A Necessary Evil

by Kava, Alex

  He scratched twice, then sat down in front of the cabinet door, staring at it. He glanced up at her as if to see if she had noticed. She could still call the police. Let them handle this. It wasn’t too late. Harvey scratched at the cabinet door and looked up again.

  “Okay, okay. Just wait a minute.”

  She pulled a clean tissue from her pocket and tried to grab the cabinet’s door handle, leaning in from as far away as possible. Her hand was shaking so badly she dropped the tissue and had to pick it up. Harvey was getting more and more anxious and she had to tug him to the side. The more anxious he got the more her hand seemed to shake. Even after she had a good grip on the knob, she still hesitated. Her chest hurt from what felt like a constant time bomb banging against her rib cage.

  She took a deep breath and yanked the door open. She jumped back from the skittering sound as something came spewing out of the cabinet, an avalanche of jelly beans, bright colors plopping to the floor, spilling out of an overturned decanter. And Harvey strained at the leash, lapping up several before Gwen’s mind and heart started working again. She pulled and tugged and escorted him away from the mess.

  “Jesus, Harvey.”

  She needed to sit before her knees gave way. She found the corner of the sofa. She should check the other rooms and leave. But if Harvey could smell nothing but jelly beans, then there was nothing else here. He would have sensed it by now. Wouldn’t he? She needed to think about this. Maggie had rescued Harvey from his previous owner’s bloodied bedroom where he had lost that owner to a serial killer in a battle that almost cost him his life. That’s why he was so protective of Maggie and that instinct seemed to transfer to Gwen, too. Wouldn’t it therefore be logical that he would be freaking out if there was even the scent of blood anywhere in the apartment? Wasn’t that exactly how he had reacted with the skull in the park? Maybe it was ridiculous to think she could psychoanalyze him like one of her patients. She wasn’t a dog shrink, but it did make sense. She didn’t allow herself to feel relieved. Not just yet.

  She persuaded him to check the bedroom, leading him to the closet and bathroom, looking behind the shower door and under the sink. There was nothing. With each discovery, or rather non-discovery, she felt the tension and the panic slowly subside. Her heartbeat and her breathing had started to return to normal. Until they got to the kitchen. She checked the refrigerator and the oven, even the dishwasher, only to turn around and find Harvey pawing at yet another cabinet door under the sink. She told herself she would treat it like the other doors and cabinets, quick like a Band-Aid, no hesitating, no imagining, just get it over with.

  Easier said than done.

  The cold, clammy perspiration returned to her forehead and the back of her neck. The tremor in her hand, though not as pronounced, slowed her quick grab of the handle. And Harvey’s side-step dance made her nervous.

  She yanked open the cabinet door to find a roll-out trash bin under the sink. The smell of rotting garbage pushed her back so that it took some effort to see the apple peel and coffee grounds on top.

  “Harvey, next time I need to feed you first.”

  She smiled down at him and patted his head, but he was still nervous, pacing, pulling against his leash. And this time she realized he no longer wanted to get at the trash bin. This time he wrenched and jerked at the leash, trying to get away from it. He twisted against his collar and his panic quickly spread to Gwen. Then there came that horrible low-pitched whine coming from the back of his throat, barely audible but hard to listen to, an uncontrollable moan that sounded as if he was in pain.

  This time when she looked, Gwen saw the plastic bag. It was buried underneath the rotting fragments of vegetable peels, coffee grounds, empty boxes and cellophane—the bits and pieces of ordinary household garbage. She had been right about Harvey. He sensed blood and wanted to be as far away from it as possible. Underneath all the garbage, Gwen could see through the plastic. She could see Dena’s brown eyes looking up at her.

  CHAPTER 41

  Downtown Omaha Police Station

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Maggie dreaded these introduction sessions. Usually they turned into tugs-of-war with local law enforcement officers strutting their stuff and reinforcing their jurisdiction. Other times there was blame to be ducked or screwups to be excused. But she had to admit she was impressed with Detective Tommy Pakula, mostly because he wasn’t the least bit interested in impressing her or marking his territory or looking to place blame. Even when he discovered he had been waiting for a female FBI agent instead of a man, it didn’t seem to faze him. In a quiet sort of way, Detective Pakula seemed only determined to do his job.

