Night Sins

by Tami Hoag

  The last picture on the page was of herself and Josh. On a sailboat at sunset. Him sleeping on her lap, her arms cradling him against her. Her eyes were closed as she bent over him. Her hair was blowing over her shoulder. She held him safe while the sea rolled and the wind snapped the sails. Safe and loved.

  She could close her eyes and feel the weight of him in her arms. His small body warm against hers. His hair smelled of salt water. His eyelashes curled against his cheek, impossibly long and thick. And she could feel her love for him swell in her chest. Her child. A beautiful little person created and nurtured in love. And she could feel, as she had at that moment, all the hope she had held for him, all the dreams she had dreamed. Perfect dreams. Wonderful dreams.

  Dreams that had been snatched away. Josh was gone. Her arms were empty. All she had left were photographs and memories.

  A soft knock sounded against the door, startling her. She jerked around as yet another volunteer from the missing children group poked her head into the room. Another stranger from another town she'd never heard of.

  “I brought you some hot chocolate,” the woman said softly, using the excuse to let herself into the room.

  Hannah put her around forty, medium height with curvy hips and no breasts. Her hair was a mop of chestnut curls, and rumpled bangs tumbled over the tops of rimless glasses. Terry something. The names went in one ear and out the other. Hannah made no effort to remember them. They came to offer support, sympathy or empathy, and friendship, but she didn't want to have anything in common with them. Theirs was a club she had no desire to join.

  “Your husband is on television,” Terry Whoever said as she set the mug of cocoa down on the nightstand. “I thought you might want to know.”

  Hannah shook her head. Terry made no comment. She stood with her back against the wall beside the door, her hands tucked into the pockets of tan corduroy slacks. Waiting. Hannah told herself again that she didn't want to reach out to this woman, but the warning couldn't penetrate the need to fill the silence.

  “They asked me to go on,” she said, staring out the window at the cold black night. “I don't want anything to do with it. I won't put what I feel on display for an audience.”

  The woman didn't chastise her. She didn't say anything, as if she somehow knew there was more. The words tumbled out like a guilty secret.

  “People expect me to. I know they do. They expect me to be at the rallies and the prayer vigils and on television. But I don't want to be weak in front of them, and I know I can't be strong. I can't be who they want me to be. Not now.” And the guilt from that was another weight added to the burden already crushing her.

  “That's all right,” Terry said in an unflappable tone. “Don't worry about what anyone else wants from you. You don't have to go on television if it feels wrong for you. We each do what we have to to get through the nightmare. Maybe it helps your husband to go on television.”

  “I wouldn't know.”

  Again the silence.

  “We're not communicating very well these days.”

  “It's hard. You do the best you can. Hang on to the pieces of your relationship and worry about putting them back together later. What's important now is just getting through it.”

  Hannah's gaze strayed to the photo album on the desk, the smiling images of her son. She would have done anything, given anything, to have him back safe. She thought of Olie Swain sitting in a jail cell, thought of the secrets he had yet to reveal, and the unbearable sense of anticipation filled her again. What did he know? What would he tell? And when he told his secrets, would it be over?

  “It's not knowing,” she whispered. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to hold back the tears, but they came anyway. “God, I can't stand not knowing! I can't stand it!”

  Sobbing, she threw herself against the wall and slammed her fist against it again and again, oblivious to the pain. And when the burst of adrenaline was spent, she just stood there pressed against the carefully painted mural of boys playing baseball, and cried. She didn't move when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder.

  “I know,” Terry murmured. “My son was abducted when he was twelve, on his way home from the movies. We lived in Idaho then, in a town a lot like this one, a quiet, safe place. Not so safe, it turned out. I thought the not knowing would kill me. And there were times I wished it had,” she confessed softly.

  Gently, she pulled Hannah away from the wall and led her to the bunk beds, where they sat down side by side. Hannah wiped her face on the sleeve of her sweater and struggled to pull herself together, embarrassed that she had come apart in front of this stranger. But Terry acted as if this were the most normal of scenes, as if she hadn't even noticed the outburst.

