Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [120]
Maggie stood up, suddenly interested.
Adam seemed pleased.
“They hid runaway slaves in the church. At night they used the tunnel to sneak them to the river where a boat would take them upstream to the next hideout. There’s an old church down by Nebraska City that was used, too. They’ve made that one into quite the tourist trap. This one’s too deteriorated. They say the tunnel’s all caved in—too close to the river. They don’t even use the graveyard anymore. A few years ago when the river flooded, it uprooted some graves. Even sent a few coffins floating down the river once. That was kind of a creepy sight.”
Maggie imagined the deserted graveyard and the swift river current sucking corpses from their graves. Suddenly, it sounded like the perfect place for a killer obsessed with his victims’ salvation.
CHAPTER 73
Maggie decided to leave Nick a note, though she had no clue what to say.
“Dear Nick, went off to find the killer in a graveyard.” It sounded bizarre, but it would be more than what she had left before she ran off to find Albert Stucky. Except that night, she hadn’t intended to really find Stucky. She had simply been checking a lead. Had hoped to find his hiding place. That he would be waiting for her, setting a trap for her, had never occurred to her until it was too late. Could that be what this killer was doing? Setting a trap and waiting for her to walk right into it?
“I think Nick’s gone,” Lucy announced from down the hall, catching Maggie with her hand on the knob of his office door.
“I know, I’m just leaving him a note.”
Lucy didn’t look satisfied, her hands planted firmly on her hips as if expecting more of an explanation. When Maggie didn’t offer her one, she added, “There was a call for you earlier from the archdiocese’s office.”
“Any message?” Maggie had spoken to a Brother Jonathon, who assured her the church did not believe Father Francis’ death to be anything criminal nor anything more than an unfortunate accident.
“Hold on.” Lucy sighed and riffled through a stack of messages. “Here it is. Brother Jonathon said Father Francis has no living relatives. The church will be making all the burial arrangements.”
“No mention of allowing us an autopsy?”
Lucy looked up at her, surprised. Maggie no longer cared.
“I took the message myself,” Lucy said softly, now almost sympathetically, understanding what the need for an autopsy implied. “That’s all he said.”
“Okay, thanks.” Maggie grabbed the doorknob to Nick’s office again.
“I can take your message for Nick if you want.”
The sympathy was gone, quickly replaced by mere curiosity.
“Thanks, but I’ll just leave it on his desk.”
Maggie went in, but she left the lights off, using the glow from the streetlights below to guide her. She bumped her shin into a chair leg.
“Damn it,” she muttered, reaching down to catch the pain though it already shot up her thigh. While bent over and rubbing her leg, she noticed Nick sitting on the floor in the corner. In the dark, she saw him hugging his knees to his chest, staring out the window, apparently oblivious to her presence.
It would have been easy to pretend she hadn’t seen him. She could write the note and be on her way. Without a word, she walked over to him and quietly, slowly took a place beside him on the floor. She followed his gaze out the window. From this angle only the black sky filled the frame. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the cracked lip, bruised and swollen. Dried blood stained that perfectly chiseled jaw. He still didn’t move, still didn’t acknowledge her presence.
“You know, Morrelli, for an ex-football player you fight like a girl.”
She wanted to make him angry, to make him feel. She recognized that numbness, that emptiness,