by Tami Hoag
They were wasting their time. Again. Ellen wondered if Garrett Wright was home right now browsing the Sunday Star Tribune, smiling to himself.
She checked her watch and shook her head. They were due at the psychiatrist's at four. She needed to call Cameron to let him know to pick her up at the law-enforcement center. She wasn't looking forward to the hour-long drive. Cameron would no doubt have as many questions for her as the reporters who were stationed outside the building, waiting.
News of the car fire had come to her at Jay's house via her beeper. He had driven her to the scene, raising a few eyebrows among the cops hanging around. Luckily, by then the reporters had already come and gone. Unluckily, they had gone in search of her. Rumor that the charred wreck might have been hers had sent them off in full cry. By the time they found her, they were foaming at the mouth, rabid for answers. She offered them none. Brooks shucked off their interest in him with the explanation that the explosion had damn near rolled him out of bed.
That the only explosion either of them had paid any attention to was of a sexual nature was nobody's damn business, but the reporters would make it their business, and Ellen knew it. She had watched it happen to Mitch and Megan. And if they chose to do so with her and Brooks, how long would it be before they jumped onto the fact that Costello and Brooks were fellow Purdue alums or that Brooks had been seen slapping shoulders with Costello at the benefit? The media had the power to turn a trial into a circus, complete with sideshows. She didn't want to see that happen for the sake of Hannah and Josh. Or for her own sake, for that matter.
She pushed through the door into the squad room and headed for an empty desk. Christopher Priest rose from the chair where he had been left waiting, fury rouging his pale cheeks.
“This is an outrage, Ms. North. How much longer are the boys going to be interrogated without the benefit of counsel?”
“They aren't being interrogated, Professor. They're being questioned.”
“I've called an attorney.”
“You have that right.”
“I've told you the boys didn't have anything to do with this. They were at the hostel. I checked on them.”
“So you said. At about four A.M. Quite a coincidence.”
His glare took on a sharpness Ellen felt like the blade of a razor, though he didn't raise his voice a decibel. “I resent the implication. First you take me to task for not supervising them closely enough. Now you call me a liar when I do check up on them.”
“I didn't call you a liar, Professor,” she said calmly. “I said it was an extraordinary coincidence. Just like Tyrell and Andersen and Dawkins being seen in the vicinity of my car last night, then the car's being disabled and subsequently blown to kingdom come.”
“They're easy scapegoats,” Priest began.
“No. Nothing about any of this is easy. I know you've got a vested interest in their innocence, Professor, but somebody has to be guilty, and it just might be your boys.” She picked up the telephone receiver but pressed the plunger down with her finger, eyeing Priest curiously. “As long as we're standing here, Professor, can you tell me if you were with anyone last Saturday afternoon, after your lunch with your friend from Gustavus?”
The fury in his eyes was the strongest emotion she'd seen in him, yet he contained it.
“You're making enemies, Ms. North,” he said quietly. “You'll wish you hadn't.”
The Taker had warned him this would happen. Josh sat in the cushy blue chair in Dr. Freeman's office, staring past her to the fish tank that was stuck into the wall. He had been told someone would try to get inside his mind and open all the doors. He had been told never to let that happen. He knew how to do that. It was stupid simple. He imagined his body as just a shell and drew his Self inward, like a ghost, into his mind, where he shut the doors and windows tight.
It didn't make him happy to do this. At first he had thought of this place in his mind as a special safe place, but he didn't like all the things the Taker had put there. They made him sad. They scared him. They made his tummy feel weird. But he had been warned and he was afraid to disobey. Too many bad things had happened already.
He didn't like the way any of the grown-ups around him were acting. It had been a relief to come to Dr. Freeman's today. She was a pretty lady with dark-brown skin and a kind smile. She usually just talked to him, real easy-like. She asked him questions, but not the same way the cops had asked him questions. She never got that tone in her voice as if she wanted to shake him, or that tone that made him think she was almost afraid of him. She never seemed to mind when he didn't answer her. But then today she started talking about relaxing and asking him if he had ever played like he was hypnotized.
Bingo.
She wanted to hypnotize him. Just another trick to try to get him to say the things the Taker had warned him not to.
Josh gave Dr. Freeman a look of huge disappointment, got up from the chair, and went to stare at the fish, trapped inside that tank the same way he had to stay trapped inside his mind.
Watching on the other side of a one-way mirror, Hannah pressed ice-cold hands to her cheeks and willed herself not to cry. Mitch gave her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze. Agent Wilhelm blew out a sigh of frustration. Ellen North exchanged looks with Cameron Reed.
“It's too soon, I suppose,” Ellen said.
Wilhelm grunted. “It might be too late for Dustin Holloman.”
Rage twisted inside Hannah. It wrenched her out of Mitch's grasp and launched her at the BCA agent.
“Don't you dare blame Josh!” she snarled, hitting him before Mitch could pull her back. “He's just a little boy! It's not his fault you can't do your job! It's not his fault the world is crawling with scum like Garrett Wright!”