  “He would have been sixteen this year,” she said. “He would have been learning to drive, going on dates, playing on the basketball team at school. But the man who took him away from us took him away forever. They found his body in a landfill, thrown away like so much garbage.” Her voice strained and she went silent for a moment, waiting for the pain to ease.

  “After they found him there was . . . relief. At least it was over. But when we didn't know at least we had some hope that he was alive and that we might get him back.” She turned to Hannah, her eyes bright with tears that wouldn't fall. “Hold on to that hope with both hands, Hannah. It's better than nothing.”

  She's gone through this, Hannah thought. She knows what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, what I'm fearing. The bond was there. That she didn't want it didn't matter; it was there. They shared a common nightmare and this woman was offering what wisdom she had won from the ordeal. It didn't matter that Hannah didn't want to join this club; she was already a member.

  She reached across the bedspread, took Terry Whoever's hand in hers and squeezed it tight.

  7:42 P.M. -30° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -62°

  “. . . and I'm outraged that this sick, perverted animal was not only let out of his cage, but was allowed to work in the same building with my son and the sons and daughters of everyone in this community!”

  Applause from the people in the volunteer center made Paul Kirkwood pause. He stared directly at the camera, head up, chin jutting forward, the light in his eyes fanatical. The look seemed to pierce the television screen and travel through the bars of the cell right into Olie's chest. He knew that look, that tone of voice. You make me sick! You're nothing but a little freak! Spawn of the devil, that's what you are! I'll beat some good into you! And the other, shriller voice joined in harmony. I told you, Leslie! You're good for nothing! Don't you cry or we'll give you something to cry about!

  He huddled into the corner of his bunk, curling up like a frightened animal as the voices ranted on. He had been locked in his own cell in the city jail, a luxurious place as jails went. Mainly empty. The newness of the facility lingered. The walls were white, the hard gray floors polished. Only the vaguest aroma of urine cut through the strong scent of pine cleaners. No smoking was allowed.

  In the next cell was the proud owner of the small portable television. A stringy, narrow-eyed character named Boog Newton who was doing three months for repeatedly drinking himself into a stupor and climbing behind the wheel of his four-by-four. In his latest escapade, he had backed into the plate glass display window of the Loon's Call Book and Gift Shop. As the only semipermanent resident in the place, he was allowed amenities.

  Boog sat on his bunk with his elbows on his knees, picking his nose, absorbed by Paul Kirkwood's passionate sermon on the failings of the system and the injustices against decent people.

  “. . . I'm sick of turning on the evening news and having to listen to how another child has been raped or murdered or abducted. We have to do something. We have to put a stop to this madness!”

  The broadcast broke for a commercial on a wave of applause. Boog rose and swaggered over to the wall of iron bars that separated the cells. His face was pitted with acne scars, his mouth twisted into a perpetual sneer.

  �
�Hey, dumbshit, they're talking about you,” he said, leaning against the bars.

  Olie stood and began to pace back and forth along the far side of his cage, back and forth, back and forth, head down, counting the steps in an attempt to shut the man out. He didn't like men. Had never liked men. Men only ever wanted to hurt him.

  “Hey, you know what I'd do if I was a judge? I'd put a bag over your ugly head, give the father of that kid a steel pipe, and lock you in a room together. Let him beat the shit out of you. Let him bash your head in. Let him ream you a new asshole with that pipe.”

  Olie paced, his hands in his pockets, his breath coming faster and faster.

  “Hey, you know what I think they oughta do with freaks like you? I think they oughta cut your pecker off and shove it up your ass. No. They oughta put you in a cell with some nine-hundred-pound no-neck biker and let him put it to you all night every night for the rest of your life. See how you like it.”

