Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land.
This little carving was his gift to the world, not that the world deserved it. Uncultured, uneducated, unwashed, and completely unable to appreciate him. But they’d see his greatness. He dawdled and decorated the polished oak with his chisel.
EAMUS.
And enjoyed the work of his hand. The way she cowered and cried inspired him to greater heights.
MEUS.
He’d found new restraints that held her better. He talked as he worked, trying to make her understand the honor he was bestowing on her.
NATIO.
He’d brushed her hair and read to her from Mother’s Bible. He even went so far as to show her the artwork he’d carved on his own body.
MEARE.
Still, like Pharaoh, she didn’t see reason. Pravus held the power of life and death. Like God. No he wasn’t like God, he was God. And this sinner had been given all the chances he was going to give her.
The beast within urged him onward to the second plague.
“You can come up to the apartment door, Rev, but you can’t come inside. We can’t let you touch—”
“I know the drill, Detective Collins.” He breathed out anger and breathed in God. It was his own Christian version of counting to ten. He couldn’t quite figure out how he’d gotten on the pretty detective’s bad side, but he’d managed it—in spades.
“Uh, sorry, Rev. I keep forgetting you were on the force.”
Paul had the distinct impression that Detective Collins never forgot a thing.
“Good. I don’t want to carry the mantle of ‘cop’ around with me anymore.”
She shoved at her hair as if she were swatting away a gnat. He remembered the wild tangles from his hospital stay. He towered over her as they walked into the apartment building. He was six one. He glanced at her with experienced cop eyes. She was five six, all lean muscle and coiled energy, hidden under the kind of cheap suit a cop could afford. She started up the outside steps of the apartment building at a fast clip. Paul tried to keep up and it hurt like blazes.
He was trying to like her, but his ribs were her sworn enemy. “I have better luck helping the people at the mission if they don’t sense the badge.”
She entered the building and started up the stairs to the missing woman’s apartment. “Should you have shed the sling and collar so quickly? You look lousy. You’ll probably end up back in the hospital.”
Paul didn’t answer her. He hadn’t had time to breathe all his anger out yet. For him to do that, she would have to shut up and give him a little more time. He was tempted to ask her to do just that.
The apartment building they were in was just outside the neighborhood Paul served. Shabby, but hanging on to respectability by a thread. Paul tried to trot up the steps behind her, but every time he jostled his ribs, his chest hurt like a heart attack. He settled for watching her disappear around the corner of the stairs. Then the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, O’Shea, passed him.
Paul trudged on, left in the dust of real cops. “Humility is the name of the game, isn’t it, Lord?”
O’Shea turned around and looked at him. Detective Collins leaned over the railing above and stared down.
He looked back and forth between them. “Did I say that out loud?”
O’Shea gave him a disgusted look. Collins rolled her eyes. They exchanged a look, shook their heads, and started moving again. By the time he made his destination, the fifth floor, they had disappeared inside a room. The hallway was dismal—the paint old, the carpet stained. But there was no trash strewed around. The doors were all on their hinges. Only one stood open. Paul smelled mold and decades of cigarette smoke, but there were no bullet holes to be seen.
There was enough noise coming from the apartment to clue Paul in that they weren’t the first ones there. He very carefully stayed out. Over the door he read, Pestis Ex Rana, carved in a beautiful script. Paul examined it, as he hadn’t had time to examine the carving he’d been given.
The words were etched into a wooden sign the same size and color as the one Paul had received. Pravus could have hung it there in a matter of seconds.
Pestis ex rana. “Plague of frogs.” Paul didn’t know how Pravus intended to harm anyone using frogs. But, on the other hand, Juanita hadn’t drowned in that ghastly pool of blood. Pravus had killed her before he’d thrown her in the water. Frogs didn’t matter any more than the blood.
After he studied the carving, he stayed outside as bossy Detective Collins had ordered, but he began looking inside, snooping for all he was worth. There was a collection of pictures on a wall just inside the door.
“No!” He stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t hit the wall across from the open door. Detective Collins was at his side before the pain in his chest could knock him down.
