by Tami Hoag
“Tell it to the town council,” she quipped, struggling for a scrap of humor in this nightmare. “They can start cleaning out Fort Knox.”
He slipped the small portable phone from his coat pocket and handed it over. “Call the priest while you're at it. We're going to need all the help we can get.”
CHAPTER 7
* * *
DAY 1
10:02 P.M. 18°
From a distance, the parking lot of the Gordie Knutson Memorial Arena resembled a giant tailgate party—cars and trucks in makeshift rows, men milling around portable heaters, their voices carrying on the cold night air. But there was no party atmosphere. Tension and anger and fear hovered like a cloud, like a drift of noxious fog.
If there had been any hope of picking up a trace of evidence from the lot itself, it was gone now. That was the risk of working crime scenes with large groups. The attention to small detail was lost in the hunt for larger clues. The sense of urgency fed on itself and grew, making the mob difficult to control.
Control. A prized word in Megan's vocabulary. She had been left in charge, but at the moment she had no control. The men turned to one another for guidance and instruction. They looked for their chief. They paid no attention whatsoever to Megan. She tried twice to raise her voice above the din. No one listened and she turned to Noga.
He gave her a rueful look and shrugged. “Maybe we should just wait for the chief.”
“Noga, a child has been abducted. We don't have time to piss around with this male pecking-order bullshit.”
Scowling, she went around to the trunk of the Lumina and rummaged through the dusty junk heap for a bullhorn, then went around to the front of the car and scrambled up on the hood, the heels of her boots denting it like hailstones.
“Listen up!” she bellowed.
The sound echoed off across the fairgrounds. As if a switch had been flipped off, the men fell silent and turned to stare at her.
“I'm Agent O'Malley with the BCA. Chief Holt has gone to speak with the parents of the missing boy. In his absence, I'm going to organize you into teams and get you started on the search. Deer Lake cops: I want three teams of two doing house-to-house on this block, asking if anyone saw anything going on between five-fifteen and seven-fifteen. We don't have a photo of the boy to give you at this point, but he was last seen wearing a bright blue ski jacket with green and yellow trim and a yellow stocking cap with a Vikings patch on it. If anyone saw Josh Kirkwood or saw anything odd or suspicious going on, we want to hear about it. The rest of you cops and county boys divide into—”
“I'll direct my own men, if you don't mind, Miss O'Malley.”
Megan's gaze dropped like an anvil onto the head of the Park County sheriff. He stood with his hands on his lean hips, a half-smile twisting his nonexistent lips. Somewhere in the vicinity of fifty, he was tall with a lean, bony face and an aquiline nose. The lights of the parking lot gleamed off dark hair that he wore slicked straight back à la basketball coach Pat Riley. His voice boomed, carrying farther than hers did with the bullhorn.
“I want my deputies on the fairgrounds. We'll do a complete sweep—every plowed road, every building. If you find something, call it in to me. Art Goble's coming with his dogs. As soon as Mitch gets back with something for them to scent off, they'll be in business. Let's go!”
Half a dozen deputies started toward the fairgrounds, flashlights bobbing in their hands. The Deer Lake cops shuffled around, uncertain who to send where or if they should do anything at all on the orders of a woman they had never seen before. Megan shot a look at Noga, and he hustled off to get them moving. She hopped down off the hood of the Lumina, landing squarely in front of the sheriff.
“It's Agent O'Malley,” she said, sticking a gloved hand out in front of her.
Russ Steiger gave her a patronizing once-over with his big dark eyes, blatantly ignoring her token gesture of courtesy. “What'd they do? Run out of men in St. Paul?”
“No.” Her smile was as sharp as a scimitar. “They decided on a novel idea and sent the most qualified person instead of the one with the biggest dick.”
