Night Sins

by Tami Hoag

  “Be still!” he ordered in a harsh whisper.

  A familiar whisper.

  Megan stared up inside the tunnel of his hood. Even in the shadows it was impossible not to recognize Mitch's face. He slid his hand away from her mouth.

  Megan didn't say a word, but struggled instead to breathe in soundless pants. The cold air felt like fists pounding her lungs, and she brought a hand up to cup around her mouth as a filter. Fletcher's car door slammed. His footsteps crunched up the packed snow toward the back door. Chances were good that he would walk up his steps and into his house as he had done a million times without noticing anything out of the ordinary, like a footprint in the snow where there should not have been one. People were creatures of habit and routine, for the most part unobservant—unless they felt they had to be on guard.

  He hesitated. She could picture him standing in the spot where she had dug the snow away from the basement window. Come on, Albert. Move. Move. Please. He moved on slowly. Up the steps slowly. Megan held her breath. Was he wondering? Was he looking off the south side of the stoop? Could he make out footprints in the shadows?

  The rattle of keys. The turn of a lock. The heavy door thumped shut and the storm door sighed as it settled back against the frame.

  Megan let out an echoing sigh. The adrenaline rush passed, leaving her trembling. She looked up at Mitch and whispered, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Do you think we could have this argument inside a building?” she muttered. “I'm freezing my butt off.”

  10:55 P.M. -30° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -55°

  There wasn't much action at the Blue Goose Saloon, a hole-in-the-wall bar with blessedly poor lighting to keep the patrons from noticing the moth-eaten condition of the dead animals mounted on the walls. The bartender, a portly woman with mouse-brown curls that fit her head like a stocking cap, stood behind the bar, smoking a cigarette, and drying beer mugs with a dingy towel. She stared up at a Cheers rerun on the portable television, small dark eyes tucked into the fleshy folds of her face like raisins in bread dough. Her only customer at the bar was an old man with bad teeth who drank schnapps and carried on an animated conversation with himself about the sorry state of politics in Minnesota now that Hubert Humphrey was gone.

  Mitch had chosen the last booth in the line before the poolroom and sat so he could see the entrance and the front window that looked out on the street. Old habits. He ordered coffee and a shot of Jack Daniel's on the side. The Jack went down in a single gulp. He sipped at the coffee while Megan told him about her conversation with Kathleen Casey, the mysterious demise of Doris Fletcher, and her husband's enmity toward Hannah Garrison for interfering.

  Megan dumped her whiskey into the coffee and added fake cream. The drink was hot and potent and warmed her from the inside out, taking the edge off her shivering. She checked her hand, squinting in the dim light. The penknife had lanced her palm with a short cut now decorated with drying blood and mitten fuzz. It would need a Band-Aid but nothing more.

  “Why wait three years to get revenge?” Mitch asked.

  “I don't know. Maybe it took that long for the plan to ferment—or for his mind to snap.”

  “He was teaching class at St. E's the night Josh disappeared.”

  “Enter the ever-popular accomplice.”

  On the television above the bar Cliff Claven did a manic dance as someone zapped him with jolts of electricity. The bartender's cigarette bobbed on her lip as she chuckled with malicious glee. Another shiver went through Megan and she took a long sip of her drink.

  “You were at Fletcher's, too, Chief,” she pointed out. “Why are you playing devil's advocate with me?”

  “Because I like it.”

  “Your natural perverse tendencies aside, I have to assume you had a reason for being there.”

  He gave a lazy shrug. “Just sniffing around. Fletcher's obsessed with the church. Three of the notes mention sin. Josh didn't like religion class.”

  “Who could blame him with Fletcher for an instructor?” Megan said, shuddering. “Albert Fletcher would have given Vincent Price the creeps.”

  “I went back over the statement he gave Noogie the night Josh disappeared,” Mitch said. He chose a peanut from the basket that sat on the table, cracked it with one hand, and tossed the nuts into his mouth. “There's nothing in it to draw suspicion.”