“What is it? Are you hurt?” He noticed she reached for the sprained wrist, checked her movements, and reached for the other arm. “You need to go back to the hospital.”
She brushed his hair off his forehead. “I should never have let you come!” She leaned close. She looked deeply into his eyes.
He looked back. He hadn’t expected this kindness. He hadn’t expected the warmth in her mysterious blue-gray eyes. He hadn’t—
She blinded him with a high-powered flashlight. “You probably still have a concussion.”
He flinched away from the light and gasped from the pain flinching caused.
“I told you this was a bad idea.” She talked to him like he was a slightly backward second grader. “Now we’re wasting time with you when we should be—”
“Get that light out of my eyes,” he cut her off. “I’m not sick.” He sounded like a cop and fought to control it. “It’s the pictures. The pictures in the hallway.”
She snapped her head around, immediately forgetting him. “Those pictures hanging on the wall?” She dragged him along right into the apartment, forgetting her stern warnings to stay out of her crime scene.
“I know the woman in those pictures.”
There were several of them, including group snapshots taken in casual settings, framed and hung with care, around a glowing picture of an ocean sunset with “Make a Joyful Noise All the Earth” across the bottom.
“Which woman?”
Paul reached up and, without touching the picture, pointed to LaToya. A young black woman with hope and humor shining out of her dark eyes. “Her. LaToya. LaToya Jordan, she’s someone who spent a lot of time at the mission.”
“Are you telling me…” Detective Collins broke off. When she spoke again Paul felt like her rigid jaw was grinding her words into dust. “… that you know both of the victims?”
Paul nodded. He had to tear his eyes away from LaToya’s picture. He knew what was in store for her. The shock passed and he began panicking deep inside, shaking in his gut. “No, dear God. Not LaToya. Don’t, please don’t let this be happening to her.”
Detective Collins wrenched him around to face her. “You know what this means, don’t you, Rev?”
He looked into her tough cop eyes and wanted to drop to his knees and beg her and the other policemen here to tear Chicago apart looking for LaToya. “Yes, of course I know. It means someone I care about is right this minute living through a nightmare.”
“No,” Detective Collins snapped at him. She shook his arm. “Get ahold of yourself and think. Use your brain for a change. That’s not what it means.”
“Of course it is. You saw the carving above the door. LaToya didn’t leave of her own volition.” Paul pointed to the hallway.
“She’s out there somewhere. She’s—”
“What it means,” Collins interrupted, “is that these murders aren’t about the women.”
“What kind of crazy thing is that to say? Two women are—”
“Remember who you used to be. Try for just one second to think like a cop. These murders aren’t about the women, they’re about you.”
Paul wheeled away from her cold eyes and her heartless truth. He stared at LaToya in horror. Seconds ticked by as the possibility cut its way into his heart. Finally, he spoke to the picture in a whisper, “LaToya, I’m so sorry. This is my fault.”
“We’ve got to interview you more thoroughly. We’ve got to hunt in your life for enemies. You deal with dangerous people at the mission.”
“They’re not dangerous. We’ve never had trouble—”
“Not dangerous, like Carlo, the gang member whose building you ran into just before it exploded?” she cut in. “He’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm. If he wasn’t a juvie, he’d be doing life.”
“No, I’m not talking about Carlo. I mean—”
“We’re not going to discuss this here. We’ll take you downtown and start talking about people who might be crazy enough to want to hurt you.” Detective Collins caught his arm.
Paul pulled away. “I’ll do whatever you need to do, but what about LaToya? Every man and woman who wastes time talking to me isn’t out hunting for her.”
“Oh, we’ll be hunting for her, all right,” she said grimly. “We’ll just be hunting inside your head.”
She grabbed Paul’s arm again and hauled him out of the apartment. He went along peacefully, feeling like he was being arrested but too upset about LaToya to care. She was right. Detective Collins had it figured out exactly right.
Juanita and LaToya had been killed because someone hated him.
It was true.
“It’s a lie!”
After two hours of badgering in the interrogation room, Paul had it figured out, and he told Detective Collins that for the tenth time. “These murders aren’t about me.”
