Night Sins (28 page)

“Hey!” he shouted at Steiger. “Get that car off the lawn! And don't you back into my Saabs! They're collector's items!”

Mitch ignored the small circus and went straight for Paige. She held her microphone up in front of her like a cross to ward off vampires.

“Chief Holt, do you have any comment?”

He snatched the mike out of her hand and hurled it twenty feet into a snowdrift, then grabbed the zipper tab of her ski jacket and yanked it down.

“Is that it, Ms. Price?” he snarled. “No body mike? No tape recorder stuck in your bra?”

“N-no,” she stammered, stumbling back.

He stayed in her face, matching her step for step. The cameraman attempted to come to her rescue. “Hey, pal, that was an expensive piece of equipment you trashed back there. You'll be lucky if the station doesn't sue.”

Mitch turned to him. His voice was eerily soft. “
I'll
be lucky?
I'll
be lucky.” He leaned down toward the cameraman until they were nose to nose. “Let
me
tell
you
something,
pal
. I don't care about your fucking camera. You and the ice bitch here have interfered with a police investigation. That's a crime, junior. And if Josh Kirkwood dies because you blew this for us, you're an accessory to murder in my book.”

He wheeled back around on Paige. “How would you like to report on that, Paige?” He swung an arm in her direction and bellowed out a cutting imitation of an emcee. “Live from the women's correctional facility in Shakopee—it's Pai-ai-ge Price!”

Paige was shaking with fear and anger. She hated him for scaring her and she hated him for making her feel responsible. “I'm just doing my job,” she said defensively. “I didn't make Leslie Sewek into a child molester. I didn't abduct Josh Kirkwood and I won't be responsible for anything that happens to him.”

Mitch shook his head in disgust and amazement. His lungs hurt from sucking in too much subzero oxygen during his sprint after Olie. His bare hands suddenly ached with cold, but he made no move to dig his gloves out of his pockets or to zip his coat. For the most part, he felt numb, stunned by the lost opportunity. Olie might have led them to Josh. The woman before him had stolen that chance and didn't even have the grace to apologize.

“You just don't get it, do you, Paige?” he murmured. “This isn't about you. You're nobody. You're nothing. Your job, your ratings, your station—don't mean shit. This is about a little boy who should be home listening to a bedtime story. It's about a mother whose child has been torn away from her and a father who has lost his son. It's real life . . . and it could be real death, thanks to you.”

He turned and headed for the lone green-and-white that waited for him with the motor running, exhaust billowing in white clouds from the tailpipe. Paige watched him go, feeling a twinge of conscience for the first time in a long time. She thought she had eradicated it years before, removed it like an unsightly mole from her perfect chin. A conscience was excess weight. While she knew she had colleagues who carried it without complaint, she had always felt the run to the top would be easier without it. Now . . .

She shook the sensation off as she turned to Garcia. “Did you get all that?” Paige asked.

The cameraman pulled a microcassette recorder from the breast pocket of his parka and clicked it off.

Paige glanced at the illuminated dial of her watch. “Let's go. If I hurry, I can still have a story ready by ten.”

10:27
P.M.
         -30°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

W
ould you like to have a lawyer present at this questioning, Mr. Sewek?”

Olie flinched at the name as if it were a hand reaching out of his past to slap him. The voice in his head shrieked
Leslie!
Leslie!
Leslie!
like a record with a needle stuck in the groove. He didn't look up at the woman cop who sat across from him. He could feel her eyes on him, burning with accusation. He could feel it pouring over his skin like acid.

“Mr. Sewek? Are you aware of what I'm asking you?”

“It wasn't me,” he mumbled.

His vision blurred as he stared at his hands on the table. He picked at the ratty edges of his fingerless gloves, keeping them carefully pulled over the reminder of his stay in Walla Walla. He could still remember the crushing weight of the biker who had sat on him while a man called Needles dug the letters into the backs of his fingers. He could still remember the harsh laughter as he begged them to stop. The tattoo was the least of what they'd done to him during his five years. Not once had his pleas been answered with mercy, only sadism.

