Presumption of Guilt

  For a moment, he heard nothing, and almost turned to go. Then he heard a voice.

  He pressed his ear to the door and knocked again. He heard the voice again, but couldn’t make out the words.

  He checked the doorknob—unlocked. Slowly, he opened the door.

  The apartment was dark and filthy. He stepped inside and looked around. There was little furniture except for an old torn-up card table in the kitchenette, covered, as was the kitchen counter, by dishes piled on dishes, old crud dried on them. There was a mattress in the far corner of the cluttered room.

  On the mattress was a woman in shorts and a dirty tank top, curled up in a fetal position, shivering. Her hair was long and red, tangled and matted. He stepped toward her. “Tracy?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tracy?” he tried again.

  She still didn’t respond, so he stepped over the clothes lying on the floor, the sandals, the wadded sheets that had been kicked off the mattress. She looked tiny, anorexic, no more than eighty pounds. And she was sick—that was clear. He knelt beside her and reached out to touch her forehead. It was alarmingly hot.

  “Tracy, can you hear me?”

  Her eyes, glassy from the fever, focused on him for a second, and she moaned, “Help me.”

  He wasn’t sure if this was drug withdrawal or a real illness, but either way she needed to be in a hospital. He looked around.

  “Do you have a phone?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  He thought of rushing off to find a pay phone and call an ambulance, but decided that she would get help more quickly if he took her himself. “Tracy, can you get up?”

  She only closed her eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll pick you up. I’m going to carry you out to my car and get you to the hospital, okay?”

  No answer.

  He scooped her up, surprised at how light she was in his arms. She probably hadn’t eaten in days—maybe even weeks. He wondered how long she had been like this.

  He carried her out, stepping back over the reeking garbage, and carefully made his way down the stairs. The girl with the baby was still sitting there. She watched him blankly as he carried Tracy out.

  “Can you tell me how long Tracy’s been sick?” he asked her.

  “Do I look like her mother?” the girl responded.

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, putting her cigarette out on the concrete. “A week maybe.”

  “Was she sick then?”

  “How should I know?”

  Frustrated, he hurried her to his car and laid her in the back seat. She curled back up in a little ball as he jumped into the front, turned on his lights, and drove away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Beth dove for the phone. “Hello?”

  “Beth, it’s Phil.”

  She closed her eyes, bracing herself. “Phil, tell me you’re going to print the article. Please. I don’t think I can handle it—” B “Relax, I’m printing it. It was great, Beth. Thank your anonymous source for me.”

  “Then it’ll be in tomorrow’s paper?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Yes!” she said, punching the air. “Thank you, Phil. You may have saved my life.”

  “I wish you didn’t mean that literally, but I guess you do.”

  “You bet I do. Listen, Phil, I know you’re not going to go for this, but I’d like to give a copy of the story to the police department tonight.”

  “No! That’s too soon!” he said. “That’s our story. I don’t want every other newspaper in the area getting it before we do, and that’s exactly what will happen if you give it to the police. You know better than that.”

  “I don’t care about being scooped anymore, Phil. Jimmy’s little sister is still in that home, and so are a lot of other innocent victims. Not to mention the fact that Bill Brandon is after me. I want him locked up. Now.”

  He moaned. “All right, Beth. Maybe the other papers still won’t get the whole story. Or maybe the police won’t act quickly.”

  “They will. They have to.”

  He hesitated, and Beth knew that all his editor’s instincts told him not to risk losing the scoop. “All right. Do what you have to do.”

  “I will.”

  She hung up and immediately clicked her mouse on the “print” button. Watching as the article slid out of her printer, she picked up the phone to call Nick and tell him the good news, but she only got his machine.

  She grabbed the printed article, folded it in half, and headed for the door. Dodger was right behind her, begging to go out. She picked him up, clipped on his leash, and put him back down. He scurried out the door the second she opened it and made a puddle on her doorstep.

  “Good boy!” she said, petting him. “You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you?” When he was finished, she hurried him back into the house.

  The sun was setting as she headed to the police station, hoping those two detectives, Larry and Tony, would be there. She wanted to make sure this didn’t fall through the cracks.

  Larry was on his way out as she came in, and she grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Detective Millsaps?”

  He looked down at her, and she could tell that he couldn’t place her.

  “Beth Wright. You were at my house last night, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Nick Hutchins’s friend.”

  “Right. Listen, I need to talk to you about something really important. Do you have a minute?”

  He checked his watch. “Yeah, I can give you a few minutes.”

  He led her back through the maze of desks in the noisy room, and offered a chair in front of his desk. Plopping into his own chair, he asked, “So what’s up? Did you hear something in your house again?”

  “Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. And I found the culprit. It was a ten-year-old boy.”

  “A ten-year-old boy?”

  “Yes. And Bill Brandon, the man who runs the home where this little boy lives, is the one who forced him to break into my house so that he could find and destroy any evidence I had against him.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Larry said. “You were working on a story about him.” He pulled a pen out of his drawer and began to take notes. “You’re sure he was behind it?”

