A Necessary Evil (5 page)

CHAPTER 8

Venezuela

H
e turned up Vivaldi on his cheap boom box and swatted at yet another mosquito. This one had gotten him good, splattering more blood, his own blood, and adding one more bump, reducing his overly sensitive skin to that of a blister-riddled leper. Father Michael Keller had learned a long time ago to ignore the constant itch, just as he had learned to deal with his body being sweat-drenched even after his evening shower. Instead, he concentrated on the simple things, the few pleasures he counted on, like Vivaldi, and he closed his eyes, letting the strings stroke him and calm him. It was all mind over matter. And he had discovered that his mind could convince him of anything, if he only let it.

He continued his evening ritual. He lit several citronella candles and checked the kettle of water on his hot plate. His white shirt, made fresh and crisp by one of the village women, was already sticking to his back. He could feel the sweat trickling down his chest, but still he looked forward to his evening cup of scorching hot tea. Tonight he selected chamomile from the package his Internet friend had sent him. What a treat it had been to receive the box with a variety of loose-leaf teas, jelly-filled cookies and shortbreads. He had been saving it, rationing it, wanting to savor it as well as savor the idea mat someone he had never met would send him such a wonderful gift, such a perfect gift.

He scooped just the right amount into his mesh-ball in-fuser then dunked it into the hot water, covering the mug and letting it steep. He lifted the cover, letting the steam rise into his face, breathing in the delicious aroma. He pulled out the infuser, tapping it against the lip of the mug, making it surrender every last drop.

A lone mosquito ignored the citronella scent and continued to buzz around his head. Outside, an evening shower added another layer of humidity to the stifling heat. But he sat back with his tea and his music and for a brief moment he felt as if he truly were in heaven.

He hadn't finished his first cup when a noise outside his door startled him. He sat up and waited for a knock, but one never came. Odd. It was unusual for him to be summoned at this time of night, and no one stopped by without an invitation. They were respectful of his privacy, apologetic even when there was an emergency.

Maybe it had been the wind. He sat back again and listened to the rain. Tonight it tapped soft and gentle on the tin roof. He listened, and he realized there was no wind.

Curiosity made him set his mug aside. He stood, but stopped suddenly, feeling a bit light-headed. Maybe it was the heat. He steadied himself, then approached the door slowly, quietly, still listening if anyone was on the other side. It was silly to be so paranoid. No, not paranoid __ simply cautious. Something else he had learned long ago out of necessity.

He unlocked the door and swung it open with such force he startled the small boy and almost knocked him to the ground.

"Arturo?" he said and he reached out to steady the boy.

He recognized him as one of his faithful altar boys. He was smaller man others his age, thin and frail with sad dark eyes and always so anxious to please. He looked even more vulnerable, standing in the rain holding out the brown cardboard box.

"What are you doing here?" Then, noticing Arturo's confused look, he repeated,
"Arturo, qué hace usted aquí?"

"Si, para usted, Padre."
Arturo presented the package with outstretched arms, smiling and obviously proud to have been entrusted with this mission.

"A package for me? But who?
"Quién lo mandó?"
he said, taking the package from the boy and immediately noticing how light it felt.

"Yo no sé. Un viejo...
old man," he added.

Father Keller squinted into the dark to see down the worn path to the church. There was no one. Whoever gave Arturo the package was gone now.

"Gracias, Arturo,"
Father Keller said, patting him on the head, thinking the boy had so little in his life he was glad to make him smile. Arturo reminded him of himself as a boy, wanting and needing someone to notice him and care about him.
"Hasta domingo,"
he told him with a brief stroke of the boy's cheek.

"Sí, padre."

The boy was still smiling when he ran off down the path, quickly disappearing into the black mist.

He picked up the box, finding himself a bit anxious. Perhaps it was another special package from his Internet friend in the States. More teas and cookies. Arturo said it had been an old man who had given him the package, but it could have been a substitute postman, someone Arturo didn't know. To young boys, anyone over thirty was old. But there was no mailing label this time. No postage stamp, nothing at all.

