Night Sins (17 page)

“He was working. It was Hannah's night to pick up Josh.”

“Uh-huh. There but for the grace of God goes Paul.”

Mitch glanced at Helen again. Her mouth was pinched tight. “You and Paul don't get along?”

“Paul is a horse's ass.”

“For any particular reason?”

Helen didn't answer. Mitch let it drop. “Helen, would you be willing to take a look at a couple of vans, tell me if any of them resemble the one you saw last night? Just so I can get an accurate description?”

“Of course.”

They drove out to the car dealerships on the east side of town, where flags and giant inflatable animals enticed people to turn off the interstate and buy a different car. At Dealin' Swede's Helen pointed out a gray Dodge utility van and said “sort of but not quite.” On the way back across town, Mitch slowed beside several parked vans, giving her a chance to look at a number of vehicles. On her own block he drove past her house and into the parking lot at the ice arena. He slowed to a stop thirty feet away from Olie's van, saying nothing.

Helen's brows knitted. She nibbled her lower lip. Mitch's stomach twisted.

“More like this one,” she said slowly.

“But not
just
like this one?”

She turned her head to one side and then the other as if a memory might shake loose. “I don't think so. Something's different—the color or the shape—but it's close. . . . I don't know.” She faced him, shaking her head, her expression apologetic. “I'm sorry, Mitch. I saw it for only a few seconds. I just got an impression, is all. I wish I could say it looked exactly like this one, but I can't.”

“It's okay,” he murmured, swinging the Explorer around and driving back to Helen's house. “Did you have a good time at the play?” he asked as she picked her purse up off the floor.

“Yeah,” she said with a small smile. “Wes is nice. Thanks for the introduction. You're a good guy, Mitch.”

“That's me—the last of the good guys.”

The tag struck him as ironic. Yeah, he was a great guy—deflecting the interest of women onto his friends so he wouldn't have to deal with them.

You weren't exactly dodging Megan tonight, were you, Holt?

A memory of heat and softness and the cool breath of night air stole into his consciousness. The taste of sweetness. Odd how someone with a tongue as tart as hers could taste sweet. She had been the one to pull back. He would have taken them past the point of no return.

“Your timing stinks, Mitch,” he muttered, turning south. At the next corner he turned east and drove down the street that ran behind the ice arena.

The case demanded all their energy. And he would be the one dodging when Megan found out Olie Swain drove a van, that he had been to Olie's house without her. She already had her suspicions about Olie. She would jump on this van connection like a she-wolf on a rabbit—and spook Olie in the process. Mitch knew even the most harmless of women made Olie uncomfortable. Mitch couldn't afford to have Olie bolt if he did have something to do with Josh's disappearance.

O
lie's house was a converted single-car garage that sat on the last property on the block. The main house on the lot was owned by old Oscar Rudd, who collected junker Saabs and parked them on every available inch of ground in the yard and on the street, in violation of three city ordinances, leaving no room for Olie to park his van. Olie left the van in the lot at the rink and walked back and forth, tramping through the snow, slush, mud—whatever the season left for him in the vacant lot between his home and the arena.

Like the main house, the garage was covered with brown asphalt-coated tar paper designed to look like brick. It fooled no one. A stovepipe stuck up through the roof at a crooked angle, venting the smoke from the woodstove that was the main source of heat. Light glowed out through the single window in the side of the building. Mitch could hear the chatter of a television as he walked up the shoveled path toward the door.
Letterman
. He wouldn't have given Olie credit for having a sense of humor. He knocked and waited. The television went mute. He knocked again.

“Olie? It's Chief Holt.”

“What'd you want?”

“Just to talk. I have a couple of questions you might be able to answer.”

The door cracked open and Olie's ugly face filled the space, his eyes round and wary. “Questions about what?”

“Different things. Can I come in? It's freezing out here.”

Olie backed away from the door, as much of an invitation as he was willing to give. He didn't like people coming into his place. This was his safe spot, like the old shed he had stumbled across as a kid. The shed sat on an abandoned piece of land, not far from his house out on the edge of town where the trashy people lived. The land backed onto a city park, but the paths in that part of the park were overgrown and so no one came near the shed. Olie had pretended the shed was his own, his place to hide to avoid a beating or to hole up after a bad one. In the shed he was safe.

