Night Sins

by Tami Hoag

  Coughing hard against the ache of cold in his lungs, he pushed himself to his feet and yanked Olie up with him.

  “It wasn't me,” Olie whimpered. Tears ran down his face. Blood dribbled from a cut on his lip and froze on his quivering chin. “I didn't do anything.”

  Mitch jerked him around and leaned down into his ugly pug face. “You've done plenty, Olie, but, by God, if you've done anything to Josh Kirkwood, you'll wish you'd never been born.”

  Olie hung his head and sobbed. A mob had gathered behind his house at the edge of the vacant lot—cops, TV people. They all knew. They knew all about him. They knew his past and they would crush his future with the weight of it.

  You'll wish you'd never been born, Leslie.

  What none of them knew was that he had wished that already. Every day of his life.

  Steiger pulled up in an unmarked Crown Victoria with a blue beacon held on the roof by a seventeen-pound magnet. Cops and TV 7 personnel scattered as the car roared up the walk alongside Olie's house, narrowly missing the fenders of two of Oscar Rudd's decrepit Saabs. Steiger climbed out, shouting orders.

  “Get him in the car! I'll take him downtown.” He flashed a stern look at the small crowd, unaware that the video camera had been dispensed with. “Move back, folks. This is police business.”

  Paige stepped forward, microphone in hand. If they got the audio, they could run it with still shots they had on file and claim technical difficulties on the video. She already had the scoop; that was all that really mattered. “Sheriff, do you believe this is the man who abducted Josh Kirkwood?”

  “We'll be questioning Mr. Swain in connection with this case as well as on charges pending in the state of Washington. That's all I can say at the moment.”

  “How did you zero in on this suspect?”

  He looked at her down his aquiline nose. His hair gleamed like a fresh oil slick in the moonlight. “Good old-fashioned police work.”

  Mitch steered Olie to the passenger side of the Crown Vic and handed him over to Noga. “Put him in your car.”

  Noogie looked from his chief to Steiger and back. “But, Chief—”

  “Put him in the goddamn car and drive him to the station,” Mitch ordered. “If Steiger gives you any lip, shoot him.”

  Noga's brows rose. “Yessir.”

  “I'll follow you downtown,” Megan told the patrolman. She put a hand on Mitch's arm. “Nice collar, Chief. You nailed his ass.”

  “Yeah?” he muttered, cutting a glance at Paige on the other side of the car. “Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet.”

  Megan refrained from comment and turned back to Noga. The patrolman clamped a huge gloved hand on the back of Olie's neck and ushered him past Steiger's car and toward the street where green and white cruisers sat in a haphazard cluster with lights flashing like carnival rides. Catching sight of Noga and Swain, Steiger abandoned Paige and hustled after his erstwhile prisoner.

  “Hey, Noga! Load him into this car!”

  “That's okay, Sheriff,” Noogie called. “We can take him. Thanks anyway!”

  Down the street, neighbors were peering out their front windows. Oscar Rudd came out of his kitchen door wearing trousers with red suspenders hanging down in big loops, and dress shoes with no socks. Only a grungy thermal undershirt covered his chest and enormous belly. More white hair sprouted out of his ears than covered his head.

  “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°

  Would 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.”

  Steiger 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

  * * *

  DAY 7

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

  News 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.