Night Sins (48 page)

His face pale, he held his hands up in surrender as he backed away. The trademark grin quivered and twisted. “Hey, Chief, I'm sorry. I didn't know this was a serious thing with you and Megan. I thought it was just—”

The words strangled in his throat at Mitch's glare. This
thing
between him and Megan was nobody's damned business, whatever it was. God knew, he'd bent his brain into a knot thinking about it in the predawn while she lay beside him. It seemed so much simpler in the night, when she wasn't afraid to need him and he couldn't think beyond the next caress. Then morning came, and the world and their lives were just as screwed up as ever.

A knock at the door brought Mitch back to the moment. Megan made her entrance, parka hanging off one shoulder, dark hair escaping her ponytail. The bright color along her cheekbones might have come from the great outdoors, but he suspected it had more to do with the energy radiating around her. He could sense her tension across the room and knew the source of it. He had felt that same rush himself more than once when he'd been onto something.

“What have you got?” he asked, moving toward her.

“I need to talk to you.” She made a beeline toward him, not so much as glancing in the direction of her replacement.

“Agent O'Malley,” Marty Wilhelm said sardonically, “aren't you supposed to be in St. Paul right now?”

Megan cut him a nasty glare and looked back up at Mitch. “I had an idea about that accident out on Old Cedar Road the night Josh disappeared.”

“Bruce DePalma called me looking for you,” Wilhelm went on.

Megan turned her shoulder to him. “What if it wasn't an accident at all? What if it was set to happen as a means of keeping Hannah at the hospital?”

Mitch frowned. “It wouldn't change anything, except to make the crime even more diabolical. We already know it wasn't a random act.”

“I realize that, but think about it—think about the location. It's a mile or so to Fletcher's and St. Elysius.”

Marty perked up at Fletcher's name. “What? How does Fletcher tie in?”

“He could have slipped out of the church, made the icy patch on the road, and gotten back in time for his classes,” Mitch speculated. “Causing the accident that kept Hannah at the hospital and still providing himself with an alibi. It works, but he still had to have an accomplice.”

“It's probably a long shot,” Megan said, “but I was thinking if we could find a witness who saw someone hanging around the Lexvold place that day, we might get a link we don't have now.”

“We?”
Wilhelm's voice made her cringe as sure as fingernails on a chalkboard. “Agent O'Malley, might I remind you, you're
off
this case.”

“I don't need reminding,” Megan said, still refusing to look at him.

He gave an incredulous half-laugh. “I beg to differ.”

He snatched a copy of the
StarTribune
off the table and displayed it in front of him. “You're on temporary suspension from active duty. That takes you off this case, out of this room, and all the way to St. Paul.”

She tilted her chin up, glaring at him. “I'm taking care of some loose ends.”

“You're off the case,” he repeated, throwing the paper down, then thrusting a forefinger in front of her face like an exclamation point.

Megan wanted to grab his hand and bite him. Instead, she clenched her jaw and her fists. “I don't take orders from you, Wilhelm. Don't try to push me around. Better men than you have tried and regretted it.”

A beeper went off like an alarm, shrill and piercing. They all flinched automatically in response, looking down at the little boxes on their waistbands. Wilhelm stepped back and unclipped his from his belt.

“If this is DePalma,” he said, moving toward the door, “I'll tell him you're on your way, Megan, because you are
off this case
.”

Megan held her tongue until he was out the door and had closed it behind him. “The hell I am, Spaniel Boy.”

“Megan, you're going to get yourself fired,” Mitch said.

“I've already been fired.”

“You've lost the field post, not your career. You jerk DePalma around this way and he'll have your badge.”

Megan stared down at the toes of her boots. She had been over all of this in her mind again and again. She had told herself her career was all she had, that she had to do everything she could to protect it—don't get involved with a case or with a cop. But she
was
involved and she couldn't walk away from this case for the sake of her career. A little boy's life was at stake.

“I'm not walking away from this until it's done. We're too close and it's too important. Now, you've got to get Christopher Priest away from Olie's computers.”

