by Tami Hoag
“We never had a report—”
“Big deal. Shit like that goes on and nobody hears about it. Kids are greedy. Olie offers some kid ten bucks for a little touchy-feely, maybe the kid thinks it's no big deal—he takes the cash and keeps his mouth shut. Olie did it.”
“Then swore in his life's blood it wasn't him,” Megan pointed out, more to needle Steiger than because she believed it.
He scowled at her. “You fell for that?” He shook his head, malicious glee tightening the corners of his mouth. “Well, I guess we all know how you made detective.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mitch growled, straightening away from the wall.
“It means he's a jerk,” Megan said smoothly. She steered the conversation back on track before Steiger could offer a rebuttal. “He could be saying he feels guilty for what he's done, but I don't believe it. He hasn't done anything remorseful; all he's done is taunt us. I think he's standing back, laughing his head off, while we run around like the Keystone Kops.”
“Goddamn head games,” Mitch muttered. Head games from a mind as twisted as a corkscrew. Warped enough to plant a piece of evidence, then calmly walk up to a house and strike up a conversation with the woman inside, casually dropping clues into the conversation, then walking away.
“I agree. We know Olie didn't have anything to do with the call made Saturday from St. Peter. He didn't plant the notebook. He couldn't have planted the jacket. That call last night didn't come from Olie, either.”
“What call?” Steiger demanded.
Megan ignored him. “It might have been a crank, but it fits too well.”
The sheriff stepped into her line of vision, a scowl pulling his features into a sour mask. “What call?”
“I got a call last night,” Mitch said, pointing to the message board. “He just said the same thing over and over—‘blind and naked ignorance.' I wrote it off as a crank.”
“Blind and naked?” Steiger sniffed. “Maybe someone was looking in your windows.”
“And maybe you should keep your mind on the case and your comments to yourself, Russ.”
Megan slipped down off the table as her beeper went off. Unclipping the pager from her belt, she hit the display button and frowned. “I have to make a call,” she mumbled, meeting Mitch's eyes with her best poker face. “Chief, are you about ready to go have that chat with the Kirkwoods?”
Mitch nodded. He didn't like the look of strain on her face. The call would be to DePalma. As much as he kept telling himself she was blowing things out of proportion, he still couldn't help but tense. He didn't want her off the case. He didn't want her punished for something he had been as much a part of as she—more, if you got right down to it. Megan had her rule against cops; he was the one who had coerced her into breaking it.
“Five minutes,” he said. “I'll stop by your office.”
He watched her slip out the door, forgetting Steiger's presence for a moment. A moment was all the sheriff allowed.
“So, how is she?” Steiger asked, swaggering across the room, his arms crossed over his chest, a smirk twisting his thin lips. “She doesn't look like she'd be much of a fuck, but then, maybe she can do better things with that mouth than shoot it off.”
Mitch's response was pure reaction. He swung a hard right that caught Steiger square in the nose. The resounding crack! of breaking bone went through the room like a gunshot. Steiger's head snapped around and he went down on one knee, blood gushing through the hands he pressed to his face.
“Jethus! Chou bloke my nothe!” he exclaimed. The blood ran thick and red between his fingers, dripping in rivulets down the backs of his hands and falling in droplets to stain the carpet.
Shaking his hand to relieve the stinging, Mitch leaned down over him, his eyes glittering and feral. “You got by easy, Russ,” he snarled. “That was for siccing Paige Price on Megan, leaking information, and being a son of a bitch in general. One lousy broken nose for all of that? Hell, you weren't that good-looking to begin with.
“But let me give you a little advance warning here, Russ,” he continued, lifting a finger to emphasize his point. “If I turn on the ten o'clock news tonight and hear Paige reciting William Blake, I'm going to come out to that tin can you live in, stick a gun up your ass, and blow your brains out. Do you understand what I'm saying here, Russ?”
