by Tami Hoag
Megan licked frosting off her finger, her eyes on Hannah's. “No, that's not stupid. I know exactly what you mean.”
“I've always been the one people turned to. The strong one. The one who knew how to get things done. Now I don't know what to do. I don't know how to let people take care of me. And I don't think they know what to do, either. They come here out of duty and then they sit around and look at me out the corner of their eye like they've just figured out I'm human and they don't like it.”
“Don't worry about them,” Megan said. “It doesn't matter what they think or what they want. Concentrate on getting through this any way you can. Make yourself eat; you need what strength you can get. Make yourself sleep. Prescribe something for yourself if you need to.”
Hannah dutifully put a scrap of the demolished sweet roll in her mouth and chewed without tasting. Lily looked up at her, annoyed. Megan dug another roll out of the pan, put it on another plate, and slid it across the table. Without asking. Like a friend, Hannah thought. What an odd time to make a friend.
“What I need,” she said, “is to do something. I know I have to be here, but there has to be something I can do.”
Megan nodded. “Okay. The volunteers at the command post are labeling fliers to be mailed out across the country. Thousands of them. I'll send someone over with a stack for you to work on. In the meantime, how about thinking on this lead? Do you know anyone with a van that even vaguely matches the description? Have you seen one parked someplace that struck you as strange? Near the school or the hospital or the lake.”
“I don't pay attention to cars. The only van I can think of is an old clunker Paul used to have when he was going through his manly-hunter phase.”
“When was this?” Megan asked, tensing automatically.
Hannah shrugged. “Four or five years ago. When we first moved out from the Cities. He had an old white van to haul his hunting buddies and their dogs, but he sold it. Hunting was too disorderly for Paul.”
“Do you know who he sold it to? Someone you know?”
“I don't remember. It didn't concern me.” Her eyes widened as the import struck.
Mitch had steered his questions on Wednesday night in the same direction. And she had pushed aside the possibility then that someone who had been in their home, eaten from their table, been taken into their trust, could turn on them so viciously. But even as her heart rejected the idea, her mind began scanning the names and faces of everyone she knew, everyone she didn't quite like, everyone on the fringe of their circle of acquaintance.
“We can't rule it out,” Megan said. “We can't afford to rule out anything at this point.”
Hannah pulled her baby close, ignoring the sticky fingers and a face smeared with frosting and cinnamon. She stared unseeing across the room, rocking Lily. Her thoughts were on Josh—where he might be, what he might be going through. Horrors enough at the hands of a stranger, but how unspeakably terrible to suffer at the hands of someone he had known and trusted. It happened all the time. She read it in the paper, saw it on television, had been in a position to try to mend such damage to other people's children.
“My God,” she whispered. “What is this world coming to?”
“If we knew that,” Megan murmured, “maybe we could stop it before it got there.”
They sat in silence. Lily's eyes roamed the kitchen and she squirmed a little, wrenching her head out from under her mother's chin. She looked up into the beautiful face that had the answers to all of her questions and asked in a small voice, “Mama, where Josh?”
8:22 A.M. 12°
Megan tracked Paul Kirkwood down at a parking area on the edge of Lyon State Park, seven miles west of town. The main search party was gathered—officers from the sheriff's department, officers from the Minneapolis Police Department canine unit with a trio of barking German shepherds, volunteers from all walks of life, so many people that the lot was full and cars were hanging off the shoulder a quarter mile up and down the main road. Four TV station vans had parked where they wanted, blocking in cars. Their satellite dishes telescoped up from their roofs, shooting signals to Minneapolis and St. Paul and Rochester.
Megan parked behind the KTTC van and headed for the crowd. Russ Steiger shouted out instructions, posing for the cameras with his fists propped on his narrow hips and his feet spread wide, mirrored sunglasses hiding his squinty eyes. Paul stood fifteen feet away, looking grave, the cold wind ruffling his brown hair. Megan slipped in beside him, hoping the newspeople would be too enraptured with the sheriff to notice her.
