by Alex Kava
“Okay, everybody,” his father announced. “Show’s over. Let’s get back to work.”
Without hesitation they followed his orders. When he saw Nick, he waved him over. Nick stood firm, a last-ditch effort to gain back a shred of authority. His father signed something for Lloyd, then wandered over, completely oblivious to Nick’s defiance.
“Lloyd’s found Rydell. We’re bringing him in for questioning.”
“You have no authority to do that.” Nick concentrated. He needed to sound calm, cool, in-charge.
His bushy eyebrows raised as he stared at Nick. “Excuse me?”
His father had heard perfectly well. It was part of his intimidation. It had always worked…in the past.
“You no longer have the authority to bring anyone in for questioning.” He met his father’s narrowed eyes.
“I’m trying to help you, boy, so you don’t look like a fucking idiot to the whole goddamn community.”
“Mark Rydell had nothing to do with any of this.”
“Right. You’re placing your money on some gimpy church janitor.”
“I have evidence that implicates Ray Howard. What do you have on Rydell?”
By now the office had come to a standstill again. Only this time no one dared gather around them. Instead, they quietly watched from doorways and behind desks, pretending to go about their work.
“Rydell’s a known fag. Has a rap sheet as long as my arm for beating up other fags. He was Jeffreys’ fag for a while. I was never convinced that he wasn’t in on the whole thing with Jeffreys. I’d bet the farm that he’s your copycat killer. Only you can’t see it ’cause you can’t see beyond Agent Maggie’s cute little ass.”
The heat crawled up Nick’s neck. His father turned away from him, finished, dismissing him in his usual manner. Nick glanced around at the eyes pretending to work. Then he saw Maggie in the doorway to the conference room. His eyes met hers. In an instant, he knew she had heard.
“This isn’t a copycat killer,” he said to his father’s back.
“What the fuck are you talking about now?”
He only glanced at Nick over his shoulder. He took the set of autopsy photos from Eddie, who willingly handed over the originals without even looking in Nick’s direction.
“Jeffreys was only responsible for Bobby Wilson’s death.” His father didn’t look up from the photos. “He didn’t kill all three boys. But then, you already knew that.” Nick waited for the implication to sink in, for it to register as the accusation he meant it to be.
Finally, his father looked at him with the scowl usually powerful enough to transform him into a sniveling teenager. Nick stood straight, keeping his hands from hiding in his pockets. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest. He was ready.
“What the fuck are you implying?”
“I’ve read Jeffreys’ arrest file. I’ve seen all the autopsy reports. There’s no way in hell Jeffrey committed all three murders. Even Jeffreys told you that, over and over again.”
“Oh, so now you believe a goddamn murdering fag over your own father?”
“Your own reports prove Jeffreys didn’t kill the other two boys. Only you were too blind. No, you wanted to be a hero. So you ignored the truth and let a killer get away. Or maybe you even helped plant the evidence. Now your own grandson’s going to pay the price for your mistakes and your fucking pride.”
The fist took Nick completely off guard. It slammed into his jaw and knocked him back into the copy machine. He caught his balance, but his vision was still blurred when the second fist slammed into his face. He looked up to see his father in the same place, same stance, photos still in his hands, a look of surprise on his face. Nick didn’t even realize it wasn’t his father’s fists that had hit him until he saw Hal restraining Eddie Gillick.
CHAPTER 72
Maggie waited but wasn’t surprised when Nick didn’t come back to their makeshift interrogation room. Adam Preston delivered dinner from Wanda’s. She told Ray Howard he was welcome to stay and eat his steak, then he was free to go. He eyed her suspiciously until Adam placed the steaming plate in front of him. Then all seemed to be forgotten.
She started to leave while Adam unpacked and laid out the rest of the food.
“Agent O’Dell, this is for you.”
“I’m not very hungry.” She turned to him, but it wasn’t a sandwich he handed her. She stared at the small, white envelope from across the table. “Where did you get that?”
“It was in the order from Wanda’s. It has your name on it.” He held it out to her, his arm stretched over the table, but she made no attempt to take it. Even Howard looked up at her from his banquet.
“Agent O’Dell? What is it? Do you want me to open it?” Adam’s green eyes were serious. His boyish face concerned.
“No, I’ll take it.” She slowly grabbed a corner, pretending—though it was too late—that it was no big deal. To prove it, she opened it without hesitation while Adam watched. Her fingers were amazingly steady though her stomach did acrobatic flips.
She read the note. It was simple, only one line: “I KNOW ABOUT STUCKY.”
She glanced up at Adam.
“Is Nick around?” She needed to keep her breathing even and steady. She needed to contain the crawly things invading her insides.
“No one’s seen him since…”
“Since Eddie decked him,” Howard finished for Adam. He smiled up at them over a forkful of mashed potatoes. “Eddie’s my man,” he said, then stuffed his mouth.
“What do you mean by that?” Maggie snapped at him, and Howard’s look told her it was too much, too shrill. She needed to be careful, but it was too late. She had set him on edge again.
“Nothin’. He’s just a friend.”
“Deputy Gillick is a friend of yours?” She looked at Adam who simply shrugged.