  He had a group assembled and ready when they arrived at the downtown Omaha police station. Well, almost ready. There were a few in and outs to the small conference room for coffee and one last phone call before they sat down. Pakula offered to get Maggie coffee, but she declined, asking if there was a vending machine nearby. He nodded, but instead of pointing her in the direction of the machine, he asked what her “poison” was. Yet he never left the conference room. Just as Maggie decided he had forgotten about her a uniformed officer came in with two ice-cold cans of Diet Pepsi and placed them beside her.

  The long table filled one side of the room. The other side had an easel-back chalkboard already filled with three columns, three lists of evidence, one list for each of the cases. A large bulletin board took up the wall. On one half were photos of the three victims along with crime scene photos. On the other half was a map of the Midwest, colored pushpins marking Omaha, Columbia and Minneapolis.

  Around the table Pakula introduced his group. Maggie couldn’t help thinking they looked as though they had been taken directly out of a diversity training video: Terese Medina, a black woman from the Douglas County crime lab who looked as if she belonged on the cover of Vogue; Detective Carmichael, a short, stocky Asian woman; Chief Donald Ramsey, a middle-aged guy in wrinkled khakis who was a contrast to his counterpart, young Detective Pete Kasab in a suit and tie. At the head of the table, looking like the matriarch of this eclectic family, sat Martha Stofko, the Douglas County medical examiner who managed to make a well-pressed white lab coat look chic with a royal-blue dress and pearls.

  Terese Medina passed out copies of her detailed reports along with Stofko’s autopsy report, a set for each. In the middle of the table she left what appeared to be evidence samples and also an assortment of digital photographs.

  Detective Carmichael—whose first name Maggie noticed Pakula had never mentioned—had a pile of information stacked in front of her that, when she sat, almost towered over her. Without breaking her constant frown, she teasingly announced that somewhere in “this pile of crap” were answers that would solve the “whole damn thing.”

  Chief Donald Ramsey shook Maggie’s hand, thanked her for coming at such short notice, then propped himself in a chair and let Pakula run the show. He looked tired, the creases in his forehead permanent worry lines. Sitting next to Kasab, the earlier contrast Maggie had noticed was even more pronounced. Chief Ramsey wore khakis and a knit polo shirt with an embroidered Omaha Police Department patch on the pocket. Detective Pete Kasab wore what looked like a tailored suit, creased trousers and starched shirt collar, perfectly knotted silk tie and salon-styled hair. Unlike Ramsey, who brought only a mug of coffee, Kasab had a bottle of water and granola bar. His small spiral notebook was open, his gold pen ready in hand.

  “I’ve filled in Agent O’Dell and brought her up to speed,” Pakula said. He remained standing. “I’m hoping there’s new stuff. Anything from toxicology?” And he looked to Terese Medina.

  “O’Sullivan’s blood alcohol content was at point zero five, so he had a couple of drinks in the hours before. Nothing to impair him. No traces of any other chemicals in the blood. The wound, however, showed residue of ammonia and an aliphatic petroleum distillate.”

  “And in English that would be…” Pakula prodded her.

  “Aliphatic petroleum
distillate is like a Stoddard solvent found in a lot of household cleaning products. The combination with the ammonia would most likely make it a common metal polish of some sort.”

  “So our killer has a fetish for cleaning his knives,” Carmichael said. “No wonder he didn’t just toss it afterward.”

  “Or if the weapon is, indeed, a dagger or letter opener as I suspect,” Stofko offered, “it may be valuable to him. Perhaps sentimentally, if not financially.”

  “Anything else new?” Pakula asked Medina.

  “The canine hairs found on the back of his shirt were from a Pekingese.”

  “Holy crap!” Pakula said. “You can tell that?”

  “In this particular case I can.” Medina smiled at him.

  “I already checked,” Carmichael offered. “O’Sullivan didn’t have a dog.”

  “Any chance the dog hairs were already on the floor?” Pakula asked.

