Blood. Everywhere. Blood and the smell of death.
“I s’pose he used the blood to get our attention.” O’Shea crouched down and reached his pen out to lift the hand that lay on the edge of the fountain.
“It worked.” Keren watched the victim bob faceup in a small cemented pond within walking distance of the Lighthouse Mission.
It was the kind of park where you stepped around the discarded condoms and kept a wary eye out for used needles. One of its efforts toward beauty was in this modest fountain, twenty feet around and sunk into the ground like a little pond with its simple joyous spray of water.
The fountain was obviously circulating the same water over and over, because blood spurted into the air in a hundred fiery arcs. The bright crimson rainbows bled down on Juanita Lopez, who lay in some kind of white dress floating on the water. From here they could see the dress was marked with drawings.
“The ME concurred with Morris on the Latin,” Keren said. “She knew from med school that sanguis is “blood” and pestis, “plague.” That covers the carving we found hung over Lopez’s door. The new words”—Keren pointed at the victim—”if Morris is right, mean ‘Let my people go.’“
O’Shea stared at the paintings on the woman’s dress. “Still no sign of that wood carving Morris got?”
“Nope, and we’ve questioned everyone.” Keren had been frantic to track down any clue, hoping there was still time to save Juanita. “We’ve had city crews on that bomb site ever since it happened.”
“That mess is the only reason we aren’t swarmed with press out here. They’d have a field day with this, regardless of its connection to the explosion. But when they connect the two, we won’t be able to take a step without reporters dogging us.”
“Let’s try to keep them away from it if we can.”
“I’ll talk to the ME’s office and the CS unit. They’ll work with us, but headquarters is another story. They can’t keep a secret, and the mayor’s office leaks like a sieve.”
“We can’t keep this under wraps anyway.” Keren looked at the body, the young Hispanic woman, her dress, long sleeves floating out like the wings of an angel, long skirt with no waist, just loose all the way to the gathered neck. “No way this is a onetime deal.”
O’Shea pulled his notebook out of his breast pocket. “Did you interview the gang members who were in that house with Morris?”
“We’ve got detectives and two FBI agents from the local office finishing up questioning them in the hospital. It doesn’t look like any of them know who set that explosive. Their enemies are all more the guns-and-knives type. I talked to a few before you called me over here.” It wasn’t even noon yet and she’d already put in almost a full day. “Now I know how a dentist feels.” Keren pulled her blazer close. “I spent all my time pulling teeth. Not a cop-friendly crowd.”
Keren wished she’d worn a coat instead of her gray wool blazer. It was a warm summer morning, but she couldn’t stop shivering. “If you’re checking for a Latin scholar, try a Catholic priest, an old one who used to do the Latin Mass.”
O’Shea shook his head in disgust. “Yeah, we were slow on that carving above her door.”
This was their case. O’Shea was the primary. Between the two of them they had nearly thirty years on the force, and both of them had missed it.
Keren reviewed the facts. “Juanita Lopez. Missing. Female. No sign of a struggle. No sign of anything wrong at her place, except for a few words carved into a sign, hung over her front door in the hallway. In that ratty building, no one was even sure if the sign was new. Coworkers reported her missing. No one had seen her for four days. Even so, we didn’t list her until forty-eight hours after they called.”
“A lot of them turn up on their own, Collins. Most of them. You know the drill.” O’Shea watched her intently. She suspected it was to check her for any sign she was a wimp.
“And then that call to Morris and the explosion. And now this.” Keren shook her head. They had come up with nothing. Keren had spent Wednesday at the site of the explosion; this morning she’d questioned witnesses, including Morris, who was due for release from the hospital tomorrow. Nothing. She’d hoped some of the gang members had seen something, but they were all clueless and uncooperative. Keren was afraid the trail was ice cold.
And now this morning, they’d gotten this call about a floater. The first cop on the scene hadn’t been able to translate the Latin words painted on the dress, but he’d heard about the missing woman and her connection to this neighborhood. Reverend Morris’s story had circulated through the department like wildfire.
At last the fountain quit bleeding. Someone had figured out how to turn off the recycling water. They both studied the obscene sight in front of them. Dr. Deidre Schaefer, the precinct’s most experienced medical examiner, pulled up in the county van.
Keren and O’Shea stepped away to give the forensics team room to work.
Dr. Schaefer pointed at the body and spoke softly to a photographer, who clicked away casually, as if he were taking pictures at a wedding.
Keren watched the professional behavior of the ME’s team. “In all this craziness let’s don’t forget routine procedure. We could miss something by putting all our faith in the Reverend.”
“You mean see if she’s got an abusive boyfriend or gambling debts?” O’Shea said with thinly veiled sarcasm.
“Yeah, right.” Keren looked at the bobbing corpse. “Routine.”
Keren washed her face, then she washed it again. She scoured her hands until they were red and raw. She was so obsessed with scrubbing, it took her awhile to figure out that she was trying to wash away the sight of Juanita Lopez floating in the crimson fountain. It didn’t make her feel less violated to realize what she was doing. But it did make her shut off the water.
She wasn’t just trying to wash this morning’s crime out of her head, she was also trying to wash away the desperate evil behind Juanita Lopez’s murder. This was a killer driven by his own personal demon in the truest sense of the word. Even after only one death, she was absolutely sure. Another thing she was sure of—there would be more.
When she came out of the bathroom, O’Shea was sitting behind her desk. Reverend Morris was there with him, looking as battered as ever, but a whole lot cleaner. He had on black sweatpants and a dark-red sweatshirt with a white lighthouse and the words, “Jesus is the light of the world” across his chest. His hair was dark and long enough to brush his collar. All his bandages were gone, including the sling. The three lines of stitches on his face made him look like a kinder, gentler Frankenstein.
