Guilty as Sin Read Online Free PDF Page B

every tool they had and had found nothing. Not a hair, not a thread from a mitten, not a thing belonging to Josh. Olie had sworn his innocence to the very end, scrawling it on the wall of his cell in blood.
     
    Cutting through the squad room of the police department, where desks were piled with paperwork and phones rang without cease, Ellen headed for Holt's office. The door to his outer office stood open, but Ellen still paused in the hall and rapped her knuckles on the door frame before sticking her head in. Mitch's administrative assistant, Natalie Bryant, swung around from her filing cabinets with a scowl on her round mahogany face and thunder in the dark eyes behind her red-framed glasses, ready to take a bite out of the interloper. The look relaxed upon recognition to show the same kind of weariness Ellen was feeling.
     
    "Girl, tell me you're going to crack that man like the cockroach he is. I'd pay money to see it," she said, propping a fist on one well-rounded hip.
     
    "I'll do my best," Ellen promised.
     
    "I'd like to do my best all over his head."
     
    "Is Mitch in?"
     
    "He figured you'd drop by. Go on in." "Thanks."
     
    Deer Lake 's police chief sat behind his desk looking the way Ellen imagined Harrison Ford would look after a week-long bender: brown eyes bloodshot and underlined with dark circles, lean cheeks shadowed with stubble. He had jerked loose the knot in his tie and combed his hair with his fingers, leaving tufts standing up here and there.
     
    "Well, it's official," she said. "I have been duly appointed to slay the dragon."
     
    "Good."
     
    His response held more confidence than she could muster at the moment. Ellen glanced around the office. There was no ego wall laden with the plaques and commendations he had garnered in his years as a cop, though she knew there were many. He had been a top detective with the Miami force for a dozen years, coming to Deer Lake after the death of his wife and young son in a convenience-store holdup. He had chosen Deer Lake as a sanctuary in a truer sense than she had.
     
    "I've had my little tete-a-tete with Wright and his lawyer. Basically told him to confess or else. For all the good that will do."
     
    "Oh, for the days of rubber truncheons . . ."
     
    "Yeah," she drawled. "Human rights can be such a drag."
     
    "He doesn't qualify as human in my book." He brightened with sarcastic false hope. "Hey, a loophole! That might be all the defense I'd need."
     
    "I'm going to try to talk to Wright's wife tonight," Ellen said. "She's still at the Fontaine?"
     
    "Yeah. The BCA guys were still going over the house today. We've got Karen under twenty-four-hour surveillance, in case she was involved. I don't think she had a clue what her husband was doing. She's not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, to begin with. Now she's so distraught, she can barely function. I didn't get anywhere with her, but you might have better luck woman-to-woman."
     
    "Let's hope."
     
    She could hear the phone ringing in the outer office, but no calls were being put through to Mitch. Natalie was running interference for him. The last two weeks had been hell on him. As Deer Lake 's chief and the only detective on the thirty-man force, he had shouldered the burden of the search for Josh and an investigation that ran virtually around the clock. His professional and personal lives had been under constant scrutiny by the press.
     
    "I spoke with Megan this afternoon," she said as he rose and came around the end of the desk to see her to the door. "She's got a rough road ahead of her."
     
    "Yeah." He tried to put on a game expression, but it hung a little crooked, letting the worry peek through. "But she's a tough cookie. She'll gut it out."
     
    "And you'll be there to help her."
     
    "If I have anything to say about it."
     
    "She's lucky to have you. You're a good guy, Mitch."
     
    "Yeah, that's me. Last of the good guys."
     
    "Don't say that. I'd like to think there's a couple left