The Second Lie (20 page)

"No." I had to be honest. "Obsession infers irrationality, and just by the fact that you're listening to those around you, questioning yourself, speaking to me, you've shown yourself to be rational." And then I added, "I do think, however, that the experience is probably affecting your judgment in that it's made your need to stop the local drug trade that much more acute. And I think it's causing a bit of sleep deprivation, which will affect your judgment."

"So what are you saying?"

"That I think you're rational and doing your job well, but that you need to be careful that it stays that way. If I were you, I'd weigh very carefully every decision I made right now."

"So you don't think I've crossed the line yet, or anything."

I didn't think so, but I wasn't positive.

"I'm just one person, Sam."

"You're a shrink. You're supposed to be able to see these things."

"I'm a professional, but I'm not perfect. And you're my friend."

"I'm going to pursue this thing."

"I know that."

"I have to."

"I know."

"Do you think I'm making a mistake?"

"I hope not."

"Yeah, me, too."

I was worried about her. "Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Keep in touch with me, 'kay? Let me know what's going on with the investigation?"

"Keeping an eye on me, Doc?"

"And if I am?"

"Thank you."

Sam had Saturday off that week. It was an every-three-week pleasure she shared with the other Fort County deputies, two at a time. Dressed in jeans, her black work boots and a black sweater, with her hair up in a bun--and a renewed confidence after her talk with Kelly--she went first to the tennis complex. There she sat in her car with a full travel mug of coffee and watched to see if any of the kids in the Ramblers club had any suspicious interactions.

When nothing transpired, she got her racket and balls out of the trunk and hit the court. She worked on her serve on an empty court, and eventually managed to talk to a couple of the kids there.

Both were part of the tennis club. They'd heard about it on the Internet. Neither of them knew Maggie. Or Shane. Both had part-time minimum-wage jobs--one at a fast-food place, the other doing yard work. Some of their club mates had paper routes. Neither had heard of a guy named Mac and both would rather be playing football.

One asked Sam out. A kid and a thirty-three-year-old woman. What in the hell was the world coming to?

Extricating herself with a smile and a comment about her boyfriend probably not liking that idea, Sam gave up and moved on to Chandler city park.

After an hour with nothing new to go on, she drove to the deserted house on Mechanic Street. The address she'd found scribbled on a paper on Holmes's coffee table. She searched the grounds again, nosed around the house again, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

And she drove out by Kyle's place, just as she'd been doing every day since the fire. Watching for any sign of suspicious activity.

Back at home with her espresso machine, she gave herself a break from the drug investigation and pored over registered sex offender logs and census records for Ohio, looking for anyone named Malcolm or Mackenzie--even MacDonald.

Eliminating any male younger than twenty and older than forty, and setting a reasonable range for distance, she ended up with an entire page full of possible Macs in Fort County. One was currently incarcerated, so she checked him off the list.

Only one, a Malcolm Hardy, was a third-tier registered sex offender living right there in Chandler.

Samantha knew the street. It was less than a mile from Maggie's home. It took Sam ten minutes from the time she read the address on the sex-offender list to reach her destination. But only because a train was passing through town and she had to take side streets to detour around it.

She parked in front of the house and checked that her weapon was lodged against her side under her black sweater. The crumbling cement steps led up to a peeling wooden porch that had once been white and had probably hosted many relaxing social gatherings on summer evenings fifty or so years ago. Now it should probably be torn down.

The house, one of several just like it in town, had been built shortly after World War I. It featured a big window on one side of the front door and two smaller windows on the other.

With her identification badge in hand, Samantha rang the bell.

The muscled, trim man who pulled open the door looked more like fifty than the thirty-nine on the registration Sam had pulled up. His hair, graying at the temples, was short and styled and his face clean shaven.

"Samantha Jones from Fort County sheriff's office." Samantha introduced herself straight off, showing her identification badge. "Are you Malcolm Hardy?"

"Yes." Irritation turned to resignation. "What am I suspected of now?"

"Nothing that I know of," Sam said.

