Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  When she came back to the living room, she took her coat off and hung it in the closet. Jay stood with his back to the fire, watching her, tumbler of Scotch in one hand, the other stuffed into his pants pocket. Too aware of his gaze, Ellen picked up her glass from the coffee table and sipped at it. The liquor seared a smooth path to her stomach.

  “It's been quite a day,” she said, settling herself into the corner of the couch. She pulled her legs beneath her, careful to keep her skirt around her knees.

  “Why didn't you take that call?” he asked. Though the tone was casual, those cool blue eyes focused on her like a pair of lasers.

  She weighed her answer. Her impulse was to keep the calls a secret, to protect herself from yet another avalanche of publicity. Of course, Brooks would have no desire to inform the press. He was here for his own purposes. She had to think he would guard the confidence jealously. And if she didn't give it to him, he would dig for it.

  “Cranks,” she said with an air of dismissal. “I've had a couple of calls. My nerves are just a little too frayed right now to take another one.”

  A half truth, Jay decided. Better than a lie. Less than trust. He couldn't have expected more.

  “Enberg's secretary told me he'd got some nasty calls,” he said. “Think they're related?”

  “It wouldn't follow. We were on opposite sides.”

  “That all depends on your point of view. From where I stand, ol' Denny looked like he'd just as soon throw the game.”

  “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. . . .”

  Ellen looked away from him, into the fire, curling her fingers tighter around her glass. Dennis had got calls, and now Dennis was dead. She was getting calls and . . . In the flames of the fire she could see the switchblade protruding from the tire of her car and the word scratched into the paint. Bitch.

  “Rumor has it you think Enberg had some help with that shotgun,” Brooks said, his eyes narrowed as he watched her for a reaction.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Around.”

  “If there's a leak on this case—”

  “No one fed it to me,” he said. “I don't have a mole in your office, if that's what you're worried about. This is a small town, Ellen. People like to talk. I know how to listen.”

  “I'm not paranoid,” she said defensively. “Corruption makes no geographical distinctions. A week ago Sheriff Steiger was trading information for sex.”

  The pirate's grin made a return even as he feigned shock. “Are you suggesting something tawdry, Ms. North?”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Mmm . . . I should say so,” he drawled, his gaze caressing her bare calf.

  He moved away from the fire, prowling, his eyes locked on her. Once again playing the rogue, the sexual tomcat, master at seduction.

  “The point is,” she began.

  “The point is, I don't pay for information—cash or favors,” he said, easing himself down beside her. His hard, muscular thigh brushed her bare foot. “And so far, the only one who's made any noise about it is Paul Kirkwood.”

  “Paul asked you for money?” Ellen said, surprised. “Well—for Josh, I suppose,” she rationalized.

  He shook his head. “I get the impression Paul thinks about Paul first and the rest of the world can queue up behind him, including his son.”

  “He's under a lot of pressure,” she said with forced neutrality.

  He made a dubious sound and pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket. Ellen took it from his fingers and, ignoring his frown, set it out of his reach on the end table.

  “He was a suspect for a while, you know,” she pointed out.

  “But he isn't anymore.”

  “There's no evidence against him.” Even as she said it, she was recalling the night Josh had been returned. Paul nowhere to be found for hours, showing up at the hospital in a snit. The story Mitch later relayed of Josh reacting violently to his father's appearance in his room.

  “There was that bit about the van,” Brooks offered.

  “That went nowhere.”

  Wilhelm was supposed to be looking for connections between Paul and Wright. He had turned his suspicion on Kirkwood days ago but hadn't said a word about it since. Ellen had to wonder if he had followed up or if the other cases had taken all his attention.

  “What about Todd Childs?” Jay asked carefully, watching her through his lashes.

  Ellen gave a little shrug. “What about him? We'll be serving him with a subpoena calling him to testify at the hearing. He isn't happy about it, but life is hard.”

  “Maybe he decided to take it out on you.”

