Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  Jay eased the truck out into the street, angling across the northbound lane, something about the Pack Rat holding his attention. A reflection in the window. An odd glow coming from within. Light. A faint glow, like the beam of a flashlight.

  Odd time of day to be browsing for bargains in a junk shop.

  He turned the corner and doubled back down the alley, cutting the engine and the headlights on the truck as he rolled up behind the store. The security light was out, if there had ever been one, but enough illumination leached over the roof from the streetlight on the corner to set the scene. A set of crumbling concrete steps with a bent pipe railing led to the only back door. A Dumpster sat to one side of the steps. At the foot of the steps waited a dirty gray Crown Victoria from the late eighties. It sat, engine running, exhaust billowing from the tailpipe—ready for an escape that was now blocked by the Cherokee.

  Who the hell robbed a secondhand shop? What was there to steal? There probably wasn't anything in the store worth more than ten bucks, and Jay couldn't imagine that there would be a lot of money in the till. Maybe the place had a safe. Employees would know. Like Todd Childs. Or maybe Childs had left something crucial in the building, something he couldn't risk coming back for in the light of day.

  Jay called 911 on his cellular phone and reported a break-in in progress, then let himself out of the truck, pocketing the keys, careful not to let the door slam. Precious minutes would tick by before a patrol car could arrive. The perpetrator wouldn't escape by car, but if he could get out of the building, he could still run. If it was Childs, and if Childs was Wright's accomplice, this was the chance to nail him and possibly bring the case to a close.

  And if you catch yourself a suspect, just think of the publicity angle, he thought sarcastically. That would be Ellen's first reaction—not that he had found some scrap of nobility within and helped them catch the bad guy, but that he wanted to help himself. Not that it should have mattered to him what she thought.

  He made his way toward the building, the snow squeaking beneath his feet. He hoped that the rumble of the car's engine masked it, or that the midnight visitor was too intent on his task to hear. His lungs holding on to his breath, he eased up one step and then another.

  The door burst open as Jay reached for it, hitting him hard, knocking him back and off balance. A black-clad figure followed, rushing him, swinging something short and black. It caught Jay on the side of the head and shorted out all thought. He felt himself falling backward, off the steps, arms flailing, colors bursting and swirling inside his head. He hit the rutted ice pack of the parking area hard.

  He fought for orientation, struggled to discern up from down. A car door thumped shut and an engine roared. He managed to turn himself onto his hands and knees as the Crown Vic's headlights blazed on, blinding him. The car roared, tires whining on the ice as it rocketed backward. The sickening crunch of metal on metal told Jay the Cherokee wouldn't be spared any more than he had been. Then there was no time to think of anything as the car lurched forward, charging him.

  He lunged sideways, his feet slipping out from under him, his left elbow cracking hard on the cement steps. He caught hold of the steel-pipe post that thrust up crookedly from the top step and heaved himself up. The bumper of the Crown Victoria followed just behind, the metal grating over the concrete of the second step.

  Engine and tires screaming, the car rocked backward once again, once again smashing into the Cherokee, pushing its nose sideways and opening enough space in the alley for the car to turn north.

  The son of a bitch was going to run. If the cops didn't show in the next ten seconds, he would be gone.

  Rage pushed Jay off the steps. He staggered drunkenly toward the mangled Cherokee, trying to run and struggling to keep himself upright. The passenger door was jammed shut, punched in like a second-rate boxer's face. He lost seconds as he stumbled around to the driver's side. The Crown Vic inched forward, toward the street and freedom, its back end sliding sideways as the tires spun to gain purchase on the slick surface.

  Spewing curses, Jay stabbed the key at the ignition again and again, his vision blurred and swirling, doubling, tripling. Hit the bull's-eye. Cranked it over. The engine roared to life, a belt inside it screaming like a banshee at the wounds that had been inflicted. He threw the transmission in gear and stepped on the gas. The four-wheel drive grabbed hold and the truck shot forward, rear-ending the car but at the same time giving it the push it needed to reach the plowed street.