  “Anything’s possible,” Medina said. “But there weren’t any on the floor around him. Just his shirt. And just the back of his shirt.”

  “That makes sense. Martha thinks the killer came up from behind,” Pakula said, waiting for her to nod in agreement. “The dog hairs could have been on the killer’s shirt and transferred to the victim. Locard’s Principle,” Pakula continued, leaving it for everyone to fill in the blank. Maggie looked around the table as each of them seemed to agree in some way with a nod of the head or a wave of the hand. They all knew and expected that there would definitely be some transfer of debris, just as Locard had predicted.

  “So we just need to look for a guy who has a fascination with knives and Pekingese dogs,” Carmichael said, picking up her own profile. “Should be a piece of cake. What the hell does a Pekingese look like?”

  “Small, long-haired, no nose,” Medina offered.

  “You looked at the other two cases,” Pakula addressed Medina. “Either mention dog hair?”

  “No, but they could have easily missed it, especially since both were outdoors. Minneapolis’s M.E. notes some ammonia residue in the wound. Could be the metal polish.” Medina flipped the pages in front of her. “Columbia guys told me they found bread crusts, not crumbs, in Kincaid’s shirt pocket.”

  “You’re kidding,” Pakula said.

  “What’s with the bread crumbs?” Maggie asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting started.

  “Crusts,” Medina corrected her. “It might not mean anything. He was at an outdoor picnic. He may have put some bread or something in his own pocket. It’s just that I found bread crumbs all over the front of O’Sullivan’s shirt, too.”

  “Dog hair on the back of his shirt and bread crumbs on the front?” Maggie wondered if the monsignor was a sloppy eater. Maybe his housekeeper owned the Pekingese. None of these things made much of an impression on her, except to note that Terese Medina was very good at her job.

  Almost as if she sensed Maggie’s skepticism, Martha Stofko looked at her and said, “O’Sullivan’s stomach contents didn’t include any bread. Looked pretty much like meat loaf and mashed potatoes.”

  “Yum,” Pakula said and drew a few laughs. Then he turned to Carmichael. “So what goodies do you have in that pile?”

  “I might just have us a suspect,” Carmichael told him, pausing to finish a mouthful of peanut M&M’s. “Remember our friend, Father Tony Gallagher? Seemed a bit…evasive, but oh so polite.”

  Carmichael reminded Maggie of a stand-up comic, her statements short punch lines all delivered with a poker face and an even tone. The pile was for show. She didn’t refer to it or to notes. She didn’t need to.

  “I did some checking just because he kinda pissed me off. About seven years ago he was an associate pastor for a short time in Chicago at Saint Stephen of the Martyr. Just so happened he was replacing none other than a Father Gerald Kincaid who was being reassigned.”

  “That’s interesting,” Pakula said and sipped what Maggie thought had to be his third cup of coffee, not counting the airport brew.

  “It gets even more interesting,” Carmichael continued. “Father Gerald Kincaid recently went away for a while. The Catholic Church has a cute little term for it, ‘in between assignments.’ He spent six months at a treatment center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico.”

  “What was he being treated for?” Chief Ramsey asked. This information seemed to have caught the chief’s attention. He sat forward, elbows on the table.

  “A Father Quinn at the center told me they treat priests who suffer from a variety of conditions including what he referred to as ‘challenges with alcohol’ and, of course, any mental or emotional problems.”

  “And Father Kincaid’s problem?” Maggie found herself sitting forward, too, anxious that her early gut reaction to this case might be true.

  “That was a confidential matter,” Carmichael said, but held up her hand to stop several groans. “However, I waited and called back a little later. This time I didn’t ask for anyone of an official capacity. I just chitchatted with the volunteer answering the phone. She had lots to tell me.”

  “Gossip,” Pakula said and he didn’t look happy. “Inadmissible gossip.”

  “Yep, you’re right,” Carmichael said as if that was exactly what she expected him to say, but it didn’t break her routine or slow her down. “So do you wanna hear the inadmissible gossip or not?”