“Mr. Kirkwood, can I have a word?” she asked quietly, turning her back to the cameras.
Paul frowned. “What now?”
“I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the van you used to have for hunting.”
“What about it?”
“For starters, why didn't you mention it to me this morning?”
“I sold it years ago,” he said irritably. “What could it possibly have to do with Josh?”
“Maybe nothing, but we want to check every possible avenue.”
She caught hold of his coat sleeve and moved away from the crowd and the ears tuned like microphones to catch any squeak of information. Paul reluctantly followed her out of the line of cameras behind a Park Service truck.
“Hannah told me you sold the van several years ago,” Megan said. “Who was the buyer? Would he have seen or met Josh at your house?”
“I don't know,” Paul snapped. “It was years ago. I put an ad in the paper and someone answered it.”
“You don't have any record of who?”
“No. He was just some guy. He paid cash, took the van, and left. It was a piece of junk. I was happy to get rid of it.”
“What about the title? You didn't go with him to transfer the title?”
He gave her a look. “Surely, you're not that naïve, Agent O'Malley.”
“No,” Megan said evenly. “I'm not naïve. But you don't strike me as the kind of man who would ignore the rules.”
“Jesus Christ.” He stepped back from her and lifted his arms out in a gesture that invited the world to share his disbelief. “I can't believe you!” His raised voice drew the attention of a number of people clustered near Steiger. “My son has been kidnapped and you have the gall to stand here and treat me like a criminal?”
Megan could see people turning their way. Tension closed bony fingers on the back of her neck. The last thing she needed was to attract more attention from the press. DePalma would yank her off this assignment and bury her so deep in the bowels of headquarters, she wouldn't be able to find her way out to University Avenue.
“Mr. Kirkwood, I'm not accusing you of anything.” She used the same low, even tone she would have used with a jumper on a ledge. “I apologize if it sounded that way.”
“I'll tell you how it sounds,” Paul said, his temper humming in his voice. “It sounds to me like you don't know how to find my son and you're doing whatever you can to cover your ass! That's how it sounds!”
He stormed away from her, away from the hundred or so people who had gathered to watch the show, away from the cameras and the reporters. They set their sights on Megan and zeroed in.
“Agent O'Malley, do you have any comment on Mr. Kirkwood's accusations?”
“Agent O'Malley, does the BCA consider Mr. Kirkwood a suspect?”
“Agent O'Malley, do you have a comment on the article in the Tribune?”
Megan ground her teeth on a hundred nasty retorts. Diplomacy. Low-key, unobtrusive diplomacy. Those were her instructions from DePalma. That was bureau policy. She had sworn she could handle it. She had promised herself she could control her temper and take anything the press or anyone else dished out to her. She pulled in a deep breath and faced the cameras without flinching.
“Mr. Kirkwood is understandably distraught. My only comment is that the BCA is doing all it can in cooperation with the Deer Lake Police Department and the Park County sheriff's office to find Josh K
irkwood and bring his abductor to justice.”
Ignoring the volley of questions, she moved through the crowd, headed back to her car.
“Did I say you'd be here a month, O'Malley?” Steiger murmured with a nasty smile as she strode past him. “That might have been optimistic.”
CHAPTER 14
* * *
DAY 3
9:19 A.M. 15°
What the hell were you thinking?” Mitch slammed the door shut behind him and Leo's 1993 Women of the Big Ten calendar jumped on its peg, sending Miss Michigan rocking back on her lovely haunches.
Megan didn't bother to play dumb and she refused to play meek. Temper snapping, she shot up out of the decrepit chair she had barely settled her fanny on. “I was thinking of doing my job.”
“By going after Paul Kirkwood—”
“By following up on all possible leads,” she qualified, rounding the desk.
“Why the hell didn't you check with me first?”
