Guilty as Sin

by Tami Hoag

  The fear inside him struggled against the need to be free of it. He wanted to be free. He wanted his family to be free. He thought maybe if he wished hard enough . . . If he was good enough . . . If he could only find the courage . . .

  “Does Paul know you're doing this?” Hannah asked, edging into the room. If she could get to the changing table, she could grab the baby powder, throw it in Karen's face, get Lily away from her before she could use the gun.

  “Paul loves me,” Karen said, hefting Lily on her hip. “I'm what he needs. I'm the kind of woman he deserves.”

  “You're right about that,” Hannah said, laughing bitterly. Paul had brought this nightmare on them with his groundless discontent, with his myopic self-absorption. Karen Wright was exactly what he deserved.

  “We'll be a happy family,” Karen said, jerking Lily against her as the baby tried to squirm out of her grasp. “Lily, stop it!” she shrieked, raising the gun. “Don't make me hurt you!”

  As she brought the butt of the gun down toward Lily's head, Josh burst to life. Hurling himself into the room, flinging his body at Karen Wright's legs.

  “Josh, no!” Hannah screamed.

  Then everything was a blur of sound and motion as she jumped to grab Karen's gun.

  “If it was Paul, Wright would have struggled,” Ellen said.

  “Unless they drugged him first,” Wilhelm offered.

  “Paul wouldn't have the guts to kill like that,” Mitch said. “With a gun, maybe. With a knife, no way.”

  “Karen got tired of his trying to control her the way he did his victims,” Ellen theorized. “He used her to get to Paul. God only knows how he might have used her before.”

  “The question is, Where did she go?” Cameron said. “And was she alone?”

  “Get on the phone to the cab company,” Ellen told him. “I have a hard time believing Paul dropped by and picked her up after she essentially testified against him in court.”

  “Tracks,” Noga said suddenly. He had been leaning against the wall, pale and wobbly. Straightening, he turned toward Mitch. “There were tracks in the backyard.”

  In the fresh snow.

  “Let's go.” Mitch started for the door, tossing instructions over his shoulder to Wilhelm. “Secure the scene and keep the press out.”

  Ellen followed him out the kitchen door, through the garage where Wright had first been arrested, and to the backyard, where reporters were creeping around the perimeter of the property in the attempt to get an angle no one else had.

  “Mitch, we'll need to make some kind of statement,” Ellen said. “Get a photo of Karen to the TV people. If she's a possible killer, the public needs to know.”

  “Do what you have to.”

  He had just turned to follow Noga north along the footprints. North, toward the Kirkwood house, when the sound of gunshots cracked the crisp morning air.

  They crashed into the dresser, sending a lamp tumbling; fell against the white wicker rocker and onto the floor, kicking and gouging. The gun flew free, spinning across the carpet. Hannah lunged for it but was pulled up short as Karen grabbed hold of her braid with a savage tug. Fingernails raked down her face. Karen's knee caught her in the stomach as Karen lunged forward. Too late.

  Josh raised the black pistol with both hands and pointed it squarely at Karen Wright's forehead, just inches away, the barrel wobbling gently back and forth.

  Karen went still. Lily lay on the floor near the crib, sobbing. Hannah struggled to sit up, to move back from Karen, her eyes on Josh.

  “You're bad,” Josh said to Karen, his blue eyes flat. “You can't take my sister. I won't let you.”

  “Bad things will happen, Josh,” she said in an eerie tone. “You know and I know. The Taker will punish you.”

  “The Taker is dead,” he said.

  Hannah's heart nearly stopped. She moved back from Karen and edged around toward Josh, holding out her hand. “Josh, honey, give me the gun.”

  “I have to stop them,” he said, tears swimming up. “I'm the only one. It's my fault. They'll hurt you and Lily.”

  “No, sweetheart,” she whispered as she crouched down beside him.

  His small hands were tight on the stock of the pistol, knuckles white as he aimed the barrel at Karen Wright's face. “She's a Taker, too. They have power. She'll take Lily. She'll hurt her. I have to stop them. It's up to me.”

