by Tami Hoag
“Is he all there?” she asked, tapping a finger to her temple.
“Oh, yes. He has an MBA from Northwestern. A very intelligent man, Albert.” Father Tom sank down into the high-backed chair behind his desk and swiveled it back and forth. “Socially, he's not exactly the life of the party. He lost his wife three years ago. Some kind of mysterious stomach ailment no one could ever quite pin down. After she was gone, he became increasingly involved with the church.”
“Obsessed.”
McCoy gave her a look and shrugged. “How do we draw the line between devotion and obsession? Albert functions well, keeps his house and yard immaculate, belongs to civic groups. He has a life; he just chooses to spend most of it here.”
He tossed his GameBoy onto the blotter and gave her a sheepish look. “This is what keeps me sane when the world gets a little too heavy.” The smile faded. “The treatment isn't holding up too well these days.”
“Josh Kirkwood.”
The priest shook his head. “My heart breaks every time I think of him. Who knows what he's going through. And Hannah . . . This is killing her. She's tearing herself up trying to find some logic in it, but there's no understanding why things like this happen.”
“I thought you'd have all the answers.”
“Me? No. The Lord works in mysterious ways and I'm not privy to His motives. I'm just a shepherd; my job is keeping the flock together and herding them in the right direction.”
“Somebody's fallen off the path in a big way.”
“And you think that somebody is from St. Elysius?”
“Not necessarily. I'm talking with everyone who had regular contact with Josh, looking for any scrap of information that might be helpful. Something Josh might have said, a change in his attitude, anything. Hannah tells me he had just started training as a server.”
The look in McCoy's blue eyes was sad and knowing. “The altar boy and the priest. Is that what this is about, Agent O'Malley?” He shook his head slowly. “I'm always amazed when one victim of stereotyping turns around and pigeonholes someone else.”
“I'm just doing my job, Father,” Megan replied evenly. “It's not my place to draw conclusions, but it is my place to go on the basis of what evidence I have and pursue any and all leads. I'm sorry if that makes you feel discriminated against, but that's the way it is. If it makes you feel any better, I'll also be talking with Josh's teachers and coaches and his Scout leader. You're not a suspect.”
“I'm not? I'll bet I could find plenty of people in this town who have already decided otherwise.” He rose from his chair and walked back and forth behind the desk with his hands in his pockets. “Can't really blame them, I guess. I mean, the papers are full of it, aren't they? This priest, that priest, a cardinal. It's deplorable. And the Church covers it up and pretends nothing is wrong, carrying on the fine tradition of corruption that's plagued us since the time of Peter.”
“Are you allowed to say that kind of thing?” Megan asked, amazed at his candor.
He flashed her a roguish grin. “I'm a radical. Ask Albert Fletcher. He's spoken with the bishop about me.”
He seemed extremely pleased to be the object of controversy. Megan couldn't help but smile. She liked Tom McCoy. He was young and energetic and not afraid to say what he thought—a stark contrast to the priests she had grown up around. A stark contrast to Albert Fletcher. And she caught herself wondering why a man as charming and handsome as McCoy was would become a priest.
He read her thoughts too easily. “It's a calling,” he said gently, easing back down into his chair, “not a consolation prize for men who can't do anything else.”
“But sometimes it calls the wrong sort of people,” Megan said, steering back onto the topic and away from her embarrassment.
Father Tom's boyish face appeared to age before her eyes. “No,” he said grimly. “Those people are hearing a different voice.”
“The voice of evil? The devil?”
“I believe in it absolutely. You do, too, don't you, Agent O'Malley?”
She didn't answer right away. She sat for a minute, thinking about her Irish Catholic upbringing. Even with that stripped away, her answer would be the same. She had seen too much on the streets to believe anything else. “Yes, I do,” she said quietly. “And as far as I'm concerned, child predators are about as evil as it gets. So is there anything you can think of that will help me nail this bastard's ass to a wall?”
