The Hero’s Sin (10 page)

A police siren sounded in the distance. Michael’s stomach clenched as it dawned on him that Mrs. Coleman’s tough questions weren’t the only ones he’d face.

“I thought he might be more reasonable this morning than he was yesterday,” he said evenly.

“What right did you have to be in our house?” she demanded again.

The volume of the police siren grew louder until
it abruptly switched off. He heard the sound of car doors slamming.

“The back door was open, and I could see the kitchen was a mess,” he explained. “I was afraid Mr. Coleman might be hurt so I came inside.”

Mrs. Coleman’s eyes narrowed as she processed the information. Footsteps pounded on the porch.

“Police!” a gruff, masculine voice yelled.

Mrs. Coleman rushed to the door, beckoning inside a middle-aged cop Michael recognized even with his hair thinning and his waist spreading. His stomach sank. Joe Wojokowski, nicknamed Wojo for short, had been the arresting officer who’d set into motion Michael’s stay in juvenile detention.

“What’s going on here?” Wojo asked sharply.

“I came by after church to see why Quincy wasn’t there and saw
him
running from the backyard.” Mrs. Coleman pointed her index finger at Michael, her expression accusatory. “He’d been in the house.”

“The phones in the house are dead.” Michael explained as calmly as he could. “I was trying to find a spot where I could get reception on my cell phone to call the police.”

“What did you do to my husband?” Mrs. Coleman suddenly shouted.

“I didn’t do anything to him.” Michael addressed his next comments to Wojo. “I came by to talk to Coleman. The back door was open. I could see something wasn’t right so I came into the house, but he wasn’t here.”

“Don’t believe him! My husband warned him not to trespass.” Mrs. Coleman sounded almost hysterical. “I want him arrested!”

“I had nothing to do with whatever happened here,” Michael insisted, but his words had no effect.

“Arrest him!” Mrs. Coleman told Wojo. “Arrest him and make him tell you what he did to Quincy!”

Wojo walked purposefully toward Michael, producing a pair of handcuffs the way he had years ago when he’d arrested Michael inside the general store. “Put your hands out,” he ordered.

“This is nuts!” Michael cried. “All I did was try to help.”

“This can go easy or this can go hard,” Wojo said. “It’s your call, Donahue.”

Surrendering to the inevitable, Michael placed his hands behind his back. The cold metal circled his wrists and the lock clicked in place while Wojo read him his rights.

“Do I at least get one phone call?” Michael asked.

Wojo gave him a little shove in the back, directing him toward the back door. “Not until we get to the station.”

So much, Michael thought, for not involving Sara in his problems.

T
HE WHITE-HAIRED MAN
ambled to where Sara waited at the front desk of the police station, his short-sleeved dress shirt partially untucked, his tie loosened, dark bags weighing down his eyes.

She briefly met his gaze, then looked away. Normally she’d greet any random stranger but she was too annoyed at being kept waiting to risk getting pulled into an idle conversation with whoever happened to walk into the police station.

“Are you the young lady who wants to see me?” The white-haired man spoke to her, his autocratic manner belying his grandfatherly appearance.

She did a double take, belatedly recognizing that he carried himself with an air of authority. “That depends on whether you’re the police chief.”

“I am. Name’s Alton Jackson.” He bowed his head but didn’t offer his hand. “I usually have Sundays off. That’s why I’m not in uniform.”

“I’m Sara Brenneman, Michael Donahue’s lawyer.” She boldly stated her credentials, even though Michael hadn’t formally hired her and she knew nothing about the alleged crime other than the sketchy details the desk sergeant had provided. “I want him released from custody immediately. As I understand it, there’s no victim. If there’s no victim, there’s no crime. So you had no right to arrest him.”

“Whoa. Who said Donahue was under arrest?”

“He did when he called me. He said he was read his rights and taken to the station in handcuffs.”

“A misunderstanding. You’re right. We’re not positive there was a crime. For all we know, Quincy might have trashed his own kitchen.” The skepticism in his unhurried voice told Sara he clearly didn’t believe that. “Quincy’s car is in his garage but he’s a hiker. It’s possible he had an accident in the woods. We’re getting ready to comb the areas he could have reached on foot.”

“Then why are you holding Michael?”

“Donahue’s free to go as long as he doesn’t leave town,” he said, another clue that he viewed the circumstances of Coleman’s disappearance as suspicious. “Officer Wojokowski and I might have a few more questions for him.”