"Why can't you people just leave me alone?" Hardy asked, still just showing his face behind the door. "I register every three months, like I'm supposed to. I meet with my parole officer."

"Do you stay away from kids, Mr. Hardy?"

"One thousand feet. Always. I can't even do my own shopping anymore. Seems like every time I was in the store somebody accused me of looking at their kid. Now I gotta pay someone to get my groceries for me."

Hardy's teeth were straight. White.

Sam had read the man's record. Someone should have broken those teeth. And shoved them down his throat.

"I'd like to feel sorry for you, sir, but I don't," Samantha told him. There wasn't a lot she could do. She had no case. No evidence. Not even a hunch.

The visit was based on pure logic. A girl had a crush on a probable pedophile named Mac. A registered sex offender in the area was named Mac.

"Tell me about Maggie."

"I don't know no one named Maggie."

"You have a computer?"

"No. I'm not allowed to own or access one."

She knew that.

"Mind if I check?" She could only search the place without a warrant if he allowed her to do so.

He pulled open the door, stepped back. "Be my guest."

Walking on a recently vacuumed carpet, Sam made a quick study of the house. A couch, table, chair and television, without cable, in one room. A single bed and chest of drawers in another. The third was completely vacant, closet and all. The kitchen had a dinette with two chairs.

There were no pictures. No mementos on the walls.

No electronics.

Except a cell phone on the table in the living room.

"This your phone?"

"Yes."

Samantha picked it up. Flicked it open. It was as simple a phone as you could get--a freebie giveaway for signing up for cell phone service. There were no pictures. And no Internet capabilities.

He stood there, arms crossed over his chest, not saying a word as she invaded his privacy.

"You ever go to the coffeehouse in town?" she asked him, setting the phone down.

"Nope. Can't. Free wi-fi."

"And if I go in, show your picture around, anyone going to recognize you?"

"Not from being in there. Coulda seen 'em at the gas station, though. Or at the pub."

She gave him that. Chandler was a small town.

"What do you do in your spare time, Malcolm?" The man was too physically fit to just sit in that chair in front of the television all day.

"When I'm not looking for work, you mean?"

"Your file says you work at the paper plant."

"I did. Until someone complained that I'd brushed against them in the cafeteria."

Sucks being a tier-three offender.
Sam had to bite back the words. Sucks being your victim even more.

"So, yeah, when you're not looking for work, what do you do?"

"I climb. Mountains. No one up there to accuse me of doing something I ain't doin'."

"You been climbing lately?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact." He opened a drawer, pulled out a permit for an all-adult campsite in southern Ohio. Sam had heard of the place. A retirement resort for RV'ers mostly. "Been there the past month." He named the hills he'd hiked.

She looked at the date of the receipt. He'd checked in to a tent campsite in the middle of August.

And checked out yesterday.

Didn't mean he couldn't have been talking to Maggie somehow while down there. Sam could call and check the log-in access records for any public computers on the premises. And he could have befriended some trusting older couple who'd allowed him access to their computer.

But even then, he wouldn't have been available to see Maggie Winston in the past month as Kelly had claimed.

Unless he'd driven home and back to the campsite.

Leaving his alibi intact.

She'd call. She'd check up on him.

And she'd add Malcolm Hardy and his home to her watch list.

At four that afternoon, after a stop home for a latte and a peach, Sam was once again knocking on a door. This one belonged to MaryLee Hatch. She'd called ahead and Nicole's mother was waiting for her.

"Did you find the number she dialed?" MaryLee asked worriedly as soon as Sam was in the door. The woman was a much older version of her blonde, blue-eyed thirteen-year-old.

Sam nodded. "It's a pay-as-you-go cell phone and has been disconnected."

"So there's no way to trace it."

"No." She hated having to admit the bad news to this single mother who was relying on Sam to keep her daughter safe.

She was not going to fail.

"And what about that other kid? Shane Hamacher. Did he tell you who he worked for?"

"Says he was on his own. That he didn't know of any girl meeting Nicole at her locker. He says that Nicole asked him for the drugs."

