Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  Parked in the machine shed was a rusting white 1984 Ford Econoline van. A match in age and condition to the van Paul Kirkwood had once owned and sold to Olie Swain. A match to the van a witness had seen at the hockey rink about the time Josh was abducted. A small toolbox behind the front seat held a roll of duct tape, folded squares of cloth—probably for administering ether—hypodermic needles and syringes for injectable sedatives. A kidnapper's tool kit.

  Ellen backed away from the shed, shoulders hunched against the cold, and looked around the neat farmyard with its small buildings and perimeter of pine trees, boughs laden with the fresh snow that had fallen in the night. Great pains had been taken to make everything appear normal. The driveway was neatly plowed. A family of concrete deer stood posing in the yard near the bird feeder. Curtains hung at the windows. Christmas lights still hung from the eaves.

  All part of the game.

  Slater was under guard at the hospital, where he was being observed for any lingering effects from the electrical shock. He wasn't talking, but his name had provided the key they needed. Ellen, vaguely dopey from the pain medication Dr. Lomax had given her before setting her wrist, had called Cameron from the hospital in the middle of the night and set him to work digging up information in Adam Slater's name. In short order they had a phone number, and from the phone number came an address.

  Dawn had just lightened the gray of the eastern horizon. Ellen hadn't slept in any restful way, just in fits and starts in a hospital bed. Nightmares of the ordeal jolted her awake every time she drifted off. The feeling of Slater's hands tightening on her throat.

  She had moved to Deer Lake to escape the violence and cynicism of the city, yet it was Deer Lake where she had been attacked, where she had been pushed to violence to save her own life and Jay's. A point for Wright's team. Just another ripple in the pond. Just another ramification of their game, along with broken trusts and a broken marriage, lost innocence and lost lives.

  She thanked God Jay was not among the body count. Though he had lost enough blood to require a transfusion, the wounds themselves were not life threatening. Still, every time she closed her eyes, Ellen saw that horrible instant when Slater had pulled that bloody knife back for one final thrust, and everything inside her had clenched like a fist.

  “You ready to go in, counselor?” Mitch asked, laying a hand on Ellen's shoulder.

  She nodded and they moved toward the house. Cameron had argued that she was in no condition to go to the scene, but she wouldn't back down. She let him take the official role, but she needed to be there. It didn't matter that she hurt all over or that she could barely speak because of the bruising in her throat. She had accepted this case, and it would be her fight until the end.

  Wilhelm unlocked the back door with a key from Slater's key ring, and they trooped in, holding their breath in anticipation of what they might find. The house was neat and tidy, with doilies on the end tables and a family photo of strangers hanging on the living-room wall.

  Probably the family of one of their victims, Ellen suspected. Maybe even the real Adam Slater's family. She should have appreciated the twisted sense of humor, she supposed. If Slater hadn't taken the name of his first victim, he might never have been found out.

  All part of the game.

  “The game is more fun when you spot the other team points.”

  One of the two bedrooms was decorated for a little boy, with shelves lined with an assortment of toys, each tagged with a name and date. Trophies from past games won. The notion sickened her. She stood in the hall, resisting the need to lean against the wall and risk ruining latent fingerprints. Leaning against Cameron, instead. He put a brotherly arm around her shoulders and stood silent, his face pale.

  They all wore the same face, Ellen thought dimly. Mitch and Wilhelm and Jantzen, the Tyler County sheriff. Even Steiger wore it. Drawn, pale, grim, eyes hollow. There was a sheen of tears in Mitch's as he came out of the room.

  “There's a red sneaker in there,” he said tightly. “With the name Milo Wiskow. That's the case Megan dug up in Pennsylvania. All we have to do is find a connection between Wright and this house, and he goes away forever.”

  End game.

  They found what they needed in the basement, where Megan had been tied to an old wooden straight chair and tortured. The short black baton Wright had used to beat her hung on a pegboard above a small corner workbench, as if it were a common handyman's tool.