  “No, Josh,” Hannah said, inching closer. “I won't let her take Lily. Give me the gun.”

  He made no move to obey. Hannah eased her arms around him, waiting to hear the terrible sound of a shot. If she moved too quickly, if she tried to pull the gun away, it could go off. As much as she wanted justice, she didn't want it like this. She didn't want it weighing on Josh for the rest of his life.

  Trying not to shake, she slipped her hands over his on the stock of the pistol. “It's over, honey.”

  His body was quivering in the circle of her arms. His eyes were locked, wide and staring, on Karen Wright as he struggled within himself.

  “Give me the gun, Josh,” Hannah whispered. “They don't have any power over us. Not anymore. It's over. They won't hurt anyone ever again. I promise. You're safe. I'll never let anyone hurt you again. I love you so much.”

  If only love were enough to protect them, she thought. If only love were enough to heal the damage that had been done. She willed her love to be enough in this moment, enough to bring Josh back from the edge. If he crossed this line, even if he crossed it only in his mind, he would be lost.

  I lost him once, God. Please don't make me lose him again. Please let us start over. Now.

  Josh stared at Karen, felt the trigger in the curve of his finger. He wanted to be free. He wanted things the way they had been before. If he killed all the Takers . . .

  “No, Josh, please.”

  His mother's voice seemed to come from within his own mind. There were so many things she couldn't understand.

  Please . . .

  He wanted to be free.

  He stared at Karen and felt . . . nothing.

  “He's dead,” he whispered as realization dawned inside him. The connection was gone, broken in the night. He was free.

  Free . . .

  Pulling his hands away from the gun, he turned to his mother, put his head on her shoulder, and started to cry.

  Hannah hugged him to her with one arm as she held the pistol trained on Karen. In another part of the house she heard a door open, and Mitch Holt's voice came like the voice of salvation.

  CHAPTER 38

  She wanted what she thought I had,” Hannah said softly.

  She stood in the doorway to Josh's room, watching him sleep. The day had been a marathon. Police trooping through the house, wanting statements, asking questions, taking photographs. The press mounting a fresh full-scale campaign to get her to talk to them. Newspapers, magazines, tabloids. Television newsmagazines, talk shows, agents from Hollywood who wanted to put together movie deals. She had shut them all out and let in only one person—Tom McCoy.

  “She wanted a happy family. We had that once,” she said wistfully. “Once upon a time . . .”

  The story of the Wrights' lives had unfolded throughout the day as the police and prosecutors examined the journals found in the farmhouse. A double life led from childhood on. Garrett—intelligent, sociopathic, controlling, manipulative. His sister, Caroline—a shadow, subservient, introverted. The children of a cold, bitter woman who valued appearances over substance; abandoned by their father, who had remarried and started a new family.

  Garrett had taken control of Caroline, absorbed her into his life and into his psyche, until they seemed to become a single entity. She had managed to break free of him when she ran away from home at seventeen, only to have him find her again a year later. And the control, the manipulation, the whole twisted cycle started all over again. They lived as husband and wife, kept up a flawless front as the psychology professor and his demure, quiet spouse, while Garrett masterminded and p
layed out his sick game.

  “I keep wondering,” Hannah murmured, “if Wright singled us out because he thought we had a perfect family, or because he knew we didn't.”

  “Have you spoken with Paul?” Tom asked, propping a shoulder against the door frame, watching Hannah. In this light the bruise her husband had left on her jaw looked like a shadow.

  “He contacted Mitch after the news broke. He'd checked into a hotel in Burnsville. He said he went there because he wanted time to think.” Mixed feelings wrestled within her like a pair of cobras. She didn't want Paul near her or the children, and yet she resented the fact that he had fled and left them to face the consequences of his mistakes. “I didn't call him back. I don't have anything to say to him my lawyer can't say more diplomatically.”

