by Alex Kava
“You can pick them up if you like.”
The voice startled Maggie, but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she simply glanced over her shoulder. The woman wore khakis and a white T-shirt with bright pink and aqua-colored fish and funky lettering that read Pensacola Seafood Festival.
“This one looks like a sixteenth-or seventeenth-century European stiletto,” Maggie said, pointing to the sleekest one, a thin blade about nine inches long with a hilt that curved down at the ends. Several years ago she had helped raid the basement of a serial killer who collected and used stilettos from different eras. It was a history lesson that stayed with her.
“Very good,” the woman said, rewarding her with a radiant smile. Now closer, she noticed gentle lines at the edges of the woman’s mouth, revealing that she was a bit older than Maggie’s first impression. She figured the woman was around her own age, early to middle thirties.
“The stilettos,” she continued, “were actually modeled after these.” She picked up the dagger and handed it to Maggie. “This one’s a bit earlier. I’ve been told it’s from a fourteenth-century knight. It was used as a companion piece for close-contact battle.”
“Close-contact battle?”
“Probably to slit his opponent’s throat.”
“Ah,” Maggie said, and she tried to hold it with the reverence it seemed to deserve.
“I’m Sister Kate Rosetti.”
“Maggie O’Dell.”
“Are you with the detective questioning Father Tony?”
“Yes, but I’m with the FBI.” She searched Sister Kate’s eyes to see if that made a difference. Would she be like Father Gallagher and become defensive, careful with her words, or anxious to be rid of Maggie? The nun picked up another one of the daggers, but seemed only anxious to show it to her.
“This is one of my favorites,” she said, turning it in the manner of a formal presentation, so that Maggie could see the intricate skull-like carving at the very top of the handle. “It’s called a talisman or a wizard’s knife. It has the flying serpent wrapped around the handle, but also the Celtic knot-work engraved on the blade.”
“Actually it’s very beautiful.” It didn’t seem to be the correct word to call such an item beautiful. However, it was difficult to ignore the craftsmanship, if not artistry, that went into each piece. “What inspired you to start collecting medieval…weapons?” Maggie looked around the counters and shelves. The glass cabinets on the wall contained different historical artifacts, but at first glance it occurred to her that most of them were, indeed, weapons of some sort.
“That’s interesting,” Sister Kate said, pausing for a moment. “You know, most people ask me where I found them or how I can afford such a collection. They seem more interested in the acquisition.” She said this while suddenly looking at Maggie, studying her as if seeing her for the first time. “They rarely ask what inspired me.” She smiled again and seemed pleased with the question, but her eyes left Maggie’s to take in the surrounding shelves as she began to explain. “My grandfather used to read me wonderful tales of knights in shining armor. My parents let me spend a summer with him on his farm in Michigan.”
Her gaze returned to Maggie. “I was eleven,” she said. “It was right after…a particularly difficult year. I guess my parents wanted me to get away. They wanted me to be safe. I’m not too sure they would have been happy had they discovered our summer reading material. But it was exactly what I needed, knights in shining armor coming to the rescue. It was quite…comforting.”
Now there was something different in her smile. Maggie thought it was softer, perhaps more genuine, but not with the radiance of before. This was a knowing smile shared with someone who had experienced a similar tragedy. What exactly was it that this woman thought they shared? Maggie had only just met her.
“How easy is it to find one of these?” Maggie asked, remembering the medical examiner’s speculation that a dagger had been used to killed Monsignor O’Sullivan.
“Very.” Sister Kate didn’t hesitate, nor did she seem surprised at the question. “I’ve bought several daggers as well as swords on the Internet and eBay. Imitations are popular right now. You have to be careful and know what you’re looking at. Whether they’re imitation or authentic they’re all considered artifacts, so they’re not treated with the same security as a regular weapon. Even when I travel with them for presentations I simply put them inside my suitcase and check it.”
“You said the imitations are popular right now. Why is that?”
“I think it’s mostly kids buying them. Many of them simply can’t afford the real thing. From what I understand, there are several Internet games that are based on knights and the Crusades, medieval stuff. They seem to be quite popular. In fact, one of my students brought in his collection today to show me. His seems to be authentic, though. He’s done a good job bartering for the items.”
She pointed to a wooden box left open on her desk. Maggie glanced inside, noticing immediately the silver crucifix that looked like a dagger. She remembered what Bonzado had said about his students playing Internet games, particularly ones that resembled Dungeons and Dragons, creating characters and playing them out on the screen, taking it as far as getting tattoos with roses and daggers. Now Sister Kate was telling her these games were popular enough that kids were buying and collecting imitation daggers. The man who discovered Monsignor O’Sullivan’s body in the airport bathroom thought he ran into the killer on his way out, a young boy with a baseball cap. Was it possible the killer was a young boy, a teenager, perhaps? If she was correct about the killer playing the role of avenger he could very well have been a victim of one of the priests.
“Are you in town for long?” Sister Kate asked, interrupting Maggie’s thoughts.
Maggie wanted to say she’d be in Omaha until the next dead priest turned up somewhere else. “I never know how long I’ll be in one city,” she said instead.