He brought the package in, noting, again, that it was light __ too light to cause much harm. Yet he set it on his small wooden table and began to examine it from all sides. There were no marks, no markings anywhere on the box. It didn't even look as if a label had perhaps been removed. Sometimes packages were a bit battered by the time they reached him. After all, this was the rain forest.

Finally he gave in and reached for the fillet knife. He sliced through the packing tape and hesitated before slowly pushing back the flaps. He was still pulling out tissue paper when he saw it. And he snatched back his hand as if he had gotten burned.

What kind of a joke was this? It had to be a joke. Who would know? And how had they found him?

His hands were already shaking when he took the plastic Richard Nixon Halloween mask out of the box.

CHAPTER 9

Omaha, Nebraska

G
ibson wondered where the noise was coming from. It was too dark to see, but it sounded like running water. Maybe it was the toilet bowl in the bathroom between his bedroom and his little brother's. All it took was a jiggle of the handle but Tyler always forgot.

He tossed and turned onto his side. He pulled the blanket up over his ears and tried to ignore the noise, burying his head in the pillow. It didn't work. The water kept gurgling. Louder now.

Damn it, how hard was it to jiggle the frickin' handle?

He crawled out of bed, feeling his way to the door like he usually did when he got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. If he turned on a light his mom got hysterical and wanted to know what was wrong. Besides, she kept a night-light in the hallway, one of those light-sensored gizmos that turned on automatically in the dark. Only tonight there was no light. The frickin' thing must have burned out. Piece of crap.

He felt along the wall. The gurgling hadn't stopped. And he was right. It did seem to be coming from the bathroom between his and Tyler's rooms. He had a notion to go wake up Tyler and show him how to fix it. But wait, wasn't Tyler supposed to be sleeping over at his friend's? The big baby must have changed his mind.

Gibson noticed the light under the closed bathroom door. Not only did Tyler leave the toilet running, he left the light on. Geez, what a pain in the ass. He pushed open the door and froze. There on the bathroom floor was Monsignor O'Sullivan, lying on his side. The gurgling noise was blood streaming from his nose and mouth and chest. And his eyes were staring, unblinking, directly at him.

Gibson started backing away and slammed into the wall. He shook his head and looked around the small bathroom. Everything else was in place. Even the wadded-up towel he had left on the floor. He closed his eyes and opened them again.

That's when the priest's eyes blinked.

Jesus! Gibson turned to run, but the door had closed behind him. He couldn't find the doorknob. What the hell happened to the doorknob?

He glanced back over his shoulder. The monsignor jerked and turned, then started to get to his feet. Now Gibson pressed himself against the wall, too stunned to move. Paralyzed, with his heart pounding in his ears and a cold sweat sliding down his back. The last time Gibson had seen him he was lying on the bathroom floor at the airport. That's where Gibson had left him. There had teen blood, lots of it. How did he get here?

Monsignor O'Sullivan looked at him and smiled as he brushed off his trousers.

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you, Gibson? You just left me lying there."

The priest rubbed at the blood trickling down the front of his shirt, getting his fingers red and dripping all over the ceramic tile. He was alive. And there was a flash of anger in his eyes. Anger at Gibson.

"Because you thought I was dead?" The monsignor said exactly what Gibson was thinking as if he could read his mind. "Did you really think it'd be that easy to be rid of me? Gibson, Gibson, Gibson. You of all the boys should know better than that."

Monsignor O'Sullivan started walking toward him.

"My mom's just down the hall," Gibson warned him.

"No, she's not. I checked."

He kept coming, shaking his finger at Gibson and splattering blood as he did so. And he had that smile, that knowing look that sank Gibson's stomach. He hadn't heard his mom come home and now he remembered mat even Tyler was at a sleep over. No one would hear him even if he yelled or screamed.

"On your knees, son. You know what you need to do," Monsignor O'Sullivan told him, and as he got closer and closer, Gibson could even smell the alcohol on his breath.

Gibson woke with a violent thrashing, fighting and swinging at the blanket he had managed to tangle around himself. He was wet and shaking, but when he finally realized it was only a dream, relief swept over him. Only then did he notice that he was still reciting the Our Father in a panicked whisper.

