by Tami Hoag
“What are you doing?” she asked as she pulled back, the demand lacking the sting she had intended.
“Changing your mind,” Mitch told her. “If I'm lucky.”
Megan stepped out of his arms. She pressed her hands together and brought her fingertips to her lips as if in prayer. She tried to focus on the granite-gray carpet, but her gaze strayed back to Mitch, standing now with his hands on his hips and one leg cocked—not in any attempt to disguise his state of arousal, but daring her to look. The aura of the dangerous male glowed around him—rough, slightly rumpled, impatient, big, and masculine—as if the day had rubbed away the polish of manners and civilization.
“No,” she whispered, everything inside her protesting the denial. “My job is hanging by a thread.”
“And the people with the ax will cut it regardless of what we do.”
“Oh, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Megan said, her voice sharp with sarcasm and hurt.
“It's got nothing to do with what I want or what I think, or what you want or what you think,” he argued. “They'll do whatever is best for them. You know that as well as I do.”
“So if they're going to punish me, I might as well be guilty of something?” she said bitterly.
He gave a shrug, as if to say “why not?” his face hard, impassive.
“I don't think so,” she said softly. As foolish as it was to want to love him, she couldn't think of loving him as an act of spite or a consolation prize.
She turned slowly and went to the door, holding her breath against a hope she wouldn't name. Mitch said nothing. She forced her chin up and gave him a last look as she gripped the doorknob. “I won't go to bed with you just because it's convenient. I've got my faults, but a lack of self-respect isn't one of them.”
DAY 10 1:02 A.M. -24° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -41°
Hannah sat in the wing chair in a corner of her bedroom. She was wide awake. Again. In the nine long nights that had passed since Josh had disappeared, she had forgotten what it was like to sleep deeply and peacefully. She had written herself a prescription for Valium but hadn't been able to bring herself to have it filled. Maybe she didn't want the sympathy of the pharmacist, or maybe it was symbolic of a weakness she didn't want to display. Maybe she didn't want—didn't deserve—the relief of sleep. Or maybe she was afraid she would give in to the pressure and the despair and succumb to the temptation to take too many.
Paul had been asked to submit to fingerprinting.
He had come home from the police station outraged, his temper out of control. Hannah had witnessed the TV 7 live report, by turns shocked, angered, sickened, and frightened. Shocked because she'd had no warning; Paul had told her nothing. Angered that he would be so thoughtless. Sickened by the possibilities that pried open in her mind. Frightened because she couldn't make them go away.
She stared at their empty bed, while in the theater of her mind she replayed the scene. She could see herself standing in the family room, arms crossed, jaw clenched, gaze hard on Paul as he stormed in. She could see the agent of the day at the kitchen table, fielding yet another of the calls that had come without cease since the TV 7 broadcast. Friends and relatives expressing their concern, offering their support, probing for oily secrets. She could see Paul's mouth moving and realized she wasn't hearing him above the roar of her blood in her ears.
“. . . that little bitch,” he snapped, jerking off his coat. He threw it on the love seat and toed off the heavy boots he should have left at the door. The laces were matted with snow that melted and ran like beads of sweat down into the carpet. “The only part of her job she can handle is fucking Mitch Holt.”
Hannah ignored the remark. “I'd like to speak with you privately,” she said tightly.
Paul stared at her, perturbed that she had interrupted his tirade. “I suppose you like her,” he accused. “You progressive women have to stick together.”
“I don't even know who you're talking about,” she snapped.
“Thanks for paying attention, Hannah,” he sneered. “It's so nice to have the support of my wife.”
“If you want my support, you might consider letting me know what's going on.” Her gaze darted to the agent at the table and back to Paul, who seemed oblivious to the third party. The phone rang yet again, the sound piercing her brain like a skewer. “You were asked to give your fingerprints and you didn't bother to let me know. How do you think that made me feel?”
“You?” Paul said, incredulous. “How do you think it made me feel?”