  She looked to Chief Ramsey and he nodded, waiting. Unlike Pakula, he didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

  “Barbara told me that Father Gerald Kincaid had a little problem with what was officially being called ‘inappropriate behavior with preadolescent boys.’”

  “And so he was reassigned,” Maggie said. “Did the Chicago PD have anything on record?” she asked even though she thought she already knew the answer. She had discovered in her short research that up until recently most of the cases had been settled out of court and under the radar of local law enforcement.

  “Nothing,” Carmichael said. “Absolutely nothing. Barbara, however, told me that Chicago hadn’t been the first incident. There had been dozens of allegations. And you’re right,” she told Maggie. “Each time Father Kincaid had simply been ‘reassigned.’ In fact, he was reassigned to five different parishes. This last time the parents threatened to go to the cops, but his archbishop convinced them Kincaid would be sent away for treatment.”

  Carmichael paused and looked around the table. “About six weeks ago he was released and assigned to All Saints Catholic Church. I talked to the church council president and the cleaning lady at the rectory—a pretty good mix in the way of gossip, by the way—and the funny thing is, nobody at All Saints in Columbia even knew Father Kincaid had been in a treatment center let alone what he was being treated for.”

  “Sounds familiar,” Maggie couldn’t help saying, and she met Pakula’s eyes.

  “Agent O’Dell thinks that could be the connection. That we might have an assassin on our hands.”

  Maggie felt all their eyes on her. Carmichael actually smiled…a little.

  “What about Daniel Ellison?” Pakula wanted to know. “Agent Weston said Ellison left the priesthood to get married. Doesn’t sound to me like someone who messed with little boys.”

  “I haven’t found any allegations, but if Kincaid’s case is any indication, I’d say the church is pretty good at keeping allegations under wraps. I was thinking we might ask our new friend, Father Tony Gallagher.”

  “Oh, really. Why is that?”

  “Seems he and Ellison were in the same seminary class at Notre Dame.”

  “Holy crap!” Pakula said. “So Father Tony has a connection to both men?”

  Maggie watched Carmichael finally grin as she seemed to relish the information she had just presented.

  “Not only that,” Carmichael said, looking as if she had saved the best for last, “but when our good Father Tony was in Chicago, he started and headed up an unofficial victims’ rights advocacy group. I imagine he got to hear all kinds of the things—or rather the
allegations—that Father Kincaid was accused of doing.”

  “If the church was keeping it hush-hush, how did you find out about the advocacy group?” Ramsey asked.

  “One thing I should probably tell you, Chief, is that for some reason people tell me all kinds of stuff. So I guess we should probably have Kasab bring the padre back in for more questioning, huh?” she asked Ramsey and Pakula, but was looking over at Pete Kasab who sat up for the first time at the mention of his name.

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” Pakula said and then added, “And you might just as well have him bring his quarterback attorney.” He looked over at Chief Ramsey. “Speaking of attorneys and other bottom-feeders, Agent O’Dell thinks we might be able to manipulate the media into helping us find out a thing or two.”

  Ramsey sat back, arms crossed. One hand strayed to rub at his jaw. His eyes met Maggie’s, gentle but tired blue-gray eyes outlined with pronounced wrinkles, what were once laugh lines. “Let us know how you want to work it. We’ll make it happen.”

  “I think it should be today. We can go over what choice information we release. Maybe we even leave out Ellison for the time being and see if anyone comes forward, connecting him,” she told both Ramsey and Pakula.

  Pakula gave her a nod of agreement or perhaps it was admission. To the others he said, “Sounds like we better find out what rumors there may have been about Monsignor O’Sullivan. As much as I hate it, we probably should call in that nagging reporter from the Omaha World Herald and find out what the hell she thinks she knows.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Omaha, Nebraska

  Gibson tried to remember the last time he had invited someone over to his house. He did it all the time when his dad was alive. But then his dad was sort of like a magnet. Gibson could remember inviting a friend over after school once and his dad talked them into a game of H-O-R-S-E. Before they knew it there had to be like half a dozen neighborhood kids playing, taking their turns and laughing so hard nobody could hit the rim.