He made himself stop. He tried to lay still and listen.

There was no gurgling. Nothing.

He stared up at his ceiling, watching the familiar shadow of a tree branch from outside the window. Watching and still listening. Finally the panic subsided and that's when he noticed the smell. He cringed and allowed a disgusted sigh as he crawled out of bed. In the darkness he began stripping his bedsheets. Maybe he could change them and get them in the washer without his mom noticing. He didn't need her worrying about him. And he didn't want her knowing. It was too embarrassing even though it had been over a year since he had wet the bed.

CHAPTER 10

Saturday, July 3
Washington, D.C.

G
wen Patterson sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of her living room dressed only in her robe. Her hair was still dripping from her shower. Her usual one cup of coffee had extended to three. She had pushed the coffee table out of the way and surrounded herself with newspaper articles and scattered files. To her right were the assorted handwritten notes from the killer __ scraps of paper, each now in a plastic bag and lined up beside her. She treated the notes as evidence, handling them carefully, as if trying to compensate for not turning them over to the proper authorities. The proper authorities being Detective Julia Racine and company, which now included Maggie.

Outside, she could hear the early-morning thunderstorm receding, reduced to a gentle patter against the windows and a distant rumble of thunder. She had left the living-room windows open, hoping the cool breeze and the fresh scent of rain would revive her after another night of tossing and turning.

She glanced around at her mess, wondering what exactly she was looking for. And would she recognize it if she saw it? Was it possible the killer was someone she didn't even know? Maybe he had seen her photograph in a newspaper or on TV? He could have heard a radio interview or perhaps attended one of her book signings? Was it possible that he had randomly chosen her as his contact because he thought she was an expert? All he had to do was a LexusNexus search and discover plenty of information about her professional background. Enough information to sound as if he knew her without ever having met her.

She poked at one of the plastic-encased notes, reading the carefully chosen block-lettered words that gave basic instructions, and then almost as an afterthought came the subtle threat. The first one reminded her of something you'd find in a fortune cookie: DO AS YOU'RE TOLD OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE WILL SUFFER. It wasn't until this third note that she decided the killer had to be someone she knew. But how could she be certain? The warning simply read: IF YOU LOVE YOUR FATHER YOU WON'T SAY A WORD.

Gwen wondered if perhaps even this warning could still be seen as ambiguous and empty. Anyone could easily find out who her father was, and when they discovered that he also was a leading psychologist, might presume that the two of them were very close. Besides, Dr. John Patterson was over five hundred miles away in New York City, living in a high-security apartment complex and working at a research facility that required government clearance. In fact, if she were to tell him later about the threat, he would laugh and shrug it off, quick to excuse it as his little girl being overly cautious.

"His little girl." Just the phrase still infuriated her. All of her accomplishments, ail of her prestigious degrees and certificates, a bestselling book and dozens of published articles in respected journals and he still didn't take her seriously. He thought she was wasting her brilliant mind and her time with what he referred to as her fascination and obsession with criminal behavior.

She picked up one of the articles she had clipped from the
Washington Post,
although she knew she wouldn't find anything new. She had read it so many times she could recite the twelve paragraphs by heart. The article was worthless with only the basic information. Gwen tossed the clipping aside. Now she grabbed the stack of patient file folders she had brought home with her. It didn't take long for her to choose one. She started flipping through her notes. Could there be something here? Something she may have noticed or written down from one of her sessions with Rubin Nash?

Ordinarily she kept her notes brief, jotting down single words and abbreviations, her own archaic form of shorthand. It was best to keep it brief or else the patient became anxious, too focused on what she was writing. Gwen had learned to do it in such a nonchalant manner that even scratching out things like "ERRATIC," "11" and "DAD GONE" attracted neither attention nor alarm. To anyone else the notes might be meaningless, but one look and Gwen remembered that Rubin Nash's behavior became erratic whenever he talked about the summer of his eleventh birthday when his mother told his father to leave and he did.

