Night Sins

by Tami Hoag

  “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  “You're still angry with me.”

  Mitch jerked open a door with more force than was necessary and stepped into the dimly lit foyer. His temper surged at the false note of hurt in her voice. She had a hell of a nerve playing the part of the wounded party. He was the one who had been sliced and diced in public, dissected by the cold metaphorical scalpels of Paige Price's shrewd mind and sharp tongue.

  She had told him she wanted to do a piece on the native Floridian relocating to Minnesota, the big-city cop adjusting to small-town life. A harmless public interest story. What had aired was an exposé of his life. She had callously exhumed the past he had buried and broadcast it all over the state, the crowning jewel for her first prime time special for TV 7 News. The tragic tale of Mitchell Holt, soldier for justice, his life shattered by a random act of violence.

  “Score another point for the investigative reporter.” His sarcasm echoed harshly. The smile that twisted his mouth was mocking and bitter. He turned it on her like a spotlight. “Congratulations on once again discerning the obvious.”

  Her mouth tightened. She stared up at him, her eyes luminous. “What I reported was a matter of public record.”

  Just doing my job. Common knowledge. The public has a right to know. The excuses throbbed in his brain like hammers hitting at his sense of decency. The pressure hit the red line and his control snapped like brittle old metal.

  “No!” Mitch bellowed, charging her a step. She backpedaled, eyes wide, and he pursued, leading with a finger that pointed at her like the lance of justice. “What you reported was my life. Not background. Not color. My life. I prefer my life to remain my own. If I wanted everyone in the state of Minnesota to know my life story, I'd be writing a fucking autobiography!”

  She was against the wall now, the top of her head just below the photograph of Gordie Knutson shaking hands with Wayne Gretzky. No amount of professional polish could hide the fact that she was trembling. Even so, her gaze was steady on his, reading everything, soaking it all in and storing it away in that calculating brain. Mitch could all but see her searching for a way to use this, to gain something, to add a shade of “close personal knowledge” to her angle on the story. It made him sick. He'd known plenty of reporters over the years. All of them were a nuisance, but most of them played by a set of rules everyone understood. Paige Price disregarded rules as casually as most people disregarded the speed limit. Nothing was out of bounds.

  She gathered her cool expertly, bent her perfect mouth into an arc of contrition. “I'm sorry if the story upset you, Mitch,” she said quietly. “That wasn't my intent.”

  Mitch pulled himself back, his face twisting at the acrid taste of disgust. He wanted to wrap his hands around her slender, lovely throat and shake her like a rag doll. He envisioned banging her beautiful head against the block wall until Gordie's picture fell down, in an attempt to physically knock some sense of propriety into her. But he couldn't do that and he knew it.

  With an extreme effort he carefully packed the rage into that little room in his chest and slammed the door.

  “I know your intent, Ms. Price,” he said tightly. “Touch some hearts and win yourself the local news pissant version of an Emmy. I hope it looks good on your trophy shelf. I could suggest several more creative places for you to put it, but I'll leave them to your imagination.”

  She put her hand on his arm. “Mitch, I'd like us to be friends.”

  “Christ.” He laughed. “I'd hate to see how you treat your enemies!”

  “Okay,” she admitted, her voice soft, her sapphire gaze steady and earnest, “I should have been more up front with you about the background for the story. I can see that now.”

  “Twenty-twenty hindsight.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Don't I get a second chance? We could have dinner. Sit down together and clear the air—when this case is over, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mitch sneered. “And as you dangle that promise out in front of me like a carrot on a stick, I'm supposed to give you little scoops on the case, right? Isn't that how it works?” His eyes narrowed with revulsion. “I had dinner with you once, Paige. Once was enough.”

  She blinked as if he'd hurt her. As if I could, Mitch thought.

  “It could have been more than dinner,” she whispered, her expression softening, the hand on his arm moving in a subtle caress. “It still could be. I like you, Mitch. I know I made a mistake. Let me make it up to you.”

