by Tami Hoag
“What's his motive?” Mitch demanded. “Why would he do something to his own son?”
“It happens,” Megan insisted. “You know it does. What about that case up on the Iron Range last year? What that man had done to his own daughter was unspeakable, and he showed up for the search every day, made pleas through the media, took a second mortgage on his house to put up reward money. It happened there and it could happen here.
“This is not Utopia, Chief,” she continued, her patience wearing thin with his resistance, with the situation. “It's just a town like any other town. The people are just like people everywhere—some are good and some are rotten. Even the Garden of Eden had a snake in it. Deal with it.”
The look he cut her way was dark and dangerous. “You think I'm not dealing with it?” His voice was whisper-soft and stiletto-sharp.
“I think you don't want to.”
“Well, we know you do, don't we?” he said sardonically. “All you care about is pulling your fanny out of the fire and getting a nice gold star on your evaluation sheet. Even if you have to tear up a few people on the way. The end justifies the means.”
“You can save that bullshit speech for Paige Price,” Megan snapped, jamming her hands at her waist. “You know damn well I want to get Josh back. Don't you snipe at me for telling the truth. I think it's too easy for you to put yourself in Paul Kirkwood's place, and that could cost us.”
Mitch was in no mood to have his conscience or his cop instincts poked at. Tired and frustrated, he lashed out at her.
“In other words, Agent O'Malley, I should forget this man has lost his son and go straight for the jugular. I should get my priorities straight, like you. The job comes first. The job, the job, the fucking job!” he shouted in her face.
“The job is who I am,” Megan said, fierce pride sparking in her eyes. “If you don't like it, tough shit.”
“It's who you are because it's all you'll allow,” Mitch snarled. “God forbid you should take off the badge and be a woman for a while. You wouldn't know what to do.”
Megan jerked back as the blow landed with almost physical force. She had taken off the badge. She had been a woman. For him. Apparently, she hadn't done a very good job of it. The idea cut her to the quick.
“Oh, like you'd give me so much more?” she struck back, her tone dripping sarcasm. “What will you give me, Chief? A roll on your sofa? Yeah, that's worth throwing my career away.”
His mouth twisted in a sneer. “I don't recall you complaining when you had your legs wrapped around me.”
“Oh, no,” Megan admitted without flinching, holding the hurt deep inside a fist of control. “It was great while it lasted. Now it's over. A big relief to you, I'm sure. Those relationships that drag on for more than three or four days can put a real crimp in your martyrdom.”
“Don't!” Mitch shouted, holding up a hand in warning. His left hand. The hand that bore his wedding ring. The gold band caught the light, gleaming, giving the lie to the denial that hadn't even made it out of his mouth.
He turned away from her and blew out a long breath. Jesus, how had they gotten on to this? What did he care what Megan O'Malley would and would not allow in her life? They'd had sex. Big deal. He didn't want anything more from her and his reasons had nothing to do with penance for past sins. This was why he didn't want anything more from Megan O'Malley. She was bullheaded and opinionated and she provoked him and antagonized him. He couldn't control himself when he was around her, and he sure as hell couldn't control her.
Megan pulled the emotions back and locked them up where they belonged. This was why she couldn't fall for Mitch Holt. He had just proven the very rule he had coaxed her to break: no cops. Now that it was over between them, everything she had given him, every private aspect of herself she had shared, would be used against her. Now there would be this awkwardness between them. Every time they had to be in the same room together, every time they had to work together.
Work should have been her only focus all along. You knew better, O'Malley. Whatever made you think you could have something more? She swallowed down the knot of emotion in her throat and forced her mind back on track.
“We have to get Paul's fingerprints,” she said. “He owned that van; he might still have a key. If his prints are in it now, after all this time, he'll have some explaining to do. You get him in here, Chief, or I will.”
