Guilty as Sin (7 page)

Harry raised his head abruptly, a growl rumbling low in his throat. The dog jumped down off the bed and stood at attention at the door that ed into the darkened hall. Ellen stood in the center of the room, pulse rate jumping, trying to recall in detail the actual act of locking the doors. She had come in from the garage into the kitchen. She always locked the dead bolt as she came in for the night. It was habit. She had gone out the front door for the mail, come back in, turned that dead bolt as her gaze scanned the words YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS.

The doors were locked. There were no odd sounds emanating from the nether regions of the living room. With that knowledge bolstering her courage, she stepped past the dog and into the hall. Harry gave a little whine of embarrassment and trailed after her, bumping up against her legs as she paused on the short flight of steps that led down to the living room. Faint silver light filtered in around the edges of the blinds. The comfortable sofas and chairs were indistinct hulks in the dark. Nothing moved. No one spoke. Beneath the warm flannel of her pajamas Ellen's skin pebbled with goose bumps. The fine hairs on the back of her neck rose as another low growl rumbled in Harry's throat.

The telephone trilled its high-pitched birdcall. The sound ripped through the room like a shotgun blast. Harry gallumphed in a clumsy circle, his booming bark all but rattling the framed photographs on the walls. The phone rang again.

The last call she had got in the middle of the night had been Mitch telling her Olie Swain was dead. Maybe Wright had been struck down ith remorse and killed himself too, but she doubted it. She had told Karen Wright to call any time of day or night. Maybe Wright's wife had found her way out of the fog of denial.

"Ellen North," she answered, her voice automatically taking on the same tone she used at the office.

Silence.

"Hello?"

The silence seemed to grow thicker, heavier with expectation.

"Karen? Is that you?"

No response. The caller remained on the line, silent, waiting. Another minute ticked past on the nightstand clock.

"Karen, if it's you, don't be afraid to talk to me. I'm here to listen."

Still nothing except the creepy certainty that someone was on the other end of the line. The hope that that someone was Karen Wright evaporated. Ellen waited as another minute slipped past.

"Look," she said crisply, "if you're not even going to bother to talk dirty to me, hang up and free the line for someone who knows how to make an obscene phone call."

Not a sound.

Ellen slammed the receiver down, telling herself it was a tactical move rather than nerves, a lie that was made painfully clear by the way she jumped as the phone rang again. She stared at it as it rang a second and third time, then gave herself a mental kick and picked it up.

"Ellen North."

"Ellen, it's Mitch. Josh is home."

CHAPTER 4

                
Journal Entry

                
January 25,1994

            
They think they have us

                
Guilty as sin

              
Caught in the act

                
Dead to rights

                 
Dead wrong.

Josh, did the man hurt you?" Josh didn't answer. He looked away at the poster on the wall instead. The poster was of a man on a gray horse jumping a fence. It was bright and colorful. Josh thought he might like to ride a horse like that someday. He closed his eyes and pretended to dream he was riding the gray horse on the moon.

Dr. Robert Ulrich bit back a sigh, flicked a glance at Mitch, then turned to Hannah. "I can't find any signs that he's been sexually abused."

Hannah stood beside the examination table where Josh sat wearing a thin blue-print cotton gown. He looked so small, so defenseless. The harsh fluorescent lighting gave his skin a ghostly pallor. She kept one hand on his arm to reassure him—and herself. A doctor herself, she knew better than to interfere with the proceedings, but she couldn't bring herself to sit in the chair three feet away. She hadn't broken contact with him since she had opened the front door of the house and found him standing on the step two hours ago.

She had been trying to sleep—something she didn't do very well anymore. The bed seemed too big, the house too quiet, too empty. She had told Paul to leave Saturday night, but he had been lost to her long before that. The happy partnership they had once shared seemed a distant memory. Lately all they had between them was tension and bitterness. The man she had married ten years ago had been sweet and gentle, full of hope and enthusiasm. The man she had faced two nights ago was angry and petty and jealous, discontented and emotionally abusive. She didn't know him anymore. She didn't want to.

And so she had lain alone in their big bed, staring up at the skyligh and the black swatch of January night, wondering what she would do. How would she cope, who would she be. That was a big question: who would she be? She certainly wasn't the same woman she had been two weeks before. She felt like a stranger to herself. The only thing clear was that she would cope, somehow. She had to for herself and for Lily . . . and for Josh, for the day he came home.

Then there he was, standing on the front step.

Afraid the spell might break, she hadn't let go of him since that moment. Her fingers stroked the soft skin of her son's forearm, assuring her he was real and alive.

"Hannah? Are you listening to me?"

She blinked and focused on Bob Ulrich's square face. He was closer to fifty than forty. He had been a friend to her from the day she had come to interview for a staff position at Deer Lake Community Hospital. He had been influential in the board's recent decision to name her head of the ER. He had delivered Lily and removed Josh's tonsils. He had come to the hospital tonight at her request to examine Josh. He looked at her now with concern.

"Yes," Hannah said. "I'm sorry, Bob."

"Do you want to sit? You look a little woozy."

"No."

Mitch contradicted her without saying a word, sliding a stool up behind her and pressing her onto it with a hand on her shoulder. Her blue eyes were glassy, her hair a mass of golden waves hastily tied back. The past weeks had taken a toll on her physically. Naturally slender, she now looked thin to the point of anorexic. She had stood beside the table for the entire exam, holding Josh's hand, staring at his face, leaning over to kiss his forehead. She didn't seem to be aware of the tears streaming down her cheeks. Mitch pulled a clean handkerchief out of his hip pocket, pressed it into her free hand, and wondered where the hell Paul was.

