by Tami Hoag
Her mind sorted tasks into a priority list and tumbled bits of information over and over in an attempt to sift out anything useful. Helen Black's statement played in the back of her mind like a videotape, and she strained to see something, hear something that might trigger an idea. She had found nothing encouraging in the reports she had gone through the night before, her share of the reports of recent incidents and known offenders. But then her eyes had given out before she could get through everything. One of her men may have had better luck.
Licking strawberry jam off her fingers, she grabbed her portable phone and punched the speed dial button for the command post.
“Agent Geist. How may I help you?”
“Jim, it's Megan. Any word?”
“Nothing yet, but the news about the van is just hitting the airwaves. I expect the hotline phones to light up like Christmas trees in another hour or so. Every third person in the state probably knows someone with a junker van.”
“What about those listings? Anything turn up?”
“Close but no stogie. We've got a couple of aborted attempts to pick up kids in Anoka County in a brown van, a convicted pedophile in New Prague who drives a yellow van—”
“It's worth checking out. Did you call the chief in New Prague?”
“He's not in yet, but he'll call back as soon as he gets there.”
“Good. Thanks. I'm going over to talk to the parents. Page me if anything goes down.”
She dried her hair and brushed it back into the usual ponytail. Makeup amounted to a touch of blusher and two swipes with the mascara wand. In the bedroom she dug through her suitcase for a pair of burgundy stirrup pants and a bulky charcoal turtleneck. The cats found perches on the boxes in the living room and watched her shrug into her parka and struggle with her scarf.
“You guys feel free to unpack and decorate while I'm out,” she told them.
Gannon curled his paws beneath him and closed his eyes. Friday gave her a look and said, “Yow.”
“Yeah, well, be that way. You don't have any sense of style anyway.”
The Lumina started grudgingly, growling and coughing. A belt somewhere in the inner workings squealed like a stuck pig when she cranked the knob for heat. The air that blasted out of the vents was like a breath from the Arctic.
To distract herself from the fact that her fingertips were going numb and the hair inside her nose was frosting over, Megan studied the town as she cruised the tree-lined streets from the east side to the west side. The established, older part of Deer Lake was a Beaver Cleaver kind of town—comfortable family homes, dogs peeing on snowmen built by the children being trundled off to school in minivans. She saw no children walking to school. Was it the cold or Josh Kirkwood that kept them off the sidewalks?
Downtown looked like a movie set for the all-American town. The city park square in the center with its quaint old bandshell and statues to long-forgotten men, the old false-front brick shops, the courthouse built of native limestone. The Park Cinema theater with a vintage 1950s marquee jutting out, heralding the showing of Philadelphia at 7 & 9:20, and the grand old Fontaine Hotel, five stories of renovated Victorian splendor.
North and west of downtown, the old neighborhoods gave way to sixties ramblers, then seventies split-level homes, then the latest upscale developments—expensive hybrid homes on lots of an acre or more. Pseudo-Tudors and pseudo-Georgians, saltboxes with attachments, and yuppie-rustic homes like the Kirkwoods', sided in split cedar and landscaped with river birch and artfully arranged boulders. The builders had gone to great pains to make it seem as if the houses had been there for decades. Strategic sites, mature trees, and winding lanes gave the impression of seclusion.
The Kirkwood house faced the lake, an expanse of snow-dusted ice dotted with ice-fishing huts. In the early morning gray it looked desolate. Beyond the western bank, the buildings of Harris College squatted like a crop of dark mushrooms among the leafless trees. South of the college lay what had once been a town called Harrisburg. In the last century it had competed with Deer Lake for commerce and population, but Deer Lake had won the railroad and the title of county seat. Harrisburg had faded, had eventually been annexed, and now bore the indignity of the nickname Dinkytown.
Megan parked, cringing as the Lumina's engine knocked and rattled before going silent. Maybe if she solved this case the bureau would give her a better car. Maybe if she solved this case there would be a little boy playing in the half-finished snow fort on the Kirkwoods' front lawn.
Hannah Garrison answered the front door herself, looking drawn and thin. She wore a faded Duke sweatshirt, navy leggings, and baggy wool socks, and still somehow managed to project an air of elegance.
“Agent O'Malley,” she said, her eyes widening at the possibilities Megan represented standing there on her front stoop. She gripped the edge of the door so hard, her knuckles turned white. “Have you found Josh?”
“No, I'm sorry, but we may have a lead. Someone may have seen Josh getting into a van Wednesday night. May I come in? I'd like to talk to you and your husband.”
“Yes, of course.” Hannah backed away from the door. “Let me catch Paul. He was just leaving to go out on the search again.”
