by Tami Hoag
An image of Megan flashed through her mind. Megan, her face a palette of bruises and stitches. Megan hadn't seen her attacker. “We fooled you all along, he said . . . We, always we . . .”
Even in the faint wash of light from the streetlamps he had to see the color drain from her face. Her gaze darted toward her car, then back to the building, judging distances as her step slowed to a standstill.
“I'm no rapist,” he assured her with a certain amount of amusement.
“I'd be a fool to take your word for that, wouldn't I?”
“Yes, ma'am,” he conceded with a tip of his head.
“Ma'am,” Ellen snarled under her breath, trying to muster up some anger to counteract the sudden burst of fear. She took a slow step back toward the building. “Now I do wish I had a gun.”
“If I were after you for nefarious purposes,” he said as he advanced on her, “would I be so careless as to approach you here?”
He pulled a gloved hand from his pocket and gestured gracefully to the parking lot, like a magician drawing attention to his stage.
“If I wanted to harm you,” he said, stepping closer, “I would be smart enough to follow you home, find a way to slip into your house or garage, catch you where there would be little chance of witnesses or interference.” He let those images take firm root in her mind. “That's what I would do if I were the sort of rascal who preys on women.” He smiled again. “Which I am not.”
“Who are you and what do you want?” Ellen demanded, unnerved by the fact that a part of her brain catalogued his manner as charming. No, not charming. Seductive. Disturbing.
“Jay Butler Brooks. I'm a writer—true crime. I can show you my driver's license if you'd like,” he offered, but made no move to reach for it, only took another step toward her, never letting her get enough distance between them to diffuse the electric quality of the tension.
“I'd like for you to back off,” Ellen said. She started to hold up a hand, a gesture meant to stop him in his tracks—or a foolish invitation for him to grab hold of her arm. Pulling the gesture back, she hefted her briefcase in her right hand, weighing its potential as a weapon or a shield. “If you think I'm getting close enough to you to look at a DMV photo, you must be out of your mind.”
“Well, I have been so accused once or twice, but it never did stick. Now my Uncle Hooter, he's a different story. I could tell you some tales about him. Over dinner, perhaps?”
“Perhaps not.”
He gave her a crestfallen look that was ruined by the sense that he was more amused than affronted. “After I waited for you out here in the cold?”
“After you stalked me and skulked around in the shadows?” she corrected him, moving another step backward. “After you've done your best to frighten me?”
“I frighten you, Ms. North? You don't strike me as the sort of woman who would be easily frightened. That's certainly not the impression you gave at the press conference.”
“I thought you said you aren't a reporter.”
“No one at the courthouse ever asked,” he confessed. “They assumed the same way you assumed. Forgive my pointing it out at this particular moment, but assumptions can be very dangerous things. Your boss needs to have a word with someone about security. This is a highly volatile case you've got here. Anything might happen. The possibilities are virtually endless. I'd be happy to discuss them with you. Over drinks,” he suggested. “You look like you could do with one.”
“If you want to see me, call my office.”
“Oh, I want to see you, Ms. North,” he murmured, his voice an almost tangible caress. “I'm not big on appointments, though. Preparation time eliminates spontaneity.”
“That's the whole point.”
“I prefer to catch people . . . off balance,” he admitted. “They reveal more of their true selves.”
“I have no intention of revealing anything to you.” She stopped her retreat as a group of people emerged from the main doors of City Center. “I should have you arrested.”
He arched a brow. “On what charge, Ms. North? Attempting to hold a conversation? Surely y'all are not so inhospitable as your weather here in Minnesota, are you?”
She gave him no answer. The voices of the people who had come out of the building rose and fell, only the odd word breaking clear as they made their way down the sidewalk. She turned and fell into step with the others as they passed.
Jay watched her walk away, head up, chin out, once again projecting an image of cool control. She didn't like being caught off guard. He would have bet money she was a list maker, a rule follower, the kind of woman who dotted all her i's and crossed all her t's, then double-checked them for good measure. She liked boundaries. She liked control. She had no intention of revealing anything to him.