“
More
questions?” She picked up on the adjective. “You questioned him without a lawyer present?”

“He was at the scene of what might be a crime. Of course we questioned him,” Chief Jackson said. “For the record, he didn’t object.”

Sara objected, but it was too late to mount a protest. She waited for Chief Jackson to release Michael, wishing he’d listened when she advised him not to talk to the police. Michael eventually walked down the hall toward her, his steps heavy. He sported a day’s growth of beard and droopy eyelids.

If she hadn’t known better, she’d say he looked like a guilty man.

“Thanks for getting me released,” he said when they were outside the station. He shielded his eyes against the sun’s glare.

“It was a bogus arrest,” she said through tight lips. “There’s no proof against you and only circumstantial evidence of a crime.”

“Then why are you ticked off?”

She didn’t respond until they were both inside her car and driving away from the station. “I told you not to let them question you without a lawyer present.”

The police station was located a few miles from the town’s center, not far from the low point of the river where the raft tours ended. Thickly leafed trees lined the twisting road, the sun peeking through in spots to create a dappled effect, but Sara wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the scenery.

“They questioned me before I called you,” he said. “I don’t have anything to hide so I didn’t see the harm in it.”

Sara could have told him the truth wasn’t always an effective defense. She didn’t ask where he wanted to be dropped, instead driving directly to her row house and pulling into the first vacant space along the main street. She set the parking brake. “We have things to talk about.”

Her law office still smelled of paint even though she’d cracked open the windows to air it out. She led him over her splashy area rugs and past the colorful geometric abstracts she’d chosen for the walls to the indoor staircase. She didn’t stop until they were upstairs in her den.

She indicated that he should sit, but she was too keyed up to settle into her sofa. He sat with his legs spread, his forearms resting on his knees.

“I need to know what happened when you got to the Coleman residence and what you told Chief Jackson,” Sara began. “Don’t leave out anything.”

He relayed the story in a monotone voice, starting with his questionable decision to confront Coleman for a second time and the state in which he’d found the kitchen.

“Coleman was drunk yesterday,” she said. “Chief Jackson said he was considering the possibility Coleman did the damage himself, then wandered off. What do you think?”

“I don’t think he believes that,” Michael said. “Not after the questions he asked me.”

That had been Sara’s impression, too. She got Michael to continue with his story, cringing when he related his encounter with Jill Coleman. “That’s not good. She can make it seem like she trapped you into calling the police.”

Sara paced from the wood-burning stove that would heat the room in the winter to the curio cabinet that was the same shade of red as the accent wall downstairs, trying to think of how to defend Michael if the worst happened.

“Did anyone see you last night?” she asked.

One of his hands tightened on his pant leg, his knuckles showing white. “I stayed in. Like I already told you, my aunt spent the night with a friend who had cataract surgery.”

Plenty of people could have vouched for Michael’s whereabouts if he’d met Sara and the Pollocks at the Blue Haven, but pointing that out would be fruitless.

“It’s vital you don’t talk to the police again without a lawyer present,” she said. “You don’t need a criminal lawyer just yet, but I have a contact who can recommend some names. It won’t hurt to be prepared.”

“You mean in case Coleman’s dead and I’m charged with the crime?” he asked bluntly.

“Well, yes,” Sara said.

He straightened and crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth thinning, his eyes narrowing. “Aren’t you going to ask me where he is?”

“Excuse me?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “As you pointed out, I was seen running from the scene of the crime. You’ve been in town long enough to know that Coleman’s a respected citizen. Nobody besides me has a motive. So go ahead. Ask me.”

Sara wasn’t sure what was going on. His voice was thick with emotion, his face pinched with it.

“I get it,” he said when she didn’t respond. “A good
lawyer never asks a client if he’s guilty because she’s afraid of the answer.”

She took a few steps closer to him, refusing to be intimidated by the tension radiating from him.

“There are so many things wrong with what you just said I don’t know where to begin, but I’ll give it a try.” She ticked off the points on her fingers. “One, you’re not officially my client. Two, where’s the victim if you were running from the scene of the crime? And three, I don’t need to ask you anything to know you’re not guilty.”

The tight arch of his shoulders seemed to relax, but only slightly. “How do you know?”

That was like asking how she knew the sky was blue. Or that birds could fly. Or flowers bloom.

