Who would have imagined it would be so easy to learn how to make your own bombs in simple one-two-three steps a child of average intelligence could follow, with colorful illustrations to help the slow-witted along? If you had the money—which he did—you could order more sophisticated triggering devices—which he had—and lovely “enhancing” kits that turned little ear-tingling pops into ear-bleeding booms guaranteed to take out a city block, or your money back. He didn’t have any desire to find nuclear ingredients, but he had a feeling that if he searched the subterranean rooms long enough and got real friendly with those stupidly dedicated anarchists, he would find everything but the plutonium. Weapons weren’t a problem either, as long as you knew where to click on. And he did, of course. Yes, he did.
Although he had ordered lots of interesting little gadgets through the Internet, he hadn’t ordered the explosives because he knew the mules could be monitoring the sight. Still, he’d gotten the connection he’d needed from one of his buddies who had hooked him up with an illegal dealer operating out of the Midwest, which was why he was now breezing down I-70 with his shopping list in his pocket.
He spotted a roadside rest area ahead and thought about stopping so he could get his copy of the tape out of the back of the van. He wanted to listen to the priest’s voice again, but then he saw the police car parked there and he immediately changed his mind.
The mules were probably replaying the tape now while they made copious notes. It wasn’t going to do them any good though. They weren’t smart like he was. They wouldn’t get anything from his voice except maybe the region he came from, and who cared about that? They would never figure out his game until it was over and he had won.
He knew what the mules were calling him. The unsub. He liked the sound of it and decided that Unknown Subject was about the best nickname he’d ever acquired. The simplicity of it appealed to him, he supposed. By using the word unknown, the mules—his nickname for the FBI agents—were admitting how inept and incompetent they were, and there was something honest and pure about their stupidity and their ignorance. The mules actually knew they were mules. How delightful.
“Are we having fun yet?” he shouted as he sped down the highway. And then he laughed again. “Oh, yes, we are,” he added with another chuckle. “Yes, sirree.”
CHAPTER 8
Two detectives from the Kansas City Police Department, Maria Rodrigues and Frances McCann, arrived at the rectory a little past two. As the interview got under way, Nick, silent and watchful, remained by Laurant’s side. He let the detectives run the show and didn’t interfere in the questioning or volunteer any opinions or suggestions. When he got up to leave the room, Laurant had to force herself not to grab hold of him to keep him there. She wanted him close by, even if only to offer moral support, but he’d gotten a phone call from a man named George Walker, a profiler assigned to the case.
Tommy joined them, and the first couple of minutes with him were very predictable. Like most women who met her brother for the first time, the detectives seemed captivated and had trouble taking their eyes off him.
“Are you a full-fledged priest?��� Detective McCann asked. “I mean, have you been ordained and everything?”
Tommy gave her one of his grins, completely unaware of the heart flutters they caused in most women, and responded, “I’m full-fledged.”
“Maybe we should stick to the investigation,” Rodrigues suggested to her partner.
McCann flipped open her notepad and looked at Laurant. “Did your brother tell you how we got hold of the tape?” She didn’t wait for an answer but continued. “The son of a bitch just strolled inside the police station sometime last night, dropped his little package, and then strolled right back out. I mean, it was the perfect time ’cause it was a zoo in there. Two big drug busts had just gone down and they were dragging their drugged-out asses in for over an hour. The watch said he didn’t notice the package until things had calmed down. Anyway, we figure he must have been dressed in blues, like a street cop, or maybe he was pretending to be a lawyer, come to bail his client out. No one remembers seeing anyone with a manila envelope,” she added. “That’s what the tape was in, and to be honest, it was such a hectic time, I doubt anyone would have noticed the envelope if the son of a bitch hadn’t called.”
“He called 911 from a pay phone in City Center Square,” Rodrigues interjected. “That isn’t too far from here.”
“The guy’s got steel balls, I’ll give him that,” McCann remarked. She colored then and blurted, “Sorry about the language, Father. I’ve been hanging around Rodrigues too long.”
“So what can you tell us?” Rodrigues asked Laurant.
Laurant raised her hands in a gesture of futility. She didn’t have the faintest idea how to help them—she couldn’t even come up with a viable theory as to why she had been targeted.