Mitch marveled at the way she slid into her cop skin so easily and ignored the emotional blood they had just drawn. He could almost feel the cold from the walls of ice that went up around her to close him off, to protect herself and the feelings he had just raked his claws through. It irked him that she had that kind of control when he felt wild inside, when he wanted to scream at her and shake her. It irritated him that he felt the slightest twinge of remorse and regret, that he felt something when she seemed to have turned her feelings off.
“Don't boss me around, O'Malley,” he warned.
Megan arched a brow. “What are you going to do about it? Tell the press you've seen me naked?” She walked away from him with her head up. “Do your job, Chief, or I'll do it for you.”
Mitch said nothing as she walked out of the war room and closed the door. He paced the room, trying to hang on to his control, trying to put his focus where it belonged.
Snarling, he wheeled around and glared at the message board. He couldn't see Paul typing out those twisted missives. He knew parents lost their tempers or their minds and committed sins that could never be atoned for. Then he thought of Kyle and what it had felt like to see his son lying dead, to live every day with the thought of how old Kyle would have been and what he would have been doing had he lived. He thought of the way it hurt every time he saw little boys playing ball, chasing up and down the street on bikes with dogs in hot pursuit. He couldn't reconcile the idea of willfully harming a child, because he still hurt so badly from having his taken from him.
I think it's too easy for you to put yourself in Paul Kirkwood's place, and that could cost us.
Easy? No. Easy wasn't the right word at all.
He walked back to the table, where Josh's think pad lay. He needed a suspect. Someone who knew the Kirkwoods, knew the area, knew Josh.
He turned through the pages of doodling and games of hangman, his pride at being made co-captain of his hockey team, his sadness at the trouble between his parents. Dad is mad. Mom is sad. I feel bad. . . . Marital problems didn't make Paul Kirkwood the kind of monster who could steal his own son and leave behind quotes on sin and ignorance.
Sin.
Mitch turned another page and stared hard at the drawings. Josh's interpretation of God and the devil, his opinions of religion class—mad faces and thumbs-down signs. Sin. In his mind's eye he could see Albert Fletcher, the St. Elysius deacon, standing on the verge of Old Cedar Road with the hood of a black parka framing his lean face.
9:57 P.M. -30° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -55°
In a perfect world, Hannah would be a candidate for sainthood,” Kathleen Casey pronounced. She sat on the sagging couch in the nurses' lounge, running shoes propped up on a blond oak Scandinavian coffee table. Dressed in green surgical scrubs and a white lab coat with the business end of a stethoscope tucked into the breast pocket, she chewed thoughtfully on a plastic needle cap as she stared unseeing at the television across the room. “All those in favor of making this a perfect world, say aye.”
Megan sank deeper into what had once been an overstuffed leather armchair. Barely stuffed was a more appropriate description. They were the only people in the lounge. Beyond the open door, the small hospital was quiet. The occasional telephone ringing. The occasional page. A far cry from the city hospitals with their codes and crises. Megan entertained thoughts of finding an empty bed and crashing. Maybe one nice shot of Demerol and then eight or ten hours of oblivion. She rubbed at her forehead and sighed.
“How do her co-workers feel toward her?” she asked, underlining the word co-workers on her notepad.
&nbs
p; “Like I told the last nine cops, she's a nurse's dream. I regularly pinch myself when we're working together.” Her small bright hazel eyes showed her years of a different experience. “Sixteen years in this business. I cut my teeth on arrogant residents and chiefs of staff who swore they couldn't have a God complex because they were God. If those guys are in heaven when I get there, I want my visa revoked at the gate.”
“How does she get along with the other doctors?”
“Great—with the exception of our Chad Everett wannabe. Dr. Craig Lomax. He was miffed when Hannah was named head of ER. It has somehow escaped his attention that he's a lousy doctor.”
“How miffed?”
“Enough to punish us all with his sulking. Enough to challenge Hannah's authority.” She took a sip of her caffeine-free Pepsi, then replaced the needle cap between her teeth and bit down. “If you're asking me was he pissed enough to take Josh, the answer is no. He's obnoxious, not insane. Besides, he was on duty that night.”
