The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them.
Pravus packed them carefully, almost sad to say good-bye to his second plague. He dressed LaToya in the shroud with care, took a long, loving look at the painting he’d created, then he hoisted her still form into his car trunk and waited for darkness.
She hadn’t moved for hours now. He had been boiling with rage when his explosion didn’t happen and the reverend wasn’t able to get them to let his people go. The beast within him drove him to his most exquisite creation yet and he’d needed everything LaToya could give to make it perfect.
He had an odd moment of wondering when the beast had first come—when the voice had first spoken and given him strength. At first, the beast had the voice of his father. But it was different now. It had become a snarling, wolfish howl.
The noise only quieted when Pravus was under complete control of himself, and that came when he created. He turned his attention to LaToya for a moment.
She slept.
He was always frustrated when his sculpture wouldn’t be still, but her motionlessness was boring. Perhaps he’d taken too much, perhaps his rage had reigned over the artist this time, which meant a lack of control. But he looked at the gown and he knew he’d done something wonderful. He couldn’t regret it. All in all, it was high time to be finished with this one.
Keren believed firmly in a day of rest, but she wasn’t getting one this Sunday. Not with LaToya still missing and a meeting of the mayor’s task force. She and Paul headed into the precinct soon after the mission church service with no new information about anyone carrying gasoline into the crack house.
“We’ve got a bigger meeting room.” O’Shea was at his desk when Keren got there.
“Good, we need it. Let’s go.” Keren led the way, with Paul and O’Shea right behind her. When she entered the room, she saw the same four FBI agents as yesterday, plus two other detectives and Dr. Schaefer.
Keren nodded a greeting to Dee, surprised to see her there. The department really was pulling out all the stops.
Then the front of the room drew Keren’s eye. A bulletin board stretched nearly the whole length of the room, covered with pictures. Her eyes were drawn immediately to Roger, his photo snapped as he entered the mission.
“Pastor Morris, good. You’re here.” Higgins stood at the front of the room, clearly in charge. “We have pictures of everyone who entered the mission this morning.”
Keren glanced at Paul and saw his distress. These people weren’t cold statistics. He knew their stories, knew that each one of them had come to the lowest place on earth in his own way. And each needed help as individuals. Now their faces were on a wall, their photos taken without permission. Their privacy about to be deeply violated.
“With the profile we’ve created, we’re working on the theory that one of the people who hangs around the mission is our perp. We’re cross-checking everyone for priors, especially a history of violence. And we’ve got our eyes open for fanatical religious beliefs, since this loon is quoting the Bible constantly.”
Keren’s jaw tensed, and she felt Paul go rigid beside her. Rosita was up on that bulletin board.
“You stood outside my mission today snapping photographs?” Paul spoke through gritted teeth. “How many of my people did you scare off? We had about half the usual crowd this morning.”
“We were discreet, Morris,” Higgins said. “We didn’t want to tip off the bums that we were suspicious. What we need to know from you is who’s missing. We need you to study this group and add any names you can think of. We want your impressions of them and any background information you might have. And we want you to think hard about who might be pretending to be homeless, since obviously our perp takes his vics somewhere.”
Keren flinched at the cop talk. Why hadn’t it bothered her before?
She felt the subtle shift in Paul’s temper, his fight to control himself. This did need to be done, but Keren hated it, hated the cynicism, hated the intrusion and disregard for the street people.
“And what do you have to report, Collins?” Higgins asked. “You told me you’d go there this morning to get a closer look at the suspects.”
“I never said I’d—”
Higgins cut her off. “We saw you go in and stay a long time. What have you learned?”
“What?” Paul turned to look at Keren. “Higgins sent you there this morning?”
Her face heated up, and Keren knew she was blushing. “Paul, it’s not—”
“Last night Detective Collins and I agreed,” Higgins interjected, “that she should learn the identities of the crowd that hangs around down there. Going in the guise of a volunteer was good thinking.”
Higgins was acting like Keren had followed FBI orders to go to the mission this morning. She did a little profiling herself. Higgins wanted to cause trouble between her and Paul. She wasn’t sure why. Her gut reaction was that he was irritated at her for walking out on him last night and petty enough to get a little payback. But she’d like to think the FBI had better men working for it than that.
“Did you get any impressions? Let’s start with your report.” Higgins looked at Keren and waited.
The silence was almost too much for her. She couldn’t report that the demon they were hunting for wasn’t there. But she could go up to that bulletin board and jerk about a dozen of the twenty pictures they had up there down, just because she trusted herself. It would save the task force hours and hours of hard labor.
Of course, no court in the land would accept that, and no cop or FBI agent worth his salt would trust her judgment. She wouldn’t have believed it herself if she wasn’t living it.