  She didn't seem to feel it necessary to point out her own appeal. Her ego probably let her believe any man with feeling below the waist would want her, regardless of the less attractive aspects of her personality.

  Mitch shook his head. “Amazing. You'd literally do anything, wouldn't you?” Turning a pointed look on her hand, he lifted it from his arm and dropped it. “Frankly, Ms. Price, I'd sooner stick my dick in a meat grinder. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a stolen child to find. Impossible as it may be for you to comprehend, he's a hell of a lot more important than you.”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Old girlfriend?” Megan asked carefully as Mitch stormed up the steps.

  He automatically shot a look in the direction of the lobby. From her vantage point she had probably witnessed the entire scene. For that matter, the TV 7 camera and sound people looking in from the outside had probably seen it as well. Great.

  He dropped into the seat beside her, glowering. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “What happened? She burn you on a case?”

  “Dismembered might be a better description,” he muttered to himself, his gaze shifting to the ice below.

  He had no desire to talk about the story, no desire to satisfy Megan O'Malley's curiosity about his past. His eyes landed on the spot along the boards where he had pinned her. It seemed a year ago, and yet he could still taste the desire to kiss her, still smell the faint aroma of cheese that clung tenaciously to her coat. He wished they could have been suspended in that moment indefinitely. Dangerous thinking for a man who wasn't looking for a relationship and a woman who didn't date cops. They were going to have problems enough with the matter of who was in charge without adding sex to the equation.

  “Let's just say Paige Price should have her promo photo taken with an ax in one hand and a butcher knife in the other,” he grumbled.

  While wearing black lace underwear and stiletto heels. Megan kept the thought to herself. A catty remark might be misconstrued. And just how would you mean for it to be construed, O'Malley? She didn't care to answer that question. She didn't care to think how Paige Price—so tall and elegant and model-perfect—made her feel short and plain and unkempt. Glamour looks were not a prerequisite of her job. And the job was all that mattered here.

  “So where do you want to set up the command post?” she asked.

  “The old fire hall. It's on Oslo Street, half a block from the station and half a block from the sheriff's department. The garages are being used for parade floats, but there are a couple of large meeting rooms that will serve the purpose, and a bunk room upstairs. I've already called the phone company, and Becker's Office Supply is hauling in copy and fax machines. CopyCats are working on the fliers.”

  “Good. What information we have is already going out on the bureau teletype. I've been in touch with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They're sending a support person down from the Cities. So is Missing Children Minnesota. They'll be a big help with getting the fliers distributed regionally and nationally. They'll also offer support for the family.”

  Mitch thought of Hannah sitting on the love seat, alone, in misery, and his heart ached. “They'll need it.”

  “I've got Records compiling a list of all known child molesters in a hundred-mile radius and a list of all reports of attempted abductions and suspected child predator situations in that same radius.”

  “That's like building a haystack in which to find our needle,” Mitch said gl
umly.

  “It's a starting place, Chief. We've got to start somewhere.”

  “Yeah. If only we knew where we were going.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Mitch leaned ahead in his seat, his elbows on his knees, shoulders sagging beneath the weight of it all. No crime of any note had taken place in Deer Lake since he'd come on the job. Burglaries, fights, domestic disputes—those were the stock crimes of a small town. Drug deals were as heavy-duty as it got, and what they had here didn't hold a candle to what he'd seen on a daily basis in Florida.

  He'd grown complacent, maybe even a little lazy. He'd let down his guard. A far cry from his days on the force in Miami. He'd been like a racehorse then—all taut muscles and nerves strung as tight as violin strings, instincts and reflexes like lightning, running on adrenaline and caffeine. Every day had brought a crisis of magnitude, dulling his sensitivity until murder and rape and robbery and kidnapping seemed normal. But those days were long behind him. He felt rusty now, slow and clumsy.

  “Have you done an abduction before?” he asked.

  “I've been in on a couple of searches. But I know the procedure,” she added defensively. She sat up a little straighter in her seat. “This is all SOP. If you want to waste our time checking—”

  “Whoa, Fury!” Mitch held up a hand to check her tirade. “Innocent question. I wasn't impugning your abilities.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” She shrunk down, heat rising into her cheeks.

