The Second Lie (22 page)

Sam called again. Told me about the checking around she'd done over the weekend with no further developments.

She'd been keeping Kyle's place under periodic surveillance and was going to be speaking with some of his neighbors that day.

And she'd subpoenaed his bank records, which she'd be going through as soon as she had them. Sam's dad and the local judge had gone to school together. He generally gave her what she asked for. And she could trust him not to mention her every move to the sheriff. He believed in her.

When I asked, she said that she hadn't found anything further to implicate him. I could tell she was missing her friend.

But I couldn't do anything to help her trust him again. That would be up to him. If it could happen at all.

Trust, once betrayed...

And then Sam told me about Mac, the tier-three pedophile. And that she'd found nothing to link him to Maggie, or even to any current deviant sexual behavior. But she'd be keeping an eye on him. There were others on her list. She was still checking. She'd still be watching Maggie.

Just the thought of a tier-three sex offender setting his sights on Maggie--a man who lived less than a mile from her--sent cold chills through my body.

I wasn't waiting around to hear more. Telling Sam to keep in touch, I rang off and called Maggie's cell phone and told the girl I had to see her. That afternoon. I told her that it had to do with Mac. I knew that would get her to respond. Maybe I was skirting propriety by not calling Maggie's mother first. But the woman had asked me to help her with her child's burgeoning sexuality.

And one thing I knew for certain. Maggie hadn't suddenly changed the way she dressed out of a desire to please her mother.

Something else was going on.

If there was even a slight chance that a registered offender was involved, I had to talk to Maggie.

Laws, procedure, meant nothing to me if a child was in danger.

Let Lori Winston sue me.

Just as her mother had reported, Maggie hardly resembled the sophisticated teenager who'd been in my office the week before. In nondescript jeans, striped sweater and tennis shoes, with her hair back in a clip, she could have passed for twelve.

"What's up?" the high school freshman asked, plopping down on what had become her end of the couch.

"I have some questions and I need complete and total honesty from you." There was no smile on my face. Or in my voice. I had a pen in one hand, and a photograph in the other, as I joined her.

I'd put on the jacket to my maroon suit, freshened up the little bit of makeup I wore and tamed down my blond mane. I couldn't be Maggie's friend that day. Her confidante.

I had to be the enforcer.

I did all I could to make sure my voice and expression followed suit.

"Okaayy." The girl drew out the word, her gaze darting from my hands back to my face. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm not sure, yet."

"You're scaring me."

Forthright was the only way to play this one.
"I'm scared."

"Of what?"

I turned around the picture of Malcolm Hardy that I'd printed off the Internet list of Ohio sex offenders. "Do you know this man?"

She leaned in. Looked closely, and then, with an expression that showed puzzlement, not recognition, said, "No. I don't think I've ever seen him before. Who is he?"

I didn't answer right away. I gave her a couple of minutes.

"Is he someone my mother knows?" Maggie was frowning. Looking a bit frightened, but still not engaged with the picture.

"I'm dead serious here, Maggie. You're sure you haven't seen him recently?"

"Completely. Why? What did he do?" She wrapped her arms around her middle, rubbing her hands against her elbows. "What does this have to do with me?"

"This isn't your Mac?"

Eyes huge, Maggie sat back. "Oh, my gosh! No! Mac's nothing like that. He's...he's...you know... He wears suits and..." And then, as though realizing how much information she was giving me, she was silent.

But I had my answer. At least on this one.

Folding the sheet of paper in half, I sent up a prayer of thanks.

"Who is that guy?" Maggie asked again.

I debated. The child wasn't involved with Malcolm Hardy. But she was seeing someone, not just talking to him on the Internet. She knew he wore suits.

"He's a registered sex offender who lives a mile from you."

"Eew." Mouth open, face skewed with a combination of fright and aversion, Maggie glanced toward the folded page. "Why would you think I'd have anything to do with him?" And then, as though ramifications were raining down on her, said, "Or did someone see him around my house? Around me?" Her voice rose.