Hannah clawed Mitch's arm to pry it away from her, the fury burning inside her. It terrified her, but she couldn't begin to suppress it. It was like acid in her chest, like blood pumping from an artery that had been severed.
“Let me go!” she shouted.
Ellen stepped forward, putting herself in front of Wilhelm. “Hannah, please calm down,” she said quietly. “We don't blame Josh—”
“I'm taking him home,” Hannah declared.
The decision was made without the usual mental weighing of pros and cons. It blurted out of her, this voice of instinct, now that the layers of education, domestication, socialization, had been slashed and torn apart.
She no longer cared what anyone thought. She knew she no longer bore any resemblance to the Woman of the Year image everyone in town had of her, and she didn't give a damn. All she cared about now was Josh, protecting him, fighting to get him the justice he deserved, fighting to protect him.
“I'm taking my son home,” she said again, looking over her shoulder at Mitch, who had brought them up in his Explorer.
“I'm sorry it didn't work out, Hannah, but we had to give it a try—for Josh's sake as well as our own.”
“No,” she murmured as his hold on her arm relaxed and she stepped away from him. “None of this has been for Josh's benefit. Don't you realize that, Mitch? Nothing that happens now can change what Garrett Wright did to him or to our family. Nothing. Ever. The only thing we can hope for is revenge.”
She walked out of the room, heading toward Dr. Freeman's office. At the door, she straightened her burgundy sweater and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. Then she knocked once and let herself in.
“Josh, we're going home,” she announced, holding out her hand to him.
Mitch shot a glare at Wilhelm, who stood frowning, rubbing the sore spot in the hollow of his shoulder.
“Are you taking sensitivity training from Steiger in your spare time?”
“We're all stressed out,” Wilhelm grumbled.
Ellen turned back to their window on the psychiatrist's office and watched through the smoky glass as Hannah knelt down to gather her son in her arms.
“Who can blame her?” she murmured to Cameron. “She's right. We didn't want this for Josh's s
ake; we wanted it to save our own hides. Sometimes I hate this job.”
“For all we know, Wright beat us to this hypnosis thing,” he said. “The man's a psychology professor, specializing in learning and perception. He might have wrung this kid's mind out like a sponge and put in whatever he wanted.”
“There's a cheery thought,” Ellen mumbled. “Think Dr. Freeman would give us a group rate?”
The session over, Dr. Freeman let herself into the room on their side of the glass. She offered no apologies and spared them none of her own feelings. She had felt it was too soon to try to pry into Josh's memories, and she had been right. He didn't trust her yet, and after this it would probably be some time before he would.
Mitch ushered Hannah and Josh out to his truck. Wilhelm climbed into his car alone and headed across town toward St. Paul and a meeting with Bruce DePalma, his special agent in charge. Ellen crossed the parking lot with Cameron.
“Think we should check my car for bombs before we get in?” he asked, only half teasing.
“It wasn't a bomb. It was just a flaming rag stuffed into the gas tank.”
“Just.”
The end result was the same. The Cadillac was trashed. Poor Manley had been stunned, walking around and around the burned-out hulk—although he had perked up when the press had turned their attention on him, the prospect of more free advertising offsetting his grief. He had even gone so far as to offer Ellen another loaner—on camera. She had declined, saying instead that she would take her own car back as soon as his people could spray some primer over the damage to the driver's door.
The worst thing was not knowing whether she was a target of Wright's supporters or Wright's accomplice. Or both. And aside from scaring the shit out of her, whoever was responsible had managed to further disrupt her life and add to the already overwhelming burden of the case.
She had planned to visit her parents after the session with Dr. Freeman. They lived just blocks away from Freeman's office, had called twice in the past week because they were concerned about her. But she had called them and canceled, not wanting to complicate Cameron's evening, and so he turned south on France Avenue and headed toward the freeway.
Maybe it was just as well, Ellen mused as they passed shopping centers and intersections that gave glimpses of quiet suburban neighborhoods. On the surface, a visit seemed to offer what she needed—support and sympathy. But what she was feeling couldn't be cured by going home. Just as it hadn't been cured by leaving the Cities two years ago—only put off for a time.
She fought it now as it rose to the surface like oil. The fear that what she had walked away from when she had left the Hennepin County system wasn't just politics or disillusionment, but the knowledge of a world and a system in decay, and the knowledge that she was as much a part of the problem as she was disgusted by it.
She thought of the many rape victims whose cases she had prosecuted over the years, the ordeal the system put them through, making them relive the crime over and over during the investigation and trial. It was no different now with Josh. He would be victimized all over again in the name of justice, and again in the name of therapy. His life had been violated, and he and his mother would be put through hell by the people who were supposed to protect them and help them in order to get a conviction. For the first time in two years she felt jaded and old in a way that had nothing to do with her upcoming birthday.
The feeling nagged her as they left the suburbs behind and the view softened to the rumpled white blankets of farm fields and valleys shaded gray with naked woods. And as they neared Deer Lake, another eerie restlessness crept in as she looked off at the countryside—the idea that their nemesis was out there somewhere right now, that if they just turned down the right road, they might drive right past the house where Dustin Holloman was waiting to be rescued.
