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  Sam’s plan was brilliant, except for the obvious fact that it only delayed the inevitable. Slater wasn’t going away—he would wait out there in the dark, biding his time while Kevin slowly dehydrated beneath the sheets. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just wait and waste away while Slater chuckled under his rock.

  The idea ignited in his mind with the sky’s first graying. Buy a gun. His eyes sprang open. Of course! Why not? Become the hunter.

  Don’t be absurd. He closed his eyes. You aren’t a killer. The discussion with Dr. Francis was one thing—all that talk about gossip and killing being the same thing. But when it came right down to it, he could never kill another human. He couldn’t line up a man in the gun’s sights and send a slug through his head. POW! Surprise, creep.

  Kevin slowly opened his eyes. Where would he get a gun anyway? A pawnshop? Not with today’s laws. Not legally, anyway. On the other hand, for the right price . . .

  Forget it. What was he going to do, shoot the phone if Slater called again? The man was too good to walk into danger. How could he lure Slater into a confrontation?

  Kevin rolled over and tried to put the idea from his mind. But now the notion began to grow, fed by his own loathing. In the end Slater would kill him—nothing else made any sense. So why not take the fight to him first? Why not demand a meeting? Face me, you slime bucket. Come out of the shadows and look me in the eyes. You want a game?

  Suddenly the thought of anything less seemed weak. He had to at least try.

  He wrestled off the sheets and slid to the floor. Sam wouldn’t agree. He would do this without her, now, before she awakened and stopped him. He quickly pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt. The details didn’t seem so critical at the moment—where he’d find a gun, how he’d hide it, how he’d use it. With enough money . . .

  Kevin grabbed his wallet off the nightstand and fumbled through it. It would have to be cash. He’d stuffed his emergency cash, the four hundred dollars from under his mattress, into his wallet before leaving the house. Still there. Surely with that much he could buy a gun on the black market.

  Kevin eased out of his room, saw that Sam’s door was still closed, and walked for the door before pulling up. He should at least leave a note. Couldn’t sleep, went to put a slug in Slater’s head, be back soon.

  He found a pad of paper with the hotel’s insignia stenciled across the top and scribbled a note. Couldn’t sleep, went for a drive, be back soon.

  The morning air felt cool on his clammy skin. Six o’clock. The underworld was undoubtedly still stirring. He had to get out before Sam awoke or he wouldn’t be going anywhere. She would worry if he didn’t return quickly. As soon as the night crawlers made their appearance, he would pull over and ask one of them the dreaded question: Where can I buy a gun to blow away the man who’s after me?

  He started the car and headed south.

  And what if the night crawler recognized him? His face had been plastered on the news. The jarring thought made Kevin flinch. He swerved. A white sedan on his tail flashed its lights. He quickly pulled over, as if it had been his intention all along. The car sped by.

  Maybe he should have brought a sock to pull over his head. Kmart special over here—one bad man with a stocking over his head, holding up a night crawler with a wallet. Give me your gun, buster.

  Twenty minutes later he emerged from a 7-Eleven with a pair of dark glasses and an orange Broncos baseball cap. With a day’s stubble, he looked nothing like the man he’d seen on television the previous day. But he decided to take the drive up to Inglewood just to be sure. Probably more guns to be had up there anyway.

  An accident on 405 stretched the hour trip into two hours. It was eight-thirty before he’d pulled onto Western Avenue in Inglewood. He had no idea where to begin looking. Sam would be up now.

  He drove aimlessly, palms sweaty on the steering wheel, telling himself he had no business asking anyone where to buy a gun, much less buying one. If he headed back over to Hawthorn and headed south, he could be back in Palos Verdes in under an hour.

  But Palos Verdes was within spitting distance of Long Beach. And Slater was waiting in Long Beach. He had to find himself a gun. Maybe a knife would be better. Definitely easier to find. Then again, killing with a knife somehow felt more evil than killing with a gun, and harder, assuming he could do either.

