Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  The clothes Josh Kirkwood had been wearing the night he'd disappeared.

  CHAPTER 34

  As birthdays went, number thirty-six was off to a pisser of a start.

  The thought was selfish on the surface, but Ellen knew that wasn't it at all. She had hoped for something better today for Josh, for Hannah, for Megan, for justice. She had hoped for an eleventh-hour gift in the form of evidence. And deep in a small, primitively superstitious part of her brain, she had held out the unspoken hope that they might get that gift because it was her birthday. She felt foolish admitting it even to herself.

  The gift they received was from a higher power with an exceedingly black sense of humor. Evidence that clearly implicated Paul Kirkwood. At least in the eyes of the person who mattered most—Gorman Grabko.

  “In light of the discoveries we've had since we adjourned yesterday, I don't see that I have a choice, Ellen,” the judge said, frowning at her gravely from behind his desk.

  She refused to look at Costello, knowing too well what she would see in his face. Victory.

  “But, Your Honor,” she said, “we don't know how those clothes came to be in the Kirkwoods' storage locker—”

  “The door was padlocked, Your Honor,” Costello said.

  “Locks can be picked. Mr. Costello should consult with his associate Mr. York on that subject,” Ellen said bitingly. “What we have here—”

  “Is a mess, Ms. North,” Grabko declared. “The prosecution clearly was not thoroughly prepared to bring these charges before the court.”

  “But, Your Honor, Chief Holt apprehended Garrett Wright. We have evidence—”

  “What the prosecution has,” Costello said, going for the kill, “are some half-baked notions unsupported by fact and not fully investigated. Ms. North wanted a slam dunk on this case for reasons of her own and has proceeded in a fashion that skirts the bounds of ethics, persecuting an innocent man.”

  The verbal knife slipped cleanly between her ribs. Ethics. Ambition. Costello had no respect for the first and lived and breathed the second. She was his mirror opposite in those aspects, and yet he neatly turned it all on her without batting an eye.

  Her fingers curled on the arms of her chair, holding her down. “That is a completely unfair, inaccurate assessment, Your Honor. My only interest in this case is justice.”

  “And to that end, I see only one choice,” Grabko said, steepling his fingers before him. “I must grant Mr. Costello's motion to dismiss and hope that the county attorney's office and the law-enforcement agencies involved do a better job of untangling this case before it is brought before the court again.”

  In her mind Ellen heard a gavel fall. Case dismissed. As simple as that, her nemesis had turned the tables on her. As simple as that, like a trick in a parlor game. And now she would have to walk into that courtroom packed with press and citizens and cops, and stand there while Garrett Wright was declared a free man. She would have to call Hannah Garrison before the press could get to her and tell her the man who had stolen her son would return to the house down the block a free man.

  The failure was crushing. She could barely rise beneath the weight of it. But she forced her shoulders back and her chin up and started for the door. Cameron and Dorman went out first. Ellen would go next. Costello would come behind her and relish his own entrance like an overbearing stage actor.

  Behind her she could hear the door close on Grabko's private bathroom, where the judge invariably retreated moments before taking the bench. Which left her alone with Costello. She turned toward him with her hand on the doorknob and simply looked at him in his tailored suit and smug satisfaction.

  “Don't take it so hard, Ellen,” he said. “You just didn't have enough to win the game this time.”

  “You'll never get it, will you, Tony?” she said, shaking her head. “This should never be about winning or losing. It should be about the truth.”

  The light in his eyes hardened and glittered. “No, you'll never get it, Ellen. It's always about winning. Always.”

  Ellen singled out faces on her way in. Mitch, drawn and grim. Karen Wright, vacuous. Christopher Priest sitting beside her, expressionless. Noticeably absent was Paul, who had yet to be located after the search of his storage locker. Nor was Brooks among the information-hungry throng. His absence struck her harder than she should have let it. It shouldn't have mattered. She knew better than to allow herself the comfort of relying on someone, especially him.

