O’Shea was on the radio when they got back to the car. He sounded exhausted and about fifteen years older than he had before this case started. “We found the next vic. She’s in the same park where he dumped LaToya.”
Keren started driving. “How bad?”
There was a long silence. “Bad.”
She thought he wasn’t going to say anymore. “You have to see it for yourself. I’d say he brought a plague on the beasts.”
“Did he get in the petting zoo? We had extra security on it.”
“No, he isn’t interested in a frontal assault. He was more creative than that.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Use the siren. We’re not holding this site a second longer than we have to. The press is all over us and there’s a crowd gathering.”
“On my way.” Keren clapped the light on her roof and hit the siren.
“Wilma.” Paul buried his face in his hands. “God, I’m sorry for what I said. Forgive me.”
He lapsed into silence and Keren looked at him. When she saw his lips moving, she knew he was still praying, and she thanked God for that. It was exactly what he needed.
It was what she needed, too.
“Plague of beasts,” Paul said. “He managed it.”
“Well, he’s an artist after all. He’s bound to have a good imagination,” Keren said, resorting to a cop’s black humor.
Wilma lay on her back near the spot Caldwell had left LaToya. Keren couldn’t see her, though. She was covered with dead birds and squirrels and rabbits. Caldwell had sprinkled poison birdseed and pellets on her, and little animals had been feasting themselves to death all night. They had piled up on her and were scattered across the park in all directions.
The police had established a perimeter, and Keren had to gather her courage before she could duck under the yellow tape.
Paul laid his hand on her back, and she looked at him. She saw his vulnerability.
He couldn’t hold her gaze, so he looked away before he admitted, “I’ve got to get out of this, Keren. When you’re done with me here, I’m going back to the mission. I’ll help any way you need, but I’m not going to ride along with you, investigate with you anymore. I can’t bear this.”
Keren nodded. She agreed he needed to go back to his own life.
They walked toward Wilma. Some of the animals were still alive, fluttering and twitching from the poison. Keren said to O’Shea, who stood near the vic, “What killed them? Could we save the ones still alive?”
O’Shea shook his head. “It’s arsenic. We had a vet called to the scene immediately. He said the effects are irreversible once they’ve eaten the poison.” O’Shea pointed to the area, surrounded by cops. “We’re having a terrible time keeping some of the bolder animals, like squirrels, from running out here and grabbing the poison. We have to get the crime scene work finished so we can get it cleaned up.”
Keren tread carefully as she got near Wilma. The ground was so covered with dead animals that she had to nudge them aside to step on the ground. She shuddered when cold fur and feathers brushed her ankles. She slipped her foot under a squirrel and pushed it gently aside and was surprised at the lack of rigor mortis. She looked at the medical examiner crouching over the body.
“Have you examined these animals?” she asked.
The ME looked up, and Keren was taken aback. Through clenched teeth, Dr. Schaefer growled, “I’m busy, if you don’t mind, Detective.”
Keren came up beside Dee and, careful of the little creatures that had fallen before this sick cruelty, knelt beside her friend. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, Dee. This is getting to me, too.”
Dr. Schaefer’s head dropped for a second, then she seemed to find something deep inside herself to draw from. Her shoulders squared, and she looked Keren in the eye. “Sorry. That wasn’t meant for you.”
“No problem. I dish it out as often as I take it. I know how it is.”
They worked in silence, gathering evidence.
A crowd was building around the park. A press corps shouted questions to anyone who got too close, and they had to bring in extra police to hold back the crowd.
The process of working the crime scene was tedious, and the sun had begun to lower in the sky when they had everything they needed.
Dr. Schaefer seemed to relax with a long, slow breath. “What were you saying about the animals?”
Keren said, “It’s just that I moved one and it’s soft. Shouldn’t it be stiff? It was killed hours ago. Would they be soft again after only one night?”
Dr. Schaefer turned to move her gloved hands over several of the poor animals within reach. “You’re right. Some of them have been dead longer than others. Some may have been dead long enough that rigor has relaxed.” She shrugged and said, “He’s probably been killing them for a while and collecting them, just so his plague of beasts would really make an impression.”
Keren recalled the night she and Paul saw the animals feeding together in the park, and she knew Dee was right. “Nothing in that revelation was important enough to interrupt you from your examination,” Keren said. “I know you’re trying to get her out of here.”
Keren heard movement beside her and glanced up to see Paul coming close. She looked back at Wilma. He’d been hanging back all this time, and Keren couldn’t blame him.
“The painting on her gown is the same as on the others,” Paul said.
“It’s done by the same hand,” Dr. Schaefer added, “but the deterioration is getting worse. I can read the words because I know what I’m looking for. “Pestis ex bestia” written on the white dress across her abdomen. “Eamus Meus Natio Meare” across her shoulders. ‘Let my people go.’ I don’t know if they would be legible if I were coming into this case cold.”
