If you do not let my people go, I will send swarms of flies on you and your officials, on your people and into your houses. The houses of the Egyptians will be full of flies; even the ground will be covered with them.
Pravus blinked his eyes to stop the burning, then he swiped one hand across his forehead. Sweat burned his eyes. It was passion. It was suffering for his art.
He looked from his new creation to the tainted woman who needed him so much. It was a shame he’d had to stop the screaming, because he had a sense that the screams let the evil out. And naturally, no one could hear her. Pravus was too smart for that.
But the noise had violated the art, stopped its flow.
Now she lay there in silence and Pravus loved her. She needed him. Poor thing. Needed him to purify her, create something beautiful out of her ugliness.
Turning back to the gown, he remembered the substandard dress he’d made for Melody. But the paint. Dead women don’t bleed. What other choice did he have?
Looking down, he saw the slits in his own arms. He’d given. He’d done his best without Melody to help. Now, this new woman was generous.
The last one he’d hurried. It hadn’t satisfied him for long, hadn’t quieted the beast for long, but while he was creating, there had been peace and pleasure sufficient to be worth it. Especially after he’d thought of leaving her at the reverend’s home. That was a second type of brilliance. A different type of art.
The brush trembled. His hand shook worse. The beast prowled inside him and told him it was because the reverend hadn’t suffered enough. Because he hadn’t known Melody.
This one would be better. Not perfect, but the reverend would know.
He watched his hand shake and heard the beast pacing and growling and saw no reason not to be painstaking with this gown.
Laughing, he looked at the woman who’d fallen so easily into his hands. He’d done her a favor, using her to create. But the dress, it wasn’t his best work.
Father would be furious.
But this victim wasn’t worthy of his art, so why bother?
Then he knew how to make even this meager creation one of his worthy people.
His laughter rose higher until it echoed off the walls.
Time for Kerenhappuch to get involved.
The tough cop who’d been waiting in the hallway crumbled into a gentle, wounded pastor.
“It wasn’t murder.” Paul covered his face with one hand. “It’s not even in my case files, because I didn’t handle the case.”
She’d talked to a few people who remembered Paul Morris from his days at Chicago PD. The main word they used to describe him was tough. As cold-blooded as any cop you ever met. Not violent, not if he could avoid it, but when he couldn’t avoid it,
he was as ruthless and unfeeling as a robot. Most of this was said with a fair amount of respect and even some affection.
“What? Tell us what this is about!” Agent Higgins demanded.
Dyson’s eyes seemed to glow.
She’d also heard from a few people who weren’t fans. One guy told her the most dangerous place in Illinois was standing between Paul Morris and a television camera. That Paul was the one who’d done a good impression of a jackbooted thug when he dealt with her years back, and he was the one who’d been standing in front of his door when she got here. That side was a good cop. Having him working this case, in his cop mode, greatly improved their chances of bringing Pravus to justice.
The trouble was, she couldn’t stand that man.
The cool, analytical police detective seemed to have nothing to do with Pastor P, who felt everything so deeply, he carried the weight on his shoulders from every sin, real or imagined, he’d ever committed. Paul’s wife and daughter had been killed accidentally, and it had brought him to the brink of suicide and ultimately to a faith in God. But now, knowing it was no accident, Keren prayed silently he could handle it.
Paul leaned forward as if he was losing consciousness. He braced his hands on his knees, his head hanging down. All his tough-cop demeanor faded and he was himself again. Or was the cop the real man and Pastor P only a facade?
“His wife.” Paul wasn’t going to be able to answer Higgins, so she did it for him. “His wife and daughter were killed, hit on the road by a man driving by. The man called the ambulance. He went with them to the hospital and showed only concern and regret. And now he must be talking about them, claiming them as his first. The dancer and her mother,” Keren mused. “Herodias telling her daughter to ask for John the Baptist’s head on a platter.”
