Night Sins (19 page)

“I'll tell you how it sounds,” Paul said, his temper humming in his voice. “It sounds to me like you don't know how to find my son and you're doing whatever you can to cover your ass! That's how it sounds!”

He stormed away from her, away from the hundred or so people who had gathered to watch the show, away from the cameras and the reporters. They set their sights on Megan and zeroed in.

“Agent O'Malley, do you have any comment on Mr. Kirkwood's accusations?”

“Agent O'Malley, does the BCA consider Mr. Kirkwood a suspect?”

“Agent O'Malley, do you have a comment on the article in the
Tribune
?”

Megan ground her teeth on a hundred nasty retorts. Diplomacy. Low-key, unobtrusive diplomacy. Those were her instructions from DePalma. That was bureau policy. She had sworn she could handle it. She had promised herself she could control her temper and take anything the press or anyone else dished out to her. She pulled in a deep breath and faced the cameras without flinching.

“Mr. Kirkwood is understandably distraught. My only comment is that the BCA is doing all it can in cooperation with the Deer Lake Police Department and the Park County sheriff's office to find Josh Kirkwood and bring his abductor to justice.”

Ignoring the volley of questions, she moved through the crowd, headed back to her car.

“Did I say you'd be here a month, O'Malley?” Steiger murmured with a nasty smile as she strode past him. “That might have been optimistic.”

CHAPTER 14

D
AY
3
9:19
A.M.
         15°

W
hat the hell were you thinking?” Mitch slammed the door shut behind him and Leo's 1993 Women of the Big Ten calendar jumped on its peg, sending Miss Michigan rocking back on her lovely haunches.

Megan didn't bother to play dumb and she refused to play meek. Temper snapping, she shot up out of the decrepit chair she had barely settled her fanny on. “I was thinking of doing my job.”

“By going after Paul Kirkwood—”

“By following up on all possible leads,” she qualified, rounding the desk.

“Why the hell didn't you check with me first?”

“I don't have to check with you. You're not my boss—”

“Jesus Christ, don't you think the man's going through enough?” he snapped, leaning over her, his dark eyes blazing with fury.

Megan met his glare head-on. “I think he's going through hell and I'm doing everything I can to get him out of it.”

“By grilling him in front of the press?”

“That's bullshit! He's the one who made a big scene, not me. I was asking for information he should have given me an hour before. Information that could very well prove pertinent to his son's disappearance. Don't you find it just a little odd that he would be annoyed with me for that?”

Mitch went still, pulling all his anger and energy inward, smoothing his face into a blank mask. He stared down at Megan. “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked, his voice a razor-edged whisper. “Are you saying you think Paul Kirkwood kidnapped his own son?”

“No.”

She blew out a breath and swept back the tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail. Control. If he could have it, she could, too. Besides that, she was running low on adrenaline. As always happened on a big case, it would ebb and flow in an erratic tide, following the radical ups and downs of the investigation. She stepped back from him and leaned a hip against the desk as she dug a prescription bottle of ergotamine out of her briefcase, fished out one tablet, and washed it down with Pepsi to ward off the headache that was sinking its talons into her forehead.

“I'm saying I went to him this morning with a lead and he blew me off,” she said. “I'm saying he committed a rather peculiar sin of omission by not telling me he had once owned and sold a van that meets the general description of the one we're looking for, and when I called him on it, he went off. Don't you find that all just a little strange, Chief?”

“You don't know the kind of pressure he's under.”

“And you do?”

“Yes,” Mitch returned too sharply. The tone revealed too much when his instincts told him to reveal nothing.

He kicked himself mentally for the tactical blunder and turned away. Hands jammed at his waist, he prowled the small office, restless, edgy.

For the first time he noticed all of Leo's certificates and commendations still tacked up on his ego wall, and Wally the Walleye preserved for all eternity on a walnut plaque above the file cabinets, cigar butt sticking out of his ugly fish mouth. Poor old Leo had left no one behind to collect the souvenirs of his life. The malodorous aroma of his cheap cigars lingered in the air, lurking darkly beneath the choking sweet perfume of air freshener. Sitting on the front edge of the desk was the only physical sign of Megan taking over the office, a shiny brass nameplate—
AGENT MEGAN O
'
MALLEY, BCA.

Megan watched him carefully, reading the set of his broad shoulders, the angle of his head. He wanted to dismiss her, but he was on her turf. He wanted to walk out, but he wouldn't. Even before she asked the question, she knew what his answer would be.

“Would you care to enlighten me, Chief?”

