A Necessary Evil (30 page)

"Why don't you tell us what you have for us, Father Keller," Pakula told the priest, but now Maggie could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eyes.

"I've included copies of our e-mails," Keller continued, but now kept looking at Maggie, as if expecting her to interrupt. "I know there's a way you can trace Internet e-mail."

"Possibly," Pakula told him. "It would be better if we had your computer."

"Oh, I've brought my laptop. It's in my hotel room."

"I would guess," Pakula said, "that he's used some standard measures to prevent anyone from finding him. I doubt we'll be able to track his e-mail."

"But the FBI has all sorts of things they can do now since 9/11, right?" Father Keller asked. Now Maggie thought she could hear a tinge of frustration in his voice.

"What else do you have?" Pakula pressed on, glancing at Maggie. Finally he was showing some doubt and dissatisfaction. She sat quietly.

"I have a copy of the list," Keller said and gave the top of the box a tap. "Father Paul Conley was on it."

"What about Father Rudolph Lawrence?" Pakula asked.

"Lawrence? No, I didn't see that name."

"Are you sure?"

"When you discover your own name on a list of people to be eliminated you tend to know who else is on the list."

"How many are on the list?" Pakula wanted to know.

"Including myself, five."

Pakula let out a long breath. His eyes met Maggie's before he reached up to swipe his hand over his shaved head.

"The deal was to turn over everything that I believe might help you capture this person. It's to my benefit that he be caught. However, before I do that," Keller said, but by now there was a definite, although subtle, quiver to his strong deep voice, "there's something else I need."

Of course there was, Maggie thought. What good timing. She wanted to tell him to forget it. They weren't even sure any of his information would help. But she could see Pakula sit forward and shift in his chair. She knew he wanted to see what was in the box and if there were actually any fingerprints.

"What else?" Pakula asked, glancing at Maggie but not waiting for her okay.

"As I mentioned to Agent O'Dell, I believe I've been poisoned. I have reason to believe it's something called monkshood."

Maggie wanted to laugh at the irony but instead muttered, "How appropriate."

Both men ignored her.

"I believe The Sin Eater sent me tea laced with monkshood. That's how he thought he would eliminate me."

"But you found out?" Pakula said. "How?"

"He told me. He seemed rather proud of his cleverness." Keller wiped at beads of sweat now on his forehead despite the room's still being freezing cold. Maggie thought his pupils were dilated and one of his hands had dropped to his lap where it fisted up as if he might be in pain.

"What do you want from us?" Pakula asked.

"I think it's called digitalis. It's used in heart medication. It's supposed to be an antidote to treat monkshood poisoning. I need it. You bring it to my hotel room and I'll hand over the box and my laptop."

He pushed back strands of hair sticking to his forehead and now he stood. She saw him wince; perhaps that simple movement was painful. Maggie tried to remember what the symptoms were for monkshood poisoning but couldn't be sure of anything other than it had been used mostly during the Middle Ages. It certainly wasn't a modern-day poison of choice.

Pakula stood, too, but looked at Maggie, waiting for her response, letting her finalize what had initially been her deal.

She remained seated. "Why in the world do you think you can trust us," she asked Keller, "when I've made it quite obvious that I think you're a cold-blooded killer?"

Although he appeared to be in some discomfort __ she could see him using his left hand against the table to steady himself __ his voice didn't waver when he met her eyes and said, "Because you gave me your word, Agent O'Dell. And I happen to know that means something to you."

CHAPTER 76

The Embassy Suites
Omaha, Nebraska

P
akula had finished his call to Chief Ramsey, then checked his voice messages to see if any were urgent. Kasab had taken Keller back to his room before the priest ended up having some sort of attack or before O'Dell ended up strangling him. She still looked like she wanted to. Pakula thought it looked more like Keller had malaria than been poisoned, but Keller seemed pretty certain what was wrong with him,

"Chief Ramsey's wife is an internist over at the Med Center. He's having her get whatever the hell Keller said he needed." He wondered if O'Dell heard him. She was pacing again, back and forth across the room.

"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 don't believe the man who killed Monsignor O'Sullivan killed Father Paul Conley," she said.

"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 (here 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.

F
rom 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. "Is there anything else, Ms. Patterson? I mean, Dr. Patterson?" the girl asked from the doorway.

Gwen took a good look at the girl... the young woman, Gwen corrected herself. Normally Gwen would have shaken her head at the eyebrow piercing and too short and too tight knit top. She had always tried to instill, or perhaps drill was more appropriate, into her assistants that their appearance became a reflection of her and her practice. They influenced her patients' first impressions of this office. They were the gateway to her business. All of that seemed insignificant at the moment. Her gateway had allowed a killer to pass back and forth, getting and taking advice that evidently had encouraged him to continue to kill. It certainly hadn't stopped him.