In the end she could only relate facts. “I didn’t get any impression among the people there that one was masquerading as homeless.”
She glanced at Paul. He had no expression. The cop was back. His eyes piercing. His jaw tight. Detached and cynical. Everything Pastor P wasn’t, and everything she’d detested about Detective Morris.
He seemed to accept what amounted to her lying and betraying him and his people for the job. In fact, he understood about putting the job before anything else.
He probably believed she’d set him up. She didn’t think he’d doubt what had happened with Roger, but she’d done her best to learn names and make contact with everyone. And now that just added to the image of her being at the mission under false pretenses.
“I saw you come charging out of that building just before you left,” Dyson weighed in. “You moved like you were running after someone, and you looked in all directions and appeared extremely frustrated.”
Keren tried to relate what she’d felt in words these folks would understand. “There was talk, a rumor about someone knowing about the bomb in the crack house. One of the homeless people told me that. He wasn’t sure who’d said it. When he—” Keren couldn’t lie and she couldn’t tell the truth. “Look, I’m a cop. I thought someone across the room reacted… strangely I couldn’t see who it was, just movement, a response by someone in the crowd. I moved fast, trying to see who it was. I didn’t see anyone. I can’t describe anyone. I know you can’t do it on my say-so, but if you’d trust me, I’d pull a lot of pictures down off that board, eliminate them as suspects. It would save us time.”
Dyson narrowed his eyes. The jerk.
“I feel certain that—” Keren saw something. Studying the pictures, she said, “Paul, some of these people weren’t there this morning. I don’t recognize them, at least.”
Keren went up front and pointed to several photos. “Who are these men? There are five or six I don’t remember.” She looked over her shoulder at him. He’d followed her and was watching where she pointed.
“They weren’t there.” Paul looked up at Higgins. “Where’d you get these five pictures?”
“They came up shortly before Detective Collins came out.
Identify them, Morris.” Higgins, giving orders again.
“That’s Murray.” Paul pointed.
“Who was supposed to preach, right?” Keren asked.
“That’s right.” Paul jabbed each photo as he named them. “That’s Buddy. Louie. Casey-Ray. McGwire.”
“I don’t remember seeing any of them.”
“They drove up right at the end. The driver let four passengers out,” Higgins said. “These pictures are pinned up here in the order the pictures were taken.”
He jabbed a finger at Murray’s picture showing him behind the wheel of a car. “The others went inside and returned almost immediately. Based on the way this one stayed behind, double parked—the others only needed to run inside briefly. They exited the building, got in the car, and drove off. Only a few seconds later you came out. They must be the disturbance that drew your attention. Since it’s clear they never planned to stay, you probably misread the situation.”
Paul’s eyes, still fully shielded as he became the cop, shifted to hers and away. Keren thought of Dyson and Higgins and their watchfulness and didn’t react, but she knew exactly what Paul was thinking. One of those men was almost certainly the killer. She’d felt him. They could narrow their suspect list to five right now. And here, in a room full of law enforcement officers, she had no way of explaining that without claiming a revelation from God.
Which these people wouldn’t believe.
But they were under so much pressure to hurry, Keren had to focus the search. She did her best to come up with a reason these people would understand.
“We need to look closer at these men. I don’t expect you to take my word for it with no solid evidence, but my gut tells me this is where we should look first.” She pointed at Murray then swung her finger down the line of photos.
“We can try to nail down where these men have crossed your path when you were a cop, Morris,” Higgins said. “We don’t count the others out, but we’ve got limited time with a missing woman to find.”
“Is it possible”—Keren turned to Dyson—”that something happened after Paul left the force? These men know him now. Have you worked on the theory that this could be rooted in Paul’s life as a pastor rather than a cop? I’m trying to remember exactly what Pravus said. Did we jump to some conclusions?”
“I’ll listen to the tapes again and see.”
Keren turned back to the pictures, satisfied that she’d given one of the FBI agents what amounted to an order.
Then she turned to Paul. “Let’s go look at your files again with these men in mind. Do any of them have known addresses? Or are they truly homeless?”
Paul stared at the picture of Murray. Keren had heard him talk about the man as a friend. “I’ve got addresses on Murray and Buddy. Louie lives in the mission. Casey-Ray and McGwire live on the streets. They sleep in the mission on cold nights. So did Buddy and Murray for that matter, until they cleaned up their act.”
“And Louie?” Dyson asked.
“On parole.”
“For what?”
Paul’s jaw was so tense Keren wasn’t sure he’d be able to move it to answer.
“He murdered his wife.”
Paul tried not to turn into a cop. He really did.
But he’d gone right ahead and turned.
Hearing that Keren had been assigned to come to the mission this morning made him sad. Hurt. More than a little confused. Cynicism was much more comfortable.