“He’s running amok now.” Keren studied the crude painting.
O’Shea stood several feet away, where his weary cop’s eyes never quit surveying the area. “Everyone in the neighborhood has gotten really cautious,” he said. “The press reports have been so sensational that women aren’t taking a single step outside their apartments alone. A lot of them aren’t even staying alone, because the newspapers and television made a huge point of the first two being taken from their apartments. Even the pimps are staying close to their girls.”
“So he’s down to street people,” Paul said. “Like Wilma.”
“They’re all he’s going to be able to find easily. And he’s in too big a hurry to plot and plan like he did with Juanita. There was no sign of forced entry for her or LaToya. He found a quiet way to get inside.”
Keren looked at O’Shea then glanced over at Paul. “Or else he knew them.”
“We’ve suspected he poses as a homeless man to move easily around the area.” O’Shea looked at the throng of gawkers, gathered around the crime scene perimeter.
Like being hit by lightning, Keren was jolted by the feeling of evil. She leaped to her feet then froze, afraid a direct search might scare their quarry away. “He’s here,” she hissed.
O’Shea looked up sharply then turned his well-trained eyes on the crowd, hundreds of people gathered, gawking. “We can’t corral all of them.”
“We have to.” Keren itched to turn on the crowd of onlookers and try to pick out their killer. Trying to be casual, she turned, wishing the feeling she had was more exact.
“How?” O’Shea studied the gathering. It lifted Keren’s heart to know he trusted her even when it made no sense that she would know this. “There are more coming, others leaving all the time.”
“He’s not leaving.”
“Keren, they’re standing in doorways and alleyways. Half of them would vanish if we even approached them, and you can bet our boy would be one who’d vanish.”
“Is there someone here with a video camera?” Keren asked under her breath.
“Sure,” Dr. Schaefer said, watching Keren closely. “Forensics always videotapes the crowd that gathers around a scene like this. Sometimes we find our perp standing, rubbernecking with everybody else.”
“Have you done it yet?”
Dr. Schaefer asked, “How can you know he’s here? What’s going on?”
Keren snapped, “Have you done it yet?”
“Yes, once.”
“Get them to do it again—quietly and thoroughly. I didn’t feel him before, so he may have just joined the crowd. We can look at the tapes and compare who came in just now.”
Dr. Schaefer gave her the look that she might normally have reserved for a mold slide under a microscope, but she turned to the closest assistant. “Norm, have Tommy take another video of the people gathered around.”
Her helper was unfolding a body bag a few feet away. “He’s done already, Doc.”
“Norm!”
The young man, apparently not very brave, said with wide, worried eyes, “What, ma’am?”
“I wasn’t making a suggestion. I was giving an order. Tell him to be casual about it, but I want everyone who is gathered around here on tape. Everyone! If he sees someone ducking behind someone else, or walking away, get them. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am.” The young man dropped the body bag and turned away.
“Casual, Norm,” Dr. Schaefer demanded.
Norm did as he was told.
“Whoa, you’d make a great mom.” Keren thought Norm’s acting was a little stiff, but, after all, he’d studied pathology, not theater.
Dr. Schaefer turned back to the body. “You’re going to tell me what this is about sometime, right, Keren?”
Keren still felt the evil. She knew Pravus was within her reach. “You’re a trained investigator, Dee. Figure it out yourself.”
“I will,” Dr. Schaefer said.
Norm was back in a couple of minutes. With some help, Dr. Schaefer wrapped Wilma in the body bag then said to Norm, “Back the meat wagon in here.”
Paul flinched.
“Pansy,” Dr. Schaefer said dryly.
Very carefully, Keren eased away from Wilma’s body. While the forensic team worked, she slowly moved toward the crowd. When she got close enough to the mob, the press attacked, which eliminated any chance she had of moving around incognito. She pushed through the press and the onlookers. The crowd kept stirring, coming and going. There were gang members, homeless people, businessmen, people of every description.
There was nothing about any she got near that told her this was the one. Knowing that lifted a weight off her shoulders about the shooting she’d done at the car. She really had followed faint running footsteps. She really had pulled the trigger because of more than just this feeling of evil. She walked through the crowd several times, praying God would open her eyes.
Looking particularly for homeless people, she made a point of touching them when she could, but most of them slinked away when the press identified her as a police detective.
Anyway, not all the people who worked at the mission were homeless. She hunted for those five men who’d been in that car out in front of the mission, photographed by Higgins, but she couldn’t pick them out of this mob.
Wilma was loaded and the coroner’s wagon drove slowly across the expanse of green.
Higgins stepped toward the reporters. “I’ll make a statement now.”
The press abandoned Keren without a backward glance.
Pulling Keren aside, Paul asked, “If you can feel the demon, why can’t you cast it out?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Well, what is it like?”