“I don’t only believe you, Michael, I believe
in
you.” In the absolute silence that followed she realized what she’d admitted and swallowed a groan. “Though don’t go getting any ideas because the offer’s off the table. Whatever was brewing between us, it’s over. I’m not interested anymore.”

His only reaction was a slow nod. “That’s smart. I’m not the right guy for you.”

“I agree. It will never work out between us, so I have no more interest in a personal relationship.” She deliberately used strong, definitive language, not wanting him to mistake her position. “Anything between us from now on will be strictly business so you can stop avoiding me.”

He didn’t bother to deny he’d stayed away from the Blue Haven last night because of her. “Okay.”

“That’s settled then.” She made a snap decision,
refusing to give herself time for second-guessing. “But we
are
having dinner together tonight.”

His brow wrinkled. “You’re not making sense.”

“I should have said we’re having dinner together if the police don’t find Coleman,” she said. “By tonight, every local in town will know the police questioned you in Coleman’s disappearance. You’ll need to show your face to prove you have nothing to hide. And I need to make sure you don’t do or say anything you shouldn’t.”

He took his time before nodding his silent agreement, his gray-blue eyes fastened on her. She’d provided a perfectly legitimate reason why they should have dinner, but as attraction flared inside her, she realized Michael wouldn’t be the one with something to hide tonight.

She would be.

W
ORD HAD
gotten around Indigo Springs that Quincy Coleman was missing and Michael was a suspect, just as Sara had predicted.

That could be the only explanation for the stares they received that evening as Michael followed Sara and an unfamiliar hostess through Angelo’s Italian Restaurant to the outdoor seating area.

The clientele consisted mostly of tourists, few of whom paid attention to their entrance, but the locals strained their necks to get a good look at him. Michael kept his back straight and held his head high, pretending he didn’t notice the faces from his past. A former teacher. The clerk at the post office. The police chief who’d questioned him that afternoon.

“You sure you want to eat outside?” the young, pretty hostess asked when they were on a covered patio decorated with tiny white lights and potted plants. A ceiling fan whirred overhead. “It’s warm even with the fan.”

Only one other couple had opted for alfresco dining, a fit-looking pair in their twenties who were probably taking hiking and biking trips along the Lehigh.

“We’re sure,” Michael said.

He picked up a menu after the hostess seated them, although he’d rather look at Sara. She wore an unlawyerlike short skirt and a tight-fitting shirt with a wide V-neck. The deep purple of the shirt should have clashed with the reddish highlights in her hair, but didn’t. She looked fantastic.

He reminded himself that their arrangement was strictly business. She’d made it clear that whatever personal interest she’d had in him was gone, for which he could only blame himself, but he’d give anything if they were a normal couple and this was a real date.

“They still haven’t found that retired banker.” The voice of the other woman on the patio carried to their table, slamming Michael back to reality. “I heard it wasn’t random. Some guy had a grudge against him.”

“Then he’s probably dead,” her male companion said. “The asshole probably killed him.”

So much for thinking anything about tonight could be normal. The hell of it was Michael couldn’t even defend himself. If he corrected the woman’s misconception about who held the grudge, he’d only succeed in drawing more attention to himself. He tried to focus on the menu offerings, but the print ran together.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Sara told him in a quiet voice. “She’s a tourist. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“She had to hear it from somewhere,” he said.

“There’s always gossip when something like this happens,” Sara said. “The people who know you don’t think you’re guilty.”

“Some of them do.” Michael nodded in the direction of Alton Jackson, who was striding onto the outdoor
patio with the vigor of a man half his age. Michael supposed it was too much to hope the police chief would leave them alone.

“Ms. Brenneman, Donahue.” Jackson nodded to one of the extra seats at their table for four. “Can I sit down?”

“Certainly,” Sara said.

The police chief’s white hair was a dead giveaway that he was approaching retirement age, but his eyes were clear and his manner commanding. He settled himself into the chair, then rested his forearms on the table. His voice was too soft for the other couple on the patio to hear, but discretion was probably unnecessary. The man was signing a credit-card slip and the woman had moved on to a loud one-way discussion of her exercise regimen.

“I expect you heard Coleman’s still missing,” Chief Jackson said. “We searched the woods in back of his house today but didn’t find him. We’ll widen the search area come daybreak but it’s looking less and less likely he wandered off on his own.”

The police chief looked pointedly at Michael, who met his gaze, reminding himself he had nothing to hide. Jackson had made no secret of his dislike for Michael, but the chief had a reputation for being thorough and honest. If a crime had been committed, he wouldn’t pin the blame on Michael without proof.