She was a cop. She had a job to do. So did he. Being a pastor investigating the people with the biggest trust issues in the world could very likely destroy years of work. Betraying his congregation, even for the best reasons, was painful, and he preferred to not deal with that pain.
His blood cooled. His feelings faded. He could do this—but only as a cop.
“We need known addresses on the two men you say have one.” Higgins moved to the center of the room. “And do you have full names? Background information will speed things up.”
Paul told them what he knew. “Except for Louie Pike, I only know what these men have told me. Murray is Leo Murray. He volunteers at the mission. I don’t file income tax forms or pay him a salary, so I don’t have a social security number for him. Buddy is the same and I don’t even know what his real name is. I asked him. ‘Buddy’ is all I’ve ever gotten. Casey-Ray is a former boxer, or so he says.”
“He coulda been a contender instead of a bum?” Higgins asked.
Higgins’s sneering attitude should have annoyed him but Paul didn’t let it. Not when he was thinking like a police detective. The black humor had always helped him cope with the tough stuff.
“McGwire—that’s not his real name. He rarely talks. He wears an old St. Louis Cardinals number twenty-five Mark McGwire jersey. I’ve never seen him without it, and I’ve known him for at least two years now. So that’s why we call him McGwire, because that name’s written on his back. He follows Casey-Ray around,
but he’s not exactly sane, I’m sure. I can’t imagine he’s the one who phoned me. Pravus’s voice didn’t sound familiar, and I’ve heard all these men talk, even McGwire on a few rare occasions.” Paul stopped and tried to connect Pravus’s voice to one of those five men. He couldn’t.
But Keren believed Pravus had been in that room. And he trusted her. He couldn’t think of what she’d done for Roger and doubt her. But he could doubt what had brought her there. He’d been stupid enough to think it was at least partly because of him.
He gave the FBI all the information he had on the five men and added names of several others missing from the morning service.
After telling them Murray’s and Louie’s addresses and the alley that was home to Casey-Ray and McGwire, Paul said, “I want to go with you to talk to these men, Higgins.”
“No. Maybe we’ll bring you in on the two homeless men if they’re not where you said they’d be. You can help us hunt, but we want to question them without you being involved. We don’t want a pastor there making it easy for them.”
“If I’m there, you’ve got a lot better chance of gaining their cooperation. They’re all hostile to the police. You’ll be lucky if they don’t hide from you.”
“We’ll be watching close. They won’t get away.” Higgins was so sure, Paul dropped it against his better judgment. That’s what a cop would do.
“Buddy and Murray could be in their apartments right now. Sunday afternoon is really quiet at the mission.” Paul narrowed his eyes and looked at the picture of Murray behind the steering wheel. “And as far as I know, none of those men owns or drives a car. So I don’t know where that one came from.”
The whole group turned to the picture.
“Did we get the plate number?” Higgins asked.
“I’ve got a photo of it pulling up. I’ll get the make and model from the picture and run it,” one of the agents said.
“Good.” Higgins turned his grim expression on Paul. “We want to know everyone pictured here. Do I dare to hope you know all of them as well as you know these five?”
“I probably know less about most of them.”
Higgins groaned. “Great. Give us what you’ve got. We’ll run it down, put the pictures through our face recognition program. It’ll take awhile.”
“Look, I don’t run background checks or take prints from the homeless people who come in to get a meal.”
“Well maybe you ought to start.” Higgins turned away. “Now what have we got from forensics?”
Paul was real tempted to keep arguing with Higgins. But he kept his mouth shut by sheer force.
“No DNA evidence.” Dr. Schaefer shoved a stack of file folders onto the desk near the front of the room. “Everything I’ve got is here and I made a copy for each of you. The short version is, there was no DNA on the victim’s body. Not surprising, considering the fountain.
“I’ve got the specifics of the wounds and cause of death in a file for each of you, so you can run the details through NCIC for a similar MO. As far as searching the apartments, where it appears the girls were taken, there are so many stray hairs in both LaToya’s and Juanita’s homes, we can’t begin to identify them all. Apparently these ladies had wide circles of friends, and we’ve found a dozen or more people for both of them who admit to being in their house. Sorting through all of that would take months and not put us one bit closer to the killers.”
“And we don’t have months.” Paul glanced at his watch.
“Detective Collins and I have theorized the frogs. We informed you of that, right?” Higgins nodded. “I’ve got ten teams who are staking out every park, fountain, and mud hole within a mile of the mission. We can’t know if Pravus will stay close when he dumps the body, but Dyson thinks it’s a probability.”
“You think he brought Juanita alive to that fountain, don’t you, Dr. Schaefer?” Paul asked the ME.
“Yes. She hadn’t been dead long when she went in the water. It’s my considered opinion that he killed her there.”