“The preschool program had a little dance number in it.” Paul spoke to the floor. His shoulders rose and fell as if breathing was all he could manage. “My daughter dressed up like a ballerina for it. She loved that stiff little skirt and she wouldn’t take it off. Or so Trish said. I wasn’t around much.”
His voice broke and even Higgins had the sense to keep quiet while Paul got ahold of himself. “Hannah was wearing it when she died.”
Paul’s legs seemed to give out, and he sank until he was sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up. Keren went to him and rested a hand on his bowed shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
“I saw her broken body, in that tiny skirt.”
“Pravus knew.” Keren kept her hand on him, trying to share some of her strength. It was hard when she wanted to curl up and cry with him. “Pravus must have stalked them. But why did he choose them?”
“It could have been random. A simple act of madness,” O’Shea said.
“All your wife or daughter would have needed to do was cross paths with him.” Keren rubbed Paul’s shoulders as she thought.
“Pravus calls himself an artist, right?” Paul kept his head down, but his shoulders squared and he sat more erectly, as if he were trying to pull himself together. “My wife worked in an art gallery. Maybe she came in contact with Pravus at work and somehow drew his attention.”
“It doesn’t matter about that.” Higgins clapped his hands together. “We’ve got him!”
Keren rounded on Higgins. “It doesn’t matter?”
Dyson sharpened his gaze, but Higgins didn’t answer her. He was too busy dialing his phone. “We can track him down. What was his name, Reverend?”
“Francis.” Paul’s head came up, and with a single lithe move, he stood, swiped the back of his hand across his eyes, and spoke with a steady voice. “I’ll remember his name until the day I die. Francis Caldwell. He cried. He stood in that hospital waiting room and cried because he felt so bad.” Paul’s eyes narrowed. They still glistened with tears, but he had it under control now.
Keren was shocked at how cold he sounded. He’d gone back to cop. Maybe it was all too much for him to stand without turning off his emotions. It was almost too much for Keren, and they weren’t talking about her family.
“I knew at the time he was an amateur artist, but no connection between him and my wife was ever found. Why would it be found? No one looked. Not even me. He was so kind.” Paul slammed a closed fist against the wall behind him. His sudden fury made Keren jump.
“That little murderous demon cried and begged me to forgive him. I was insane with guilt and grief and rage. I jumped on him, and the EMTs had to pull me off. I—I think I’d have killed him with my bare hands, but I never once believed it was deliberate. Caldwell quoted scripture to me. He asked for forgiveness. He prayed out loud, almost rambling. He seemed so distraught, he was on his knees part of the time. It seemed a little extreme, but he’d just killed two people.”
“Extremely religious is a long way from a demon,” Keren said.
“Demon?” Dyson’s head came up and he looked at her hard.
“Demon,” Keren repeated, “or evil. Latin for Pravus, the name he calls himself.”
“Pravus, is that like depravity? Depraved?” Dyson asked.
Keren exhaled slowly. “Maybe. Latin root words aren’t exactly part of my skill set. We can look it up. It fits, doesn’t it?”
“Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” Paul quoted scripture, and it gave Keren hope that the pastor was still in there somewhere. But Paul’s voice was so cold she was frightened for him. “I came down hard on Caldwell. He had a couple of minor charges—one was reckless driving. He had an assault charge he’d pled down to a misdemeanor. I put it in the worst light possible to make it look like he was a repeat offender, pulled strings, called in favors. He got a couple of years.”
Higgins got off his phone. “We’ll throw everything we have into locating Francis Caldwell. I’ve already started the wheels turning. Maybe we can get to him before he hurts anyone else.”
Paul’s jaw tightened, and he didn’t respond.
“We’ll go through the records and find Caldwell’s current address. And if he’s hanging around the mission, we should be able to find an up-to-date picture and pick him up.”
“Wait a minute.” Paul’s eyes sharpened. “I know what Caldwell looks like. I’d have recognized him if he was hanging around the mission.”
“A disguise,” Higgins said. “Maybe even plastic surgery. Maybe lifts in his shoes. A full beard like so many homeless men wear. He could have changed his appearance radically.”