The sheriff blinked as if she'd hit him in the forehead with a mallet. Christ, DePalma would have her head on a pike if he heard her talk that way to a county sheriff. Never mind that she knew male agents who had vocabularies that could singe the hair in a sailor's ears. That was guy stuff, locker-room bravado. She had been given explicit instructions to make a good impression, not to offend, not to step on toes. But she knew too well what would happen if she kept her mouth shut and bowed to the local potentates. She'd end up sitting in her office, filling out forms and trimming her cuticles. It didn't take a genius in human behavior to see that this particular potentate was like a big bull moose—a polite tap on the shoulder would not get his attention; he needed something more along the lines of a sharp whack between the ears with a Louisville Slugger.
The sheriff snorted. “Russ Steiger, Park County sheriff. Leo was a hell of a guy.”
“Yeah, well, he's dead now and we've got a job to do,” she said, fed up to her back teeth with Leo accolades. “Let's get to it before the press shows up.” She deliberately turned her back on him, then turned around in calculated afterthought. “Your men find something on the fairgrounds, Sheriff, you call it in to me. I'll be coordinating the effort at the command post.”
She blew out a long breath. Fatigue pressed down on her like a millstone. These were hardly the ideal circumstances for her to establish a rapport with the local boys. She would have to be on the offensive every second or get trampled beneath a herd of size-twelve boots—a distraction she didn't need. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see Josh Kirkwood grinning out at her from his third-grade photo. She could see his mother, the elegant beauty of her face twisted with guilt and a terrible fear Megan could only imagine.
Pain stabbed as sharp as an ice pick above her right eye. She had a bad feeling about this one. Abductions seldom ended happily. The message they had found in Josh's duffel bag rang like a bell of doom in her head: ignorance is not innocence but SIN.
That the note was typed suggested premeditation, and the whole idea of abduction reeked of a seriously disturbed mind. She wondered if they were dealing with a local or a drifter, someone already familiar with the community or someone who had hung around just long enough to get down the town routines. Or maybe the perp was someone who prowled the interstate highway systems, pulling off when the mood or opportunity hit to grab a kid and go. Maybe he had a whole glove compartment full of typed notes composed to strike terror into the hearts of those left behind. The possibilities were multifarious, the probabilities chilling.
Every step of the way a cop was taught not to become emotionally involved in a case. Good advice, but damn hard to follow when the victim was a child. Megan's heart wrenched at the idea of a small boy dragged into God knew what terror. She knew what it was to be small and alone and afraid, to feel abandoned. Those memories of her own childhood swirled like oil on water down in the pit of her soul.
A shout went up off to Megan's right, snapping her back to the moment just in time to see a pair of coon hounds bearing down on her with bright eyes and long pink tongues lolling out the sides of their mouths. At the last second one darted right and one left, their big, muscular bodies glancing off her legs, knocking her flat in the driveway.
“Aw, damn, they're after a rabbit!” A man who looked like one of the Keebler elves in a snowmobile suit looked down at Megan in disgust, then offered his hand. “Sorry, miss.”
“Agent O'Malley, BCA,” she said automatically, grimacing as she let him help her up.
“Art Goble. Excuse me, miss, while I round up Heckle and Jeckle.”
“Heckle and Jeckle?” She watched him trundle off after the dogs, her heart sinking as she stepped up onto the sidewalk. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
“They're the best we can do on short notice,” Mitch said. He had parked his Explorer in the fire zone in front of the
arena. “I called the volunteer canine search and rescue club, and the canine unit in Minneapolis. They'll have dogs here inside two hours.”
The challenges of law enforcement in the hinterlands. Megan sighed. “The mobile lab is on its way and the choppers should be here within the hour. How are the parents?”
He shook his head, his expression bleak. “Hannah is despondent. Paul is angry. They're both scared. I left Natalie in charge at the house to deal with your techs.”
“Good. It'll go more smoothly that way.”
“Paul is coming down to help with the search.”
Megan squeezed her eyes shut and groaned.
“I know, I know,” Mitch muttered. “But I couldn't stop him. He needs to feel like he's taking some kind of action.”
“Yeah, well, if we knew where not to look for Josh, we could send him thataway.” She could sympathize with a parent's need to do something proactive in a situation like this, but no one wanted a father to discover his child's body or a civilian to unwittingly miss or destroy evidence.