He had transferred that feeling of safety to this place. The garage was small and dark. A cubbyhole. He filled it with his books and the stuff he bought at junk shops. He invited no one inside, but he couldn't say no to the chief of police. He stepped back to his makeshift desk and absently stroked the top of his computer screen, petting it as if it were a cat.

Mitch had to duck a little to come in the door. He took in the state of Olie's domain with a seemingly casual glance. There was only one room. One dark, cold room with dirty blue indoor-outdoor carpet covering the concrete floor. The kitchen consisted of an ancient refrigerator and a cast-off olive green electric range. The bathroom was partitioned off by a pair of mismatched curtains hanging from a wire. The curtains gaped, offering a glimpse of a tin shower stall.

“Cozy place you got here, Olie.”

Olie said nothing. He wore the same green flight jacket, the same dark wool sweater, the same Ragg wool half-gloves he had worn the night before. Mitch wondered if he bothered to change clothes all winter. For that matter, he wondered if he ever bothered to use that shower stall. The place smelled like dirty feet.

He looked for a place to sit, hoping to put Olie at ease, but settled for leaning against the back of a ratty old recliner. There were books everywhere. Shelves and shelves of books. Piles and piles of books. What furniture there was seemed to serve only as another place to pile books. What room wasn't taken up by books was taken up by computer equipment. Mitch counted five PCs.

“Where'd you get all the computers, Olie?”

“Different places. In the Cities. Businesses throw 'em out 'cause they're out of date. I didn't steal them.”

“I didn't think you did. I'm just making conversation here, Olie.” Mitch offered him a smile. “Businesses throw them out? That's quite a deal. How'd you find out about that?”

Olie eased down into his chair, his good eye darting from the computer screen to Mitch and back. The glass eye stayed on Mitch. “Professor Priest.” His hand darted over the keyboard to hit a button. “He lets me sit in on some classes.”

“He's a nice guy.”

Olie didn't comment. He hit another button and the screen before him went blank.

“So what do you do with all these machines?”

“Stuff.”

Mitch forced another smile and let out a measured sigh between his teeth. That Olie, master of small talk. “So, Olie, did you work tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything going on at the rink around five-thirty?”

He shrugged. “Skating club.”

“Practicing for the big show Sunday, I suppose.”

Olie took it for a rhetorical statement.

“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about last night,” Mitch said.

“You haven't found that boy.”

It seemed more a statement than a question. Mitch watched him carefully, his own expression impassive. “Not yet, but we're looking real hard. We've got a couple of leads. Did you think of anything that might help us?”

Olie's good eye looked down at his keyboard. He flicked a lint ball off one of the keys.

“Someone thinks they saw Josh get into a van last night. A van that looked something like yours—older, light-colored. You didn't see a van like that, did you?”

“No.”

“You didn't loan your van to someone, did you?”

“No.”

“You leave the keys in it?”

“No.”

Mitch lifted a book from the pile on the seat of the recliner and studied the cover idly.
Story of the Irish Race
. He wondered if Olie was Irish or just curious. He'd never thought of Olie as being anything but weird.

Olie popped up from his chair. His brows pulled low over his mismatched eyes, seeming to tug at the port wine birthmark on the left side of his face. “It wasn't my van.”

“But you were inside the arena,” Mitch said. He set the book aside and slid his hands into his coat pockets. “Running the Zamboni, right? Maybe someone used your van without asking.”

“No. They couldn't.”

“Well . . .” Yawning hugely, Mitch pushed away from the decrepit recliner. “People do strange things, Olie. Just to be safe, we should probably take a look inside. Would you mind showing me?”

“You don't have a warrant.” Olie immediately regretted the words. Mitch Holt's gaze sharpened like a gun scope coming into focus.

“Should I get one, Olie?” His soft, silky voice raised the short hairs on the back of Olie's neck.

“I don't know anything!” Olie shouted, shoving at a stack of books on a TV tray. They tumbled to the floor, sounding like bricks as they hit the concrete. “I didn't do anything!”

Mitch watched the outburst stonefaced, his expression giving away nothing of the tension tightening inside him like a watch spring. “Then you don't have anything to hide.”

His mind was racing. If Olie consented to a search of the vehicle now and something turned up, would a judge later toss out the evidence on the argument of no warrant, consent given under duress? Without a positive ID on the vehicle, Mitch didn't have enough cause to obtain a warrant, and he doubted he could get Olie to sign a consent form. Goddamn technicalities. What he had was a missing child and a need to find him that far outstripped the needs of the courts.

