Guilty as Sin (28 page)

This was what he got for sniffing around a live case. Ordinarily, he had sense enough to come in after the fact, after the strongest of the immediate emotions had faded away and the parties involved had gained perspective on the crime that had touched their lives. There was no perspective here. This case was as hot as a live wire . . . and just as dangerous.

Scuttlebutt had the body of Dennis Enberg being hauled away for a look-see by a medical examiner. Ellen had as much as said she believed the lawyer had been murdered, even though the official rumor was suicide.

Jay had heard the calls on the police scanner, had found his way to the Southtown Shopping Center and bided his time in the relative warmth of his vehicle until the reporters lost interest in the scene and split in search of quotable sources. A single uniformed cop had been left to guard duty in front of the building.

Jay had wandered up, bummed a cigarette, stayed to chat as if he had nothing better to do with his time. The cop, young and unaccustomed to the sight of gruesome death, had eventually let the details of the scene come rolling out. His hands shook so violently, he could barely bring his cigarette to his lips.

"Man, I mean, you see things like that in the movies, but this was real" the kid mumbled. Far across the way, half a dozen cars were parked in front of Snyder's Drug. People came to buy cold tablets and headache remedies, ignorant of the fact that a hundred yards from them a man had had his brain splattered all over the wall of his office.

"It's a tough sight to stomach," Jay said. "Truth to tell, I've seen many a strong man toss his cookies right there and then. And there's no shame in it, if you ask me. Sight like that oughta make any decent person sick."

"Well ... it did me," the kid admitted. He looked at Jay out the corner of his eye. "I suppose you've seen a lot. I read Twist of Fate. That was grisly."

"True enough. Never ceases to amaze me the violence people will do to one another."

"Yeah . . ." He sucked his Winston down to the filter, the ash glowing red as he tossed the butt. The look in his eyes was faraway, deep inside, where people keep their darkest fears and seldom look at them. "I can't imagine sticking a shotgun in somebody's mouth and pulling the trigger."

Murder. As if this case hadn't been sinister enough to begin with.

Jay now shot a sweeping glance across the crowd gathered for Ellen's impromptu press conference. The old warhorse with the beetle brows and bad comb-over who had walked in on them shouted down his colleagues.

"Ms. North, what is your reaction to Garrett Wright's release pending payment of bond?"

"It goes without saying, I'm extremely disappointed." She was all cool control once again, as if those moments of discomposure in the courtroom had never happened. "However, Judge Grabko listened to both sides and made his decision, and we'll live with it. That's the way our system works."

Which was essentially saying it hadn't worked this time.

"Will Dr. Wright return to his home in the Lakeside neighborhood— virtually yards away from the Kirkwood home?"

"I don't know," Ellen said. "I hope not, for the family's sake."

"What about rumors that Dennis Enberg's body was transported to the Hennepin County Medical Center for an autopsy?"

"Mr. Enberg died a violent and unexpected death. The city and county agencies are obligated to investigate that death to determine beyond question whether or not it was self-inflicted."

"Was there a suicide note?"

"No comment."

"With Garrett Wright in jail at the time, you can't possibly suspect involvement on his part in either Mr. Enberg's death or the kidnapping of Dustin Holloman, can you?"

"I have no comment regarding ongoing investigations."

The stone wall had gone up. She had made her point about Wright's release; the rest would be for show. The tough lady prosecutor showing the world this small defeat didn't faze her. None of these reporters had seen her tears or heard the self-castigation in her voice.

Jay had. And that mattered to him in a way that was patently unwise.

He pulled his gaze off her and continued to scan the crowd. Courthouse personnel hung around the fringes of the media group, curious to see their allegedly ambitious assistant county attorney in action. Until the first kidnapping, press conferences had likely been a rarity here.

A flash of rusty-red hair caught his eye. He moved slowly down the hall, skirting the crowd, like a hunter easing up on wary prey.

Todd Childs had focused his attention on Ellen, his gaze flat and cold behind retro-look glasses. He stood half-hidden by a marble column, wearing a long olive-drab wool coat that looked as if it had been fending off moths in someone's attic for years. A student of Wright's at Harris, Childs had been mentioned in the news reports following the O'Malley mcident on Saturday. One of the local TV stations had included a shot of him and a comment as to Dr. Wright's innocence in their follow-up story on Sunday.

Jay eased up beside him, tipping his head conspiratorially. "She's a cool one, isn't she?" he murmured.

"She's a bitch," Childs said between clenched teeth. He jerked his gaze away from Ellen, looking at Jay as if he felt he had been tricked into responding. "You a reporter?"

"Me? Naw. Just interested. How about you?"

He scratched his scruffy goatee and sniffed. "Yeah .
 
.
 
. I'm interested. Dr. Wright is sort of a mentor of mine. The man is fucking brilliant."

"Yeah, but is he guilty?"

Childs glared down at him, pale skin tightening over his bony face. Even though the light in this part of the hall was poor, his pupils were black pinpoints, suggesting he had indulged in some substance other than the dope he smoked, the smell of which had become as ingrained in his ratty coat as the scent of mothballs.

"The man is fucking brilliant," he said again, enunciating each word crisply. "The case against him is bullshit." He cut a nasty glance toward Ellen. "She'll wish she'd never started this."

He backed away from the pillar and turned toward the steps at the far end of the hall. The sudden mix of voices talking all at once told Jay the press conference was over. He didn't look for Ellen but fell in step behind Todd Childs. Keeping his head down, he hustled down the first set of stairs, coming even with Childs on the second-floor landing.

