He could hear his mom calling for him from the bottom of the stairs. Why didn't she come up? Could he ignore her? No, 'cause then she would come up.
Gibson made himself get up off the bed and go to his door.
"What?"
"Come down for a few minutes, sweetie. There's someone here who would like to talk to you."
Was it Timmy?
"Give me a couple of minutes. I need to close down something on my computer." He shut his door with a bit of slam, then very slowly and quietly opened it so he could tiptoe out far enough to see who it might be. He could hear his mom's voice, now a worried whisper. "I'm sure you must be wrong, Brother Sebastian." And the rest was muddled up the stairwell, but Gibson thought she said something about drugs.
Now he could see a slice of who she was talking to, who Brother Sebastian was. He had his back to the staircase, but Gibson recognized him anyway. It was the Darth Vader guy.
He could barely control his panic as he tried to get back to his room quietly. He closed and locked the door and then his eyes raced around his room. He had to get out. He shut down his laptop, snapping off cables and wrapping the power cord around it then shoving it into his backpack. He pulled off the gadget he had duct-taped to the underside of his headboard, worked it open and took out the folded-up cash he had hidden. It went into the backpack's side pocket. He grabbed the portfolio and slipped it in last.
He slid open the window and could immediately feel the blast of warm, sticky night air hit him in the face. He double-checked to make sure no one was out on the sidewalk. The sun had just started going down behind the trees but only the fanatics would be out walking on a night like this.
It had been over a year since he had used this exit, which required sliding down onto the porch roof and then jumping off into the grass. He hadn't needed to sneak out because his mom was hardly ever home. He hoped they couldn't see him when he dropped off the porch. He'd have to go more toward the left and then use the back alley. And damn, he'd have to leave behind his bike. It was on the porch.
He pulled on the backpack and readjusted the straps so it'd stay tight on his back. He couldn't risk smashing his laptop. He had no idea where he would go or when he could come back.
Gibson took one last look around his room, the one place he had felt safe. Then he left.
CHAPTER 65
Omaha, Nebraska
Tommy Pakula came in the back door, catching Clare at the kitchen sink. Before he could find a place to put down the two pizza boxes, he stopped and kissed the back of her neck, getting a satisfactory stroke of his cheek in return.
"You taste good," he said. "Maybe we don't need the pizzas."
"The girls are starved." She turned and smiled at him, but there was something sad in her smile. Something was wrong.
"What's happened?"
When she put a finger to his lips to hush him, he knew it wasn't good.
"Angie's pretty upset," she told him, keeping her voice low and her eyes watching out over the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room.
"Is she hurt?"
"No, no. It's nothing like that. She received a letter from Creighton today. She'll show it to you later. We should eat first, okay? Let her tell you about it in her own way. Don't push her."
"What kind of a letter?" But he already knew and there was a lump gathering in the pit of his stomach.
"They're rescinding her scholarship. Something about insufficient funds that they've only now become aware of."
"Insufficient funds. That's bullshit."
"Tommy." This time she placed a finger against her own lips.
He obeyed and kept his voice down, but the anger was still there. "You know what this is."
"We don't know that for certain."
His cell phone interrupted them and he wanted to rip it off his belt and throw it across the room, but he was expecting a call from Chief Ramsey.
"I've got to get this," he told her and she nodded, taking the pizza boxes to the dining room where he saw the table was already set "Pakula," he grunted into the phone.
"I got your message " Chief Ramsey said without a greeting. "I'm talking to Cunningham in an hour. Do you have any idea what this Father Michael Keller has for us?"
"He said he had the list of the priests being offed. Supposedly he thinks he has something else that could lead us to the killer, but he wouldn't spell it out to O'Dell until he knew he had a deal and until he was here in the States."
"She thinks he's on the level?"
"She thinks he's scared. He's on the list."
Ramsey was quiet and Pakula waited it out, watching Clare put ice in their glasses and pour the tea. There was something about the way she moved that had a calming effect on him.
"The shit is starting to hit the fan," Ramsey finally said, and it wasn't at all what Pakula had expected him to say. "My wife found out today that her grant for the hospital got canceled. She says it's a coincidence. I don't think so."
Pakula turned his back to Clare and the dining room and walked across the kitchen as far out of her hearing as possible. "My daughter's scholarship just got pulled. Insufficient funds."
"Jesus! You're kidding." There was a pause. "Well, we both knew this could happen."
"Yep, we did." Pakula kept it to himself that he didn't think the asshole would be able to do stuff like this or at least not this quickly. "He'll be shitting bullets if he hears what I found out this afternoon."
"What's that?"
"Seems the monsignor had a thing for little boys after all, and the archbishop knew all about it."
"Figures," Chief Ramsey said.
"Look, about this Keller guy making a deal with O'Dell. You think your buddy Cunningham is gonna have a hernia?"
"Not when I tell him we have five dead priests."
"Five?"
"Deputy Sheriff down in Santa Rosa County, Florida, just found one in the wetlands," Chief Ramsey explained. "May have been there for over a week. I'll have a copy of the autopsy report in the morning."
"And the fifth?"
"North Boston." This time Ramsey paused and Pakula could hear him shuffling papers. "Information's still coming in. Details are sketchy. If I understand correctly, it happened earlier today. This one's freaky, Pakula, and I can't help wondering if the killer is not only escalating but that he's starting to lose it." "How freaky?"
"The victim was a Father Paul Conley at Blessed Sacrament. His head was found on the altar."
CHAPTER 66
Omaha, Nebraska
Gibson had managed to get a dark corner booth in Goldberg's Bar and Grill on Fiftieth and Dodge Streets. He didn't think he had an appetite, but he had ordered a cheeseburger and fries so that the waitress wouldn't mind him taking up a whole booth. Then it smelled so good that he started taking nibbles, and before he realized it he had it devoured, probably eating out of nervous energy more than hunger.
When he called his mom from the restaurant's pay phone she sounded hysterical, not because he had slipped out on her but because Brother Sebastian had convinced her Gibson was on drugs. He couldn't believe it and told her so. How could she believe some stranger over him? He tried his best to reassure her that he wasn't taking or selling drugs.
He couldn't tell her about the portfolio even though he was pretty sure that's what Brother Sebastian wanted from him. Instead, he told her Sebastian was a bad guy and she needed to stay away from him. But that's when she laughed, a nervous, slightly hysterical laugh. "Now you sound paranoid, Gibson. Isn't that something that happens when you take drugs?"