“But you already have, Ms. Ellen North,” he said, hunching up his shoulders as the wind bit a little harder and spit a sweep of fine white snow across the parking lot. “You already have.”
CHAPTER 3
The Fontaine Hotel sat kitty-corner from the City Center, on the opposite side of the park that made up the old-fashioned town square. In ordinary times Ellen would have enjoyed a brisk walk around the park ending in the warmth of the Fontaine's beautiful restored Victorian lobby. But these were not ordinary times. She parked her car in the lot beside the hotel and sat with the heater and fan running full blast, as if the trembling in her arms and legs had anything to do with the cold.
She liked to think of herself as strong, smart, savvy, able to handle herself in any situation. In a matter of moments, in the course of a few sentences, a lone man had managed to summarily unnerve her. Without ever laying a hand on her, without ever making a verbal threat, he had shown her just how vulnerable she really was.
Jay Butler Brooks. She had seen his face on the cover of People as she'd stood in the checkout line at the supermarket. She had seen his name on book covers, remembered glancing through an article about him in a recent issue of Newsweek.
He was one of the current pack of lawyers-turned-authors. But instead of making his fame with courtroom fiction, Brooks had chosen to capitalize on actual crime. His books sold millions, and Hollywood snapped them up like Godiva chocolates.
The story had left a bad taste in Ellen's mouth. She looked at the business of turning true crimes into entertainment as twisted and sleazy, vulgar voyeurism that only helped blur the lines between reality and fantasy, and further inured Americans to violence. But money talked, and it talked big. Jay Butler Brooks was worth more than most third-world countries.
“I prefer to catch people . . . off balance . . .”
The remembered timbre of his voice rippled through her. Dark, warm, husky. Seductive. The word whispered through her mind against her will, against logic. He had said nothing seductive. There had been nothing sexual about the encounter. Still, the word hung in her mind like a shadow. Seductive. Dangerous.
“If I wanted to harm you, I would be smart enough to follow you home. . . .”
Reporters came out of the mahogany woodwork the instant she set foot in the Fontaine's elegant lobby. Ellen shouldered her way past them without comment and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of a uniformed police officer guarding the doors to the elevator. He nodded to her as she stepped into the car and halted those who would have followed her, demanding that they produce room keys. As a number of them scrambled to reach into their pockets, the doors closed.
Wright's wife had been given a room on the second floor to discourage any notions of flinging herself out a window. The woman who answered the door to room 214 was not Karen Wright. Teresa McGuire's pixie face peeked out from behind the safety chain, eyes narrowed with suspicion, mouth tightened into a knot. The victim-witness coordinator for Park County, she had drawn baby-sitting detail because there were no women on either the Deer Lake or Park County forces.
“Ellen! Thank God,” she whispered, closing the door enough to slide the chain free. “I thought you were Paige Price. Would yo
u believe yesterday she actually thought she could talk her way past me just because she once interviewed a friend of mine for a story on victims' rights? That bitch. I wouldn't watch channel seven if you held a gun to my head.”
“I hear she's been reassigned to cover that sewage-plant disaster in Minot, North Dakota,” Ellen said softly, setting her briefcase on a side table. “She blew it big time getting into bed with the sheriff for her inside information.”
A shudder of revulsion jiggled through Teresa's small, plump body. “That is so gross! Paige Price and Russ Steiger. Anybody and Russ Steiger. Do you think he ever changes the oil in that hair?”
“I try not to wonder. How's Mrs. Wright holding up?”
Teresa shot a look toward the bedroom that was separated from the entrance by a partial wall. “She's not, poor thing. She keeps saying it has to be a mistake. She's been sedated. I don't know how much good she'll be to you.”
Ellen shrugged out of her coat and hung it in the closet. “We have to keep trying to get through to her. She could be the key to this whole thing.”
