by Tami Hoag
“Thank you, Professor. We'll set you up in a room here. A computer expert from the BCA will be working with you. That's standard procedure when someone from outside the agency is called in.”
“I understand. I don't have a problem with that.”
“Good.”
Megan reached out to shake his hand, but the contact was never made. Her office door swung open and Mitch leaned in.
“Paul's coming in,” he announced in a voice as hard as rock. “And he's bringing an entourage.”
CHAPTER 30
* * *
DAY 9
11:57 A.M. -20° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -46°
The circus set up in the City Center lobby. A ring made of television lights and cameras. An audience of shocked and angry people from the volunteer center, print media reporters, reporters from competing television stations, their eyes glowing with jealousy. As ringmaster: Paige Price, resplendent in a cardinal-red hacking jacket over a short black shift and black hose.
The main attraction at the City Center circus was, of course, Paul Kirkwood. He had been livid when Mitch had cornered him at Ryan's Bay and informed him he had to come in to be fingerprinted. He was still livid. This was all the fault of that bitch O'Malley. By God, he would make her pay. She and Mitch could both pay as far as Paul was concerned—for the humiliation, for the suspicion. He should have been the object of sympathy and concern and compassion. Instead, he was being fingerprinted.
He put on his best martyr's expression and gave it the perfect hint of indignation and outrage. He had considered going home first to shower and change into better clothes, but Paige had pointed out the potential for impact if he came in straight from the search in his jeans and Sorels and heavy sweater. His hair was mussed from his cap, his nose still red from the cold.
A TV 7 technician did a light check on Paige's face. Another minion sidled up to her with a compact mirror so she could check her makeup. She nodded her readiness. The countdown came from a disembodied voice just beyond the ring of light.
“Three . . . two . . . you're live.”
“This is Paige Price coming to you live from the Deer Lake City Center with Paul Kirkwood, whose son Josh was abducted outside an ice arena here in Deer Lake eight days ago. As the search for Josh and his abductor drags on, law enforcement authorities working on the case have suddenly turned their focus on Josh's father. Today Paul Kirkwood was ordered by Deer Lake Chief of Police Mitchell Holt to submit to having his fingerprints taken.” She turned to Paul, microphone in hand, grave expression in place. “Mr. Kirkwood, can we get a reaction from you on this latest development?”
“It's an outrage,” Paul replied, his voice shaking with the strength of his fury. “The BCA and the police have botched this case from the beginning. The only real suspect they had committed suicide while in their custody. They're desperate to appear as though they're making progress on the case when all they're doing is grasping at straws. But to turn the focus on me is absolutely unconscionable.”
Tears welled up in his eyes, sparkling like diamonds under the lights. “Josh is my son. I love him. I would never, never do anything to harm him. We did everything together. Camping, sports. He used to come to my office sometimes and I'd give him a calculator and he would pretend h-he was j-just like m-me.”
Giving Paul a chance to compose himself or make a spectacle of himself, whichever way he wanted to play it, Paige turned once again to face the camera. She let a single tear slide down her cheek, her big too-blue eyes like a pair of shimmering lakes. “This is certainly an unexpected and, if I might editorialize for a moment, a most callous turn taken by the BCA-led investigation into the disappearance of Josh Kirkwood. From the first terrible moments of this investigation we've seen Paul Kirkwood at the forefront of the search to find his missing child.”
She turned back to Paul, who was managing to look noble and long-suffering at once. “Mr. Kirkwood, do you have any explanation for their interest in you as a suspect?”
He shook his head sadly, wearily. “I once owned the van that belonged to Olie Swain. Years ago. Agent O'Malley has decided those intervening years mean nothing.”
“Agent Megan O'Malley with the BCA?”
“Yes.”
“And Chief Holt is going along with her theory that you are somehow involved in Josh's kidnapping because of this vague past connection to the van?”
