Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [660]
“That the killer could be a teenager?”
“Or two. Maybe they got the idea from playing one of these games.”
“You think a kid—even two kids—could actually plan something like this and pull it off and in a public place? Not only that, but he could keep his cool enough to stab a Catholic priest and just walk away? You’re asking me to consider all that?”
“Sounds too incredible, huh?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Okay. Try this, though. No one ever considered that two teenagers could build and plant two twenty-pound propane bombs and place them in a school cafeteria, rigged to explode and kill up to five hundred of their schoolmates. And no one considered that if and when those bombs failed to detonate, the teenagers would then arm themselves with two sawed-off shotguns, a 9 mm semiautomatic carbine rifle and a 9 mm Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol and then proceed to very calmly, very calculatingly shoot and kill twelve students and one teacher.”
“I’d like to believe Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were extreme exceptions,” Pakula said, not enjoying the fact that he could be so wrong. When she put it that way, it certainly did sound like a possibility. “But you told me that the murders looked like the work of an assassin.”
“Which is what some of these Internet games allow for, right? I mean, in a way, don’t they allow the players to become executioners or assassins?”
“I don’t know enough about the games. Look, I suppose it’s possible. Anything’s possible. To tell you the truth I was beginning to think it might be more than one person, but a kid…I just can’t wrap my brain around that one.”
“One thing I’ve learned, Detective Pakula, in almost ten years of chasing killers is never to underestimate who is capable of murder.”
“You mean like four years ago in Platte City?” It had taken Pakula a while to remember the details of the case, but when he did he also remembered the rumors. “Didn’t you make a statement someplace that you thought the wrong men were being convicted? If I remember correctly, the FBI profiler in that case—you—believed a young Catholic priest was responsible.”
“I still do believe that,” she said, looking out her side window at the little shops and restaurants in Dundee along Underwood Avenue.
“Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“I did.” This time she shot him a look and he caught a glimpse of her anger before she could control it and go back to studying the cityscape outside her window. “Everyone in Platte City, including Sheriff Nick Morrelli seemed content to believe they had the killer, or rather, killers. Timmy Hamilton escaped and was rescued. I suppose everyone thought it was a nice wrap-up.”
“But if the kid got away couldn’t he identify the guy?”
“No, Timmy said the man always wore a Halloween mask, a Richard Nixon Halloween mask. I certainly could understand that people wanted to put the case behind them. They thought they had the killers in custody and why wouldn’t they think that? The kidnappings and murders stopped.”
“Makes sense,” Pakula agreed.
“Yes, but what no one seemed to notice or care about was that Father Michael Keller had suddenly disappeared. He left the country. Not even the Omaha Archdiocese knew why or where he had gone. They claimed there was no reassignment. It wasn’t like he had taken a leave of absence. He just disappeared.”
She paused and Pakula glanced at her. She stared out the windshield now, but seemed to be somewhere else, her hands in her lap, her fingers nagging at a loose thread on her jacket. She continued as if she needed to explain, “I tracked him for a while as best I could even though I had absolutely no jurisdiction to do so. He wasn’t implicated in the case in any way and he had left the country. All I had to go on were rumors. He fit the description of an American-speaking priest who suddenly showed up at a small parish in a poor village outside of Chiuchin, Chile. No sooner did I think I’d found him and he was gone again, on to some other little village.”
“How could he do that without the Catholic Church keeping track of him? What did he do, just show up and