Guilty as Sin (9 page)

"Some support would be nice!"

"No! No!" Josh mumbled, kicking at the covers.

Dr. Ulrich took another step. "Come on, Paul. Why don't you go down to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee? I'll join you in a few minutes and fill you in on the examination."

"He doesn't have any reason to be afraid of me!"

"Paul, for God's sake, please," Hannah pleaded.

"Fine," he muttered. "Hell of a homecoming."

Tom McCoy watched from down the hall as Paul Kirkwood stormed into and out of his son's hospital room. His training dictated he try to intervene and smooth things over between family members. His training didn't apply anymore. Not here. Not between Hannah and Paul.

He had tried. Paul resented his attempts, considered it interference rather than help. In the process, Tom's feelings toward Paul had become something less than Christian. It was difficult for him to find understanding in his heart for a man who had married a jewel and treated her like dirt. Paul Kirkwood had so much and was so blind to it—two beautiful children, a comfortable home, a stable career. Hannah.

Therein lay the heart of the problem. Hannah.

Glad for the shadows in the hall, Tom leaned back against the wall and stared up at heaven. He couldn't see it, of course. There was too much in the way—physically and metaphorically.

Hannah had turned to him, the one person she thought she could trust absolutely—her priest. And her priest had committed a cardinal sin. He couldn't for the life of him admit that what he had done was wrong. He hadn't broken any vows. He had kept silent. Locked tight in his heart was the fact that he had fallen in love with Hannah Garrison.

"I could use a little help here, Lord," he murmured. But as he looked up, all he could see was a faint brown stain in the ceiling where a water pipe had once sprung a leak.

With a weary sigh he walked down the hall to Josh's room and cracked the door open a few inches. A lamp on the far side of the bed washed the room in soft topaz. Josh lay curled on his side with his thumb in his mouth, asleep. Hannah lay behind him, his small body tucked back against hers, her arm around him. She looked like an angel who had tumbled to earth, tendrils of wavy golden hair escaping their band to fall against her cheek.

The picture brought a bittersweet ache. He started to turn away from it, then Hannah opened her eyes and looked right at him. And he could no more walk away than he could stop his heart from beating.

"I just wanted to check on you two before I left," he whispered, slipping into the room. "It looks like Josh is out cold."

"The wonders of modern sedatives," Hannah murmured, raising herself on her elbow.

"How are you doing?"

"I've got Josh back. That's all that matters."

"Paul didn't stay."

Careful not to disturb Josh, she sat up and tucked her legs beneath her. "Josh didn't want him here. He acted as if ... as if he were afraid."

The words had the bitter taste of blasphemy, as if she were somehow betraying Paul by speaking them, even though they were nothing less than the truth.

"God, I hate Garrett Wright for what he's done to us," she admitted. "He did more than take our child. Whatever problems Paul and I had before all this, at least we trusted each other. When Josh reacted to him tonight, I looked at Paul like I'd never seen him before, like I actually believed he could have ... I don't," she whispered, even as the doubts scrolled through her mind—the lies about the van, the times he had been gone, his answering machine at the office picking up when he should have been there.

Father Tom sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to take her hand. She grabbed hold and hung on tighter than she meant to, wishing with all her heart he would put his arms around her and just hold her for a while. The longing that rose in her soul was for comfort and friendship and compassion. Things Tom McCoy would offer freely with no strings attached. He would never suspect her feelings had grown deeper; she would never tell him. She wouldn't risk losing what they had by asking for more than he could give her.

"Don't add more guilt to the burden, Hannah," he said softly.

She jerked her head up and looked at him, her pulse quickening at the absurd idea that he had somehow read her thoughts.

"You can't control a reaction like that. Who knows why Josh reacted badly to his father? He's frightened and confused. We don't know what he's been through. We don't know what Wright might have planted in his mind. Josh responded and you reacted to that. You're allowed; you're his mother."

"And Paul is his father. He would no more hurt Josh than he would—" Hurt me. Which he had done again and again; hurt her in ways that didn't leave obvious bruises or scars. "He wouldn't hurt Josh."

"I'm sure he wouldn't."

Tom raised his other hand and brushed a stray tear from beneath her eye. His fingertips threaded into the golden silk of her hair, and she turned her face to rest her cheek against the cool of his palm for just a moment. She held her breath, as if she could hold the moment within it.

"Get some sleep," he whispered, fighting the urge to lean down and press a kiss to her forehead or her lips. Her hand was still in his. He gave it a squeeze. She answered it back. "We'll talk tomorrow."

"Thanks for coming tonight. You've gone above and beyond the call through all of this."

"No," he said. "You deserve a lot more than what you've been given." And he wished like hell he could have been the man to give it to her, but he couldn't be—or so he was told. And so he turned and walked away.

And Hannah lay back down beside her child, listening to the rhythm of his breathing and wishing for things that could never be.

CHAPTER 5

There was no way of containing the news that Josh Kirkwood had been returned. The hospital staff told friends, who told other friends who worked nights and stopped into the Big Steer truck stop out on the interstate for coffee and pie. The Big Steer served as restaurant to the Super 8 motel, where four out of five rooms were occupied by reporters.

