Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [689]
“That boy, Arturo,” she said. “Keller murdered him before he left. He hasn’t stopped.”
Pakula let out a long sigh. She didn’t look like she cared if he believed her or not. He knew what she was probably thinking. He didn’t know Keller the way she did. He was meeting him for the first time, seeing him only as he was today, sick, sweating and trembling. However, Pakula could still remember details of that case four years ago. He’d never seen the killer’s handiwork—the raw carvings sliced into the chests of those poor innocent little boys—but anything with kids was hard to stomach. He could understand it driving O’Dell crazy if she believed Keller was the killer, and especially if she believed he hadn’t stopped.
“Look, O’Dell,” Pakula said. “You might be right about Keller killing those boys outside of Platte City. Maybe you’re right about this Arturo kid, but we have nothing on Keller. You’re gonna have to let it go.” He wasn’t pissed at her. He hoped she could hear sympathy more than impatience in his voice. “You’re no help to me in catching this killer if you don’t let it go.”
She was quiet and continued pacing. Then out of the blue she said, “Monkshood,” and let out a laugh.
“Excuse me?”
“The Sin Eater certainly has a sense of humor.”
“Careful,” Pakula joked. “You sound like you’re starting to admire him.” He needed to get her mind on the killer and off Father Keller.
“Wouldn’t you agree that the evilest of evil are those who intentionally harm children?” Her question sounded like a challenge.
“Without a doubt,” he answered without hesitation.
“And what about the ones who not only intentionally do harm but use a child’s respect and reverence for authority, like for a priest, in order to keep doing it again and again? Come on, Detective Pakula, you and I both know pedophiles well enough to know that Mark Donovan’s experience with Monsignor O’Sullivan was not an isolated case.”
“Agreed.” He crossed his arms over his chest, suspecting that she was going somewhere with this, and that he didn’t necessarily want to go along.
“How many pedophiles do you know who’ve been rehabilitated?”
“I know what you’re getting at, Agent O’Dell.”
“I don’t know of any, but I can tell you about the little girl who was sexually assaulted and buried alive by a pedophile who had just been released from prison. In fact, I can tell you about dozens of cases.” He watched her pause to run her fingers through her hair, her frustration clear. But her mind was off Keller and so he’d allow her the soapbox.
“You know as well as I do,” she continued without any prompting, “that with pedophiles the violence usually accelerates, instead of stops. And yet in the last fifteen years the Catholic Church reassigned approximately fifteen hundred priests after allegations of sexual abuse. That is, of course, with the exception of a short vacation for some of them to a magical treatment center. My guess,” she said, rubbing her shoulders as if she still hadn’t gotten rid of her earlier chill, “is The Sin Eater is someone who simply got tired of seeing it happen over and over again without anyone else doing something about it. And yes, I suppose unlike any other killer I’ve profiled, I have to admit, I can almost sympathize with this one.”
He was afraid that was exactly where she was going. “Is that your new profile?” he asked, smiling just enough, hopefully, to get her to relax and let the intensity go. “Yesterday you were telling me it was two killers, teenage boys who had been abused and were playing some game.”
“It could be,” she said, considering this as she began pacing again. “Kids sometimes have a basic, clear-cut view of justice.”
“Father Paul Conley’s head on the altar isn’t my idea of any kind of justice.”
She stopped for a minute and he wondered if she was reminding herself of the magnitude of these murders, or if she was simply envisioning Father Keller’s head in Conley’s place.
“I