  On the surface there was nothing about Albert Fletcher that would have drawn notice. He was a retired professional, a respected member of the community. Not what most people would consider the profile of a child predator, but there were just as many pieces that fit. Fletcher's duties with the church put him in proximity with children. His authority at St. E's translated into trust in the eyes of children and adults alike. He would hardly have been the first to abuse that trust.

  “Did he know Olie?”

  “I can't imagine they ran in the same circles, but we'll check it out. I'll talk to him myself in the morning.” He wished he could have run Fletcher in to the station that night, but that wasn't how things were done. He couldn't go after the man with nothing more than a hunch and some three-year-old rumors. No one had mentioned him in connection with Josh other than in his position with the church. No one had reported anything suspicious going on at Fletcher's house. Mitch had assigned a man to keep an eye on the residence through the night, just the same.

  He dug out his wallet and tossed some ones on the table. Megan followed suit. The bartender waddled out from behind her post to scoop up her booty as they headed for the door.

  “You folks come again,” she called in a voice that sounded like Louie Armstrong with a bad head cold.

  As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, the cold nearly took Megan's breath away. Not even the warmth of the whiskey in her belly could keep her teeth from chattering.

  “Jesus, Mary, and J-Joseph,” she stuttered, digging her car keys out of her pocket. “If it weren't for Josh, I think I'd be hoping to get fired. Humans weren't meant to live like this.”

  “Get tough or die, O'Malley,” Mitch drawled without sympathy.

  “If I get any tougher, bullets will bounce off me,” she tossed back as she slid behind the wheel of the Lumina.

  She began the ritual of coaxing the car to start, her gaze on Mitch as he climbed into the Explorer. The streets of Deer Lake were deserted, the Blue Goose the only business open. Watching him drive away gave her an empty feeling inside, as if she were the only human left on the planet.

  There were worse things than being alone. But as she sat there alone in the cold, dark night with a child missing and her future hanging by a thread, she had a hard time thinking what they were.

  * * *

  JOURNAL ENTRY

  DAY 8

  They found the jacket today. They don't know what to think. They don't know which way to turn. We can smell their panic. Taste it. It makes us laugh. They are as predictable as rats in a maze. They don't know which way to turn, so they turn on each other and they grasp at anything, hoping for a clue. They deserve whatever fate befalls them. The wrath of God. The wrath of colleagues, of neighbors, of strangers. Wrath rains down on the heads of the guilty and the fools.

  Should we give them something and see where it leads them? All scenarios have been mapped out, far beyond the immediate moment. If we give them A, will it lead them to B? If it leads them to C, what then? On to D or E? We can't be surprised. We have planned for all contingencies, all possibilities. Ultimately, we are invincible and they will know that. The game is ours. The suffering is theirs. Deserving victims of the perfect crime.

  CHAPTER 29

  * * *

  DAY 9

  8:00 A.M. -23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -51°

  The ground search resumed in the gray light of a sunless morning. The governor had volunteered cold-weather gear from the National Guard, and a pair of military trucks sat in the alley behind the old fire hall to dispense Arctic mittens
and thermal ski masks to any volunteer in need.

  With the discovery of Josh's jacket, the panic level around town had soared. More volunteers than ever crowded the briefing room in the fire hall, anxious, desperate to help. They flocked to the focal point of the search with the zeal of the mob storming Dr. Frankenstein's gates. They were angry and terrified and tired of the waiting. They wanted their town and their lives back, and they wanted to believe determination alone could win the day.

  Mitch sat in his Explorer and watched the search teams and search dogs disperse. Most cases had a feel to them, a rhythm that picked up as things progressed and clues came in and leads were followed and evidence built. This one had no rhythm, and the only feeling he got was bad. The deeper they went into this maze the more lost and disoriented they became.

  Maybe there were two kidnappers. Maybe Olie had been one of them. Maybe not. Maybe Paul was involved, but how and why? Maybe Albert Fletcher was a suspect. Maybe he was insane. Had he known Olie, or was the accomplice someone they hadn't even considered? Was there an accomplice at all?

