Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [604]
“Hey, earth to O’Dell. Are you still with me? Do you need to get out and stretch?”
Maggie realized she had tuned out Racine for too long.
“No, I’m fine,” she said, twisting around to check on Harvey. The dog was sprawled out and fast asleep.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“Just a little tired, I guess.”
“Another big night, huh?”
Racine gave her a look over her sunglasses and only then did Maggie remember Harvey’s slobberfest that Racine had overheard on Friday evening. She started laughing.
“Hey, it’s none of my business,” Racine said, waving a hand at her as if to say it was no big deal. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
Maggie couldn’t help it. She kept laughing, harder now, and somehow she managed to say, “It was Harvey.”
“What?”
“It was Harvey you heard the other night.”
It took Racine a second to register. Maggie thought she saw a bit of a blush. It was difficult to tell with the sunglasses. Maggie started laughing again, and soon Racine was joining her.
CHAPTER 25
Omaha, Nebraska
Tommy Pakula knew he’d be making up for this one for months. It didn’t matter that it was a holiday. His wife, Clare, was used to him working plenty of holidays. However, he and Clare had agreed long ago that Sunday mornings would be family time. He had even signed up to be an usher at Saint Stan’s to prove to her how serious he was about keeping that pact. They’d all go to early Sunday mass, and then out for brunch. He actually looked forward to it every week.
There had been three times he had been called away on a Sunday morning in the last several years since the pact was made. But being called away could and had been forgiven easily. This time was a bit harder to forgive. He had tried to explain the urgency to Clare. When that didn’t work, he’d tried joking that he was missing mass for a private consultation with the monsignor.
Now as he looked down at Monsignor William O’Sullivan’s gray body laid out on the stainless-steel autopsy table, Pakula realized it wasn’t much of a joke. This was sort of a private consultation in which Pakula hoped the monsignor would tell him what happened in that airport bathroom.
Martha Stofko, Chief Medical Examiner for Douglas County, had already taken the external measurements and samples. Before she made the Y incision, she inspected the old priest’s chest, taking several pictures and now sticking a gloved finger into the wound.
“Tell me again why we’re doing this on a Sunday morning,” she asked, looking up at Pakula.
“You can thank Archbishop Armstrong. For some reason he’s got the chief convinced expediency equals respect.” Pakula wasn’t sure Stofko would understand. She was a transplant from somewhere in California—not a hometown kid. It took firsthand experience to realize the politics and power of the archbishop.
“So Chief Ramsey is Catholic?”
Maybe Stofko understood better than Pakula gave her credit for.
“Supposedly the monsignor’s sister wants him back home in Connecticut as soon as possible.” Pakula repeated the request, or rather the demand, word for word, just as Brother Sebastian had ordered over the phone.
However, this time Martha Stofko looked up at Pakula over half glasses that sat at the end of her nose.
Pakula simply shrugged. “You know me, Martha. I just do as I’m told.”
“Yeah, right. In that case, come over and take a look at this.”
Pakula watched her poke at the wound, separating the flaps of skin.
“See how the wound is crisscrossed?”
“It looks like an X.”
“Or a cross. You usually get a cross-shaped appearance like this when the knife is twisted as it’s pulled out. It was a double-edged blade, thick in the center, but less than an inch wide. I should be able to tell you how long once I dissect and follow the path.”
Stofko stuck her index finger into the wound again, this time making her finger almost disappear.
“It was an upward thrust. I can be more definitive once I see the tract.”
“Right-handed or left?” Pakula asked.
“I’m not sure.