“Yeah, he’s a friend. There ain’t no crime in that, is there? We do stuff together. It’s no big deal.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Howard looked from her to Adam. His hands had stopped cutting and scooping. His back straightened. When he looked back at Maggie, she saw the cold defiance.
“Sometimes he comes over to the rectory and plays cards with Father Keller and me. Sometimes just him and me go out for burgers.”
“You and Deputy Gillick?”
“Didn’t you say I was free to go?”
She stared him down. She was right. Those clever, reptilian eyes did know more, much more. Deep down, she knew he wasn’t the killer, despite Nick’s hunches. Howard may have been unfortunate enough to be in possession of her cellular phone, but Ray Howard was not the killer. His limp would never allow him to maneuver the steep woods along the river, let alone carry a sixty- to seventy-pound boy. And despite his smart remarks, he simply wasn’t smart enough to carry off a series of killings.
“Yes, I did say you were free to leave,” she finally answered without breaking his gaze. She wanted him to see the suspicion. She wanted him to slip up, sweat a little. Instead, he ignored her and went back to scraping great globs of food onto his fork, anchoring it with his knife and stuffing his mouth full before he started to chew.
She gestured to Adam, and he followed her out. Safely down the hall, she stopped and leaned against the wall, holding herself up from the exhaustion. Adam waited patiently with quick glances in both directions, although making sure no one saw him alone with her. He was too young to be a leftover of Antonio Morrelli’s regime, though he, too, seemed anxious to please, anxious to be a part of the group. Still, his respect for authority extended to Maggie, and his tall, thin frame slouched, ready to listen.
“You grew up in Platte City, right?”
The question surprised him. Of course, it would. He nodded, anyway.
“What can you tell me about the old church, the one in the country?”
“We checked it out, if that’s what you mean. Lloyd and I went out there before the snow and then again after. The place is boarded up. Di
dn’t look like anyone’s been in there for years. No footprints, no tire tracks.”
“It’s close to the river?”
“Yeah, just off Old Church Road—guess that’s probably where it gets its name. The church is listed as an historical landmark. That’s why no one’s torn it down.”
“How do you know all of that?” She pretended to be interested, though its location was really all she needed to know. If Howard went there to cut wood, perhaps he had seen something close by. She rubbed the knot in her neck, squeezing and applying pressure. Exhaustion clouded her thoughts. Or maybe she just didn’t want to think anymore.
“My dad owns land close by,” Adam continued. “He wanted to buy the church property, tear down the building. It’s prime farmland. Father Keller told him it couldn’t be torn down on account of it’s registered as an historical landmark. I guess it was used as part of John Brown’s Underground Railroad in the 1860s. Supposedly there’s a tunnel from the church to the graveyard.”
Maggie stood up, suddenly interested.
Adam seemed pleased.
“They hid runaway slaves in the church. At night they used the tunnel to sneak them to the river where a boat would take them upstream to the next hideout. There’s an old church down by Nebraska City that was used, too. They’ve made that one into quite the tourist trap. This one’s too deteriorated. They say the tunnel’s all caved in—too close to the river. They don’t even use the graveyard anymore. A few years ago when the river flooded, it uprooted some graves. Even sent a few coffins floating down the river once. That was kind of a creepy sight.”
Maggie imagined the deserted graveyard and the swift river current sucking corpses from their graves. Suddenly, it sounded like the perfect place for a killer obsessed with his victims’ salvation.
CHAPTER 73
Maggie decided to leave Nick a note, though she had no clue what to say.
“Dear Nick, went off to find the killer in a graveyard.” It sounded bizarre, but it would be more than what she had left before she ran off to find Albert Stucky. Except that night, she hadn’t intended to really find Stucky. She had simply been checking a lead. Had hoped to find his hiding place. That he would be waiting for her, setting a trap for her, had never occurred to her until it was too late. Could that be what this killer was doing? Setting a trap and waiting for her to walk right into it?
“I think Nick’s gone,” Lucy announced from down the hall, catching Maggie with her hand on the knob of his office door.
“I know, I’m just leaving him a note.”
Lucy didn’t look satisfied, her hands planted firmly on her hips as if expecting more of an explanation. When Maggie didn’t offer her one, she added, “There was a call for you earlier from the archdiocese’s office.”
“Any message?” Maggie had spoken to a Brother Jonathon, who assured her the church did not believe Father Francis’ death to be anything criminal nor anything more than an unfortunate accident.
“Hold on.” Lucy sighed and riffled through a stack of messages. “Here it is. Brother Jonathon said Father Francis has no living relatives. The church will be making all the burial arrangements.”
“No mention of allowing us an autopsy?”
Lucy looked up at her, surprised. Maggie no longer cared.
“I took the message myself,” Lucy said softly, now almost sympathetically, understanding what the need for an autopsy implied. “That’s all he said.”
“Okay, thanks.” Maggie grabbed the doorknob to Nick’s office again.
“I can take your message for Nick if you want.”
The sympathy was gone, quickly replaced by mere curiosity.
“Thanks, but I’ll just leave it on his desk.”
Maggie went in, but she left the lights off, using the glow from the streetlights below to guide her. She bumped her shin into a chair leg.