“I don't understand it. I've done everything I can to aid in the investigation. How they can turn on me like this, I—I just don't understand. I've known Mitch Holt since he moved here. I can't believe he could think I was involved.”
Mitch and Megan and Sergeant Noga stood on the periphery of the mob at the mouth of the hall to the law enforcement center, unnoticed at first with all the jockeying for position by rival camera crews, their attention on Paul and Paige. Then at the mention of Mitch's name, one person turned and glared at him, then another. Then a camera swung around in his face and a microphone was thrust out in front of him.
“Chief Holt, do you have any comment on the situation with Paul Kirkwood?”
Before Mitch could do more than think of an obscenity he couldn't voice, the whole media tide swung toward them, babbling questions, thumbing their noses at Paige Price. Mitch made no attempt to answer or to placate them. A ferocious scowl tightening his features, he waded through them, his eyes on Paul. Megan tailed him. Noogie fell in behind her, guarding them from the rear.
Paige's face lit up. She couldn't have written a more perfect scenario. She stepped in front of Paul to intercept Mitch.
“Chief Holt, do you have anything to say about this apparent lack of compassion for this poor grieving father?”
He wanted to smack the poor grieving Paul upside the head for pulling this stunt. The play for sympathy had nothing to do with Paul's grief and everything to do with his petty vindictiveness. Mitch turned his glare on Paige, then looked over her shoulder at the mayor and half the town council standing in the hallway to the city offices.
“As I explained to Mr. Kirkwood quite thoroughly this morning,” he answered, “this procedure is necessary for the purpose of identifying all prints found in the van. He once owned the van, therefore, we're taking his fingerprints for comparison. Mr. Kirkwood is under neither arrest nor suspicion.”
He turned back to Paul, his face ruddy with anger. “If you'll come with me, Paul, we can have this over in a matter of minutes with a minimum amount of fuss.”
Paul's expression would have looked more fitting on a pouting ten-year-old. Noogie turned around to clear the path, and they started for the law enforcement center. The shouted questions of reporters echoed and amplified, filling up the atrium with a tower of sound.
Megan wasn't quick enough in her attempt to fall in line. Paige cut her off, clearly annoyed at having her exclusive interview disappear down the hall with a police escort.
“Agent O'Malley, what do you have to say about the BCA's role in this drama?” she asked, a gleam of vengeance in her eyes. “Do you consider Paul Kirkwood a suspect?”
Megan frowned as a spotlight hit her in the face. “No comment.”
“Is it true you're responsible for focusing this attention on Paul Kirkwood?”
Megan's stomach churned as she imagined DePalma watching this, his blood pressure hopping higher into the danger zone with every second. “A connection was found between Mr. Kirkwood and the van owned by Olie Swain,” Megan replied, measuring her words carefully. “What we're doing now is simply standard procedure and is in no way an indictment or a persecution of Mr. Kirkwood. We're simply doing our jobs.”
Paige moved in a little closer. Her eyes narrowed with what looked to Megan like malicious glee, though viewers would probably mistake it for sharp journalistic instincts. “Your job is pulling the focus of your investigation off legitimate leads and placing it on Josh's father?”
“We're following all leads, Ms. Price.”
“By ‘we,' you mean yourself and Chief Holt, with whom yo
u've been linked—”
“By ‘we,' I mean the agencies involved—”
“And this attention on Paul Kirkwood is not in retaliation for his criticism of your handling of the case?”
“I'm with the BCA,” Megan snapped. “Not the Gestapo.”
“Mr. Kirkwood has been openly critical of your conduct—”
“My conduct?”
A red haze filmed Megan's vision. How dare Paige Price prostitute herself for inside information, then turn around and point a pious finger at someone else?
“We're doing everything we can to find Josh. Perhaps you could ask Sheriff Steiger to elaborate on the details the next time you're in bed with him.”
Paige fell back a step, gasping, her face flushing as red as her jacket. Megan gave her a gotcha, bitch smile, then turned on her heel to push her way through the mob.