“You know they are.” Detective Collins had her heels dug in.
Paul sat with his hands clenched together on the table in front of him. It was all he could do to keep from leaping over the table and shaking some sense into the pretty little tyrant.
“Just because they’re both from my neighborhood, and I knew them both, doesn’t mean this is about me. You’re wasting valuable time. If you won’t go out and hunt for her, at least let me.”
“Rev, do you really think O’Shea and I are the only ones working this case?” she stormed.
“I know how it is when a crime gets committed on the South Side. It’s not a priority.”
“This one is. We’ve got forensics working on the pond, both women’s homes, and the site of the explosion.”
“That fountain.” Paul’s stomach twisted and he’d only seen the pictures. “He made a fountain flow with blood.”
“Blood meal. It’s a garden fertilizer. Available in every store that sells potting soil. All it really did was dye the water red. Just another thing we’ve found out while you say we’re doing nothing.” Detective Collins placed her hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “The ME is personally doing all the prelims for the autopsy. The forensics lab has pushed this case ahead of everything else. The FBI is running all the results we’ve got through their computer looking for similar crimes. We’re tracking down the delivery man who brought that package to you. We’ve got people going through your records at the mission—”
“I shouldn’t have let you do that,” Paul interjected. “I should at least be there. Those records are—”
“—and hunting through your old case files from your cop days.” She kept talking as if he were a buzzing insect. “We’ve got one poor schmuck going to every art supply and hardware store in the city, trying to identify the exact type of cutting tool Pravus used to make his signs. We’re tracking down the name. Someone thought Pravus sounded Middle Eastern. I told them it was Latin, but still we’re trying to rule out any terrorism. We’re digging through the rubble of that building, tracking down the source of every incoming call on your cell. We’re questioning everyone who might know someone you drove completely crazy!”
Paul inhaled sharply. Somewhere along the line, he’d done something to someone that had resulted in this. He scrubbed his face with his right hand, still coddling his left. He wanted to wash reality away. “I can’t bear to think about it.”
Keren caught his arm, his good arm, and pulled it away from his face. “Well, you’re going to have to think about it! I don’t have time to baby you while you—”
“Back off, Keren,” O’Shea growled from where he leaned, with his arms crossed, against the wall off to Paul’s left. “He’s a witness, not a suspect.” He’d mostly observed, throwing in a question now and then. Paul got a sense the two of them were doing a routine with him that they’d performed a hundred times before. But Detective Collins was losing her cool. That wasn’t part of the routine.
She let go of his arm. After a few moments of obvious effort, she said, “Sorry, that was out of line.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Paul said through a clenched jaw. “I know you’re trying to find a connection between me and this lunatic. But I’ve thought it over and we’re on the wrong track. Yes, I know both of them, but lots of people know both of them. They were from the neighborhood. This guy could have come from here and been victimized by someone in this area.”
“Pravus phoned you, Rev. He knew you and cared enough to track down your cell phone number and mail you that sign.”
“But don’t you see, he could have done all that without it being personal. I’m the logical one in that neighborhood. My cell phone number is no secret. I’ve got it posted on the bulletin board at the mission. He kept saying Juanita was evil. He said, ‘I’ll tell you where to find this harlot.’ He might see me as someone who would join his twisted fight against all the ills around the Lighthouse Mission.”
“Listen, Rev, you can speculate all—”
“Will you quit calling me Rev?” Paul lunged to his feet. His ribs punished his chest. His temper pounded in his wounded forehead. He spun away from the mouthy cop who wouldn’t quit.
He needed to spend some quiet time in prayer. He knew he was fraying badly around the edges. His temper was hot, his impatience was boiling over. All his old cop instincts were fighting to emerge, and they were the worst part of himself. But even if he could get away from this nagging woman, he’d still dash around looking for LaToya instead of kneeling before his Savior, seeking peace.
Hang on. Don’t lose it. Don’t lose it.
Collins slammed a fist on the table. “We don’t have time to argue about your title.”
Paul lost it.
He whirled around to take her apart. She was fuming. Her hands were clenched until her knuckles turned white.
