Presumption of Guilt (14 page)

“Forget the awards, Phil. Don't even give me a byline. I don't care. Just print it.”

“I'll read it, Beth. We'll see.”

“Call me as soon as you decide,” she said.

“I will.”

She hung up and rested her face in her hands. She'd done her part. Now, if Phil printed the story, her career—even her life—might be ruined. Or Bill might decide to go out in a blazing act of vengeance, and come after her.

She just hoped God hadn't forgotten to record this in her scorebook.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

N
ick found the woman's apartment building, an old structure with peeling paint, busted-out windows, and trash and old furniture on the front lawn. He found it hard to believe that people lived here; it looked as if it should be torn down.

A toddler played at the bottom of a staircase, wearing nothing but a filthy diaper. As Nick walked from his car across the lawn, he looked for some sign of an adult nearby. Seeing none, he leaned down, hands on knees, and smiled at the child. The baby's face was dirty and sticky, and his nose was runny. He smiled back and reached up to hand Nick a cigarette butt that he'd, no doubt, picked up from the clutter at his feet. His fingers were crusted with filth.

“Hi there.” Nick took the butt. “Where's your mommy?”

“Who wants to know?” a hoarse voice said from behind the broken staircase.

Taking a couple of steps, Nick peered around the staircase and saw a girl of no more than fifteen sitting on a cracked slab of concrete, smoking a cigarette. “Hi,” Nick said. “I didn't see you there. I thought the baby was out here alone.”

“What's it to you?”

He shrugged. “Just worried me, that's all. There are a lot of things around here that could hurt him.”

“So what do you want, anyway?” the girl demanded.

“Uh . . .” He looked back down at the dirty toddler. His instinct was to scoop the baby up and take it away to a place where it would be cared for. But he reminded himself, as he had to several times a day, that not every child was his responsibility, and that things weren't always as bad as they seemed. “I was looking for a woman named Tracy Westin. I think she lives upstairs. Do you know her?”

“Yeah, I know her.”

“Is she home?”

“I haven't seen her come out.”

He looked up the broken staircase. “So she's in that apartment up there?”

“Give the man an award.”

Annoyed, Nick started to respond in kind—and then realized that she was, herself, a child, unable to handle the weight of hopelessness that so obviously held her down.

He looked at the baby again, then back at the girl. Sister? Mother? One could never tell. He only hoped that she was a better caretaker than his first impression suggested. He could only hope that she
had
a better caretaker for herself.

He went up the staircase, stepping over the broken steps. A garbage bag with trash spilling out of a gnawed-out hole sat at the top of the steps, and a cat prowled in the refuse. He stepped over it, ignoring the stench, and knocked on the door.

For a moment, he heard nothing, and almost turned to go. Then he heard a voice.

He pressed his ear to the door and knocked again. He heard the voice again, but couldn't make out the words.

He checked the doorknob—unlocked. Slowly, he opened the door.

The apartment was dark and filthy. He stepped inside and looked around. There was little furniture except for an old torn-up card table in the kitchenette, covered, as was the kitchen counter, by dishes piled on dishes, old crud dried on them. There was a mattress in the far corner of the cluttered room.

On the mattress was a woman in shorts and a dirty tank top, curled up in a fetal position, shivering. Her hair was long and red, tangled and matted. He stepped toward her. “Tracy?”

She didn't answer.

“Tracy?” he tried again.

She still didn't respond, so he stepped over the clothes lying on the floor, the sandals, the wadded sheets that had been kicked off the mattress. She looked tiny, anorexic, no more than eighty pounds. And she was sick—that was clear. He knelt beside her and reached out to touch her forehead. It was alarmingly hot.

“Tracy, can you hear me?”

Her eyes, glassy from the fever, focused on him for a second, and she moaned, “Help me.”

He wasn't sure if this was drug withdrawal or a real illness, but either way she needed to be in a hospital. He looked around.

