Guilty as Sin (6 page)

A shudder of revulsion jiggled through Teresa's small, plump body."That is so gross! Paige Price and Russ Steiger. Anybody and Russ Steiger. Do you think he ever changes the oil in that hair?"

"I try not to wonder. How's Mrs. Wright holding up?"

Teresa shot a look toward the bedroom that was separated from the entrance by a partial wall. "She's not, poor thing. She keeps saying it has to be a mistake. She's been sedated. I don't know how much good she'll be to you."

Ellen shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet. "We have to keep trying to get through to her. She could be the key to this whole thing."

Karen Wright sat in a flowered chintz chair, staring at the print that hung in an ornate gilt frame above the bed: a mother cat watching her plump, fluffy kittens cavort with a ball of yarn. She had curled herself into the chair, pulling her feet up onto the seat and wrapping her arms around her knees. A variation on the fetal position. She was a lovely woman with delicate features and ash-blond hair that hung like silk in a classic bob. The only sign that she had spent the past several days in tears was the red that rimmed her big doe eyes and tinted the end of her upturned nose. Somehow the color managed to coordinate with the rose-colored leggings and soft gray sweater she wore.

"Karen? I'm Ellen North with the county attorney's office." Ellen pulled out the chair from the writing desk and sat. "I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes if that's all right."

"It was a mistake," Karen said without looking away from the print. "Garrett's never even had a parking ticket."

"We have a good deal of evidence against him, Karen," Ellen said gently. "By law you can't be compelled to testify against your husband, but if you know anything at all that could be helpful in finding Josh, you would tell us, wouldn't you?"

Karen nibbled at a cuticle and dodged Ellen's gaze. "Do you know any reason he would single out the Kirkwoods, any reason he would take Josh?"

The silence stretched into a moment, two.

"This must be especially hard for you. You must feel betrayed, maybe even guilty in a way."

The feelings had to be there somewhere, deep inside. She had been stuffing missing-child fliers into envelopes at the Josh Kirkwood Volunteer Center, had gone to the Kirkwoods' house to baby-sit Josh's little sister, while her husband had been holding them all in the grip of fear. Had he fooled her that completely or had she known all along?

"Karen, you have to be aware that you could be considered an accessory," Ellen said. "People are having a hard time believing you didn't know what Garrett was doing."

Not a flicker of response. Karen combed a strand of hair behind her ear. Slowly, a smile spread across her mouth. "Lily's so sweet," she murmured. "I don't mind watching her. Garrett and I don't have any children." Tears glittered in her big dark eyes. "I suppose Hannah won't let me watch her anymore."

She put her head down on her knees and sobbed softly, as if the prospect of not being able to baby-sit was too much for her but the idea that her husband was some kind of sociopathic monster made no impact on her whatsoever. Ellen didn't know whether to feel sympathy or horror. Frustration took up the slack.

"Karen, you have to listen to me." Leaning forward, she reached out and took a firm hold of the woman's wrist. "Josh is still out there somewhere. If you have any idea where Garrett may have taken him, you have to tell us. Think of Hannah and Lily. Think how much they must miss Josh."

"And Paul . . . ," Karen murmured, lifting her head a fraction. Her gaze fixed on the fringed lamp that sat on the night table. "He has such a nice family," she said wistfully.

"Yes, Josh has a very nice family and they miss him very much. You have to help them if you can, Karen. Please."

Ellen held her breath as she watched the play of emotions in Karen Wright's eyes. Confusion, pain, fear. Was she afraid of her husband? Had ie somehow brainwashed her? He was a professor of psychology; he had :o know how to manipulate minds.

"He can't hurt you, Karen. It can only help everyone for you to tell us vhat you know."

Karen slowly pulled her arm from Ellen's grasp and unfolded herself rom the chintz chair. Hugging herself, she wandered the room, ending lp in front of the antique ash dresser, staring at her own reflection in the >val mirror above it. Slowly, she picked up a brush and started in on her lair with gentle strokes.

"A terrible mistake," she whispered. "Garrett would never . . . He wouldn't do that to me."

Ellen pushed herself to her feet and headed for the door.

"I'll leave you my card, Karen," she said, placing it on the dresser as ic passed. "You can call any time of the day or night. Any time you think f something that might be helpful or if you just want to talk."

"No. It's just a mistake," Karen mumbled to herself, stroking the rush through her hair.

He watched Ellen North emerge from the Fontaine Hotel, wondered hat she'd got. Karen was there, being watched by a hundred eyes. He wanted to go to her, talk to her, but that wasn't possible. She would never betray him. He consoled himself with that thought even as fear rose inside him like a tide of acid.

Life had betrayed him again and again, tricked him into thinking he wanted one thing when he needed something else. The job, the house, the car, the trophy bride. Every time he grabbed a prize, he found he wanted something else. The hunger never abated, it simply changed its guise.

He wanted someone to blame for that, but he could never see where the blame should lie. When he was younger, he had blamed his parents. His father, a man who settled for less than his family deserved, and his mother, a woman who stood in her husband's shadow. Lately, he had thrown the blame at Hannah's feet. Her career came first, before her family, before him. She had never been any man's shadow. Her shadow fell across him. And he hated her for it.

Ironically, no one else blamed Hannah for anything. Throughout this ordeal they had painted her as a victim, as a valiant figure struggling to cope. Poor Hannah, the mother whose child had been taken. Poor Hannah, she helped so many people, she didn't deserve all this pain.

Poor Hannah, who had left their son standing outside the skating rink while she'd tended someone else's needs at the hospital. Poor Hannah, who'd sat at home waiting for the phone to ring while he had gone out and beat the bushes with the search teams and made pleas on television.