They were lying in wait like a pack of wolves when Ellen pulled into the City Center lot at five to seven. She promised to give them something later and hurried into the building, hanging a left into the law-enforcement center.

They met in a conference room that had been dubbed The War Room in the first hours of the investigation into Josh's kidnapping. A time line was taped to one long wall to keep track of everything that had happened pertaining to the case. From a fat red main artery, numerous tributaries branched out in various colors of ink. The notes that had been left by the kidnapper to taunt them were emblazoned across a white melamine message board in Mitch Holt's bold, slanted handwriting. A large cork bulletin board was covered with a map of Minnesota and one of the five-county area. The maps were bristling with pins that marked search areas.

Ellen poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table next to Cameron. Wilhelm sat across from her, nursing the same lack-of-sleep hangover she was fighting. Sheriff Steiger had claimed the chair at the head of the table, a minor power play in an ongoing pissing contest with Mitch. Steiger was fifty, lean and tough with a narrow face and a complexion like old leather. Adhesive tape across his nose suggested he had lost a battle in the war for supremacy. The looks the two traded were stony.

As much as she disliked Steiger for the sexist jerk he was, Ellen took no pleasure in the seething enmity between the two men. A successful investigation, an investigation that would lead to a conviction, required teamwork and open lines of communication between all team members.

Mitch paced along the time line as he filled them in on Josh's exam and what had transpired later in Josh's room.

"So Paul Kirkwood is still a suspect," Wilhelm declared.

"Suspect is too strong a word," Mitch said. "Josh's reaction could have been caused by any number of reasons other than guilt on Paul's part. It could have been that Paul shares some physical characteristics with Wright. Or maybe it was the way Paul approached him or something in the tone of his voice."

"We have to tread lightly here," Ellen cautioned. "Mr. Kirkwood is already hypersensitive to the attention he's gotten. He feels victimized by the crime and by the police. If we mishandle this and he's completely innocent, we're going to be looking at lawsuits."

"I'm seeing him this morning," Mitch said. "I'll be the soul of diplomacy."

"I want in on that," Wilhelm said.

"Any progress on finding the location Wright held Megan?" Ellen asked.

"We know it wasn't his own house," Wilhelm said, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. "We know it wasn't Christopher Priest's house, even though the initial attack took place in Priest's yard. Wright drove her somewhere."

"We're doing a records search in a fifty-mile radius," Steiger interjected. "Trying to find out if Wright owns any other property in the area."

"He could own it under another name or under a dummy business name," Cameron suggested bleakly. "Or the house could belong to his accomplice, whoever that might be."

"Well, we know now it couldn't have been Olie Swain," Mitch said. "And Karen Wright was locked up tight in the Fontaine last night."

Wilhelm raised his eyebrows. "But Paul Kirkwood was out driving around town in the middle of the night."

"Maybe we should be looking for connections between Kirkwood and Wright," Cameron said, uncapping a fountain pen and jotting a note on his legal pad.

Mitch looked unhappy at the suggestion. "What motive could cause Paul to conspire with Garrett Wright to steal his own son? That's just rucking bizarre."

"World's full of perverts and kooks, Holt," Steiger commented, chewing on a toothpick. "You ought to know that."

The tension in the room thickened like the air before a lightning strike.

"What about that student of Wright's?" Ellen prompted, steering the conversation back on track. "Todd Childs?"

"We're checking him out, too," Steiger grumbled. "Goddamn pothead."

"And Priest?"

"Him too."

"Priest passed a polygraph," Mitch reminded them. "He was in St. Peter Saturday. We've confirmed he spent the night in a motel because of the storm. It looks like Wright sent Megan to Priest's place knowing the professor wouldn't be home. The isolated location made it the perfect spot for an attack."

"What about the third professor involved with the Sci-Fi Cowboys?" Cameron asked.

"Phil Pickard," Mitch said. "He's on a year-long sabbatical in France."

"Wright claims he was working in the Cray building at Harris at the ime Josh was abducted," Ellen said. "If we could find someone who saw him leave the building before Josh was taken—"

"Trouble is, there was hardly anyone on campus because of winter break," Mitch said. "And there's the possibility that the accomplice picked Josh up. Wright may well have been right where he says he was."

"Agent Wilhelm, I'm assuming you've got someone digging into Wright's past?" Ellen said.

He nodded and rubbed his eyes like a sleepy child.

"And we can hope to hear from the evidence techs as soon as they find anything in the stuff they confiscated from Wright's home?"

"Yes."

Ellen checked her watch and rose, fighting off a yawn herself. "I want to be the first to know."

"What about Stovich?" Steiger scowled at the prospect of having to report to a mere woman or a second-in-command or both.

She looked him square in the eye. "This is my case, Sheriff. Report to me," she said, snapping the latches on her briefcase. "Thanks, gentlemen. We're out of here. We've got a bond hearing to prepare for."

The pack had grown to a mob. Ellen made them follow her all the way to the courthouse and gave them their sound bite on the front steps with the grand facade of justice looming up behind her.

"We're overjoyed at Josh's return. This is the conclusion everyone was praying for."

"How will this affect the prosecution's case against Garrett Wright?"

"Not at all. The evidence against Dr. Wright is more than sufficient. All this shows us is that he wasn't acting alone, a suspicion we harbored all along."