“I travel quite a bit, too, making presentations, attending workshops. I know how boring it can be having room service in your hotel or going to a restaurant to eat alone. If you get bored, let me know.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.” She was surprised by the invitation and this time she found herself assessing Sister Kate’s motive. Maggie wondered if her profession made her so skeptical that she suspected everyone’s motives, including a friendly invitation to dinner. She glanced around the classroom again. But then, feeling the need to prove herself wrong, she found herself asking, “Are you free tomorrow evening?”
“Yes, certainly. Where are you staying?”
“The Embassy Suites on Tenth Street.”
“Oh, there are so many wonderful restaurants in the Market. There’s a little place a block up from you on Eleventh—M’s Pub. Why don’t I meet you there around seven?”
Sister Kate’s students started coming back into the room.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Maggie told her.
She took her time leaving, watching the students amble in aimlessly like teenagers with little ambition beyond their next task. She wondered if she and Pakula may have been looking in all the wrong places for this killer. Maybe they weren’t seeing what was right in front of them.
As a profiler she was taught to find the similarities and use them for a foundation. But from experience she’d learned never to underestimate who could kill. She noticed a couple of boys with baseball caps. One removed his and tossed it onto the desk, revealing shaggy, dirty-blond hair growing longer over his ears. He and his friend were her height, maybe a little taller, both with slight builds.
The medical examiner had reported that it would take little strength to shove a knife, a sharp dagger, up into the monsignor’s chest, piercing his heart. It was possible that a teenage boy could have done it.
CHAPTER 56
Washington, D.C.
Gwen ran her fingers through her hair, resisting the urge to grab at it and pull.
“Tell me again how this little game worked?”
Just when Gwen thought Racine couldn’t get any angrier, her tone turned up a notch and so did the sarcasm.
“It wasn’t a game,” Gwen explained, trying to keep her calm despite the cockroaches invading her insides. It had to be all the caffeine that was ripping away at her stomach, two days’ worth of caffeine and no food. Maybe that’s why she felt so light-headed.
“He thought it was a game,” Racine almost hissed at her. “Believe me, this psycho thought it was a game, no matter what you think.”
The detective paced back and forth in front of the sofa where Gwen sat. How many times had Rubin Nash sat in her office, in this very spot, and ranted about “having himself yet another pretty, little coed?” Gwen thought it was all about sexual conquests, asserting himself and his manhood. The movies made it out to be a sexual odyssey from boyhood to manhood when an older woman seduced a young boy. But if the woman purposely emasculated him, as in Nash’s case, the damage could be irreparable. Should Gwen have seen the signs for his violent behavior? Should she have figured out months ago that he could and would kill?
Racine stopped every once in a while to look over the notes, the map, the earrings, everything that Gwen had received. She had scattered them on her desktop, each piece encapsulated in its own Ziploc bag, labeled like crime scene evidence. Everything except the last manila envelope and the water glass, failing to explain her unsuccessful attempt at matching Nash’s prints.
“None of this proves your patient is the killer,” Racine said. “Maybe we’ll be lucky and pull a print off something he sent you. But I’m guessing he’d be more careful than that.” She turned to look at Gwen. “When do you see him again?”
“We recently moved his weekly sessions to Saturday mornings to accommodate his travel schedule.”
“He travels?”
“Yes, I believe he sells computer software. He’s mentioned that his sales region extends as far north as Boston, I think, and as far south as the northern part of Florida.”
“By car or by plane?”
“Excuse me?”
“When he travels for his job,” Racine said, slowing down her words as if addressing a child. “Does he drive or fly?”
“I have no idea.” Gwen frowned, trying to remember if he had mentioned it. “Why would it matter?” she finally asked.
“We’ve never found the torsos,” Racine said, expecting it to be all that was necessary for Gwen to understand. Her face must have showed her confusion, because Racine continued. “If he drives, it might explain how or if he dumps the torsos somewhere else.”
“Was the rest of Dena’s body…was she left anywhere else in the brownstone?” Gwen asked.
She thought she saw Racine soften, as if the reminder of what Gwen had been through in the last twenty-four hours had brought a fleeting moment of compassion, and even her answer came in a quiet, almost apologetic voice when she said, “No. We haven’t found anymore of her.”
Gwen rubbed her hands over her face again, this time digging the heels of her palms into her eyes, hoping to get rid of the image. She’d never be rid of it.
“The notes, the messages,” Racine started in at her again, “all of them have been delivered to your office?”
“Yes. Either dropped in the mail slot in the lobby after hours or delivered to the main desk downstairs. One of the earrings was left on Saturday in a manila envelope. Dena said she found the envelope on the reception desk after Rubin Nash’s appointment.” Gwen paused. “Do you think he expected me to recognize it as hers?”
“If he did, he may have wanted to taunt you with it,” Racine said and Gwen could feel the detective’s eyes on her as if expecting some reaction. “You know, to show you how close he could get. If you’re right about him being Dena’s new boyfriend, that could explain how he got the key to her brownstone and knew where she lived. Although there’s no evidence that he killed her there.”
