Night Sins (30 page)

“Hey, you know what I'd do if I was a judge? I'd put a bag over your ugly head, give the father of that kid a steel pipe, and lock you in a room together. Let him beat the shit out of you. Let him bash your head in. Let him ream you a new asshole with that pipe.”

Olie paced, his hands in his pockets, his breath coming faster and faster.

“Hey, you know what I think they oughta do with freaks like you? I think they oughta cut your pecker off and shove it up your ass. No. They oughta put you in a cell with some nine-hundred-pound no-neck biker and let him put it to you all night every night for the rest of your life. See how you like it.”

Olie already knew. He knew what they did to child molesters in the joint. He remembered every excruciating moment, every pain, the sickening fear. He knew what it was to be tortured. Sweat burst out of his pores, sour with the knowledge that it would all happen again. Whether they kept him there or sent him back to Washington, it would all happen again.

“Hey, you're sick, you know that? That's sick, touching little boys and shit like that. What'd you do to that Kirkwood kid? Kill him? They oughta kill you—”

“It wasn't me!” Olie screamed. His whole face was flushed. His good eye bugged out, rolling wildly. He launched himself across the small space and slammed into the bars, pinching Boog's fingers. “It wasn't me! It wasn't me!”

Boog jerked back, stumbling, shaking his stinging fingers. “Hey, you're nuts! You're fucking crazy!”

A shout rang from the end of the hall as the jailer came running.

Olie sank to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut, sobbing, “It wasn't me.”

CHAPTER 23

D
AY
7
8:37
P.M.
         -31°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -64°

G
randma says you put the bad guy in jail and now it'll be easier to breathe,” Jessie said as she worked at tying a long, bedraggled red ribbon around Scotch's throat.

The old dog suffered the indignity with good grace, groaning a little and rolling his eyes up at Mitch, who sat on the couch studying the photocopied pages of Josh's notebook, looking for some mention of Olie beyond the one page—
Kids tease Olie but that's mean. He can't help how he looks
. The living room floor was littered with Barbie dolls and their paraphernalia. The television in the oak entertainment center across the room was tuned to a news magazine. As Jane Pauley dished out the headlines, images of the latest L.A. earthquake and a scandal-embroiled figure skater flashed across the screen.

Jessie looked up at Mitch from her seat on the floor. “Why did Grandma say that?”

The first few answers that came to mind were not flattering to Joy Strauss. Mitch bit his tongue and counted to ten. “She meant she feels safer now,” he said, turning over a page of carefully drawn spaceships and laying it facedown with the other pages on the coffee table.

And it meant Joy had been given a new needle to stick him with.

“I can't believe someone like him can just be allowed to walk the streets of Deer Lake.”

“He wasn't exactly wearing a sign, Joy. He didn't have a big P for pedophile branded on his forehead. How was I supposed to know?”

“Well, Alice Marshton says police departments have networks that keep track of this kind of person. Alice reads a lot of mysteries and she says—”

“This is real life, Joy, not an Agatha Christie novel.”

“You don't have to be so huffy. I was just saying what Alice told me.”

She was just saying what more than a few people in town were saying—that they blamed him for Josh Kirkwood's disappearance. He understood that they felt the need to blame somebody. Pointing the finger at a real live person was less frightening than believing they had no defense against what had happened. But that didn't make it any easier to take the abuse. Natalie had fielded angry phone calls all day; the tape on his home answering machine was full of messages from irate citizens.

He continued to let the machine take the brunt of the fury. He had no desire to play whipping boy tonight. He wanted some quiet time with Jessie—even if he had to divide his attention between his daughter and the stack of paperwork he had brought home with him. Joy had clucked about him taking Jessie home on such a cold night, insisting she would catch a virus. Mitch had reminded her they were only going across the alley and told her it was too cold for germs, refraining from yet another futile attempt at explaining how viruses are actually spread. Since he had never worked in the kitchen of the hospital like her friend Ione, Joy had no faith in his medical knowledge.

Finished with the bow, Jessie picked up a brush and began to groom Scotch's back. The Labrador made a sound of contentment and rolled onto his side, offering his belly for this treatment. “Grandma said that man did all kinds of bad things to little kids that only God knows about,” Jessie said. “But if God's the only one that knows, then how does Grandma know?”

“She doesn't. She only thinks she knows. No one has proven that man did anything.” Mitch felt amazed and vaguely ashamed of himself for defending Olie Swain just to take sides against his mother-in-law.

He turned to another page, this one full of Josh's thoughts about being made co-captain of his hockey team.
Its real cool. I'm real proud, but my Mom says not to brag. Just do a good job. No body likes a bragger.
The next page expressed his displeasure with having to go to religion class in the form of mad faces and thumbs-down signs, God with a long beard and halo, and a devil's scowling face.

