Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [690]
“Which follows your theory of two killers.” Pakula still wasn’t sold on the idea that teenage boys could pull these murders off. But he was beginning to think she was right about two killers. All the more reason they needed anything and everything Father Keller had brought with him.
“Why do you suppose Father Rudy down in Florida wasn’t on the list?” she asked. But before he could answer she continued, “That may mean Keller’s list is bogus. The murderer gives Keller a list knowing he’ll hand it off to the authorities. Of course, he’s going to include those who have already been killed to give the list some credibility. But why isn’t Father Rudy on the list?”
She was back at the service butler, pouring more hot water over another tea bag. She was getting as bad with the hot tea as he was with the coffee. That was just great—both of them pumped with caffeine. Then she was back to her pacing, although a bit slower with the full mug.
He got up from the table and stretched his arms and back. He spent too many hours these days sitting. Maybe pacing would do him some good, but he only got as far as the service butler. No sense in all that free food going to waste. He’d be banging at his punching bag for an extra thirty minutes, but he sampled several of the little cubes of cheese.
“Maybe Father Rudy was a mistake.” He popped a couple of grapes into his mouth. Then he remembered his voice messages. “Hold on. I forgot, I have a message from my friend down in Pensacola.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open, punching through the missed calls. When he got to the 850 area code one, he hit Play and listened.
“Hey, Tommy. Gotta make this short. Actually there’s not much to tell. I finally found someone who didn’t mind telling me that Father Rudy was a real pervert. But Tommy, it wasn’t little boys he liked. There was at least one eleven-year-old girl. Call me tonight if you wanna talk.”
Pakula folded up his phone and stared at it. Without realizing it, he had wandered over to the easy chairs in the corner and now dropped into one. He had treated this case like any other, disgusted anytime kids were involved. But for some reason it suddenly struck him. His youngest daughter, his baby, Madeline, had just turned eleven last month and for a brief moment he thought about her trusting a man, a priest, and that man, a priest, taking advantage of her respect and reverence for him just as O’Dell had outlined in her earlier sermon. Suddenly he could taste the bile backed up in his throat, and he felt an incredible urge to hit something.
He looked up to find O’Dell had stopped pacing and was standing in front of him, staring, waiting.
“What is it?” Her frustration was gone and now there was concern because he hadn’t been able to hide his disgust. She must have read it on his face, in his grimace.
“It’s nothing for sure,” he told her. “Just rumors. More of the same, except Father Rudy preferred eleven-year-old girls.”
He watched O’Dell close her eyes and take a deep breath, needing to compose herself. And he wondered if she ever got the urge to hit something, too.
“So Father Rudy had reason to be on the list,” she finally said and Pakula nodded. “Then why wasn’t he on it?”
CHAPTER 77
Washington, D.C.
From her office window, Gwen Patterson watched the rush-hour traffic below. Detective Julia Racine had left Gwen’s nerves frayed and her mind preoccupied. Yet, somehow she had managed to get through the day of appointments, and she had managed to do so despite all the interruptions from her temp. The poor girl had jammed the copier, broken Gwen’s brand-new gourmet coffeemaker and hung up on everyone she thought she was putting on hold, including a United States senator with an urgent question for Gwen. His impatience, however, seemed to override his urgency. He never called back. She was glad she had left poor Harvey back at her brownstone. He would have been a nervous wreck trying to keep track of all the chaos in the office today.