Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  He had come to Deer Lake to lose himself in someone else's misery, he had said. But the misery of Dustin's parents and Josh's parents was too close a cousin to his own. He had a son. Had lost that son before he'd even known the child existed. Had found him and had him taken away again all in the space of a day. Ellen could feel the tug to reach out to him.

  She reached for the telephone instead and punched in Mitch's home number. His machine picked up, but he answered himself as soon as Ellen began to leave her message. She told him everything Brooks had told her and added a couple of her own hunches, all to be relayed to Megan. Diversionary tactics aside, the case was revolving around Wright and his circle of acquaintances; revolving in what seemed to be a spiral into the past. He had done this before. They had done this before. Christopher Priest had been heading south at three o'clock. The call had come a little past four o'clock. If Megan could dig up just one key piece . . .

  “I thought O'Malley was off the case,” Jay said carefully as Ellen hung up the receiver.

  Regarding him with a poker face, she said nothing for a moment that stretched into another.

  “You wanted me to trust you,” she said at last. “I'm trusting you with this: Agent O'Malley is digging into Wright's background because Wilhelm wasn't getting the job done.”

  Jay gave a low whistle. “She's a little biased, don't you think?”

  “I think she's a damn good cop, and there's nothing she can do to change Garrett Wright's past. Anything she comes up with will be established, corroborated fact.”

  “Still, if Costello catches wind of this—”

  “I'll know where he got it, won't I?”

  “And you'll cut out my black heart with a grapefruit knife.”

  “Worse. I'll let you answer to O'Malley. She won't bother with a knife.”

  Unfamiliar pleasure coursed through Jay. It was about trust. Something Ellen had no reason to offer freely and every reason not to offer at all.

  He rose from his chair and rounded her desk to kneel down beside her. Taking her hand, he raised it to his mouth.

  “My lips are sealed,” he said, each word a caress against her fingertips.

  She tried to draw her hand away, but he held it firm, and drew the end of her middle finger between his lips. Her breath shuddered at the subtle abrasion of his teeth along the pad of her fingertip, at the touch of his tongue, at the gentle sucking.

  “Jay . . .”

  He drew his lips down her palm, lingered at the delicate skin inside her wrist. “You trust me, Ellen?” he whispered, drawing her up from her chair.

  Apprehension and desire shivered inside her. “There's so much at stake here, Jay.”

  “I know,” he said, knowing she meant the case, knowing there was more.

  “I've never been anyone's hero, Ellen,” he said. “I've lived my life for myself and to hell with everyone else. I've never had any trouble justifying or rationalizing or outright lying when it suited my cause. And I look at you and I think: Brooks, you got no business touching her, 'cause she's better than you'll ever be. But I want you anyway.”

  “And you always get what you want.”

  “I used to think so,” he murmured. “Now I stand back and look at what I've got and none of it means a damn thing to me. The money, the house, the spite I prized so dearly . . . I look at Hannah Garrison, see her fighting for her child . . . I look at you, see you fighting for justice . . . What have I ever fought for besides my own gain? What good have I ever been to anybody?”

  He forced a smile that was sad and wry. “Looks like you might redeem me after all.”

  “No,” Ellen whispered. “I don't want that responsibility. That's your choice. It has to be what you want.”

  “What I want,” he echoed, pulling her closer. “I want you.”

  He kissed her slowly, deeply, and Ellen thought she could taste his yearning and the confusion that shrouded it. She kissed him back, her own emotions kindred spirits of his.

  When he lifted his head a fraction, the need in his eyes took her breath away. The need to be touched by something good.

  As tempted as she was, Ellen knew she couldn't fight that battle for him. She had her own war to wage, her own enemies all around.

  “I need to prepare for tomorrow,” she murmured.

  He kept his arms around her. “You need a good night's sleep—preferably with me. You can prepare until your eyes bleed, but that won't make you any more ready. You can't give more than all you've got, Ellen. You've done the best you can.”

  Her best. Her best hadn't measured up so far. She closed her eyes and saw Garrett Wright smile that knowing, omnipotent smile that made her think he already knew the outcome of his game.

  “That's what scares me most,” she confessed in a whisper. “What if my best isn't good enough?”

  She moved away from him, feeling rumpled and wilted, trying in vain to smooth some of the wrinkles out of her blouse. Back in Hennepin County she had kept a change of clothes in her office. But Hennepin County was miles away, literally and figuratively. She didn't have a change of clothes here. She didn't know that she had any of what she really needed. The sharp edge, the bright eye, the quick mind. She didn't know that she hadn't left it all in Minneapolis.

  Watching her struggle, Jay remembered the blind panic that struck in the eleventh hour before a case went to court, the naked insecurities. He had never measured up to the standards of his family, and what if they were right? What if, behind all the bluff bravado, the swagger, the smile, there really was nothing of substance to call on when he needed it most?

  The anxiety was one of the many things about being a trial lawyer that he never missed. There was no panic associated with what he did now, dealing with cases after the fact. It was safer. It hurt less. Maybe you're the coward, Brooks. . . .

  Ellen hadn't wanted this case, but she had accepted the challenge—not for personal gain or glory, but because she knew she was the county's best hope for justice.