He should have been here for this, for Josh, for Hannah. Hannah had tried to call him at his office, which was where he had been spending his nights, and had got his machine. Mitch had sent a squad car to the office complex. Nearly two hours later there was still no sign of Paul. And God knew, tomorrow, when Paul would be the center of attention for the press, he would blame the police department for not rushing him to his son's side.

Josh had been absolutely silent throughout the whole ordeal, not uttering a sound of fear or discomfort. He answered no questions.

Mitch hoped the last would be a temporary condition. This was already a case with too many questions and not enough answers. While Josh's reappearance was cause for celebration, it added to the Q column. With Garrett Wright sitting in a jail cell, who had brought Josh home? Did Wright have an accomplice? What few clues they had pointed to Olie Swain. Olie had audited some of Wright's classes at Harris. Olie had the van that fit the witness description. But the van had yielded them nothing, and Olie Swain was dead.

"There's no sign of penetration," Dr. Ulrich said quietly, keeping one eye on Josh, who seemed to be asleep sitting up. "No redness, no tearing."

"We'll see what the slides show," Mitch said.

"I'm guessing they'll be clean."

The doctor had conducted the standard rape kit, searching Josh literally from head to toe for any sign of a sexual assault. Oral and rectal swabs taken would be tested for seminal fluid. Mitch had overseen the exam as a matter of duty, watching like a hawk to be certain Ulrich didn't skip anything, well aware the doctor had little in the way of practical experience with this kind of procedure. Just another of the challenges of law enforcement outside the realm of a city, where rape was not an uncommon crime. Deer Lake Community Hospital didn't even own a Wood's lamp—a fluorescent lamp used to scan the skin surface for signs of seminal fluid. Not that a Wood's lamp would have done them much good in Josh's case. The boy appeared scrubbed clean, and the scent of soap and shampoo clung to him. Any evidence they may have got had literally gone down a drain.

"What about his arm? You think they drugged him?"

"There's certainly been a needle in that vein," Ulrich said, gently pulling Josh's left arm toward him for a second look at the fine marks and faint bruising on the skin of his inner elbow. "We'll have to wait for the lab results on the blood tests."

"They took blood," Hannah murmured, stroking a hand over her son's tousled sandy-brown curls. "I told you, Mitch. I saw it."

He gave her a poker face that told her he was politely refraining from comment. He probably thought she'd finally cracked. She couldn't blame him. She had never put much stock in the ravings of people who claimed they saw things in dreams. If she had been asked to diagnose a woman in her own situation, she would have probably said the stress was too much, that her mind was trying to compensate. But she knew in her heart what she had seen in that dream Friday night: Josh standing alone, thinking of ler, wearing a pair of striped pajamas she had never seen before. The same striped pajamas he had been wearing tonight, which Mitch Holt had bagged to send to the BCA lab.

Mitch leaned down to Josh's eye level. "Josh, can you tell me if someone took blood from your arm?"

Eyes closed, Josh turned to his mother, reaching for her. Hannah slid off the stool and gathered him close. "He's exhausted," she said impatiently. "And cold. Why is it so damn cold in this hospital?"

"You're right, Hannah," Ulrich said calmly. "It's after two. We've done all we need to for tonight. Let's get you and Josh settled into a room."

Hannah's head came up as alarm flooded through her. "You're keeping him here?"

"I think it's wisest, considering the circumstances. For observation," he added, trying to take the edge off her panic. "Someone is watching Lily, right?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"Josh has been through a lot. Let's just keep an eye on him for a day ar so. All right, Dr. Garrison?"

He added the last bit to remind her who she was, Hannah thought. Dr. Hannah Garrison knew how things were done. She knew what logic dictated. She knew how to keep her composure and her objectivity. She vas strong and levelheaded, cool under fire. But she had ceased to be Dr. Hannah Garrison. Now she was Josh's mom, terrified of what her child nust have gone through, sick at heart, racked by guilt.

"How's that sound, Josh?" Ulrich asked. "You get to sleep in one of hose cool electric hospital beds with the remote controls, and your mom will be right there in the room with you. What do you think about that?"

Josh pushed his face into his mother's shoulder and hugged her tighter. He didn't want to think at all.

Ellen paced the confines of the waiting room like an expectant aunt.

Marty Wilhelm, the agent the BCA had sent down from St. Paul to replace Megan, sat on the couch, flicking through cable channels with the remote, seemingly mesmerized by the changing colors and images. He looked young and stupid. Tom Hanks without the brain. Too cute, with a short nose and a mop of curly brown hair.

Ellen had taken an instant dislike to him, then chastised herself for it. It wasn't Wilhelm's fault that Paige Price had decided to play dirty and turn the media's attentions on Megan and Mitch's budding relationship. Nor was it Marty's fault Megan had a hot Irish temper and a tongue that was too sharp and too quick for prudence. That Megan had become a public-relations problem which had outweighed her value as a cop had nothing to do with Marty.

All those issues considered, she still disliked him.

He glanced up at her with eyes as brown and vacuous as a spaniel's and said for the ninth time, "It's taking them long enough."