Karen Wright sat in a flowered chintz chair, staring at the print that hung in an ornate gilt frame above the bed: a mother cat watching her plump, fluffy kittens cavort with a ball of yarn. She had curled herself into the chair, pulling her feet up onto the seat and wrapping her arms around her knees. A variation on the fetal position. She was a lovely woman with delicate features and ashblond hair that hung like silk in a classic bob. The only sign that she had spent the past several days in tears was the red that rimmed her big doe eyes and tinted the end of her upturned nose. Somehow the color managed to coordinate with the rose-colored leggings and soft gray sweater she wore.
“Karen? I'm Ellen North with the county attorney's office.” Ellen pulled out the chair from the writing desk and sat. “I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes if that's all right.”
“It was a mistake,” Karen said without looking away from the print. “Garrett's never even had a parking ticket.”
“We have a good deal of evidence against him, Karen,” Ellen said gently. “By law you can't be compelled to testify against your husband, but if you know anything at all that could be helpful in finding Josh, you would tell us, wouldn't you?”
Karen nibbled at a cuticle and dodged Ellen's gaze.
“Do you know any reason he would single out the Kirkwoods, any reason he would take Josh?”
The silence stretched into a moment, two.
“This must be especially hard for you. You must feel betrayed, maybe even guilty in a way.”
The feelings had to be there somewhere, deep inside. She had been stuffing missing-child fliers into envelopes at the Josh Kirkwood Volunteer Center, had gone to the Kirkwoods' house to baby-sit Josh's little sister, while her husband had been holding them all in the grip of fear. Had he fooled her that completely or had she known all along?
“Karen, you have to be aware that you could be considered an accessory,” Ellen said. “People are having a hard time believing you didn't know what Garrett was doing.”
Not a flicker of response. Karen combed a strand of hair behind her ear. Slowly, a smile spread across her mouth. “Lily's so sweet,” she murmured. “I don't mind watching her. Garrett and I don't have any children.” Tears glittered in her big dark eyes. “I suppose Hannah won't let me watch her anymore.”
She put her head down on her knees and sobbed softly, as if the prospect of not being able to baby-sit was too much for her but the idea that her husband was some kind of sociopathic monster made no impact on her whatsoever. Ellen didn't know whether to feel sympathy or horror. Frustration took up the slack.
“Karen, you have to listen to me.” Leaning forward, she reached out and took a firm hold of the woman's wrist. “Josh is still out there somewhere. If you have any idea where Garrett may have taken him, you have to tell us. Think of Hannah and Lily. Think how much they must miss Josh.”
“And Paul . . . ,” Karen murmured, lifting her head a fraction. Her gaze fixed on the fringed lamp that sat on the night table. “He has such a nice family,” she said wistfully.
“Yes, Josh has a very nice family and they miss him very much. You have to help them if you can, Karen. Please.”
Ellen held her breath as she watched the play of emotions in Karen Wright's eyes. Confusion, pain, fear. Was she afraid of her husband? Had he somehow brainwashed her? He was a professor of psychology; he had to know how to manipulate minds.
“He can't hurt you, Karen. It can only help everyone for you to tell us what you know.”
Karen slowly pulled her arm from Ellen's grasp and unfolded herself from the chintz chair. Hugging herself, she wandered the room, ending up in front of the antique ash dresser, staring at her own reflection in the oval mirror above it. Slowly, she picked up a brush and started in on her hair with gentle strokes.
“A terrible mistake,” she whispered. “Garrett would never . . . He wouldn't do that to me.”
Ellen pushed herself to her feet and headed for the door.
“I'll leave you my card, Karen,” she said, placing it on the dresser as she passed. “You can call any time of the day or night. Any time you think of something that might be helpful or if you just want to talk.”
“No. It's just a mistake,” Karen mumbled to herself, stroking the brush through her hair.
He watched Ellen North emerge from the Fontaine Hotel, wondered what she'd got. Karen was there, being watched by a hundred eyes. He wanted to go to her, talk to her, but that wasn't possible. She would never betray him. He consoled himself with that thought even as fear rose inside him like a tide of acid.