“I don't have to check with you. You're not my boss—”
“Jesus Christ, don't you think the man's going through enough?” he snapped, leaning over her, his dark eyes blazing with fury.
Megan met his glare head-on. “I think he's going through hell and I'm doing everything I can to get him out of it.”
“By grilling him in front of the press?”
“That's bullshit! He's the one who made a big scene, not me. I was asking for information he should have given me an hour before. Information that could very well prove pertinent to his son's disappearance. Don't you find it just a little odd that he would be annoyed with me for that?”
Mitch went still, pulling all his anger and energy inward, smoothing his face into a blank mask. He stared down at Megan. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked, his voice a razor-edged whisper. “Are you saying you think Paul Kirkwood kidnapped his own son?”
“No.”
She blew out a breath and swept back the tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail. Control. If he could have it, she could, too. Besides that, she was running low on adrenaline. As always happened on a big case, it would ebb and flow in an erratic tide, following the radical ups and downs of the investigation. She stepped back from him and leaned a hip against the desk as she dug a prescription bottle of ergotamine out of her briefcase, fished out one tablet, and washed it down with Pepsi to ward off the headache that was sinking its talons into her forehead.
“I'm saying I went to him this morning with a lead and he blew me off,” she said. “I'm saying he committed a rather peculiar sin of omission by not telling me he had once owned and sold a van that meets the general description of the one we're looking for, and when I called him on it, he went off. Don't you find that all just a little strange, Chief?”
“You don't know the kind of pressure he's under.”
“And you do?”
“Yes,” Mitch returned too sharply. The tone revealed too much when his instincts told him to reveal nothing.
He kicked himself mentally for the tactical blunder and turned away. Hands jammed at his waist, he prowled the small office, restless, edgy.
For the first time he noticed all of Leo's certificates and commendations still tacked up on his ego wall, and Wally the Walleye preserved for all eternity on a walnut plaque above the file cabinets, cigar butt sticking out of his ugly fish mouth. Poor old Leo had left no one behind to collect the souvenirs of his life. The malodorous aroma of his cheap cigars lingered in the air, lurking darkly beneath the choking sweet perfume of air freshener. Sitting on the front edge of the desk was the only physical sign of Megan taking over the office, a shiny brass nameplate—AGENT MEGAN O'MALLEY, BCA.
Megan watched him carefully, reading the set of his broad shoulders, the angle of his head. He wanted to dismiss her, but he was on her turf. He wanted to walk out, but he wouldn't. Even before she asked the question, she knew what his answer would be.
“Would you care to enlighten me, Chief?”
“We aren't here to talk about me,” he said, the words short and terse.
“Aren't we?” Megan advanced on him, hands on her hips, unconsciously mimicking his stance. They faced each other like a pair of gunslingers, and the tension in the air was as thick as the smell of old Dutch Masters cigars.
He glared at her, his face a rigid mask of hard planes and sharp angles. Pride and anger and something like panic squeezed into a knot in his chest. He wanted to push it away. He wanted to push her away, out of his way, away from the dark territory that was his past. Like a cornered wolf, he wanted to lash out, but the need to control that rage overruled. So he stood there with every muscle as rigid as the walls he had built to protect himself.
“You're on thin ice, O'Malley,” he said in a deadly whisper. “I suggest you back off.”
“Not if what's going on here is you projecting your feelings onto Paul Kirkwood,” Megan said, stubbornly taking another step out onto that proverbial thin ice, knowing that if it cracked, she would be sucked into the vortex of the rage whirling beneath his surface. “If that's what's going on, then we'd damn well better talk about it. An investigation is no place for that kind of involvement, and you know it.”
An investigation was no place for the kind of emotions that were stirring inside her now, either. She wanted to break his iron fist of control. She wanted him to let go. She wanted him to confide in her—not for the good of the case, but because in a corner of her heart she seldom acknowledged and never indulged, she wanted to get closer to him. Dangerous stuff all the way around. Dangerous and seductive.