“. . . there is a warrant outstanding for your arrest for violation of parole . . .”

They could send him back. The thought sent agony rushing through him like an arrow.

“We know what you did to that boy back in Washington, Olie,” Mitch Holt said. He paced back and forth behind the woman, his hands on his hips. “What we want to know is what you've done with Josh Kirkwood.”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Olie, don't jerk us around. You've got the record, you had opportunity, you have the van—”

“It wasn't me!” Olie shouted, raising his face to glare at Mitch Holt.

Cops never believed him. They always looked at him like something they had to scrape off their shoe. A piece of dog shit. An ugly bug, squashed and oozing. In Mitch Holt's face Olie saw the same combination of disbelief and disgust he had seen so many times before. Even though he had seen it again and again over the course of his miserable life, he still felt a little piece of him break inside.

He had never meant to hurt anyone.

His lips curled back, quivering, and a strange whine crept up the back of his throat as he gritted his teeth against the urge to cry. He clamped a hand on top of his head and wiped it across his brush-bristle hair, down the port wine stain and over his glass eye. He felt as if his body were being steamed inside his heavy winter clothes. His pants and long underwear clung to him where he'd wet himself. The smell of urine burned his nose.

“Did you have an accomplice?”

“Is Josh all right?”

“Cooperation will make all the difference when it comes to indictments.”

“Is he safe?”

“Did you molest him?”

“Is he alive?”

The questions came in a relentless barrage. And between each one the voice shrieked,
Answer me, Leslie!
Answer me!
Answer me!

“Stop it!” he cried, slapping his hands over his ears. “Stop it! Stop it!”

Mitch banged his fists down on the table and leaned across it. “You think this is bad, Olie? You want us to stop asking you questions? How do you think Josh's parents are feeling? They haven't seen their little boy in a week. They don't know whether he's alive or dead. Can you even imagine how much they hurt? How bad do you think they want this to stop?”

Olie didn't answer. He stared down at the imitation walnut grain of the table, his head and shoulders shaking. Mitch fought the impulse to grab him by the throat and shake him until his eyes popped out.

“Mr. Sewek,” Megan said in a voice like polished marble, “you are aware of the fact that even as we speak, a team of crime-scene experts is conducting a thorough search of your house and vehicle.”

“You're going down for the kidnap, Olie,” Mitch said tightly. “And if we don't find Josh alive—if we don't find Josh at all—you'll go down for murder. You'll never ever see the light of day again.”

“You can only help your situation by cooperating, Mr. Sewek.”

Olie put his head in his hands. “I didn't hurt him.”

There was a knock at the door and Dave Larkin stuck his head in. His trademark beach-bum smile was nowhere in sight. “Agent O'Malley?”

The formality was almost as alarming as his bland expression. Megan rose and slipped out the door into a narrow hall bleached by harsh fluorescent lights. Phones rang incessantly in the squad room down the hall, where the level of activity belied the hour. Paige Price might have scooped the competition, but everybody wanted a piece of the action before the end of the ten o'clock reports.

“Is he talking?” Larkin asked.

“No. What's going on at the house?”

“Jeez, that place is unbelievable. You wouldn't believe the stuff he's got crammed in there. He must have a thousand books and five or six computers—”

“Laser printer?”

“Dot matrix. But we came across something else I knew you'd want to see right away.”

He reached into an inside pocket of his thick down coat and pulled out a plastic bag of snapshots. Megan felt the color drain out of her face as she pulled the photographs from the bag and went through them one by one. There was no way of telling when or where they had been taken. She couldn't identify any of the subjects—all of them little boys in various stages of undress.

Her hands were trembling as she slipped the evidence back into the bag.

“They were in a manila envelope under his mattress,” Larkin said. “Flash those and let's hear what tune he sings.”

Megan nodded and turned back toward the door.

“Hey, Irish?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder.

“Nail his ass good.”

Olie still had his head in his hands when she strode into the interview room. Mitch looked at her expectantly. Without a word she tossed the bag of photographs down on the table.