  Dismissing those thoughts, she took her place beside Cameron at the table.

  It was over in a matter of moments. More moments than were strictly necessary, simply because Grabko liked to pontificate to a captive audience. Through the entire speech Ellen stood at the table, aware of every eye on her back. Her mind raced ahead, laying out the scenario for what would happen next. The press would champion Costello and she would be crucified. Rudy would lay the blame entirely at her feet in an effort to keep himself from being tainted. Garrett Wright would be painted as a martyr, and the people of Deer Lake would call for the head of Paul Kirkwood.

  Worst-case scenario.

  The hell of it was, as much as she had professed not to want it, she knew she would have taken the case again if she had it to do over.

  Grabko pronounced the case dismissed and rapped his gavel dramatically. Behind the bar the gallery exploded into a deafening cacophony of sound. The doors to the hall burst open, and half the reporters poured out into the hall to array themselves for the inevitable impromptu press conference, while the other half pressed up against the railing in a mob, shouting questions.

  “Ms. North, will charges be brought against Paul Kirkwood?”

  “Dr. Wright, will you be filing suit against the county attorney's office?”

  “Ms. North, is there any truth to the rumors of your dismissal from the county attorney's office?”

  Costello flashed them all his legal-eagle look and placated them with promises of answers out in the rotunda. Ellen refused to acknowledge them at all, keeping her back to them as she pretended to arrange the files in her briefcase. She could hear Cameron giving them the party line about an official statement coming from the office later in the day.

  “Ms. North?”

  The voice was too close, too soft for any reporter. Ellen jerked her head up. Garrett Wright stood no more than a foot from her, his expression calm, almost apologetic. He offered her his hand.

  “No hard feelings,” he said, the consummate gentleman. “You were only doing your job.”

  And I beat you. We beat you.

  She could hear the words as clearly as if he had spoken them aloud. She could see them, deep in his eyes, in a moment just like the one they had shared in the interview room of the city jail. A moment no one else in the room had experienced. She could feel the reporters staring at them. She could hear the whir of motor drives on cameras, but she knew not one photograph would capture what was passing between them.

  She ignored the offered handshake and stood a little straighter. “I'm still doing my job, Dr. Wright,” she said softly. “You know what they say—it ain't over till it's over.”

  “What does this mean?” Hannah asked, stunned, shaking. She sank weakly onto the couch, her knees buckling beneath her. She found herself holding the portable phone to her face with both hands because her fingertips had gone numb and she thought she might drop it.

  “It means Wright is a free man—for the moment,” Ellen North said. “But it isn't over as far as I'm concerned. I'll do everything in my power to get him to trial, Hannah. I promise you that.”

  Hannah stared across the room to the corner where Josh had sequestered himself for the morning. He faced the wall with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face hidden. Her son was locked in a mental prison, and the man who had put him there was walking free.

  “You did that already, didn't you?” she said, the bitterness thinned by abject disappointment.

  “I'm sorry, Hannah. What we had against him
should have been enough, but with his accomplice still at large, and with the evidence that came to light yesterday . . .”

  Ellen's voice trailed off. She was trying to be diplomatic, Hannah thought. The news was bad enough without emphasizing the fact that Paul was now wanted for questioning, that Josh's clothes had been found in the storage locker Paul rented because he had never been able to abide a cluttered basement.

  Mitch had broken that news to her in the dead of night. I don't know how to tell you this, Hannah. . . . We're not sure what it means. . . . The clothes could have been planted there for us to find. . . . We need to talk to Paul. . . . You don't know where he is?

  I don't know who he is, she thought. I don't know what he's become. I don't know what he might be capable of. I don't know why Josh is afraid of him. I can't believe he struck me.

  “But Mitch caught Garrett Wright,” she said, talking more to herself than to Ellen.

  “I know. Mitch knows. Costello blew enough smoke to cloud the issue for the judge. We just need a little more time, another piece of solid evidence against Wright or a break regarding his accomplice. It'll come, Hannah. Hang in there. And please let me know the minute Josh has something to say about what happened.”