She tamped down hard on her knee-jerk resentment.
“I’ve found our expert, Collins.” Mick jabbed his pen at Morris. “He’s agreed to work on the Latin stuff for us.”
Keren stopped so suddenly she almost stumbled over her own feet. She’d planned on a white-haired priest. Paul Morris wasn’t even close. She felt again a level of honor in the man and she remembered him whispering “pretty” while he held her filthy hair.
It wasn’t enough to override her hostility. Her antipathy was audible when she said, “You don’t speak Latin, Rev. You thought that sign was Spanish.”
Morris must have caught her caustic attitude. That didn’t exactly make him a genius.
He raised his eyebrows as if he was surprised, even hurt, by her tone.
“He only thought that for a minute,” O’Shea said. “Once Latin occurred to him, he figured it out. He learned it in minister college.”
Morris, apparently a stickler for honesty, what with his vocation and all, said, “They taught me after a fashion. I have a Latin/English dictionary and I know how to use Google. What I can’t translate, I can find.” His gaze narrowed on her face. He studied her for a while. “Have we met?”
Keren ignored his question. “I don’t think that’s good enough, Rev. We need someone who is an expert. We could buy our own Latin/English dictionary.”
“I’m a little better than that,” Morris said mildly.
“You were supposed to stay in the hospital another day.” Keren whacked O’Shea on the arm and he got out of her chair. “You look like you can barely sit up.”
Morris massaged his left wrist and continued to study her face as if he were sorting around inside his head for a WANTED poster on her.
“The hospital was overwhelmed.” He spoke mildly, pastorishly. “I checked myself out to open up a bed.”
That was generous, courageous, and self-sacrificing. It only made her more annoyed. And knowing that wasn’t fair only made her more annoyed.
“Then you should be at home resting.” Keren slouched back in her chair. “Your translating will slow us down.”
O’Shea gave Keren a look that would have made her squirm a couple of years ago. Now it only irritated her.
“I’m going to make arrangements for a new cell phone, one we can sync with ours and we can more easily record and trace,” O’Shea said to Morris. “It’ll have the same number, in case this nut calls you again.”
O’Shea turned to Keren. “He’s in. We’ve got to figure out why he got the phone call. So, he might as well be our Latin expert while he’s at it. You two work this out.”
He headed for his own desk.
She gave him an angry look that was wasted on his retreating back, but the reverend caught it clearly enough.
“I came in here to help, and Detective O’Shea said you were looking for someone to examine the paintings on…” His voice faltered. “… on Juanita’s dress.” He cleared his throat. “She’s been violated enough. You don’t need to bring strangers in to help if you don’t have to. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be the one.”
Keren opened her mouth to flatly refuse his offer then clamped it shut. She knew she wasn’t being reasonable, although the reverend hadn’t shown that great a skill with Latin. But it was possible that these days no priest spoke Latin, either. Or precious little more than Morris. If they didn’t use the reverend, they’d need to go find a college professor. This was much easier, and the only reason she wanted him gone was because of their past history. A history that he apparently hadn’t cared enough about to remember.
She couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of him. “Fine. I suppose you’re better than nothing. The autopsy’s scheduled for this afternoon. Go home. We’ll call you when we’re finished, so you can examine the photographs.”
“I’ll just sit in on the autopsy.”
The idea galled her. “You will not! I wouldn’t let you within a hundred feet of that girl! You couldn’t handle it.”
“Wanna bet?” Something in his tone made the heels Keren was digging in slip a little. She studied his eyes. They’d gone a flat blue, as cold and dead as the nails in a coffin. She couldn’t believe what a difference it made in him. It changed him into the cop who had run over her. And it reminded her of how much she disliked him. “I know you used to be a cop. But this still isn’t where we need your help.”
He gave her an extended look that seemed to worm right into her brain. “You knew I was a cop?”
“Yeah, I’m a cop myself,” Keren said dryly. “I’m forever detecting.”
“So what’s your problem? You know I can help you with this.”
The arrogance she remembered so well was right there. She longed to slap him down. “No problem, Rev. And you won’t slow us down, because I won’t let you.”
His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond.
“So you went from a cop to a reverend? That’s quite a transition.”
“Is it? It seemed natural enough to me at the time.” He quit talking and studied her until she felt like a bug under a microscope.
He smiled in a way that told her he was deliberately trying to make her squirm.
“You know, Rev, it’s not very Christian to enjoy making me feel uncomfortable.”
“And you’re such an authority on being Christian?”
Somehow it hurt that he hadn’t sensed it in her. She wondered if that might be because she’d been relentlessly rude to him ever since they’d met. “Oh yes. Born and raised. I have…”
She almost told him about her gift. She was shocked at how close she’d come to blurting out the grim message she’d gotten from the murder scene. She’d learned very young never to talk about it. It had created too many awful situations when she’d seen demonic work in the oddest places. And it had ruined a relationship that she’d thought was ordained by God. She’d done some fast growing up and never mentioned her gift again. If the reverend understood, he’d be the first one who did.
She wondered why she’d come so close to telling him. Honestly, the man probably had his parishioners confessing things to him right and left.
“You have…?” he prompted.
Keren couldn’t imagine what in the world to say. The truth was not an option, and she had no intention of lying. The only thing she could think of was to snarl at him some more. A plan which appealed to her.
“And by the way, you can’t be born a Christian. We all come into this world needing to make the choice for ourselves.”
“I know that.” A nice theological debate would get his mind off her slip of the tongue.
O’Shea came trotting up.
She took one look at his face and forgot all about her gift and her need to confess it. “What?”
“We’ve just had another missing person reported.”
Keren knew what he was going to say next. She prayed she was wrong.
She wasn’t.
“There’s a carving over the door.”