Olie peered down at them through his fingers and felt the bottom fall out of his stomach.

“What the hell have you got to say for yourself now, Mr. Sewek?”

Olie squeezed his eyes shut. He whispered, “I want a lawyer.”

S
teiger had a ringside seat of the interrogation. The trouble was, he wanted to be
in
the ring, not sitting on the other side of a two-way mirror. Holt and O'Malley had shut him out. It wasn't his case. It wasn't his collar. It was fine for him to spend the last week tramping around in the snow, freezing his balls off for the cause, but they didn't want him in the room for the questioning.

Mr. Hotshot Miami Detective Holt would grab all the glory for himself—what he could wrest away from that pissy little BCA bitch. First female field agent. Big fucking deal. She was nothing but a publicity stunt, the bureau trying to get equal rights advocates off their backs. Holt treated her as if she was a real cop, but he was probably drilling her after hours. Steiger smiled to himself as he thought of how the shit would fly if that kind of news hit the airwaves.

Propping his boots up on the window ledge, he checked his watch and sighed. Twelve-fifteen. The interrogation was fruitless. Swain, or Sewek, or whatever the little turd's name was didn't have anything to say without a lawyer or with one. Ken Carey, the public defender, advised him unnecessarily to keep his mouth shut. Finally, Holt threw up his hands and called the thing to a halt. Olie would be held pending charges on the possession of child pornography, suspicion of the abduction, and on the Washington State warrant. Noga was called in to usher Olie to a cell. The room was vacated, the lights flipped off, end of show.

Steiger stood and stretched, switching on the lights in his theater. He wondered if any reporters were left out in the cold, waiting for a word from someone important.

The door swung open and Holt stepped inside, closing it quietly behind him.

“I thought he would have rolled,” Steiger said. “I thought the pictures would have kicked him over. How bad were they? I couldn't see them from here. Were they just naked kids or was there sex involved?”

Mitch narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, that would be a juicy little detail for Paige, wouldn't it? What would she give you for a tidbit like that, Russ?”

“I don't know what the hell you're talking about.” Steiger reached for the coat he had tossed over the back of a chair.

“Leslie Olin Sewek,” Mitch said carefully. “Only three people knew that name. Only one of us gave it to Paige Price.”

“Well, it wasn't me.”

“Would you care to look me in the eye when you say that?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” The sheriff didn't wait long enough for an answer. “I don't have to take this from you,” he snapped, and started for the door.

Mitch caught him by the shoulder. “You were against the surveillance so you called Paige and gave it to her.” He shook his head, his expression sour with disgust. “Jesus, you're worse than she is. You're sworn to uphold the law, not break it. You're supposed to protect and serve the people of this county, not sell them to the highest bidder.”

The rage pushed harder, squeezed into his veins. He hit Steiger in the chest with the heel of his hand. “You jeopardized the investigation. You jeopardized Josh—”

Steiger gave a hard laugh. “You don't believe he's alive any more than I do. The kid is dead and—”

The kid is dead.

Instantly Mitch saw the convenience store, the bodies, the blood, the baseball cards in his son's limp hand. He heard the voices of the paramedics.

“Hey, Estefan, let's get 'em bagged and downtown.”

“What's the hurry? The kid is dead.”

In a heartbeat the walls shattered. The rage poured out. Blinding, wild, burning. His vision misting red, Mitch lowered a shoulder and slammed it into the sheriff's sternum, running him backward like a blocking dummy. Steiger's breath left him with a
whoosh
as his back hit the wall.

“His name is Kyle!” Mitch yelled point-blank into Steiger's face. The sound of his own voice rang in his ears—the fury, the volume, the name.
Kyle
. . .
oh, sweet heaven
.

Weakness washed through him and he fell back a step, shaking his head, as if the realization had hit him physically and dazed him. Steiger was staring at him, waiting, wary.

“Josh,” Mitch said quietly. “His name is Josh, and you'd better believe he's alive, because we're all the hope he's got.”