“Then how come that man's in jail?”

“Jessie . . .” he said, trying not to grit his teeth. He leaned ahead to brush a hand over his daughter's head. “Honey, Daddy's really tired from this case. Can we talk about something else?”

Guilt nipped him immediately. He had always made a point of being as honest and up front with Jessie as he could. It seemed to him that deflecting a child's questions caused more problems than it cured, but he didn't have the energy for answers tonight. Now that Olie was behind bars, the stress and long hours were hitting with a vengeance. And the worry for Josh's well-being had intensified with the discovery of the bloodstains in the van. They could do nothing but wait for the lab results. Unfortunately, Jessie's idea of changing the subject was not quite what Mitch had in mind.

A page of Josh's drawings caught her eye, and she abandoned Scotch to scoot over to the coffee table on her knees. “Who made these pictures for you?”

“These are pictures Josh made.” He ran a fingertip along the crooked line of a forgotten game of tic-tac-toe.

“Can I color them for you?”

“No, honey, this is evidence. Why don't you make me a picture from one of your coloring books?”

Jessie ignored the suggestion. She picked up one of the pages Mitch had already set aside and studied it.

“Did you find Josh?”

Mitch sighed and speared his fingers back through his hair, lifting it into thick spikes. “Not yet, sweetheart.”

“He must be sad,” she said quietly, carefully laying the drawing down. It showed a boy with freckles and a big hairy dog.
Me and Gizmo.

“Come here, sweetie,” Mitch whispered, opening his arms in invitation. Jessie scrambled around the end of the table and climbed up on his lap. Mitch wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Are you still worried about someone taking you away?”

“A little bit,” she mumbled against his chest.

He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he wouldn't let anything happen to her, that nothing bad would happen to her if she followed all the rules. But he couldn't make any of those promises and he hated the sense of impotence and inadequacy that reality gave him. He wished the world were a place where little girls had nothing to worry about except playing with their dolls and dressing their dogs up in red satin bows, but that wasn't the case. Not even in Deer Lake.

He rocked his daughter slowly. “You know, it's not your job to worry, Jess. Worrying is
my
job.”

She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “What about Grandma? She worries about everything.”

“Yeah, well, Grandma is in a league of her own. But when it comes to you and me, I get to do all the worrying, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, trying to smile.

Mitch held a hand out in front of her, palm up. “Here. You crunch up your worry like a piece of paper and give it to me.”

Jessie giggled and made a show of pretending to squish her worries into a ball. She plopped the invisible burden in Mitch's hand. He closed a fist over it and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his denim shirt. Scotch watched the proceedings with his head cocked and his ears up.

The doorbell rang and the dog lurched to his feet with a booming bark, tail wagging.

“That'll be Megan,” Mitch said, rising with Jessie in his arms.

Jessie stuck her lower lip out. “How come she's coming over? You said I could stay up late 'cause there's no school tomorrow and we'd have fun.”

“We've had lots of fun, haven't we?” Mitch said. “But you can't stay up as late as me, so who will keep me company when you go to bed?”

“Scotch.”

Mitch growled and tickled her, then sent her into a fit of squealing giggles by swinging her up over his shoulder legs first. He opened the door with a smile and backed into the living room, calling, “Welcome to the monkey house!”

Megan's reluctance couldn't withstand the windchill factor of minus sixty-something. She stepped into the foyer of Mitch's house, closing the door behind her, instantly feeling like an intruder. Mitch was giving Jessie a wild ride around the living room on his shoulders while a big yellow dog gave chase with a Barbie doll in his mouth. No one seemed to notice her standing there swaddled in wool and goose down with a quart of chocolate chip ice cream clutched between her mittens. She wondered if they would notice if she simply backed out the door and went home.

Before she could take a step, however, Mitch came to a halt in front of her and nailed her to the spot with a knowing gaze. With one finger he tugged the scarf down from her face.

“Take your coat off and stay awhile, O'Malley,” he said softly.

She gave him a wry smile as she unwound her scarf and draped it over a coat tree. She looked up at the little girl perched on his shoulder. “Hi, Jessie, how are you?”

“I don't have kindergarten tomorrow 'cause it's too cold for brass monkeys. That's what my grandpa says.”

“That's pretty cold,” Megan agreed, amusement tugging hard at the corners of her mouth.

“So I get to stay up past my bedtime and have fun,” Jessie said in a cautionary tone, as if it just might be too much for Megan to deal with.

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you get to stay up long enough to have some of this ice cream Megan brought us. Wasn't that nice of her?”