“What about patients?” Megan asked. “Anyone you can think of who didn't handle the outcome of a case well? Someone who would have blamed her.”
Kathleen ran a hand back through her thick hedge of red hair as she thought. “This isn't like the city, you know. People in small towns don't sue for malpractice. They trust their doctors and have enough common sense to know everything doesn't always work out for the best and it isn't always somebody's fault.”
Megan persisted. “What about relatives of people who didn't make it? A parent who lost a child, maybe.”
“Let's see. . . . The Muellers lost a baby to SIDS last fall. Brought him in DOA. Hannah worked on him forever, but there was nothing she could do.”
“Were they angry?”
“Not with Hannah. She went above and beyond the call.” She thought some more, scanning a mental list and discarding names. “I can't think of anyone who would do this kind of thing. Hannah is an excellent doctor. She can calm people down faster than a handful of Valium. And she knows the limitations of our hospital. She doesn't hesitate to send a patient on to a better-equipped facility if she thinks it's warranted.” She pulled her feet off the coffee table and tucked them beneath her on the couch. Tugging the needle cap from between her teeth, she used it like a pointer. “I remember the time she personally drove Doris Fletcher to the Mayo Clinic for tests because her husband refused to take her.”
“Fletcher?” Megan sat up straight. “Any relation to Albert Fletcher?”
Kathleen rolled her eyes. “Deer Lake's own Deacon of Doom. The world's going to hell on a sled. Women are the root of all evil. Sackcloth and ashes as a fashion statement. That Albert Fletcher? Yes. Poor Doris had the misfortune to marry him before he became a zealot.”
“And he wouldn't take her to a hospital for tests?” Megan asked, incredulous.
The nurse rolled her eyes. “He thought they should have waited for the Lord to heal her. Meanwhile the Lord is throwing His hands up in heaven, saying ‘I gave you the Mayo Clinic, for crying out loud! What more do you want!' Poor Doris.”
“How did Fletcher react to Dr. Garrison taking his wife for those tests against his will?”
“He was pissed. Albert isn't big on women asserting themselves. He thinks we should all still be paying because Eve screwed up.”
“What did his wife die of?” Megan asked.
“Her whole gastrointestinal system went haywire, then her kidneys failed,” she explained. “It was sad. No one ever came up with a concrete diagnosis. I said Albert was feeding her arsenic, but nobody listens to nurses.”
When Megan didn't laugh, Kathleen gave her a look. “I was joking. About the arsenic. That was a joke.”
“Could he have killed her?” Megan asked, straight-faced.
The nurse's eyes widened. Her pale brows shot up toward her hairline. “The deacon break a commandment? The sky would turn black and the earth would shake.”
“Was there an autopsy?”
Kathleen sobered. She turned the needle cap over and over in her small hands. “No,” she said softly. “Mayo pressed for it. They couldn't stand the idea of a disease they had no research funding for. But Albert refused on religious grounds.”
Megan stared at her notes. Messages about sin. A personal vendetta. If Fletcher had somehow managed to poison his wife and get away with it, he might still be inclined to punish Hannah for interfering. If he were crazy enough, twisted enough. He had been teaching religion classes the night Josh disappeared, but if they were looking at tag-team lunatics, then all alibis were irrelevant.
“You don't really think he took Josh, do you?” Kathleen asked in a quiet voice. “I'd rather believe Olie did it and now he's roasting in hell.”
Megan heaved herself up out of the armchair. “I imagine he's roasting, but I think he's probably saving a spot for somebody. It's my job to find out who.”
The question that nagged her as she drove across town was whether or not it would still be her job by the end of the week.
She cursed office politics to hell and gone. She had come here to do a job, plain and simple. But there was nothing plain or simple about the situation into which they had all been thrust—herself, Mitch, Hannah, Paul, everyone in Deer Lake, all the people from outside the community who had come to help. One act of evil had changed all their lives. The taking of Josh had set into motion a chain of actions and reactions. Their lives had been wrested from their control and now hinged on a madman's next move.