Cameron took the exit at the Big Steer truck stop and rolled down the frontage road past Dealin' Swede's A-1 Auto and Manley's two biggest dealerships, where yellow ribbons had been tied to every car on the lots and the showroom windows had been painted with the slogan “Bring Dustin Home.” Even the giant inflatable blue gorilla that hovered above the roof of the Pontiac place had been adorned with a yellow ribbon, fluttering gaily around its neck.
Driving through the streets of town, Ellen saw the same symbols over and over. The ribbons on the front doors meant to show support and perhaps to ward off the evil. The posters taped to store windows. The new banner the town council had had hoisted across Main Street—“Protect Our Children!”
The plea struck Ellen as personal. The citizenry turned instantly to the police they otherwise seldom thought about, expecting the crime to be solved, regardless of the lack of clues. They turned to the court system they likely knew nothing about, calling for justice at all costs. The pressure of their silent demands settled on her shoulders, turning the muscles to rock.
“Did you want to go back to the office?” Cameron asked. “We could try to contact some more of Wright's old chums.”
“I'll pass for once,” Ellen said. “I think we've suffered enough for one day. All I want to do is get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I don't suppose you got much last night.”
You don't know the half of it.
It seemed impossible that she had spent the night with Brooks. It seemed impossible that she had let her guard down that much. And with Jay Butler Brooks, of all men. But they had reached out to each other . . . and it had been incredible.
And it was incredibly complicated.
“Apparently, Manley thinks you're cursed,” Cameron said, pulling into Ellen's driveway beside the Bonneville. The driver's door wore a big splotch of gray primer where the word “BITCH” had been.
“Can you blame him? Frankly, I was afraid to have my car at his garage. I don't want to be responsible for his business going up in flames.”
“You're not responsible,” Cameron reminded her. “You're the victim.”
“Be that as it may, I'm dangerous to know.”
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No.” She nodded toward the gray sedan parked at the curb. “Mitch gave me a guard. I'll be fine. Thanks for the ride.”
“Try to stay out of trouble for a few hours,” he said, offering her a gentle version of his teasing grin.
“I'm going to bed early. How much trouble could I get into?”
Visions of Jay's pirate smile rose in her memory as she drove the Bonneville into the garage.
“God, Ellen,” she mumbled as she hefted her briefcase out of the car. “Of all the lousy times to develop a libido.”
“You won't hear me complaining.”
She whirled around. Brooks came out of the shadows of the garage. He hadn't bothered to shave, apparently hadn't bothered to run more than his fingers through his hair.
“Dammit!” Ellen complained. “I'm not going to have to worry about Wright's accomplice getting me. You'll give me a heart attack first! What the hell are you doing in here?”
“I had my doubts about your surveillance team. Decided to test them for myself.” He reached out and took her briefcase from her. “They failed.”
“I can see that. How did you get in? Everything was locked.”
He pulled a credit card from his coat pocket and held it up. “Don't leave home without it. I parked on the next block, cut through the alley, hopped your fence—”
“And Harry?”
“Greeted me with tail wagging. He's not exactly Cujo.” He nodded toward the door that led directly from the garage to the backyard. “You need a dead bolt there. I jimmied the lock with the credit card. Any two-bit burglar could do it.”
“There's a comforting thought.”
“Look on the bright side, sugar,” he said, following her into the house. “At least I was the one to show you your security shortcomings. The only thing I'm after is some wild, hot sex.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“You weren't so blasé last night.” Wicked
mischief lit his eyes as he planted a hand on either side of her and trapped her with her back against the wall. “As I recall, you said something more along the lines of all that, Jay?”
“I was probably referring to the size of your ego.”
His grin deepened. “You're blushing, counselor.”
“It's the sudden warmth.”
“Hear! Hear!”
He brushed his mouth across hers, his lips cold, his tongue warm, his gaze holding hers. Ellen's body responded to his as if they had spent years together instead of just a night. It was a frightening thought—that they could be so in tune, that she could be so easily won over, that her body could so eagerly shut out her mind.
She turned her face away. “I need to let Harry in.”
She brought the dog in and gave him his supper. She could feel Jay watching her as she hung up her coat and turned up the thermostat. The quality of his gaze unnerved her—the intensity of it, the sense that he wasn't just watching her but observing her, studying her.
She drew a deep breath as she faced him. He had turned the fireplace on and stood with his back to it. In the deep shadows of the room he looked like the kind of man no sane person would cross paths with. In another time, in another place . . . they would never have met. That was the bottom line.
“I've been thinking,” she began, pacing nervously between the coffee table and the wing chair.
“Uh-oh.”
“Last night . . . last night was . . . incredible—”
“But . . .”
“It can't happen again.”
“Because?”
“Because everything. Because of the case. Because of who I am. Because of who you are.”
“Those are all the reasons we're together.”
“I know.” She shook her head. “It can't work, Jay.”
“It worked pretty damn good last night,” he said, moving toward her.
Ellen held her ground. “You know what I mean. I've got priorities.”