A Necessary Evil

CHAPTER 76

The Embassy Suites

Omaha, Nebraska

Pakula 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?"