Guilty as Sin (73 page)

Ellen stared at him, the horror of the last few moments hitting her. The strength that had carried her through vanished, and tremors shook her.

"It's all right," Jay murmured, sliding his left arm around her and gathering her close. He pressed his face against the cool silk of her hair and kissed her. "It's over, baby. It's over."

An insidious numbness was creeping through him, creeping in on the edges of his mind. He felt that the energy that comprised his being was gathering into a softly glowing ball and slowly drifting out of the wounded shell of his body. He fought the sensation, as seductive as it was. All he wanted was to hold Ellen, shelter her.

"Oh, God, you're bleeding!" she whispered. She fumbled to press a hand against the gushing wound in his shoulder. His blood oozed out between her fingers and ran in rivulets down her hand.

"Don't worry," he told her. "I can't die a hero." He gave her a pale shadow of his smile. "It'd be too damned ironic."

CHAPTER 36

In his dream Josh saw blood. Rivers of it. Geysers of it. Smooth, oily pools of it. He was in it up to his chin. The undercurrent pulled at his feet. The hands of the Taker closed around his ankles and tried to pull him down. The Taker had chosen him. The Taker wanted him. It frightened him to disobey. He had gone into the smallest box of his mind to hide, and still the Taker had hold of him, pulling on him.

He had been told to obey. Bad things would happen. Terrible things, they had already started. Josh could see his whole world tearing apart, just the way the Taker had shown him. But still he clung to the sides of his box, holding on to what was left of his world.

If he could just hide long enough . . . If he could make himself even smaller inside the shell of his body. If he could get back inside the box ...

His hands were slipping. He gulped a breath as the Taker pulled him under, through the blood.

Then, just as quickly, he was free. He broke the surface, soared, as if he had been thrown clear of a slingshot. Into the light. Into the air. He could breathe again. He was flying. And below him the blood drew into a smaller and smaller puddle, and then it was gone.

Josh's eyes snapped open. The room was dark, except for the night light and the numbers on his clock. He felt as if he had been sleeping for a long, long time. Days instead of hours. His mom was asleep in the sleeping bag on the floor. She looked so tired and worried. Her brow was frowning.

Because of me.

Because of the Taker.

There was so much she would never understand. So much he wished they could both forget and just start over, as if they hadn't even been alive until today.

Maybe they could do that, if he wished it hard enough, if he was good enough . . . if he could only find the courage.

CHAPTER
 
37

The farmhouse sat on an isolated, wooded acreage just over the county line to the south in rural Tyler County. The nearest neighbors were Amish farmers who had no interest in the comings or goings of the "English." Ellen had to imagine they were taking notice this morning. Cars from the Tyler and Park county sheriff's departments, the Deer Lake PD, and the BCA filled the yard while news vans and reporters' vehicles clogged the road. Uniformed officers kept the press at bay while the detectives and evidence techs went about their work.

Parked in the machine shed was a rusting white 1984 Ford Econoline van. A match in age and condition to the van Paul Kirkwood had once owned and sold to Olie Swain. A match to the van a witness had seen at the hockey rink about the time Josh was abducted. A small toolbox behind the front seat held a roll of duct tape, folded squares of cloth— probably for administering ether—hypodermic needles and syringes for ejectable sedatives. A kidnapper's tool kit.

Ellen backed away from the shed, shoulders hunched against the cold, and looked around the neat farmyard with its small buildings and perimeter of pine trees, boughs laden with the fresh snow that had fallen in the night. Great pains had been taken to make everything appear normal. The driveway was neatly plowed. A family of concrete deer stood posing in the yard near the bird feeder. Curtains hung at the windows. Christmas lights still hung from the eaves.

All part of the game.

Slater was under guard at the hospital, where he was being observed for any lingering effects from the electrical shock. He wasn't talking, but his name had provided the key they needed. Ellen, vaguely dopey from the pain medication Dr. Lomax had given her before setting her wrist, had called Cameron from the hospital in the middle of the night and set him to work digging up information in Adam Slater's name. In short order they had a phone number, and from the phone number came an address.

Dawn had just lightened the gray of the eastern horizon. Ellen hadn't slept in any restful way, just in fits and starts in a hospital bed. Nightmares of the ordeal jolted her awake every time she drifted off. The feeling of Slater's hands tightening on her throat.

She had moved to Deer Lake to escape the violence and cynicism of the city, yet it was Deer Lake where she had been attacked, where she had been pushed to violence to save her own life and Jay's. A point for Wright's team. Just another ripple in the pond. Just another ramification of their game, along with broken trusts and a broken marriage, lost innocence and lost lives.

She thanked God Jay was not among the body count. Though he had lost enough blood to require a transfusion, the wounds themselves were not life threatening. Still, every time she closed her eyes, Ellen saw that horrible instant when Slater had pulled that bloody knife back for one final thrust, and everything inside her had clenched like a fist.

"You ready to go in, counselor?" Mitch asked, laying a hand on Ellen's shoulder.

She nodded and they moved toward the house. Cameron had argued that she was in no condition to go to the scene, but she wouldn't back down. She let him take the official role, but she needed to be there. It didn't matter that she hurt all over or that she could barely speak because of the bruising in her throat. She had accepted this case, and it would be her fight until the end.