“Why?”

“Because everything we just said about Albert Fletcher could apply to him, too.”

“Megan, get a grip. He's been nothing but helpful on this case from day one.”

She nodded. “And most arsonists return to the scene of the crime to watch the firemen. Listen to me, Mitch. I know it sounds crazy on the surface, but it could fit. The kid behind the wheel of that car was a student of his,” she reminded him, refusing to back down. “Priest told me he had sent him out to run an errand. He had to know the kid would take Old Cedar Road.”

“What possible motive would Priest have for taking Josh?”

“I don't know,” she admitted, wishing she had more to go on than the uneasy feeling in her gut. “Maybe it's not about motive. We've said all along he's playing games with us. Taking Josh was the opening move. Then came the taunts, the messages, the notebook, his conversation with Ruth Cooper. Maybe it's just about winning, outsmarting everyone.”

“And yesterday it was a personal vendetta against Hannah and Paul. And the day before that Paul did it—”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means you'll beat your head against a wall until the wall moves.”

“I'm doing my job,” she insisted.

“And the rest of us aren't?” he said, spreading his hands.

Megan scowled at him. “I never said that.”

“You've been taken off the case, Megan.”

“And you think I should just back down and drop it?”

“I think you should have a little faith that someone besides you can do the job,” he said, ticking his thoughts off on his fingers one by one. “I think you should realize DePalma's got you by the short hairs. I think you should take a look in the mirror and see what you're doing to yourself. Yesterday you couldn't even stand up!”

He reached out to touch her, to touch her forehead, where pain was gathering in a tightening knot.

She stepped back from him. “I'm fine now. I sure as hell don't need you—”

“That's what it comes down to, isn't it?” Mitch snapped, dropping his hand. “You don't need anybody. Mighty Megan O'Malley taking on the whole fucking male-dominated world!”

“Yeah, well,” she jeered, “it's an ugly job, but somebody's got to do it.” She gave a bitter attempt at laughter. “Like you want me to need you.”

Megan stared up at him, wary and defiant. She had spent her whole life learning not to trust emotions, not to be vulnerable, not to put her heart in someone else's hands because she got it back when they found out she wasn't what was really wanted.

“I can take care of myself,” she said, chin up, eyes glittering. “I've been doing it my whole life.”

And she would go on doing it, Mitch thought. She was afraid to need and he had spent the last two years afraid of being needed. Where did that leave them? Squaring off in the war room. How apropos.

“Fine,” he said, focusing past her head to the slick white board where the kidnapper's messages mocked them in bright-colored marker. “Then go do it. I don't have time for this bullshit game of yours, knocking the chip off your shoulder so you can pick it up and put it right back. I've got better things to do with my time. I've got a legitimate suspect at large.”

“Yes, and since he's
your
suspect, he's the only suspect,” Megan sneered. “Good luck finding him with your head up your ass.” She ignored the dangerous glint in his eyes. She felt something dangerous herself.

“You're a great one to talk about playing games,” she lashed out. “I told you from the first I didn't want to get involved with a cop, but you pushed and pushed, and now that you've had what you wanted, the game's over. How nice and neat for you. You don't even have to bother foisting me off on some other guy. I'll just be gone and you can have your town back and put your ring back on and go back to—”

He jerked a finger up in front of her face, cutting her off. “Don't,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper, and yet stronger, more frightening than a shout, vibrating with emotion, sharper than steel. “Don't you dare. I loved my wife. You don't even know what that means.”

No, she didn't know what that meant. Nor did she stand a chance of finding out, Megan thought as he turned and stormed out of the room. He left her standing there, slamming the door shut on her, on them. She stood there, the sudden silence pounding in her ears; angry, hurtful words echoing in her head—her words, his; the aftertaste of heartbreak bitter in her mouth.