No one ever said "poor Paul". Thanks to that BCA bitch O'Malley, they had turned to him with suspicious eyes because of that damned van. They had tried to tie him to Olie Swain, had tried to blame everything on him when he had done everything he could to play the hero.

A victim, that was what he really was. A victim of circumstance. A victim of fate. He didn't even have a home to go to tonight.

". . . I don't know who you are anymore, but I know I'm sick of your lies and your accusations. I'm sick of you blaming me for losing Josh, when all you seem to want to do is bury him and hope the cameras get your good side at the funeral!"

"I don't have to listen to this." He looked away from her, away from the contempt in her eyes.

"No," Hannah said, picking up his coat off the back of the sofa. She flung it at him, her mouth trembling with fury and with the effort to hold the tears at bay. "You don't have to listen to me anymore. And I don't have to put up with your moods and your wounded male ego and your stupid petty jealousy. I'm through with it! I'm through with you... You don't live here anymore, Paul."

The scene played through his mind. Saturday night. Mitch Holt had come to give them the news of Garrett Wright's arrest.

Hannah would divorce him. And everyone would look at her and say, "Poor Hannah." No one would look at what had been taken from him. No one would say, "Poor Paul" . . . except Karen. No one understood him except Karen.

A yawn pulled at Ellen's mouth and she gave in to it, stretching, rustling the thick down comforter that covered her legs and drawing a one-eyed look from the big golden retriever sprawled across the foot of her bed.

"I know it's late, Harry," Ellen said, shoving her reading glasses up on her nose. She resettled herself against the mountain of pillows and among the piles of law books and fought off another yawn. The cube-shaped clock radio on the cherry bedside stand pronounced it to be 12:25 a.m. "I'm working to put away the guy who took Josh."

The dog whined a little, as if he, too, had absorbed the hours of news coverage about the abduction.

Ellen let Minnesota Rules of Court—State and Federal fall shut in her lap as an image of Garrett Wright rose in her mind. The image he had given her in the interview room—pale, drawn, delicate: a victim, not a monster.

Although there were people ready to pin the blame for these crimes on anyone, there were a great many people in
Deer
Lake
who would not want to pin the blame on Garrett Wright. People who had trusted him, respected him, looked up to him. The students from Harris. The people who backed the juvenile offenders' program he had helped establish. There would be people who wouldn't want to believe, because, if a man like Garrett Wright could be guilty of something so ugly, then who could they trust?

Who can you trust? The question brought a chill with it. A memory of old cynicism and hard-won wisdom. Trust no one.

She didn't want to believe that anymore. She had done her time on cases of smoke and mirrors, where nothing was as it seemed, where enemies came with smiles and stroked with one hand while the other plunged the knife in deep.

"Long ago and far away," she murmured, magic words to ward off the memories.

She could see Wright against a dark background. Staring at her with eyes that were bottomless black holes, soulless, staring into her, through her. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile that made ^cr blood run cold. He knew something she didn't. The game plan. The big picture. He looked inside her and laughed at something she couldn't see.

Then his image blurred into another. "I frighten you, Ms. North? You don't strike me as the sort of woman who would be easily frightened." He stepped closer, leaned closer. She tried to back away and found herself held to the spot, unable to move. She could feel the energy around him. Seductive. The word wrapped itself around her like curling fingers of smoke. ". . . assumptions can be very dangerous things . . ."

Ellen jerked awake with a cry that brought Harry's head up. Her heart was pounding, her glasses askew. She pulled them off and set them aside with a trembling hand as she tried to jump-start her brain. A sound. A sound had snapped her to consciousness. A bang or a thump, she wasn't sure.

Holding her breath, she strained to listen. Nothing. But in the back of her mind that dark voice whispered. "If I were after you...I would . . . follow you home, find a way to slip into your house or garage . . . catch you where there would be little chance of witnesses or

interference. "

The killer-blue eyes stared up at her from the pages of the Newsweek she had dug out of the recycling bin. She picked up the magazme and glared at his image. It was an artsy shot full of shadows. He stared at the camera, looking tough, his hands curled around the bars of a wrought -iron fence. His hair was brown, cropped short with a hint of a cowlick in front. His face was masculine, angular, with a slim, straight nose and a stubborn chin. In contrast his mouth was full, sculpted, almost feminine, far too sexy. The kind of mouth that hinted at dark, sensual, secret talents.

The headline read "Crime Boss" in bold black letters. The caption— "Crime pays big time for Jay Butler Brooks."

Ellen scowled at the photograph. "I should have had you arrested."

Disgusted with herself, she tossed the magazine aside and crawled out from under the covers and the books. Trying to ignore the uneasiness that curled through her midsection, she picked up the half-emptY glass of white wine from the table and padded barefoot across the plusn ivory carpet. Her doors were locked. Her alarm system was on the bed, watching her.

Sipping absently at the wine, she pulled aside the thick swag of ivory lace at the window and looked out at the night. The new snow sparkled like a carpet of white diamonds beneath the light of a crescent moon. Beautiful. Peaceful. No hint of the storm that had slapped Minnesota over the weekend. No evidence of the violence that had put Megan O'Malley in the hospital. No sign of Josh Kirkwood. Just another quiet night in the Lakeside subdivision. The Kirkwoods' neighborhood. Garrett Wright's neighborhood.

Her house was less than two blocks away from theirs. She could see a wedge of lake from her living room, was within walking distance of Quarry Hills Park, where Mitch and Megan and Garrett Wright had played out a life-and-death drama Saturday night. Ellen had been sitting in front of her fireplace sharing cappuccino and conversation with a friend, oblivious to what was happening a stone's throw from her own home.