If Olie let him take a look and he saw something in the van, he could have the vehicle towed in on the grounds that overnight parking was technically not permitted in the Gordie Knutson Memorial Arena lot. Upon impounding the vehicle, they would be able to inventory the contents, and anything suspicious listed on the inventory would give them probable cause to ask for a warrant authorizing seizure of it as evidence of a crime.

Okay. He had a plan. His ass was covered. The next move was Olie's.

Olie glared at him, his small mouth puckered into an angry knot. The birthmark that spilled down his forehead seemed to darken, and the rest of his face paled. His hand was trembling as he raised it and pointed a finger at Mitch.

“I don't have anything to hide,” he said.

The eye staring defiantly at Mitch was made of glass. The other one slid away.

J
OURNAL ENTRY
D
AY
2

Round and round and round they go. Will they find Josh? We don't think so.

CHAPTER 13

D
AY
3
5:51
A.M.
         11°

M
egan overslept, dreaming dark, sensuous dreams about Harrison Ford. As she slowly blinked her eyes open, the feelings lingered—forbidden needs and a lush, heavy sense of pleasure; guilt and gratification; the taste of Mitch Holt's kiss, the feel of his hands on her body, the feel of his mouth on her breast . . .

She stared at the hairline cracks in the ceiling plaster. The predawn light seeped into the room through sheer curtains, casting everything in shades of gray, like a dream. She lay beneath the tangled sheets and quilt, her heart beating slowly, strongly, her body warm, nerve endings humming. She could feel Gannon curled against her, the cat tucked into his favorite spot behind her knees. Friday would be in the kitchen, prowling for breakfast.

Megan's mind wandered into forbidden territory, and she wondered if Mitch might have dreamed about their kiss, wondered if the sensations hung around him like a heavy, sultry cloud as he lay in his bed.

Not a smart thing to wonder. He should have been just another cop, just someone she had to work with. But she had the feeling there was nothing simple about Mitch Holt. The Everyman façade hid a complex core of anger and need and pain. She had glimpsed those things in his eyes, tasted them in his kiss, and the hidden mysteries drew her in. She could have resisted mere sex appeal, but a mystery . . . Her mind was naturally geared to solving mysteries.

There was a more pressing mystery to solve. The reminder was a poke in the conscience that drove Megan out of bed and into the shower. She let the water beat down on her in an attempt to pound out the numbness of sleep. Her head seemed as heavy and dense as an anvil. Her eyes felt as if they had grown a coat of fur. Five hours of sleep in forty-seven was not enough. She could have slept for a day, but she didn't have that luxury and wouldn't until this case was over. Even then she would be behind in her duties. All appointments with the other chiefs and sheriffs of her territory had been put on hold, but crime in those other counties and towns didn't stop just because Deer Lake had been hit with a big one. There was no balance maintained at the courtesy of lowlifes.

Friday jumped up on the edge of the old clawfoot tub and stuck his head inside the shower curtain. He wore a disgruntled expression on his round black face, golden eyes glowering at Megan, white whiskers twitching in annoyance as water droplets pelted him. He yowled at her in his complaining voice and swiped at his whiskers with his paw.

“Yeah, yeah, you want breakfast. You want, you want—what about what I want, huh?”

As he hopped down from the tub, he made a sound that indicated he was patently disinterested in her needs. A typical male attitude, Megan thought, cranking the faucet off and reaching for a towel.

After pulling on sweats, she fed the cats, then fed herself an English muffin. Sitting at the table, she stared unseeing at the depressing mess in her living room, the unpacked and half-unpacked boxes. She didn't let herself think about the need to build herself a nest and surround herself with the things she had collected—other people's heirlooms and memories, the false sense of belonging and family she had attached to her flea-market finds.

Her mind sorted tasks into a priority list and tumbled bits of information over and over in an attempt to sift out anything useful. Helen Black's statement played in the back of her mind like a videotape, and she strained to see something, hear something that might trigger an idea. She had found nothing encouraging in the reports she had gone through the night before, her share of the reports of recent incidents and known offenders. But then her eyes had given out before she could get through everything. One of her men may have had better luck.

Licking strawberry jam off her fingers, she grabbed her portable phone and punched the speed dial button for the command post.

“Agent Geist. How may I help you?”

“Jim, it's Megan. Any word?”

