Guilty as Sin (39 page)

"I certainly hope not. What purpose is served punishing the faithful and the innocent? I'd call that sadism, wouldn't you?"

Jay leaned back and crossed his arms, regarding Tom McCoy with a quizzical scrutiny. "Are you sure you're a priest?"

He gave a humorless laugh and looked away. The word "no" reverberated in the air around him. "After the last couple of weeks, I don't think any of us can be sure of anything."

The answer struck a chord. Truth. The kind nobody really wanted to hear.

"But you must see this all the time," McCoy said. "It's your job— going from one set of victims to another. Does it get to you, or are you immune?"

"Not immune; careful. I keep my distance. Don't let it get personal. I'm there to ask questions, look for answers, patch it all together and move on." Even as he rattled off his stock answer, he could see Ellen in his mind's eye. He could feel her in his arms, feel her fear, her tears soaking into his shirt. Some distance.

"It's not about me," he said. That was a lie, too.

He might have called coming to Deer Lake running away, but he couldn't escape the fact that immersing himself in this particular case was certainly about him, about his own sense of loss. It was about punishing and comforting himself with perspective, which made him both selfish and opportunistic. Why couldn't he have just jumped on a plane to Barbados after seeing Christine? He could have been soaking up sun and rum instead of freezing his ass and digging up unwanted emotions out of the deepest corners of his soul.

"I'm just recording the story," he stated, as if that could make it so.

"Nothing personal," Father Tom said. His gaze had narrowed, focusing deeper than the surface excuses and public facade. "Do you have children?"

Depends on who you ask, he thought, but he kept that answer to himself. Confession was for the regulars of St. Elysius, not smart-mouth mercenary hacks from out of town.

McCoy interpreted the silence as a no. "Have you met Hannah and Josh?"

"Not yet."

"Why is that? The story is about their lives."

"There are other people involved. I've been busy getting background, getting to know the players."

"Really?"

"If you're waiting for me to say it didn't seem right to approach her, you'll be waiting a long time, Father," he said, wondering just how many srikes God would list against him for lying to a priest.

He had been avoiding Hannah Garrison on the excuse that the story was about more than her son. It was about the court system and the cops and Garrett Wright and Dennis Enberg. But at its heart it was about a little boy. An eight-year-old boy who had had his whole life pulled up by the roots.

He had chosen this story specifically for the parallels, to force himself to examine the pain and to probe the questions while maintaining his usual safe distance . . . and he had shied away from the heart of it. Josh, Josh, who was eight years old, freckle-faced, gap-toothed. Who liked to play hockey and Little League. He remembered the picture in Paul's office—Josh in his baseball uniform with Paul, the proud father, beside him. The fist of longing tightened.

What the hell are you doing here, Brooks?

Father Tom rose to his feet. "Let's take a ride, Mr. Brooks. There's someone I think you should meet."

They drove down Lakeshore, past Garrett Wright's home with a few intrepid reporters parked out front, on to the Kirkwood house, and turned in the driveway. Jay had parked in front of this house once before only to back off and drive away. Nothing had changed in the few days in between, the snow fort in the front yard was still half-finished. He wondered if Josh would ever finish it or if what he had gone through had so changed him that something as simple and childish as a snow fort would forevermore seem unimportant.

Father Tom stepped out of the Cherokee. Jay gave a cursory glance at his minicassette recorder lying on the console between the seats and left it.

They walked up the driveway together, Jay quietly absorbing the feel of the place, the detail. The house was the last one on the block. It looked comfortable, the kind of place to raise a family. From the front step the view of the street and the rest of the neighborhood was limited, cut off by the attached garage that jutted out in front of the house itself. The view was of the lake and the trees that lined the banks. Through the lacework of leafless branches and across the frozen expanse, the buildings of Harris College were just visible.

It was on this step that Josh Kirkwood had been left four nights ago. Alone. Dressed in a pair of striped pajamas. His mother had seen no one, no car. Garrett Wright's house was just down the block, but as yet no evidence had been found to suggest Josh had ever been inside it. Karen Wright had been under guard that night at the Fontaine Hotel.

Who had brought him back? Todd Childs? Christopher Priest? Or was Wright's accomplice someone so anonymous he or she was able to move around town freely, unknown, unseen, unsuspected? And what was the connection to Wright? Or was the connection to the people who lived in this house?

Hannah Garrison opened the door, a smile lighting her face when she saw Father Tom.

"You forgot your gloves again," she chided. "If you don't end up with frostbite, it'll be a miracle."

"Well, that would certainly improve my stock with the bishop."

Hannah had been the less visible one during the ordeal, staying in the background while her husband joined the search teams and played to the press. But Jay had watched her one television interview enough times that he had already memorized the sound of her voice, the cadence of her speech, the cornflower-blue of her eyes. He knew she blamed herself because she hadn't been there to pick Josh up that night. He had seen the pain in her face, heard the confusion in her voice. She'd had the perfect life and suddenly it was broken all around her.

And he wanted to write a book about it.

"Jay Butler Brooks, ma'am," he said, offering his hand.

The pretty, fragile smile went brittle, and her gaze cut to her friend, Father Tom.

"I thought it was important" was all he said.

"I'm not a reporter, ma'am," Jay said.