She wondered if he knew that, whoever he was. As she stared out the windshield into the bleak shadows of the cold night, she wondered if he was thinking even now about his next move and how it would affect the unwilling players of his sick game.
Power. That was what this was all about. The power to play God. The power to break people until they begged for mercy. The rush of showing how much smarter he was than everyone else.
“It's easy to win the game when you're the only one who knows the rules,” Megan muttered. “Give us a clue, jerk. Just one lousy clue. Then we'll see what's what.”
Soon. It had to happen soon. She could feel her time running out. DePalma's ultimatum hung over her head like an anvil—make something good happen.
She turned onto Simley Street a block west of St. E's, killed the headlights, and let the Lumina roll for half a block before pulling in along the curb. There was no life on Simley Street at ten o'clock. Residents of the neat, boxy houses were all glued to the news—with the notable exception of Albert Fletcher. There was no light in the living room window of 606 Simley. There was no light in any window of the story-and-a-half house.
Where would a sixty-year-old Catholic deacon be at ten-fifteen on a Wednesday night? Out tripping the light fantastic with some hot widow? The image made Megan grimace.
She crossed the street and made her way down the sidewalk with a purposeful stride, as if she had every reason to be there. The trick of fitting in where you don't belong—pretend you do. She headed up the driveway of 606 and slipped around the side of the garage, taking herself out of sight of any neighbors who happened to glance out their front windows.
The snow screeched like Styrofoam beneath her boots. Even the fabric shell of her parka was stiff from the cold. Every move she made sounded like someone crumpling newspaper. She cursed herself for staying in this godforsaken deep-freeze as she fumbled in her coat pocket for a small flashlight. Mittens did not lend themselves to skills involving dexterity—one reason the number of burglaries always fell off dramatically during cold spells.
The side door of the garage was locked. Shielding the light with one hand, Megan held it up to the window and peered in, holding her breath so as not to fog the glass in the window. The only car in the garage was a sedan of indeterminate make encased in canvas sheeting, like an old couch hiding beneath a slipcover. The near stall was empty. The place was immaculate. Not so much as a grease spot on the floor.
She turned and followed the walk toward the back porch steps. She wanted to peek in the
windows, but all shades were drawn. Even the basement windows were covered. The foundation of the house had been wrapped with thick, cloudy plastic, then banked with snow for insulation.
Swearing, Megan knelt down directly beneath a first-floor window and dug the snow away with her hand. She pulled off one mitten, dipped in her coat pocket for a penknife, and used it to pry loose a few of the staples from the lathe that held the plastic in place. Tugging the plastic down, she shined the flashlight into the basement. What she could see of it was swept as clean as a dance floor. No stacks of old paint cans. No piles of newspapers. No boxes of discarded clothing. No dungeon. No chamber of horrors in evidence. No little boy.
Half disappointed, half relieved, Megan sat back on her haunches and shut off the flashlight. At the same instant, headlights beamed up the driveway.
“Shit!”
She scrambled to stuff the flashlight and penknife back into her pocket, managing to stick herself in the palm with the blade in the process. Biting down on the desire to yelp, she used her good hand to scoop the snow back up against the window. The garage door began its automatic ascent. She packed the snow as best she could, slapping at it with both hands. Her eyes kept darting to the garage. Fletcher drove in without seeing her, but if he came out the side and headed for his back door, her ass was fried.
The car engine rumbled, then quit. Crouching, Megan ran up the back steps, jumped down off the stoop, and ducked around the far side of the house, running headlong into a man.
Her scream was smothered by a big gloved hand. An arm banded around her with punishing strength, pulling her hard against a man's body. Twisting around, he pinned her between himself and the side of the house. Megan lashed out with the toe of her boot, connecting with his shin. He grunted in pain, but only leaned into her harder.