This set of notes included disturbing words and phrases her patient had used during their fifty-minute session. She didn't need to rely on her awful handwriting. She remembered him explaining, or rather telling __ there was too much confidence for him to feel he needed to explain __ how he had the urge to strangle someone, a woman, any woman. It didn't matter whether or not he knew her. A total stranger would do. Women had taken so much away from him that he wanted to make them pay. It would be a symbolic gesture, he had said later, laughing, when he calmed himself. And yet at the same time he added, and this she had written down word for word, that he wondered what it would "feel like to twist someone's neck and hear it snap."

Gwen reminded herself that just because he said it it didn't mean Rubin Nash was capable of doing it. She had heard plenty of strange rantings from patients. Most of the time, the threats were simply part of the process, a verbal exercise to blow off steam. It wasn't necessarily a sign of destructive or dangerous behavior when patients shared their darkest secrets, urges, or even their desire for vengeance. More often it was a sign that they felt comfortable enough and trusted her enough that they could share such things. However, Gwen had spent too many years profiling and assessing the criminal mind to let the violent comments, especially those delivered as calmly as Rubin Nash had delivered his, to go unnoticed. And perhaps out of habit, she had started listening and watching Nash a bit closer even though he was a patient and not a suspected killer the FBI had asked her to psychoanalyze.

Maybe her father was right. Maybe it had been an obsession. At one time she had spent so much time at Quantico, consulting with the Behavioral Science Unit, Assistant Director Cunningham joked that she should have her own office. But in recent years when her District practice finally took off, she was surprised to find herself relieved, almost anxious to trade in the analyzing of rapist and murderers for listening to frustrated wives of senators and the nervous ramblings of overambitious members of congress. In fact, she had recently bragged to Maggie that she hadn't been in the same room as a killer since two years ago in Boston when survivalist Eric Pratt had threatened to shove a sharp lead pencil into her throat.

What a thing to brag about, her father would tease her. If he only knew. But she had always been careful not to tell him or her mother about the dangers her so-called obsession had often put her in the middle of. Would he taker her seriously if he knew or would he consider her reckless?

Of course, it didn't matter now. It was no accident the FBI called on her expertise less frequently, respecting her wishes. These days she preferred to write books and articles about criminal behavior. She liked that way. It wouldn't have bothered in the least to never have to sit across from a killer again, coaxing and prodding his psyche to get him to trust and confide in her. And yet, despite her best efforts, she found herself being dragged into another killer's world. The bastard had decide to coax and prod her into being his accomplice. Only it wasn't a knife or pencil shoved against her throat or a gun pointed at her head. She would have almost preferred any one of those rather than the threat he had chosen. And he had chosen wisely. She couldn't risk telling the police and she wouldn't dare tell her father. That's why she was certain she must know him. She wondered if it could possibly be someone who sat across from her every week, examining and studying her all the while he paid to be examined and studied by her.

She checked the clock on her mantel. She had a couple more hours before she needed to get to the office for her Saturday-morning sessions; the first one had been rearranged to accommodate Nash's new travel schedule. Suddenly Gwen remembered what Maggie had said about the torsos of the three Jane Does being dumped somewhere else, perhaps somewhere outside the District. She couldn't help wondering if it wasn't a coincidence that Rubin Nash had suddenly started to do more traveling for his business.

Her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. She had to pull it out of her briefcase.

"This is Dr. Patterson."

"Hi, sweetie, it's Dad."

A chill came so suddenly she bolted to her feet, then realized almost as quickly how silly she was being. He sounded fine, cheerful even. It was a holiday weekend. He always called on holiday weekends.

"How are you and Mom?"

"Fine. Excellent. Your mom's playing bridge. But, sweetie, where are you? I've been waiting here at Regis for almost a half hour."

"Excuse me?"

"Your note said to meet you at eight for breakfast at Regis. Why didn't you tell me sooner that you were going to be in the city today?"

Gwen found the edge of the sofa and eased herself down. So the killer knew her well enough to know that she would have misgivings. This had to be his way of telling her how easy it would be to carry out his threat.