CHAPTER 22

D
AY
7
PROJECTED DAYTIME HIGH
: -25°
WINDCHILL FACTORS
: -60°– -70°

N
ews of Olie Swain's arrest and his secret life swept through Deer Lake like the howling northwest wind. With the help of every television station, radio station, and major newspaper in the state, there was scarcely a person in town who wasn't able to shake their head and bemoan the state of affairs over breakfast. The stories emphasized Olie's past history—“The Making of a Child Predator”—and sensationalized his flight from Washington and the subsequent years spent hiding out in Deer Lake. Much was made of his chameleon ability to hide his true self and live an outwardly quiet life. More was made of the shock and horror of the citizenry at discovering that not only had they had a monster living in their midst, they had let him into close contact with their children.

Mitch and the county attorney held a press conference in a vain attempt to stem the flow of wild gossip. By afternoon there were stories all over town about Olie Swain molesting boys in the furnace room at the hockey rink and exposing himself to children in the city parks and peering in people's windows in the dead of night. There were rumors that horrific stuff had been discovered in the search of his house and van, and rumors that Josh Kirkwood had been found alive, half dead, dead, decapitated, mutilated, cannibalized.

By evening most of the townspeople had been whipped into a frenzy by a tangled mix of truth and fiction. The only thing that kept them from marching to the city jail to demand the head of Leslie Olin Sewek was an inbred Minnesotan aversion to creating a spectacle and a windchill factor of sixty-two degrees below zero.

The brutal cold had virtually brought the state to a standstill. The governor himself had ordered all schools and state offices closed. In Deer Lake, as in most towns around the state, every function, meeting, class, and gathering that could be canceled was canceled due to the dangerous conditions. Still, a group of nearly a hundred people made it to the volunteer center, where Paige Price and the crew from
TV 7 News
were doing a live special report on the case.

7:00
P.M.
         -29°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

T
onight no police, no one from the sheriff's department.” Because Mitch Holt had forbidden any of his people to talk to her and Steiger had thought it best to lay low for a day or two. “Tonight we talk with the citizens of Deer Lake, the small town rocked by the abduction of eight-year-old Josh Kirkwood and by the discovery of a monster in its midst.”

She moved between a computer desk and a long table stacked with bright yellow fliers. The people seated at the table in the Josh Kirkwood Volunteer Center gazed up at her. She had chosen slim dark slacks and a cashmere sweater set in a muted shade of violet that brought out her too-blue eyes. A look that was dressy enough to show respect, casual enough to make her seem almost one of the crowd. Her blond hair had been deliberately mussed and carefully sprayed into place, her makeup downplayed.

“Tonight we will listen to the people of Deer Lake, to the volunteers who have given their time, their money, their hearts to the effort to find Josh Kirkwood and bring his kidnapper to justice. We'll speak with a psychologist about the impact this crime has had on the community and about the minds of men who prey on children. And we'll talk with Josh's father, Paul Kirkwood, and get his reaction to the arrest of Leslie Olin Sewek.”

7:04
P.M.
         -29°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

I
t isn't bad enough that she blew the surveillance,” Megan said in disgust when the show broke for a lottery commercial featuring a hibernating cartoon bear. “By the time Paige and her cohorts are finished, there won't be an impartial juror left in the state.”

They watched the broadcast on the small color TV that perched on an old oak credenza in the office of assistant county attorney Ellen North. Mitch sat with his back to the set, refusing to look at Paige in her hour of glory. The show was on at Ellen's request. Her boss, Rudy Stovich, may have been the one telling the press they would prosecute the case to the full extent of the law, but most of the work of that task would fall on Ellen's shoulders.

Stovich was more politician than prosecutor. In Mitch's opinion, he was a bumbling idiot in the courtroom, something he could get away with in a rural county, where there wasn't much crime to speak of and not that many attorneys to pick from. The good ones were drawn to the Twin Cities, where there was more action, more money, and more courtrooms. The people of Park County were damn lucky to have Ellen North.