“Damn it,” she muttered, reaching down to catch the pain though it already shot up her thigh. While bent over and rubbing her leg, she noticed Nick sitting on the floor in the corner. In the dark, she saw him hugging his knees to his chest, staring out the window, apparently oblivious to her presence.
It would have been easy to pretend she hadn’t seen him. She could write the note and be on her way. Without a word, she walked over to him and quietly, slowly took a place beside him on the floor. She followed his gaze out the window. From this angle only the black sky filled the frame. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the cracked lip, bruised and swollen. Dried blood stained that perfectly chiseled jaw. He still didn’t move, still didn’t acknowledge her presence.
“You know, Morrelli, for an ex-football player you fight like a girl.”
She wanted to make him angry, to make him feel. She recognized that numbness, that emptiness, that could paralyze a person for a long, long time if not confronted. There was no response. She sat quietly by his side. Minutes passed. She should get up, leave. She couldn’t afford to share his pain. She couldn’t risk caring about him. Her own vulnerability was already a tremendous liability. She couldn’t take on his.
Just as she stretched her legs to get up, he said, “My dad was wrong to say what he did about you.”
She leaned back. “You mean I don’t have a cute little ass?”
Finally, she caught a hint of a smile.
“Okay, only half-wrong.”
“Don’t worry about it, Morrelli. I’ve heard worse.” Though the sting always surprised her.
“You know, when all this began, the only thing I cared about was how I’d look, whether people would think I was incompetent.”
He kept his gaze out the window to avoid looking at her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark now, and she studied him. Despite the disheveled look, he was remarkably handsome with all the classic features—strong, square jaw, dark hair against tanned skin, sensuous lips, even his earlobes were perfectly sculpted. Yet, those physical characteristics that she initially found so attractive now seemed minor. It was his smooth, steady voice she looked forward to. It was his warm, sky-blue eyes that made her weak in the knees. The way they held her, as if she was the most important person in the world. The way they searched deep inside her, as if hoping for a glimpse of her soul. Those eyes made her feel naked and alive. Now that he kept them from her, she felt robbed, removed from the intimate bond that had begun forming between them. At the same time, she knew it wasn’t right to feel this close to a man she had met less than a week ago. She kept quiet and waited, half dreading that he would share some secret that would bring them even closer. At the same time, part of her hoped he would.
“I’m incompetent. I don’t know the first thing about heading a murder investigation. Maybe if I had admitted that in the beginning…maybe Timmy wouldn’t be missing.”
His confession surprised her. This wasn’t the same cocky, arrogant sheriff she had met several days ago. Yet, his admission wasn’t self-pity. It wasn’t even regret. Instead, Maggie sensed it was a relief for him to finally say it out loud.
“You’ve done everything possible, Nick. Believe me, if there was something I thought you should have done or should be doing differently, I certainly would have told you. If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not shy in that area.”
Another smile. He leaned back against the wall and released his knees from his chest. He stretched those long, lean legs out in front of him. For a minute she thought it was over.
“Maggie, I am so…I keep imagining finding him. I keep seeing him…lying in the grass, that same vacant stare. I’ve never felt so…” The strong, steady voice hitched, caught on a lump in his throat. “I feel so fucking helpless.” The knees came back to his chest, brushing his chin.
Her hand went up, then stopped in midair at the nape of his neck. She wanted to comfort him, caress him. She snapped back her hand, scooted farther away and leaned against the wall, trying to get comfortable, trying to dislodge the overpowering urge to touch him. Another glance. Moonlight crept into a corner of the window, framing his pr
ofile. What was it about Nick Morrelli that made her want to be whole again? That made her realize she wasn’t whole?
“You know all my life I’ve done everything my dad told me…suggested I do.” He kept his chin on his knees. “It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to please him. It was just easier. His expectations always seemed to be lower than my own. Being sheriff of Platte City was supposed to be writing tickets and rescuing lost dogs, and breaking up a few bar fights now and then. Maybe an occasional traffic accident. But not murder. I’m not prepared for murder.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything to prepare you for the murder of a child, no matter how many dead bodies you’ve seen.”
“Timmy can’t end up like Danny and Matthew. He can’t. And yet…there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” The catch in his voice was back. She glanced over at him, and he turned his face away. “There’s not a fucking thing I can do.”
She heard the tears in his voice, though he tried his best to disguise them with anger. She reached out again, hesitated again, her hand hovering. Finally, she touched his shoulder. She expected him to bolt. Instead, he sat quietly. She stroked his shoulder blades and ran her hand over his back. When the comfort started turning too intimate for her, she pulled her hand away, but he reached up and caught it, gently trapping it in his large hand. He looked up at her and brought the palm of her hand to his face, rubbing it against his swollen jaw.
“I’m glad you’re here.” His eyes held hers. “Maggie…I think I—”
She snatched her hand back, suddenly uncomfortable with his attempted revelation. He was beyond flirting. She could see him testing, struggling with feelings she didn’t want to know about.
“Whatever happens, it won’t be your fault, Nick.” She changed the subject while pretending to be on it. “You’re doing everything possible. At some point you have to let yourself off the hook.”