She ignored the hands that grabbed at her. The shouted questions ran together in a cacophony of babble. She had nothing to say to any of them. These parasites offered little in the search for Josh or the effort to capture the predator who had taken him. As far as she was concerned, they were nothing but carrion feeders, getting in the way and clouding the focus of the case with their endless dust storms of manufactured controversy.
Let them feed on each other, she thought, striding purposefully down the hall of the law enforcement center. Her gaze was focused straight ahead, her mind moving beyond, to the booking room where Paul Kirkwood was grudgingly giving up his fingerprints.
9:23 P.M. -23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -50°
The reaction to Paul's theatrics was immediate and overwhelming. Phones in the police department and city hall offices rang off the hook all afternoon. Paul would have been dismayed, however, to learn that not all of the callers were expressing their displeasure with “this disgraceful turn of events,” as one of his supporters called it. While some sympathies ran in Paul's favor, there were those who thought he'd done it all along. And on the gossip grapevine, which thrived even in these frigid temperatures, the rumor that his arrest was imminent quickly gained momentum and strength.
On the more visible pro-Paul front, outraged citizens called their council members, council members called the mayor, the mayor called on Mitch in person. Mitch, still furious with Paul, offered no apology. He got paid to do a job and he did it. If people wanted control of who fell under suspicion, they would have to find someone else to wear the badge.
At the moment, that didn't seem like such a bad idea, he thought.
To get away from ringing telephones, Mitch sat in the war room, but reminders of the case shouted at him from the walls and the tables that were piled with copies of reports and statements and files on hopeful tips that had hit dead ends. Where the clock on the wall ticked the seconds away loudly: 9:23.
He had spent the past four hours personally checking out a possible sighting of Josh in the small town of Jordan, seventy-five miles away. Another dead end. Another adrenaline rush and crash. He had returned to a desk stacked with statements from Deer Lake citizens pointing the finger of blame at neighbors, at cops, at teachers, at Father Tom, at Paul. He returned to a telephone that refused to stop ringing with calls from more people casting more blame.
This was an ugly case full of ugly possibilities, the ugliest being that Paul was indeed somehow involved.
Logic made a case against Paul that he had not been able to argue away without leaving behind the metallic aftertaste of lies. Logic dictated they take Paul's fingerprints, and Paul had protested too much.
Logic also made a case against Albert Fletcher. The man also made the hair on the back of Mitch's neck stand up. He didn't like the deacon, got that old corkscrew feeling in his gut when he thought of Fletcher. He would have bet his badge Fletcher was guilty of something. Trouble was, he didn't know what and couldn't prove anything. So far the most suspicious thing his men had to report on the deacon was a trip to a dry cleaner's in Tatonka even though there were two in Deer Lake. Not exactly a smoking gun.
Mitch stared at the blackboard. Chalk circles wreathed names and questions—scattered clouds from various brainstorming sessions. Suspicions and conjecture. Theories about the darker minds and motives in Deer Lake. His haven. His purgatory. He felt as if he had been living in a fog of bland niceness for the past two years, oblivious to the abscesses beneath the placid surface of the town. Willingly blind to it. Willfully shutting off his cop instincts.
He resented Megan for going after him every time he turned around, pushing him to see things he didn't want to see, to consider things he didn't want to consider. But she was right in doing it. He might have come here with the idea of hiding to lick his wounds, but he couldn't hide from this. He couldn't look at Deer Lake and see a haven. He had to think like a cop.
He stared hard at the chalkboard, at the thick white circle around Albert Fletcher's name.
Fletcher had been teaching class at the time of the kidnapping. If he was involved, he had to have had an accomplice. No connection had been made between him and Olie Swain.
No solid connection had been made between Olie and the crime. Olie's van was a near-perfect fit to the one Helen Black had seen the night of the abduction, but the lab had turned up nothing useful in the van Olie had purchased from Paul. . . .