  This was where he was supposed to counsel her, Tom thought. If he was a good priest, he would tell her there was still hope, that wounds could heal, that what was broken in her marriage could be made whole through prayer and faith. But he didn't believe it was true, and he didn't see himself as a good priest. He didn't really see himself as a priest at all anymore.

  “I'm sorry,” he said with sincerity.

  “So am I,” Hannah whispered. Vignettes of her marriage flashed through her mind as she looked at Josh. The good times, when life had held such promise. “It should have been forever.”

  Instead the promise had been broken, and she was left to rage and mourn the jagged pieces.

  Tom's hand closed around hers, offering comfort, offering strength. Bringing a thin veil of guilt to the complex mix of emotions she was already struggling with.

  “I could use a glass of wine,” she said, turning away.

  Evening was closing in outside. It only seemed like midnight. Exhausted from the ordeal of the day, both Josh and Lily had crashed late in the afternoon, but the night still stretched ahead. Long hours of quiet waiting to be filled with introspection and pointless longing.

  She filled two glasses with chardonnay and carried them to the family room, where Tom was tending the fire. The light caught on the gold rims of his glasses, warmed the color of his strong, handsome face. He was in jeans and one of his lumberjack shirts. She saw no evidence of his clerical collar.

  “What will you do?” he asked, setting the poker back in the stand. “Will you stay?”

  “No.” She waited for him to admonish her, to tell her she needed time, that she should wait and sort things out when the emotion had passed and she could think more clearly. But he said nothing. “We have a lot of memories here, but even the good ones hurt. I think it's best if we make a break. Go somewhere new. Give Josh a fresh start.”

  She settled into the corner of the couch nearest the fire and sipped her wine. “You've been such a good friend through all this. I don't know how to thank you.”

  “I don't need thanks,” he said, lowering himself to the edge of a chair that was close enough that their knees nearly touched.

  “I know it's your job, but—”

  “No. This isn't about my duty as a priest. Or maybe it is.” He drew in a deep breath. Anticipation and dread held it in his lungs a moment. “I'm leaving the priesthood, Hannah.”

  The look on her face was less than he had hoped for, but no different from what he had expected. Shock with an underlayer of fear.

  “Oh, Tom, no.” She set her glass aside with a hand that trembled. “Not because of— Please don't say I drove you to—” Her blue eyes shimmered like the lake in summer. “I've got more guilt than I need already.”

  “It's not for you to feel guilty, Hannah,” he said, leaning toward her, his forearms resting on his thighs, his face earnest. “There is no guilt. I feel what I feel, and no rule can convince me what I feel is wrong.

  “How can it be wrong to love someone? I've chewed on that question until there's nothing left. I don't see how it can ever be reconciled.” He smiled, a sad, fond smile. “Monsignor Corelli always said my philosophy degree would get me in trouble. I think too much. You know, I've never been very good at toeing the company line.”

  “But you're a wonderful priest,” Hannah insisted. “You make people think, you make them question, you make them look deeper within. If we don't do those things, what are we?”

  “Stagnant. Comfortable. Happy,” he conceded. “Growth hurts. Growth precipitates change. Change is frightening. It would be easier for me to stay in the Church,” he admitted. “Safer. It's what I know. There are parts of it I love. But if I have to be a hypocrite to do it . . . I can't live like that, Hannah.”

  Still more of life's endless supply of irony, Hannah thought. He was a good priest, but he was too good a man to stay a priest. He couldn't go against his principles, even if his principles went against the Church.

  “I shouldn't be dumping this on you tonight,” he said, glancing away. “It's just that . . . I've made the decision, and you've made yours . . . I don't want to add to your burden, Hannah. I just wanted you to know.”

  He went back to the fire and poked at the logs, kicking up sparks like a swarm of fireflies that shot up the chimney. He loved her. There had been a time, Hannah thought, that she would have said love would be the one thing to get her through an ordeal like the one they had just been through—her husband's love. But Paul didn't love her, and in all the madness the love she had found within her was for this man. This man who was supposed to be beyond her reach.

