Night Sins (29 page)

Paul sat in one of two director's chairs at the front of the room. His brown hair was perfectly combed, the knot of a silk tie perfectly centered above the crew neck of a navy wool sweater he wore over his pinpoint oxford shirt. His deep-set eyes had naturally dark sockets that were emphasized by the camera, intensifying his haunted, angry expression. A great face for television.

Paige slid into the other director's chair. “Paul,” she said softly, reaching out to touch his arm. “Again, all our hearts go out to you and your wife, Dr. Hannah Garrison. I understand Hannah is too distraught to join us tonight.”

Paul frowned. Hannah had refused to come to the center despite her repeated complaints of not being able to help in the search effort. She found the idea of this program repulsive, exploitative, and mercenary, in no way useful in finding Josh.

The Sunday papers had been splashed with color photographs of her collapsing in the volunteer-center booth and being escorted away by Father Tom McCoy. They painted her a heroine—valiant and courageous, trying to be strong in the face of incredible adversity. The brave, compassionate Dr. Garrison, who had helped so many people. They made little mention of the fact that this whole situation was her fault, that her career had destroyed their marriage, torn their family apart, and driven him into the arms of another woman. Instead, they said that Josh had been abducted while Dr. Garrison was fighting to save the life of an accident victim, turning it all around to make her the object of admiration and pity.

“She's home with our daughter,” he said flatly.

Paige looked directly into the camera. “Dr. Garrison, our prayers are with you.”

7:30
P.M.
         -29°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

T
he television in the family room was on. Hannah could hear it—mumbled voices, changes in pitch, tone, and volume—but she couldn't make out what anyone was saying. She didn't want to. She hated that
TV 7 News
was running the interview, hated that her neighbors and friends would watch it, hated that people she didn't even know would be asked to voice their feelings about the terrible act that was tearing her life apart. She hated that Paul had agreed to be a part of it. That he could so callously discount her feelings was further evidence of the widening rift between them.

There had been a time when he would have found the program as invasive and self-serving as she did. Tonight he had fussed over what to wear and spent an hour in the bathroom getting ready. The thought that she didn't know him anymore whispered through her mind at regular intervals.

She stood in the center of Josh's room because she was too wired to sit. Olie Swain had been arrested but not charged. No official word had come of a confession or clues to Josh's fate. Nothing. Silence. She felt poised on the brink of a high precipice, every muscle, every fiber of her being held taut as she waited to fall one way or the other. The anticipation had built and built until she was certain she would explode from the pressure. But there was no explosion, there was no relief.

She paced the room, her arms wrapped around herself. Even with the thick sweater and turtleneck she wore she felt thin. She was losing weight and, as a doctor, she knew that wasn't good. That professional, practical, intelligent part of her mind told her to eat, to sleep, to get some exercise, but that part seemed to be disconnected from the rest. Emotion ruled. Erratic, irrational emotion.

She tried to think of what it had been like—what
she
had been like—when she had been the calm, rational head of the ER. Cool under fire. A leader. The person everyone looked to in a time of crisis. She tried to remember the afternoon before Josh had been taken. The patients she had treated. The people she had offered comfort and explanations. The precision of the trauma team as she had orchestrated the attempt to save the life of Ida Bergen.

A week had passed. It seemed a lifetime ago.

Squeals of delight came from the living room, where Lily had charmed the BCA agent on duty into playing with her. Hannah swung the bedroom door shut. Here, in Josh's room, she wanted to hear nothing but the silence that waited for his voice. She breathed in the waxy scent of crayons and felt as if one had been driven through her heart. On the small desk lay the photo album she had brought in one of the first days, as if having Josh's picture in there might help conjure him up. She stood over it and looked down at the photographs, each one raising a memory.