“It’s not something I can do. My gift is to discern spirits. I can’t cast them out like some exorcist.”
“Are you sure?”
“The person with the demon has to do it. Like with Roger, I can help them believe such a thing is possible, but the choice to be free has to come from the one who’s possessed. That’s the only way I know.”
Keren watched the video camera being swept across the crowd. Keren turned to Paul but only for a second. She couldn’t stop moving through the crowd, searching, praying. “You’re done here.”
He nodded. “I think I’ll walk back to the mission now.”
“I’m not letting you go alone.” As casually as possible, she pressed on shoulders, eased past people, making sure to brush against them. Paul kept pace. “We both know that one of these times this”—she turned to hiss at him—”this maniac is going to turn his attention on you.”
“I don’t think so,” Paul said. “He’s after women. He may be blaming me for this, but his hatred is for women.”
“Maybe so, but you seem to be his real target. Maybe he only plans to torment you, but I wouldn’t count it as an established fact that it’s some mommy dearest situation.” Keren felt the demonic presence ease and wanted to scream. Who was it? There were people walking away in all directions. She checked her watch. The video would be time stamped. She’d see who walked away at just this time.
“The profiler is researching his background since we know his name now.” Keren kept studying the crowd, trying to fine-tune her sense of evil. “He’s hoping, if we look into his past, it’ll help us predict the future.”
“You don’t have to escort me home. I see Roger over there.” Paul pointed at Roger, standing alone.
“Okay. But don’t go alone with him.”
“You don’t trust Roger?” Paul looked alarmed.
“Yes. No. Look, it’s not him, but just… just make sure there are several of you.” Keren studied the people near Roger, but none of them were the killer. The killer was gone. But maybe she could eliminate a few suspects. “Are any of the men still here that were riding with Murray that morning?”
“I don’t see them.” Paul studied the crowd.
Frustrated, Keren dragged her cell phone out of her pocket. “Let us know if anyone calls so we can start a trace.” She pushed a couple of buttons. “That’s how you record. Don’t forget it, even if he calls in the middle of the night.”
“I don’t like you going without a cell.” Paul accepted the phone only when she jammed it into his hand. “He may have his eye on you, too.”
“I can get another one from the station. And I’ll ride back with O’Shea. I’m not going anywhere alone either, Rev.”
They stood and watched Higgins finish his little press conference then approach them across the killing field of the park.
As soon as he left the press, his expression turned grim. His perfect hair even seemed a little flat. “We have another woman missing.”
The top of Keren’s head almost blew off. “And you told the press before you told me?”
“No.” Higgins’s eyes glittered gold and icy.
“So you lied to the press?” “bure.”
“We really try not to tell blatant lies to the press here. They don’t forget.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. I’m going back to DC when this is over.” Higgins shrugged, not the tiniest speck of concern for Chicago cops and their relationship with a skeptical press. “She’s homeless, but someone saw her being taken, and when they went up to the spot she’d been dragged away from, they found a sign that said this.” He held up a scrap of paper that said, “Pestis ex ulcus.”
“I can’t take any more of this.” Paul ran one hand into his hair.
Keren grabbed his arm. “Tell us what it means first, Paul. I’ve got them all written down back in the car and at the office, but I can’t remember them.”
Paul said, “I can barely remember my name.”
“Morris,” Higgins said sharply.
Paul reached for the paper but pulled his hand back at the last minute as if touching it would bring the plague on himself. “Plague of boils.”
“Boils?” Higgins grimaced. “What does that mean?”
Paul said, “This one might be the worst yet. He could go a lot of different ways with boils. He could infect someone with anthrax or smallpox.”
“If he had access to such a thing,” Higgins said doubtfully.
“Boils are nasty blisters. A plague of them, they’d cover your body.” Paul stared at the paper in Higgins’s hand, then he said under his breath, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Go,” Keren said. “We’ve got nothing left, except to get the dead animals tagged and bagged.” She wanted Paul away from there. She wished she could order him out of the city.
“We’ll handle it,” she said.
Paul watched the coroner’s team start picking up dead animals, sacrificed to a madman along with poor, harmless Wilma. Then he jerked his head as if he had to force himself to look away and stalked off toward his friend from the mission.
“What’s the matter with him?” Higgins asked.
Keren watched Paul walk away, then she turned to Higgins. “He’s just trying to remember who he is.”
“That’s something I never waste time doing.” Higgins turned his tawny eyes on her. She wondered if he’d ever tried to hypnotize the truth out of perps.
“Why not?” Keren asked.
“Because I’m afraid if I figure it out, I won’t like what I find.”
Keren frowned. “I think, right now, Paul’s afraid of exactly the same thing.”
She went back to work gathering evidence. They found hundreds of poisoned pellets still scattered around.
Keren stayed alongside city crews, working into the night, so the plague of beasts could come to an end.