  Hannah held the phone in her lap for a long while after the connection had been broken. Her line to justice, she thought, cut off, and she and her children were left holding the frayed end of what should have been a lifeline to pull them past this ordeal.

  Of the things she had to hope for, justice had seemed the most realistic, the most attainable. She could hope for Josh's recovery, but there was no guarantee how long that hope would have to last or that it wouldn't be crushed in the end. She had hoped for a mend in the tear of her relationship with Paul, but that would never happen. Their marriage was over. And so she had hoped for justice. There was a system in place to mete it out. There were people who cared fighting on her side. But the irony in the fight for justice was that not everyone played fair.

  Lily scrambled up onto the couch beside her and reached for the phone. Holding it up with both hands, she began an animated conversation of gibberish punctuated by the word “Daddy.”

  Hannah thought of calling Tom but denied herself the comfort. On top of everything else, she didn't want the guilt that came with thinking she had corrupted him.

  She knew there were people on the outside of her ordeal looking in who didn't believe she felt guilty enough for her initial sin of being late to pick up Josh that night because she hadn't thrown herself prostrate in front of the nation, sobbing and begging forgiveness. They didn't know anything. The pain was hers to bear. She wouldn't allow herself the luxury of begging for the sympathy of strangers. Her punishment was to cope, to care for her children, to deal with every individual rock in the avalanche that was raining down on their lives.

  Like Garrett Wright going free.

  Leaving Lily to her imaginary telephone conversation, Hannah went to her son and knelt down behind him. She put her arms around him and kissed the top of his head. He didn't move. He didn't speak.

  “We won't let him beat us, Josh,” she whispered. “I won't let him take you from me. I won't let you down again. I promise.”

  Even the worst day in the history of mankind had only twenty-four hours. Ellen repeated that mantra all day long. All during her conversation with Hannah. All through Rudy's “damage control” meeting. All through the brief but excruciating official press conference. This day had only twenty-four hours, and she would live through them to fight another day. Costello had roused the tiger within her. She wouldn't be happy until it tore his throat out, eviscerated Garrett Wright and his partner.

  Rudy hadn't fired her. Wouldn't fire her. He needed her. He was too wily not to see that. He needed her now for a whipping boy, and he would need her later when this case went to trial. Whether or not he would put her in first chair or hide her as second to Sig Iverson's figurehead prosecutorial post remained to be seen, but he needed her either way. Ellen intended to make the most of that.

  Tomorrow they would regroup. She would call her cops together for a strategy session. By tomorrow Todd Childs's prints could have matched up with prints found in Denny Enberg's office, and they would have the lever they needed to crack him open. By tomorrow they might have preliminary reports back from Dustin Holloman's autopsy, which was where Wilhelm and Steiger had spent the afternoon. If the ME came up with a few stray hairs, a skin scraping from under the boy's fingernails, a DNA fingerprint in the form of a drop of blood . . . they'd be back in business. If Megan could dig up just one anomaly in Garrett Wright's perfect past . . .

  She grabbed the phone and dialed Megan's number again, getting the answering machine. O'Malley had been out all day. Mitch had said she'd found a better place to work, but he didn't have a number or the time to discuss it. Some of Harris College's rowdier students had used Garrett Wright's release as an excuse to run amok on campus and call it a victory celebration. Their celebration had spilled out into Dinkytown in the form of skirmishes, vandalism, and general mayhem. With an official victory party scheduled for eight o'clock and a promised appearance by the man himself, the police were bracing themselves for a night of trouble.

  Ellen checked her watch. Nine-nineteen. The party was already well under way. She had given Phoebe orders to attend but suspected her once-loyal secretary was more likely to spend the evening giving Adam Slater an exclusive than paying attention to what was going on around her.