“Kenny Grieb heard you arguing with Quincy the day before he disappeared,” the chief said.

“That’s no secret,” Michael said, disliking the direction of the conversation. “I already told you about the argument.”

The chief’s gaze didn’t waver from his face. “You didn’t tell me you threatened to kill him.”

“What?” Michael exclaimed. The heads of the tourist couple, who’d risen from their table, snapped in their direction. Michael waited until they left the patio before he continued. “That’s not true. I didn’t say that.”

“So you didn’t tell Quincy you were tired of the way he was treating you?”

Michael searched his memory, futilely trying to recall his exact words. “I might have said something like that, but I swear I never threatened him.”

“Did any of the other neighbors who witnessed the argument say they heard a threat?” Sara asked, as coolly and calmly as if she were cross-examining a witness in a courtroom.

“None of those neighbors were at the house next door,” the chief said, in effect providing the answer. Kenny was their only witness. Kenny, who’d disliked Michael since they were in their teens.

“I don’t care what Kenny says he heard, it didn’t happen,” Michael said. “Any bad blood between Coleman and me was on his part, not mine.”

“That may be,” the police chief said slowly, “but I can imagine how a man could get tired of so much ill will being directed his way.”

The legs of the chair made a scraping noise as Chief Jackson pushed back from the table and stood. He bent down, still speaking in that same quiet voice. “You better hope we find Quincy alive and well, Donahue.”

“And you better have solid evidence before you make a move or you’ll find yourself facing a claim of false arrest,” Sara replied in an equally soft voice.

Chief Jackson’s jaw tightened before he left them with an insincere sounding, “Enjoy your dinner.”

Even as the police chief retreated, Michael’s muscles coiled in what he recognized as the fight or flight instinct. He was leaning toward flight, not only from this restaurant, but from this miserable town.

“If you leave,” Sara said, as though she’d read his mind, “you’ll look guilty.”

He couldn’t tell by her impassive delivery whether the chief’s visit had caused her to doubt him. His stomach clenched. He couldn’t stand it if she believed he’d threatened to kill Coleman.

“Grieb is trying to make trouble for me,” Michael said.

“I picked up on that. The same way I figured out Chief Jackson is stirring things up to see if anything shakes loose.” She put an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “Any particular reason he doesn’t like you?”

Michael wished he didn’t have to tell her, that he could pretend he’d never done anything to raise the ire of the Indigo Springs police. One thing he’d never been, though, was a liar.

“Did you notice the general store a couple of doors down from the restaurant?”

“Abe’s?”

“That’s the one.” He picked up his water glass, put it back down again. “I got arrested for breaking and entering when I was seventeen and did four months in juvenile detention.”

The space between her brows crinkled. She stared at him so hard he felt like she was trying to see inside him. “I can’t picture you doing something like that.”

The idea to jimmy the lock and break into the store hadn’t been Michael’s, but shifting the blame hadn’t been an option then and wasn’t now. “I was no angel. I had some priors for vandalism, shoplifting, fighting, that kind of thing.”

“Was this after your mother died?” she asked.

“Before and after,” he said, unwilling to use his mother’s death as an excuse. “But lots of kids lose a parent and don’t get into the trouble I did.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” she said. “Why did you move in with your great-aunt after your mother died? Why not stay with your father?”

“I don’t know who my father is.” He’d never spoken the words aloud before. To anyone. Now that he had, the rest of the story tumbled free. “My mother didn’t know, either. She had a drug problem and used to have these blackouts. It was years before I figured out I was conceived during one of them.”

Michael was almost afraid to look into Sara’s eyes to gauge her reaction to his dark secret, but he saw compassion instead of censure. “How did she die?”

“A cocaine overdose. In the middle of the afternoon.” He’d come home from school that day, pleased to see his mother’s car in the driveway so he wouldn’t have to wait to tell her he’d aced his algebra test. “She was just lying there on the coach, not moving. There were lines of white powder on the coffee table. I knew she was already gone, but I kept shaking her and shaking her.”

His voice trailed off, the horror of that afternoon reaching out from the past and grabbing him. Sara stretched her hand across the table and laid it on his
arm. It was warm and soft…and comforting. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” He smiled sadly. “She wasn’t the best mom, but she made sure I knew she loved me.”

“The police should have cut you a break when you got in trouble instead of sending you to juvenile detention,” she said.

