Guilty as Sin (74 page)

"You said he wanted to spot us points. Besides, they alibi each other, and those of us who believe one is guilty automatically believe the other is guilty." He turned in at the Wrights' driveway and cut the engine. Reporters swarmed toward the truck. Ignoring them, he gave Ellen a hard look. His game face. "Let's see if Dr. Wright might be able to help us with the answers to those questions. He can provide the commentary when we lay those videotapes."

A whole other crop of questions assaulted them as they made their way to the front door, hurled by the news-hungry like rice at a wedding. Steiger barked something out, grabbing the opportunity to look important.

Mitch hit the doorbell and waited, hit it again. "Dr. Garrett Wright," he said in a loud voice, "this is the police. Please come to the door. We need to speak with you."

They waited a moment that stretched into another. Mitch lifted his two-way. "Noogie? You got any action back there?"

Noga's deep voice came back. "Nothing, Chief."

Mitch knocked on the door again. "Dr. Wright, this is Chief Holt. We need to speak with you."

"He has to be home," Wilhelm muttered. "He was at the victory celebration last night. We know he came back here."

"But did he stay?" Mitch asked. "If he caught wind of his boy wonder going down last night, he may just have split."

Mitch hit the button on the radio again. "Noogie? Take a peek in the garage. What have we got for vehicles?"

"Got a Saab and a Honda, Chief."

"All present and accounted for," Mitch said. He cast a look at Ellen. "I say we go in. We've got probable cause."

"And an audience," Wilhelm said through his teeth.

"Then get them the hell off the yard, Marty," Mitch ordered. "Make yourself useful for once."

As Wilhelm turned away, Mitch tried the doorknob. "Locked." He raised the radio again. "Noogie? You got any company back there?"

"No, sir."

"Then do your thing."

"Ten-four."

Noga was the force's official battering ram. The house door hadn't been made that Noga couldn't bust off its hinges with a shrug. In a matter of moments the front locks were tumbling and the big officer pulled the door open.

The house was quiet. Tastefully, expensively decorated in neutral tones and sleek, pale oak furnishings. Mitch scanned the rooms visible from the foyer.

"Dr. Wright?" he called, sliding his Smith & Wesson nine-mil from his shoulder holster and holding it nose up. "Police! Come out where we can see you!"

The silence hung around them.

"I guess we get to do this the hard way," he muttered, turning toward Ellen and Cameron. "Wait outside. I don't want any chance of this turning into a hostage situation. Noogie, back me up."

Ellen laid a hand on his forearm. "Be careful, Mitch. He doesn't have anything to lose now."

They moved down the halls of the house, Mitch taking the lead, his back to one wall. Each closed door represented a potential nasty surprise. The tight quarters of an unfamiliar house were always a dangerous setting. They opened doors that led to a bathroom, to a guest room, to Karen Wright's hobby room. Not a sound. Not a thing out of place.

They could have easily left in the night, Mitch thought. With the charges dismissed, he had had no choice but to pull the surveillance team or risk charges of harassment. In the back of his mind he made a note to check with the twenty-four-hour car service that taxied people from Deer Lake to the airport in Bloomington. The Wrights could have been halfway to Rio by now.

He sidled up beside the last door on the upper level, reached over, and knocked. "Wright, come out with your hands up! You're under arrest!"

Nothing. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, holding himself against the wall. No shots blasted out at them. And then he slipped inside the master bedroom and found out why Garrett Wright hadn't answered them.

Garrett Wright lay spread-eagled on the king-size bed, naked, his throat cut from ear to ear, a butcher knife buried to the hilt in his chest, his dead eyes gazing up at a heaven he would never know.

He's not stiff yet," Mitch said. "He hasn't been dead more than a few hours."

Ellen took a long look at the gaping wound that nearly severed Garrett Wright's head from his body, then turned away, taking in the room. "There's no sign of a struggle."

"Too bad. He should have had to look death in the face. He should have had to feel the fear his victims felt."

"The cars are here and Karen Wright is missing," Wilhelm said. "Either she did it and walked away or the killer took her with him."

"Paul Kirkwood publicly vowed revenge," Cameron reminded them. "He was having an affair with Karen."

"Get out APBs on both of them," Ellen said. Her gaze drew back to the man whose life had bled out of him.

A murderer. A man whose mind and heart had been as dark as the blood that soaked the ivory sheets around him. He had tormented, tortured, killed, and called it a game. Heartless and cruel. And even with his death, it continued. He had driven someone else to kill, and that person would touch other lives, and the effects would go on and on like a stream of oil bleeding into the ocean.

"I always wanted children," Karen said, rocking the baby in her arms.

"Garrett and I couldn't have children. But Paul and I can. We can have Lily."

Hannah stared at the woman who had invaded her home sometime in the hours before dawn. Karen Wright. Vapid, innocuous Karen. Always trying to help. Doe-eyed, pretty Karen. Her husband's mistress. Wife of the man who had kidnapped her son.

Hannah had awakened to the sound of a voice singing softly down the hall. A woman's voice coming from Lily's room. Groggy and confused, she'd crawled out of the sleeping bag in her leggings and baggy sweatshirt, her hair falling out of its loose braid and into her eyes.

She stood now in the hall between the bedrooms, still hoping this was yet another of the strange nightmares that had been plaguing her since the start of the ordeal; knowing it was not. Karen Wright stood in her daughter's room, holding Lily and a gun.