He didn't bat an eye at her language. “No. I wish I could. We had a prayer vigil here last night. I spent most of the time scoping out the crowd, thinking maybe I'd see someone who didn't fit in, thinking maybe he would come to see the kind of havoc he's wreaked on this community. Thinking maybe I'd see a sign, you know—glowing red eyes, 666 marked across his forehead—but I guess that happens only in the movies.”
“What about regarding Josh himself? Had you noticed any change in his behavior?”
“Well . . .” He took a moment to choose his words carefully. “He'd been quieter lately. I think Hannah and Paul are having some trouble. Not that either of them has said anything; it's just a feeling I get. Josh is a sensitive boy. Kids pick up a lot more than adults realize. But I hadn't noticed anything overt. He takes his duties as a server very seriously.”
“You train the boys yourself?”
“We have girls now, too. The Church's effort to join the age of equality. Of course, they'll never consider women as priests, but—” He cut himself off from another radical tangent, giving Megan a sheepish look. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with a forefinger against the bridge. “Anyway, to answer your question, Albert Fletcher and I both work with the kids. We do a kind of a good cop–bad cop routine. Albert drills the rules into them, then I give them a wink and let them know it's okay if they goof up every once in a while just as long as they don't sneeze on the hosts.”
Megan smiled at the joke, but her mind had turned toward Albert Fletcher. Albert Fletcher, the religious fanatic, the man who quoted the Bible in answer to her questions. She wondered if he could quote Robert Browning as well: ignorance is not innocence but SIN.
“Do you happen to know what kind of car Mr. Fletcher drives?”
“A brown Toyota wagon. Is Albert not a suspect, too?” the priest asked dryly.
Megan rose from her chair, her expression sober. “At this time, Father, everyone is not a suspect. What about you? What do you drive?”
“A red Ford 4X4 truck.” He grinned his rogue's grin and shrugged. “Somebody's got to shake up the status quo. It might as well be me.”
She couldn't help but smile. If there had been any priests like Tom McCoy around when she was growing up, she might have actually paid attention in church instead of spending all her time doodling on the back of the missalette.
“Father Tom, can I have a word?”
Megan swung toward the door at the sound of Mitch's voice. He strode into the office, his coat hanging open, his hair windblown. He looked annoyed at finding she had beat him to St. Elysius.
“Ah, Agent O'Malley,” he said, “grilling the local clergy now?”
“Just asking Father to help me pray for patience in dealing with arrogant territorialism.”
Lacking a good comeback, he gave a snort and turned his attention to the priest. He played golf with Tom McCoy during good weather and liked him. There was always some gossip floating around town that the Father was in trouble with the diocese mucky-mucks for being too liberal, news Father Tom shrugged off with an indifference Mitch respected.
Tom McCoy met his gaze. “You think I'm not a suspect, too?”
“Did Agent O'Malley lead you to believe otherwise?” Mitch asked.
“Father Tom and I were just having a routine chat,” Megan said coolly. “Did I need your permission for that, Cujo?”
“Did you discuss the notes?”
“No.”
“What notes?” Father Tom asked. “Has there been some kind of ransom demand?”
“I wish it
were that simple,” Mitch said. “Two notes have been found—one in Josh's duffel bag, one in a notebook of his. Both make a reference to sin.”
“And the natural correlation is to the Church,” the priest concluded.
“I'm looking for names of anyone in your parish you might think of as being mentally unstable, fanatical—particularly anyone with a connection to the Kirkwoods.”
“Our resident fanatic is Albert Fletcher, but Albert would no more commit a crime than he would denounce the Pope,” said Father Tom. “And he was teaching Josh's class that night, if he needs an alibi. Mentally unstable—we've got a few of those, but I'm talking about people with problems, not psychotic monsters. Nor can I think of anyone who would have it in for Hannah or Paul.”