  “It's hard to imagine his getting up the energy for that kind of rage.”

  “She's a bitch.” Jay could hear Todd Childs's voice, see the venom in his eyes as he watched Ellen talk to the press. “Rage can be chemically induced. I'd hazard a guess he'd know all about that. I had me a little chat with Todd this morning.” He took another sip of his drink and looked at her sideways. “Just long enough to give me the willies.”

  “Oh, great,” she groaned. “That's what I need—you tampering with my witnesses.”

  She swung her feet down off the couch and sat with her elbows planted on her thighs and her face in her hands.

  “I wasn't tampering,” he said. “I can have a conversation with anyone I choose. I'm a private citizen.”

  “With an in to the state attorney general and a truck parked in my driveway.”

  She had to fight the urge to get up and peek out her front window for signs of reporters staking out her house. The unwanted, unwarranted publicity that Mitch and Megan's relationship had drawn was fresh in her mind. It had indirectly cost Megan her field post, and she and Mitch were on the same side. Ellen shuddered to think what the ramifications of having Jay Butler Brooks in her home might be. He was looking for inside information. She was the lead prosecutor on the case.

  She turned and looked at him. “I don't need any more complications in my life.”

  Complications. The case. His involvement in it. The attraction that sparked between them whether she liked it or not. It struck him as funny, in a bitter, twisted sort of way, that he had come here to escape the complications of his own life and had become a complication in someone else's. And Ellen had come to Deer Lake to escape the complications of her life in Minneapolis and now found herself in the center of a madman's web.

  He stared at Ellen. Backlit by the fire, her hair was burnished gold. The barriers were down. He could have turned the moment to his advantage. Instead, he tossed back the last of his Scotch and set the glass aside.

  “No,” he said. “You need a break. In the case and from the case. So tell me about your mother.”

  “My mother?”

  “You know, the woman who gave you birth. The woman who called to see how you're doing.”

  Suspicion lowered her brows. “Why?”

  He dropped his head back against the couch and rolled his eyes. “I reckon she called because she loves you, but that's just speculation on my part. If you're asking why I asked, it's called making conversation. Or if you're intent on casting me as a bastard, call it looking for background.”

  That was the problem with him, Ellen thought—there was no telling which definition suited.

  “My mother is an attorney,” she said. “My father, too. And my sister, Jill. Tax law.”

  “Ah, a nest of lawyers,” he said with a warm, teasing smile. “And you're the white sheep.”

  The term brought pleasant surprise. Her father called her the white sheep, always with a gleam of pride in his eyes.

  “My father says I inherited the recessive North gene for justice. His grandfather was a circuit court judge back in frontier times. They called him Noose North.”

  Jay laughed. Ellen let herself relax marginally, glad for the diversion. Whatever his motive, she had to be grateful. She needed the downtime, a chance to lower her shields for a moment or two.
She turned toward him, once more tucking herself into the corner of the couch.

  “Anyway, they have a nice practice in Edina—the suburb where I grew up.”

  “And you're close.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling to herself.

  Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of something sad in Brooks's eyes. He covered it in a blink.

  “You come from a family of lawyers, too,” she said.

  He leaned toward her in confession. “I'm the black sheep.”

  “Big surprise. You were an attorney, though,” she pointed out. “Why not with the family firm?”

  “I go my own way. Make my own rules. I was too much of a rebel for an old southern law firm, as contradictory as that may sound to a Yankee.”

  “Your opinion or theirs?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, not liking the probing quality of her gaze. “We were talking about you.”

  “And now we're talking about you. Do you have a problem with that, Mr. Brooks?”

  “Oooh, trick question.” He grinned and tipped his head. “I can't wait to see you handle a cross-examination. You know what I thought when I first laid eyes on you? I said to myself, Jay, that little gal looks sharp as a tack and cool as tungsten steel. What the hell do you think she's doing here?”

  “Asked and answered.”