  Too good for you, Brooks . . .

  He crossed the room to where she stood, staring out through the barely parted blinds. Slipping his arms around her from behind, he pressed a kiss to her hair and whispered, “You'll win,” as if his own conviction was enough to make it so.

  “I wish I could be sure of that,” Ellen said. But the one thing she knew with any certainty was that in this game, where the stakes were so high, there was no such thing as a sure thing. And she had the sick feeling that the other team was playing with a stacked deck.

  At eleven-ten she trudged up the stairs to the third-floor law library. She had the dubious services of Deputy Qualey for another forty minutes. Time enough to pull the books she needed, for all the good they would do her. If Grabko had already made up his mind about the lineup ID, he would have found precedent to back himself. Anal-retentive bugger that he was, he would no doubt have scoured every obscure text of U.S. case law in existence to support his decision. Ellen had assigned Cameron the task of finding rulings to back their position. He had carted a stack of books home with him. But she wanted a solid familiarity with the cases cited in the general rule regarding violation of the right to counsel, and so she found herself in the darkened halls of the third floor.

  She had thought of bringing Qualey up with her but had taken pity on him and his bum hockey knee. After Brooks had gone, she'd had her chat with Ed about security, and he had assured her he'd let no one else in. The third floor was vacant, the courtrooms and construction junk waiting out the night.

  Logical assurances warred with creepy sensations. Chiding herself for being skittish, Ellen let herself into the library and flipped on the lights.

  It was a room designed for function. Industrial-grade carpet the color of pea soup, no-frills oak bookcases varnished dark with age, mission-style library tables and straight chairs that had been in place long before the retro-mission decorating craze.

  She prowled the stacks with purpose, pulling the books she needed and carrying them
to a table. She had memorized the names of the cases, state and federal—United States v. Wade, Gilbert v. California, Minnesota: State v. Cobb, and State v. Guevara. She forced herself to look them up, to mark the pages. No sense getting all the way home only to discover she'd pulled the wrong book. Be thorough. Stay focused. Fight the nerves.

  The first two cases were nearly thirty years old. State v. Cobb was dated 1979, not that it mattered if the ruling applied. State v. Guevara was the most recent, 1993, and the most pertinent, if memory served. That had been a child-abduction case as well, up in Dakota County on the southeast side of the metro area. A witness had picked Guevara out of a lineup, but Guevara's attorney had gotten the lineup thrown out. Unease crawled along Ellen's nerves as she remembered the trial had ended in an acquittal.

  She was trying an entirely different case, the logical side of her brain argued. Guevara had been charged not only with kidnapping, but had been indicted by a grand jury on murder charges. The fact that the little girl had never been found had weighed more heavily with the jury than any other aspect of the case.

  But that lineup might have tipped the scales the other way. . . .

  Ellen turned the pages. Page after page of case law, stopping cold when she reached State v. Guevara.

  Someone had been here before her and marked the page with a slip of white paper. She turned the book sideways and, heart pounding, read the message on the note.

  it is a SIN to believe evil of others, but it is

  seldom a mistake

  The clock on Josh's nightstand ticked one minute past midnight. Hannah sat cross-legged on the sleeping bag she had spread out on the floor across the room from Josh's bed. Anticipation wound like a watch spring inside her, tightening with every passing minute, building to she knew not what.

  A battle, she thought. A battle for her son. Not simply for justice, but for Josh himself. He had been taken from her. She had played the role of victim, but no more. The longer she thought about it, the more clearly she could see it—the challenge of something evil, the role she needed to play. The struggle in the courtroom would begin in a matter of hours, but the battle would go on beyond the courthouse, beyond the reach of Ellen North or Anthony Costello. She could see that now.

  Closing her eyes, she summoned the evil, a faceless entity. In her mind's eye she could see herself standing on a dark plain, the sky low and leaden. She could see Josh standing off to one side, just beyond her reach, his face completely without emotion, sightless. And she could feel the evil, cold and heavy.

  “You can't have my son. I'll kill you if I have to.”

  “I've already taken him. He's already mine.”

  “I'll kill you.”

  She raised her hand and a knife appeared in her grasp. She slashed downward through the oppressive air, slicing the blackness like a canvas that split open to reveal a wall of blood. The blood poured over her, knocking her off her feet, filling her mouth and nose, choking her, drowning her. She fought to come awake, but it dragged her down like an undertow, and then there was nothing.

  Josh dreamed of a sea of blood. He was floating on it, like floating on an air cushion in the lake. Safe, but not safe. Safe because the Taker said so, and that scared him because he didn't want to trust the Taker anymore. He could feel his mother pulling at him, her hands reaching up from the sea to grasp at him. He wanted to go with her, but he was afraid that if he did, the Taker would drown them both. But if he stayed where he was, the Taker would always be with him, and the Taker scared him more and more. He could see the other Goner in his dream, being held above him by the Taker's hands, the hands tightening and tightening; the boy opening his mouth to scream but no sound coming out, his eyes going wider and wider with terror, a terror Josh could feel inside himself. He didn't like the feeling. It made him want to cry. It made him want to be sick. It made him want to turn to his mother, but she was beneath the blood sea.