“Do you have a phone?”

“No,” she whispered.

He thought of rushing off to find a pay phone and call an ambulance, but decided that she would get help more quickly if he took her himself. “Tracy, can you get up?”

She only closed her eyes.

“All right,” he said. “I'll pick you up. I'm going to carry you out to my car and get you to the hospital, okay?”

No answer.

He scooped her up, surprised at how light she was in his arms. She probably hadn't eaten in days—maybe even weeks. He wondered how long she had been like this.

He carried her out, stepping back over the reeking garbage, and carefully made his way down the stairs. The girl with the baby was still sitting there. She watched him blankly as he carried Tracy out.

“Can you tell me how long Tracy's been sick?” he asked her.

“Do I look like her mother?” the girl responded.

“When's the last time you saw her?”

“I don't know,” she said, putting her cigarette out on the concrete. “A week maybe.”

“Was she sick then?”

“How should I know?”

Frustrated, he hurried her to his car and laid her in the back seat. She curled back up in a little ball as he jumped into the front, turned on his lights, and drove away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

B
eth dove for the phone. “Hello?”

“Beth, it's Phil.”

She closed her eyes, bracing herself. “Phil, tell me you're going to print the article. Please. I don't think I can handle it—” B “Relax, I'm printing it. It was great, Beth. Thank your anonymous source for me.”

“Then it'll be in tomorrow's paper?”

“Absolutely.”

“Yes!” she said, punching the air. “Thank you, Phil. You may have saved my life.”

“I wish you didn't mean that literally, but I guess you do.”

“You bet I do. Listen, Phil, I know you're not going to go for this, but I'd like to give a copy of the story to the police department tonight.”

“No! That's too soon!” he said. “That's our story. I don't want every other newspaper in the area getting it before we do, and that's exactly what will happen if you give it to the police. You know better than that.”

“I don't care about being scooped anymore, Phil. Jimmy's little sister is still in that home, and so are a lot of other innocent victims. Not to mention the fact that Bill Brandon is after me. I want him locked up. Now.”

He moaned. “All right, Beth. Maybe the other papers still won't get the whole story. Or maybe the police won't act quickly.”

“They will. They have to.”

He hesitated, and Beth knew that all his editor's instincts told him not to risk losing the scoop. “All right. Do what you have to do.”

“I will.”

She hung up and immediately clicked her mouse on the “print” button. Watching as the article slid out of her printer, she picked up the phone to call Nick and tell him the good news, but she only got his machine.

She grabbed the printed article, folded it in half, and headed for the door. Dodger was right behind her, begging to go out. She picked him up, clipped on his leash, and put him back down. He scurried out the door the second she opened it and made a puddle on her doorstep.

“Good boy!” she said, petting him. “You're getting the hang of this, aren't you?” When he was finished, she hurried him back into the house.

The sun was setting as she headed to the police station, hoping those two detectives, Larry and Tony, would be there. She wanted to make sure this didn't fall through the cracks.

Larry was on his way out as she came in, and she grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Detective Millsaps?”

He looked down at her, and she could tell that he couldn't place her.

“Beth Wright. You were at my house last night, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Nick Hutchins's friend.”

“Right. Listen, I need to talk to you about something really important. Do you have a minute?”

He checked his watch. “Yeah, I can give you a few minutes.”

He led her back through the maze of desks in the noisy room, and offered a chair in front of his desk. Plopping into his own chair, he asked, “So what's up? Did you hear something in your house again?”

“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. And I found the culprit. It was a ten-year-old boy.”

“A ten-year-old boy?”

“Yes. And Bill Brandon, the man who runs the home where this little boy lives, is the one who forced him to break into my house so that he could find and destroy any evidence I had against him.”

“Oh, that's right,” Larry said. “You were working on a story about him.” He pulled a pen out of his drawer and began to take notes. “You're sure he was behind it?”