"How did you get in here?" Hannah demanded.

"With a key," Karen said matter-of-factly, never taking her eyes off Lily. "I have copies of all of Paul's keys." She smiled dreamily. "I can have the key to his heart now that Garrett won't come between us."

She rose from the rocking chair, juggling Lily and the nine-millimeter gun, the load seeming too much for her. "You're so sweet, aren't you, Lily?" she cooed. "I've always pretended you were mine. I wanted Garrett to get you for me, but he only takes little boys. That's the way it's always been. He hated children."
        

"You can't have her," Hannah said flatly.

Karen's eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted on the bitterness. "You don't deserve her. I do. I give and give and never get anything back. It's my turn. I told Garrett. He wouldn't listen. I told him I wanted Paul. I love Paul. Paul could give me a baby. But no. He had to make Paul look guilty. He had to ruin what I wanted. He made a very big mistake."

Her arms tightened on the baby, and Lily squirmed and frowned. "Down!"

"No, no, sweetheart," Karen said with a sudden smile, stroking Lily's cheek with the barrel of the gun. "You're going to be my little girl now. We have to go away and make a new life with your daddy. We'll be a happy family."

"What about Garrett?" Hannah asked, inching forward to block the loor. Damned if she was going to let a madwoman walk out of her house with her daughter. She would do whatever she had to do. She had pledged to keep her children safe. She was all through being a victim.

Karen's eyes glazed with tears. "Garrett . . . wouldn't listen. He wouldn't let me be happy." A single tear skimmed her cheek. "I love Paul, and Garrett made me betray him. He shouldn't have done that."

Lily twisted in her grasp, pushing against the arm that was banded round her middle. "Lily down!" she demanded. She looked to Hannah. "Mama, down!"

Anger flashing across her features, Karen gave the baby a shake. "Stop it, Lily!" She turned Lily's head toward her with the barrel of the gun. I'm your mommy now."

Josh watched the scene from behind his mother. No one had noticed him. No one would. He could be like a ghost. The quiet was in his mind, and he could make it as big as he was and put it all around him like a giant bubble. He saw the gun. He heard the words. Karen was going to take Lily. Just as he had been taken. Just as that other boy had been taken. The other Goner was dead now, just as Josh had been warned. Now Lily, just as he had been warned. Bad things would happen if he told anyone the truth. But he hadn't told anyone and bad things were happening anyway.

The fear inside him struggled against the need to be free of it. He wanted to be free. He wanted his family to be free. He thought maybe if he wished hard enough ... If he was good enough ... If he could only find the courage . . .

"Does Paul know you're doing this?" Hannah asked, edging into the room. If she could get to the changing table, she could grab the baby powder, throw it in Karen's face, get Lily away from her before she could use the gun.

"Paul loves me," Karen said, hefting Lily on her hip. "I'm what he needs. I'm the kind of woman he deserves."

"You're right about that," Hannah said, laughing bitterly. Paul had brought this nightmare on them with his groundless discontent, with his myopic self-absorption. Karen Wright was exactly what he deserved.

"We'll be a happy family," Karen said, jerking Lily against her as the baby tried to squirm out of her grasp. "Lily, stop it!" she shrieked, raising he gun. "Don't make me hurt you!"

As she brought the butt of the gun down toward Lily's head, Josh burst to life. Hurling himself into the room, flinging his body at Karen Wright's legs.

"Josh, no!" Hannah screamed.

Then everything was a blur of sound and motion as she jumped to grab Karen's gun.

"If it was Paul, Wright would have struggled," Ellen said.

"Unless they drugged him first," Wilhelm offered.

"Paul wouldn't have the guts to kill like that," Mitch said. "With a gun, maybe. With a knife, no way."

"Karen got tired of his trying to control her the way he did his victims," Ellen theorized. "He used her to get to Paul. God only knows how he might have used her before."

"The question is, Where did she go?" Cameron said. "And was she alone?"

"Get on the phone to the cab company," Ellen told him. "I have a hard time believing Paul dropped by and picked her up after she essentially testified against him in court."

"Tracks," Noga said suddenly. He had been leaning against the wall, pale and wobbly. Straightening, he turned toward Mitch. "There were tracks in the backyard."

In the fresh snow.

"Let's go." Mitch started for the door, tossing instructions over his shoulder to Wilhelm. "Secure the scene and keep the press out."

Ellen followed him out the kitchen door, through the garage where Wright had first been arrested, and to the backyard, where reporters were creeping around the perimeter of the property in the attempt to get an angle no one else had.

"Mitch, we'll need to make some kind of statement," Ellen said. "Get a photo of Karen to the TV people. If she's a possible killer, the public needs to know."

"Do what you have to."

He had just turned to follow Noga north along the footprints. North, toward the Kirkwood house, when the sound of gunshots cracked the crisp morning air.

They crashed into the dresser, sending a lamp tumbling; fell against the white wicker rocker and onto the floor, kicking and gouging. The gun flew free, spinning across the carpet. Hannah lunged for it but was pulled up short as Karen grabbed hold of her braid with a savage tug. Fingernails raked down her face. Karen's knee caught her in the stomach as Karen lunged forward. Too late.

Josh raised the black pistol with both hands and pointed it squarely at Karen Wright's forehead, just inches away, the barrel wobbling gently back and forth.

Karen went still. Lily lay on the floor near the crib, sobbing. Hannah truggled to sit up, to move back from Karen, her eyes on Josh.