Mitch did his best to take the disappointment in stride. Cases like this were seldom made in one smooth move. A cop couldn't afford to take every setback and dead end hard; there would be too many of them. There had been too many today already. The search was going nowhere. Hannah and Paul had been predictably upset with the disclosure of the notes on television. The interviews of school employees were netting them nothing but paperwork. He had a leak in his department, every man on his force pulling overtime, and Megan O'Malley challenging his authority. The combination ate at the lock on his temper like a voracious virus.
“We've already discussed Josh's altar-boy training,” Megan told him. “That looks like another dead end.”
“Then I guess we can let you get back to work, Father,” Mitch said. “Give me a call if anything comes to mind.”
“I will,” Father Tom said, a grave expression tugging at his features. “And in the meantime, we should all pray like hell.”
Megan preceded Mitch out the side door of the church and started down the steps to the neatly shoveled sidewalk. Snow was piled on the boulevard between the walk and the parking lot, rising up like a miniature mountain range through which passes had been cut at thirty-foot intervals. She aimed for the one nearest the Lumina.
“Did you expect me to sit in my office and do my nails all day?” she asked without bothering to look back at Mitch. “But that wouldn't make me like Leo, either, would it?”
She paused on the sidewalk to pose with her chin on her mittened fist. “Let's see. What would Leo do? I know,” she said brightly. “We'll go on down to the Blue Goose Saloon and slam a few brewskis. Then we can sit around belching and farting and cursing our lack of clues.”
“Hey,” he barked, “Leo was a good cop. Don't slam Leo. And I never said you shouldn't do your job.”
He started for his truck without waiting for a rebuttal. Megan hustled after him, tossing the tail of her scarf back over her shoulder.
“No, you said I shouldn't do it without asking first. So, in the interest of diplomacy, I'm asking where you want me to go next.”
His laugh cracked the cold air like a gunshot. He looked back at her over his shoulder. “You're asking for it all right, O'Malley.”
“I've been hearing that for years.”
“Think it'll ever sink in?”
“I doubt it,” Megan said as they turned through the pass into the parking lot. She fished her keys out of her coat pocket while Mitch turned toward his truck. “So where are you going?”
“Oh, I thought I'd stop off at the He-Man Woman Haters Club and then go bowling with the guys from the Moose Lodge.” He unlocked his door and pulled it open. “Us guys are like that, you know.”
Megan cocked her head.
“I'm going to go hunt for the animal who took Josh Kirkwood,” he said. “You, Agent O'Malley, can stay out of my way.”
CHAPTER 15
* * *
DAY 3
4:55 p.m. 23°
Daylight was fading to black when Megan checked back in at the command center. She had spent the afternoon personally rechecking the other people on the list of adults with whom Josh had regular contact, dispensing sympathy and tissues and getting no answers to the questions that loomed larger with every tick of the clock.
Josh's teacher, Sara Richman, had two sons of her own. Despite the fact that she had been questioned twice already, she still couldn't speak or even think about what had happened without starting to cry. His Scout leader, Rob Phillips, was a clerk in the county attorney's office, a man who had been confined to a wheelchair for the last three years and for the rest of his life, thanks to a drunk driver. Phillips had taken vacation time from work to help at the volunteer center.
People were heading out of the fire hall—some to go home to their families, some to grab dinner and come back. Megan went in search of Jim Geist and found Dave Larkin in his place in the room where some of her agents and several of Mitch's men handled the hotline phones. There seemed to be a phone ringing constantly, punctuating the running underscore of mumbling voices. Cops and volunteers came in and left the room, bringing in fliers and food, taking out scrawled notes and fax messages.
Larkin wore a blue and white aloha shirt that accented his beach-bum image. A phone receiver was sandwiched between his shoulder and ear, and he was scribbling furiously on a legal pad. He glanced up at her and rolled his eyes.
“No, I'm sorry, Mr. DePalma, I haven't seen Agent O'Malley. She's been out in the field all day working on a lead. Yes, sir, I understand it's important. I'll see that she gets the message.” He grimaced at Megan. “She should call you at home? I understand. Yes, sir.”