“So he’s not ‘dumping a body.’“ Paul couldn’t be cool while Higgins callously discussed the mission and LaToya. “He’s bringing LaToya, who is at this point still a kidnap victim, to the place he plans to kill her. If we cover every possible place, we have a chance to save her.”
“I know.” Higgins’s hazel eyes flashed with irritation. “Everyone who’s standing guard knows.”
“Just make sure they do.” Paul had led a lot of cases. He knew how to run an investigation every bit as well as Higgins. “If you get sloppy, then LaToya dies, Higgins.”
“I don’t get sloppy.” Higgins bristled and squared off against Paul.
“I think you do. I think talking about a body being dumped is you being sloppy enough to get someone killed.”
Everyone in the room froze. Even Paul was shocked at the command in his voice. He remembered this. The ability to take charge. The sweet taste of power.
“Get it straight, all of you.” His eyes swept the room. “We go out tonight with a plan to save this young woman. If any of you can’t remember your job, I’ll be glad to replace you with someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Higgins’s brows arched nearly to his stupid, stylish black hair.
Paul knew when he said it he had no clout to get anyone replaced. But then maybe he did. He could go to the press. He knew how to get his hands on a TV camera and a microphone. It was a skill he’d developed to an art form back in the day.
“Are we done here?” Keren asked.
Was she on his side? Or was she still taking orders from Higgins? Paul trusted her as a cop, but suddenly he didn’t trust her at all as a woman. A woman who had kissed him pretty enthusiastically a few times. Would Keren flirt with him or kiss him to stay close to the mission?
When Paul was a cop, he’d never done that, but the opportunity had never come up. He’d been ruthless when it came to solving a case. Would he have stooped low enough to feign an attraction to a woman if it would have added to his solve rate? He knew he would, even as a married man.
“Stay here and tell me what you know about the rest of these people, Morris.” Higgins jerked his head toward the door. “The rest of you can get to work.”
It didn’t take long. Higgins seemed to respect Paul more when he acted like an arrogant jerk. So they worked well together, getting what Paul knew about the men on the bulletin board.
“We’ll let you know if we have trouble finding those men.” Higgins nodded to the door, clearly telling Paul to get out.
Paul was glad to oblige.
Keren was poring over the police files of the suspects they couldn’t eliminate, looking for a face that matched one of those five men in the car Murray was driving. It had to be one of those men. Or did it? Had someone else come in, maybe from the back? Wondering about it was driving her crazy, so she went with what she knew and tried to mentally add years and facial hair and maybe a disguise to the pictures, maybe even plastic surgery.
Paul came in and started sorting through files without talking to her or O’Shea, who was working beside her. She thought Paul believed her about why she was at the mission, but she didn’t ask, settling for the quiet rather than start something. They’d deal with it later.
Dyson came and asked Paul a few questions about how the Lighthouse Mission operated. “Where does its funding come from? Who does the books? Who has keys?”
“We may have culled too deep on these files,” O’Shea muttered. “I’m going to look at a few we eliminated.” He left, probably to return very soon with a lot more work.
Once they were alone, Paul said, “You’re sure it’s one of those five?”
“I’m sure that Pravus was in the mission after the services. The timing is right. Someone could have come in from the back maybe, or—or—”
“Maybe came down from upstairs, the sleeping quarters.”
“Of the five, Louie is the one with a murder rap. He murdered his wife?”
“Yes, Louis Pike went down for voluntary manslaughter. His other crimes were just thug stuff. Bar fights. A couple of B and Es. He’d done time in juvie. Been in foster care most of his life. He was drug involved. He did five years, and his parole includes community service, which is how I got him.”
“Does he seem capable of this?”
Paul shook his head. “He’s young. He’d have been in his late teens when I was on the force. He’s a known quantity. Not with a missing past like most of the men at the mission. I don’t see how I could have done him damage and now not remember him.”
Paul looked up. “He’s always been Louie Pike, if you know what I mean. He’s accounted for. No name change, no gaps in his history. His face looks the same now as it did in his teens. I’d recognize him if I’d run across him before. Plenty of paper on Louis Pike. So if I hurt him or arrested him, he’d be in here, listed by name.”
“And he’s not.”
Paul shook his head.
“It almost seems more likely it’s someone like McGwire,” Keren said. “All that silence. The way he dresses and looks, that full beard. Even the way he keeps his head down, it’d be a good disguise.”
Paul stared into the distance. Keren was sure he was thinking of the interactions he’d had with all these men. “If he’s faking then he’s never missed a note. He’s a great actor.”
“Listen, while we’ve got a second…” Keren didn’t want to mess up this moment when they were trying to solve this crime and save a life, but she had to say something. “I didn’t come down there on Higgins’s order.”
Paul turned his eyes on her. Cop eyes. Detached, analytical. Rude. “It’s the job, I get that.”