"So are you involved with the protest out front?" he asked as they made their way toward the ground floor.

"Yeah." Childs shot him a sideways look. "You ask a lot of questions. Who are you?"

"James Butler," he lied without hesitation. "I'm doing some independent consulting work with the county auditor's office. You might have guessed, I'm not from around here. I just sort of dropped in on all of this—like tuning into the middle of a movie, you know?"

"Yeah, well, you know what they say, man," Childs muttered as he flipped down his clip-on shades. "Truth is stranger than fiction."

He pushed through one of the heavy main doors and cut diagonally down the steps, his bushy hair bouncing like a foxtail down the center of his back. Jay watched from the door, his sixth sense stirring restlessly.

"Hey!" a voice sounded beside him. "You're Jay Butler Brooks! Adam Slater, Grand Forks Herald. Could I ask you a couple of questions?"

"Yeah, sure," Jay mumbled resignedly. His eyes remained on Todd Childs, who approached the small crowd of student protestors now celebrating his mentor's release . . . and walked right past them as if they weren't there.

CHAPTER
 
16

The news of Garrett Wright's release on bond swept through Deer Lake and on to Campion like a blizzard wind. Telephones at the courthouse and law-enforcement center were jammed with irate calls from the faction of the population who believed Wright was guilty. In Campion the search for Dustin Holloman went on unrewarded, and the reporters lost interest in shooting still more footage of grim-faced volunteers trudging through the snow. Word that Anthony Costello would be giving a formal statement in front of the Park County courthouse about Wright's release sent them packing.

The sidewalk in front of the courthouse took on the carnival atmosphere of a political campaign riding the tide of victory. The Harris College students who had been protesting Dr. Wright's incarceration took up new celebratory chants. The Sci-Fi Cowboys, freed by a teacher in-service day in the metropolitan school system, had set up a vendor's cart on the sidewalk and were selling T-shirts to raise money for Wright's defense fund. A boom box blasted out rap music with strong themes of injustice and oppression. Deer Lake natives watched the festivities with wary eyes from the front window of the Scandia House Cafe. In typical rural Minnesota fashion, all overt displays of emotion were considered suspicious.

Ellen looked down on the goings-on from the window of the conference room. Momentum was swinging Wright's way. Just days ago she had held the control. Now her handhold was being pried away one finger at a time.

"Do you think they have a permit to sell those T-shirts?" Cameron asked.

"They do," Phoebe said, holding her glasses on her button nose as she looked down. "I checked. And we can't stop Mr. Costello from speaking on the steps of the courthouse, either."

"He would only use it against us if we tried," Ellen muttered.

She turned away from the window and faced her team. Mitch had seated himself at one end of the table. Steiger positioned himself at the opposite end, standing with one dirty boot planted on the seat of the chair. Wilhelm sat halfway between them, looking shell-shocked, glassy-eyed. The idiot grin he had worn to Deer Lake a week ago had slipped badly in the last few days. Between developments in the Kirkwood case, the Holloman kidnapping, and Denny Enberg's death, the hours had been hellish, the pressure immense, the leads nonexistent.

"I'm familiar with Costello's tactics," Ellen said. "He believes the best defense is a good offense. He'll do everything he can to make us look bad."

"You mean he'll throw as much shit as he can at the wall and hope some of it sticks," the sheriff said bluntly.

"I'm sure he wouldn't put it quite that way, but that's the gist of it. He plays big-league hardball."

"He's an out-of-town stiff," Steiger snorted. "Just because he's from the Cities, we're all supposed to crap our pants at the sight of him. He's just another shyster lawyer."

Cameron rolled his eyes. Phoebe gave the sheriff a look that suggested he smelled as if he had already seen Costello and fulfilled his statement.

"This shyster is like having a great white shark land in our lake, Sheriff," Ellen said. "Do not underestimate him."

"He's got his own private investigator," Mitch interjected. "Raymond York. The guy was sniffing around St. Elysius today. Father Tom called to complain."

Steiger scowled at him. "So?"

"So this PI will be working full-time to find anything that might get Wright off the hook, while the rest of us are trying to work this case, find Dustin Holloman, figure out whether or not Denny Enberg killed himself, and deal with our everyday, garden-variety mopes."

"The Holloman case and Denny's death complicate our situation," Ellen admitted. "But if we go on the assumption they're tied to Josh Kirkwood's case, that it's Wright's accomplice carrying on the game, then we're still focused on nailing Wright."

"That could be a dangerous assumption if it's wrong," Wilhelm stated.

"But it's not wrong," Mitch said. "We know the kidnappings are related. The thing we can't be sure of is Enberg. The autopsy is scheduled for Monday. If we're lucky, we'll get the word on fingerprints Monday, as well"

"Did Denny's secretary know anything about any late-night appointments?" Ellen asked.

He shook his head. "She said it was a light day. Three appointments with clients and a couple of reporters dropping by for comments. He didn't have anything scheduled after five, told her he was going to stay late and do some paperwork. I've got guys talking to the clients, trying to get a handle on his state of mind. Barb, the secretary, said he was down about the Wright case, but that he didn't want to talk to her about it."

"No witnesses from around the shopping center?" Cameron asked, tapping the end of his fountain pen against his legal pad, impatient for a break.

"None yet, but we haven't been able to track down the night staff from the Donut Hut. They're gone to Mankato for the day—skiing."