  What would Jennifer say to this sudden madness that had overtaken him? Take him out. No, that was figurative, Kevin. He swallowed, suddenly swamped with the foolishness of what he was doing. He didn’t even have a plan! God, help me.

  For someone studying to be a priest, he sure hadn’t prayed much in the past two days. He’d been too busy confessing his sin to the world. He wasn’t sure he even believed that God could save him. Could God really reach in and save his people? He imagined a huge finger flicking the head off Slater’s shoulders. For that matter, what did it take to become one of God’s people? How was the soul truly regenerated? Through the sinner’s prayer? Take my heart, take my soul; wash my mind as white as snow. And if anyone comes after me with a gun, please put him in a place where there is no sun—preferably six feet under in a concrete tomb.

  He’d never really prayed like that. Oh, he’d prayed plenty in church. He’d committed himself to vocation and to ministry. He’d said what he needed to say to become who he was trying to become, and he was doing what he needed to do to help others become like him. But he was no longer sure what he’d become. He’d broken with his past and started fresh.

  Or had he?

  Sure he had. Out with the old, in with the new, yippee-kie-ay, yabba dabba doo. Are you regenerated, Kevin? Are you saved? Are you worthy of feeding at the trough with the others in the flock? Are you fit to shepherd the sheep grazing in God’s green pastures?

  I was three days ago. At least I thought I was. At least I was successfully pretending to think I was.

  Praying to a heavenly Father filled his mind with images of Eugene, dressed in his riding boots, issuing commands in a phony English accent. Fathers were silly men who went about pretending they were important.

  Kevin cleared his throat. “God, if anyone ever needed your help, I do. However you do it, you have to save me. I may not be a priest, but I do want to be your . . . your child.”

  Tears filled his eyes. Why the sudden emotion?

  It’s coming because you never were anyone’s child. Just like Father Strong used to say. God’s waiting with outstretched hands. You never really took that seriously, but that’s what becoming a child is all about. Trust him at his Word, as the good reverend would say.

  Kevin pulled into a Burger King. Three young men walked out in baggy jeans with chains that hung from their belt loops to their knees.

  A gun. Right now he didn’t need God’s Word. Right now he needed a gun.

  Jennifer picked up her phone, dialed Kevin’s number, and let it ring a dozen times. Still no answer. He’d been gone since five o’clock last evening, and she had hardly slept.

  They had set up audio surveillance with a single laser beam, which when placed on any one of Kevin’s windows could turn the glass into an effective diaphragm for sounds beyond. Slater had probably used a similar device. The problem with the laser technology was that it picked up sounds indiscriminately. A digital-signal processor decoded the sounds and filtered voice, but the settings had to be adjusted whenever the operator changed windows, or when conditions—such as the closing of drapes—changed sufficiently to interfere with the acoustics of the room. For some reason Kevin had decided to close the drapes just before his departure.

  A young agent named McConnel was resetting the laser receiver when Kevin had come out. McConnel said he heard a barrage of static in his earphone and looked up to see the garage door open and the rented Ford Taurus pull out. He’d reported the incident immediately, but his hands were tied. No following.

  The fact that McConnel had heard nothing resembling a phone call before Kevin’s departure was somewhat comforting, but the c
all could have come while the agent was adjusting the receiver.

  Jennifer had tried to reach Sam at the Howard Johnson hotel, on the whim that she might know Kevin’s whereabouts. No luck. The agent wasn’t picking up her cell and the hotel clerk said that she’d checked out yesterday morning. She remembered Sam because she’d been tipped twenty dollars. Any agent who’d leave a tip for a desk clerk was unusual at the least.

  Jennifer only hoped that Slater would have as much difficulty reaching Kevin as she did. If so, the disappearing act might actually offer some benefits. No bombs. So far. Hopefully the statewide bulletin on the Taurus wouldn’t trigger one. She wasn’t sure why Kevin had left—most probably a reaction to the stress—but in doing so he may have inadvertently stalled Slater.