  Their candidates for Accomplice of the Year would be there—Christopher Priest and Todd Childs. The Sci-Fi Cowboys would be there—would Tyrell Mann risk an appearance? Garrett Wright would be center stage with his wife beside him. Karen, drugged and distant, the secrets of her marriage locked inside her seemingly vacant mind.

  Ellen would have bet Karen's affair with Paul was what had set the game in motion. It was Wright's motive for choosing Josh, for framing Paul. And Dustin Holloman had been nothing more than a pawn to make Wright look innocent.

  But who had orchestrated the second half of the match? And why was Paul Kirkwood suddenly missing if he was guilty of nothing more than adultery?

  The questions swarmed around Ellen's brain. She allowed herself a little groan as she rose from her chair and went to the window. Suppertime had come and gone without supper. The lack of fuel was dragging her mood down when she thought it couldn't sink any lower.

  She was alone in the office. Beaten, hungry, freezing, old, and alone.

  “Don't forget feeling sorry for yourself, Ellen,” she muttered as she stretched, then rubbed her hands together to ward off frostbite.

  For once she wished Brooks would show up uninvited. But for all she knew, he had jumped sides now that Wright was off. The story of a “good” man triumphing over a prosecutor out to get him would make a much better book than the tale of said prosecutor's failure to get a vicious monster to trial.

  “I go after what I want, Ellen North. And I get it.”

  Then in her mind's eye she saw his face the night before the hearing began, right here in her office.

  “I've never been anyone's hero. . . .” Eyes shadowed with old pain, old uncertainty. “Will you try to redeem me, Ellen?”

  That look lingered in her mind, until the practical side of her reared up. She was wasting time. She had a whole table of notes and statements to go over. Again. That was what she had wanted this quiet time for. Not for feeling old and alone and sorry for herself. Not for romanticizing about tarnished knights and wounded souls.

  The phone rang and she flinched. She let it ring as she ticked off possible callers. It was her mother. It was Megan with the much-needed clue. It was Jay. It was some damned reporter who had wheedled her direct-line number out of Rudy. It was—

  “Ellen North,” she said, grabbing up the receiver, forcing herself past the apprehension.

  “Ellen, Darrell Munson. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I just got home from a dive trip off Key West.”

 
Munson. That name clicked slowly into place. Probation officer turned beach bum.

  “Thanks for calling back,” she said without enthusiasm. The Sci-Fi Cowboys trail had led nowhere but to the Garrett Wright alumni fan club. She couldn't find much hope that this call would be any different from the rest, but she went through the motions, explaining to Munson the situation.

  “That's pretty hard to believe,” he said, his voice going cold over the line. “I knew Dr. Wright fairly well. Had nothing but respect for the man. I'm not happy to hear you're looking to discredit him.”

  “I'm doing my job, Mr. Munson,” Ellen explained. “The evidence is compelling or we wouldn't be proceeding. If Dr. Wright is innocent, then he has nothing to worry about. He certainly wasn't anyone's first choice as a suspect.”

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” he said grudgingly. “What was it you wanted from me?”

  “I wanted to know if you kept track of the kids you had in the Sci-Fi Cowboys program. We're contacting past members as part of Wright's background check.”

  “I had two the first year the program started; then I got out of Dodge and came down here.”

  “Tim Dutton and Erik Evans.”

  “Yeah. Sure, I know where Tim is. He sends me Christmas cards. He's an apprentice electrician up in New Hope. Erik, I lost track of. Last I knew he was at the U studying computers. Really bright kid. Very personable. A minister's son.”

  “Doesn't sound like your average juvenile offender.”

  “I don't suppose he was. He had some emotional problems, some problems at home. His mother was in and out of institutions. It all dated back to that business with the neighbor kid when Erik was ten. That kind of trauma would screw up anybody.”

  “What trauma?”

  “He saw a playmate hang himself.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah. It was a bad deal. The kid's mother blamed Erik. She was pretty vocal about it. It was all over the news at the time. I'm surprised you don't remember it. Slater was the kid's name.”