Hannah lifted her chin, her gaze cool. "I know what you are, Mr. Brooks. Come in," she said. She directed them, not into the family room where the television was on and toys were scattered across the floor, but into a formal dining room with furniture that likely hadn't been used since Christmas. She was distancing him from her real home, from her children. Jay accepted the subtle slight as part of the big picture, part of the whole story, part of who Hannah Garrison was.

She took the seat at the head of the table. Even though she looked as if she had been ill—thin, pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes—her bearing was regal. Her wavy golden hair was pulled back from her face, accenting the kind of bone structure that made fashion models wealthy, but she wore no makeup, no jewelry. Her sweatshirt was a well-worn relic from her alma mater, Duke University. She could have made a gunnysack look chic.

"My husband told me he'd spoken with you," she said.

"Why does that make me think I've already got a strike against me?"

"Certainly you have in Paul's eyes. I make my own judgments."

Jay nodded. "That's fair. I've been told you're a remarkable woman, Dr. Garrison."

She moved one long, elegant hand in a dismissive gesture. "By circumstance, that's all. Which is why you're here, isn't it?"

"I won't lie to you about that, Dr. Garrison. I'm a writer. You've got hell of a story here. I'd like the chance to tell it."

"And if I decline, you'll tell it anyway?"

"Probably. I'd like to be able to include your perspective, but it's up to you whether or not you want to participate."

"Well, that was simple. My answer is no. Living this nightmare once is uite enough. I don't have any desire to go through it again in retelling the tale to you or in thinking thousands of people will live it vicariously reading your book."

"Not even if it might help someone to understand—"

"Understand what? No part of this is understandable. I know. I've spent every night, every day, trying to understand. All I've got for the effort is more questions."

"There will be a considerable amount of money for Josh," Jay said. He found it very telling that Hannah herself hadn't spoken a word about payment when it had been virtually the first thought in her husband's head.

She gave him a frosty look. "I won't prostitute my son or myself, Mr. Brooks. We don't need your money. All I want is to get away from this nightmare, for us to distance ourselves from it emotionally and get on with our lives. Any money associated with what happened would only be like dragging the experience with us. It would be like blood money."

She stood and smoothed her hands along the baggy hem of her sweatshirt. "No. That's my answer. Would you like coffee?"

Subject dismissed, on to obligatory hostess duties. Jay had the feeling that if he had come here a month ago, Hannah would have been softer, gentler, less blunt, more elaborate in her guise of good manners. The ordeal had pared away the unnecessary in her, cut away the crap of social ceremony, leaving only the honest, the essential. Like many people he had interviewed, people who had gone through harrowing experiences, Hannah had seen how much of life is just bullshit, just meaningless ritual made important to give humankind some pretense of being better than the rest of the animals on the planet.

In another part of the house a telephone rang. She excused herself to answer it.

"The trust fund will be set up," he said to Father Tom. "They can do what they want with the money. Give it away for all I care."

The priest gave a lazy shrug. "It doesn't matter to you. You've absolved yourself, done your part, paid your fee."

"I can't win for losing around here," Jay grumbled. "If I kept every nickel for myself, I'd be a greedy son of a bitch. If I give it away, I'm trying to buy a conscience."

"Are you?"

He barked a laugh and looked away. What the hell would he want with a conscience? It was just excess baggage, another rock around his neck to drag him down. If he had a conscience, he would have to believe that it was all his own fault that Christine had kept his son from him all these years, that it wasn't just virulent spite on her part. He hurt enough as it was. To think it was his own doing that had taken eight years of his son's life away from him, denied him even knowledge of the boy, would be too much.

A mop of sandy-brown hair and a pair of big blue eyes suddenly appeared in the doorway to the family room. The eyes were somber with a steady stare.

"Hi, Josh," Father Tom said in a casual voice. "Would you like to join us?"

The boy eased the rest of his body into view but kept one hand on the doorjamb. The other clutched the handle of a bulging nylon backpack. He was dressed in baggy blue jeans and a Blackhawks hockey jersey several sizes too big. He made no move to come forward.

Jay turned sideways on his chair and rested his forearms on his thighs. "Hey, there, Josh," he said quietly. "My name's Jay. Your dad tells me you're quite the baseball player."

Josh's expression didn't flicker. There was no relaxation at the mention of his father, no response at all. He had a face made for a mischievous grin. Jay remembered the smile from the photograph in Paul's office— shining eyes and shy pride—and the photograph from the "missing" post-—a gap-toothed grin and a Cub Scout uniform.

Slowly Josh crossed the hall and came into the dining room, skirting the way around the room, his eyes on Jay. When he was even with her Tom, he stopped and dug a spiral notebook out of the backpack, opened it, and tore out a page.

"I guess hockey is the sport now," Jay went on, making conversation break the tension that filled the room, hoping he might strike the right chord and draw the boy out. "We don't play much hockey where I come from. We don't have any winter to speak of."

Josh paid no attention to him as he knelt on the floor and carefully folded the sheet of paper in half and in half again. When he was finished, stood, hooked his backpack over one shoulder, and walked a straight line across the area rug, as if he were on a tightrope. When he reached the table, he held the paper out for Father Tom.

"For me?" he asked, accepting the gift.

Josh nodded. "But don't open it now."