“Nothing yet, but the news about the van is just hitting the airwaves. I expect the hotline phones to light up like Christmas trees in another hour or so. Every third person in the state probably knows someone with a junker van.”

“What about those listings? Anything turn up?”

“Close but no stogie. We've got a couple of aborted attempts to pick up kids in Anoka County in a brown van, a convicted pedophile in New Prague who drives a yellow van—”

“It's worth checking out. Did you call the chief in New Prague?”

“He's not in yet, but he'll call back as soon as he gets there.”

“Good. Thanks. I'm going over to talk to the parents. Page me if anything goes down.”

She dried her hair and brushed it back into the usual ponytail. Makeup amounted to a touch of blusher and two swipes with the mascara wand. In the bedroom she dug through her suitcase for a pair of burgundy stirrup pants and a bulky charcoal turtleneck. The cats found perches on the boxes in the living room and watched her shrug into her parka and struggle with her scarf.

“You guys feel free to unpack and decorate while I'm out,” she told them.

Gannon curled his paws beneath him and closed his eyes. Friday gave her a look and said, “Yow.”

“Yeah, well, be that way. You don't have any sense of style anyway.”

The Lumina started grudgingly, growling and coughing. A belt somewhere in the inner workings squealed like a stuck pig when she cranked the knob for heat. The air that blasted out of the vents was like a breath from the Arctic.

To distract herself from the fact that her fingertips were going numb and the hair inside her nose was frosting over, Megan studied the town as she cruised the tree-lined streets from the east side to the west side. The established, older part of Deer Lake was a Beaver Cleaver kind of town—comfortable family homes, dogs peeing on snowmen built by the children being trundled off to school in minivans. She saw no children walking to school. Was it the cold or Josh Kirkwood that kept them off the sidewalks?

Downtown looked like a movie set for the all-American town. The city park square in the center with its quaint old bandshell and statues to long-forgotten men, the old false-front brick shops, the courthouse built of native limestone. The Park Cinema theater with a vintage 1950s marquee jutting out, heralding the showing of
Philadelphia
at 7 & 9:20, and the grand old Fontaine Hotel, five stories of renovated Victorian splendor.

North and west of downtown, the old neighborhoods gave way to sixties ramblers, then seventies split-level homes, then the latest upscale developments—expensive hybrid homes on lots of an acre or more. Pseudo-Tudors and pseudo-Georgians, saltboxes with attachments, and yuppie-rustic homes like the Kirkwoods', sided in split cedar and landscaped with river birch and artfully arranged boulders. The builders had gone to great pains to make it seem as if the houses had been there for decades. Strategic sites, mature trees, and winding lanes gave the impression of seclusion.

The Kirkwood house faced the lake, an expanse of snow-dusted ice dotted with ice-fishing huts. In the early morning gray it looked desolate. Beyond the western bank, the buildings of Harris College squatted like a crop of dark mushrooms among the leafless trees. South of the college lay what had once been a town called Harrisburg. In the last century it had competed with Deer Lake for commerce and population, but Deer Lake had won the railroad and the title of county seat. Harrisburg had faded, had eventually been annexed, and now bore the indignity of the nickname Dinkytown.

Megan parked, cringing as the Lumina's engine knocked and rattled before going silent. Maybe if she solved this case the bureau would give her a better car. Maybe if she solved this case there would be a little boy playing in the half-finished snow fort on the Kirkwoods' front lawn.

Hannah Garrison answered the front door herself, looking drawn and thin. She wore a faded Duke sweatshirt, navy leggings, and baggy wool socks, and still somehow managed to project an air of elegance.

“Agent O'Malley,” she said, her eyes widening at the possibilities Megan represented standing there on her front stoop. She gripped the edge of the door so hard, her knuckles turned white. “Have you found Josh?”

“No, I'm sorry, but we may have a lead. Someone may have seen Josh getting into a van Wednesday night. May I come in? I'd like to talk to you and your husband.”

“Yes, of course.” Hannah backed away from the door. “Let me catch Paul. He was just leaving to go out on the search again.”

Megan stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She drifted after Hannah, staying far enough behind to remain unobtrusive, to observe without seeming to take in anything at all.