“That must be it.” Paul stared sightlessly. Probably running faces through his mind, searching for the one that could be Francis Caldwell.
The ME team got there. Keren felt sorry for them as they entered the swarming apartment.
Keren and Paul got back to the station house just in time to be informed that another woman was missing, Katrina Hardcastle.
Francis Caldwell had vanished off the face of the earth.
He’d taken all his money—a sizable amount—out of the bank, in tidy, nine-thousand-dollar chunks so he wouldn’t alert any officials. He hadn’t filed a tax return, registered a car, or used his social security number since the death of Paul’s family. There was no record of his existence for the last two years. Keren spent another day tracking down the men who lived near the mission. She stopped in at the mission near mealtimes when she could manage it and got no further sense of Caldwell being near.
But the word was out on the street about the danger circling Paul and the mission, and many of the regulars were missing.
She and Paul spent another night in the hospital with LaToya. And as they worked, they waited for a phone call or another plaque.
She’d gotten copies of all the pictures Higgins had, plus the ones Paul had added of those who hung around the mission, and she and Paul eliminated all the ones Keren was sure she’d been close to.
There were still too many. But Keren kept coming back to those five men who’d driven away together in Murray’s car Sunday morning. It had to be one of them. It had to.
Dawn broke over the hospital ward after another lousy night’s sleep.
Keren said, “I’ve used up all the clothes I had at the precinct. I’ve got to go home. I’ve been showering at work, living out of my locker, but it’s crunch time for human hygiene.”
“You’re not going to your place alone.” Paul looked as if he was prepared to be very stubborn.
“Good, I can use a bodyguard.”
A smile bloomed on his face. One of the few she’d seen since they’d realized what had happened to his wife and little girl. Then it faded.
“I know what you’re up to.”
“What?”
“You think that if you let me play bodyguard for you, then I’ll be a good sport about it when you reciprocate.”
With a quick tilt of her head, Keren said, “Maybe. But I still want you to come with me.”
Rosita arrived at the hospital and they left her to sit with LaToya.
“Do you really want me as a bodyguard?” Paul asked. “Are you scared?”
Keren studied his face. It was cool, the cop, and it irked her.
“He was at your place, not mine.” They rode the El while Paul flipped through the pictures for what had to be the one hundredth time.
“You’re driving yourself crazy with that.” It was too early for rush hour, so Paul could spread the pictures out. The steady roar of the El was such an everyday sound, Keren barely heard it as they rushed along.
“Why can’t I recognize Caldwell?” Paul flipped to the most recent photo they could find of Francis Caldwell. It was over five years old. A skinny little man. Short, weak chin, eyeglasses, painfully short dishwater-blonde hair.
Caldwell would be in his thirties by now. He’d gotten a few paintings carried in a smaller art store before he’d killed Trish and Hannah Morris. The photo was a publicity shot, and Keren had to assume it was the best picture the little weasel could get of himself.
The few paintings he’d gotten listed in the stores were either sold or disposed of. There was no record of where they’d gone. Keren wondered if those paintings would be bloody, ugly things.
“He’s not a man who would attract attention.” Keren stared at the picture, trying to add years, weight, a beard, madness. “But I’d be able to recognize him if I saw him. And so would you.”
“So we’re wrong about him hanging around my mission.”
“We’re not,” Keren insisted. “I know he was there, and we know he’s got inside knowledge.”
“Which means he’s a regular.” Paul nodded. “And he was there as recently as Sunday, and he’s most likely one of these five men.”
Paul lifted up the five pictures they’d chosen to focus on as the El’s brakes gave their high-pitched squeal and the train slowed. Keren caught the handrail.
“But we can’t be certain. If I were dead certain, I’d do whatever it took to point the FBI and all our police resources on these five.” Keren stuffed the pictures back in her file folder and shoved it in her oversized purse as they exited the train.
“The FBI is going to do some work on that photo of Caldwell. Age it. Try a few possible alterations in case he had plastic surgery. Give him a beard, lose the glasses.”