Megan stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She drifted after Hannah, staying far enough behind to remain unobtrusive, to observe without seeming to take in anything at all.
In the family room a fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace, closed off from the room by glass doors and a safety screen in deference to the baby, who was curled up dozing on the back of a huge stuffed dog on the floor. The Today show was playing on a television set into a cherry armoire. Katie Couric needling Bryant Gumbel, Willard Scott laughing like an imbecile in the background. A petite woman with big brown eyes and an ash-blond bob silenced them with a remote control and looked up at Megan expectantly.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a hushed voice. “I'm Karen Wright, a neighbor. I'm here to help Hannah.”
Megan gave her a cursory smile. “No, thank you. I need to speak with Mr. and Mrs.—um, with Mr. Kirkwood and Dr. Garrison.”
Karen made a sympathetic face. “Awkward, isn't it? Life was simpler when we were all less liberated.”
Megan made a noncommittal sound and moved on toward the kitchen, where Curt McCaskill was pouring himself a cup of coffee and reading the StarTribune. The agent glanced up with an exaggerated show of surprise.
“Hey, O'Malley, I was just reading about you. Did you really crack a kiddie porn ring when you were in vice?”
Megan ignored his question, zeroing in on the article spread out on the kitchen table. Female Agent Fighting Crime and Gender Bias. The byline was Henry Forster's, the jerk. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, DePalma will shit a brick when he sees this!”
The piece detailed her service record and her struggle to gain a field post at the bureau. There were no direct quotes from her, but “sources in the bureau” had made several uncharitable remarks about her ambition. The article went on to recount the sexual harassment brouhaha of the previous fall, which had not involved her at all but had made life at headquarters unpleasant for everyone for a month or two. Battle lines had been drawn between the sexes and hard feelings still lingered. Forster's article would poke a stick at that old hornet's nest, but no one would turn on Forster. They would turn on her.
She groaned when she finished reading.
“You want a cup of coffee?” McCaskill asked.
“No, thanks. I need something stiffer than caffeine.”
“I could make a joke here, but it might seem inappropriate, all things considered.”
Megan laughed. She had always liked Curt. He had a sense of humor, something in increasingly short supply in the world at large.
His blue eyes twinkled. With his thick shock of ginger hair he looked like a leprechaun on steroids. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”
“We have a witness who may have seen Josh getting into a van. I want to talk to
the parents about it. Nothing happening on your end of things?”
The smile faded. He shook his head and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “I gotta tell you, thirty-nine hours and no word . . . If we haven't heard anything by now, we're not liable to. What we've got here is an abduction by a predator, not a kidnap for ransom.”
Megan didn't answer him, but the weight of truth pressed down on her just the same. Just because she didn't give it voice didn't make it any less real. She pulled in a hard, deep breath, trying like hell to hang on to her determination. “You want to take a break? I'll be here half an hour or better.”
He rose from his chair, trying to work the kinks out of his shoulders. “Thanks. I could use some fresh air.” He made a fist and scuffed it against her upper arm. “You're okay—for a chick.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but the sound of sharp voices coming from the other side of the kitchen door drew her attention. The door swung open and Hannah stomped in, hugging herself against the cold that drifted in from the garage beyond. Her wide mouth was drawn in a thin, angry line, and her eyes gleamed with tears or temper or both. Paul stalked in behind her, looking irritated.
Megan had taken an instant dislike to Paul Kirkwood and she chided herself for it. The poor man had lost his son, he had every right to behave in any way he wanted. But there was just a certain petulant arrogance about Paul Kirkwood that rubbed her the wrong way.
He looked at her now, his mouth set in an expression that was more pout than frown. “What's this about a van?”
“A witness thinks she may have seen Josh getting into an older, light-colored van Wednesday night. I was wondering if either of you knows anyone with a van that matches that description or if you might have seen one in the neighborhood recently.”
“Did they get a license plate?”
“No.”
“A make and model on the van?”
“No.”
He shook his head, not bothering to hide his impatience with her incompetence. “I told Mitch Holt neither of us is here enough to notice anyone hanging around. And if we knew anyone sick enough to steal our son, don't you think we would have said so?”
Megan bit down on her temper.
Hannah gave her a brittle, sour smile. “Paul is in a hurry,” she said sarcastically. “God knows, they can't start the search without him. Heaven forbid he should be held up by something as trivial as a real lead—”
Paul cut her a narrow look. “Someone thinks they might have seen a boy who might have been our son getting into a van they can barely describe. Big fucking lead, Hannah.”
“It's more than anyone else has come up with,” she shot back. “What have you found out there tramping around in the snow? Have you found Josh? Have you found anything at all?”
“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 useless 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.”