“I like cookies better.”

“Jessie . . .” Mitch gave her a stern look as he set her down.

Across the room the phone on the end table rang, the answering machine picked up.

“Mitch? Mitch, can you hear me?” The woman's voice was nearly frantic. “It's Joy. I can see your lights on.” She turned away from the receiver and spoke to her husband somewhere in the background. “Jurgen, he's not answering! Maybe you should go over. They could have carbon monoxide poisoning!”

Forcing a weary smile, Mitch heaved a sigh. “I'd better take this.” He looked to his daughter. “Jessie, please take Megan into the kitchen and help her get out bowls for the ice cream.”

Resigning herself to her fate with a much-put-upon look, Jessie headed for the kitchen. Megan followed dutifully. The dog trotted past them both, the doll in his mouth smiling with one arm raised, as if waving.

“That's my dog, Scotch,” Jessie said. “I put that bow on him. I can tie my own shoes and ribbons and stuff. Kimberly Johnson in my class can't tie anything. She has to wear shoes with Velcro and she picks her nose, too.”

“Yuck.”

“And she eats it,” Jessie went on, digging the ice cream scoop out of a drawer crammed with spatulas and plastic spoons. “And she's mean. She bit my friend Ashley once and had to have time-out in the corner all through recess and didn't get to have any of Kevin Neilsen's birthday treats at milk break. And she said she didn't care 'cause they weren't really Tootsie Rolls, they were cat poop.” She gave Megan a look. “That wasn't true.”

“Sounds like a tough customer.”

Jessie shrugged, dismissing the subject. She pulled a chair across the linoleum and climbed up on it to get bowls out of a cupboard. Megan set about the task of opening the carton and dishing out the treat.

“I can eat two scoops,” Jessie said, peering over the edge of the tile-topped kitchen table. “Daddy can eat about ten. Scotch can't have any 'cause he's too fat.”

Megan's gaze skated around the kitchen, taking in the crayon and fingerpaint masterpieces taped on the wall and refrigerator. They tugged at a vulnerable corner of her heart—their naïveté, their unabashed enthusiasm and attention to odd detail. And the fact that Mitch displayed them so proudly. She could almost picture him, the hard-ass cop fumbling with Scotch tape, cursing under his breath as he tried for the third time to get the latest work of art straight on the wall. She couldn't help but compare this kitchen to the one on Butler Street in St. Paul that smelled of grease and cigarettes and bitter memories. A cardboard box under her bed had acted as treasure chest for the things she and no one else had taken pride in.

“You're quite the artist,” she said to Jessie. “You made all these pictures for your dad to put up?”

Jessie went to one that was taped at her eye level. “This is my daddy and this is me and this is Scotch,” she explained. Mitch was depicted in an abstract arrangement of geometric shapes like a man made out of building blocks. There was a badge as big as a dinner plate on his chest. Scotch was roughly the size of a Shetland pony with teeth like a bear trap. A long pink tongue hung out of his mouth.

“I used to have a mommy,” Jessie said as she came back to the table and rested her arms on top of it. “But she went to heaven.”

The statement was matter-of-fact, but it struck a chord in Megan. She slid down onto a chair and leaned against the table, her gaze steady on Mitch's pretty dark-eyed daughter with her crooked barrettes and purple sweatshirt.

“I know,” she said quietly. “That's hard. I lost my mom when I was little, too.”

Jessie's eyes widened a little at this unexpected common ground. “Did she go to heaven?”

“No,” Megan murmured. “She just went away.”

“Because you were naughty?” Jessie ventured timidly.

“I used to think that sometimes,” Megan admitted. “But I think she just didn't love my dad anymore and I think she didn't want to be a mom, and so she just left.”

The moment stretched between them. The refrigerator hummed. Mitch's daughter regarded her with somber brown eyes.

“That's like diborce,” Jessie said. “My friend Janet's mom and dad got a diborce, but he still wants to be her dad on Saturdays. It's hard to be a little kid.”

“Sometimes,” Megan said, amazed with herself. She didn't talk about her past, ever, with anyone. It was over, long gone, didn't matter anymore. Yet here she was having a heart-to-heart with a five-year-old and it felt . . .
right,
which scared the hell out of her. What was she doing? What was she thinking?

You've been working too hard, O'Malley.

Mitch stood in the dining room with his feet rooted to the floor. He hadn't intended to eavesdrop, had meant only to take a peek in through the door to see how Megan and Jessie were getting along. Jessie was very protective of him and jealous of their time together. He wanted to see if she behaved herself without him right there to enforce her manners. He sure as hell hadn't counted on overhearing a confession from Megan about her well-guarded past.