Keren marched down the hall to her apartment, wishing she had picked one on a higher floor. It ate at her just how accessible her home was to a lunatic. She tugged the barrette out of her hair as she walked and let the heavy mass of it fall down her neck. “I’ll never get a comb through this.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to be hours getting dolled up.”
Keren whirled around. Paul grinned at her.
Another smile.
Rolling her eyes, she decided to let him live. For now. She moved faster, ignoring her protesting muscles. Her feet echoed in her building’s hallway.
“You won’t have to wait long.” With a smug smile she added, “And I was just patronizing you before, about the bodyguard thing, so you’d let me take care of you. I’m fine without a watchdog.”
“Well, you’re getting one anyway. And if you don’t quit complaining about it, I’m telling everyone at the station your real name.”
Keren glared at him over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Paul said lightly.
“I’m being blackmailed by a missionary.” Keren trudged when she wanted to jog. Her ribs reminded her of the little argument she’d lost with a Malibu grill. She probably had cracked ribs. One of her knees was determined to make her sorry for every step.
She wondered how Paul was holding up. “We’ve been at the hospital three nights now. I’m thinking of putting it on my next Christmas card: ‘Cook County: my home away from home.’“
“I’m getting close to liking the chairs in the hospital, now that my spine has been bent out of alignment enough to match them.” Paul wasn’t even breathing hard, the big jerk. “And I don’t know when they’ll let me back into my place.”
There was a stretch of silence, then Paul asked, “Do you think she’s going to wake up?”
Keren stopped and turned to face Paul. “Of course she’s going to wake up. Why would God have saved her the way He did in that park, if He didn’t have further plans for her?”
Paul nodded but without a lot of assurance. “She’s been out so long.”
“Three days isn’t that long when your injuries are as traumatic as LaToya’s. She needs to heal, then she’ll wake up.” Keren laid her hand on his arm. “I know she will.”
“And what about the two since then?” Paul covered her hand with his. “Melody Fredericks dead, Katrina Hardcastle missing. He’s escalating, Keren. You know he is. He’s on a rampage, and we’re not any closer to finding him than we were that first day.”
“Of course we’re closer. We’ve got his face sent out to every cop in town. The FBI has it entered on their database. And we’re tracking down those Internet bug sites. If he ordered from them, he had to give a mailing address. We’ll get him.”
“How could I have not thought of my wife and daughter right away? I actually knew the loon. Why didn’t I think of him?” Paul’s fist clenched. “We could have saved LaToya what she’s going through, and the other two women wouldn’t have even been hurt.”
“He already had LaToya by the time the dust settled from that first explosion. Figuring it out instantly wouldn’t have stopped that.”
“But the other two. If we’d have gotten his picture out—”
“Stop!” Keren cut him off. “You know better than to play this guilt game. Stop whining and pull yourself together.”
The General George Patton school of psychological counseling. Maybe she ought to slap the poor guy, too.
There was a visible battle inside of Paul and finally the kindhearted, worried pastor faded away, replaced by the police detective, eyes sharp, head nodding. “You’re right. Sorry. Wasting time. As soon as you’re ready to go back to work, we can sit in on Melody’s autopsy.”
Keren looked at him for a long time. She didn’t know quite what to make of his seesawing manner. As soon as she had some spare time, maybe she’d talk to him about his Pastor Jekyll and Detective Hyde personalities. For now, she just headed down the long hall again.
“Why doesn’t he call?” Paul groused. “We found the body at my place yesterday. Another woman disappeared the same day. Where has he stashed the latest vic?”
Vic? Keren glanced over her shoulder, but he was staring angrily at his phone, as if he could glare it into ringing.
“It’s flies this time, isn’t it?” Keren asked.
“Yeah, the fourth plague is flies. He can have a ball with that.”
They reached Keren’s apartment. The door swung open when she touched the knob. She immediately snatched her hand back. She heard a high-pitched whine. Then she smelled death.