The detectives didn’t have any leads yet, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. They had already canvassed the neighborhood, searching for witnesses who might have noticed a stranger or a car in the vicinity late Saturday afternoon. No one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary, which hadn’t surprised the detectives.
“People around here are suspicious of the police,” Rodrigues explained. “We’re hoping that if anyone saw anything peculiar, he’ll confide in Monsignor or maybe even Father Tom here. The parishioners trust their priests.”
Neither Rodrigues nor McCann were optimistic about catching the unsub quickly. They would have to wait and see what developed. Maybe the letter the man had told Tommy he’d mailed would shed some insight. Then again, maybe not.
“Aside from assaulting Father Tom here, no other crime has been committed,” McCann said. “At least not yet anyway.”
“Do you mean to tell me that if I’m murdered, then you’ll look into it?” Laurant asked a little more sharply than she intended.
McCann, the more blunt of the two, responded. “Do you want me to sugarcoat it or be honest?”
“Be honest.”
“Okay,” she replied. “We’re pretty territorial, kinda like big cats, and it would depend on where he dumped the body. If it’s our city, we take the case.”
“A crime has already been committed,” Tommy reminded them.
“Yes,” Rodrigues agreed. “You were assaulted, but—”
Tommy interrupted. “I didn’t mean that. He confessed to killing another woman.”
“Yeah, well, he says he killed her,” Rodrigues countered. “He could have been lying about that.”
McCann volunteered her opinion that the incident in the confes-sional was just a sick prank by an irate man who maybe had a grudge against Father Tom and wanted to get back at him. That was why, she explained, they had spent so much time on their first call questioning him about possible enemies.
“Look, we aren’t going to sit on our hands,” Rodrigues assured Laurant. “But we don’t have a lot to go on yet.”
“And it isn’t our jurisdiction.”
“How do you figure that, Detective McCann?”
Nick asked the question. He was leaning against the door frame, watching the detectives.
Her tone was antagonistic when she answered. “The unsub reported the crime here in Kansas City, but he made it clear on the tape, clear to us anyway, that he lives in or around Holy Oaks, Iowa. We’ll share what we’ve got with the police there, and we’ll keep the file open of course . . . in case he comes back.”
“The way we see it, the FBI’s involved. Right? You guys are bound to come up with something,” Rodrigues offered.
McCann nodded. “We don’t like to interfere in an FBI investigation.”
“Since when?” Nick asked.
She smiled. “Hey, we’re trying to get along here. I don’t see why we can’t work on this together. You give us what you’ve got, and if we come up with anything, we’ll be happy to share it with you.”
They weren’t getting anywhere. After the detectives gave Laurant their cards, they left the rectory. Laurant was thoroughly frustrated by the lack of action, even though she realized her expectations had been unrealistic. She wanted answers and results—maybe even a miracle—to make this nightmare go away, but by the time the detectives left, she felt . . . hopeless. Because her brother seemed so relieved that something was being done—the cavalry had arrived after all—she didn’t tell him how she felt. In fact, she didn’t get a chance to talk to him for the rest of the afternoon. His attention was diverted elsewhere.
Tommy was so rattled by what was happening, he forgot it was Sunday afternoon. But then he happened to look out the window and saw the kids waiting for him. There was a tradition at Mercy parish on warm Sunday afternoons when Tommy was in town, and he wasn’t about to let anything get in the way of the ritual that meant so much to the children in the neighborhood. At precisely quarter of three, all other duties and concerns came to a standstill, when a large number of neighborhood kids gathered in the church parking lot and began to clamor for Father Tom to come outside. Tommy put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, kicked his shoes and socks off, and grabbed a towel. He made Laurant stay inside—it was safer he told her—but she could watch the fun from one of the windows.
