Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [661]
“From what I could find out, yes, I think that’s exactly what he was doing, probably what he’s still doing. Many of these poor villages haven’t had a priest for years. The people have to travel miles just to take part in a mass. Can you imagine a priest just coming into their village? They might not question it at all. They’d simply be glad to have him. They’d probably do anything and everything in order to keep him. Maybe even keep his presence secret.”
“Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time the bad guy got away.” Pakula flexed his shoulders. He’d wondered if he’d overdone it with the punching bag this morning.
“Maybe he hasn’t gotten away, after all.”
“Whadya mean?”
“That’s who called me right before we went into the school,” Maggie said.
“Holy crap! You’ve got to be kidding.” Then he remembered. “You said something about the list. He’s on it?”
“Yes,” she said, only now she was smiling.
“What the hell did he want?”
“Protection. And medical attention. He thinks the killer poisoned him.”
Pakula couldn’t believe it. “Why the hell does he think we’d protect him?”
“For one thing, he can tell us who else is on the list.”
“He has the list?”
“That’s what he says.”
“And you believe him?”
Maggie nodded. “He says Daniel Ellison is on it.”
Pakula stared at her until he realized they were approaching a stop sign. Keeping his eyes on the road, he said, “You already made a deal with this guy, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.
“We should probably talk to Chief Ramsey about this,” she said calmly.
Pakula felt the sweat trickling down his back. He turned up the air-conditioning and flipped one of the vents to blast him in the face.
“We’ll have to do that later,” he told her. “We only have about a half hour before we meet with that snoopy reporter.” And he needed to keep focused. Actually what he needed was a break. This case kept getting more and more bizarre. “How ’ bout some lunch? Whadya think about splitting a pie at LaCasa’s. Best pizza around.”
“Italian sausage?”
“Only if we get to have Romano cheese.”
“Deal,” she said.
“Oh crap!” Pakula said, slapping his forehead. It hit him like a flash of lightning. “Hamilton? The kid. Morrelli’s nephew is Timmy Hamilton. And you asked him how his sister, Christine, was?”
“That’s right. What is it?”
“It just occurred to me and I don’t suppose it’s a coincidence—the snoopy reporter from the Omaha World Herald is Christine Hamilton.”
CHAPTER 58
Our Lady of Sorrow High School
Omaha, Nebraska
Gibson waited outside Sister Kate’s classroom for Timmy. He’d told Gibson that he was almost certain he recognized the woman who had been talking to Sister Kate earlier. He kept saying she was an FBI agent he knew. Yeah right, Gibson had wanted to say, but didn’t. He liked Timmy. And he liked having a friend.
Yesterday they discovered that they lived only about three blocks away from each other, so Gibson invited him to come over again and play some computer games. Now he wondered what was taking Timmy so long. Maybe he ran into the FBI lady. He had gone off to use the school’s ancient pay phone to ask his mom’s permission about going over to Gibson’s, which blew Gibson away. He couldn’t believe Timmy didn’t have a cell phone. Gibson thought he was the only teenager alive who didn’t have one.
He was actually feeling pretty good today. Sister Kate had taken more of an interest in his collection than he expected. She even praised him, telling him she was impressed that he had been able to find and barter such exquisite authentic pieces. She had actually called them exquisite. And she said she was impressed. Sister Kate was impressed with him and his collection. Yeah, it was a pretty good day. One of his best in a long time, probably since he helped her with her cataloging project.
Maybe he’d show Timmy the portfolio he found in his backpack. He was hoping that having Timmy there with him might give him the courage to go through the damn thing. He had carefully placed it in the back of his closet after he opened it and found Monsignor