CHAPTER 35

D
AY
11
11:22
A.M.
         24°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: 14°

C
hristopher Priest was not at the station. Megan stuck her head into the little room assigned to Olie's computers, to find a brush-cut, bow-tied pencil neck from headquarters who had obviously been told not to share with her. He offered no explanation for the professor's absence and gave no indication as to whether or not Olie's machines had turned up anything of interest.

The carrion feeders were waiting for her as she tried to slip out a service entrance to the City Center. The mob lunged at her with microphones, hand-held tape recorders, cameras.

“Agent O'Malley, do you have a comment on your firing?”

“Not one you can print,” she snarled, shouldering her way through the crowd.

“Do you have any comment on the lawsuit?”

“Do you have any proof Paige Price is sleeping with Sheriff Steiger?”

From behind the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses, she shot a glare at Henry Forster. His beetle brows were drawn together in a furry V as he stared back at her through the smudged lenses of his crooked glasses. The wind had blown his comb-over into a spike that stood straight up from his liver-spotted head like a horn.

“You're the hotshot investigative reporter,” she snapped. “Dig up your own dirt.”

They trailed her halfway across the parking lot, then gave up, disheartened by the lack of usable sound bites. Vultures. Megan scowled at them as she wheeled the Lumina out onto Main Street.

No one at the volunteer center had seen Christopher Priest since Friday. Classes began again at Harris on Monday. She might try his office there, suggested one of Priest's student volunteers, while other members of the volunteer staff shot her looks from the corners of their eyes. A copy of the
StarTribune
lay on the end of a table, where fliers were being stuffed into envelopes, Henry Forster's headline jumping off the page—
O'Malley Strikes Out
.

“I haven't finished swinging yet, Henry,” she muttered. She climbed back into her car and for the second time that day headed through the snow toward Harris.

P
riest's office, she was told by a perky young woman in the administration building, was on the fourth floor of Cray Hall. Megan trooped across the Harris grounds. She tried not to breathe too deeply; the fresh air seemed to knife right up behind her eyes. Brain freeze—like swallowing too much ice cream.

“Just let me get through today, God,” she mumbled as she climbed the stairs of Cray Hall. “Just let me get a good lead and then you can nail me. Just one solid lead. Don't let me go down in flames here.”

One lead that might come from a man no one would ever suspect—or want to suspect. Professor Priest. Quiet, unassuming, more enamored of machines than of people. Fascinated and bewildered by the vagaries of fate and human nature.
Is it fate or is it random? What brought Mike Chamberlain to that corner at that moment? What put Josh Kirkwood on that curb alone that night?

Had he been toying with her that day at the hospital? Trying to plant clues in her mind without her ever suspecting? Or was she grasping at straws, so desperate for an end to the case that she was beginning to see suspects every time she turned around? Megan's gut told her no, and her gut was seldom wrong. Unlike her mouth, which blurted out the wrong thing at the wrong moment with regularity. Or her heart . . .

The fourth floor of Cray Hall was a warren of offices and narrow halls the color of mustard. The building was old, the kind of place that would feel dank and clammy year-round. The sharp clack of her boot heels against the old brown flooring carried down the hall like the report of gunshots.

The door to Priest's office stood open, but it was not Christopher Priest who looked up at her from behind a mountain of books and papers on the desk. Todd Childs, the clerk from The Pack Rat, looked up at her with surprise in his sleepy, drug-dilated eyes.

“Hey, it's Dirty Harriet!” he said with a grin. A strand of rust hair fell in his face and he swept it back. Behind him, Garrett Wright looked up from browsing through a file cabinet.

“We seem destined to cross paths, Agent O'Malley,” Wright said, smoothing a hand over his trendy silk tie as he came around the desk. “What brings you to the hallowed halls of Harris?”

“I'm looking for Professor Priest,” Megan said. She glanced around the office. “This
is
his office, isn't it?”

“Yes. I think I told you—Chris and I are conducting a joint project dealing with learning and perception. It involves a computer program designed by his students,” he explained. Slipping his hands into the pockets of his dark pleated trousers, he rocked back on his heels. “It's fascinating stuff. We're gearing up for the next phase of testing. Todd and I are going through some of the data we compiled last semester.”