"No, there's nothing else, Amanda. Let's call it a day."

"I'm so sorry about your coffeemaker. I'll buy you a new one."

"Don't worry about it," Gwen told her, knowing poor Amanda didn't realize it would take her almost a whole week's salary to replace it. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll try it all over again tomorrow."

"Thanks, Dr. Patterson." It was the first smile Gwen had gotten out of her all day.

Amanda would probably go home and complain to her roommate or her boyfriend, maybe her mother or a girlfriend. And suddenly Gwen realized what luxury it must be to have someone like that to release the day's trials and tribulations to. And who did she have? Only Harvey and even he was on loan. She decided she'd call Maggie tonight. For a person who made her living convincing her patients that confession is actually good for the soul and the mind, she sure didn't practice what she preached. Maybe it was about time that she started.

Gwen decided she'd also take her own advice about going home and getting some rest. She slid her laptop and some folders into her leather briefcase just as the phone began to ring. She was tempted to let the voice-messaging service pick it up, but at the last minute grabbed the receiver.

"This is Dr. Patterson."

"Hey, Doc, it's Julia Racine."

So much for rest, and Gwen leaned against her desk, expecting to need the extra support.

"What can I do for you, Detective Racine?" she asked instead of saying what she wanted to say __ What the hell do you want now?

"The Boston guys found some prints they think the killer left on a coffee mug. I just thought you'd like to know the prints don't match up. They're not Rubin Nash's."

"Am I supposed to be relieved?" All it meant was that Nash hadn't traveled to Boston to cut the head off some priest. She had already guessed that the two cases weren't related. "That only means he hasn't switched from killing young women to killing priests."

"I'm not too sure about that," Racine said and Gwen could barely hear her with what sounded like traffic noise in the background. The detective must be en route somewhere. "The rest of it is very much like our guy. Father Conley was strangled just like the other victims and the killer used a hatchet to chop and rip off his head. Sounds like he even dismembered him in the garden shed behind the rectory."

Gwen didn't want these details. She couldn't hear them without visions of Dena being mutilated piece by piece. She wanted to tell Racine to stop, to save it for Maggie or Tully or anyone else. She didn't want to do this anymore. After Rubin Nash her criminal-profiling days would be over.

'Those are details," Racine continued, "that we haven't released to the media, so it's not likely we have a copycat."

"Why are you telling me all this, Detective Racine?"

"Because I have nothing. And unless you can tell me something more about Rubin Nash, I can't even bring him in for questioning."

Gwen resisted the urge to hang up. She released a heavy sigh, hoping to release her frustration.

"I've told you everything I can think of," she told Racine. "The notes, the things he's left me, aren't any of them proof enough?"

"They would be if we could find his fingerprints on any of it."

"But I noticed myself that there are fingerprints. There's even a smudge of one on the map of the park."

"They're not his." Racine was shouting now, but not out of anger. It was only to make herself heard over the noise surrounding her. "Look, I've gotta go, Doc. If you think of anything, anything at all, call me."

And she was gone before Gwen could respond. She was beginning to think Racine had dropped the ball. Had she really checked out the fingerprints? Was it possible Nash had used someone else as his courier? Maybe he wanted to throw them all off.

She had just finished packing her briefcase when she heard the outside door to the office open. Amanda had either forgotten something or she'd neglected to lock it on her way out She couldn't handle one more delivery or repairman and was about to say just that when James Campion stopped in her doorway.

"Hello, Dr. Patterson," he said, sounding out of breath.

He looked awful compared to his usual neat and tidy self. His clothes were wrinkled as if he had slept in them, his hair disheveled and his eyes bloodshot and swollen.

"James? Are you all right?"

"I really need to talk to you, Dr. Patterson."

"What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"No, no. Not hurt. At least not the way you mean."

She knew she should tell him to come back in the morning, that it was after hours. But he looked so frantic, so frightened, his boyish face grimacing, and she worried morning might be too late, remembering the hesitation marks on his wrists.

"Come in and sit." She needed to calm him down, but he was pacing the length of her office, watching out the window with every pass as if expecting to see that someone had followed him. She didn't like her patients up and about. It made them too out of control.

"We can talk, James, but you need to sit down and tell me what's happened."

Finally he stopped long enough to meet her eyes and in what sounded like a very small boy's voice he whispered, "The pounding, the banging," and he pointed to his chest and his head, "it won't stop. I think it's because I broke the rules."