“I'm sure I wouldn't know. You certainly didn't share it with me. It was just a fluke that I saw that sideshow at City Center. Did you think it was more important to get Paige Price on your side than me?”
“I shouldn't have to get you on my side. You should be on my side!”
His raised voice drew a look from the agent.
“If you want to continue this conversation,” Hannah said, “I'll be in our room.”
She strode across the room and up the steps. She felt as if they were living in a fishbowl; she didn't need a live audience for the disintegration of her marriage.
Paul caught hold of her arm from behind and jerked her to a stop. “Don't you walk away from me!” he snarled. “I've about had it with your attitude.”
“My attitude!” Hannah gaped at him. “I'm not the one who was fingerprinted today!”
“You think I wanted that?”
She stared at him, at the hand that gripped her arm so hard his knuckles had gone white, at the lean face that was red and twisted with rage. She didn't know this man, didn't trust him, didn't know what to believe about him.
She pulled away from his grasp and rubbed at the soreness in her arm. “I don't know what to think,” she whispered, shivering.
He blinked at her, color draining from his face. “Jesus, Hannah. You can't think I had anything to do with it.”
Guilt came on a tide of exhaustion. It wasn't that she believed he had, it was that she wasn't sure he hadn't. The technicality would be lost on Paul. Truthfully, it was all but lost on her. How could she think Paul would hurt their son, take their son away, put her through this hell? How could she think it? What kind of wife was she? What kind of person?
“No,” she said in a small voice. “I just don't know what to think, Paul. We used to share everything. Now we can't even talk without going for each other's throats. You can't imagine how I felt seeing you on television, hearing about the van and the fingerprints. All of it was like a scene from a bad soap opera. Why didn't you tell me?”
He dodged her plaintive look by staring into Lily's empty room. Karen Wright had offered to take the baby for the evening. Hannah had been too much in shock after seeing Paul on television to protest.
“There wasn't time,” he explained. “I was out on the search and Mitch Holt came and . . .”
He was lying. The thought was instantaneous. Hannah felt ashamed for thinking it, but she couldn't push it aside. It was written all over her face.
“And you wonder why I didn't confide in you?” He shook his head. “I'm out of here.”
“Paul—”
“I'll be at my office,” he snapped, turning away. “You might want to alert the police so they can set up a surveillance.”
He hadn't returned. He hadn't called. She hadn't tried to call him for fear he wouldn't answer. The way he hadn't answered the night Josh disappeared.
A tremor shook her and she curled herself more tightly into the chair, wrapping her arms around her knees. She didn't want the doubts and questions that ate away at the corners of her mind like mice. She didn't want to think about the interview she would do tonight with Katie Couric. All she wanted was to close her eyes and make it all go away.
Instead, she closed her eyes and saw Josh.
He was alive. Expressionless. Standing in a gray, formless void. He didn't speak. He showed no sign of recognizing or even seeing her. He simply stood there as her perspective shifted around him, circling slowly, tak
ing in everything about him. There was a bruise on his right cheek. He wore striped pajamas she had never seen before. Even though she couldn't see through the sleeves, she knew he wore a gauze bandage on his left arm at the inner elbow. Just as she knew his mind was filled with the same gray fog that surrounded him, with the exception of one thought—Mom.
Hannah's heart raced out of control. She wanted to touch him, but couldn't move her arms from her sides. She tried to call out to him, but no sound came out of her mouth. She willed him to look at her, but he looked through her, as if she were not there. Frustration built and built inside her like steam in a kettle until she screamed, and screamed and screamed.
She jerked in the chair, her eyes snapping open, her heart galloping. The nightshirt and leggings she wore were soaked with sweat. She thought she'd slept a matter of minutes. The clock on Paul's nightstand told her she had dozed more than an hour. It was two-forty.
The bed was still empty.
The phone rang and she dove for it, knocking the base to the floor. “Paul? Paul?”