  It seemed they deserved something better than to be pulled apart. But could they have something more? Something that wouldn't wither in the shadow of their past or be crushed by the burden of complicity.

  “I need time,” she said, going to him. “I think we both do. We've been through so much, so fast. I know I have to get away from it. I have to clear it all out, sort it into some kind of order. Can you understand that?”

  “Yes.” He looked down at her, his eyes searching hers, his hands reaching up to frame her face, to touch her hair. “As long as you don't clear me out when you're sorting through the rest of it. Don't throw away what we could have together because it would be easier, Hannah.”

  There was nothing easy about any of it, she thought, closing her eyes against the bittersweet pain. The weight of her choices pressed down on her, a burden she couldn't bear at the moment. Time. They needed time. Sliding her arms around his waist, she hugged him tight and whispered, “I love you.”

  He bent his head and kissed her cheek. She felt his gentle smile against her skin. “Then I can wait as long as it takes. Just don't let it take forever.”

  Ellen sat back in her desk chair and allowed herself a long, slow, heartfelt sigh. It felt like the first good breath she'd had all day. It was certainly the first moment's rest. Exhaustion felt like an anchor strapped to her shoulders. Pain throbbed through her body. Neither dimmed the sense of relief. It was over.

  Garrett Wright had been passed on to a higher court for judgment. Karen Wright had been transported to the state psychiatric hospital for an evaluation she would almost certainly fail. Adam Slater was under twenty-four-hour watch in the county jail. The BCA and FBI were working through the journals and contacting law-enforcement agencies in the other states where Wright had played his game, wrapping up cases that went back twenty-six years. Cases that had gone unsolved. Cases that had ended in convictions of innocent people, convictions that would now be overturned all these years after the fact.

  The ripples were still going out from the rock in the pond. And they would go on and on and on. The surface would eventually smooth over, but underneath, the changes would remain. The people of Deer Lake would pretend to forget, but they would lock their doors and watch their children and never quite trust in the way they had. She would settle back into her old routine, but she would never feel the same kind of peace. And Brooks . . .

  She had to think this had changed him as well. She didn't want to believe he could involve himself in the lives of the people who had been violated by these crimes and not be touched in some fundamental way. He had come
here to stand on the edge of it and look in, but he had been drawn in time and again. He had saved her life. He couldn't be the same man who had come to Deer Lake two weeks ago, the mercenary looking to score off the suffering of others.

  Or maybe he would go back to Alabama and write his book and make a lot of money and play himself in the movie version because everyone knew he was better looking than Tom Cruise. People would name him the Sexiest Man Alive, and she would never see him again except on the dust jackets of the books she wouldn't buy.

  The events that had taken place, the revelations that had been made, were just what he had come looking for. Sensational, twisted, complex. Erik Evans / Adam Slater's story alone was worthy of a book. What went wrong in a child's mind to turn him into a killer? She had to admit she was curious herself. She wanted to be able to comprehend what had happened, make some kind of sense of it.

  Maybe she would end up picking up one of Brooks's works after all. Maybe there was some value in standing back from a crime and analyzing the why. Maybe there would be some comfort in isolating the madness of what had gone on. Then again, she'd been in the system too long to be naive. She knew too well there was no isolation of evil. It crept out and spread like a killing vine. Even to places like Deer Lake.

  A knock at her door jolted her back to the moment. The excitement of the day had culminated with a press conference at six o'clock. Bill Glendenning had beat a path down from his lofty office in St. Paul to personally commend her in front of the multitude of television cameras—with Rudy right by his side. The air of excitement had lingered, keeping people in the courthouse longer than usual as they hung around to rehash the fantastic details of the day and of Wright's lifetime exploits.

  Cameron stuck his head in the door, eyebrows raised. “You need a lift home?”

  “No, thanks. I'm fine. I'm just winding down here before I have to fight my way through the media hordes. Did you find anything in Slater's phone records yet?”