Free Night Sins by Tami Hoag Page B

Olie.
    “We're trying to find Josh Kirkwood,” Mitch said, his tone very matter-of-fact. “He plays on John Olsen's Squirts team. You know him?”
    Olie shrugged. “Sure.”
    He offered nothing else. He asked no questions. He glanced down at his Ragg wool half-gloves and smoothed his right hand over his left. Typical Olie, Mitch thought. The guy possessed no social graces to speak of, never had much to say, and never said anything without prompting. An odd duck, but there was no law against that. All he seemed to want in life was to do his job and be left alone with his books.
    From his position in the doorway Mitch could see Olie and the whole room without moving his eyes. An old green card table with a ripped top and a paint-splattered wooden straight chair took up most of the floor space. On top of and beneath the table were piles of outdated used textbooks. Computer science, psychology, English literature—the books ran the gamut.
    “Josh's mom was late coming to get him,” Mitch went on. “When she got here he was gone. Did you see him leave with anyone?”
    “No.” Olie ducked his head. “I was busy. Had to run the Zamboni before Figure Skating Club.” His speech was a kind of linguistic shorthand, pared down to the bare essentials, just enough to make his point, not enough to encourage conversation. He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and waited and sweat some more.
    “Did you take a call around five-fifteen, five-thirty from someone at the hospital saying Dr. Garrison would be late?” Megan asked.
    “No.”
    “Do you know if anyone else did?”
    “No.”
    Megan nodded and ran the zipper of her parka down. The little room was located next door to the furnace room and apparently absorbed heat in through the walls. It was like a sauna. Mitch had unzipped his parka and shrugged it back on his shoulders. Olie kept his hands in his jacket pockets. He rolled his right foot over onto the side of his battered Nike running shoe and jiggled his leg.
    “Did you notice if Josh came back in the building after the other boys had gone?”
    “No.”
    “You didn't happen to go outside, see any strange cars?”
    “No.”
    Mitch pressed his lips together and sighed through his nose.
    “Sorry,” Olie said softly. “Wish I could help. Nice kid. Don't think something happened to him, do you?”
    “Like what?” Megan's gaze didn't waver from Olie's mismatched eyes.
    He shrugged again. “World's a rotten place.”
    “He probably went home with a buddy,” Mitch said. The words sounded threadbare, he'd said them so often in the past two hours. His pager hung like a lead weight on his belt, silent. In the back of his mind he kept thinking it would beep any minute and he'd call in to hear the news that Josh had been found eating pizza and watching the Timberwolves game in a family room across town. The waiting was eating at his nerve endings like termites.
    Megan, on the other hand, appeared to be enjoying this, he thought. The idea irritated him.
    “Mr. Swain, have you been here all evening?” she asked.
    “That's my job.”
    “Can anyone verify that for you?”
    A bead of sweat rolled down Olie's forehead into his good eye. He blinked like a deer caught in a hunter's crosshairs. “Why? I haven't done anything.”
    She offered him a smile. He didn't buy it, but it didn't matter. “It's just routine, Mr. Swain. Have you—”
    Mitch caught hold of a belt loop on the back of her parka and gave it a discreet tug. She snapped her head around and glared at him.
    “Thanks, Olie,” he said, ignoring her. “If you think of anything at all that might help, would you please call?”
    “Sure. Hope it works out,” Olie said.
    The feeling of claustrophobia lifted from his chest as Holt and the woman backed away from the door. As their footsteps faded away, Olie's sense of solitude began to return. He moved around the room, running his fingertips over the block walls, marking his territory, erasing the intrusion of