Silence answered her, heavy and dark.
She sank down to sit on the floor, leaning back against the bed.
“Paul?” she tried again.
The voice came, low and eerie, a whisper like smoke. “A lie is the handle which fits them all. A lie is the handle which fits them all. A lie is the handle which fits them all.”
CHAPTER 31
* * *
DAY 10
5:47 A.M. -23° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -40°
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all came from Oliver Wendell Holmes, they found out. They had looked the phrase up in an old dog-eared book of quotations in Paul's home office, an immaculate room that should have been featured in a home decorating magazine. Megan's gaze had roamed. Not a book, not a pen out of place. Not a speck of dust. Not a picture hanging crooked on the wall. Compulsively, fanatically neat. Not Hannah's doing; Hannah wasn't certain Paul had a book of quotations. Anyone keeping a room that clean had to know every title on the shelves.
Serial killers were often compulsively neat. Megan knew that from her behavioral science courses at the FBI academy. No one considered Paul Kirkwood a potential serial killer; still, she filed his compulsive tendencies away in the back of her mind. That and the fact that he had been out of the house when the call had come. The watch commander had sent a unit to the Omni Complex, and the officers had awakened Paul from what he claimed was a sound sleep on the sofa in his office and escorted him back home.
Megan saw the apprehension in Hannah's eyes when Paul came into the kitchen. She felt the tension that lay between them like a sheet of ice. God, wasn't the loss of Josh enough? Did they have to lose their marriage, too? On the other hand, didn't Hannah deserve better than Paul? Weak and petulant and self-absorbed, he got Megan's back up, and had almost from the moment she'd met him. But had he called his wife in the dead of night and taunted her with hints of lies?
If he had, he was a damn good actor. News of the call had shaken him. With fear or abject guilt?
The call had come from somewhere in Deer Lake. There hadn't been sufficient time to trap it to get more than the exchange. It could have come from anywhere—a house across the street or across town or across the lake where Albert Fletcher lived in the shadow of St. Elysius. It could have come from Paul's office. It could have come from any pay phone in town.
The possibilities buzzed like flies in Megan's brain. She hadn't been sleeping long or well when the call had come. Thoughts of the curt message DePalma had left on her answering machine for her to call him ASAP had kept her mind from winding down. And now that she was back home from the Kirkwoods' house, it was too late to go back to bed and too early to go in to the office.
She sat at the round oak table she had rescued from a flea market and stripped herself, another of her faux heirlooms. A tremor rattled through her body. Caffeine overload. Between the coffee and the drugs to stave off a monster migraine, she felt as if her body were running on rocket fuel. Her heart was pumping too fast and she felt dizzy. She had been abusing her body and abusing her medications, taking too much of some and ignoring others because they knocked her out and she couldn't afford to be groggy or unconscious.
She would be paying for her sins soon. She just had to hang in there a while longer. Just until they could make the pieces fit. Just until they saw the one thing they had been missing.
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Whose lie? Whose sin? What was there that they couldn't see?
Pain squeezed her temples like a giant forceps. Trying to will it away, she pushed herself to her feet and went into the bathroom. She fumbled with the cap on the prescription bottle of Propranolol, finally tipping a pill into her trembling hand. She washed it down with water and stood there for a moment after, scowling at herself in the mirror.
“One more strike and you're out, O'Malley,” she mumbled.
The pain dug into her temples like a pair of spurs.
A little voice in the back of her head whispered she was out already.
7:15 A.M. -19° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -38°
She avoided her office, having no burning desire to return DePalma's call of the night before. She stopped first at the command center to see if anything useful had come in over the hotline. Lots of calls pro- and con-Paul. One call from a woman who claimed Josh had been abducted by aliens. A dozen or more from people who wanted to chastise Megan personally for picking on Paige Price. A whole lot of nothing. She left the center with a promise to return at eight to brief her people on the latest developments and make assignments for the day.