  Olie already knew. He knew what they did to child molesters in the joint. He remembered every excruciating moment, every pain, the sickening fear. He knew what it was to be tortured. Sweat burst out of his pores, sour with the knowledge that it would all happen again. Whether they kept him there or sent him back to Washington, it would all happen again.

  “Hey, you're sick, you know that? That's sick, touching little boys and shit like that. What'd you do to that Kirkwood kid? Kill him? They oughta kill you—”

  “It wasn't me!” Olie screamed. His whole face was flushed. His good eye bugged out, rolling wildly. He launched himself across the small space and slammed into the bars, pinching Boog's fingers. “It wasn't me! It wasn't me!”

  Boog jerked back, stumbling, shaking his stinging fingers. “Hey, you're nuts! You're fucking crazy!”

  A shout rang from the end of the hall as the jailer came running.

  Olie sank to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut, sobbing, “It wasn't me.”

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  DAY 7

  8:37 P.M. -31° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -64°

  Grandma says you put the bad guy in jail and now it'll be easier to breathe,” Jessie said as she worked at tying a long, bedraggled red ribbon around Scotch's throat.

  The old dog suffered the indignity with good grace, groaning a little and rolling his eyes up at Mitch, who sat on the couch studying the photocopied pages of Josh's notebook, looking for some mention of Olie beyond the one page—Kids tease Olie but that's mean. He can't help how he looks. The living room floor was littered with Barbie dolls and their paraphernalia. The television in the oak entertainment center across the room was tuned to a news magazine. As Jane Pauley dished out the headlines, images of the latest L.A. earthquake and a scandal-embroiled figure skater flashed across the screen.

  Jessie looked up at Mitch from her seat on the floor. “Why did Grandma say that?”

  The first few answers that came to mind were not flattering to Joy Strauss. Mitch bit his tongue and counted to ten. “She meant she feels safer now,” he said, turning over a page of carefully drawn spaceships and laying it facedown with the other pages on the coffee table.

  And it meant Joy had been given a new needle to stick him with.

  “I can't believe someone like him can just be allowed to walk the streets of Deer Lake.”

  “He wasn't exactly wearing a sign, Joy. He didn't have a big P for pedophile branded on his forehead. How was I supposed to know?”

  “Well, Alice Marshton says police departments have networks that keep track of this kind of person. Alice reads a lot of mysteries and she says—”

  “This is real life, Joy, not an Agatha Christie novel.”

  “You don't have to be so huffy. I was just saying what Alice told me.”

  She was just saying what more than a few people in town were saying—that they blamed him for Josh Kirkwood's disappearance. He understood that they felt the need to blame somebody. Pointing the finger at a real live person was less frightening than believing they had no defense against what had happened. But that didn't make it any easier to take the abuse. Natalie had fielded angry phone calls all day; the tape on his home answering machine was full of messages from irate citizens.

  He continued to let the machine take the brunt of the fury. He had no desire to play whipping boy tonight. He wanted some quiet time with Jessie—even if he had to divide his attention between his daughter and the stack of paperwork he had brought home with him. Joy had clucked about him taking Jessie home on such a cold night, insisting she would catch a virus. Mitch had reminded her they were only going across the alley and told her it was too cold for germs, refraining from yet another futile attempt at explaining how viruses are actually spread. Since he had never worked in the kitchen of the hospital like her friend Ione, Joy had no faith in his medical knowledge.

  Finished with the bow, Jessie picked up a brush and began to groom Scotch's back. The Labrador made a sound of contentment and rolled onto his side, offering his belly for this treatment. “Grandma said that man did all kinds of bad things to little kids that only God knows about,” Jessie said. “But if God's the only one that knows, then how does Grandma know?”

  “She doesn't. She only thinks she knows. No one has proven that man did anything.” Mitch felt amazed and vaguely ashamed of himself for defending Olie Swain just to take sides against his mother-in-law.

  He turned to another page, this one full of Josh's thoughts about being made co-captain of his hockey team. Its real cool. I'm real proud, but my Mom says not to brag. Just do a good job. No body likes a bragger. The next page expressed his displeasure with having to go to religion class in the form of mad faces and thumbs-down signs, God with a long beard and halo, and a devil's scowling face.