“Fluck chou,” Steiger blubbered, fumbling in his hip pocket for a handkerchief.
“Well said, Sheriff,” Mitch drawled as he straightened and started for the door. “A master of articulation, as usual. Too bad you're not half as good a cop.”
She twisted the facts,” Megan said into the receiver. Elbows on her blotter, she leaned her forehead heavily against one hand. “What am I saying? She didn't even have the facts! Bruce—”
“Don't call me Bruce when I'm angry with you,” DePalma snapped.
“Yes, sir,” she said on a sigh. She felt as if some unseen hands were stabbing darning needles into her eyes. “She fabricated that story out of thin air—”
“You weren't at Chief Holt's house at three in the morning?”
“There is a very simple, innocent explanation—which, I might add, Paige Price did not bother to try to get from me before jumping me at the press conference.”
“So you're saying this is all a misunderstanding that has been blown out of proportion?”
“Yes.”
“That's become a recurring theme in your life, Agent O'Malley.” The tone was sharp enough to make her wince. “We've already had this discussion about the gender issue. The last thing this bureau needs is to be dragged into a sex scandal.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any idea the kind of feeding frenzy that could go on here? We finally give a woman a field post and the first thing she does is seduce the chief of police?”
She nearly came out of her chair. “I did not seduce—”
“I'm not saying you did, but that doesn't mean the press will be as kind. What did go on?”
Megan swallowed hard and crossed her fingers. “Chief Holt and I were discussing the case over coffee—”
“In the dark?”
“He had a fire going and the television was on. The two combined provided more than adequate light.”
“Go on.”
“As you know, we've been putting in hellish hours on this case. We were both exhausted. We simply fell asleep.”
During the lengthy silence that ensued, Megan felt beads of sweat pop out on her forehead like bullets. She wasn't a liar by nature and she detested the need for it now. What she did after hours should have been nobody's business. Had she been a man, she doubted anyone would have cared enough to follow her around. Had she been a man, she thought sourly, she probably would have been expected to have seduced someone by now.
Seduced. The word left a bad taste in her mouth. It sounded so cheap. Regardless of what became of her relationship with Mitch, she didn't want to think of what they had shared in those terms.
“My sixteen-year-old comes up with better stories than that,” DePalma said at last.
“It's the truth.” Part of it, anyway.
DePalma heaved a sigh that sounded like gale-force winds over the telephone. “Megan, I like you. You're a good cop. I want this job to work for you, but you're putting the bureau in an untenable position. We name you our first woman in the field and we get accused of tokenism. Every time you turn around you stick your foot in something new—fighting with Kirkwood, sleeping with Holt—”
“I told you—”
“Save your breath. It doesn't matter if you did or you didn't. People will believe what they want.”
“Including you.”
“And now your only suspect turns up dead in jail—”
“Are you accusing me of murdering him, too?”
“It looks bad.”
“God forbid crime should be anything but tidy—”
“That kind of smart remark is exactly what gets you in tro
uble, Megan. You've got to learn to curb that Irish tongue of yours before it gets you fired.”
Which meant she wasn't fired yet. She would have breathed a sigh of relief, but she knew damn well she was still on a high wire juggling bowling balls. One more misstep and it was all over.
“I don't want it to come to that, Megan. God knows what kind of mess we'll have on our hands if we have to pull you in. But we've got a mess already, so don't think that will stop it from happening.”
“No, sir.”
“Where are you with the case?”
Down a rabbit hole with a madman. She kept that thought to herself and explained without embellishment or false hope where they stood. In police work it didn't pay to promise more than you could deliver.
DePalma asked questions at intervals.
“Can this Cooper woman identify the man who came to her house?”
“She's not sure. He was bundled up pretty well against the cold. I've got her with the composite artist right now.”
“Was there blood on the jacket?”
“Not that I could see. It's gone to the lab.”
“What do you think about the note? Do you think he's saying he killed the boy?”