  Mitch dismissed her embarrassment, looking back out onto the ice. His eyes were bleak, the lines of strain beside them etching deeper into his skin.

  “I've done four.”

  “Did you find the kids?” She wished instantly she hadn't asked. Her sixth sense—her cop sense—twisted uneasily inside her.

  “Twice.” A simple one-word response, but his face spoke volumes about tragedy and disappointment and the hard life lessons cops had to suffer again and again with the families of victims.

  “They don't all end that way,” Megan asserted, pushing herself to her feet. “This one won't. We damn well won't let it.”

  They would have damn little say in the matter, Mitch thought as he rose. That was the bald, ugly truth. They could launch an exhaustive search, utilize incredible manpower, use every tool modern technology had to offer, and it still came down to luck and mercy. Someone in the right place at the right time. The whim of a warped mind and a twisted conscience.

  She knew it, too, he thought, but she wouldn't say so. She wouldn't jinx them and she wouldn't give in to the fear. Her jaw was set at a stubborn angle, her brows pulled tight and low over her jewel-green eyes. He could feel the determination rolling off her in waves and he wanted to pull her close and absorb some of it because all he was feeling at the moment was tired and disillusioned. Not a smart idea. Still, he reached out and brushed a thumb across a streak of dirt on her cheek, picked up no doubt in the close encounter with Art Goble's hounds.

  “Let's hit the bricks, O'Malley,” he said. “See if we can't make good on that promise.”

  The mobile lab and technicians from Special Operations arrived almost simultaneously with the BCA helicopter. The chopper set down in a parking lot on the fairgrounds and Mitch hustled to meet them. Megan led the other agents into the ice arena to brief them.

  “What have you got for us, Irish?”

  Dave Larkin was an evidence tech, thirty, cute in a beach-boy sort of way. He loved his job, if not the crimes that made it necessary, and always came to the scene eager to dig in. He was a good guy and a good cop, one of Megan's first friends when she had joined the bureau. If it hadn't been for his badge and his string of amiable ex-girlfriends, she might have taken him up on one of his many offers for a date.

  “Not much,” she admitted. “We assume the boy was taken off the sidewalk out front, but we have no witnesses at the moment to substantiate this, therefore, no true crime scene. In any event, there's been a parade of cars over the drive and in the parking lot, so we're screwed there. In the way of evidence, we've got Josh Kirkwood's duffel bag—which we left where we found it—and we have this note, which was sticking up out of the bag.”

  She handed Dave a glassine bag with the note inside. He read it and frowned. “Christ, a head case.”

  “Anyone who grabs a little boy off the street is a head case, whether he leaves a note or not,” said Hank Welsh, a still photographer for Special Operations. The others nodded gravely.

  Dave went on studying the note, looking displeased. “This ain't much, kiddo. Looks like a laser printer on ordinary copy paper. We'll run Ninhydrin and argon-ion laser tests, but our chances of getting a decent fingerprint off this . . . ? You'd get better odds on the Mets winning the next World Series.”

  “Do what you can,” Megan said. “Our priorities now are to get the Kirkwoods' phones wired and to get the command post up and running. You graphics guys—I know it might seem pointless at the moment, since we haven't been able to preserve a scene, but I'd like you to shoot stills and video outside. It might come in handy later on.”

  “You're the boss,” Hank replied archly, coming to his feet.

  Megan's gaze sharpened on him. Welsh was heavyset with a ruddy face left pitted by a long-over adolescent battle with acne. He was closer to fifty than forty and he looked none too pleased to be there. Megan wondered if it was the case or her that gave him that look of a man with chronic heartburn.

  The techs moved toward the doors, but Dave Larkin hung back, planting a hand on Megan's shoulder. “Rumor has it Marty Wilhelm was up for Leo's job,” he said in a low voice. “Do you know him? He's a Spec Op guy.”

  Megan shook her head.