Wilhelm unlocked the back door with a key from Slater's key ring, and they trooped in, holding their breath in anticipation of what they might find. The house was neat and tidy, with doilies on the end tables and a family photo of strangers hanging on the living-room wall.

Probably the family of one of their victims, Ellen suspected. Maybe even the real Adam Slater's family. She should have appreciated the twisted sense of humor, she supposed. If Slater hadn't taken the name of his first victim, he might never have been found out.

All part of the game.

"The game is more fun when you spot the other team points.

One of the two bedrooms was decorated for a little boy, with shelves lined with an assortment of toys, each tagged with a name and date. Trophies from past games won. The notion sickened her. She stood in the lall, resisting the need to lean against the wall and risk ruining latent ingerprints. Leaning against Cameron, instead. He put a brotherly arm around her shoulders and stood silent, his face pale.

They all wore the same face, Ellen thought dimly. Mitch and Wilhelm and Jantzen, the Tyler County sheriff. Even Steiger wore it. Drawn, pale, grim, eyes hollow. There was a sheen of tears in Mitch's as he came out of the room.

"There's a red sneaker in there," he said tightly. "With the name Milo Wiskow. That's the case Megan dug up in Pennsylvania. All we have to do is find a connection between Wright and this house, and he goes away forever."

End game.

They found what they needed in the basement, where Megan had seen tied to an old wooden straight chair and tortured. The short black baton Wright had used to beat her hung on a pegboard above a small corner workbench, as if it were a common handyman's tool.

The basement was divided into three rooms, one of which was padlocked from the outside. Again, Wilhelm provided the key from Slater's ring, and they walked into the small chamber where the boys had been held.

The only furnishing was a cot. The only light a bulb in the ceiling with a switch outside the door. A video surveillance camera and stereo speakers hung high on the walls, their wiring connecting them to a system in the main workroom. From a pair of stools at the counter, Slater and Wright could watch their captive, speak to him, play the cassette tapes that were neatly stacked beside the tape deck.

Handling it gingerly with latex gloves, Mitch slipped a tape into the deck and hit the play button. Garrett Wright's voice came over the speakers, smooth and eerie.

"Hello, Josh. I am the Taker. I know what you think about. I know what you want. I can make you live or die. I can make your parents live or die. I can make your sister live or die. It's all up to you, Josh. You do what I say. You think what I tell you, remember what I tell you. I control your mind. I know everything you think."

"Jesus," Mitch muttered as he stopped the tape.

Mind control. Psychological terror of children. Having been in the cell where Wright had kept the boys, Ellen found it too easy to imagine how frightened they must have been, how lonely, wondering if anyone would come to save them, wondering if they would live or die, wondering if they might somehow unwittingly cause the deaths of the people they loved.

"I am the Taker. I know what you think about. I know what you want. . . ."

She thought of Josh sitting in the psychiatrist's office as the doctor tried to coax answers from him. No wonder he wouldn't speak. Wright had buried the fear so deep inside his young mind, it could take years to extract it. He might never feel safe again.

"Bastard," Steiger growled.

The shelves above the cassette deck housed a small library of audio-and videotapes. A sight that was horrible and welcome at once. Wright's training as an academician and a psychologist, as well as his own overconfidence, would do him in. He had apparently documented his games, his mind-control experiments ... his crimes. Not even Tony Costello would be able to explain away videotape.

"He believed he'd never get caught," Ellen said, her voice a whispery rasp. "He thinks he's invincible."

"He's dead fucking wrong," Mitch growled. "Let's go pick him up. We can sort through this stuff later. I want that son of a bitch in a cell."

"Chief?" Wilhelm called from a desk ten feet away. "I think you might want to take a look at this first."

"What is it?"

"See for yourself."

Wilhelm had pulled a three-ring binder from a row of similar binders and placed it on the blotter open to page one. Ellen stepped in beside Mitch and looked down at the childish handwriting.

                    
Journal entry

         
          
August 27, 1968

They found the body today. Not nearly as soon as we expected. Obviously, we gave them too much credit. The police are not as smart as we are. No one is.

 
We stood on the sidewalk and watched. What a pitiful scene. Grown men in tears throwing up in the bushes. They wandered around and around that corner of the park, trampling the grass and breaking off bits of branches. They called to God, but God didn't answer. Nothing changed. No lightning bolts came down. No one was given knowledge of who or why. Ricky Meyers remained dead, his arms outflung, his sneakers toes up.

 
We stood on the sidewalk as the ambulance came with its lights flashing, and more police cars came, and the cars of people from around town. We stood in the crowd, but no one saw us, no one looked at us. They thought we were beneath their notice, unimportant, but we are really above them and beyond them and invisible to them. They are blind and stupid and trusting. They would never think to look at us.

 
We are twelve years old.

 
We.

My money is on Priest," Mitch said, hitting the blinker.

His Explorer led the procession of police vehicles turning onto Lakeshore Drive. A mob of press had already arrived and staked out Wright's lawn, making themselves useful for once, virtually trapping him in his own home. "Megan had her eye on him. They may have known each other as boys; they taught together at Penn State. They founded the Cowboys together, and according to Slater, the Cowboys were formed around Wright's plan to develop him as a protege."

Ellen sat tense in the passenger's seat, anticipation tightening every niscle in her body. "But if they were in on this game together," she roaked, "then why didn't they alibi each other for the night Josh went lissing? Why have Todd Childs get up at the hearing and contradict the statement he gave the police?"