Free All the Dead Fathers by David J. Walker

wouldn’t go near the place past midnight, not without backup.” He smiled. “And I’m … you know … less interesting -looking than you are.”

13.
    When Wardell was gone Kirsten sat a few moments, staring down at the picture of Thomas Kanowski. Police don’t like to share information with non-police … even ex-police. But Wardell had shared with her. A lot. Sure, Larry Candle made the intro, and some cops spoke well of her, but that didn’t explain it. The explanation was that Wardell was working a homicide with no leads, and he wanted to solve it. He was reaching out, doing whatever he could that might bring in something. Whatever he’d heard about her was important, though, because it made him believe he could trust her, and that she might even be of help.
    And maybe she could, but how? The various police departments surely suspected by now that they were faced with a serial killer. They could call in an FBI profiler—if they could find one not working twenty-five hours a day on terrorism. They could assign forensic experts to analyze and compare the tiniest bits of evidence taken from the three scenes and the three victims. They could share information with each other and with a phone book full of federal, state, and county agencies and offices and databases—by computer, at the speed of light.
    They could do all that, assuming anybody cared enough. And even if they did, she’d be outside the loop—and no way Wardell or any other cop would get her inside.
    So?
    So, just as she’d told Dugan, to help Michael her focus shouldn’t be on identifying and apprehending the killer. Her job was protection. On the other hand, she’d be most effective if she could figure out which priest on that newspaper list was the next target. The eighteen had already been whittled down to fifteen. Was there a pattern?
    There certainly was a pattern in the sense that so far none of the victims had lived at Villa St. George. She had a copy of the list, but she hadn’t asked Michael which ones lived there and whether he knew where the others lived.
    What about a pattern regarding the type of abuse? The charge against Thomas Kanowski—denied, but proven in court—involved an eleven-year-old boy, almost certainly prepuberty and thus classic pedophilia. The charges against Stanley Immel—denied and not proven, although certainly possible—involved two young girls, probably both prepuberty and therefore pedophilia also. So what about Emmett Regan? Was it boys or girls? Pre- or post-? All of the above?
    Meanwhile, though, she was very close to the Kanowski crime scene and she had a photo to show. And what investigators do best is investigate, not read tea leaves. She slipped her bag over her shoulder and went out to her car. She had “a crummy late-night bar called Bunko’s and two twenty-four-hour adult book stores” to visit.
    Stepping out into the cool, damp night air, she felt around in her bag for her cell phone to call Dugan. But no, it was late. He might be asleep already. She dug out her car keys instead and hit the button to unlock the door, then stopped and stared. The Celica was parked right under a light in the lot. But something seemed—
    Damn! The right rear tire. Flat. How could it go flat just sitting there? Had some idiot asshole punk let the air out? She squatted down beside the wheel. The valve looked fine. And then she saw the hole, right in the wall of the deflated tire, near the metal rim. A puncture, like an ice pick would make.
    Her breath froze in her throat, and a bone-deep chill and a clammy sweat broke over her body simultaneously. She stood up and whirled around, looking in every direction, hand wrapped around the Colt .380 in her purse. The two clerks were clearly visible inside the doughnut shop, talking and giggling. A car passed by on the street, then another one going the other way. Otherwise,