Paul pulled out his handkerchief and gingerly pulled the door shut before more than a handful of flies could escape.
“I think we found Katrina Hardcastle.”
They backed away from the door. It was only after they were across the hall that they spotted the sign hanging over the door.
“Pestis ex Musca,” Keren read aloud, thinking, Caldwell knows where I live.
Paul translated: “The plague of flies.”
Keren swallowed hard then forced herself to lean against the wall across from her door, and called O’Shea.
A glance at Paul showed he was in pure cop mode. Keren thought this was more the time for the kindly pastor.
Keren left the autopsy with a headache she decided to blame on the chemicals in the lab. Dr. Schaefer escorted them out to make a few final points, complete with eight-by-ten glossies.
“This one is definitely different than the others,” Dr. Schaefer said with a considerable amount of gallows enthusiasm. “Her wounds are postmortem and they’re minimal, no bleeding. I suspect the blood on the shroud is his. We’re doing DNA testing.”
“We know who did this now.” Paul picked up one of Dr. Schaefer’s gruesome snapshots with no apparent emotion. “The test doesn’t help us find him.”
“DNA testing will be useful in court,” O’Shea reminded him.
“She had a skull fracture and a broken neck. Her right arm is crushed. There is a compound fracture of the tibia and femur, and massive trauma, particularly down the whole right side of her body. I’d say she either fell a long way, or, more likely, she was hit. Hard.”
Dr. Schaefer was making Keren sick, but there was no escape from the report. “There’s shattered glass imbedded in her skin. I’ll bet it proves to be the kind of glass used for headlights. She died instantly.”
“He ran her down?” O’Shea asked.
The ME looked up and nodded. “That’s what it looks like, Mick. I can pinpoint the time of death on her more exactly than on Juanita, too. She never spent time in a pool of an indeterminate temperature.” Dr. Schaefer considered carefully. “I’d say, judging by the rigor and the extent of decomposition, she died Sunday night.”
“Sunday night?” Keren asked. “That’s when he was trying to kill LaToya.”
“That’s when he ran scared from a crime scene.” Paul looked as calm as if he were figuring a math problem in his head. “He hit you with his car, Keren. Maybe he hit someone else, too.”
O’Shea said, “Makes sense. That would explain why you don’t know her, Paul. It was strictly chance. That may be why he killed her in such a different way.”
“And he made up for neglecting you,” Keren added, “by dumping Melody at your house.”
“Maybe it was different, but satisfying just the same,” O’Shea speculated. “So he decides to play the next one the same way. Pick a victim at random—you don’t know Katrina Hardcastle either—and make his point with the dump site.”
“So will the next one come to your place, O’Shea?” Keren asked. “Now that Paul and I are both out of a place to live.”
“Not me,” Paul said. “For now I live at the hospital, and as soon as LaToya wakes up, I’m going to bunk in the homeless shelter.”
“Which, being a homeless shelter,” Keren said, “is exactly the same as being out of a place to live, which I just said.”
“When I get time, I’ll convert part of the office into living quarters.” He sounded lighthearted, but then his voice cooled until he showed no emotion at all. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep in my place for a while.”
Keren heard him earlier referring to Melody as the vic. Caldwell was doing more damage than he knew by pushing Paul away from his peaceful life of faith.
Then she thought of her apartment. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to sleep in my place ever again.”
“Caldwell is losing it. Look at the painting.” O’Shea held up photos of the dress that had been found on Melody. “Remember how carefully he painted Juanita’s shroud? And the work on the first two signs was meticulous.” O’Shea held up the sign from Keren’s apartment. “This one that arrived with Hardcastle is sloppy.”
“It looks like he carved it out in a few minutes. He didn’t bother to sand or varnish the wood,” Paul noticed.
“I’d say our killer is spinning out of control.” Keren ran her hand over the splintered wood.
“Which should make him careless and easier to catch,” Dr. Schaefer added. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“You can see the deterioration of his mental state in this work.” O’Shea gestured with the eight-by-ten picture of the dress. “The drawing of Pharaoh isn’t nearly as realistic. I wouldn’t even think it was a pharaoh, if I hadn’t seen the earlier paintings.”