“I'll let him bring up the rear with the county boys. They've started?”
“Oh, yeah. Me and Wyatt Earp got them all whipped into a frenzy,” she replied sarcastically.
“So you met Russ?”
“A charming fellow. Were I a fish, he would have thrown me back in disgust.”
“Don't say I didn't warn you.”
“I'll be hearing that in my sleep,” she muttered. “If I ever get any. This is liable to be a long night.”
“Yeah, and it's about to get longer,” Mitch snarled as a TV 7 news van rolled up to the curb in front of them. “Here comes the sideshow. There ought to be a law against civilians owning scanners.”
“Would that apply to the media? They only appear to be humanoid.”
The newspeople piled out of the van like the troops landing at Normandy. Technicians grabbed equipment, flipped on blinding portable strobes, tossed coils of electrical cord out onto the sidewalk. The passenger door opened and the star emerged, glamour-girl looks and too-blue contact lenses, thick sandy hair spray-starched into a helmet impervious to weather. She wore a stylish blue ski jacket open over an equally stylish sweater, and navy leggings tucked into tall leather boots. The latest outfit for reporters on the go tracking down misery and tragedy in the dead of winter.
“Oh, shit,” Mitch growled through his teeth. “Paige Price.”
While he had no great love for any reporter, he knew only too well this one was hungry, ambitious, and ruthless in her pursuit of a story. She would do anything for a scoop, for a fresh angle, for an edge against the competition.
“Chief Holt!” The smile that graced Paige Price's mouth was small, appropriate, businesslike. The gleam of excitement in her eyes was not. “Can we get a few words from you about the abduction?”
“We'll hold a press conference in the morning if necessary,” he said curtly. “We're very busy right now.”
“Of course. This will take only a moment,” she said smoothly. “Just a sound bite.”
She turned toward Megan, her reporter's eyes glinting with shrewd speculation, but she quickly arranged her features into perfect concern touched with sympathy. “Are you the boy's mother?”
“No. I'm Agent O'Malley with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.”
“You must be new,” she said, the speculation sharpening.
“To the bureau, no. To the Deer Lake area, yes. This is my first day here.”
“Really? What a terrible way to start a new job.” Paige mouthed the platitudes automatically while she scanned the files of her brain, ferreting out pertinent kernels of information. “I don't recall ever hearing of a female agent in the field. Isn't that unusual?”
“You might say that,” Megan said dryly. “If you'll excuse me, Ms. Price, I have work to do. This is Chief Holt's investigation, at any rate,” she added, tossing the ball into Mitch's court and not missing the narrow look he shot her. She kept her focus on the reporter, however, knowing better than to turn her back on a viper poised to strike. “Any help we can get from the media in achieving the safe return of Josh Kirkwood will be greatly appreciated.”
On that note, she abandoned Mitch, heading for the relative warmth of the ice arena to await the arrival of the crime scene unit. Relief flooded through her for escaping Paige Price's manicured claws. Bureau policy was to remain in the background of investigations, leaving the publicity and the credit to fall on the shoulders of the local chief or sheriff, where it belonged. The BCA was a workhorse at the disposal of local authorities, not an organization of grandstanders looking to bask in the limelight.
The policy suited Megan fine. She wanted to be a cop, not a celebrity. She could imagine the minor strokes touched off in the bureau hierarchy if Paige Price latched on to her for an exclusive. BCA's First Female Field Agent Fields Sensational Child Abduction Case. She had no desire to be held up by Paige Price or anyone else as a curiosity or an icon for the women's movement. All she ever wanted was to do her job.
She climbed the stairs into the darkened bleachers and settled in an aisle seat two-thirds of the way up, grateful for the silence. It wouldn't last long. The mobile lab would arrive to collect what pitifully meager evidence they had—the duffel bag, the note. She would send the techs to the Kirkwood house to wire the phones. Then she would work with Mitch to establish a command post where searchers would report any findings, where a telephone hotline would be set up to receive tips from the public. A million details flew around inside her head like a swarm of fireflies, threatening to overwhelm her.