She sat behind her desk, eating a turkey sandwich. Her blond hair was swept back neatly into a tortoiseshell clip. She was thirty-five, a transplant from the judicial system of Hennepin County—or, as Ellen sometimes referred to it, the Magnificent Minneapolis Maze of Justice—where she had a reputation as a tough prosecutor. Tired of the workload, the bureaucracy, the game-playing, and the increasing sense of futility as crime rates in the Cities soared, she had sought the relative peace and sanity of Deer Lake.

“You can bet Sewek will ask for a change of venue,” she said, wiping her fingertips on a paper napkin. “And you can bet he'll get it—provided we come up with enough evidence to charge him. Has anything turned up in the search? Possessions of Josh's? Anything in the van—hair, fibers, blood?”

“They sprayed the interior of the van with luminol and found some bloodstains in the carpet in the back,” Megan said. “But at this point we don't even know if the blood is human, let alone Josh Kirkwood's. Trace evidence findings won't be in for a couple of days. We found nothing in the house that can link Olie directly to this crime.

“Early word on the photographs dug up last night is that they're more than five years old. They came from a Kodak instant camera Kodak had to stop making film for in the mid-eighties due to the verdict of a lawsuit brought against them by Polaroid. Which would mean Olie probably brought them with him when he moved here. So far no one has found anything in his books. No one has been able to access the files in his computers; he has all kinds of traps set up in the programming to prevent it.”

“And he's not talking.” Ellen looked to Mitch. “Can your witness ID the van?”

He shook his head. “Not absolutely.”

“Which is as good as nothing.” She sipped a can of raspberry-flavored seltzer and shook her head. “We have to hope the lab boys come up with something fast. The public may be ready to convict him, but we don't even have enough to charge him. Unless Paige Price is the judge, we're nowhere with this.”

At the mention of Paige's name, Mitch scowled. “Where do we stand in bringing obstruction charges for that stunt she pulled last night?”

Ellen made a face that discouraged hope. “It's been tried once or twice in recent years, but it would be almost impossible to make it stick in this case. We would have to prove absolutely that harm came to Josh as a result of the interference. Media people can wrap themselves in the First Amendment and get away with almost anything. If you could prove collusion between Paige and Steiger, you'd have something, but that's almost impossible unless one of them was stupid enough to tape the conversation or hold it in front of a witness.”

“So we've got nothing,” Mitch said. The injustice ate at him.

“And Paige Price has the scoop of the week. Again.”

7:16
P.M.
         -29°         
WINDCHILL FACTOR
: -62°

P
aige slid into a chair beside a heavyset woman with an unsmiling, unpainted mouth and brown hair that had been smashed flat by a stocking cap.

“Mrs. Favre, you told me you had suspicions about the man you knew as Olie Swain long ago. How did you feel when this information about his prior record surfaced?”

“I was furious,” the woman said loudly, grabbing hold of the mike and pulling it toward her as if she meant to devour it. “You bet I was. I told the police there was something wrong with him. My boy come home from hockey more than once and told me how Olie was weird and all and acted strange around them boys. And the police didn't do nothing. I talked to Mitch Holt myself and he didn't do nothing. He wouldn't listen to me and now look what's happened. It makes me sick.”

Paige took the microphone back and turned to face the camera. “Deer Lake police deny having any prior knowledge of Olie Swain's past life as pedophile Leslie Olin Sewek. City personnel in charge of the Gordie Knutson Memorial Arena also deny any knowledge of Mr. Swain's past. They did not check into Olie Swain's background for a criminal record before hiring him to work as a maintenance man at the ice rink where Deer Lake's children play hockey and practice figure skating.”

She rose and walked away from the table, past a computer desk where a Harris College student sat before a color terminal filled with Josh's image. The camera zoomed in on the computer screen, then backed off and swung back to Paige.

“It is important that we make it clear Leslie Olin Sewek has not been formally charged with the abduction of Josh Kirkwood. He is being held in the Deer Lake community jail because of a warrant issued on parole violations in the state of Washington. As of late this afternoon the only evidence gathered implicating Sewek in any crime at all was a packet of sexually explicit photographs involving young boys. Photographs he allegedly brought with him when he came to Minnesota after leaving a Washington State correctional facility.