The three of them at the beach on the Carolina shore the summer they had gone to visit her parents. The year before Lily was born. Josh riding on his father's shoulders, his arms banded across Paul's forehead, Paul's baseball cap drooping sideways on Josh's head. Josh standing beside a sand castle in a white T-shirt and baggy shorts, his arms spread wide, a bright grin displaying gaps where baby teeth had fallen out. His hair was a tangle of sandy-brown curls, tossed by the same wind that bent the slender stems of spartina and panic grass on the dunes. The ocean was a belt of blue trimmed in lacy white.

The three of them standing together on a jetty. All of them laughing. Hannah wore a filmy summer dress in blue and white. The long skirt whirled around her legs like a matador's cape. Josh was standing on a piling. Paul was hugging him tightly from behind with one arm; his other arm was draped around Hannah's shoulders. Holding them all together. A family. So close, so happy. So distant from here. So far removed from what they had become.

The last picture on the page was of herself and Josh. On a sailboat at sunset. Him sleeping on her lap, her arms cradling him against her. Her eyes were closed as she bent over him. Her hair was blowing over her shoulder. She held him safe while the sea rolled and the wind snapped the sails. Safe and loved.

She could close her eyes and feel the weight of him in her arms. His small body warm against hers. His hair smelled of salt water. His eyelashes curled against his cheek, impossibly long and thick. And she could feel her love for him swell in her chest. Her child. A beautiful little person created and nurtured in love. And she could feel, as she had at that moment, all the hope she had held for him, all the dreams she had dreamed. Perfect dreams. Wonderful dreams.

Dreams that had been snatched away. Josh was gone. Her arms were empty. All she had left were photographs and memories.

A soft knock sounded against the door, startling her. She jerked around as yet another volunteer from the missing children group poked her head into the room. Another stranger from another town she'd never heard of.

“I brought you some hot chocolate,” the woman said softly, using the excuse to let herself into the room.

Hannah put her around forty, medium height with curvy hips and no breasts. Her hair was a mop of chestnut curls, and rumpled bangs tumbled over the tops of rimless glasses. Terry something. The names went in one ear and out the other. Hannah made no effort to remember them. They came to offer support, sympathy or empathy, and friendship, but she didn't want to have anything in common with them. Theirs was a club she had no desire to join.

“Your husband is on television,” Terry Whoever said as she set the mug of cocoa down on the nightstand. “I thought you might want to know.”

Hannah shook her head. Terry made no comment. She stood with her back against the wall beside the door, her hands tucked into the pockets of tan corduroy slacks. Waiting. Hannah told herself again that she didn't want to reach out to this woman, but the warning couldn't penetrate the need to fill the silence.

“They asked me to go on,” she said, staring out the window at the cold black night. “I don't want anything to do with it. I won't put what I feel on display for an audience.”

The woman didn't chastise her. She didn't say anything, as if she somehow knew there was more. The words tumbled out like a guilty secret.

“People expect me to. I know they do. They expect me to be at the rallies and the prayer vigils and on television. But I don't want to be weak in front of them, and I know I can't be strong. I can't be who they want me to be. Not now.” And the guilt from that was another weight added to the burden already crushing her.

“That's all right,” Terry said in an unflappable tone. “Don't worry about what anyone else wants from you. You don't have to go on television if it feels wrong for you. We each do what we have to to get through the nightmare. Maybe it helps your husband to go on television.”

“I wouldn't know.”

Again the silence.

“We're not communicating very well these days.”

“It's hard. You do the best you can. Hang on to the pieces of your relationship and worry about putting them back together later. What's important now is just getting through it.”

Hannah's gaze strayed to the photo album on the desk, the smiling images of her son. She would have done anything, given anything, to have him back safe. She thought of Olie Swain sitting in a jail cell, thought of the secrets he had yet to reveal, and the unbearable sense of anticipation filled her again. What did he know? What would he tell? And when he told his secrets, would it be over?

“It's not knowing,” she whispered. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes to hold back the tears, but they came anyway. “God, I can't stand not knowing! I can't stand it!”