  A stocky sergeant from the Minneapolis K-9 squad directed his German shepherd into the stand of cattails. The dog loped up onto the bank, tail wagging, nose to the snow. Uniformed officers herded volunteers out of the dog's path. Mitch's heart picked up a beat. The dog seemed to have a scent. He trotted south, away from the houses, along the snowmobile trail and up onto Mill Road, which ran east into town and west to farm country. He stood there, looking toward town, looking toward the field across the road where ash-blond cornstalks stood unharvested, row upon row, in testament to the wet fall and early winter.

  The scent was gone. Like every other scrap of hope they had been given, this one was snatched away. Mitch put the truck in gear and headed for Albert Fletcher's house, less than a half-mile away.

  By daylight the Fletcher home was an uninspired square, one-and-a-half stories high, painted a somber shade of gray. No remnants of the Christmas season decorated the door or the eaves. Albert apparently refrained from garish displays. Mitch recalled hearing something about a brouhaha in St. E's over decorating during Advent. The ladies' guilds were for it, the deacon was against it. Mitch hadn't paid much attention. His Sunday mornings were spent beside his daughter and his in-laws at Cross of Christ Lutheran, where he spent every sermon doing math in his head as an act of rebellion.

  He rang the doorbell and waited for the sound of footsteps. None came. No light escaped through the drawn shades. He hit the bell again and bounced on the balls of his feet in an attempt to shake off the cold. Earmuffs clamped his head like a vise. The hood of his parka stemmed the flow of body heat out the top of his head.

  No one came to the door. Of course, Albert was the only known resident of the house. Mrs. Fletcher was dead and the deacon had never been linked romantically with anyone. Despite the fact that he had had a successful career as comptroller of BuckLand Cheese and was probably comfortably well off, the ladies apparently did not consider him a catch.

  Doris wasting away might have had something to do with that, Mitch thought as he made his way along the neatly shoveled path to the garage. As far as he had been able to discern, no one had suspected Albert at the time of his wife's illness and subsequent death.

  The garage was immaculate from what he could see through the window. The doors were locked. The only car in residence sat beneath a dust-laden canvas cover. It looked as if it hadn't been moved or touched in years. Garden tools were lined up neatly along the wall. Peg-Board above the workbench displayed a neat array of Joe Handyman stuff—wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers.

  Clutching the chemical hand-warmer packets in his coat pockets, Mitch headed around the back of the house to check the basement window.

  His temper boiled at the memory of how close Megan had come to getting caught snooping around here the night before. What if Fletcher was insane? What if he had found her there alone?

  Mitch looked down at the foundation of the house, at the thick plastic sheeting that obscured the basement windows.

  The staples had been replaced.

  At the church Mitch found Father Tom kneeling with two dozen women, chanting the decades of the rosary. A wall of votives flickered and saturated the air with the thick vanilla scent of melting wax. On the wall beside the tiers of candles, the catechism classes had taped handmade posters. Carefully printed messages in colored marker on newsprint paper—Jesus, please keep Josh safe. Lord, please bring Josh home. Crayon drawings of angels and children and policemen.

  All eyes turned to Mitch as he hesitated beside the priest's pew. They looked to Mitch for some kind of deliverance, for some news he couldn't give. Father Tom rose and slipped out the end of the pew. The leader of the prayer dragged the rest of them on with her droning monotone.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee . . .”

  “Is there some news?” Father Tom whispered, his voice as taut as a guy wire. He let out a breath as Mitch shook his head.

  “I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “Let's go in my office.”

  Father Tom led the way, genuflecting hastily at the foot of the altar before moving on. In the office he motioned Mitch to a chair and shut the door. He looked as priestly as Mitch had ever seen him, with a clerical collar standing up stiffly above the crew neck of his black sweater. Comb tracks suggested he had even made an attempt to style his unruly hair into submission, though sandy sprigs sprung up defiantly at the crown of his head like wheat stubble. The pope gazed down on him from an oil painting on the wall behind him, looking more skeptical than benevolent, as if the collar didn't fool him in the least.