“Positive.” She handed him the article. “The boy is still with us—Nick knows all about it. Don't you think it's odd that a child is missing from the St. Clair Children's Home and no one there has reported it?”

“Well, yeah . . .”

“Read the article,” she said, sitting back and crossing her arms. “I'll wait.”

She watched as he read the article, skimming at first, then settling in as a wrinkle of concentration and concern gradually deepened across his forehead. When he'd finished, he looked up at her and rubbed his hand across the stubble around his mouth. “That's some article.”

“It's all true.”

“So let me see if I got all this. Brandon has a crime ring that might explain dozens of break-ins in St. Clair over the last several years. He's abusing these kids. He probably murdered his sister to keep her quiet. And he ran you off the road—”

“Tried to,” she cut in.

“Tried to run you off the road.” He shook his head and looked up as he saw Tony hurrying through. “Hey, Tony. Come here.”

Tony seemed a little distracted as he headed toward them.

“You got to read this,” he said. “It's coming out tomorrow in the
St. Clair News.”

They both watched as Tony read. As his interest in the article increased, he dropped the sport coat he'd been holding by one finger over his shoulder. “This is bad.”

“Then you'll do something about it? Tonight?” Beth asked.

Tony glanced at Larry. “What do you think?”

“Well, we'll have to talk to the kid first . . .”

“Where is he now?” Tony asked.

“With some friends of mine,” Beth said. “Lynda Barrett and Jake Stevens.”

“Yeah, we know them. We'll head over there and interview him right now.”

“He's scared to death that something will happen to his sister if an arrest isn't made soon. I think he has reason to be.”

“I think
you
have reason to be, if what you're saying is true.”

She stared at them. “Why would I lie?”

“I'm not suggesting you are,” Larry said. “But we have to have more substantial proof than a newspaper article and the word of a little boy who got caught breaking the law. Kids have been known to lie their way out of tight spots.”

“He isn't lying! Check the dents on my car! Check out Bill Brandon's alibi the night his sister was murdered! You think it was a coincidence that Jimmy broke into
my
house when I was working on a story about Bill?”

“We're going to check it all out, Beth,” Tony said. “We aren't doubting you. We're just doing our job. Now, do you think Nick is up to placing all those kids when we arrest Brandon and take the rest of his staff in for questioning?”

“He's been ready.”

“None of us may get any sleep tonight,” Larry said.

Tony reached for the phone. “I'll call Sharon and cancel our date tonight.”

“Yeah, I'd better call Melissa, too. Beth, if I were you, I'd wait at Lynda's until you hear from us. It's safe there. We can follow you over right now.”

“All right,” she said. “But you'll call me when you've got him?”

“Sure thing. Come on, Tony, we've got to get all this done so we can catch Judge Wyatt to get a warrant before he leaves for the day.”

Tony shrugged on his blazer to conceal his gun. “He's the presiding judge in town,” he told her. “This is worth going straight to the top.”

As they hurried out ahead of her, she felt a huge weight drop from her shoulders. At last, her case was in good hands.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

N
ick knew all of the emergency room doctors and nurses, because he was called here frequently when injuries to youngsters suggested the possibility of child abuse. As soon as he'd brought Tracy in and told them how he'd found her, they'd rushed her back, intent on finding the reason for her illness. She was in good hands.

While he waited, he went to the pay phone and tried to call Beth. Her machine answered, so he left a message, hung up, and dialed his own number. Beth had left a message that she had gotten approval from the paper, that the story would be out tomorrow, and that she was giving it to the police so they could arrest Bill Brandon tonight.

He grinned and hung up, then dropped into a chair. Part of him wanted to relax, but the other part knew that he needed to be at the office finding qualified foster parents to stay with the kids tonight. He had already thought this through and decided that, instead of scattering them all over the state in private homes, it would be better, at least for the next few days, to get couples to come replace SCCH's employees so the children could stay where they were. That would be less traumatic for the kids, and less work for Sheila and him.