"No." I was quick to reassure her, yet glad that she was beginning to see the possible dangers. "He isn't allowed anywhere near kids and appears to be adhering strictly to the requirements of his release. But you told me your guy's name is Mac and I couldn't take any chances."

Nodding, Maggie seemed to be okay with that.

"So now we need to talk about this man, Maggie."

"What about him?"

"Just the fact that he exists. I need to know how old he is."

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"Maggie, I'm not fooling around here."

"I really don't know."

"Guess."

"Twenty-five. Thirty, maybe."

I waited.

"Okay, probably more than thirty. He seems older than my mom and she's thirty."

"Older how?"

"Like he knows stuff that she doesn't know."

Which could merely mean that he was more educated.

"Do you know what he does for a living?"

"Not really. Just that it's business. He's always dressed nice."

"So you see him a lot?"

"No, hardly at all." And then. "This stuff that I tell you. It's confidential, right? Because I'm not saying anything else if it isn't."

"Why? Is something wrong with this man? Is there something you're hiding?"

"No! I just don't want trouble, that's all. There's nothing wrong. Nothing happening. And I don't want to get anyone in trouble just because I told you I kinda, you know, thought someone was hot."

"If a thirty-year-old man is romantically involved with a fourteen-year-old girl, there is something wrong, Maggie. It's against the law. Period."

"He's not romantically involved."

"That's not what you said last time we spoke."

"I said he likes me. That's all. He's not... There's nothing, you know, physical or anything..."

"He's never touched you? Kissed you?"

"No! Mac wouldn't do that. I've run into him a couple of times in the park, is all. We say hello. That's it."

Pen in hand, I was shaking too much to write. I believed the girl.

Maggie sounded far too offended to be lying to me.

But I was listening to a fourteen-year-old's perspective. What about the man? Did he know Maggie had a crush on him?

Was he doing anything to avert the situation?

Or was he a pedophile creep who was wooing a vulnerable and naive young girl?

"He's never asked you to do anything physical for him?"

"He asked me to dress more conservatively," Maggie said, her tone as defensive as the look on her face. "He says girls that wear so much makeup and tight clothes are sending out the wrong signals. He says that I need to protect myself so that I'm not taken advantage of."

Things I should have told her when I saw her last. This mystery man, this Mac, was keeping Maggie safer than we were.

"And you're sure he didn't make any advances."

"Mac isn't like that. I'm telling you. If he did like me that way, he'd wait until I was older. He doesn't break laws."

"You sound sure about that."

"I am sure."

We'd overreacted.

"So, these feelings you were telling me about having, the kind of attraction you felt, the being curious about sex...they were all just you."

"Yeah. That's what we were talking about, right? Me?"

Out of the mouths of babes. And teenagers.

"Do you have a crush on Mac?"

"Yeah." Maggie sounded relieved, as though now that she figured we understood each other, she could speak freely.

"So how about if you call him and ask him to meet you in the park. Let me meet him."

"I don't have his number. Heck, I don't even know his last name."

"Or what kind of car he drives?"

"Nope."

Then she hadn't been in it.

So maybe it was just as Maggie said. A crush.

A schoolgirl crush. We'd all been expending valuable hours investigating a schoolgirl crush.

Wait until Sam got a load of this one. She'd really be after me to pay up with the sleeping-pill prescription.

Maybe I was the one who should be worried about obsessing.

Especially considering the fact that I wasn't going to tell Sam. Not yet. I wasn't ready to call off the watch.

19

S
am had spent the day driving county roads, pointing a speed gun, watching for unusual traffic or activity on farming property and thinking about the Mac names she had yet to investigate. She'd also been thinking about the local pharmacy records she'd obtained a warrant for, and was now perusing one by one on her own time, looking for suspicious purchases of pseudoephedrine drugs. Or the kind of plastic tubing used for IV drips. She was also thinking about the girl who'd approached Nicole at school. And how to find her.

