28.

After Dugan left, Kirsten wandered through the apartment, trying to concentrate on stalkers and serial killers and how to uncover them, but mostly thinking about herself and Dugan. She had never once worried about him straying, and she knew he didn’t worry about her, either. She was the luckiest person in the world.

Which is why it bothered her so much that she’d never told him about her pregnancy in Florida, and its termination. She’d never even brought it up to her doctor, and she was wondering now whether something that had gone wrong during the abortion procedure might be the reason she hadn’t gotten pregnant in the more than six months they’d been trying. She should tell Dugan the whole story when he got back from Asheville.

Why was it so hard to talk about? Being young and stupid, having sex with someone you thought cared about you, even getting pregnant … they weren’t such shameful acts. Even the abortion wasn’t something—at least not now—that she thought was so terrible. One thing that made it so difficult was that weakness and fear had driven everything she did at the time. That was something she really felt ashamed of. Back then she’d believed abortion was an evil thing, one of the worst things she could do. Yet she went ahead and did it because she was scared. Frightened to death that she might be tied down to a baby.

For that reason, and for God knew what other reasons she didn’t understand, over the years Florida had become her dark secret, never revealed to anyone. Most of the time she could ignore it, but the longer she kept it to herself, the heavier it weighed, like a thick blanket smothering part of her soul.

She was restless, and she went through the motions of straightening up the apartment. The TV was on in the background, tuned to CLTV, the local cable news channel. Suddenly the word “priests” jumped out at her. It was a teaser about a press conference to be aired later that morning. The FBI and law enforcement officials from Chicago, Waukegan, and Winnebago County in Illinois, and from Crow Wing County in Minnesota, would address the recent series of killings of Catholic priests.

*   *   *

The so-called press conference started at eleven o’clock and originated from Chicago Police Headquarters. It was little more than a statement read by an FBI spokeswoman. Five or six police officers, one of them Danny Wardell, stood shoulder to shoulder behind her, but only the woman spoke. She announced that over a three-week period three men, all of them Chicago priests or former priests who’d been charged in the past with sexual misconduct with minors, had been murdered, and that now a fourth such man had apparently been abducted.

On behalf of all the jurisdictions, the spokeswoman entertained a few questions but refused to give any but the most general and innocuous bits of information. Her main point was clearly to stress that each jurisdiction was conducting its own “very aggressive” investigation while cooperating with, and in constant communication with, the FBI and one another. All press inquiries and briefings—even regarding the Minnesota case—would be coordinated by the feds and handled through the Chicago Police Department’s Office of News Affairs. There were no suspects as yet, she said, and no physical evidence that the crimes were the work of the same person or persons. She managed to maintain a perfectly straight face as she acknowledged that “such a possibility is under consideration.”

She ended the session in true government style. “Though we do not know whether these incidents are causally related, the obvious similarities in the victims’ personal backgrounds lead us to conclude that even if these incidents are the work of a single disturbed individual or group of individuals, members of the general public have no reason to fear for their own or their children’s safety from this source.”

Kirsten could see that gibberish summarized in a headline in tomorrow’s Sun-Times:

ONLY PRIEST PERVERTS IN PERIL, POLICE SAY

More importantly, the media frenzy sure to follow, and the unified police front, meant that she would have a tougher time than ever squeezing information out of anyone.

*   *   *

Back at the kitchen table Kirsten opened the folder with the information Michael had given her. Along with his notes was the the list she had drawn up:

#1 — OUT — I-90 rest stop — shot dead, then stripped & slashed

#2 — OUT — Minn cottage — tied up, then stripped & slashed

#3 — OUT — Chgo apartment — slashed (tied up? stripped?)

#4 — VSG — Waukegan hospital —?

Only the priests living at Villa St. George were her clients, and she was doing what she could, through Cuffs, to protect them. But if she could find a pattern and figure out who would be next, whether it was a Villa St. George resident or not, there was a better chance of catching the maniac.

She added “fingers severed (dead?)” to #4, Carl Stieboldt. She had already recognized the differences between Stieboldt and the first three cases. He was a VSG victim; he was attacked just two days, and not a week, after the preceding victim; and seizing him from a public place was a risk the killer hadn’t taken with the others.

But there was something else, something she hadn’t considered before. The other bodies had been left at the scenes where they’d been murdered, with no attempt to announce their presence. With Stieboldt, however, his fingers had been severed and placed in a mailbox that was opened every day. Thus the killer had gone out of his way—or could it possibly be her way?—to announce that Stieboldt hadn’t simply run away, even if his body wasn’t found for a long time, or ever.

Kirsten was convinced that if the killer were primarily concerned with finding victims who presented a low risk of capture, Stieboldt would not have been fourth. There were plenty of remaining non-VSG targets to choose from. So again, what was it about Stieboldt?

She took her list again, and added a new column, this one for the molestation victims. They were, in order: one boy, 11; two girls, 8 and 10; ten boys, 13 to 17; and one boy, 12. That didn’t seem to lead anywhere. The murders began shortly after the publication of the Sun-Times list, but the specific charges against each priest weren’t in the paper and it seemed unlikely the killer would have that information.

In fact, maybe there wasn’t any pattern at all, just four men the killer found to be available. Or maybe Stieboldt was killed by a different person. Jesus! She stared at the four names and wondered. She shook her head and—whether it was the movement that did it or not—she suddenly thought of something. Or, more accurate, saw something. But it wasn’t possible. It had to be a weird coincidence.

A weird, frightening coincidence.

She turned back to Michael’s list, the one with all eighteen names. Yes, there was a possible fifth victim who fit the impossible pattern. And only one. He was listed in the Villa St. George column, which, taken alone, made him less likely to be the next victim. So if he was next, what had jumped out at her wasn’t a coincidence at all, but a bizarre, calculated plan.

That would also at least begin to address the troubling question of why two crazies—one out to kill abusive priests and the other out to terrorize Kirsten—had crept into her life at the same time.

She had to contact—who?—which police department? Someone. Whoever it was, they might think she was crazy, but they couldn’t just ignore her. They would have to throw a blanket of protection over the man she identified as the next victim. And when they did, the killer would either abandon the pattern or—as Kirsten thought more likely—lie back and wait for as long as it took until they gave up and withdrew the protection.

On the other hand, if she was right, the way to catch the killer was to have the next victim protected but apparently vulnerable, and then jump quickly when the maniac moved in. Yeah, right. Propose dangling a victim out as bait? The cops would tell her she was out of her mind. Which they’d already think she was, anyway, because by then she would have told them she could predict the next victim … and the victim after that.