Jabbing a blunt finger at the dots at the bottom of the picture, he added, “And these aren’t identifiable as gnats. I mean, I don’t know how he’d do that, but he managed to depict exactly what he wanted with the other paintings.”
Paul said, “Pestis ex culex. The plagues must have some special meaning to him. Why hasn’t the profiler come up with something?”
“I think they’ve quit involving Dyson since they got a name.”
“Well then, why don’t they send him back to DC?” Paul muttered. “That guy is weird.”
“Caldwell is falling apart.” Keren stepped back from the table.
“I’ll do the Hardcastle autopsy first thing in the morning,” Dr. Schaefer informed them. “But my preliminary examination tells me victim number four died more like Juanita. He took her alive. My staff has done a species examination of the frogs, gnats, and flies. They’ve come up with supply houses and websites that sell things like these in quantity. Here’s a copy of the suppliers.”
“Great, we can get a court order and have a look at their customer lists.” O’Shea nodded with satisfaction.
Keren glanced at Paul. “What’s the next one?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “Pestis ex bestia.”
O’Shea snagged the list of Internet sites that dealt in bugs and frogs. “I can’t keep track. What is bestia?”
“Beasts or animals.” Paul reached for the exit door and stopped. “The plague of animals.”
“So he’s going to turn loose a herd of sheep in O’Shea’s house?” Keren asked scathingly.
O’Shea’s face turned ice cold. “I need to call my wife.” He opened his phone and walked a few steps away.
Keren tried to think of anyone else who would need to be warned. Her family wasn’t around Chicago.
“She’s going to stay with her sister in St. Louis for a while.” O’Shea’s voice was impassive, but he clicked his phone shut with undue force. “Now what about the plague of beasts?”
Keren wanted to tell O’Shea how sorry she was for the whole mess, even though it wasn’t her fault. But O’Shea’s expression didn’t invite comment.
Paul must have gotten that, too, because he went on. “Actually, the plague of beasts was a little different. Up until then, all the plagues had been some sort of blight. Blood made the water undrinkable. Frogs covered the land, and they crawled into beds and into the food. The gnats and flies made the air impossible to breathe. But the plague of beasts was about hurting the animals. Of course, that hurt the Egyptians by extension. But Caldwell might not be setting loose a herd of sheep so much as killing a bunch of animals, and his next victim along with them.”
“Where do you find a flock of sheep in Chicago?” Keren wondered.
“Or any animals.” O’Shea handed the pictures to Keren and she took them, annoyed that because of her purse she ended up being a pack mule. There was a kind of animal.
“Mounted police, maybe?” Keren tried to think of different kinds of animals that might be in danger. “Horses? A stable?”
“Could he be planning some kind of attack on a zoo?” O’Shea wondered.
“Zoos are sewn up pretty tight,” Keren said. “So far, he hasn’t done any high-tech breaking and entering.”
“He got into your apartment,” Paul reminded her.
“Yeah, but it looks like he used a sledgehammer on my patio door.”
“That’s low tech,” O’Shea agreed.
“He got into your apartment, too, Paul,” Keren pointed out. “And the lock wasn’t broken.”
“Yeah, but the mission is wide open. I don’t lock my door.”
“You don’t lock your doors?” O’Shea exploded. “What kind of dumb thing is that to do?”
“I’ve got nothing anybody wants.” Paul shrugged. “My furniture comes from donations. If someone needs my old couch enough to steal it from the fourth floor, then they’re welcome to it. I’ll just get another one from our used-furniture storehouse.”
“What about stealing your life? You’ve got enemies,” Keren warned. “Even before this nightmare, Carlo and a host of others weren’t overly fond of you.”
“ ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?’“ Paul quoted.
“ ‘Don’t help a good boy go bad,’“ O’Shea tossed back, quoting from an old television commercial.