“Higgins suggested it, but I’d already decided I wanted to hear you preach.”
“So showing up had nothing to do with solving this crime.”
Keren narrowed her eyes at him. “Every breath I take involves solving this crime, Paul. And it had occurred to me that I might be able to sense Pravus if he was down there. But I would have come anyway.”
The coldness wavered. Keren thought she caught just a glimpse of hurt.
Before he could mask his feelings, she added, “You saw what happened with Roger.”
Paul’s expression relaxed. He nodded. “I saw.”
“You can’t believe that was part of being a cop. Yes, I was hoping I could pick Pravus out of the crowd, but—”
“The FBI wants you to carry this phone, Morris. It’s more easily traceable than the one you have.” A uniformed officer held out a cell phone to Paul.
“I can’t figure out how to run this dumb thing,” Paul grumbled as the young officer walked away. He sounded like a pastor again.
The tension eased and Keren managed a smile. “You’ll be fine.”
Paul tapped away at the buttons with his brow furrowed. “Have you tried simply concentrating on each file?”
“I can’t get a sense of anything from them. I’ve tried.”
“You’ve never even told O’Shea about this, have you?”
She shrugged. “No, and it’s embarrassing to sit and try to vibe out a demon while I’m holding paper in my hand like it’s some kind of Ouija board. But I’ve tried.”
“Tried what?” O’Shea returned.
“Tried nothing.” Keren had to stifle a groan at the stack of files her partner carried. “Good grief, you want us to go back to considering all those?” Keren turned to glare at Paul. “What were you, the Energizer Bunny of cops?”
They got back to work. As soon as it could possibly be declared night, Paul was ready for the stakeout.
“It’s five o’clock.” Keren held him off. “We can’t even conceal ourselves until dark. No way is Pravus going to strike in full daylight.”
“I’m going to the same frog pond we staked out last night.” Paul went back to combing through files.
Keren could see Paul was pinning everything on being there to intervene when Pravus surfaced with LaToya. A small army of cops was going to sit a vigil on every green space and body of water near the Lighthouse Mission.
When the sun was finally low enough in the sky, O’Shea stood up and pulled on his suit coat. “I’ve got my own water hole to stake out. I’m making the freak do some real police work for a change.”
“Freak?” Keren asked, though she had a pretty good idea.
“Dyson. I can’t decide if he’s psychic or psycho. I bet he lives in his mama’s basement—alone.”
By tacit agreement Paul and Keren teamed up, and, at nine o’clock, they gathered some supplies before they abandoned the musty halls of the precinct station and headed for the park in Keren’s car.
“Paul, you know we’re just guessing about this location.” Keren badly wanted to lower his expectations. He had a battle-weary cop’s view of reality and the redeemed heart of a Christian. The combination ought to make him the toughest man walking the planet. Even with all that, he was going to be devastated if LaToya turned up dead.
“Even if we get him, she might already be dead,” Keren reminded him gently. “Dr. Schaefer said Juanita was killed very close to the time her body was dumped. But the findings could be off, especially since she was in the water so long. She could have been killed wherever Pravus was hiding then brought directly to the fountain.”
“You don’t have to tell me it’s a long shot.” Paul settled lower in the seat with a pigheaded look on his face, as if he expected her to hit an ejector button to get rid of him.
“We need to leave the car off a ways and slip in close.” Keren pulled into a parking structure a couple of blocks from the park. “We have to figure Pravus will be very careful about dumping her.”
“How about we hunker down in those bushes you ran into last night?”
Keren glanced at him, grateful he didn’t add, To get away from kissing me. “Sounds good. I brought a thermos of coffee, a couple of waterproof sheets, and two blankets.”
“I hope it’s good,” Paul said. “Strong coffee like we make at the Lighthouse Mission, not that wimpy stuff you and O’Shea like to drink.”
With an inelegant snort, Keren gathered her blankets from the backseat. “Like you’ve never had coffee at a police station. We drink it burned and black. I can’t believe there’s a cop in the city with any stomach lining left.”
They quit talking as they neared the park. The gang problem had abated some in recent years. The park was still a known hangout for them, but the trouble usually started later at night. In the settling dusk, it was deserted.
Keren felt foolish climbing into the twenty-foot-square thicket of stunted trees. If anyone was around, they were busted, because the park was very open.
They studied the area around the pond. The park swept away in three directions. Keren looked down a grassy slope that didn’t often see a mower. The setting sun was forgiving to the sparse grass and the litter. The green expanse was broken occasionally by rusty playground equipment and decorative plantings that had been hardy enough to survive the neglect that so often plagued the South Side. The city was close at hand on the side they’d come in on.
Paul whispered, “Do you have a good range of vision?”
