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.”