“It's way cool,” Todd said. “How individuals perceive the world around them. How different personality types perceive and learn. The human psyche is a fascinating creature.”

“Is Priest around?” Megan asked, her interest in learning and perception limited to the case.

“I'm sorry, no,” Wright said. “He told me he had to go to St. Peter. Is this about the case?”

“I just wanted to ask him a few questions,” Megan said, her face carefully blank. St. Peter. The call from Josh had come from St. Peter. “I'm fuzzy on a couple of things I thought he might be able to help me with.”

“Ah . . . excuse me,” Wright said, hesitant and a little awkward, “but didn't I read something in the
StarTribune
about you being taken off this case?”

Megan flashed him a phony smile and lied. “Can't believe everything you read, Dr. Wright.”

He didn't believe her, but he gave a shrug as if it made no difference to him. “Oh, well . . . He told me he would be home about two-thirty. I'm sure he'll be eager to help. He's been so involved with the case, he hardly talks about anything else.”

How involved
was what Megan wanted to ask, but if Priest was in fact the man at the heart of the mystery, she doubted he shared that information with his college colleagues.
What did you do over winter break, Chris? Oh, I kidnapped a little boy and held an entire community hostage to the whims of my madness. How about you?

“I've wanted to take a more active role myself,” Wright continued, rocking back on his heels again. “I feel so bad for Hannah and Paul. Such a perfect family,” he said with a tight little smile. “I haven't been able to contribute much to the effort, I'm afraid. The media grabbed me because I teach psychology. I keep telling them I don't have any degrees in criminal behavioral studies. They don't seem to grasp that.”

“Yeah, well, they're that way,” Megan said, backing toward the door.

“They don't see the big picture,” Todd said, wagging his shaggy head sadly.

Megan forced a polite smile and directed it at Wright. “Thanks for your help, Dr. Wright.”

“Any time. Do you know where Chris lives?”

“I can find it.”

He nodded, smiling. “Right. You're the detective.”

“For the moment,” Megan muttered to herself as she retraced her route to the stairs.

Outside, the snow had begun to fall, fine white flakes sifting down like flour from the sky. Pretty. Clean. The Harris campus looked like a postcard setting. Winter wonderland. In the parklike square across the street, a group of young women were on their backs making snow angels, their laughter clear and pure as it rose into the naked branches of the trees.

Megan walked to her car and sat behind the wheel for a few moments with her eyes closed and her forehead pressed against the cold window. She turned off the incessant crackling of the police radio and tuned the car radio to a light rock station that always promised the latest weather updates.

Mariah Carey told her to look within herself and find strength. “Hero.” Good advice, but what happened when the strength ran out, or time ran out, or the villain was too damn smart? What happened to heroes then? And what happened to the people who counted on them? Like Josh.

Mariah blasted out the final note, turning it into a dozen notes with vocal gymnastics.

“It's going to take a hero to make it through this weather,” the deejay said. “A word of advice for travelers—don't. We're looking at eight to ten inches of the white stuff in the metro area before it's all over tomorrow. Outlying areas are already reporting poor driving conditions. So bundle up and keep your dial on KS95, where it's always ninety-five and sunny.”

The Beach Boys launched into “Kokomo.” Megan cut them off with a twist of her wrist, put the car in gear, and headed for Deer Lake Community Hospital.

M
ike Chamberlain wasn't able to add any pieces to the puzzle. While his injuries incurred in the car accident hadn't been critical, he had developed a serious bacterial infection that was threatening his life. He had been transferred to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he was in surgical intensive care with no visitors but family members allowed.

Megan took the news with resignation. He probably couldn't have helped. If he had played a part in this drama, he was an unwitting pawn. If the accident was indeed the first move in this
madman's game . . .