  “Positive.” She handed him the article. “The boy is still with us—Nick knows all about it. Don’t you think it’s odd that a child is missing from the St. Clair Children’s Home and no one there has reported it?”

  “Well, yeah . . .”

  “Read the article,” she said, sitting back and crossing her arms. “I’ll wait.”

  She watched as he read the article, skimming at first, then settling in as a wrinkle of concentration and concern gradually deepened across his forehead. When he’d finished, he looked up at her and rubbed his hand across the stubble around his mouth. “That’s some article.”

  “It’s all true.”

  “So let me see if I got all this. Brandon has a crime ring that might explain dozens of break-ins in St. Clair over the last several years. He’s abusing these kids. He probably murdered his sister to keep her quiet. And he ran you off the road—”

  “Tried to,” she cut in.

  “Tried to run you off the road.” He shook his head and looked up as he saw Tony hurrying through. “Hey, Tony. Come here.”

  Tony seemed a little distracted as he headed toward them.

  “You got to read this,” he said. “It’s coming out tomorrow in the St. Clair News.”

  They both watched as Tony read. As his interest in the article increased, he dropped the sport coat he’d been holding by one finger over his shoulder. “This is bad.”

  “Then you’ll do something about it? Tonight?” Beth asked.

  Tony glanced at Larry. “What do you think?”

  “Well, we’ll have to talk to the kid first . . .”

  “Where is he now?” Tony asked.

&
nbsp; “With some friends of mine,” Beth said. “Lynda Barrett and Jake Stevens.”

  “Yeah, we know them. We’ll head over there and interview him right now.”

  “He’s scared to death that something will happen to his sister if an arrest isn’t made soon. I think he has reason to be.”

  “I think you have reason to be, if what you’re saying is true.”

  She stared at them. “Why would I lie?”

  “I’m not suggesting you are,” Larry said. “But we have to have more substantial proof than a newspaper article and the word of a little boy who got caught breaking the law. Kids have been known to lie their way out of tight spots.”

  “He isn’t lying! Check the dents on my car! Check out Bill Brandon’s alibi the night his sister was murdered! You think it was a coincidence that Jimmy broke into my house when I was working on a story about Bill?”

  “We’re going to check it all out, Beth,” Tony said. “We aren’t doubting you. We’re just doing our job. Now, do you think Nick is up to placing all those kids when we arrest Brandon and take the rest of his staff in for questioning?”

  “He’s been ready.”

  “None of us may get any sleep tonight,” Larry said.

  Tony reached for the phone. “I’ll call Sharon and cancel our date tonight.”

  “Yeah, I’d better call Melissa, too. Beth, if I were you, I’d wait at Lynda’s until you hear from us. It’s safe there. We can follow you over right now.”

  “All right,” she said. “But you’ll call me when you’ve got him?”

  “Sure thing. Come on, Tony, we’ve got to get all this done so we can catch Judge Wyatt to get a warrant before he leaves for the day.”

  Tony shrugged on his blazer to conceal his gun. “He’s the presiding judge in town,” he told her. “This is worth going straight to the top.”

  As they hurried out ahead of her, she felt a huge weight drop from her shoulders. At last, her case was in good hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nick knew all of the emergency room doctors and nurses, because he was called here frequently when injuries to youngsters suggested the possibility of child abuse. As soon as he’d brought Tracy in and told them how he’d found her, they’d rushed her back, intent on finding the reason for her illness. She was in good hands.

  While he waited, he went to the pay phone and tried to call Beth. Her machine answered, so he left a message, hung up, and dialed his own number. Beth had left a message that she had gotten approval from the paper, that the story would be out tomorrow, and that she was giving it to the police so they could arrest Bill Brandon tonight.

  He grinned and hung up, then dropped into a chair. Part of him wanted to relax, but the other part knew that he needed to be at the office finding qualified foster parents to stay with the kids tonight. He had already thought this through and decided that, instead of scattering them all over the state in private homes, it would be better, at least for the next few days, to get couples to come replace SCCH’s employees so the children could stay where they were. That would be less traumatic for the kids, and less work for Sheila and him.

  The emergency room physician, a guy he’d played racquetball with a few times, came out and scanned the faces in the waiting room, spotted Nick, and came to take the chair at right angles to his.

  “So what is it?” Nick asked. “Drugs?”

  “Actually, no. No drugs in her bloodstream at all. What your friend has is probably the worst case of double pneumonia I’ve ever seen.”

  “Pneumonia? This time of year?”

  “Yeah. She’s in bad shape, Nick. She may not pull through.We’re admitting her into intensive care right now. Can you fill out the paperwork? Give us her insurance company, that sort of thing?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about her other than her name. And I seriously doubt that she has insurance. Judging from the place she lives, I’d say she’s indigent. That’s why I brought her here.”

  It was a charity hospital, so he had known that they wouldn’t turn her away.

  “All right. We’ll take care of things,” the doctor said. “Do you know if she has any next of kin?”

  He thought of Jimmy and Lisa. “She has two kids that were taken away from her. They’re seven and ten.”