  Jennifer called the agent on duty by the house and learned, as expected, nothing new. She decided to try the dean a few minutes early.

  Dr. John Francis lived in an old brick house on the edge of Long Beach, two blocks west of Los Alamitos. She knew that he was a widower with doctorates in both psychology and philosophy who’d lived in the same house for twenty-three years. Other than that all she knew was that he had taken Kevin under his wing at the seminary. And that he liked to drive fast, judging by the black Porsche 911 in his driveway.

  Five minutes after pulling up to his house, Jennifer sat in a cozy living room, listening to quiet strains of Bach, nursing a hot cup of green tea. Dr. Francis sat opposite her in an armchair, legs crossed, smiling without trying to. He was quite distressed over all the news he’d heard about his student, but she would never guess it with a glance. The professor had one of those faces that couldn’t help but reflect God’s goodness, regardless of what might be happening.

  “How well do you know Kevin?” she asked.

  “Quite well as far as students go. But you must understand, that doesn’t qualify me to pass any judgment on his past.”

  “His past. We’ll come back to that. This may sound like a simple case of revenge based on what the media is pumping over the air, but I think it’s more complicated than that. I think whoever’s after Kevin sees his life as it is now and takes exception to it. That’s where you come in. It appears that Kevin’s a quiet man. Not a lot of friends. In fact, he evidently considers you his best. Maybe his only, other than Sam.”

  “Sam? You mean his childhood friend, Samantha? Yes, he’s spoken of her. He seems quite taken with her.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “You’re looking for something in his life today that might elicit anger in someone from his past?”

  She smiled. The psychologist in him was speaking. “Exactly.”

  “Unless Kevin comes forward with his confession, which he did, the man will extract a price.”

  “That’s the basic story.”

  “But the confession missed the mark. So now you dig deeper, in search of that which so offends this Slater.”

  She nodded. Dr. Francis was a quick study. She decided to deal straight with the man. “On the surface it seems obvious. We have a student pursuing a holy vocation. As it turns out, his past is filled with mystery and murder. Someone takes exception to that dichotomy.”

  “We all have pasts filled with mystery and murder,” Dr. Francis said.

  Interesting way to put it.

  “In fact, it’s one of the aspects of the human condition Kevin and I have discussed before.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s one of the first things an intelligent man like Kevin, who comes to the church later in life, notices. There is a pervasive incongruity between the church’s theology and the way most of us in the church live.”

  “Hypocrisy.”

  “One of its faces, yes. Hypocrisy. Saying one thing but doing another. Studying to be a priest while hiding a small cocaine addiction, for example. The world flushes this out and cries scandal. But the more ominous face isn’t nearly so obvious. This is what interested Kevin the most. He was quite astute, really.”

  “I’m not sure I follow. What’s not so obvious?”

  “The evil that lies in all of us,” the professor said. “Not blatant hypocrisy, but deception. Not even realizing that the sin we regularly commit is sin at all. Going about life honestly believing that we are pure when all along we are riddled with sin.”

  She looked at his gentle smile, taken by the simplicity of his words.

  “A preacher stands against the immorality of adultery, but all the while he harbors anger toward the third parishioner from the left because the parishioner challenged one of his teachings three months ago. Is anger not as evil as adultery? Or a woman who scorns the man across the aisle for alcoholic indiscretions, while she routinely gossips about him after services. Is gossip not as evil as any vice? What’s especially damaging in both cases is that neither the man who harbors anger nor the woman who gossips seriously considers the evil of their own actions. Their sins remain hidden. This is the true cancer in the church.”

  “Sounds like the same cancer that eats away at the rest of society.”

  “Exactly. Although in the church it makes every attempt to remain hidden, where it is left alone to grow in the dark. You ever wonder why incidences of divorce and gluttony and virtually all of evil’s fruits are as high in the church as in society at large?”

  “Actually, I didn’t know that.”

