Eppley Airport
Omaha, Nebraska

Detective Tommy Pakula hated messes. He didn’t really mind the blood. After almost twenty years as a cop there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen. He could handle splattered brain matter or sawed-off body parts. None of that bothered him. What he absolutely hated was a contaminated crime scene.

He ran his hand over his shaved head, the bristles becoming a bit pronounced at the end of what had already been a long day. He had been home only long enough to change his shirt and socks, the latter at his wife, Clare’s, insistence. They’d been married for as long as he’d been a cop, and his stinky feet still bothered her. The thought made him smile. There were a lot worse things she could complain about. He should be grateful. Things like calls interrupting dinner, forcing him to leave behind homemade lasagna and hot garlic rolls in order to take care of some dead guy in a toilet at the airport.

From the doorway he could easily see what irritated him most, at least three different sets of footprints. One set trailed blood from inside the bathroom out into the hallway, leading all the way around the cleaning cart that had been parked in front of the doorway to block the entrance. The footprint’s owner had ignored the yellow plastic Out Of Order sign. From what Pakula had been told, the cart had been placed there after the stiff was found, so this set of tracks belonged to one of the sightseers. If all that wasn’t bad enough, the stiff just happened to be a priest, a monsignor, according to his driver’s license.

“Holy crap,” Pakula said to no one in particular. “My eighty-year-old mother can’t get past airport security without disrobing and being patted down, but every Tom, Dick and Harry can drop by to take a piss and see the dead guy on the bathroom floor.”

“Guy who found him said he asked a janitor to pull his cart in front of the doorway while he went to get help.” Pete Kasab consulted his two-by-four notebook, jotting down more chicken scratch.

Pakula tried not to roll his eyes at the wet-behind-the-ears junior detective and instead, watched the young black woman from the Douglas County Crime Lab. She hadn’t reacted or responded to any of their chatter. Instead, she had already finished with the video camera and was now starting to work her grid on gloved hands and padded knees, filling specimen bags and bottles with items at the end of her forceps, items that seemed invisible from where Pakula stood. He had never worked with her before, but he knew Terese Medina by reputation. If the killer left something behind, Medina would find it. He wished he could trade Pete Kasab for Medina.

“The guy said he may have bumped into the killer,” Kasab continued, reading it as if it were just another of his scribbles.

“He said what?” Pakula stopped him in midflip of his pages.

“The guy thinks he may have bumped into the perp on his way out of the bathroom.”

Pakula winced at his use of the term “perp.” Was this kid for real? “This guy have a name?”

“The guy he bumped into?’

“No.” Pakula shook his head, biting down on the word idiot before it escaped his lips. “The witness. The guy who found the body.”

“Oh, sure.” And the pages started flipping again. “It’s Scott…” Kasab squinted, trying to read his own notes. “Linquist. I’ve got his work phone, home phone, cell phone and home address.” He tapped the page, smiling, eager to please.

“Happen to have a description?”

“Of Linquist?”

“No, damn it. Of the supposed killer.”

Kasab’s face looked crushed, and he flipped more pages as he mumbled, “Of course I do.”

Now Pakula felt like the asshole. It was a little like stepping on a puppy. He rubbed his hand over his face, trying to get rid of the exhaustion and his impatience. Overdosing on caffeine only made him cranky.

“Linquist said he looked young, was shorter than him. I figured Linquist at about five-ten. He said he had on jeans and a baseball cap. Said the kid bumped into him, you know, in a hurry, on his way out of the bathroom just as Linquist came in. In fact, Linquist said he saw the body and the blood, turned around and raced back out to get help and the kid was nowhere in sight.”

“How young a kid?” Pakula doubted this was the killer. Probably a kid in shock, not knowing what to do or not wanting to get involved. Maybe even afraid he’d get blamed for it.

“He couldn’t say,” Kasab said, but he continued to check his notes. “Oh, here it is. He said he never got a look at the kid’s face.”

“Then how’d he know he was a kid?”

Kasab looked up at him as if checking to see if the question was a test. “I guess by his demeanor or maybe his stature.”

Great, Pakula thought. Now the rookie was guessing. Brilliant police work. Pakula wanted to groan, but instead turned and glanced back at Terese Medina who had meticulously made her way to the corpse. Pakula watched Medina pick at the back of the stiff’s polo shirt with her forceps. Maybe they’d get lucky and there’d be some interesting transfer debris. Now, that would be brilliant police work. Just then Medina held up something at the end of her forceps.

“This is weird,” she said, turning it around for a more thorough inspection. To Pakula it looked like a piece of white fuzz, no bigger than a dime.

“What is it?” Pakula came closer while she slipped it into a plastic bag and was picking another off the monsignor’s polo shirt.

“I could be really off base,” she said, holding it up to her nose this time, “but it looks like crumbs.”

“Crumbs?”

“Yeah, bread crumbs.”

Before Pakula could respond, his cell phone started tinkling, the sound of a million tiny little bells. He should never have let his daughter Angie—the techno nerd—program the damn thing. He had no idea how to change the tone and instead he resorted to ripping the phone off of his hip, breaking his record at two rings.

“Pakula.” All he got was static. “Hold on.” He turned his back and walked down the hallway, hoping for a stronger signal. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Pakula, it’s Carmichael.”

“Where the hell are you, Carmichael? I could use your butt down here at the airport.”

“I’m still at the station.”

“I’ve a got a sliced-up priest on the bathroom floor with idiots walking around him to take a piss and maybe even eat a sandwich over his dead body.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Well, that all sounds like a lot of fun, but I thought you might be interested in the phone call I just got. A Brother Sebastian from the Omaha Archdiocese’s office wants to know the condition of Monsignor William O’Sullivan’s body.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding. How the hell did he already find out? We just ID’d the padre less than an hour ago.”

“Said he received an anonymous phone call.”

“Really?”

Pakula could hear Detective Kim Carmichael crunching, a nervous habit that added to her waistline. Then the rest of them would pay, having to listen to her complain in a burst of choppy Korean expletives. But he’d trade Kasab for her, too.

“Here’s the thing, Pakula, actually two items I think you’ll find interesting. Brother Sebastian seemed awfully concerned about the monsignor’s personal effects, particularly one leather portfolio. Second, he wanted us to know that Archbishop Armstrong would help us, so it certainly wouldn’t be necessary to bring in the FBI.”

“The FBI?” Pakula laughed. “Okay, Carmichael. Very funny. But it’s been a long day, and I’m really not in the mood for—”

“I’m not kidding, Tommy. That’s what he said. I even wrote it down.”

“Why the hell would we call in the FBI for a local homicide?”

“He tried to sound nonchalant about it when he said it,” Carmichael replied, “but I could hear something, you know. He was nervous and careful with his words, and yet, trying to be all like it’s no big deal.”

Pakula stopped, leaned against the wall, keeping out of earshot of the coffee and doughnut counter. He couldn’t remember seeing a leather portfolio. From the beginning he thought this was a random hit, maybe a robbery gone badly despite the padre’s wallet left behind filled with euros. Euros were worthless to a local petty thief. But what if the killer hadn’t been looking for quick cash? What if he knew exactly who he had followed into the men’s bathroom? Was it possible someone intended to kill the good monsignor? That made it a whole different case.

“Hey, Pakula, you fall asleep on me?”

“Do me a favor, Carmichael. Give Bob Weston a call and fill him in on the details.”

“You sure you wanna do that?”

“The archbishop says he doesn’t want us to bring in the FBI. Yeah, maybe I might check with the FBI to see why that is.”