  The basement was divided into three rooms, one of which was padlocked from the outside. Again, Wilhelm provided the key from Slater's ring, and they walked into the small chamber where the boys had been held.

  The only furnishing was a cot. The only light a bulb in the ceiling with a switch outside the door. A video surveillance camera and stereo speakers hung high on the walls, their wiring connecting them to a system in the main workroom. From a pair of stools at the counter, Slater and Wright could watch their captive, speak to him, play the cassette tapes that were neatly stacked beside the tape deck.

  Handling it gingerly with latex gloves, Mitch slipped a tape into the deck and hit the play button. Garrett Wright's voice came over the speakers, smooth and eerie.

  “Hello, Josh. I am the Taker. I know what you think about. I know what you want. I can make you live or die. I can make your parents live or die. I can make your sister live or die. It's all up to you, Josh. You do what I say. You think what I tell you, remember what I tell you. I control your mind. I know everything you think.”

  “Jesus,” Mitch muttered as he stopped the tape.

  Mind control. Psychological terror of children. Having been in the cell where Wright had kept the boys, Ellen found it too easy to imagine how frightened they must have been, how lonely, wondering if anyone would come to save them, wondering if they would live or die, wondering if they might somehow unwittingly cause the deaths of the people they loved.

  “I am the Taker. I know what you think about. I know what you want. . . .”

  She thought of Josh sitting in the psychiatrist's office as the doctor tried to coax answers from him. No wonder he wouldn't speak. Wright had buried the fear so deep inside his young mind, it could take years to extract it. He might never feel safe again.

  “Bastard,” Steiger growled.

  The shelves above the cassette deck housed a small library of audio- and videotapes. A sight that was horrible and welcome at once. Wright's training as an academician and a psychologist, as well as his own over-confidence, would do him in. He had apparently documented his games, his mind-control experiments . . . his crimes. Not even Tony Costello would be able to explain away videotape.

  “He believed he'd never get caught,” Ellen said, her voice a whispery rasp. “He thinks he's invincible.”

  “He's dead fucking wrong,” Mitch growled. “Let's go pick him up. We can sort through this stuff later. I want that son of a bitch in a cell.”

  “Chief?” Wilhelm called from a desk ten feet away. “I think you might want to take a look at this first.”

  “What is it?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Wilhelm had pulled a three-ring binder from a row of similar binders and placed it on the blotter open to page one. Ellen stepped in beside Mitch and looked down at the childish handwriting.

  Journal entry

  August 27, 1968

  They found the body today. Not nearly as soon as we expected. Obviously, we gave them too much credit. The police are not as smart as we are. No one is.

  We stood on the sidewalk and watched. What a pitiful scene. Grown men in tears throwing up in the bushes. They wandered around and around that corner of the park, trampling the grass and breaking off bits of branches. They called to God, but God didn't answer. Nothing changed. No lightning bolts came down. No one was given knowledge of who or why. Ricky Meyers remained dead, his arms outflung, his sneakers toes up.

  We stood on the sidewalk as the ambulance came with its lights flashing, and more police cars came, and the ca
rs of people from around town. We stood in the crowd, but no one saw us, no one looked at us. They thought we were beneath their notice, unimportant, but we are really above them and beyond them and invisible to them. They are blind and stupid and trusting. They would never think to look at us.

  We are twelve years old.

  We.

  “My money is on Priest,” Mitch said, hitting the blinker.

  His Explorer led the procession of police vehicles turning onto Lakeshore Drive. A mob of press had already arrived and staked out Wright's lawn, making themselves useful for once, virtually trapping him in his own home. “Megan had her eye on him. They may have known each other as boys; they taught together at Penn State. They founded the Cowboys together, and according to Slater, the Cowboys were formed around Wright's plan to develop him as a protégé.”

  Ellen sat tense in the passenger's seat, anticipation tightening every muscle in her body. “But if they were in on this game together,” she croaked, “then why didn't they alibi each other for the night Josh went missing? Why have Todd Childs get up at the hearing and contradict the statement he gave the police?”