The heat between them intensified by one degree and then another. Then he turned away abruptly, snapping the thread of tension.
As he fought to regulate his breathing and his temper, Mitch found himself staring at a snapshot of Leo at the annual Park County Peace Officers Association barbecue—red-faced, wearing a stained chef's apron over his considerable bulk and a cap with a plastic trout head sticking out one side and its tail sticking out the other. Beer in hand, cigar clamped between his teeth, he stood beside a pig roasting on a spit.
Life had sure as hell been simpler with Leo around. Leo had been a grunt-work old-fashioned cop not interested in new theories of criminology or psychology or personnel dynamics. He had never wanted to spill his guts to Leo. He didn't want to unlock the door to the old pain, didn't want to show any sign of vulnerability, especially not here, on the job. Here, more than anywhere, he needed to keep the emotions closed up tight in their little box in his chest.
“Look,” he said in a low voice, “I think you could have been more diplomatic, that's all. If you want to track down Paul's van, fine. Do it through the DMV. I'll handle any questioning.”
“I've already called the DMV. They're checking,” Megan said, the adrenaline receding sharply, leaving her feeling drained. “Or, rather, they're trying to. Their computer is down.
“I just wanted an explanation from him,” she confessed. “I realize people react differently to this kind of stress, but . . . I get the feeling he doesn't want to talk to me—or look me in the eye, for that matter. My gut feeling is he's holding something back, and I want it.”
“It may have nothing to do with Josh,” Mitch said irritably. “Maybe he doesn't like women cops. Maybe he feels guilty because he wasn't there for Josh that night. That kind of guilt can tear a man up inside. Maybe you look just like the girl who turned him down for the senior prom way back when.”
“Where was he that night?” Megan demanded, unwilling to give in. “Why wasn't he there?”
“He was working.”
“Hannah called him repeatedly and he didn't answer the phone.”
“He was working in a conference room down the hall.”
She gave him a look of astounded disbelief. “And he returns to his office and ignores the message light on his machine? Who does that? And while we're at it, who can corroborate it?”
“I don't know,” Mitch conceded. “Those are valid q
uestions, but I'll be the one to ask them.”
“Because you're the boss?” Megan said archly.
The muscles in his jaw tightened. A sculpture in granite couldn't have looked more forbidding. “I told you not to rock my boat, O'Malley,” he said softly. “This is my town and my investigation. We'll do it my way. There's only one top dog around here, and it's me. Is that clear?”
“And I'm supposed to come to heel and sit like a good little bitch?”
“Your analogy, not mine,” he said. “This case is giving the press enough fodder as it is. I don't need Paul going off like a rocket in front of them.”
“We're agreed on that much. I don't need any more airtime, either, thanks anyway,” she said dryly. “DePalma has already left three messages for me to call him so he can chew me out over the StarTribune article.”
“And you ignored them?” he mocked. “Who does that?”
Megan narrowed her eyes. “He isn't calling to tell me my child is missing. He's calling to sink his teeth into my throat and shake me like a dead rat—something I'd like to see someone do to that hack Henry Forster, now that I think of it.”
“Maybe we can set it up as a media event,” Natalie suggested, letting herself into the office. Her face was screwed into an expression of supreme displeasure as she looked up at Mitch. “I like that irony, don't you? We can add Paige Price and her ‘inside informant' to the list of headline acts. Someone gave her the scoop on the notes.”
“No,” Mitch said, as if that would make it so. The bottom dropped out of his stomach as Natalie refused to retract the information.
“TV 7 just did a live report from the steps of the courthouse. Paige Price read the world the messages you've found. She said the notes came from a laser printer and were printed on common twenty-pound bond paper.”
“Shit.” Mitch rubbed a hand over his face, imagining how Hannah would feel hearing those lines read aloud on television, imagining Paul's rage. Imagining every nut in the state cranking up their laser printers. Imagining wrapping his fingers around Paige Price's throat and squeezing.