“Mine’s from the Bible, yours is from TV.”
“There’s truth in it, Paul,” Keren said. “You might be tempting someone if you make an attack on you too easy.”
“Maybe.” Paul shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t think the lock to my apartment door works, and I have no idea where the key might be. I’ll check into it.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Keren muttered. “Thanks for your help, Dee.”
Dr. Schaefer nodded then squared her shoulders and turned to get back to her ghastly work.
“Now.” Keren reached for the door. “Where do we look for beasts?”
They were considering the possibilities when they stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. A herd stampeded toward them and surrounded them. But these animals shouted questions.
“Is it true, Pastor Morris, that you are friends with four women who have been killed in the last two weeks?”
“Where did they come from?” O’Shea growled.
“No comment.” Paul began shoving relentlessly through the throng of reporters.
“And Detective Collins, a dead body was found in your apartment? A body covered with insects?”
“No comment.” Keren kept moving. She had ignoring reporters down to an art.
“Are you and Pastor Morris both involved with these women, Detective?”
Keren was going to be seeing spots for a month from the flashing cameras. She waded toward her car. Someone caught her arm and tried to drag her to a halt. She recognized a woman reporter for the crime beat of a local television station and saw a video camera right behind her. Keren pulled free, trying not to be rough enough to provide good footage.
“Is the killer someone who wants revenge on both of you?”
Paul reached the front passenger-side door. O’Shea provided an escort for Keren around to the driver’s side.
“Is it true you and the pastor worked together when you were both on the force?”
“The Chicago Police Department gives a daily briefing at headquarters, as you all know,” O’Shea announced over the din. “All your questions will be answered then.”
“Even the question of whether Detective Collins and Pastor Morris are having an affair?”
Keren jerked to a stop and turned to see who had asked that. She saw a man smirking at her from one of the sleazier local tabloids. She glared at him, and it was like pouring blood in shark-infested waters. The snapping cameras went crazy.
“C’mon, Detective Collins, admit it.” The man tipped back his hat and sneered. “That’s why the killer is focusing on the two of you. The pastor is kicking up his heels with a lady cop, and this nut is offended.”
Paul had already gotten in the car. Keren prayed desperately that he hadn’t heard the insinuations. She tamped down hard on her temper and began moving again. O’Shea helped wrestle her door open. She slid in and slammed her door shut, hoping she’d catch a few fingers in it.
She glanced at Paul. His eyes flashed fire and his jaw was tensed into a firm line.
O’Shea climbed in the back. “Guess the press finally put all these cases together. Took ‘em long enough.”
Keren took another look at Paul. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where they got an idea like that.”
“They’re going to print that.” Paul reached for the door handle. Keren grabbed his shoulder and sank her fingernails into his sweatshirt hard enough that he turned on her.
He jerked against her grip.
“Get ahold of yourself, Paul.” Keren saw the photographers leaning against the windows, recording everything.
Fuming, Paul asked, “Do you know how many kids I’ve counseled about abstinence? Do you know the battle I fight every day against the single-mother culture that guarantees a life of poverty to so many women and children in my neighborhood? If they print something like that, it will undo years of work in a single day.”
He caught Keren’s hand to pull it loose.
“Don’t you dare open that door.” Keren let go of him and started the car. “If you go out there, I promise you I’ll leave you to those wolves.”
She backed out of the parking stall.
Paul didn’t get out.
Keren could see that it cost him.
He stared at his white-knuckled hands. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m so angry at Caldwell and so angry at these reporters. I haven’t had time to pray or read my Bible, and all of a sudden it’s like I’m losing my faith. Am I so weak that if I’m deprived of quiet time for prayer and daily exposure to God’s Word that I just forget what I believe?”
Keren heard a satisfying thunk as she backed into a particularly foolish reporter, who thought she’d stop rather than run a man down.
Paul turned around. “Keren, you hit him!”
Keren glanced at Paul and smiled. “I’ve got too much respect for a man’s innate sense of self-preservation to stop.”