In the family room a fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace, closed off from the room by glass doors and a safety screen in deference to the baby, who was curled up dozing on the back of a huge stuffed dog on the floor. The
Today
show was playing on a television set into a cherry armoire. Katie Couric needling Bryant Gumbel, Willard Scott laughing like an imbecile in the background. A petite woman with big brown eyes and an ash-blond bob silenced them with a remote control and looked up at Megan expectantly.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a hushed voice. “I'm Karen Wright, a neighbor. I'm here to help Hannah.”

Megan gave her a cursory smile. “No, thank you. I need to speak with Mr. and Mrs.—um, with Mr. Kirkwood and Dr. Garrison.”

Karen made a sympathetic face. “Awkward, isn't it? Life was simpler when we were all less liberated.”

Megan made a noncommittal sound and moved on toward the kitchen, where Curt McCaskill was pouring himself a cup of coffee and reading the
StarTribune
. The agent glanced up with an exaggerated show of surprise.

“Hey, O'Malley, I was just reading about you. Did you really crack a kiddie porn ring when you were in vice?”

Megan ignored his question, zeroing in on the article spread out on the kitchen table.
Female Agent Fighting Crime and Gender Bias.
The byline was Henry Forster's, the jerk. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, DePalma will shit a brick when he sees this!”

The piece detailed her service record and her struggle to gain a field post at the bureau. There were no direct quotes from her, but “sources in the bureau” had made several uncharitable remarks about her ambition. The article went on to recount the sexual harassment brouhaha of the previous fall, which had not involved her at all but had made life at headquarters unpleasant for everyone for a month or two. Battle lines had been drawn between the sexes and hard feelings still lingered. Forster's article would poke a stick at that old hornet's nest, but no one would turn on Forster. They would turn on her.

She groaned when she finished reading.

“You want a cup of coffee?” McCaskill asked.

“No, thanks. I need something stiffer than caffeine.”

“I could make a joke here, but it might seem inappropriate, all things considered.”

Megan laughed. She had always liked Curt. He had a sense of humor, something in increasingly short supply in the world at large.

His blue eyes twinkled. With his thick shock of ginger hair he looked like a leprechaun on steroids. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“We have a witness who may have seen Josh getting into a van. I want to talk to the parents about it. Nothing happening on your end of things?”

The smile faded. He shook his head and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “I gotta tell you, thirty-nine hours and no word . . . If we haven't heard anything by now, we're not liable to. What we've got here is an abduction by a predator, not a kidnap for ransom.”

Megan didn't answer him, but the weight of truth pressed down on her just the same. Just because she didn't give it voice didn't make it any less real. She pulled in a hard, deep breath, trying like hell to hang on to her determination. “You want to take a break? I'll be here half an hour or better.”

He rose from his chair, trying to work the kinks out of his shoulders. “Thanks. I could use some fresh air.” He made a fist and scuffed it against her upper arm. “You're okay—for a chick.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but the sound of sharp voices coming from the other side of the kitchen door drew her attention. The door swung open and Hannah stomped in, hugging herself against the cold that drifted in from the garage beyond. Her wide mouth was drawn in a thin, angry line, and her eyes gleamed with tears or temper or both. Paul stalked in behind her, looking irritated.

Megan had taken an instant dislike to Paul Kirkwood and she chided herself for it. The poor man had lost his son, he had every right to behave in any way he wanted. But there was just a certain petulant arrogance about Paul Kirkwood that rubbed her the wrong way.

He looked at her now, his mouth set in an expression that was more pout than frown. “What's this about a van?”

“A witness thinks she may have seen Josh getting into an older, light-colored van Wednesday night. I was wondering if either of you knows anyone with a van that matches that description or if you might have seen one in the neighborhood recently.”

“Did they get a license plate?”

“No.”

“A make and model on the van?”

“No.”

He shook his head, not bothering to hide his impatience with her incompetence. “I told Mitch Holt neither of us is here enough to notice anyone hanging around. And if we knew anyone sick enough to steal our son, don't you think we would have said so?”

Megan bit down on her temper.

Hannah gave her a brittle, sour smile. “Paul is in a hurry,” she said sarcastically. “God knows, they can't start the search without him. Heaven forbid he should be held up by something as trivial as a real lead—”

Paul cut her a narrow look. “Someone thinks they
might have
seen a boy who
might have been
our son getting into a van they can barely describe. Big fucking lead, Hannah.”

“It's more than anyone else has come up with,” she shot back. “What have you found out there tramping around in the snow? Have you found Josh? Have you found anything at all?”