  “You seemed evasive.”

  “Not so. There simply isn't anything more to tell.”

  “Then your leaving Minneapolis had nothing to do with the rape trial of Art Fitzpatrick?”

  The shields came up again. “What would make you ask that?”

  “It was the last trial of any real consequence you were involved with up there.”

  “A number of victims of other crimes might beg to differ with you. I tried any number of cases after Fitzpatrick.”

  “But none so high profile. A prominent businessman accused of an ugly crime. It was common knowledge you took the loss hard.”

  “A rapist went free. Of course I was unhappy. And, in point of fact, I was not the lead prosecutor on Fitzpatrick. That was Steve Larsen's case. I was his second. May I ask why and how you've been digging up this information?” Just what did he know about the Fitzpatrick case? Did he know about her relationship with Costello? About Costello's link to Fitzpatrick?

  “It's part of my job,” he explained. “I know you think I'm just as lazy as a poor boy's sigh, too unimaginative and slothful to create plots of my own; that I just waltz into the middle of a story and save up the news clippings. But the fact is, I do my homework, Ellen, same as any good journalist.”

  “Then why aren't you doing homework on Wright? Why dig into my boring past when you could be revealing this man for the monster he is? You could actually be doing someone some good.”

  “You don't want me tampering with the case—unless it's on behalf of the prosecution. Is that it?”

  “Associate you with my office and run the risk of having my conviction thrown out on appeal? No, thanks. I would just like to think that maybe you wanted something more out of this than money.”

  “Such as?”

  “Justice.”

  “That's your quest, counselor. I'm just an observer.”

  “And that excuse is supposed to absolve you of all responsibility, humanity, compassion, emotion? How can you look at Josh, at his parents, and not feel something?”

  He felt plenty. Pity, compassion, sympathy . . . lucky, confused. He had come here to escape his own tearing sense of loss. Had come deliberately to study people who had lost more, thereby consoling and punishing himself at once.

  “You don't know what I feel,” he said quietly.

  “And you won't tell me.”

  “Not tonight.” He drew in a deep breath, mustered a weary smile, and pushed himself to his feet. “I think you've had enough intrigue and twisted drama to last you. What you need is a good night's sleep.”

  He offered her a hand up from the couch. She gave it a dubious look.

  “Is that an overture, Mr. Brooks?” she asked dryly, accepting the gesture just the same.

  “Hell, no.” He pulled her close, bending his head down so that his gaze met hers full force. “I'm being damned gallant. When you go to bed with me, sweetheart, the last thing you'll be getting is sleep.”

  Remarkably, Ellen caught herself smiling at his audacity.

  “You're incorrigible, Mr. Brooks,” she murmured. “Among other things.”

  She walked with him to the door, where he dealt with laces on his boots and zippers on his parka.

  “I don't see how people live in this state,” he complained. “It's too damn much work.”

  “Winter is nature's way of weeding out the faint of heart,” Ellen said. “Thanks again for driving me home.”

  “You ought to have a cop sitting out front,” he cautioned.

  She shook her head. “With all that's been going on, there's no manpower for baby-sitting detail. There's a patrol car prowling the neighborhood, and I've got a trace on my phone. And I've got Harry. If someone tries to break in, he'll knock them down and lick their face until help arrives.”

  “I could stay all night,” he offered with a leer.

  “I don't think so.”

  “Like I said before,” he murmured, hooking a finger under her chin, “you think too much.”

  Ellen caught her breath, expecting him to kiss her. Half hoping he would. But he turned and walked out. And she was left alone to call herself a fool.

  CHAPTER 19

  By Friday morning Mother Nature had dumped six inches of new snow on southern Minnesota, and a blast of air had come sweeping down from Saskatchewan to stir it into a ground-scudding cloud that limited visibility to a fraction of a mile. The temperature, which had been teetering on the brink of tolerance, went over the edge and into a long, hard fall, taking spirits with it. School was canceled. Roads outside of Deer Lake were closed. In Campion the search for Dustin Holloman had to be called off because of the danger to the volunteers. No one spoke of the danger to Dustin.