This was the kind of responsibility she had asked for. This was as close as she would come to FBI work as long as her father was alive. Careful what you wish for, O'Malley.
Punchy with exhaustion, she tried to imagine what Neil O'Malley would have done if she had been abducted as a child. Pretend paternal outrage and hoist a bottle of Pabst in private, glad to be rid of the daughter he never wanted.
“There's a million stories in the Naked City,” she mumbled absently, dismissing her own as she glimpsed movement down in the shadows near the doors to the locker rooms. Olie Swain? Uneasiness danced across her nerve endings as she pictured his ugly face and remembered the sour smell of sweat in his little cubbyhole next to the furnace room. “A million stories in the Naked City. What's yours, Olie?”
Mitch stood scowling into the glare of the TV 7 portable lights and gave a terse, much-abridged version of the abduction of Josh Kirkwood, assuring the ten o'clock news audience that everything possible was being done to find the boy, asking them to come forward with any information they might have.
A lot of people in Deer Lake watched KTVS, channel seven out of Minneapolis. If there was any chance that one of them had even a scrap of information, Mitch was more than willing to beg for it. It galled him to give Paige Price the exclusive, but he couldn't let personal feelings enter into the picture. He would use whom he could, however he could. If it meant getting Josh back, he would deal with the devil himself—or the devil's sister.
Paige stood beside him, looking grave and glamorous. The scent of her perfume seemed intensified by the heat of the lights—something thick and expensive. Choking. Or was that his own temper rising up in his throat and pounding between his ears? When he finished his statement, she was right there with a question, deftly heading off his escape.
“Chief Holt, you're calling this an abduction. Does that mean you have proof that Josh Kirkwood was kidnapped? And if so, what kind of proof?”
“I'm not at liberty to divulge that kind of information, Ms. Price.”
“But it's safe to say you fear for Josh Kirkwood's life?”
Mitch gave her a cold look. “Someone has taken Josh Kirkwood. Any rational person would be concerned for Josh's safety. We're doing everything we can to find him and bring him home to his family, unharmed.”
“Is that a realistic hope, considering the outcome of such cases as the Wetterling abduction or the Erstad d
isappearance? Or the cases gaining national prominence at the moment—Polly Klaas in California and Sara Wood in upstate New York? Isn't it true that with every moment that passes, the chances of a child's safe return diminish?”
“Cases are individual, Ms. Price.” He mentally cursed her for trying to sensationalize an already terrible situation. Unprincipled bitch. But then, he knew that firsthand, didn't he? “There's no reason to frighten people by connecting either the crimes themselves or their outcomes to this incident.”
Paige didn't bat an eyelash at the reprimand. She forged onward—straight for the jugular. “Does this case hold a special significance for you, Chief Holt, considering your own personal—”
Mitch didn't wait for a conclusion to the question. He ended the interview for her, turning on his heel and stalking off toward the arena, shrugging off the hand that reached for his arm. The rage seethed inside him, hissed like steam in a pressure cooker. Behind him he could hear Paige saving herself gracefully, tying up the story with a neat, touching bow of words.
“. . . first on the scene as a big-city horror strikes at the heart of this quiet small town, this is Paige Price, TV 7 News.”
Someone called out, “And . . . we're clear! That's it for the moment, folks.”
He heard the technicians bitching about the cold, then the sharp clack of boot heels on the sidewalk, rushing up behind him.
“Mitch, wait!”
He jammed his hands in his coat pockets and continued up the steps without sparing her so much as a glance. Not that she was the least daunted by his ignoring her. Paige Price didn't dignify subtle hints.
“Mitch!”
“Nice save, Paige,” he said flatly. “A touch of sensationalism, a touch of sympathy, let the viewers know you're the first vulture to roost. Very professional.”
“It's my job.” Somehow she managed to sound both apologetic and proud of herself.