  “Marty is engaged to Hank's daughter, et cetera, et cetera . . .”

  “Oh, swell.”

  “Don't sweat it. Hank knows his job and he'll do it.” He flashed her one of his beach-bum grins. “For what it's worth, I'm glad you got the assignment. You deserve it.”

  “At the moment, I'm not sure if that's a compliment or a curse.”

  “It's a compliment—and I'm not making it for the sole purpose of getting you to go out with me. That will just be a bonus.”

  “In your dreams, Larkin.”

  Impervious to put-downs, he went on as if she hadn't spoken. “I'm not the only one rooting for you, either, Irish. A lot of people think it's great you got the nod. You're a pioneer.”

  “I don't want to be a pioneer; I want to be a cop. Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if we were all gender neutral.”

  “Yeah, but then how would we decide who leads when we dance?”

  “We'd take turns,” she said, pushing open a door. “I have no desire to spend my whole life dancing backward.”

  As they stepped out into the cold, his grin faded. “How many guys will they spare you from Regional for the investigation?”

  “Maybe fifteen.”

  “You'll get at least another ten volunteers. This kind of thing rings a lot of bells. You know, if kids aren't safe on the streets of a town like this . . . And if we can't catch the scumbags who pull this kind of shit, what kind of cops are we?”

  Desperate cops. Scared cops. Megan kept the answer to herself as she looked around. Down the block, porch lights burned bright. She could see a couple of Mitch's uniforms tramping from one house to another. In the other direction, the beams from flashlights bobbed and darted like fireflies across the dark fairgrounds. Overhead, the eerie thump of helicopter rotors broke the calm of the night. And somewhere out there a faceless person held the fate of Josh Kirkwood in his hand.

  Desperate and scared barely began to cover the feelings that thought inspired.

  DAY 2

  4:34 A.M. 12°

  Paul pulled his Celica into the garage, killed the engine, and just sat there, numb, staring straight ahead at the bicycles he had hung up on the wall for winter. Two mountain bikes and the new dirt bike Josh had gotten for his birthday. The dirt bike was black with splashes of neon-bright purple and y
ellow. The wheels were like big blank eyes staring back at him.

  Josh. Josh. Josh.

  They had called the ground search at four A.M. and told everyone to regroup at the old fire hall at eight o'clock. Cold to the bone, exhausted, disheartened, the deputies and patrolmen and volunteers had trooped back to the ice arena parking lot.

  Paul could see himself as if he were watching a movie—arms gesturing angrily, his face contorted as he'd railed at Mitch Holt.

  “What the hell is going on? Why are you calling this off? Josh is still out there!”

  “Paul, we can't push people beyond human endurance.” They stood beside Holt's Explorer and Holt tried to put himself between Paul and any onlookers lingering around the lot. “They've been at it all night. Everybody is frozen and tired. It's best if we call it now, get some rest, and regroup when we have daylight to work with.”

  “You want to sleep?” Paul shouted, incredulous, wanting the whole world to hear him. Heads turned their way. “You're leaving my son out there with some madman so people can go home and sleep? This is incredible!”

  Those lines had struck the ears of the press people who hadn't left for warm motel rooms, and they had descended like a swarm of mosquitoes smelling blood. Holt had been furious with the impromptu mini press conference that transpired, but Paul didn't give a shit what Mitch Holt liked. He wanted his outrage on the record. He wanted his grief and desperation on videotape for all the world to see.

  Now he felt drained, empty. His hands were trembling on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. His heart beat a little faster, seeming to rise up to the base of his throat until he felt as if he couldn't breathe. Somewhere in the distance a helicopter passed over the rooftops.

  Josh. Josh. Josh.

  He bolted from the car, walked around the hood of Hannah's van, up the steps, and into the mud room. The kitchen lights were on. A stranger sat at the table in the breakfast alcove, bleary-eyed, paging through a magazine and drinking coffee out of a giant stoneware mug from the Renaissance Festival. He came to attention as Paul stepped into the room, shrugging out of his down coat.