  The hope was that his kidnapper was keeping him safe and warm, that he would eventually be found or returned unharmed, as Josh had been. The hope was that they would get lucky. The idea that they were all relying on the kindness and benevolence of a psychopath sat like a mace in the center of Mitch's chest. There was no way of knowing what the next move in the game would be. No way of knowing when their luck would run out.

  The pressure had snipped his temper down to the short hairs, so that even at nine o'clock in the morning his daily quota of patience was nearly spent.

  Ignoring the proffered chair, he paced the width of Christopher Priest's small office, a room crowded with file cabinets and bookcases. Short towers of text and reference books and stacks of student papers were neatly aligned across the surface of the scarred old desk. A personal computer sat whirring softly to itself, green cursor blinking impatiently beside a prompt sign on the screen.

  “So the Sci-Fi Cowboys spent the night in Deer Lake?” he asked.

  Priest watched him with owl eyes and an impassive expression. “Yes. The Minneapolis schools were off yesterday and today for in-service. We had arranged for the boys to spend the weekend in Deer Lake doing fund-raising activities for Garrett's defense.”

  “And they stayed where?”

  “At the youth hostel here on campus.”

  “Supervised?”

  “I was with them most of the evening. We had a celebratory dinner with Garrett and his attorney,” he said with just a hint of smugness, his gaze sliding toward Ellen.

  “What time did you finish?” she asked.

  “Things started breaking up around eight.”

  “And what about the rest of the evening? Can you account for the whereabouts of all the boys?”

  A hint of angry color stained his cheeks. He tugged at the too-short sleeves of his black turtleneck. “They're not prisoners, Ms. North. A bond of trust is essential to the success of our program.”

 
“Yeah, well, maybe that trust isn't always deserved,” Mitch grumbled.

  Priest gave a little sniff of affront. “Just what is this about, Chief?”

  “Last night someone defaced Ms. North's car with a switchblade.”

  “And you automatically assume that someone is one of the Cowboys? That's patently unfair and discriminatory.”

  “Not at all, Professor,” Mitch said, bracing his hands on the back of the chair he had declined. “With all due respect to your program—and you know I've been a fan in the past—your kids are A-students in this kind of shit. They have records. They have motive. They are, therefore, logical suspects. You, of all people, should be able to grasp that.”

  “The Cowboys aren't the only people in town unhappy with Ms. North,” Priest pointed out.

  “No, they're not,” Mitch conceded. “And my office will follow all possible avenues. Which brings me to my next question—where were you last night around nine?”

  Priest's jaw dropped, a show of spontaneous emotion that looked genuine. “You can't possibly think I would be involved in something so—so—”

  “Juvenile?”

  His face flushed and he shot up from his chair. “After all the hours my students and I put in at the volunteer center— After I've bent over backward to help with the investigation— I took a polygraph, for heaven's sake! I can't tell you how angry this makes me.”

  Mitch straightened, shoving the chair into the front of Priest's old oak desk with a rattle and a thump. “Welcome to the club, Professor. I've been working this case around the clock from day one and it just keeps getting worse. I can no longer afford to be polite. I can't afford to worry about whether or not it offends people to be questioned. I don't have time to step around egos. Here's the bottom line: Garrett Wright stands accused. You are a friend and colleague of Garrett Wright. That makes you fair game.”

  “Chief Holt is simply doing his job, Professor,” Ellen said, working to show a little diplomacy, though her own temper was slipping. She'd had to begin the day arranging to have her car towed from the courthouse lot to Manley Vanloon's garage for repairs and repainting. Stooping to what she felt was an abuse of her position, she had called Manley himself and asked him to have one of his service mechanics deliver a loaner to her house before answering all of the calls from the hardworking people who needed jump-starts for frozen batteries.