Life had betrayed him again and again, tricked him into thinking he wanted one thing when he needed something else. The job, the house, the car, the trophy bride. Every time he grabbed a prize, he found he wanted something else. The hunger never abated, it simply changed its guise.
He wanted someone to blame for that, but he could never see where the blame should lie. When he was younger, he had blamed his parents. His father, a man who settled for less than his family deserved, and his mother, a woman who stood in her husband's shadow. Lately, he had thrown the blame at Hannah's feet. Her career came first, before her family, before him. She had never been any man's shadow. Her shadow fell across him. And he hated her for it.
Ironically, no one else blamed Hannah for anything. Throughout this ordeal they had painted her as a victim, as a valiant figure struggling to cope. Poor Hannah, the mother whose child had been taken. Poor Hannah, she helped so many people, she didn't deserve all this pain.
Poor Hannah, who had left their son standing outside the skating rink while she'd tended someone else's needs at the hospital. Poor Hannah, who'd sat at home waiting for the phone to ring while he had gone out and beat the bushes with the search teams and made pleas on television.
No one ever said “poor Paul.” Thanks to that BCA bitch O'Malley, they had turned to him with suspicious eyes because of that damned van. They had tried to tie him to Olie Swain, had tried to blame everything on him when he had done everything he could to play the hero.
A victim, that was what he really was. A victim of circumstance. A victim of fate. He didn't even have a home to go to tonight.
“. . . I don't know who you are anymore, but I know I'm sick of your lies and your accusations. I'm sick of you blaming me for losing Josh, when all you seem to want to do is bury him and hope the cameras get your good side at the funeral!”
“I don't have to listen to this.” He looked away from her, away from the contempt in her eyes.
“No,” Hannah said, picking up his coat off the back of the sofa. She flung it at him, her mouth trembling with fury and with the effort to hold the tears at bay. “You don't have to listen to me anymore. And I don't have to put up with your moods and your wounded male ego and your stupid petty jealousy. I'm through with it! I'm through with you. . . . You don't live here anymore, Paul.”
The scene played throu
gh his mind. Saturday night. Mitch Holt had come to give them the news of Garrett Wright's arrest.
Hannah would divorce him. And everyone would look at her and say, “Poor Hannah.” No one would look at what had been taken from him. No one would say, “Poor Paul” . . . except Karen. No one understood him except Karen.
A yawn pulled at Ellen's mouth and she gave in to it, stretching, rustling the thick down comforter that covered her legs and drawing a one-eyed look from the big golden retriever sprawled across the foot of her bed.
“I know it's late, Harry,” Ellen said, shoving her reading glasses up on her nose. She resettled herself against the mountain of pillows and among the piles of law books and fought off another yawn. The cube-shaped clock radio on the cherry bedside stand pronounced it to be 12:25 A.M. “I'm working to put away the guy who took Josh.”
The dog whined a little, as if he, too, had absorbed the hours of news coverage about the abduction.
Ellen let Minnesota Rules of Court—State and Federal fall shut in her lap as an image of Garrett Wright rose in her mind. The image he had given her in the interview room—pale, drawn, delicate: a victim, not a monster.
Although there were people ready to pin the blame for these crimes on anyone, there were a great many people in Deer Lake who would not want to pin the blame on Garrett Wright. People who had trusted him, respected him, looked up to him. The students from Harris. The people who backed the juvenile offenders' program he had helped establish. There would be people who wouldn't want to believe, because, if a man like Garrett Wright could be guilty of something so ugly, then who could they trust?
Who can you trust? The question brought a chill with it. A memory of old cynicism and hard-won wisdom. Trust no one.
She didn't want to believe that anymore. She had done her time on cases of smoke and mirrors, where nothing was as it seemed, where enemies came with smiles and stroked with one hand while the other plunged the knife in deep.