Saint Francis Center
Omaha, Nebraska

Tommy Pakula swallowed one of the miniature sandwiches and just as quickly popped another into his mouth, gulping down the rest of his coffee before the second sandwich had cleared his throat. It was a nervous habit for him to snarf down food whenever he felt control slipping from his grip, and he was feeling it with this case, big-time.

“Not bad,” he said, referring to the food and nodding at Brenda Donovan who continued to stare at him over the mug of coffee she was sipping. Her son didn’t seem to notice that anyone else was in the room. At least he hadn’t acknowledged anyone else after the muttered hello during the intros. Now he stuffed food into his mouth without looking up.

Christine Hamilton offered the other easy chair to O’Dell, then pulled up a hardback chair to the edge of the small little circle so that she could sit between the law enforcement officials and the Donovans. Pakula had already guessed they were the victims.

He had to give Hamilton credit. She didn’t just want to make her statement, she wanted to drive it home with a tug at the heartstrings or perhaps with something she hoped would shock them. What she didn’t realize was that Pakula had seen and heard it all, the worst of the worst, from a newborn crack baby left floating in the toilet of a Gas ’n Shop to a domestic dispute where a husband had used a nail gun to crucify his wife to their living-room wall.

“Every time I’ve talked to Detective Sassco,” Hamilton began, “he’s insisted I back up the allegations I was making, despite my journalistic right to conceal my sources. Mark and his mother are very brave to be here today, but they wanted me to reiterate that this in no way implies they are willing to file an official police report.”

Pakula watched Mark the entire time. The young man hadn’t looked up from his food yet. He stopped once but only to take a sip of his Coke. Suddenly Pakula realized Hamilton was staring at him, waiting for his agreement to the terms.

“That’s fine.” He nodded at Hamilton then glanced at O’Dell, but she seemed to be somewhere else, probably trying to figure out what to do with Keller.

“Brenda,” Hamilton said, “would you like to begin?”

“When my husband first passed away…” The woman set her coffee mug down and began wringing her hands. She had been staring at Pakula since he’d walked into the room but now her eyes were everywhere but on him. “Well, when he died it was hard on Mark. They were so close the two of them. Monsignor O’Sullivan, although he was only Father O’Sullivan back then, asked if he could come over for dinner, spend some time with Mark. He said he was worried about him. I was always raised to believe that there was no better way to grace your home, your family, than for the parish priest to come to dinner. You have to understand. Well, you probably can’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.

“No, I do,” Pakula said. “I’m Catholic.”

“So am I,” O’Dell said.

The woman looked from him to O’Dell and back to him like she was seeing them for the first time. Pakula wondered if knowing they were both Catholic would help her trust them or simply strengthen her distrust.

“When Mark finally told me what Father O’Sullivan did to him whenever he volunteered to tuck Mark in bed after dinner…well, I’m ashamed to admit, I didn’t believe him. He was ten. Boys make up all kinds of stories at that age.”

“But I wasn’t making it up,” Mark interrupted.

Pakula noticed that all of them jerked their heads to look at him, surprised to realize that he was even listening.

“I know, I know,” Brenda Donovan said, bobbing her head. “But that’s what Father O’Sullivan told me when I finally got up enough courage to tell him why he couldn’t come to dinner anymore. He told me that if I believed my son’s lies then I couldn’t come to his house for dinner anymore, either.” She looked up at them again, searching their faces for understanding. Evidently she saw their confusion because she tried to explain. “You know, his house being the church and dinner being Holy Communion. I was devastated. I didn’t know that a priest could punish you like that. So I went to Archbishop Armstrong.”

Pakula waited, watching Brenda Donovan shake her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. He glanced at O’Dell who was now not only paying attention but sitting forward in her chair.

“Tell us what the archbishop had to say, Brenda,” Hamilton said.

“Father O’Sullivan must have warned him that I’d be calling. The archbishop asked me why I would want to ruin a good priest’s reputation with such lies. Then he held my hands and asked me to pray along with him. He said we’d join hands and pray for him. It wasn’t until we were halfway through our prayer that I realized the ‘him’ we were praying for was not my son, but Father O’Sullivan. That was the day I left the Catholic Church. I haven’t been back since.”

There was an uncomfortable silence but Pakula sat through it. He had learned a long time ago that when people confided something gut-wrenching, they didn’t necessarily want someone telling them it’d be okay. They knew it would never be okay. They just wanted someone to listen.

“Mark wasn’t the only boy,” Hamilton finally said. “I’ve found seven others who are now thirteen to twenty-five years old. Two the archdiocese paid over a hundred thousand dollars each. One told me his father forfeited a payoff when Armstrong promised he’d send O’Sullivan away for treatment. O’Sullivan was gone for two months.”

Pakula rubbed his jaw. He wasn’t surprised. He had heard about the various scandals all over the country, but had to admit he hadn’t paid much attention. He remembered being grateful that the Omaha Archdiocese seemed to have escaped it. Once, he and Clare had gotten into an argument about it when he suggested that he didn’t understand why the boys didn’t fight back. Why they waited until years later when they were adults and the statute of limitations had long expired. At the time he couldn’t help wondering if many of the cases were simply about money. Okay, so a priest put his hand down some kid’s pants, he’s definitely a sicko, but is it traumatic enough to equal a couple million dollars? Clare had told him that he had no idea what those boys had gone through.

“I’m sorry both of you had to go through that, Mrs. Donovan,” Pakula told her. “I just wish you had gone to the police instead of the archbishop.”

“I know, I know,” she said.

“Who the fuck do you think the police would have believed?” Mark asked. This time his outburst made his mother jump.

“I’ve got to ask you something, Mark,” Pakula said. “And I don’t want you to think that I’m being insensitive to what’s happened to you, whatever it was, but why didn’t you tell him to stop it?”

“I was ten years old.” Mark’s voice was suddenly low and calm, the anger evidently pushed back somewhere. “This priest who I’ve been taught is like God comes into my bedroom and kneels at my bedside.”

He looked around the group as if making sure they were listening. Pakula noticed all of them were literally at the edge of their seats.

“He told me that God and my dad were watching us from heaven. Then he asked me to close my eyes and pray the Our Father with him, so I did. We wouldn’t get halfway through the prayer and I’d feel his hand under my covers. He’d dig into my pajama bottoms, grab hold of me and start jerking at me. Sometimes so hard it hurt. I remember once opening my eyes and that’s when I saw that he was still on his knees but I could see his fly was open and in his other hand he had hold of his own penis, too, and was jerking it just as hard as he was jerking me.”

Mark stopped and looked Pakula in the eye. When he spoke this time he sounded like a small boy, “He told me my dad and God were watching us. I kept telling myself they wouldn’t let this happen to me if it wasn’t okay.” Then as if that wasn’t enough of an explanation he added, “I was only ten years old.”