  “You said he wanted to spot us points. Besides, they alibi each other, and those of us who believe one is guilty automatically believe the other is guilty.” He turned in at the Wrights' driveway and cut the engine. Reporters swarmed toward the truck. Ignoring them, he gave Ellen a hard look. His game face. “Let's see if Dr. Wright might be able to help us with the answers to those questions. He can provide the commentary when we play those videotapes.”

  A whole other crop of questions assaulted them as they made their way to the front door, hurled by the news-hungry like rice at a wedding. Steiger barked something out, grabbing the opportunity to look important.

  Mitch hit the doorbell and waited, hit it again. “Dr. Garrett Wright,” he said in a loud voice, “this is the police. Please come to the door. We need to speak with you.”

  They waited a moment that stretched into another. Mitch lifted his two-way. “Noogie? You got any action back there?”

  Noga's deep voice came back. “Nothing, Chief.”

  Mitch knocked on the door again. “Dr. Wright, this is Chief Holt. We need to speak with you.”

  “He has to be home,” Wilhelm muttered. “He was at the victory celebration last night. We know he came back here.”

  “But did he stay?” Mitch asked. “If he caught wind of his boy wonder going down last night, he may just have split.”

  Mitch hit the button on the radio again. “Noogie? Take a peek in the garage. What have we got for vehicles?”

  “Got a Saab and a Honda, Chief.”

  “All present and accounted for,” Mitch said. He cast a look at Ellen. “I say we go in. We've got probable cause.”

  “And an audience,” Wilhelm said through his teeth.

  “Then get them the hell off the yard, Marty,” Mitch ordered. “Make yourself useful for once.”

  As Wilhelm turned away, Mitch tried the doorknob. “Locked.” He raised the radio again. “Noogie? You got any company back there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then do your thing.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Noga was the force's official battering ram. The house door hadn't been made that Noga couldn't bust off its hinges with a shrug. In a matter of moments the front locks were tumbling and the big officer pulled the door open.

  The house was quiet. Tastefully, expensively decorated in neutral tones and sleek, pale oak furnishings. Mitch scanned the rooms visible from the foyer.

  “Dr. Wright?” he called, sliding his Smith & Wesson nine-mil from his shoulder holster and holding it nose up. “Police! Come out where we can see you!”

  The silence hung around them.

  “I guess we get to do this the hard way,” he muttered, turning toward Ellen and Cameron. “Wait outside. I don't want any chance of this turning into a hostage situation. Noogie, back me up.”

  Ellen laid a hand on his forearm. “Be careful, Mitch. He doesn't have anything to lose now.”

  They moved down the halls of the house, Mitch taking the lead, his back to one wall. Each closed door represented a potential nasty surprise. The tight quarters of an unfamiliar house were always a dangerous setting. They opened doors that led to a bathroom, to a guest room, to Karen Wright's hobby room. Not a sound. Not a thing out of place.

  They could have easily left in the night, Mitch thought. With the charges dismissed, he had had no choice but to pull the surveillance team or risk charges of harassment. In the back of his mind he made a note to check with the twenty-four-hour car service that taxied people from Deer Lake to the airport in Bloomington. The Wrights could have been halfway to Rio by now.

  He sidled up beside the last door on the upper level, reached over, and knocked. “Wright, come out with your hands up! You're under arrest!”

  Nothing. He turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, holding himself against the wall. No shots blasted out at them. And then he slipped inside the master bedroom and found out why Garrett Wright hadn't answered them.

  Garrett Wright lay spread-eagled on the king-size bed, naked, his throat cut from ear to ear, a butcher knife buried to the hilt in his chest, his dead eyes gazing up at a heaven he would never know.

  “He's not stiff yet,” Mitch said. “He hasn't been dead more than a few hours.”

  Ellen took a long look at the gaping wound that nearly severed Garrett Wright's head from his body, then turned away, taking in the room. “There's no sign of a struggle.”

  “Too bad. He should have had to look death in the face. He should have had to feel the fear his victims felt.”