“Yes, I just hope Pravus doesn’t decide he wants to hide in the bushes. These are the only ones, and it will get real crowded in here with the three of us.”
“If he does climb in, he’ll be within grabbing distance.”
“If he’s coming to this pond, he’ll probably come in from the street. There’s no place to park nearby. Let’s sit back-to-back so we can see in all directions.”
Keren laid her ground sheet down and they settled in to wait among the prickly branches. They didn’t dare talk above a whisper. As night fell, the land around them began to move. Keren marveled at the life in the little park. It seemed like a place of neglect and danger that would probably be best plowed up and cemented, but there was life here. Squirrels, creatures Keren would have said lived on nuts, began eating in the mounds of refuse scattered around the park.
“They’re hardy little things, aren’t they?” she whispered.
“What?” Paul turned around.
Keren said, “Look at ‘em all.”
“In the middle of all this concrete and traffic, who’d think there was so much wildlife.”
While they watched, pigeons came down in hordes from the buildings around the park and settled into their night’s feasting. Rabbits hopped boldly around the open area, belying their reputation for being skittish.
“Oh yuck, look.” Keren pointed at several rats that scuttled out of the alley.
“Big deal,” Paul murmured, too close to her ear for comfort. “They’re a link in the food chain. Anyway, what’s a pigeon except a rat that can fly in your window? What’s a squirrel except a rat with a more socially acceptable tail? What’s a rabbit—”
“All right. I get your point. They’re a big, fat, ugly, disease-bearing part of the circle of life. I still hate ‘em.” They fell silent and watched.
After a time, Paul said, “Look at the way they’re eating the grass.”
“What?” Keren focused more analytically on the animals.
“They’re spread out all around that knoll over there.” Paul pointed to the top of a rise at the far end of the park. “I wouldn’t have thought they would graze. Maybe the rabbits…”
Her spine chilled. “It isn’t normal. They’re all over.”
Keren felt, more than saw, Paul shrug. “I suppose the animals that adapt to urban life are the ones that learn to eat what grows in urban areas.”
The animals’ presence distracted Keren from thinking about the futility of the night. The unlikelihood of Pravus showing up here was demoralizing. Sitting in a bush all night was a waste of time. But Paul needed to do something, and if being in a thicket like a two-hundred-pound jackrabbit helped him, she’d stay. The minutes ticked by, and the weight of Pravus’s threats pressed on her like a physical thing.
“Let’s switch sides,” Paul whispered. “I’m starting to be hypnotized by all this grass. If I could watch the traffic it might keep me alert.”
“Okay.” Keren glanced at her watch. She was trying not to watch the minute hand creep around. The slowness was maddening.
They settled in again, and Keren was just fighting off the urge to look at her watch again to see if it’d been two hours or two minutes when they heard the first rumble of thunder. Keren groaned. “Rain. That’ll make this real pleasant.”
Paul didn’t respond. The wind came first with a few light gusts, then it began whipping up. Lightning danced across the sky. Keren pulled a blanket around herself and handed Paul one.
A bolt of lightning lit up the park. Thunder rolled and the storm drew closer.
While they shifted around, Paul asked, “Do you suppose these bushes are the tallest things around?”
Keren growled at him, “Thanks. I hadn’t considered being struck by lightning.”
“Worrying about it oughta keep you awake anyway.” Paul laughed softly, and, as if to reward his teasing, the lightning became wilder, the thunder exploded around them, and the wind cut through, even with the small copse of trees and bushes to protect them.
Keren was no longer so concerned with their voices carrying thanks to the pounding thunder. “You know, if he were coming, this weather might change his mind.” She watched all the night animals desert the park to seek shelter. Because she was watching them so closely, she was completely focused when, at the top of the rise at the far end of the park, lightning flared and silhouetted a man against the buildings. A man carrying something that looked very much like a body in a loose-fitting white dress.
“That’s him!” She threw off the blanket. “C’mon.” She ran. The lightning flashed again and she saw him. He was setting the bundle down gently, almost reverently. He fell to his knees beside the body as if to pray before the world went dark again. Keren did her best to set a world speed record.
Paul came alongside her. She hissed, “Do you see him?”
“Yes!” Paul passed her.
The thunder and lightning were coming at the same time now. Another bolt of lightning showed the man with his arm reaching high in the air over the body. Until now Keren and Paul had been running silently, hoping to close the distance between them and the killer.
But they were out of time. Paul shouted, “No!”
Keren reached for her gun. She’d have to shoot uphill and run at the same time. And if her bullet went wild, who knew where her shot might land.
The man held his hand high. He looked toward the sound, maybe unsure if he’d heard a voice in the crashing thunder. He saw them, and, when his eyes landed on them, Keren knew it was Pravus. The demonic evil in him washed over her until she wanted to cry out with fear. Instead, she ran straight into the face of evil, prepared to fire if she had to.