  “Then how come that man's in jail?”

  “Jessie . . .” he said, trying not to grit his teeth. He leaned ahead to brush a hand over his daughter's head. “Honey, Daddy's really tired from this case. Can we talk about something else?”

  Guilt nipped him immediately. He had always made a point of being as honest and up front with Jessie as he could. It seemed to him that deflecting a child's questions caused more problems than it cured, but he didn't have the energy for answers tonight. Now that Olie was behind bars, the stress and long hours were hitting with a vengeance. And the worry for Josh's well-being had intensified with the discovery of the bloodstains in the van. They could do nothing but wait for the lab results. Unfortunately, Jessie's idea of changing the subject was not quite what Mitch had in mind.

  A page of Josh's drawings caught her eye, and she abandoned Scotch to scoot over to the coffee table on her knees. “Who made these pictures for you?”

  “These are pictures Josh made.” He ran a fingertip along the crooked line of a forgotten game of tic-tac-toe.

  “Can I color them for you?”

  “No, honey, this is evidence. Why don't you make me a picture from one of your coloring books?”

  Jessie ignored the suggestion. She picked up one of the pages Mitch had already set aside and studied it.

  “Did you find Josh?”

  Mitch sighed and speared his fingers back through his hair, lifting it into thick spikes. “Not yet, sweetheart.”

  “He must be sad,” she said quietly, carefully laying the drawing down. It showed a boy with freckles and a big hairy dog. Me and Gizmo.

  “Come here, sweetie,” Mitch whispered, opening his arms in invitation. Jessie scrambled around the end of the table and climbed up on his lap. Mitch wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Are you still worried about someone taking you away?”

  “A little bit,” she mumbled against his chest.

  He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he wouldn't let anything happen to her, that nothing bad would happen to her if she followed all the rules. But he couldn't make any of those promises and he hated the sense of impotence and inadequacy that reality gave him. He wished the world were a place where little girls had nothi
ng to worry about except playing with their dolls and dressing their dogs up in red satin bows, but that wasn't the case. Not even in Deer Lake.

  He rocked his daughter slowly. “You know, it's not your job to worry, Jess. Worrying is my job.”

  She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “What about Grandma? She worries about everything.”

  “Yeah, well, Grandma is in a league of her own. But when it comes to you and me, I get to do all the worrying, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, trying to smile.

  Mitch held a hand out in front of her, palm up. “Here. You crunch up your worry like a piece of paper and give it to me.”

  Jessie giggled and made a show of pretending to squish her worries into a ball. She plopped the invisible burden in Mitch's hand. He closed a fist over it and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. Scotch watched the proceedings with his head cocked and his ears up.

  The doorbell rang and the dog lurched to his feet with a booming bark, tail wagging.

  “That'll be Megan,” Mitch said, rising with Jessie in his arms.

  Jessie stuck her lower lip out. “How come she's coming over? You said I could stay up late 'cause there's no school tomorrow and we'd have fun.”

  “We've had lots of fun, haven't we?” Mitch said. “But you can't stay up as late as me, so who will keep me company when you go to bed?”

  “Scotch.”

  Mitch growled and tickled her, then sent her into a fit of squealing giggles by swinging her up over his shoulder legs first. He opened the door with a smile and backed into the living room, calling, “Welcome to the monkey house!”

  Megan's reluctance couldn't withstand the windchill factor of minus sixty-something. She stepped into the foyer of Mitch's house, closing the door behind her, instantly feeling like an intruder. Mitch was giving Jessie a wild ride around the living room on his shoulders while a big yellow dog gave chase with a Barbie doll in his mouth. No one seemed to notice her standing there swaddled in wool and goose down with a quart of chocolate chip ice cream clutched between her mittens. She wondered if they would notice if she simply backed out the door and went home.