  “The cars are here and Karen Wright is missing,” Wilhelm said. “Either she did it and walked away or the killer took her with him.”

  “Paul Kirkwood publicly vowed revenge,” Cameron reminded them. “He was having an affair with Karen.”

  “Get out APBs on both of them,” Ellen said. Her gaze drew back to the man whose life had bled out of him.

  A murderer. A man whose mind and heart had been as dark as the blood that soaked the ivory sheets around him. He had tormented, tortured, killed, and called it a game. Heartless and cruel. And even with his death, it continued. He had driven someone else to kill, and that person would touch other lives, and the effects would go on and on like a stream of oil bleeding into the ocean.

  “I always wanted children,” Karen said, rocking the baby in her arms. “Garrett and I couldn't have children. But Paul and I can. We can have Lily.”

  Hannah stared at the woman who had invaded her home sometime in the hours before dawn. Karen Wright. Vapid, innocuous Karen. Always trying to help. Doe-eyed, pretty Karen. Her husband's mistress. Wife of the man who had kidnapped her son.

  Hannah had awakened to the sound of a voice singing softly down the hall. A woman's voice coming from Lily's room. Groggy and confused, she'd crawled out of the sleeping bag in her leggings and baggy sweatshirt, her hair falling out of its loose braid and into her eyes.

  She stood now in the hall between the bedrooms, still hoping this was yet another of the strange nightmares that had been plaguing her since the start of the ordeal; knowing it was not. Karen Wright stood in her daughter's room, holding Lily and a gun.

  “How did you get in here?” Hannah demanded.

  “With a key,” Karen said matter-of-factly, never taking her eyes off Lily. “I have copies of all of Paul's keys.” She smiled dreamily. “I can have the key to his heart now that Garrett won't come between us.”

  She rose from the rocking chair, juggling Lily and the nine-millimeter gun, the load seeming too much for her. “You're so sweet, aren't you, Lily?” she cooed. “I've always pretended you were mine. I wanted Garrett to get you for me, but he only takes little boys. That's the way it's always been. He hated children.”

  “You can't have her,” Hannah said flatly.

  Karen's eyes narrowed, her mouth twisted on the bitterness. “You d
on't deserve her. I do. I give and give and never get anything back. It's my turn. I told Garrett. He wouldn't listen. I told him I wanted Paul. I love Paul. Paul could give me a baby. But no. He had to make Paul look guilty. He had to ruin what I wanted. He made a very big mistake.”

  Her arms tightened on the baby, and Lily squirmed and frowned. “Down!”

  “No, no, sweetheart,” Karen said with a sudden smile, stroking Lily's cheek with the barrel of the gun. “You're going to be my little girl now. We have to go away and make a new life with your daddy. We'll be a happy family.”

  “What about Garrett?” Hannah asked, inching forward to block the door. Damned if she was going to let a madwoman walk out of her house with her daughter. She would do whatever she had to do. She had pledged to keep her children safe. She was all through being a victim.

  Karen's eyes glazed with tears. “Garrett . . . wouldn't listen. He wouldn't let me be happy.” A single tear skimmed her cheek. “I love Paul, and Garrett made me betray him. He shouldn't have done that.”

  Lily twisted in her grasp, pushing against the arm that was banded around her middle. “Lily down!” she demanded. She looked to Hannah. “Mama, down!”

  Anger flashing across her features, Karen gave the baby a shake. “Stop it, Lily!” She turned Lily's head toward her with the barrel of the gun. “I'm your mommy now.”

  Josh watched the scene from behind his mother. No one had noticed him. No one would. He could be like a ghost. The quiet was in his mind, and he could make it as big as he was and put it all around him like a giant bubble. He saw the gun. He heard the words. Karen was going to take Lily. Just as he had been taken. Just as that other boy had been taken. The other Goner was dead now, just as Josh had been warned. Now Lily, just as he had been warned. Bad things would happen if he told anyone the truth. But he hadn't told anyone and bad things were happening anyway.