed by her. If Fletcher knew where Megan lived . . . She wouldn't have thought twice about taking him on.

He caught sight of her white Lumina parked at a cockeyed angle to the curb in front of her apartment house. The driver's door was ajar. Visions of her being pulled from the car pushed him into a trot up the sidewalk to the big Victorian house. He took the stairs two at a time to the third floor. No sound came from her apartment. No light leaked out under the door.

“Megan?” he called, pounding on the heavy old door. “Megan, it's Mitch! Let me in!”

Nothing.

If her car is here and she isn't, then where the hell is she?

“Megan?” He knocked again, tried the knob, found it locked. “Shit,” he muttered, stepping back. “You're too damn old for this, Holt.”

He took a deep breath and did it anyway. Thank God she hadn't thrown the deadbolt. The door gave up on the third kick and swung inward.

“Megan?” Mitch called, his gaze scanning the dark apartment.

The shades were drawn. What sun they had had in the morning had retreated behind a thick shroud of gray in the afternoon, leaving the apartment dimmer than twilight. The room was cold, as if the heat had been off for some time. His heart thumping, Mitch eased his Smith & Wesson out of his parka and pointed it at the ceiling. He moved slowly, silently, through the maze of boxes, walking on the balls of his feet, ready to jump.

His toe kicked a boot that had been abandoned. “Megan?”

M
egan thought it was a hallucination. The banging, the voice. She was fading in and out of consciousness, in and out of reality. She wasn't certain the pounding wasn't inside her head—the pain. The pain took on dimensions beyond physical feeling. It became sound and light, an entity unlike any other, beyond description.

“Megan?”

But it never called her name. She was sure of that. The word ripped through her brain and she whimpered and tried to press her hands over her ears.

“Megan? Jesus!”

Mitch dodged a stack of boxes and dropped to his knees on the floor beside her. His hands shook violently as he reached for her.

“Honey, what happened? Who hurt you? Was it Fletcher?”

Megan tried to turn away from him. But he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her onto her back. The lamp at the end of the couch went on and she cried out.

“What is it?” Mitch demanded, leaning over her, pulling her hands aside as she tried to cover her eyes. “Where are you hurt, honey?”

“Migraine,” she whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Turn off the fucking light and go away.”

The light went out, allowing her to breathe again. Weakness trembling through her, she turned onto her side again and pulled her knees up to her chest.

Mitch had never seen anyone in this much agony who wasn't bleeding profusely from a bullet hole or knife wound. He would never have imagined a headache severe enough to knock someone to the ground.

“Should I take you to the hospital?”

“No.”

“What can I do, honey?” he murmured, bending close.

“Stop calling me honey and go away.” Her pride didn't want him to see her like this—weak, vulnerable.

“The hell I'll leave,” Mitch growled.

He scooped her up in his arms and stood. Megan curled against his chest, clenching a handful of his parka, willing herself to not throw up as he carried her out of the living room and down the hall.

He eased her down onto the bed and she sat there shaking, doubled over. He took off her coat, her cardigan and her shoulder holster, her turtleneck and her bra. Then he dressed her in an oversize flannel shirt that lay across the foot of the bed. She lay down and he set about stripping off her slacks and the .380
A.M.
T. Back-Up she wore in a custom-made holster around her right ankle.

“Do you have medication to take?” he asked.

“In the medicine cabinet,” she whispered, trying to burrow into her pillow. “Imitrex. Don't talk so loud.”

He left and returned with the needle cartridge, then argued that he should take her to the hospital when she coached him on how to administer the injection.

“Megan, I can't give you a shot; I'm a cop, not a doctor.”

“You're a wimp. Shut up and do it.”

“What if I screw up?”

“It's subcutaneous; you can't screw up,” she said, swallowing back the nausea. “I'd do it myself, but my hands are shaking.”

Scowling ferociously, he pressed the cartridge against her bare arm, depressed the trigger button and counted to ten. Megan looked up at him from beneath half-lowered lids. He tossed the used cartridge in the wastebasket and gazed down at her.

“You're being nice to me again,” she muttered.

“Yeah, well, don't get used to it.” The words held no sting and the only thing in his touch as he brushed her hair back from her face was tenderness.

“Don't worry, I know better,” she whispered.

Mitch didn't know whether she was referring to her job or their relationship. He wasn't certain what they had could be called a relationship, but now was not the time to discuss it.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said softly. “I thought our nut case
du jour
had gotten ahold of you.”

“Who?” Megan asked, thoughts tipping and tumbling in her mind again.

“Fletcher flipped out and cracked Father Tom's head open with a candlestick. But then, you probably know how that feels.”

“Piece o' cake,” she mumbled. “Did you get him?”

“We will.” Mitch decided to save the rest of the Fletcher story for later. She was in no condition to hear about the case, especially when she had been taken off it. “Don't worry about it, O'Malley. You'll give yourself a headache.”

Megan thought she smiled a little, but she wasn't sure. Her brain kept shorting out as pain flashed like fire behind her eyes.