"Do you believe him?"

"No, but the deputy that questioned him did. He put him on civic duty and let him go."

Seeing the other woman's distress, Sam continued. "He's not going to rat on his contact. He'd be in danger if he did. But don't worry. I'm watching him, and working on several other leads. We'll get these guys. I promise you."

MaryLee's grateful--and still frightened--look would go in the portfolio that kept Samantha awake at night.

She hefted the large stack of yearbooks from schools in the county that she had under her arm.

"She's in here," MaryLee said, leading Sam to a homey, lived-in family room. Nicole was curled up in a chair in a corner, reading.

The girl took an hour going through the photographs, having spent as much time with the Chandler yearbooks at the station.

And the result was the same.

She didn't recognize anyone who resembled the mystery female who'd shown up at her locker at the junior high eight days before.

When Kyle heard car tires on his gravel drive early Saturday evening, he expected to see either a county cruiser coming to pick him up or Sam's Mustang. As far as he knew, she was off duty.

And off duty wouldn't stop her from investigating him, or even calling for his arrest.

It wasn't Sam that pulled up to the barn. It was her brother, Pierce. Kyle was only slightly more happy to see him.

Pierce was an okay guy. More than that, he was the closest thing to a brother Kyle had ever had. But Pierce loved his sister. And right now Kyle was trying to stay as far away from that woman as he could get while still living in the same county.

Sam didn't trust him--his own fault.

She was on a witch hunt. There had been inexplicable happenings on his farm. And he hadn't been completely honest about Sherry Mahon.

He hadn't wanted to give her any more reason to doubt him, and telling her the truth would have done that. It would have made her feel as though she didn't know Kyle at all.

When it came to that part of his life, he didn't even recognize himself.

Zodiac, who'd been no farther than a few yards from Kyle in the two days she'd been back on her feet, ran up to welcome their visitor. Her raspy bark and perhaps some weight loss were the only visible signs of her life-threatening ordeal.

Pierce greeted her while still in his car, checking her over, petting her, telling her what a good girl she was.

Zodiac soaked up every drop of affection and then returned immediately to Kyle's side.

"How about a game of darts?" Pierce asked, climbing out of his sedan, a bag in each hand. "I brought pork and caramelized-onion crostini, some Parmesan and prosciutto bread-stick bites, cucumber cups and some tarts." He held up one bag.

Grandpa loved Pierce's tarts. The old man was already in bed for the night, but Kyle would love to have tarts waiting for him for breakfast in the morning. They'd have a better chance of having a good day if it started off on an up note.

"Got any of those homemade potato-chip things?" he asked.

Pierce lifted the other bag.

"I'll get the beer."

He'd thrown one dart when Pierce mentioned the fire.

"Sam tell you about it?" Kyle asked. With a careful aim, he set a second dart sailing. Bull's-eye. Except the excessive force he'd used caused the dart to bounce right back off the board rather than sink gently into its brushed bristle depths.

Pierce stood beside the card table laden with the food he'd brought. "No. I ran into Chuck Sewell at the gas station. He said the fire department declared the field a toxic waste dump. He asked me if I knew anything about it. If you'd said anything about it."

So Sam wasn't the only cop checking up on him.

Kyle did not want to talk about or hear what anyone thought--firefighters or cops.

Which was why he hadn't set a foot near town since bringing Zodiac home.

He was going to have to go within the next day or two, though. His grandfather was out of cookies and they'd need milk.

"What did you tell him?" he asked Pierce.

What in the hell would happen to Grandpa if Kyle got arrested? He hadn't done anything, but with the circumstantial evidence they had they could still press charges.

"I told him that was the first I'd heard of it," Pierce said. "You got any idea what's going on?"

"None." And then, because he was speaking with Sam's older brother, a person who would understand the painful dynamics of Sam's role in the investigation, he said, "Sam thinks it's meth-lab waste. Apparently everything used in illegal meth labs could pretty much pass for household waste, so I'm not sure with only charred remains if they'll be able to tell for sure."