“We aren't here to talk about me,” he said, the words short and terse.

“Aren't we?” Megan advanced on him, hands on her hips, unconsciously mimicking his stance. They faced each other like a pair of gunslingers, and the tension in the air was as thick as the smell of old Dutch Masters cigars.

He glared at her, his face a rigid mask of hard planes and sharp angles. Pride and anger and something like panic squeezed into a knot in his chest. He wanted to push it away. He wanted to push
her
away, out of his way, away from the dark territory that was his past. Like a cornered wolf, he wanted to lash out, but the need to control that rage overruled. So he stood there with every muscle as rigid as the walls he had built to protect himself.

“You're on thin ice, O'Malley,” he said in a deadly whisper. “I suggest you back off.”

“Not if what's going on here is you projecting your feelings onto Paul Kirkwood,” Megan said, stubbornly taking another step out onto that proverbial thin ice, knowing that if it cracked, she would be sucked into the vortex of the rage whirling beneath his surface. “If that's what's going on, then we'd damn well better talk about it. An investigation is no place for that kind of involvement, and you know it.”

An investigation was no place for the kind of emotions that were stirring inside her now, either. She wanted to break his iron fist of control. She wanted him to let go. She wanted him to confide in her—not for the good of the case, but because in a corner of her heart she seldom acknowledged and never indulged, she wanted to get closer to him. Dangerous stuff all the way around. Dangerous and seductive.

The heat between them intensified by one degree and then another. Then he turned away abruptly, snapping the thread of tension.

As he fought to regulate his breathing and his temper, Mitch found himself staring at a snapshot of Leo at the annual Park County Peace Officers Association barbecue—red-faced, wearing a stained chef's apron over his considerable bulk and a cap with a plastic trout head sticking out one side and its tail sticking out the other. Beer in hand, cigar clamped between his teeth, he stood beside a pig roasting on a spit.

Life had sure as hell been simpler with Leo around. Leo had been a grunt-work old-fashioned cop not interested in new theories of criminology or psychology or personnel dynamics. He had never wanted to spill his guts to Leo. He didn't want to unlock the door to the old pain, didn't want to show any sign of vulnerability, especially not here, on the job. Here, more than anywhere, he needed to keep the emotions closed up tight in their little box in his chest.

“Look,” he said in a low voice, “I think you could have been more diplomatic, that's all. If you want to track down Paul's van, fine. Do it through the DMV. I'll handle any questioning.”

“I've already called the DMV. They're checking,” Megan said, the adrenaline receding sharply, leaving her feeling drained. “Or, rather, they're trying to. Their computer is down.

“I just wanted an explanation from him,” she confessed. “I realize people react differently to this kind of stress, but . . . I get the feeling he doesn't want to talk to me—or look me in the eye, for that matter. My gut feeling is he's holding something back, and I want it.”

“It may have nothing to do with Josh,” Mitch said irritably. “Maybe he doesn't like women cops. Maybe he feels guilty because he wasn't there for Josh that night. That kind of guilt can tear a man up inside. Maybe you look just like the girl who turned him down for the senior prom way back when.”

“Where was he that night?” Megan demanded, unwilling to give in. “Why wasn't he there?”

“He was working.”

“Hannah called him repeatedly and he didn't answer the phone.”

“He was working in a conference room down the hall.”

She gave him a look of astounded disbelief. “And he returns to his office and ignores the message light on his machine? Who does that? And while we're at it, who can corroborate it?”

“I don't know,” Mitch conceded. “Those are valid questions, but I'll be the one to ask them.”

“Because you're the boss?” Megan said archly.

The muscles in his jaw tightened. A sculpture in granite couldn't have looked more forbidding. “I told you not to rock my boat, O'Malley,” he said softly. “This is my town and my investigation. We'll do it my way. There's only one top dog around here, and it's me. Is that clear?”

“And I'm supposed to come to heel and sit like a good little bitch?”

“Your analogy, not mine,” he said. “This case is giving the press enough fodder as it is. I don't need Paul going off like a rocket in front of them.”

“We're agreed on that much. I don't need any more airtime, either, thanks anyway,” she said dryly. “DePalma has already left three messages for me to call him so he can chew me out over the
StarTribune
article.”

“And you ignored them?” he mocked. “Who does that?”

Megan narrowed her eyes. “He isn't calling to tell me my child is missing. He's calling to sink his teeth into my throat and shake me like a dead rat—something I'd like to see someone do to that hack Henry Forster, now that I think of it.”

