Guilty as Sin (58 page)

The admission was earnest, the apology sincere. Ellen's wariness melted.

"I'm surprised you wanted to bother," she said.

"Why?" he asked, moving closer with just a shift of his weight. He caught a strand of her hair over his fingers and brushed it back behind her ear, his fingertips skimming the soft skin there. "Because I didn't get what I wanted last night? I don't give up that easily."

"I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news."

"Then maybe I should sweeten the deal. It comes complete, with cupcakes, fried chicken, and information."

"Information?"

"Supper? It's a package deal, counselor. You gotta eat the chicken to get the scoop."

Ellen's stomach made the decision for her. The egg-salad sandwich she'd pulled out of the vending machine in the cafeteria for supper had ended up in the trash, and lunch had been a hastily grabbed cup of peach yogurt h»«rs before. The aromas escaping the basket were too much for her.

She led the way to her office, taking her place behind her desk. They spread the containers of food out on the blotter. Crispy fried chicken, cole slaw, french fries, buttery biscuits, the promised cupcakes.

"Are you sure you're not trying to kill me?" she said. "This looks like death by cholesterol."

"It's my Southern-fried Lawyer, Night Before a Big Case special. I'm from Alabama, you know. We have a strong belief in the powers of grease. Chow down."

Ellen stabbed her plastic fork into a chicken breast and tore a succulent piece of white meat free. "So what's this hot information?"

"I heard about the phone call to Dustin Holloman's mother," Jay said, wandering to the bookcase to peruse the compact disks. "I heard it came this afternoon around four-fifteen."

"Yes. The BCA guys traced it to Rochester. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't beat it down there with the thundering herd."

"It's another snipe hunt."

"Another chapter. 'The Pathetic Desperation of the Futile Search.' "

He ignored the gibe. "I was over at Harris College having a little chat with Professor Priest at about two, two-thirty. He hustled me out, told me he had a class to prepare for."

"He is a teacher."

He selected a Philip Aaberg CD and loaded it into the player. New Age piano music with a subtle western edge drifted from the small speakers. "So, according to the main office, he didn't have another class until seven tonight. Now, maybe he just doesn't appreciate my unique brand of southern charm, but that doesn't explain why he was driving out the campus gates when I was coming out of Cray Hall at two-fifty."

"Why were you leaving the building after him if he threw you out of his office?"

"I made a detour past Garrett Wright's office, where the lovely but loony Mrs. Wright was trying to find some books her husband had asked her to stop for."

Ellen stilled. "What books?"

"She didn't say, but I can't imagine there was anything left that might have been incriminating in any way. The cops had tossed that place like a Caesar salad."

"What did she have to say?"

"That her husband shouldn't be on trial, that this is all a big mistake. She said Garrett wouldn't steal a child, because he didn't like children, that he hadn't liked being a child. I asked her if she had known him as a child, but she didn't answer me that, either. That little gal is one blade shy of a sharp edge, if you ask me."

Her appetite suddenly on hold, Ellen sat back in her chair. "According to what we know, Karen and Wright met in college."

"So he told her he had a rotten childhood. Confession is part of courtship, isn't it?"

"I wonder what else he might have confessed to her."

"You'll never know, counselor. A wife can't be compelled to testify against her husband."

"No. She's on Costello's list to testify on behalf of Wright. Of course, she's hardly a credible witness. Not that that will stop Tony from trying to get some mileage out of her," she grumbled. "So you're leaving Cray Hall and you see Priest driving away. He could have gone anywhere. He could have gone to the dry cleaner's. He could have gone home."

"But he didn't."

"You followed him?"

"All the way to the interstate. He turned south."

Toward Rochester, an hour away. Ellen felt her pulse pick up a beat. If Priest was Wright's accomplice, would he have been so reckless as to leave in interview with a prominent crime writer in order to drive to the site of the next move in his sick game? Did he feel that invulnerable?

"Something else funny about my little visit," he said. "I talked to a professor at Penn State who used to know Priest and Wright, who told me they were all kids in good old Mishawaka. They were different ages, from different parts of town. He didn't know either of them back then, but he thought it was quite a remarkable coincidence that they had all ended up it Penn State. When I mentioned it to Priest, he flat out denied it. Said he grew up in Chicago."

"Why would he lie about that? It's easy enough to check out through school records."

"I don't know. Anyway, when I heard about the call to Mrs. Holloman," he went on, "I got hold of Agent Wilhelm and told him. I figured you'd want to know, too, and I wasn't going to count on his getting back to you tonight."

"Yeah, so what's in it for you?" she asked, her gaze sharp on him.

"Nothing."

Ellen gave him a speculative look as she raised her fork. "You're turning into a regular good guy, Brooks. You'd better look out, you'll ruin your reputation."

She had said it before, Ellen thought, that for someone who claimed to be a mere observer, he had a hard time grasping the concept. More often than not his involvement had struck her as being self-serving, but what she saw in his face now, in the amber glow of her desk lamp, looked an awful lot like honesty. As if he cared. And it hurt him to care.

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 er wrist. "You trust me, Ellen?" he whispered, drawing her up from her lair.

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 motions kindred spirits of his.

When he lifted his head a fraction, the need in his eyes took her breath way. 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 lat the other team was playing with a stacked deck.