“It won’t hurt to thin the herd a little anyway,” O’Shea said. “Survival of the fittest. Darwin would be proud.”
Keren looked at Paul. There was a war inside him. She needed the cop, but she liked the pastor. She had been meaning to talk to him about it, but now wasn’t a good time. Despite herself, she asked, “Why do you think getting angry has anything to do with being a Christian?”
“Because it does,” Paul said vehemently. “It does for me. My anger has always been Satan’s greatest hold over me. When I first gave my life over to God, I had to fight the rage in myself constantly.”
Paul looked behind them. Keren glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the reporters racing toward their cars.
Paul turned forward again. “I can hear the devil whispering anger into my ear. Anger is what ruined my marriage, it was what drove me to work eighteen hours a day. It was what made me turn my back on my daughter.”
Paul took a deep breath and Keren saw his clenched fists open. “It took me years to get a handle on it, even after I was saved. Now it’s like all that time spent training myself to control my temper and respond to people with love is just gone.”
O’Shea said, “Only a moron wouldn’t get angry over a maniac like Caldwell.”
“Yeah,” Keren agreed. “And those reporters spend time in college learning how to annoy stories out of people. They’re masters at getting under your skin so you’ll react without thinking. I wanted to deck them myself.”
“Anger is a sin,” Paul said firmly. “Anger is rooted in hate and that’s the opposite of love. I try so hard to love the people I come in contact with at the mission. They’ve all been arrested and assaulted and ignored. Love is the only thing that has any hope of working with them.”
Keren was free of the mob of reporters now and she drove out of the parking lot, picking up speed to head back to the precinct. She saw several cars fall in line behind them. “Anger in itself isn’t a sin, Paul. Jesus got angry. Don’t forget about Him knocking over tables and driving the people selling doves out of the temple. I’ve got Him pictured as furious.”
“Jesus had one or two episodes of purely righteous anger.”
“What are you talking about?” Keren asked. “You went to Bible college, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I went to Bible college.” Paul gave her an annoyed look, like he was tired of her interfering when he was busy beating himself up.
“So was that just a name, or did you actually study the Bible?”
Paul turned on her. She smiled.
“Yes, we studied the Bible,” he growled.
Keren pulled up to a red light. “So, I remember Jesus spending half His time getting in someone’s face—always someone powerful—and telling them they were blind guides, hypocrites, fools. He got angry all the time.”
Paul gestured in front of them. “I, on the other hand, want to throw a fit every ten minutes, because I have to wait in traffic.”
“That hasn’t been my experience with you,” Keren said. “When you get angry, you’ve always had provocation.”
“Big-time,” O’Shea said.
Keren started the car moving again. “You’ve handled all this with incredible grace and Christianity.”
“Yeah,” O’Shea added. “And besides, there’s a big difference between wanting to punch some mouthy newshound in the face and actually doing it.”
Keren sensed Paul’s anger ebbing away as she opened up some space between themselves and the reporters and that ugly autopsy.
He breathed slowly and seemed to relax. Finally, he said, “Thanks. I appreciate the support. But you don’t know what churns around inside me. The anger I’m fighting is sin. I can’t let it get the best of me, and you shouldn’t encourage me to let it loose.”
Keren opened her mouth to talk about her own anger and the struggle she, and most likely every human being, had.
O’Shea butted in. “Okay, feel guilty all you want.” He reached between Keren and Paul and offered them the list of Internet companies. “But do it in your spare time. We’ll track these down online, then we’ll go kick some doors in. They mostly sound like suppliers for laboratories, although one of them might supply fish bait.”
Paul looked at the list. “Lab experiments?”
“Sure, everything from medical research to insecticide testing to high school biology class,” O’Shea said, as if he’d known it all along.
Keren said dryly, “You don’t think a biology teacher had to personally go out and catch those frogs we had to dissect, do you?”
As if she’d known it all along.
Paul tightened his grip on the list. “I hadn’t thought of that. But it shouldn’t take long to track him down. How many orders can there be?”