He hung up the phone, stuck a finger in his ear, and wiggled it around, giving Megan a comic look of distress. “Irish, you owe me so big.”
Megan slid into the chair beside him and leaned an elbow on the table. “I'll promise you anything that isn't sex related.”
“Hell,” he grumbled. “If I'd known that, I would have made you take the call.”
“You're such a pal. DePalma is the last person I want to talk to.”
“Rightly so. He sounded in a mood for some grilled agent.”
She sniffed. “It's the reporters he ought to want roasted. If someone wants to run a spit through Henry Forster and Paige Price, I'll make the potato salad. So what are you doing here?” she asked. “Did Jim go back to the hotel?”
“Yeah. I'm here on my own time,” he said, giving her a little smile. “Told you you'd get volunteers.”
“And I appreciate it. Any word from the lab on the notes?”
“Nothing that hasn't already been on TV. We accelerated the reaction on the ninhydrin test with heat and humidification and ran it under the ultraviolet. If there were prints on the paper, they would have gone purple and fluoresced under illumination. We got zip. Sorry, kiddo.”
Megan sighed. “Yeah, well, I didn't think we'd get that lucky. We're not dealing with your garden-variety idiot. This one would know enough to wear gloves. So what's the latest on the van?”
“I'd say every third person in the state knows someone weird who drives a light-colored utility van.” He pulled Geist's notes in front of him and flipped through the pages. “First of all, the chief in New Prague checked the con with the yellow van. The van is now sporting an airbrushed mural of a desert sunset, and the con bowls Wednesday nights in a league. This week he scored a 220 high and won the beer frame twice.”
“Lucky dog,” she muttered without enthusiasm. “Anything else turn up?”
“Jim organized the tips geographically. He met with Chief Holt this afternoon. They went over the list of local calls together, sorted a few out, then Jim sent a guy with one of Holt's men to check the rest.”
“Let me see the list.”
Larkin handed it over and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head. “So after we nail this piece of dirt, you want to take a weekend and go skiing in Montana? I know a guy who has a friend who has a condo in Whitefish.”
Megan scanned the names and addresses of people in Park County whose neighbors had ratted on them. “I don't ski.”
“That's even better. We can spend our time in the hot tub.”
“Maybe you
should spend some time under a cold shower,” she suggested.
The name hit her with all the force of a line drive. She sat up straight in the chair as she took in the number of calls that had come in about this particular van and the fat red line drawn through them. “What the hell is this?”
Larkin leaned over and glanced at the list. “Holt said he already checked it out.”
“That son of a bitch,” Megan growled, shooting to her feet. She could feel her blood pressure climbing into the red zone. It pounded in her ears as her temper boiled. She stepped away from the chair and shoved it hard against the table. The noise cut through the bleating of telephones and low rumble of conversations and drew wide-eyed looks in her direction.
“Where are you going?” Larkin called as she stormed out.
“To kick some ass!”
He cupped his chin in his hand. “I guess this rules out dinner and an evening of wild, unbridled sex.”
5:01 p.m. 23°
Mitch sat in his office with only the amber light of the lamp shining down on the reports and statements strewn across the desktop. He had sent Natalie home to help her two teenagers get ready for the torchlight parade. Valerie played flute in the high school band. Troy was riding on the senior class float. The town council had voted to go on with the Snowdaze activities, but every event would in some way now focus on Josh's abduction. The show of community unity would be both tremendous and tragic.
The day had beat Mitch down physically and mentally. The constant pressure, the sense of urgency, wore on nerves and patience. He had personally questioned much of the elementary school staff and walked the grounds again, trying to find something, anything, that would be a connection to or spark an idea as to the identity of the person who had planted Josh's notebook on the hood of his truck. All with reporters swarming after him like gnats. All for nothing. The parking lot was easily accessible and no one had seen anything. Planting the evidence had been a simple matter of driving up alongside the Explorer and reaching out the window. Slick, simple, diabolical. Infuriating. It made him feel like a chump, as if he'd been had in a shell game, played for a fool and beaten.