The man held his hand aloft. When the next bolt of lightning brandished, Keren felt the palpable cruelty as Pravus laughed over the wicked thunder. LaToya was clearly illuminated, lying motionless at the top of the slope. Pravus looked at them, as if to be sure they were watching, then he slashed his weapon down with brutal force.
Keren cried out, even as she knew it was too late. “No! Please, no! No! No! God!” She fired her weapon, aiming for the ground just off to the side of her target.
As his arm descended, Keren’s shot diverted Pravus’s attention for a split second. Or maybe it was her prayer.
LaToya, who a moment before had seemed as still as death, wrenched herself sideways, and Pravus’s killing blow missed.
Paul shouted, “She’s alive!”
Pravus screamed and grabbed at LaToya. She threw herself sideways until she rolled down the hill from him.
Paul and Keren were closing the distance fast. Pravus screamed in frustration and leaped to his feet. He threw the weapon at LaToya, in one last desperate attempt to be granted the victory of killing her. Keren fired again and Pravus turned and fled. Paul got to LaToya’s side first. Keren slid to her knees beside them. LaToya lay unmoving on her side; a sculptor’s chisel protruded from the center of her back. Blood flowed from the wound. Keren shouted over the storm, “Call an ambulance!”
As she knelt there, scrambling to find a pulse, she felt the ground turn to life under her. LaToya’s body crawled with something living. Keren realized something squirmed under her. The sky lit up and she saw frogs—hundreds of little frogs crawling and hopping over every inch of the ground.
Paul shouted, “I’ve got a heartbeat!”
Their eyes met over LaToya’s battered body. Paul snarled, “Give me your gun.”
“My job, Rev. Call for backup and get an ambulance out here.” Keren jumped to her feet and ran after Pravus.
“Keren!”
Keren shouted over her shoulder, “Don’t let her move. That chisel might have hit her spine.” She ran in the direction Pravus had gone. She could feel him. She knew unerringly which way to go. She shouldn’t go after him alone. It was completely against procedure, but she couldn’t stand to let him go without pursuit. Stopping him was too important.
The park ended in a rundown neighborhood that led to Paul’s mission.
Keren dashed up an alley that vibrated with Pravus’s presence. Normally she would have slowed down and gone into the pitch-black alley carefully, but she heard pounding footsteps ahead, still running. She came out the other end of the alley, ran across a deserted street, and disappeared into another alley. She thought she caught sight of movement ahead of her. She picked up her pace. As she came out of the dark bowels of the back alley, she heard a car roar to life through the next alley. She ran across the street and dived back into the darkness, putting every ounce of strength she had into getting there, getting her hands on him, getting off a shot, at least getting a look or a license plate. She barreled out of the alley, and twin headlights bore down on her.
Unable to stop her forward motion, she hurled herself up. The car hit her feet. She landed with a bone-cracking thud on top of the car. She rolled, bounced on the trunk, and slammed onto the unforgiving pavement. With a sickening snap her skull hit concrete. Tumbling, she clung to her gun until she stopped.
With pure willpower, she rolled onto her belly, focused on the disappearing car, and fired at the rapidly disappearing vehicle. No light shined on the license plate. She heard glass break and a taillight went blank. She unloaded her weapon at the car, then it skidded around a corner, and in the streetlight she made out the shape of the lights and the silhouette of the car, a sedan. Dark. Four doors.
They’d said the car Murray was driving was a dark-green Malibu. Keren thought this might be it.
It sped around a corner, and Keren shoved against the pavement, to go after him.
She made it as far as her knees before her head began to spin. She stared at blood dripping onto her hands and had a vague idea that it wasn’t a good sign.
She was only distantly aware of the lightning and thunder as the storm broke and rained down on her collapsing form.
Paul couldn’t leave LaToya’s side. He gave the 911 operator directions with his cell in one hand while he tried to stem the gushing wound in her back and hold her still with the other. An ambulance siren sounded in the distance.
“Hurry,” Paul prayed as he carefully avoided touching the chisel, afraid he’d make it worse. How could it be worse? He laughed harshly. It wasn’t a sound he’d heard come from himself for five years. But he recognized that cynical cop laughter well.
He felt something crawling inside his shirt but he didn’t have a hand to spare for himself. The creeping feeling of the trapped frog seeped into his guts and filled him with loathing.
The blinding lights of the ambulance swept across the park. Following Paul’s careful directions, it drove straight out onto the grass and sped toward them.
LaToya’s pulse was weakening. Her breathing was so shallow he had to lean right next to her mouth to hear it. The rescue squad skidded to a stop. Paramedics raced toward him. He thanked God for the rapid response. They pushed him aside. He yelled instructions about the chisel.