She drove through town with her headlights on and wipers slapping ineffectually at the windshield. Main Street looked like a ski run for automobiles, tire tracks cutting through the heavy snow in a series of trails that told tales of control problems and fender benders. A team of city workers struggled to bring down the Snowdaze banner that spanned the street, the painted oilcloth billowing and snapping like a sail in the wind.

As she drove out of the business district toward the lake, she encountered more snowmobiles than cars. Yards that should have been overrun with children building snowmen and forts were mostly empty. With Albert Fletcher at large, the children of Deer Lake were being held captive in their homes by fear of abduction.

Gossip down at the Scandia House Cafe had it that he might have poisoned poor Doris and that he had always taken an unnatural interest in the altar boys at St. E's. Some of the regulars nodded over their coffee and said they had always thought he was “a little funny.” They were all angry and wary and afraid, and they all grew quiet when they realized the person sitting at the front table eavesdropping on their conversations was “that BCA woman.”

Megan didn't blame them. Josh's abduction had cracked the placid surface of their quiet town and revealed a nest of worms. Betrayals and secrets, twisted minds and black hearts, all tangled together so no one could decipher the knot. Olie Swain had been transformed from a harmless loser to a wolf loose among the lambs. Albert Fletcher had metamorphosed from deacon to demon, Paul Kirkwood from victim to suspect. She wondered what they would say if she told them she was on her way to question the mild-mannered professor who had worked with juvenile offenders. Christopher Priest was a source of pride for Deer Lake. Would they turn on him or on
her
?

She thought she knew the answer. One more reason not to stay here, she told herself as she drove past the beautiful old Fontaine, past the courthouse, taking a left at the stoplight to drive past City Center. It was just a town, like a million other towns. If the bureau let her go, she could move to a better climate and find a town as nice as this. Her father could come with her or rot. He could live with Mick in L.A. and gush over him in person, and she could be free to start a new life. Alone.

Christopher Priest's home was on Stone Quarry Trail, a fraction of a mile north of the Kirkwood house, but not so easily reached. Especially not on a day when the country roads were fast becoming covered with pristine blankets of new wet snow. Megan navigated with the extreme caution of a city dweller, letting the Lumina creep along what she hoped was the center of the road. There was no other traffic. Woods crowded the shoulders of the road, the naked branches of the trees reaching overhead, nearly lacing together to form a bower. The occasional mailbox marked a driveway. Two to be exact. In the gathering gloom, with the snow coming down, the houses were hidden, crouching like giant forest creatures behind the cover of the woods.

The road simply ended. A yellow and black dead end sign stated the obvious at a point where the road crews had given up and let nature alone. The thick tangle of trees and brush belonged to the back reaches of Quarry Hills Park, the same park that ran behind Hannah and Paul's house. The park where Josh and his buddies had explored and played, never imagining that any of them would ever be in any kind of danger.

A simple black mailbox marked Christopher Priest's driveway, a signpost for a road no one had been down recently. The drive was narrow and thick with fresh snow. Priest hadn't made it back from St. Peter yet. If Garrett Wright knew what he was talking about, Priest would be at least another forty-five minutes—probably more with the weather—which would give her plenty of time to look around.

Not trusting the Lumina to make it up the driveway, let alone back out, Megan abandoned it at the end of Stone Quarry Trail and started up the drive on foot. The trees created a false calm, cutting the wind to innocuous puffs of air. They diminished what little light the day offered as well, giving the impression of a weird kind of twilight, a gray shadow kingdom with a small, dark castle at its heart.

The house sat in a clearing, like something from one of the Grimms' grimmer fairy tales. A shingle-sided Victorian painted the color of slate and ashes, a small turret squatted at one corner. The windows were dark, staring blankly at her through the falling snow. To the east of the house stood a double garage and south of it an old shed, both painted to match the house. Megan trudged up the steps onto the porch. She stamped the snow off her boots and knocked on the old glass-paned front door. With Priest gone, there should have been no one to answer. According to the background check they'd run on him, he was unmarried and had no children or roommates—unless he was keeping Josh locked up in the turret. No lights went on. No faces peeked out from behind the drapes.