At the station her first stop was the war room. Mitch had been there ahead of her. The Oliver Wendell Holmes line had been added to the list on the message board. The call to Hannah had been noted on the line, and Paul's noticeable absence had been starred.
Megan walked backward along the line, looking for a sign that Paul was at the heart of the mystery. Paul had lied to them. Paul had been evasive. He had a secret, of that she was certain, but was his secret dark enough, evil enough to drive him to harm his own son?
Albert Fletcher appeared on the time line only once—on the night of Josh's abduction, when he had been teaching the class Josh should have attended. The line was for facts only, no conjecture, no suspicions, which served only to magnify their lack of solid leads. Their crook might be any one of fifteen thousand people in Deer Lake—if he was from Deer Lake at all. He might be someone she had passed on the street. He might be sitting at the coffee shop down the block. All they knew with any certainty was that someone had happened upon Josh at a moment when he was absolutely vulnerable. That truth pointed to Olie Swain, and Olie Swain was gone forever.
Her next stop was to see that Olie's computers had been set up for Christopher Priest. Not only had they already been set up, Priest was already inspecting them. The machines had been lined up on a long table in a small gray room that held nothing else but a pair of chrome-and-plastic chairs. The disk drives hummed quietly. The monitors glowed in varying shades and combinations of black and white and green. Priest was bent over one, frowning at the message on the screen. He looked up as Megan entered the room and pushed his oversize glasses up on his nose.
“You're early, Professor. I wasn't expecting you until eight-thirty.”
“I just stopped in to see if we're set up.” The sleeves of his blue turtleneck crept halfway to his elbows. “I'd like to get an early start if possible.”
“I'll see if the computer guy from headquarters is around,” Megan said. “He must be here somewhere if the machines are on. You didn't turn them on, did you?”
“No.” The professor crossed his arms like a little boy who had been told not to touch anything in the toy store.
“Good. Actually, you shouldn't even be in here without him,” she pointed out, her gaze scanning the screens in the fruitless hope of detecting whether or not they had been tampered
with. What she knew about computers was limited to writing reports and calling up information from headquarters. “Procedure,” she added as a diplomatic afterthought.
Priest looked at her blankly.
“Why don't you have a seat in the break room, help yourself to a cup of coffee while I see if I can find him?” Megan suggested, holding the door open.
“I hope he's here,” he said, reluctantly backing away from the table. “I have a faculty meeting at one. I would like to be finished . . .”
He let the thought hang, sliding the computers a longing glance.
“He's probably waiting in my office,” Megan said, standing firm, doorknob in hand. They couldn't afford a kink in the chain of evidence. If Olie's machines yielded some relevant link to an accomplice, their means of obtaining that tidbit had to be squeaky clean in order to stand up to a judge's scrutiny. If that connection ended up getting thrown out because a judge decided they hadn't played by the rules, everything they found as a direct result of that link would go as well. Fruit of the poisoned tree, the lawyers called it. Cops called it bullshit nitpicking, for all the good it did them.
Priest slipped past her into the hall. “I am trustworthy, Agent O'Malley,” he said, giving her a hurt look. “I've worked with the police before.”
“Then you know it's nothing personal.” She gave him a pained smile as she locked the door behind him. “I'm just covering my backside.”
And she felt a little bit of a draft. Christopher Priest might have been a model of virtue, teacher, volunteer, role model for rehabilitating juvenile delinquents; but he had known Olie Swain. A defense attorney would gnaw on that bone all day long if he found out Priest had been in the room with the computers all by his lonesome.
She made her way through the labyrinth of halls, oblivious to the people she passed. Her vision was changing subtly, blurring a bit at the edges, her perception of light and dark becoming sharper. Warning signs. If she could just hold it off until afternoon, until this, until that. The bargains were old and timeworn. She would leave early and sleep all night. She would eat regular meals and avoid stress. Lies she told herself every time the talons of pain began to dig in.