  “Any adults?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  The doctor suddenly looked very tired. “I’ll level with you, Nick. If you hadn’t brought her in here when you did, that girl wouldn’t have lasted through the night. I hate to see a person that near death, without a person in the world who cares about her.”

  Nick rubbed his weary eyes. “Yeah, me too.”

  The doctor slapped his knee and got up. “We’ve got her on an IV, and we’re starting a round of serious antibiotics. ICU doesn’t allow nonfamily members to visit, but I’ll pull some strings if you want to come back and see her tonight.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks for bringing her in, man.”

  Nick checked his watch as he headed out of the emergency room. He wondered if Bill Brandon had been arrested yet—and if Beth was safe.

  Walking out into the night, he looked up at the stars spread by the millions across the sky like a paint-spattered canopy. God had been with him today. “Thank you,” he whispered, grateful that the Holy Spirit had prompted him to find Tracy, just in the nick of time. There must have been a reason.

  It wasn’t all hopeless. There was a plan. There were times when Nick did act as an angel to a dying world. That realization gave him the energy to keep going tonight.

  And he knew he wasn’t working alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I can’t give you a warrant for Bill Brandon’s arrest.” Judge Wyatt said the words with such finality as he packed his briefcase that Tony and Larry only stared at him.

  “Excuse me, Judge, but did you say you can’t? ”

  Tony asked. I “No, I can’t! Not on such outlandish charges with absolutely nothing to support them.”

  Larry touched Tony’s arm to quiet him, and tried again. “Judge, maybe we didn’t make ourselves clear. There’s the account given by the boy from the home who was caught breaking into this reporter’s house. We just talked to him ourselves. The reporter has another source who used to live in Brandon’s home, who corroborated that story. And Marlene Brandon, Bill Brandon’s sister, was murdered right after she talked to the reporter. We’ve been in touch with the Tampa PD, and the only ones backing up Brandon’s alibi are his employees, who could also be involved.”

  “I read the article, gentlemen,” the elderly judge said. “But I’m not issuing a warrant for anybody’s arrest based on some trumped-up charges by a newspaper that won’t print anything unless it’s painted yellow!”

  “Your honor,” Tony tried, hoping a little more respect might calm things a bit, “this isn’t yellow journalism. This article matches the facts we do have. We have a lot of unexplained break-ins. Kids have been seen in some of the areas before or after a crime was committed. We have small unidentifiable fingerprints at the scene of some of these crimes. We didn’t pursue that angle very hard in our previous investigations of the robberies because it seemed so farfetched. But if this is a professional crime ring—”

  “Then where are they keeping the stolen goods?” the judge demanded. “Where are they selling it? Have you gotten down to that, yet?”

  “Well, no, not yet. But—”

  “Then how do you expect me to give you a warrant for this man’s arrest? This is pretty shoddy police work, gentlemen. And I’m not going to wind up with egg on my face when it comes out that a decent, upstanding citizen who provides a good home to so many children was wrongly arrested because of some cockamamie story by an overzealous reporter trying to make a name for herself! Until you come up with something I can see, something other than a kid with a strong imagination who’s trying to get himself out of trouble, don’t waste my time wit
h this again.”

  “Judge, you can’t be serious—”

  “Good-bye, detectives,” he said, grabbing up his briefcase and ushering them out. “I have a meeting in twenty minutes, and I don’t intend to be late.”

  “Judge Wyatt, you’re acting irresponsibly here!” Tony cried.

  The judge swung around. “What did you say?”

  Tony’s face was red. “I said, you’re acting irresponsibly. Children’s lives are at stake, for Pete’s sake.”

  “If you don’t get off these premises in the next three seconds, detectives, I’ll call my bailiff and have you thrown into jail yourselves.” Tony and Larry stood there, stunned, as the judge headed out of the office without another word.

  “Great going,” Larry bit out. “He’s right. We shouldn’t have been in such a hurry. We should have gotten more evidence before we came here.”

  “Then let’s go get it now,” Tony said. “Time is running out for those kids.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Bill Brandon thanked his source for the tip, hung up his phone, and stared down at his desk for a moment. So the article was scheduled to come out in tomorrow’s newspaper. Beth Sullivan—alias Beth Wright, he thought with amusement—actually thought she was B going to expose him. But she was so wrong.

  He picked up the phone again and dialed the extension for Cottage B. One of the children answered. “Put Stella on the phone,” he ordered. He waited a few seconds, then the housemother answered.

  “Stella, send the team over for me, pronto. We have a job to do. Oh, and include Lisa Westin.”

  He went to the closet and pulled the rolled-up blueprints off the top shelf. There was one for City Hall, one for the Police Station, one for the courthouse, one for the St. Clair First National Bank . . . He pulled them out one by one, until he came to the one for the building housing the St. Clair News. He put the others back carefully, then went to his desk and opened the blueprint, spreading it out across his desk.

  There it was: all of the rooms at the St. Clair News, carefully labeled with their purposes and the machinery housed there. His sources were nothing if not thorough.