Alex Kava - A Necessary Evil

Gwen took a good look at the girl… the young woman, Gwen corrected herself. Normally Gwen would have shaken her head at the eyebrow piercing and too short and too tight knit top. She had always tried to instill, or perhaps drill was more appropriate, into her assistants that their appearance became a reflection of her and her practice. They influenced her patients' first impressions of this office. They were the gateway to her business. All of that seemed insignificant at the moment. Her gateway had allowed a killer to pass back and forth, getting and taking advice that evidently had encouraged him to continue to kill. It certainly hadn't stopped him.

"No, there's nothing else, Amanda. Let's call it a day."

"I'm so sorry about your coffeemaker. I'll buy you a new one."

"Don't worry about it," Gwen told her, knowing poor Amanda didn't realize it would take her almost a whole week's salary to replace it. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll try it all over again tomorrow."

"Thanks, Dr. Patterson." It was the first smile Gwen had gotten out of her all day.

Amanda would probably go home and complain to her roommate or her boyfriend, maybe her mother or a girlfriend. And suddenly Gwen realized what luxury it must be to have someone like that to release the day's trials and tribulations to. And who did she have? Only Harvey and even he was on loan. She decided she'd call Maggie tonight. For a person who made her living convincing her patients that confession is actually good for the soul and the mind, she sure didn't practice what she preached. Maybe it was about time that she started.

Gwen decided she'd also take her own advice about going home and getting some rest. She slid her laptop and some folders into her leather briefcase just as the phone began to ring. She was tempted to let the voice-messaging service pick it up, but at the last minute grabbed the receiver.

"This is Dr. Patterson."

"Hey, Doc, it's Julia Racine."

So much for rest, and Gwen leaned against her desk, expecting to need the extra support.

"What can I do for you, Detective Racine?" she asked instead of saying what she wanted to say _ What the hell do you want now?

"The Boston guys found some prints they think the killer left on a coffee mug. I just thought you'd like to know the prints don't match up. They're not Rubin Nash's."

"Am I supposed to be relieved?" All it meant was that Nash hadn't traveled to Boston to cut the head off some priest. She had already guessed that the two cases weren't related. "That only means he hasn't switched from killing young women to killing priests."

"I'm not too sure about that," Racine said and Gwen could barely hear her with what sounded like traffic noise in the background. The detective must be en route somewhere. "The rest of it is very much like our guy. Father Conley was strangled just like the other victims and the killer used a hatchet to chop and rip off his head. Sounds like he even dismembered him in the garden shed behind the rectory."

Gwen didn't want these details. She couldn't hear them without visions of Dena being mutilated piece by piece. She wanted to tell Racine to stop, to save it for Maggie or Tully or anyone else. She didn't want to do this anymore. After Rubin Nash her criminal-profiling days would be over.

'Those are details," Racine continued, "that we haven't released to the media, so it's not likely we have a copycat."

"Why are you telling me all this, Detective Racine?"

"Because I have nothing. And unless you can tell me something more about Rubin Nash, I can't even bring him in for questioning."

Gwen resisted the urge to hang up. She released a heavy sigh, hoping to release her frustration.

"I've told you everything I can think of," she told Racine. "The notes, the things he's left me, aren't any of them proof enough?"

"They would be if we could find his fingerprints on any of it."

"But I noticed myself that there are fingerprints. There's even a smudge of one on the map of the park."

"They're not his." Racine was shouting now, but not out of anger. It was only to make herself heard over the noise surrounding her. "Look, I've gotta go, Doc. If you think of anything, anything at all, call me."

And she was gone before Gwen could respond. She was beginning to think Racine had dropped the ball. Had she really checked out the fingerprints? Was it possible Nash had used someone else as his courier? Maybe he wanted to throw them all off.

She had just finished packing her briefcase when she heard the outside door to the office open. Amanda had either forgotten something or she'd neglected to lock it on her way out She couldn't handle one more delivery or repairman and was about to say just that when James Campion stopped in her doorway.

"Hello, Dr. Patterson," he said, sounding out of breath.

He looked awful compared to his usual neat and tidy self. His clothes were wrinkled as if he had slept in them, his hair disheveled and his eyes bloodshot and swollen.

"James? Are you all right?"

"I really need to talk to you, Dr. Patterson."

"What's happened? Are you hurt?"

"No, no. Not hurt. At least not the way you mean."

She knew she should tell him to come back in the morning, that it was after hours. But he looked so frantic, so frightened, his boyish face grimacing, and she worried morning might be too late, remembering the hesitation marks on his wrists.

"Come in and sit." She needed to calm him down, but he was pacing the length of her office, watching out the window with every pass as if expecting to see that someone had followed him. She didn't like her patients up and about. It made them too out of control.

"We can talk, James, but you need to sit down and tell me what's happened."

Finally he stopped long enough to meet her eyes and in what sounded like a very small boy's voice he whispered, "The pounding, the banging," and he pointed to his chest and his head, "it won't stop. I think it's because I broke the rules."

The Embassy Suites

Omaha, Nebraska

Nick actually looked forward to the evening. After some persuasion, he had gotten Christine to agree that Timmy could spend the night with him in his suite. He had even gotten Christine to call Mrs. McCutty and convince her that Gibson could spend the night, too. Of course, it hadn't been easy. At first Christine didn't like the idea.

"I can't believe you want to reward them for skipping school," she yelled at him over the phone. "You know how much I spent on that Explorers class?"

When he told her about Brother Sebastian coming to the house, looking for the two boys, she went silent.

"I don't know what's going on," Nick told her, "but you have to admit, this Sebastian guy is pretty creepy."

"He's the archbishop's henchman," Christine said. "If there's something going on it involves Archbishop Armstrong. You don't think he's trying to get at Timmy because I've been working on this article, do you?"

"Are you kidding?" Sometimes he couldn't believe how naive his big sister could be. "You're trying to pin a cover-up on him and you don't think he might try to stop you?"

""Maybe it would be a good idea for the boys to be someplace else. I'll call Mrs. McCutty and tell her."

His powers of persuasion worked on Jill, too, though he hated to admit there was little persuading. Jill seemed more than willing to forfeit an evening with him for another opportunity to check out flower arrangements, and oh by the way, the caterer was bringing by some samples so if he wasn't going to be around she'd invite her bridesmaids over.

He was beginning to wonder if she was more excited about the getting-married part than she was about marrying him. What was it about wedding planning that seemed to turn an intelligent, sophisticated, professional woman into a magazine-flipping, mall-hunting, shop-till-you-drop addict? Even when they did manage to get together their conversation invariably turned to mini-quiches versus miniature watercress sandwiches and whether or not one groom's cake would be sufficient. Surely they had talked about other things once upon a time, though at the moment he couldn't remember a regular conversation in quite a while.