“Authorities in Columbia County, Washington, are all too familiar with Leslie Sewek. As is the case with the majority of child molesters, Leslie Sewek's record is a long one that began when he himself was little more than a boy. Here with us tonight to talk about the mind of the child predator is Dr. Garrett Wright, head of the psychology department at Harris College.” She slid into the vacant chair beside Wright and regarded him with grave interest. “Dr. Wright, what can you tell us about the pattern of behavior in men like Leslie Sewek?”

Garrett Wright didn't look convinced this was a good idea. “First of all, Ms. Price, I want to make it clear that criminal behavior is not my area of expertise. I have, however, studied deviant behavior, and if I can shed some light on the situation and in any way help people deal with it, I will.”

“You're a resident of Deer Lake, aren't you, Doctor?”

“Yes. In fact, Hannah and Paul are neighbors of mine. Like most of the people in town, my wife and I are eager to help any way we can. Community support and involvement are very important to
all concerned. . . .”

Paige listened with one ear, impatient to get to the juicier stuff, the questions that would keep viewers glued to their sets. Wright might be visually interesting—almost as pretty as she was, and very scholarly in a button-down shirt and blue blazer—but talk of community support was not what she'd had in mind when she had personally coerced him into appearing on the show. She could almost hear the viewing public yawning.

Worse, she could picture the network people yawning. When the news of Leslie Sewek's past record had hit the wires, the networks and tabloid shows had scrambled to get people to Deer Lake. Josh Kirkwood's case was made for television news. And if Paige could pull it off, it was a case that would catapult her to bigger and better things.

“Obviously,” Garrett Wright went on, “it helps the victims to cope, but it also helps the rest of us to cope, to feel as if we're taking proactive measures against what is essentially an alien threat to our community—crime.”

“And about the crime,” Paige interjected smoothly. “There is a fairly consistent story behind men who become child molesters, like Leslie Sewek, isn't there, Doctor?”

“Yes, there seems to be. First of all, pedophiles tend to come from abusive home situations themselves and have strong unmet needs for personal warmth.”

“Are you saying we should feel sorry for someone like Leslie Sewek?” Paige asked with perfect indignity. Inwardly, she smiled as the crowd behind her grumbled angrily.

Garrett Wright held up a hand to ward off rebuttal. “I'm merely stating facts, Ms. Price. This is the common background among child molesters; it isn't an excuse to break the laws of society. Nor am I saying this is Leslie Sewek's background. I know nothing about the man. And as you pointed out, we don't know that Leslie Sewek has broken any laws here. We can't say with any certainty that the person who kidnapped Josh Kirkwood is a pedophile. We could be dealing with a very different sort of mind altogether, and frankly, one far more dangerous than the quote
average
unquote pedophile,” he argued. The camera zoomed in on his expression of profound concern.

Paige's inward smile stretched wider. “Such as, Dr. Wright?”

Garrett Wright's disapproval was almost a tangible thing. He gave her a long, cool look. “You're playing a dangerous game, Ms. Price. I didn't come here to play Name That Psycho. That kind of conjecture on my part would be inappropriate, to say nothing of ghoulish—”

“I didn't mean to suggest such a thing,” Paige interrupted, the internal smile going brittle.
Damn.
“Perhaps you could give us a better understanding of that quote average unquote pedophile?”

Wright relaxed marginally. “Pedophiles often relate better to children than to adults and in most cases they seek to control the child rather than to harm the child,” he went on before Paige could jump in with another inflammatory question. “They may truly believe they love children and will often seek employment that will put them in contact with or proximity to children.”

“A fact that brings us directly back to Deer Lake and the case of Leslie Olin Sewek,” Paige said, abandoning Garrett Wright for her special guest star. “With the shadow of Josh Kirkwood's abduction hanging over this town, the discovery of a convicted child predator at the very ice arena from which Josh disappeared has frightened and outraged the citizens of this quiet community. Certainly no one in Deer Lake has more reason to feel anger at this revelation than Paul Kirkwood, Josh Kirkwood's father.”