  The car lunged west down the residential side street. Jay turned the Cherokee out of the alley, the wheel seeming to spin too far, too easily. The truck rocked sideways, then straightened, and he stomped on the gas. The brake lights of the Crown Vic flashed two blocks down as it turned south. Taking the same turn, the Cherokee side-swiped a station wagon, careened across the street, and nicked the front end of a Honda, the sound of glass shattering a high-pitched accompaniment to the crash of steel.

  They made a right onto Mill Road. Jay spun the Cherokee's wheel hard, swinging the nose of the truck around just as the front wheels jumped the curb. The truck plowed through the deep snow on the boulevard, narrowly missed a tree, and bucked back down onto the road.

  The paved road gave way to gravel. The streetlights ended, and the velvet-black of the country night enveloped them, only a wedge of moon and headlights brightening the dark. The road split between farm fields, rose and fell with the hills, then plunged down, curving into a valley dark with the winter skeletons of a thick hardwood forest.

  With every turn the Cherokee's steering loosened more. With every curve and dip, Jay's battered brain swam wilder and wilder. Too fast, he thought. Out of control. The pop of gravel beneath the tires was like firecrackers snapping. The road was icy in patches, rutted and rough. He didn't know shit about driving in these conditions. The Crown Victoria was running away from him, putting more ground between them with every jog in the road.

  It disappeared over a crest. Jay followed, foot too heavy on the gas. The Cherokee left the ground as the road dropped sharply down. There was no way to pull the truck down, to rein it in, to make the hard right-angle turn.

  I'm fucked, he thought, gripping the steering wheel, bracing his body as best he could.

  The truck plunged nose-first into a thicket, bounced up hard, throwing Jay around the cab like a rag doll. The headlights flashed at crazy angles as the Cherokee bucked and skidded down the slope, spraying up snow in blinding plumes, coming to a violent stop when it slammed sideways into a tree trunk.

  Jay landed against the mangled passenger door, his head smacking hard against the cracked window. His mind drifted ever farther from his body, the connection between the two pulling as thin as hair. The truck's radiator hissed. The lights on the police scanner glowed red in the gloom of the cab. The radio crackled, picking up the transmission of the patrol car that had finally arrived on the scene at the Pack Rat.

  The last conscious thought Jay had was You blew it, hotshot.

  CHAPTER 24

  Tell me what you remember.”

  Jay closed his eyes and winced. Pain ran down his right side like a mallet playing xylophone on his ribs. Dr. Baskir, a small man with an enormous nose and a lilting Indian accent, had examined him thoroughly upon his delivery to the Deer Lake Community Hospital, addressing his various bruised and battered body parts as if each possessed self-awareness. He told the ribs they were not broken and tried to verbally placate his muscles, announcing to Jay in a whispered aside that they were likely to be “angry” for days to come. He had deftly stitched two gashes in the side of Jay's head, picking broken glass out of his hair with tweezers and muttering to the hard plates of bone in his skull.

  The upshot was that he would live to tell about his adventure. The downside was that the cops would make him tell it over and over. Already he had related the details to the sheriff's deputy who had picked up the chase down Mill Road and arrived on the scene just moments after the crash. The patrolman who had tak
en the call to the Pack Rat had been next and another patrol officer who had been called in by the owner of one of the smashed cars on the route of the chase.

  Now the unholy trinity of Steiger, Wilhelm, and Holt stood in a semicircle around the end of the emergency-room examining table. All of them looked grim and surly, adjectives that likely applied to himself as well. He sat on the table in his bloodstained, rumpled khakis, his shirt gone, cut to shreds by overzealous volunteer ambulance people. Dr. Baskir had swathed his ribs in a tight, unyielding bandage that kept him from inhaling more than a teaspoon of air at a time. His chin was split, his head felt as if someone had taken a ten-pound hammer to it, and he was fucking cold.