Sobbing, she threw herself against the wall and slammed her fist against it again and again, oblivious to the pain. And when the burst of adrenaline was spent, she just stood there pressed against the carefully painted mural of boys playing baseball, and cried. She didn't move when she felt a hand rest on her shoulder.

“I know,” Terry murmured. “My son was abducted when he was twelve, on his way home from the movies. We lived in Idaho then, in a town a lot like this one, a quiet, safe place. Not so safe, it turned out. I thought the not knowing would kill me. And there were times I wished it had,” she confessed softly.

Gently, she pulled Hannah away from the wall and led her to the bunk beds, where they sat down side by side. Hannah wiped her face on the sleeve of her sweater and struggled to pull herself together, embarrassed that she had come apart in front of this stranger. But Terry acted as if this were the most normal of scenes, as if she hadn't even noticed the outburst.

“He would have been sixteen this year,” she said. “He would have been learning to drive, going on dates, playing on the basketball team at school. But the man who took him away from us took him away forever. They found his body in a landfill, thrown away like so much garbage.” Her voice strained and she went silent for a moment, waiting for the pain to ease.

“After they found him there was . . . relief. At least it was over. But when we didn't know at least we had some hope that he was alive and that we might get him back.” She turned to Hannah, her eyes bright with tears that wouldn't fall. “Hold on to that hope with both hands, Hannah. It's better than nothing.”

She's gone through this,
Hannah thought.
She knows what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, what I'm fearing.
The bond was there. That she didn't want it didn't matter; it was there. They shared a common nightmare and this woman was offering what wisdom she had won from the ordeal. It didn't matter that Hannah didn't want to join this club; she was already a member.

She reached across the bedspread, took Terry Whoever's hand in hers and squeezed it tight.

7:42
P.M.
         -30°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

“. . . and I'm outraged that this sick, perverted animal was not only let out of his cage, but was allowed to work in the same building with my son and the sons and daughters of everyone in this community!”

Applause from the people in the volunteer center made Paul Kirkwood pause. He stared directly at the camera, head up, chin jutting forward, the light in his eyes fanatical. The look seemed to pierce the television screen and travel through the bars of the cell right into Olie's chest. He knew that look, that tone of voice.
You make me sick! You're nothing but a little freak! Spawn of the devil, that's what you are! I'll beat some good into you!
And the other, shriller voice joined in harmony.
I told you, Leslie! You're good for nothing! Don't you cry or we'll give you something to cry about!

He huddled into the corner of his bunk, curling up like a frightened animal as the voices ranted on. He had been locked in his own cell in the city jail, a luxurious place as jails went. Mainly empty. The newness of the facility lingered. The walls were white, the hard gray floors polished. Only the vaguest aroma of urine cut through the strong scent of pine cleaners. No smoking was allowed.

In the next cell was the proud owner of the small portable television. A stringy, narrow-eyed character named Boog Newton who was doing three months for repeatedly drinking himself into a stupor and climbing behind the wheel of his four-by-four. In his latest escapade, he had backed into the plate glass display window of the Loon's Call Book and Gift Shop. As the only semipermanent resident in the place, he was allowed amenities.

Boog sat on his bunk with his elbows on his knees, picking his nose, absorbed by Paul Kirkwood's passionate sermon on the failings of the system and the injustices against decent people.

“. . . I'm sick of turning on the evening news and having to listen to how another child has been raped or murdered or abducted. We have to
do
something
. We have to put a stop to this madness!”

The broadcast broke for a commercial on a wave of applause. Boog rose and swaggered over to the wall of iron bars that separated the cells. His face was pitted with acne scars, his mouth twisted into a perpetual sneer.

“Hey, dumbshit, they're talking about you,” he said, leaning against the bars.

Olie stood and began to pace back and forth along the far side of his cage, back and forth, back and forth, head down, counting the steps in an attempt to shut the man out. He didn't like men. Had never liked men. Men only ever wanted to hurt him.