“Maybe we can set it up as a media event,” Natalie suggested, letting herself into the office. Her face was screwed into an expression of supreme displeasure as she looked up at Mitch. “I like that irony, don't you? We can add Paige Price and her ‘inside informant' to the list of headline acts. Someone gave her the scoop on the notes.”

“No,” Mitch said, as if that would make it so. The bottom dropped out of his stomach as Natalie refused to retract the information.

“
TV 7
just did a live report from the steps of the courthouse. Paige Price read the world the messages you've found. She said the notes came from a laser printer and were printed on common twenty-pound bond paper.”

“Shit.” Mitch rubbed a hand over his face, imagining how Hannah would feel hearing those lines read aloud on television, imagining Paul's rage. Imagining every nut in the state cranking up their laser printers. Imagining wrapping his fingers around Paige Price's throat and squeezing.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he snarled, his temper sparking like a live wire. He turned to Natalie. “Call Hannah and tell her I'm on the way and tell her why. Radio Steiger. Tell him I need Paul ASAP and to get him away from the search with as little hoopla as possible.”

He rattled off the orders like a field general, a man who was used to giving orders and having them obeyed without question. The top dog, Megan thought. The alpha wolf.

His assistant nodded, sifting through the sheaf of pink message slips she carried, sorting them by priority. “Just so you know, Professor Priest and his students are setting up in that vacant store next door to the command post—used to be Big D Appliance. It looks like all the volunteers are going to move in there, too. There's too many of them to all fit into the fire hall.”

“Go take a look at their setup,” Mitch ordered Megan as her phone rang.

She scowled at his back as he left the room. “Bossy son of a bitch,” she muttered.

The answering machine spun out its request to leave a message and Bruce DePalma growled out an order to return his call
immediately
. Megan winced and reached for her parka.

10:02
A.M.
         16°

W
ith the scanner we're able to create a high-grade computer image of Josh that can be transmitted electronically to computers all over the country and printed off from those computers onto more fliers,” Christopher Priest explained, raising his voice to be heard above the din of voices and the clank of chairs and tables being set down and shoved into place. In the background a radio was tuned to a local country station blasting out Wynonna Judd.

The student at the terminal was one of five in down coats and stocking caps clacking away on keyboards. Megan watched as Josh's image came up on the screen in full color. The bright smile, the unruly hair, the Cub Scout uniform—everything about the picture hit her like a fist in the solar plexus every time she saw it. He looked like such a happy little boy. He had so much life ahead of him.

If they could find him. Soon. She felt the seconds ticking by one after another, and resisted the urge to glance at her watch.

She looked away from the screen, taking in the makeshift volunteer center. The room was being transformed before her eyes. Tables and chairs and office equipment were being hauled in through both the front and back doors, creating a wind tunnel of frigid air through the building. The volunteers took positions at the tables the instant the legs hit the floor, piling all available surfaces with fliers and envelopes, staplers and stamps and boxes of rubber bands.

They came from all walks of life, from all over the state. Some men, many women. Middle-aged, elderly, college aged. They had already papered over the big front windows of the store with bright yellow Missing posters and with posters that had been drawn by Josh's third-grade classmates calling for Josh to come home, as if the power of their collective plea might be enough to bring him back. Nearly every storefront in town wore similar window dressing.

“We can also communicate with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and with Missing Children Minnesota,” the professor went on. He was bundled into a black down parka that seemed to be swallowing him whole. It crept up around his ears, and he jammed his hands in his pockets and jerked it back down. “We can connect with a number of missing children's networks and foundations around the country. It's amazing how many there are. Tragic is the word I ought to use, I suppose. It seems for every child that disappears, a foundation springs up in his name.”

“Let's hope we don't need a Josh Kirkwood Foundation,” Megan murmured.

“Yes, let's hope,” he said on a sigh. He tore his eyes away from the computer screen and blinked at her behind the lenses of his oversize glasses. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee, Agent O'Malley? Hot cider, hot tea? We don't have a shortage of volunteers or food.”

“Cider would be great, thanks.”

She followed him to a long table at the back of the main room, where all the edible donations had been laid out, and gratefully accepted the cup of steaming spiced cider. The heat radiated out through the cup and through her gloves to fingers that felt brittle with cold. She looked across the room bustling with volunteers, people who were giving their time, their talents, their hearts, and their money to bring Josh home. A fund had already been established for reward money, and donations were pouring in from all over the Upper Midwest, from individuals, civic groups, businesses. At last report they had collected in excess of $50,000.