“Why can’t you cooperate?” she snapped. “Don’t you care if we get this guy?”
“Not care?” Paul reached for her and grabbed her wrist with his good hand. He dragged her up out of her chair until they were nose to nose, with only the table keeping them apart. “How dare you say I don’t care?”
She jerked against his hold. “Get your hands off—”
“All right.” O’Shea slapped his hands on the table between them so hard he shoved the table a few inches and broke Paul’s grip on the little shrew.
O’Shea’s thunderous outburst brought dead silence to the room. “We’re going to take a break,” he said through clenched teeth. “We’re not getting anywhere with you two snarling at each other.”
“Are you nuts?” Collins asked. “We don’t have time to—”
“Quiet!” O’Shea cut her off. His voice echoed against all four shabby walls.
“But—”
O’Shea jabbed a fat finger right at her nose. “I mean it, Keren. You’re out of here if you say one more word before I declare this break over. I’ll go to the captain and have you reassigned. You know I can do it. I’m going to the overpriced cafe next door and get some coffee. I’ll meet you outside and we’ll take a break and sit in the park across the street.”
Anxiety pressed on Paul until he thought he might suffocate. “We’re not wasting one second sitting in a park.”
“You”—it was Paul’s turn to get jabbed at—”are going to shut up right now.”
Five years ago he wouldn’t have backed down. He’d have ripped this blowhard’s finger off and shoved it down his throat.
But he was a changed man. He didn’t feel real changed right at this moment, but he remembered what he was supposed to act like and let O’Shea keep his finger.
“Let’s get out of here. I’ll buy us each a six-dollar cup of coffee and we can think about highway robbery instead of this case.”
Paul looked across at Collins. She shrugged and opened her mouth—Paul thought to agree with him for a change, that they should keep working. O’Shea turned his blazing temper on her with a single look.
With an exasperated growl, she threw her hands wide and led the way out of the police station.
Paul leaned back on the park bench and drank the most outrageous cup of coffee he’d ever had. Caramel, mocha, cappuccino, latte, espresso, whatever.
Maybe all those things. The cup was bigger than his head. His coffee usually ran to a brew so strong it could open the eyes of a man hungover for the thousandth morning in a row, and so hot it could warm the frostbitten toes of a woman who had cardboard in her shoes on a subzero Chicago morning. That coffee was made in a one-hundred-cup coffeepot that burned along all day.
This coffee had whipped cream and chopped nuts on top. He sat drinking it while a monster acted out a plague on his friends.
They chatted idly about the green grass and the blue sky. Every time they got on the subject of the horror they were dealing with, O’Shea would growl and they’d change the subject.
Finally, O’Shea glanced at his wristwatch. “We’ve been here ten minutes. I’m going in. Your new cell phone should have been delivered by now. I’ll round it up. You two are staying for another five. I want you to figure out why you’ve been snapping and snarling at each other from the minute we started working today. You both want this case solved. You both know you need to cooperate to get it done. If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was something personal between you.”
“Personal? Me and Rev? We just—”
“Will you quit calling me Rev? Why don’t you—”
“I promise I’ll lock you both in the lineup room if you don’t work this out.” O’Shea heaved himself to his feet. “We’ve got a murder to solve, and if I have to do it myself”—he turned on them—”because you two kids never learned how to work and play well with others—”
His voice rose to a shout. “There’s gonna be payback for both of you.” Then a roar. “That you’ll still be stinging from, years from now.” He stormed off in a huff.
The two of them stared after O’Shea in shock. Then they looked at each other.
“Did he just threaten to spank us?” Paul asked.
Keren looked at her coffee. Paul noticed she was fighting a grin. “Maybe. And that bit about the lineup sounds a little like being sent to our rooms.”
“And this is definitely a time-out.” Paul swirled his mocha-shmocha-cappa whatever, trying to keep the concoction mixed up until he was done drinking it and to give himself something to do besides talk to Keren.
Finally, she moved. He glanced up and saw she had her hand extended toward him. “Hi, my name is Keren Collins. It’s nice to meet you. Call me Keren.”