The message board mocked him.
ignorance is not innocence but SIN
i had a little sorrow, born of a little SIN
my emanation far within
weeps incessantly for my SIN
“Give me something to go on, you son of a bitch,” Mitch muttered. “Then we'll see who's ignorant.”
“I keep thinking maybe he's already given us something and we're just not seeing it.”
Megan stood just inside the door, looking rumpled and ragged. Of course, her day had been the equal of his. Possibly worse. She looked in need of someone to lean on, but she wasn't likely to accept an offer from him. He could all but see the chip on her shoulder, and he knew he'd put it there.
“Hear anything from DePalma?” he asked after she sat two chairs down from him.
Megan shook her head. “I would like to think no news is good news, but I'm not that naïve. Aside from fingering Paul, I revealed Paige's secret life as a mercenary slut on live TV. I'll hear something. No good deed goes unpunished.”
Mitch gave her a crooked smile. “As a diplomat, you make a great street cop.”
Her mouth tugged up on one corner. “Thanks.” She drew an aimless pattern on the tabletop with her thumb. “There seem to be more than a few people around town willing to believe Paul could have done it.”
“They want to believe someone did it,” Mitch said. “They would rather believe it was one of their own than some faceless evil. They would rather believe it was Paul, because then the evil would all be contained nice and neat within one family. Then they can go back to thinking they're all safe because the rotten apple was in someone else's barrel.”
“That or they really believe he did it.”
Mitch sighed. As badly as she felt pressured, Megan knew the pressure was, in many different respects, worse for him. He had family and friends taking sides in the case, looking for him to tie it all up in a nice neat yellow bow like the ones the residents of Deer Lake had tied around tree trunks and light poles in a show of hope. He had the past she had thrown in his face last night.
“We'll see what the lab has to say about his prints,” he mumbled, staring once more at the time line taped to the wall.
“The lack of his prints in the van won't clear him,” she reminded him, winning herself a scowl. “Logic dictates he would have been wearing gloves.”
“Logic dictates,” Mitch repeated. Logic dictated many things. It seemed few people took heed—including him. Logic dictated he steer clear of Megan, yet he made no real effort to do so. “I think logic clocked out a while ago. We should do the same. How about a pizza?”
The easy camaraderie in his offer surprised her. Mitch made a face at the wary look she
was giving him. “Truce, okay? It's late. It's been another pisser of a day.”
“Do I have to take off my badge?” she said, her voice cool.
He winced. “Okay, I was a jerk last night,” he admitted, sliding into the chair between them. “This case hasn't done much for my temper. We both said some things we wouldn't have if the world were a sane place.” He gave her his shrewd, hard-bargain look. “I'll spring for extra cheese.”
“See each other after hours?” Megan made her eyes wide with false shock. “What will the public think?”
“Screw 'em,” Mitch growled. “If we don't crack this case, they'll throw us both out in the street anyway.”
“No,” she said. “You'll survive failure; people forgive that all the time. But heaven help you if the bad guy turns out to be someone they really like. That kind of truth pisses them off every time.”
She stared at the door that seemed a mile away. The idea of a cold apartment full of boxes served as no incentive.
“Come on, Megan,” he cajoled. “It's just a pizza.”
Temptation curled its tentacles around Megan and pulled. It was just a pizza. And then it would be just a touch, just a kiss, just a night, just sex.
“Thanks anyway,” she murmured. “I think I'll just go home and lose consciousness.”
But she just stood there. Wanting.
“Megan . . .”
He said her name in a low voice, a quiet, intimate tone that struck a chord of longing inside her. The beam of his whiskey-amber gaze caught her and held her in place as he rose from his chair. Then his arms were around her.
Mistake. Weakness. The words stabbed her hard, but her lips parted and met his. Her lashes fluttered down and heat enveloped her, enveloped them both. The kiss was long, yet impatient; gentle and urgent; aggressive and questioning and comforting. She wanted to touch him, to feel his need for her, to imagine it was the kind of need that transcended the physical. But it wasn't.