  “I've told you twice,” he said through his teeth.

  “You didn't recognize the guy coming out of the store?” Holt asked.

  “He was wearing a ski mask. He hit me fast and kept on running. I don't know how tall he was. I don't know what he looked like.”

  “You don't know shit, do you, hotshot?” Steiger snarled. The overtures to buddyhood they had made in the Blue Goose Saloon earlier in the evening were forgotten now that he had been deprived of sleep and glory.

  “What did he hit you with?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Some kind of club. Short. Black. Hurt like fucking hell.”

  Holt traded looks with the BCA man. “Sounds like what Wright used to work Megan over.”

  “Sounds like. But it could have been just a flashlight.”

  “Or some piece of junk from that rat hole,” Steiger groused. “Who the fuck robs a place like that? What's the point?”

  “Good question,” Mitch said. “The owner says he never keeps more than fifty bucks in the place, and that goes home with him Friday nights. All his help knows that.”

  “Maybe they weren't after money,” Ellen suggested.

  She stood just inside the door, leaning against the jamb, hoping she looked relaxed instead of dead on her feet. The men made a little break in their circle, looking at her with a certain amount of annoyance. She returned the favor, in no mood for niceties. Her gaze landed on Brooks, and a sharp sliver of alarm wedged into her at the sight of him. She forced her attention to Mitch.

  “If it was Childs, maybe he had something stashed there,” she said. “If he's tangled up with Wright, it might be evidence.”

  Wilhelm yawned hugely. “We're tearing the place apart right now. There had better be something there. It's going to take forever to go through it all.”

  “There's no guarantee he didn't take it with him,” Mitch said. “And there's a good chance ‘it' doesn't have anything to do with this case.”

  “Any word on the car?” Ellen asked.

  “Childs drives an old Peugeot,” Mitch said. “We got nothing on this Crown Vic—”

  “Including the tag number,” Steiger complained.

  “It was dirty,” Jay said. “It was dark.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . Why should we assume it was Childs or that this break-in has one goddamn thing to do with the kidnappings? If you ask me, it's just another big huge waste of time, taking our attention off what we ought to be doing just because Truman Capote here decided to play Dirty Harry.”

  Jay cocked a brow. “There's an image for you.”

  The sheriff gave him a look. “My men have a description of the car. If they see it, they'll stop it. That's as far as we're taking it. I'm going home.”

  Jay tried to sit up a little straighter, immediately regretting it. “But shouldn't you do a house-to-house or garage-to-garage or whatever you want to call it? What if this is your guy? What if he's the one who took the Holloman kid?”

  “Do we have any reason to think it is? Do we have any reason to think it isn't just some doped-up kid looking to score a few bucks?”

  “But if it was Childs—”

  Steiger turned his back and headed for the door. “I'm going to bed. Nobody call me unless there's a major felony involved.”

  “Man,” Wilhelm said to no one in particular. “When the bean counters get a load of the overtime on this gig, they're going to eat me alive.”

  Mitch glared at him. “Tell them to sell tickets. They'll be back in the black in no time.”

  “Very funny.”

  As the agent disappeared into the hall, Mitch looked to Ellen. “He thought I was joking?”

  Shaking his head, he turned back to Jay. “Bottom line here, Mr. Brooks. You should have let us handle it. We're the cops, you're the writer,” he said in an exaggerated, patronizing tone. “Remember that from here on out. We've got enough trouble without having civilians kill themselves trying to do our jobs for us. If that deputy hadn't caught sight of you, you'd be a Popsicle by now. And if there'd been anybody in those cars you hit, I'd be hauling your ass downtown. I don't give a damn who you are. As it stands, you'll be getting a hefty citation.”

  “I'll pay the damages,” Jay muttered. Working to dredge up some humor, he cast a hopeful look at Ellen. “Maybe I can sweet-talk my way out of that ticket.”