  In a panic, he turned within himself, using the Taker's trick to trick the Taker. He opened the door inside his mind, went into the smallest, most secret room, and vowed not to come out ever again.

  it is a SIN to believe evil of others, but it is

  seldom a mistake

  Ellen saw the note on the table before her, heard the message—an eerie whisper that seemed to surround her. She could feel his presence, feel his hands close around her throat.

  Evil.

  The hands tightened. She lunged up out of the chair and across the tabletop, sending books tumbling into the blood that covered the floor. She landed in it herself on her hands and knees and slipped and slid as she struggled to stand. She couldn't breathe, could feel her windpipe collapsing in on itself. Fighting, she staggered up and twisted around. Garrett Wright sat in the chair she had vacated, smiling. The hands around her throat were invisible.

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

  The line rang in her ears, louder and louder, until the words were indistinguishable.

  Gasping for air, she jerked upright in bed and stared at the phone on the nightstand. Fear rose in her throat until she thought she would gag on it. But she forced herself to reach out and pick up the receiver.

  “Ellen North,” she said, her mouth as dry as cotton.

  The silence was a heartbeat, and then came the voice, gruff and unsteady.

  “It's Steiger. We've found the Holloman boy. He's dead.”

  Journal entry

  February 1, 1994

  Our litany of sins is an old classic song

  We started young and have lasted long

  Infused with new blood, our game will go on

  CHAPTER 30

  Ms. North, how will this affect the charges against Garrett Wright?”

  “Ms. North, are you ready to admit you're prosecuting the wrong man?”

  “Ms. North, are you holding to your accomplice theory?”

  “Ms. North, is it true your lineup witness recanted her identification of Wright?”

  “Ms. North!”

  “Ms. North!”

  “Ms. North!”

  The frantic voices echoed in Ellen's brain, louder and louder and louder, like the voice in her nightmare, until all she heard was noise.

  “Stop it!” she shouted, turning her face up into the punishing hot spray of the shower, trying to wash away the images, sharp and painful, in her memory. A child's body, the purple marks of strangulation a circlet of bruises around his small throat. A child's body with a slip of paper pinned to the striped pajamas he wore. A message that cut to the bone: some rise by SIN, and some by virtue fall. A child's body discarded like a blown tire along the side of the road, abandoned at the base of the sign that welcomed visitors to Campion, A friendly place to live.

  The black humor, the twisted psychological intent of leaving the body when and where it was found, sickened Ellen almost as badly as the murder itself. The message was arrogance, disrespect for the police agencies involved; a callous disrespect for life, for decency, for small-town values. Just as the note in the book had been a nose-thumbing at the court system, a sneering disregard for the sanctity and security of the courthouse.

  The total package of crimes that made up The Game was among the worst she had ever dealt with. With the discovery of Dustin Holloman's body, the situation, difficult enough to this point, had reached critical mass.

  She could still hear the hysterical sobs of the Holloman family; the shaky voices of the cops. Even the coroner, the irascible Stuart Oglethorpe, had wept as Dustin's lifeless body was zipped into the too-big black bag and loaded into the hearse.

  Ellen had held herself together as best she could, struggling to put a brave face over the emotions that ravaged her. She represented justice. If any entity needed to show strength in the face of evil, it was justice. The people looked to her, to the system, to make things right, to avenge the wrongs. She had to stand strong.

  A blessed numbness had descended to insulate her. The miraculous self-protective properties of
the human psyche at work. She had gone through all the motions, consulted with Steiger and Wilhelm as the evidence techs from the BCA mobile lab processed the scene under the harsh white glare of the portable halogen lights.

  Individual faces in the surrounding crowd caught in her peripheral vision. Henry Forster from the Star Tribune. A correspondent from Dateline. Jay.

  He had come there for the story. The cynic in her reminded her of that fact, but it couldn't discount the bleak expression on his face or the sound of his voice when several of the reporters had turned to him for opinions when they could get no answers from anyone else.

  “It's a tragedy,” he said in a rough, low voice. “There's nothing I can say to make it any less senseless.”

  His words stayed with her as she prepared herself for the day, slicking her hair back into a twist, selecting her best black suit from the closet. Dustin Holloman's death was a tragedy that should never have happened anywhere, but most of all not here. This was a crime against the community of Park County, the murder of a collective innocence.

  Ignorance is not innocence but sin.

  Garrett Wright and his shadow may have viewed the innocence of this place as ignorance, but the sin was theirs, and they would be made to pay. They would damn well be made to pay. The vow burned in Ellen's mind, in her heart. She would see to it. She hadn't asked for this battle, hadn't wanted it to come here, but she would fight it with everything she had.

  Not giving a damn if the reporters followed her, she drove across town to the new office complex on Ramsey Drive, where Costello had rented a suite for his stay here. The extravagance sickened her. This was what Tony Costello was all about—money, power, a staff of drones to do the work, an image polished to a diamond shine.

  She marched past the secretary, homing in on Costello, who stood in the hall giving orders to one of his associates. Dorman's eyes widened at the sight of her. Costello's expression was guarded.