As was the custom and barring any unforeseen complications, a fire truck arrived at three o’clock, and two good-hearted off-duty firemen closed the gates to the lot and opened the fire hydrant. The children, including toddlers through high schoolers, eagerly waited while the firemen adjusted the heavy nozzle between the iron gates and clamped it to the rails so that the hose wouldn’t go skittering every which way. Then the water was turned on. The kids wore cut-off jeans or shorts. None of them owned swimming suits—such apparel wasn’t in their parents’ budgets—but that didn’t diminish their excitement. After stacking their towels and shoes on the steps of the rectory, they played in the water until their clothes were soaked, splashing and shouting with as much enthusiasm as any children at a country club. There weren’t any fancy kidney-shaped pools with diving boards and water slides at Mercy. They made do with what they had, and for an hour, while the firemen and any other adults who had tagged along with their little ones sat with Monsignor on the porch and sipped cold lemonade, chaos reigned.
When Tommy wasn’t busy holding on to the smaller children so they wouldn’t be swept into the bushes by the force of the spray, he manned the medical kit and dispensed Neosporin, glow-in-the-dark Band-Aids, and sympathy for skinned knees and elbows. After the firemen turned the water off and prepared to leave, Monsignor dispensed Popsicles. No matter how tight money was or how poor the collections were that week, there was always enough set aside for these treats.
After the pandemonium had died down and the waterlogged, worn-out children had all gone home, Monsignor McKindry insisted that Nick and Laurant join Tommy and him for a peaceful dinner. Tommy and Nick prepared the meal. Nick grilled chicken while Tommy fixed a salad and green beans fresh from the monsignor’s garden. The table conversation revolved around the monsignor’s reunion, and he entertained his guests with one story after another about the trouble he and his friends had caused during their seminary days. By unspoken agreement, no one discussed what the older priest called the “disturbing event” during dinner, but later as Monsignor McKindry and Laurant worked side by side washing and drying the dishes, he brought up the topic again when he asked her how she was handling the worry. She told him she was frightened, of course, but also so angry she wanted to start throwing things. Monsignor took her at her word and immediately snatched the plate she was drying out of her hands.
“When your brother found out he had cancer, I know he felt powerless and frustrated and angry, but then he decided to take charge of his medical care. He read as much as he possibly could about his specific type of cancer, and that was quite a challenge because his is such a rare type. He studied all the medical journals and he interviewed a good number of specialists in the field until he found the man who had set the protocol for treatment.”
“Dr. Cowan.”
“Yes,” Monsignor replied. “Tom felt that Dr. Cowan could help him. He didn’t expect any miracles, of course, but Tom had faith in Dr. Cowan, and the physician seems to know what he’s doing. Your brother’s holding his own in this battle,” he added. “And that’s why, when the oncologist transferred to Kansas Medical Center, Tom followed him. What I’m trying to advise you to do, Laurant, is take charge. Figure out a way you can do that and then you won’t feel so helpless or afraid.”
After they finished cleaning the kitchen, Monsignor brewed her one of his special toddies, guaranteed to soothe her frazzled nerves. Then he said his good nights and went upstairs to bed. The drink was bitter, but she dutifully drank it down because Monsignor had gone to so much trouble for her.
It had been a hell of a day. It was late now, almost ten o’clock, and the stress had worn her out. She sat on the sofa next to her brother in the rectory living room, trying to pay attention as they formulated their plans. But concentration was difficult, and she couldn’t keep her thoughts from wandering. She couldn’t even seem to block out the background noise. An old air conditioner propped in the window adjacent to the fireplace droned on and on like a swarm of angry bees, yet barely cooled the room. Occasionally the unit would shudder violently before returning to the monotonous droning again. She kept expecting the thing to leap out of the window. Icy condensation dripped down into a spaghetti pot Tommy had placed under the window to protect the hardwood floor he was determined to refinish one of these days, and the constant pinging noise was driving her to distraction
Nick was full of energy. He was pacing around the living room, his head down as he listened to what Tommy was saying. Her brother, she noticed, was quieter—he’d taken his tennis shoes off and propped his feet up on the ottoman. There was a huge hole in one of his white socks, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care, that his big toe was sticking out. He was yawning every other minute.
Laurant felt as limp and lifeless as a rag doll. She put the china cup on the table, sank back into the soft cushions of the sofa, took a couple of deep breaths, and closed her eyes. Maybe tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, she’d be more clearheaded.
So lost was she in her own thoughts, she flinched when Tommy nudged her knee to get her attention.