About tennis clubs and drugs and pedophiles.

And Kyle. Whoever had been dumping chemicals on his property had stopped.

Chuck and Todd Williams had checked every inch of his land.

But there were neighboring farms. She had to speak to James and Millie and some of the others. If Kyle wasn't dumping on his own land, surely a neighbor had noticed something on the property.

The same went for the missing chemicals. Hard to believe someone had managed to steal that much hazardous material without being seen.

She just couldn't figure how someone could get into Kyle's locked barn without alerting Kyle or Zodiac.

She'd stopped for lunch with Pierce and her mother and had used up what extra energy she had chatting about the weather and local football scores, not leaving a breath for them to jump in and ask a single question about her career.

She was tired of her family thinking she was still a child, needing their protection. Tired of them making her feel as though she couldn't think clearly, do her job thoroughly. Tired of having babysitters.

Thirty-three was a little old to still be requiring child care.

By Monday evening all she could think about was Arabica beans and milk and cinnamon, with a touch of nutmeg. And a bagel laden with fresh vegetables.

If she had the vegetables.

Coffee was the most important part of the menu.

She was using decaffeinated beans after five these days.

Anything to get some sleep.

Exchanging her uniform for the long white terry robe her mother had bought her for Christmas, she stretched out on the couch in front of an
I Love Lucy
rerun as soon as dinner was done. At least she was resting. And Lucy could sometimes hold her attention all the way through to commercial break.

Unless her scanner, which was always on, bleeped with something important. Or her phone rang.

Or headlights shone through her front window as they did just now. Living in a trailer park meant that cars went by frequently. The lights only shone in her bay window when someone was pulling onto her lot.

Not dressed for company, Sam peeked through the partially closed blinds and didn't bother running for clothes when she recognized Kyle's truck.

Undressed with Kyle. Exactly what she'd have ordered up as a stress reliever.

"Hey," she said, standing there with the door already open by the time Kyle climbed the steps onto her porch.

She saw his gaze take in the gap at the front of her robe, showing more cleavage than anyone but Kyle was allowed to see. And then he looked away.

Hmmm.

"Come on in."

He did. And stood, hands in his pockets, just inside the door. Like he didn't know what to do with himself.

It hadn't been that long since he'd been there. Six weeks, maybe.

"Take off your jacket." The temperature had dropped down to the fifties, but was expected to go back up to near seventy before winter finally set in.

Throwing his denim jacket on the back of her rocker, Kyle settled on an end of the couch, sitting upright, his hands on his knees.

"Can I get you some coffee?"

"No, thanks."

"A beer?"

"No, I'm good."

"You been in town?" Maybe he'd already had his two-beer driving limit.

"No. I came in the back way."

"James and Millie with Grandpa?"

He shook his head. "Clara's there tonight. Monitoring his blood pressure every hour."

"His usual quarterly check?"

Kyle shrugged, and Sam took the answer as a yes.

She eased back on the couch, not quite at the other end, but not too close to Kyle, either, and tucked her feet up underneath her robe.

On the TV, Lucy was trying to sell Vitameatavegamin. Of all the episodes, this one was Sam's favorite.

"It's so tasty, too!"

Sam laughed out loud at Lucy's loud and perky sales pitch.

"Why didn't you ever tell me about your mother?"

She blinked. Looked over at Kyle. If he wanted to have an attitude because she'd had to search his place, that was fine.

But he'd better not talk to her in that accusatory tone, trying to make her feel guilty for withholding information.

She wasn't the one who'd done that.

"What about my mother?" she asked, watching Lucy continue shooting a commercial, taking sips of the magic potion she was trying to sell, unaware that she was getting drunker by the minute.

Pretty soon she'd be asking the audience if they "popped out at parties."

"Her rape."

Not a Lucy topic. Not even close.

And not something that anyone needed to know about.