Guilty As Sin

Monday, January 24, 1994

He said it was a game," she murmured, her voice whisper-soft, and tight with pain.

She lay in a hospital bed, the deep purple bruises on her face a stark contrast to the bleached white of the sheets and the ash white of her skin. Her right eye was nearly swollen shut, the flesh the color of an overripe plum. Bruises circled her throat like a purple satin band where she had been choked. A fine line of stitches mended a split in her lip.

The pain triggered flashes of memory -- sudden, violent, blaring. A memory of pain so sharp, so intense, it took on qualities of sound and taste, the smell of fear, the presence of evil.

"Clever girl. You think we're going to kill you? Perhaps."

Her throat being closed by hands she couldn't see. The instinct to survive surging. Fear of death riding the crest of the wave.

"We could kill you." The voice a silky murmur. "You wouldn't be the first. . . ."

The air caught like a pair of fists in her lungs, then slowly seeped out between her teeth.

Assistant County Attorney Ellen North waited for the moment to pass. She sat on a high stool beside the bed, a legal pad and small cassette recorder on the bedside tray to her right. She had met Megan O'Malley only days before. Her impression of the field agent for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had consisted of a handful of ad-jectives: tough, gutsy, capable, determined, a small woman with fierce green eyes and a big chip on her shoulder. The first woman to break the male ranks of BCA field agents. Her first day on the job in the Deer Lake regional office had been day one of the Kirkwood kidnapping. Twelve days ago. Twelve days that had taken the previously innocent, quiet, rural college town into the depths of a nightmare.

In her efforts to crack the case, the chip had been effectively knocked off Megan's shoulder and smashed, and Megan along with it. She had come too close to unraveling the puzzle. Beneath the covers, her damaged right knee was elevated. Her right hand was encased in a cast. According to her doctor, the hand was badly smashed, and he despaired of the "poor darling little bones" recovering, even with the meticulous attention of a specialist.

Megan's transfer from Deer Lake Community Hospital to the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis was scheduled for Tuesday, weather permitting. She would have been transported the night of her ordeal, but Minnesota had been clutched in the grip of a January storm. Two days later Deer Lake was just beginning to dig out from under ten inches of new snow.

"He said it was a game," Megan started again. "Taking Josh. Taking me. Fooling everyone. We fooled you all along, he said . . . We, always we . . ."