“I never blamed them for arresting me,” he said, then stated the credo he’d come to live by. “A man has to take responsibility for his actions.”

“But you were a boy.”

“I was seventeen, six months from being a legal adult.” Michael had been two months shy of his eighteenth birthday when he got out of juvenile detention, two months in which he’d taken up with Chrissy and become increasingly unwelcome in his aunt’s house. “I should have known better.”

“You couldn’t have—?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t taken your order yet.” A redhead Michael recognized from the wedding appeared at the table. He dredged up her boyfriend’s name. Chase Bradford. Yes, that was it. “I’m Mandy, and I’ll be your server to…”

The waitress’s voice trailed off, her eyes lighting on Sara and growing unfriendly. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Hello, Mandy,” Sara said with a smile that seemed forced.

The waitress scowled and positioned her pen over her order pad, focusing on Michael. “What can I get you?”

“Why don’t you order first, Sara?” Michael suggested, earning him a grateful smile from Sara and more frostiness from the waitress.

“What was that all about?” Michael asked after they’d placed twin orders for the house specialty of chicken marsala over spaghetti. The hostess was seating more diners on the patio, with a few of the new arrivals slanting Michael curious looks, but nobody aiming as much dislike at him as Mandy had directed at Sara.

“As near as I can tell, she’s unhappy I didn’t hire her as my office manager,” Sara said. “Could we talk about something else?”

“You mean besides missing men, suspicious police chiefs and surly waitresses? Hmm.” Michael pretended to mull it over. “Works for me.”

She laughed, and the light, melodic sound seemed like an invitation to put his troubles aside, at least for tonight. After a moment, he found himself laughing with her.

S
ARA HAD
the warm, excited feeling of a woman on a good date with a man who intrigued her.

She could track the moment their business arrangement started to feel like a date back to her laugh. As the outdoor patio filled up, she and Michael had discussed typical date topics: travel, books, music.

“Tuareg Blues? Never heard of them,” she said when they were outside the restaurant, pleasantly full from a delicious meal. “Have they been on tour?”

He chuckled. “Tuareg blues isn’t a band—it’s a style of African music. The Tuareg are one of the ethnic groups that live in Niger. Their music is hard to explain, but it’s kind of like desert blues.”

They walked through town toward Sara’s place, as
they’d done the first night they’d met, passing the same shops, their shoulders occasionally brushing because the sidewalk was too narrow. Michael had been a mystery to Sara then, and it occurred to her she didn’t know him much better now.

His life in Niger had come up during the dinner conversation, but not in any depth. She hadn’t questioned him about the Peace Corps, perhaps because of Johnny Pollock’s deluded request to talk Michael out of volunteering for another two years. Now it seemed silly not to ask. “What did you do for the Peace Corps while you were in Niger?”

“Helped a crew in one of the villages build a cement schoolhouse,” he said. “Cement is a big deal over there. The old school buildings never last through the rainy season because they’re made of mud brick walls and millet stalk roofs.”

“It seems to me I remember hearing what a poor country Niger is,” she said.

“One of the poorest in the world. Most of the time it’s hot, dry and dusty. The village where I lived didn’t have electricity or telephones or even running water.”

She could hardly imagine a world without indoor showers. “Then how did you bathe?”

“Well water,” he said. “I got pretty good at taking a bucket bath.”

“It sounds like a tough place to live,” she said.

“It’s tough for the people who are born there,” he said. “Life expectancy is somewhere around forty-five.”

Her hand flew to her mouth, horror filling her at the number he’d cited. “Why so low?”

“Lots of reasons. High child mortality. Poor health care. Ignorance about how to stop disease from spreading.”

She looked up, surprised to realize they were in view of her home. She should tell him good-night and go upstairs, but she wanted to know more about what made him tick.

She sat down on the park bench overlooking the street and the small park from where Ben Smith had aimed his slingshot two nights before. Wordlessly, Michael joined her, the brush of his arm against hers sending a tingle down her body.

She reminded herself that Michael had repeatedly proved he wasn’t relationship material, and she’d accepted that and moved on. It shouldn’t matter that he felt compelled to volunteer to work in the world’s poorest countries, but God help her, it did.

“Niger must be a depressing place,” she remarked.

“It’s not,” he said. “That’s the amazing thing. The people have so little yet they’re warm and generous with what they do have. And happy, too.”

“How about you, Michael? Does the Peace Corps life make you happy?”