“I don't know.”
“Have you considered the possibility that Swain's accomplice might have been someone from his past in Washington?”
“According to everything we've got on him,” Megan said, “he was a loner there as well. The closest thing he had to a friend was the cousin whose identity he was carrying around, and the nicest thing he has to say is that Olie was a freak. Of course, I'd be a little cranky too if my cousin stole my driver's license and assumed my identity in another state, then committed a heinous crime that garnered national attention.”
DePalma ignored her sarcasm. “Maybe you need some help,” he suggested.
Megan felt the fine hair on the back of her neck rise. “What do you mean?”
“You're not getting anywhere. Maybe you need someone to come in with a fresh perspective.”
“I can handle the case, Bruce,” she said tightly.
“Of course you can. I just believe that when things are at a standstill, a person coming in fresh can shake something loose.”
Like me, Megan thought sourly. The game plan was painfully clear. DePalma would send out another agent to quietly usurp her authority, and when the reins had changed hands, she would be called back quietly to headquarters. No muss, no fuss, all neat and tidy, just the way the brass liked things.
“I think it would be a mistake.” She struggled to hang on to some semblance of cool. “Anyone coming in cold would have to wade through all the statements, reinterview witnesses, get to know the family—and frankly, they don't need any more upheaval in their lives.”
“I'll bear that in mind. In the meantime, Megan, you need to make something good happen. Do you understand what I'm saying?”
“Perfectly.”
They said their good-byes and she hung up the phone, making a nasty face at it. “And don't call me Megan when I'm angry with you,” she jeered.
“Yes, ma'am,” Mitch replied as he stuck his head in the door.
Megan looked up at him, too weary and too worried to even try to smile. “I'm not angry with you.”
He ambled into her office with his coat thrown over his shoulder.
“What'd you do to your hand?”
A frown curved his mouth as he glanced at the swollen knuckles. “I felt a need to hit something.”
“Like what—a brick wall?”
“Steiger's face.”
She raised her brows in amazement. “Damn, Chief, I would have paid money to see that.”
He shrugged. “Better not to have witnesses,” he said. “Steiger's been leaking information to Paige Price. I expressed my displeasure.”
The rage of injustice only made her temples pound harder. “She's screwing Steiger for information and she has the gall to stand up at a press conference and point a finger at me. I wouldn't mind hitting something myself.”
“Lay a finger on her and she'll have more than your job,” Mitch pointed out, running a finger along the ridge of her brass nameplate. He picked it up and read the inscription on the back: TAKE NO SHIT, MAKE NO EXCUSES. “What did DePalma have to say?”
“What did he say or what did he mean? Officially, they won't comment on hearsay about an agent. They will express their full confidence in me in the most lukewarm terms they can think of. Officially, they may send in another agent ‘to assist me with the investigation.' If that happens, he'll end up with my job and I'll end up at a desk in the bowels of headquarters doing paperwork on petty fraud schemes.”
Scowling, Mitch stalked her around the end of the desk as she turned for the coat rack. “I wish you'd let me talk to him.”
She shook her head. “I don't want you fighting my battles for me.”
“It's called supporting a friend, Megan.”
She turned and tipped her head back to meet his gaze. He was standing too close again, trying to intimidate her, calling her attention to the fact that he was bigger and stronger and capable of dominating her—or protecting her. A part of her found the idea tempting, but she wouldn't give in to that part.
“It's called giving false information, which I already did,” she said. “I won't have you lie on my account, and that's that.”
Her answer brooked no disagreement. Mitch said nothing as he watched her shrug into her monstrous down-filled coat. So damned stubborn. So damned independent. He wanted her to lean on him, he realized with no small amount of wonder. He wanted to help her. He wanted to defend her honor. Old-fashioned notions, and she was no old-fashioned woman. Notions that hinted at commitment—something they both claimed not to want.
“We'll work it out,” he murmured, not certain what aspect of this tangled mess he meant.