Paul shook his head then took her hand. “My name is Paul.”
“Oh I’m sorry, I heard your name was Rev. Where did I get a silly idea like that?”
“Can’t imagine. So… truce?”
Keren nodded. Then she said in a hesitant voice, “I know you’re a good man, Rev… I mean Paul.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Rev really suits you.”
“Paul or nothing.” Paul realized he was still holding her hand and dropped it. He rubbed his hand on his pant leg to cool it off.
“I’m sorry I’ve been riding you so hard.” Keren glanced up at him. “I can’t even blame this case exactly. I mean, it is the case but…” She shrugged.
Paul saw her clench her teeth to keep from saying something. He wondered what it could be.
“O’Shea says I have good cop instincts, and all my instincts tell me we’re dealing with an evil that is beyond…” Keren fell silent again.
Paul had been trained in counseling. He shouldn’t put words in her mouth, but he was so sure of what she was going to say he had to do it. “An evil beyond what any human is capable of.”
“Without help.” Keren nodded.
“Do you believe in the devil, Keren?” Paul was amazed how many people didn’t, even when they were faced with the evidence of him every day.
“You bet I do.” She surprised him. “All that is wrong with this world isn’t just the evil in people’s hearts. I believe in the rebellion in heaven. I know Satan has been cast out, and now he and his minions walk among us. I know that’s not the accepted idea these days. Even a lot of Christians don’t believe in him.”
“I’ve seen too many people lured away while I’m trying to lead them to God.” Paul thought of Juanita and LaToya, two girls who hadn’t been lured away. He prayed now for LaToya’s safety and thought of Juanita, who was with the Lord, beyond earthly pain, beyond the need of any prayers.
“And I’ve felt Satan in myself, warring with God.” Keren took a sip of her coffee. “Trying to infect me with greed and jealousy and anger.”
“Oh, c’mon, when have you ever been angry?” Paul asked dryly.
Keren looked up and smiled. “I’ll take the Fifth on that… Paul.”
“Now that didn’t hurt, did it?”
“ ‘Bout killed me.” Keren stared into her cup for a long minute, then she said, “Do you know the verse that says Satan will be set loose on the earth?”
Paul quoted, “ ‘When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth.’ It’s from Revelation.”
“I wonder sometimes if we’re not living in that time,” Keren said. “I wonder if Satan hasn’t been released from his prison.”
“Ask the people in Africa dying of AIDS, or the people in North Korea who are starving to death, or the people in Saudi Arabia who are being put to death for becoming Christians, if they think Satan isn’t loose,” Paul said.
“You may not need to go so far afield,” Keren said. “How about we ask LaToya?”
“You really are a believer, aren’t you?” Paul felt the assurance in his heart even before she answered. She wasn’t the kind of Christian he was used to. She was too cold, too busy, too grouchy. Of course, they’d met under nasty circumstances. He hadn’t exactly been on his best behavior, either.
“I really am.” She stood. “I’ll get rid of the cups, then we’ll go see if our ‘time-out’ is over and Mick’ll let us quit sitting in the corner and get back to work.”
Paul wasn’t perfectly satisfied with their new harmony. He knew there was something else going on. Her jaw never really relaxed. Her piercing eyes, so pale they were breathtaking, watched him until he thought she could have performed laser surgery with them. But she wasn’t attacking him anymore, so he didn’t push.
Paul handed her his empty cup. Her hand closed over his. He was bemused by the strength and softness of her hand. He glanced up and their eyes caught. A soft breeze blew one of those corkscrew curls across her gently sculpted cheekbone. She was so extraordinarily pretty and delicate. He towered over her, but her size didn’t diminish her strength. Her white teeth bit nervously into her bottom lip. Her full lips held his attention.
They both dropped the cup at the same time. Paul jumped back. He told himself it was to avoid getting splashed with the nonexistent contents of his empty cup. He looked at Keren again, unable to stop himself. She was extremely busy picking up the cup. Silently, they walked back into the station house together. Paul weighed the pros and cons of going back to open warfare.
For the first time in the history of the world, war sounded like the most peaceful option.