Then Racine hesitated, but she was still watching Gwen, studying her. “If you had recognized the earring, would you have done anything about it? Would you have called the cops?” The harsh tone returned, cold and unsympathetic.
If Racine thought she could possibly make Gwen feel any more responsible for Dena’s death, she was wrong. Gwen wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forgive herself for Dena’s death.
CHAPTER 57
Omaha, Nebraska
Tommy Pakula had had enough. He felt Morrelli’s attention had followed O’Dell out the door after she’d left Father Gallagher’s office. The two may have worked a case years ago, but it seemed obvious to Pakula that Morrelli still held some kind of a grudge. Pakula finally told both men that he’d be in touch, thanked them for their time and left.
He found O’Dell coming out of a classroom and raised his eyebrows at her, surprised that she would be so transparent in her snooping.
“Learn anything?” he asked.
“Maybe. Are you finished with Father Gallagher?”
“Yeah, I’ve had enough of those two clowns. I should have unleashed Carmichael on them.” They started down the steps, and he let her lead the way. “I can tell you one thing, Morrelli sure isn’t finished with you. Is he going to be a problem?”
“I get the feeling he thinks there’s some unfinished personal business between us,” she said with no emotion, perhaps a bit of amusement if anything.
“Is there?”
“If you’re asking if it’ll get in the way of working this case, I won’t let it.” Her tone was serious now.
“No, actually I wanted to make sure the asshole’s not gonna be hassling you. If he gives you any problems you’ve got my cell-phone number. You give me a call. I’ll take care of it.”
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at him. “Are you trying to protect me, Detective Pakula?”
He stopped in his tracks, too, and wanted to cringe. Was she going to bust his chops about how just because she was a woman she didn’t need his protection? Jesus!
“It’s been a while since I’ve had someone want to play big brother with me,” O’Dell told him, but she was smiling now. “That’s kinda nice.” And before he could respond she was on her way again, leaving him as she headed out the school’s front door.
Back in the car, she filled him in about her conversation with Sister Kate Rosetti, the lesson in daggers and their popularity because of medieval crusader-type games on the Internet. She also shared her new theory, that maybe the killer could be a teenage boy who had been abused by a priest. He listened without interrupting, hearing her out.
“You’re forgetting one thing,” he finally said. “How does a fifteen-or even sixteen-or seventeen-year-old have the time or opportunity to get from Minneapolis to Omaha to Columbia, Missouri, on his own?”
“Each of the murders happened over holiday weekends. Look, I don’t have this figured out. All I’m saying is that we need to consider it.”
“That the killer could be a teenager?”
“Or two. Maybe they got the idea from playing one of these games.”
“You think a kid—even two kids—could actually plan something like this and pull it off and in a public place? Not only that, but he could keep his cool enough to stab a Catholic priest and just walk away? You’re asking me to consider all that?”
“Sounds too incredible, huh?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“Okay. Try this, though. No one ever considered that two teenagers could build and plant two twenty-pound propane bombs and place them in a school cafeteria, rigged to explode and kill up to five hundred of their schoolmates. And no one considered that if and when those bombs failed to detonate, the teenagers would then arm themselves with two sawed-off shotguns, a 9 mm semiautomatic carbine rifle and a 9 mm Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol and then proceed to very calmly, very calculatingly shoot and kill twelve students and one teacher.”
“I’d like to believe Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were extreme exceptions,” Pakula said, not enjoying the fact that
he could be so wrong. When she put it that way, it certainly did sound like a possibility. “But you told me that the murders looked like the work of an assassin.”
“Which is what some of these Internet games allow for, right? I mean, in a way, don’t they allow the players to become executioners or assassins?”
“I don’t know enough about the games. Look, I suppose it’s possible. Anything’s possible. To tell you the truth I was beginning to think it might be more than one person, but a kid…I just can’t wrap my brain around that one.”
“One thing I’ve learned, Detective Pakula, in almost ten years of chasing killers is never to underestimate who is capable of murder.”
“You mean like four years ago in Platte City?” It had taken Pakula a while to remember the details of the case, but when he did he also remembered the rumors. “Didn’t you make a statement someplace that you thought the wrong men were being convicted? If I remember correctly, the FBI profiler in that case—you—believed a young Catholic priest was responsible.”
“I still do believe that,” she said, looking out her side window at the little shops and restaurants in Dundee along Underwood Avenue.
“Why didn’t you pursue it?”
“I did.” This time she shot him a look and he caught a glimpse of her anger before she could control it and go back to studying the cityscape outside her window. “Everyone in Platte City, including Sheriff Nick Morrelli seemed content to believe they had the killer, or rather, killers. Timmy Hamilton escaped and was rescued. I suppose everyone thought it was a nice wrap-up.”
“But if the kid got away couldn’t he identify the guy?”
“No, Timmy said the man always wore a Halloween mask, a Richard Nixon Halloween mask. I certainly could understand that people wanted to put the case behind them. They thought they had the killers in custody and why wouldn’t they think that? The kidnappings and murders stopped.”
“Makes sense,” Pakula agreed.