What? Megan wanted to ask. The job situation? Their personal situation? She chose the former, knowing that was where their focus needed to be, knowing that damn clock would not stop ticking.
“That means one thing,” she said, her expression grim. “We find Josh.”
CHAPTER 27
* * *
DAY 8
5:39 P.M. -27° WINDCHILL FACTOR: -45°
Hannah stood at the window, staring out at the lake. The final rays of sunlight streaked the far horizon like angry red lines of infection radiating from a wound. Funny how such a hot color was an indication of such a cold sky. As she stood there, she could feel the cold seeping in through the glass, seeping into her body. She wished it would numb her, but it didn't; it simply made her shiver.
Across the lake, lights winked on. The helicopters had been called in again. She could see one in the distance, hanging over Dinkytown like a vulture. In her memory she recalled the thumping of the rotors and how she had lain awake listening to their eerie passing back and forth over the town. Beyond Dinkytown, out toward the flaming horizon, lay Ryan's Bay. On Ryan's Bay a dog had discovered Josh's jacket, discarded like a piece of litter.
She could see the jacket in her mind's eye—bright blue with splashes of green and yellow. She knew the size and the brand name. She knew the pockets where he stashed small treasures and Kleenex and mittens. She knew the smell of it and the feel of it, and all those memories hovered in her mind, intangible and untouchable. Only the second sign of Josh to surface in a week, and she had not been allowed to see it or touch it. The jacket had been whisked off to St. Paul to be studied and analyzed.
“I would have liked to just hold it,” she said quietly. She tried to imagine it in her hands, raising it to her face, brushing it against her cheek.
“I'm sorry, Hannah,” Megan said gently. “We felt it was essential to get it to the lab as soon as possible.”
“Of course. I understand,” she murmured. But she didn't, not outside that logical, practical square of brain that answered by rote.
“You'll get fingerprints off it?” Paul said. He sat by the fireplace in faded b
lack sweatpants and a heavy gray sweatshirt with a University of Minnesota logo. His hair was still damp from the shower he had taken to warm himself. Lily sat on his lap, trying unsuccessfully to interest him in her stuffed Barney.
Megan and Mitch exchanged a look.
“No,” Mitch said. “It's virtually impossible for nylon to hold fingerprints.”
“What then?”
“Do you really want to make them say it?” Hannah said sharply. “What do you think they'll be looking for, Paul? Blood. Blood and semen and any other grisly leftover from whatever this animal has done to Josh. Isn't that right, Agent O'Malley?”
Megan said nothing. The question was rhetorical. Hannah neither needed nor wanted an answer. She stood with her back to the window, defiance and anger a thin mask over the raw terror that consumed her.
“The woman whose dog found the jacket may have seen the man who planted it,” Mitch said. “In fact, she may have had a conversation with him.”
“May have?” Hannah said, puzzled.
Mitch told them the story of Ruth Cooper and the man who had come to her door after she'd seen him through her kitchen window. When he came to the part about the dog's name, Hannah turned ashen and took hold of the wing chair for support.
Paul came to attention. He rose slowly, setting Lily down on the floor. She toddled over to Mitch and offered him her dinosaur. Father Tom rose from the couch and scooped her up, tickling her into giggles as he carried her to the bedroom upstairs.
“So, she can identify this man,” Paul said.
“She's working with a composite artist,” Megan explained. “It's not as easy as we'd like it to be. The man was bundled up to be out in the weather. But she thinks she might be able to pick him out if she sees him again.”
“Might? Maybe?” Pulling a poker from the stand of brass tools, Paul turned his attention to the fire, stabbing at the glowing logs, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
“It's better than nothing.”
“It is nothing!” He wheeled around, poker in hand, his lean face twisted with bitter rage. “You've got nothing! My son is lying dead someplace and you've got nothing! You can't even manage to keep the one suspect you had alive!”