  “What's the occasion?” Mitch needled, pointing at his throat. “Is the bishop coming to town?”

  Tom McCoy gave him a sheepish look. “One of those little deals we make with God. I'll try to be a better priest if He'll give Josh back to us.”

  Mitch sensed an underlying motive but didn't press. He knew Father Tom well enough to golf with him, not well enough to act as confessor to a man rungs above him on the spiritual ladder.

  “Unfortunately for all concerned, I don't think God kidnapped him,” he said. “How was Hannah when you left last night?”

  The priest frowned down at the Game Boy on his blotter. “She's doing the best she can. She feels helpless; that's unfamiliar territory for her.”

  “Paul isn't exactly helping.”

  Father Tom's jaw tightened. “No. He isn't,” he said shortly. He drew in a slow breath and raised his head, his gaze glancing off Mitch's left shoulder. “I suggested she take up one of the news magazines on their request for an interview. I think it might help her if she can present her story in a way that could benefit other mothers, help prevent this kind of thing from happening to someone else. That's the role she's most familiar with—helping others.”

  “Maybe,” Mitch murmured, thinking of his own role as helper/protector and how he had retreated from it after his crisis.

  “You said you had some questions?”

  “Is Albert Fletcher around?”

  Father Tom's brows pulled together. He tucked his chin and sat back in his swivel chair. “Not at the moment. I think he's at the rectory. Why?”

  Mitch gave him his deadpan detective face. “I need to talk to him about a couple of things.”

  “Is this about Josh?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  Father Tom gave a laugh that held no amusement. “I believe we already had this little chat. Albert had Josh for server instruction and religion class. Doesn't that automatically make him a suspect?”

  Mitch let the defensive tone slide. “Fletcher was teaching classes the night Josh disappeared. Why? Do you think he could have done it?”

  “Albert is the most devout man I know,” Tom said. “I'm sure he secretly thinks I'm doomed to perdition because I had cable installed at the rectory. No.” He shook his head. “Albert would never blatantly break the law—secular or holy.”
<
br />   “How long have you known him?”

  “About three years.”

  “Were you around during his wife's illness?”

  “No. She died, I believe it was January ninety-one. I came here that March. I got the impression he must have been close to her by the way he turned to the church for solace afterward. The way he immersed himself, he must have had a big void to fill.”

  Or he had already been in love with the church and wanted Doris out of the way so he could pursue his obsession with full zeal. Mitch kept that theory to himself.

  “He had a funny way of showing his affection for her,” he said. “It seems to be fairly common knowledge that he didn't want her to seek treatment for her illness. He claimed he wanted to heal her through prayer, and he wasn't too pleased when Hannah intervened.”

  A frown curved Father Tom's mouth. “Mitch, you're not suggesting—”

  “I'm not suggesting anything,” Mitch said, getting out of his chair, hands raised in denial. “I'm fishing, that's all. I'll throw back a lot of chubs before I catch anything for the frying pan. Thanks for your time, Father.”

  He started for the door, then turned back. “Would Fletcher have made a good priest?”

  “No,” Father Tom answered without hesitation. “There's more to this job than memorizing scripture and church dogma.”

  “What's he lacking?”

  The priest thought about that for a moment. “Compassion,” he said softly.

  Mitch had never been a fan of old Victorian houses with their heavy dark woodwork and cavernous rooms. The St. Elysius rectory was no exception. It was big enough to house the entire University of Notre Dame football team, whose photograph hung prominently on the wall of the den above the evil cable box.

  He wandered through the rooms of the first floor, calling for Albert Fletcher and receiving no answer. The smell of coffee and toast lingered in the kitchen. A box of Frosted Flakes sat on the table. Beside it squatted a half-empty coffee mug, a souvenir from Cheyenne, Wyoming. The StarTribune had been left open to a story about the plight of the Los Angeles quake victims and the reprise of the old fake-priest scam—con men impersonating clergy and collecting cash donations intended for those left homeless.