  Mitch barked a laugh. “Yeah, when pigs fly. Try it here, where there's a full medical staff to put the pieces back together.” He turned to Ellen. “I'm out of here. There's nothing more we can do tonight. Wait and see what Wilhelm's guys come up with—but, you know, Steiger might be right for once in his miserable, brain-atrophied life—it could be nothing. I've got to get some sleep. I'm picking Megan up from HCMC at noon.”

  Ellen nodded. When Mitch exited the room, she suddenly realized the folly of coming down here. What had she been thinking? She could have sent Cameron as her backup; she had already taken one call for the night. Or she could have waited until morning. Brooks hadn't offered them any revelation, no evidence, nothing but a writer's hunch that the man he had pursued had been their man.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded.

  “I wish I'd taken the insurance on the rent-a-Jeep?”

  She just stared at him.

  “So,” he said, “is this where you tell me you think I staged it all to boost interest in my book?”

  “I don't think you'd go so far as to risk killing yourself. That would rather defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Then again, the waiting room is SRO with reporters ready to tout you as a would-be hero.”

  Jay gave a harsh laugh that ended in a hiss of pain and eased himself down off the table, gritting his teeth. It wasn't that she didn't think him capable of concocting the whole thing as a publicity stunt, or calculating enough to capitalize on a real brush with death. But had he ever given her reason to believe otherwise? Had he ever given himself reason to believe, for that matter?

  “Believe me, counselor. I'm nobody's hero. I had no intention of trying to catch the son of a bitch until he tried to kill me. That pissed me off.”

  “What were you doing there in the first place?”

  “I was just riding around, contemplating the meaning of life. Ironic that I ended up damn near getting my ticket punched, isn't it?”

  “Don't be a smart-ass.”

  “Oooh, that's a tall order, sugar. Might as well ask a cat to change his stripes.”

  Ellen refused to be amused. How could he make wisecracks? He could as easily have been in a body bag right now, could have been killed in any number of ways, according to his story. And the evidence bore his story out.

  “Do you have any idea how long it takes to freeze to death on a night like this?” she asked.

  “No, but I'd say I'm well on my way there.” He opened and closed drawers in the table base in search of something to use as a shirt. “Christ, don't they have heat in this place? What do y'all do up here—freeze the germs to death?”

  “Make all the jokes you want, but I personally feel that enough people have been broken or killed in this goddamn game! There's nothing funny about it!”

  She turned her back to him, cursing herself mentally for letting her control slip. This wasn't the time or the place. He wasn't the man to lose it for.

  She needed to hang
on, tough it out. The hearing would begin Tuesday. She couldn't afford to let the pressure get to her now.

  “I have to go,” she whispered.

  Jay watched her move toward the door, telling himself to let her go. Leave awkward enough alone. Then he reached out anyway and caught hold of her shoulder.

  “Ellen, wait.”

  She stopped but didn't turn. Over her shoulder he could see she had closed her eyes.

  “You didn't have to come down here,” he said. He was glad she had; it had to be a sign of a crack in her armor, one that he might charm open to let himself in. “You were worried about me?”

  “It must be the sleep deprivation.”

  “Must be.”

  He stepped around in front of her, hooked a knuckle under her chin, and lifted her face. Her skin looked too pale, accented by harsh shadows of exhaustion and etched with fine lines of strain.

  “Thanks anyway,” he whispered.

  She let him settle his mouth against hers. It was just a kiss. Something both of them could easily walk away from, and would.

  “Get some sleep,” he murmured. The pirate's smile showed. “Will you dream about me?”

  “Not if I have any sense left at all,” she said sadly, and walked out.

  Paul sat in his borrowed car at the end of Lakeshore Drive. He wouldn't dare stay long for fear some cop car would come rolling up and hassle him, and then the press would descend again. Two weeks ago he had sought out the media. Now he found himself sneaking around, driving someone else's car so he wouldn't be recognized. He was being made to feel like a criminal.