  “Though being freed from sin, most remain slaves, blinded and gagged by their own deception. ‘The good that I would, that I do not do and that which I would not, that I do.’ Welcome to the church in America.”

  “And you’re saying you’ve discussed this with Kevin?”

  “I discuss this with every class I teach on the subject. Kevin, more than most students, understood it.”

  “Based on what you’re saying, what Slater’s doing isn’t so different from what every old lady in the church does when she gossips?” And killing Roy was no different either, she almost said.

  “Assuming that old ladies have a proclivity for gossip, a false assumption, actually. On the other hand, Saint Paul drew a distinction between some sins and others. Although he did place gossip in the most vile category.”

  Jennifer set down her cup on a cherry wood end table. “So you’re suggesting that the Riddle Killer is interested in Kevin confessing his true nature, not necessarily some particular sin. Seems like a stretch. To what end? Why would Slater single out Kevin, unless Kevin somehow wronged him?”

  “Now you’re out of my league, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re pushing theory way beyond what feels reasonable, Doctor. My brother was murdered. I hardly see any similarities between his killer and an old lady in a church.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” His compassion appeared thoroughly genuine.

  “Even naysayers accept the brilliance of the teachings of Jesus,” he said. “You do know what he said on the matter?”

  “Tell me.”

  “That to hate a man is the same as killing him. Perhaps the gossipers are murderers after all.”

  The notion struck her as absurd. Jennifer sighed. “So Slater, who was once wronged by Kevin, studies him today and sees this great inconsistency—that Kevin lives a life of minor sins—anger, resentment, gossip. But Slater believes, as you seem to, that minor sins are no less evil than the greater sins. Kevin decides to become a priest. This upsets Slater and he decides to teach Kevin a lesson. That the gist of it?”

  “Who’s to say how a demented mind works?” The professor smiled. “Really, it’s beyond me how anyone could do this to another man, especially a man like Kevin. Regardless of his past sins, Kevin is a walking testimony of God’s grace. You’d think he’s been through his share of difficulties. To have become the man he is today is nothing short of amazing.”

  She studied Dr. Francis. “He is quite unusual, isn’t he? I didn’t know his type still lived on the West Coast.”

  “His type?” the professor asked. “You mean his innocence?”

  “Innocent, genu
ine. Maybe even naive, in a nonoffensive way.”

  “You’re aware of his past?”

  “Sketchy. I haven’t exactly had the time to dig past his file these last two days.”

  The doctor’s brow went up. “Perhaps you would do well to pay a visit to the home of his childhood. I don’t know the entire story, but from what Father Strong told me, Kevin’s childhood was anything but normal. Not necessarily terrible, mind you, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find more there than Father Strong or any of the rest of us suspects, particularly in light of these recent events.”

  “So you don’t know the details of his past. Still, you say he’s been through his share of difficulties.”

  “His parents died when he was one. He was raised by an aunt who despises his pursuit of higher education. As you say, he acts like a man who has recently walked off an island to discover that there is a rest-of-the-world. Naive. I think there’s something in Kevin’s past that haunts him. It may shed some light on this man you call Slater.”

  “The boy,” she said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know about any boy.”

  She would take a trip to Baker Street as soon as she left. “Nothing else comes to mind? No other students or faculty might have any motive to hurt Kevin?”

  “Heavens, no. Not unless all of our gossiping students are becoming murderers to flush out the truth.” He grinned.

  “You sound like a wonderful teacher, Dr. Francis. Do you mind if I call on you again?”

  “Please.” He tapped his chest. “There’s a special place in here for Kevin. I can’t place it or explain why I am so taken by the boy, but I think we all have something to learn from his story.”

  She stood. “I pray you’re right.”

  “I didn’t know you were a religious woman.”

  “I’m not.”

  15

  THE YOUNG MEN WITH THE CHAINS didn’t look like they were carrying any weapons. Not that criminals made a habit of hanging guns around their necks from shoestrings for all to see. Either way, Kevin gave them a pass and pulled back onto Western.