“I’m here with a police detective. She went after him,” Paul shouted at the first responding paramedic. “You have to keep it quiet that she’s alive.” He grabbed her arm and shook the poor woman until she threatened to belt him. Then, knowing he had her attention, he said, “The man who tried to kill her is the serial killer who blew up that building last week. He’ll come after her if he knows she’s alive.”
With soothing tones that Paul knew she practiced, the woman said, “We can put out the word she died. I know the guy you’re talking about.”
“What is this crawling all over her?” one of the paramedics asked, his voice strangled with horror.
“Frogs,” Paul said hoarsely. “Last week it was a plague of blood. This week is a plague of frogs.”
The paramedic who asked made an inarticulate sound of disgust.
“Where are you taking her? What hospital?”
“We’ll go straight to Cook County,” the woman medic said.
Paul said, “I’m here with a police officer. She chased the man out the south side of the park. I’m going after her!”
The sound of gunfire froze everyone in their tracks. Paul whirled to face the direction of the sound. The direction Keren had run.
“Wait for the police, sir! They’re equipped to handle this!”
“Just don’t let anyone know she survived. Please. Send the police after me.” Paul turned and raced in the direction Keren had gone. The sky opened up and poured.
Paul sprinted toward the shots, sick at heart from what he might find. He heard a car roaring away and tore down one alley after another. He almost tripped over Keren, lying unconscious on the pavement. He had his cell phone out for the second time in minutes, calling for help.
Blood coursed down the side of Keren’s face. The rain pelted her and turned the trail of blood into a red river. Paul fumbled at her wrist for a heartbeat and, when he found a strong, steady pulse, he relaxed for just a second. Her breathing was even and deep. He started checking her for gunshot wounds. It was so dark that he had to wait for lightning to flash for him to see. She had her gun still clutched in her hand, and he pried it free and checked the load. He’d counted the shots. He knew her gun’s capacity and that she’d keep it fully loaded. It was empty now.
All the shots had come from her gun.
The bleeding on her head must be from a nasty scrape, not a bullet. A welt the size of an egg was swelling up from under the scrape. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to the rain to wet it then pressed it against her head to staunch the bleeding.
Paul ran his free hand over her inert form and found no more blood, except on her hands, which were grated raw. He did his best to check for broken bones, and when he found none, he gently held out her hands to the rain to rinse away the worst of the dirt and gravel.
He noticed movement in the alley across from them. All they needed to end this dreadful night was to be mugged. He glared at the alley, hoping he would finally have the chance to do more than just call for help. He had a visceral need to fight back.
Keren distracted him when she moaned softly. It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.
“Keren? Keren, did he shoot you?” He knew the answer but couldn’t stop the panicked question.
“No,” she groaned, trying to sit up. “I shot him!”
“Don’t move. An ambulance is on the way. You’re bleeding, honey. You’ve got to lie still.” Paul held her down with little trouble, because she was still semiconscious. Trust Keren to fight the world standing on her own two feet, even when she was battered and bleeding.
She said in a husky voice, “I’m drowning.”
Paul realized the now-pouring rain was hitting her right in the face. He leaned over her to shelter her with his body. “Did you really shoot him?”
“No!” she snarled, then she tried to sit up again. “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t see anything! I shot at him and I got a couple rounds into the car, but I didn’t even slow him down. They might as well get me a Seeing Eye dog!”
Paul held her down. Then he thought of something that might help. A little. “LaToya’s alive. The paramedics are taking her to Cook County Hospital.” A gust of wind blew the rain sideways so Keren got hit in the face. Paul leaned closer.
The distant sound of an ambulance told Paul help was on the way.
“Is she going to make it?” She sounded like knowing LaToya was alive really had made her feel better.
“I don’t know. But she’s got a chance. Thank God, she’s got a chance.”
“Will you pray with me, Paul?” Keren asked. “Pray for LaToya?”
“I’d love to pray with you.” Paul began speaking to the Lord. “Dear God—”
“Wait a minute,” Keren interrupted. “Something is crawling around inside my clothes.” She reached under her shirt.
Paul realized he had a few wiggly spots, too. “Frogs.”
Keren shuddered. “Gross.” She tossed one frog out and went back after another.
Paul said doubtfully, “Maybe we’d better keep them. They might be a clue.”
“Can you store them in your shirt?” Keren groaned. “I’ve had about all I can take for one night.”
“Yeah. Sure. I don’t mind amphibians in my clothes.” Paul thought gloomily that this was what chivalry had come to. He caught the frogs as she extracted them. She found two, he found five on himself. He gently bundled them up in the front of his sweatshirt.
As the ambulance pulled up, Keren groused, “Did I hear you call me ‘honey’?”
“It must be the head injury,” Paul said.
“It had better be.”