Ten Plagues (3 page)

“No,” Keren said sarcastically, “the captain. Of
course
the guy in the hospital.”

“I don’t know. I barely caught his name. I don’t even know if what I’ve told you is right. I probably made part of it up, ‘cuz Cap was yelling his head off and shouting orders at everybody. I got the basics and ran like a scared rabbit.”

“Smart man.” Keren let O’Shea into her five-year-old Impala then went around to her side. Her car was blue somewhere under its coating of gray grit.

She caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror and was appalled. She pulled the dust mask off and it was worse. Her eyes, which she called light blue, looked gray to match the car and her clothes and the whole rest of the world. Her hair sprung out in a hundred directions. She looked like a science experiment gone horribly awry.

“We should clean up first. We’ll probably get kicked out of the hospital.”

O’Shea snorted, which was as close as her partner came to a laugh most of the time. “Everyone there’s gonna look the same. We’d get kicked out if we were clean.”

“Still, I’d hate to drip brick fragments into some guy’s newly sewn-up head.”

“We’ll risk it. Drive.”

Keren obeyed him. Amazing what a little trauma will do to a person. “What’s the name of the guy Cap said to question?”

Keren eased her car into the street.

O’Shea checked his notebook. “Paul Morris.”

Paul Morris! Keren’s stomach took a dive. No, it wasn’t that uncommon of a name. It couldn’t be the same guy.

“Where is Paul Morris?” Keren yelled over the din in the emergency room.

A harassed nurse actually balled her fist. Keren got ready to duck.

“Find him yourself! I’m busy!” The nurse walked away before Keren could threaten the poor woman into cooperating.

There were bleeding people everywhere. Some injured. Others, obviously worried family, crying and dragging on the arm of anyone who looked official. Every cubicle was jammed with cots.

“How, in all this chaos, are we supposed to find anyone?” Keren shook her head at the chaos.

O’Shea shook his head, then he shook it again as if he were trying to shake out the vision of bleeding, weeping, grieving people. “You start in the cubicles. I’ll start asking around out here.”

“Okay, that should only take ten or twenty hours,” Keren said.

“I’m open to suggestions.” O’Shea glared at her.

“If that means I have to use my brain, forget it. I’m sucking fumes. Just start. Even if we could get a nurse to talk to us, she probably wouldn’t know where he is in this mess.”

O’Shea waded into the crowd. Keren heard him asking, “Do you know a Paul Morris? Is one of you Paul Morris?”

Keren sighed and went into the first cubicle.

It was over an hour later when she found him. She peeked between two poorly closed curtains and saw a man sleeping on a gurney, amid five other occupied beds.

It was him. The man who’d run up to the tenement building with that wooden sign and been shoved inside. The man who’d risked his life to save those kids.

She was surprised at the strength of the image she had of strangling him with her bare hands. The neck brace wouldn’t save him. Not if she threw herself into it.

With the same insight that had washed a demonic presence over her at the bomb site, she knew she was looking at a good man. Sometimes she got a mild impression of good or evil dwelling inside a person. Sometimes it hit her so hard it almost knocked her to her knees. Right now, she was taking a hit.

Paul Morris, whatever he had been when he’d stomped Keren under his heel, was now a man of powerful faith. She found herself moving into the room—drawn to him, even in his sleep, wishing she had as strong and bold a spirit.

He was wearing the tattered remains of sweatpants, and Ace bandages where his shirt should be. Besides the neck brace, he had a bandage covering half his head. One of his arms was in an inflatable cast, strapped to his chest with a blue sling. Bruises blackened his face. Stitches lined his temple, jawline, and lower lip.

Keren stared at him and felt forces clashing inside her. She wanted to talk to him, share her faith, and learn about his.

She wanted to break his other arm.

Was Morris even going to remember her? He’d done all his damage long distance, taking down several young detectives when he’d stormed through their lives. Keren was the only one who had put up with the reprimands and suspension and stayed on the force. Now, she could sense the goodness in him. It was completely at odds with the glory-hogging, career-destroying rat he’d been. So, maybe he’d changed, or maybe he’d always had both goodness and cruelty in him. Keren had never before gotten close enough to him to get a positive impression.

There was no point in dredging up the past. If she did mention it, he’d probably demand another police officer. Keren wondered if he really knew anything now, or was he just in the right place at the right time? He’d left the force. Maybe he missed having his name in the paper.

She stepped out of the cubicle and waved to get O’Shea’s attention over the crying and shouting injured. O’Shea nodded. She went back for one more look before she schooled her features into neutrality for O’Shea’s benefit. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to remember it wasn’t Christian to hate someone’s guts. She’d take Morris’s statement then get back to real police work.

Paul Morris was the guy who’d run into the building, and that meant he hadn’t set the bomb. She’d just lost her prime suspect. She had hoped to find a man on whom she could blame this whole mess. It wasn’t going to happen.

O’Shea slipped into the cubicle.

Keren had never told O’Shea about Morris and why she’d been assigned to the evidence locker. After six months of pushing paper, she’d helped O’Shea crack a case, and he’d asked for her to be assigned as his partner. She wasn’t about to go into it now. “Paul Morris?”

His eyes popped open so quickly, and his focus was so clear, Keren doubted he’d been sleeping.

“Yes. Pastor Paul Morris, Lighthouse Mission.”

Pastor? Keren checked the ceiling to see if pigs were flying overhead. “I’m Detective Keren Collins, Chicago PD. We got a call that you had information about today’s bombing.”

“At last.” A sigh of relief almost wiped the pain and concern off his face. Almost. “I’ve been asking to talk to the police. I have some idea what happened this morning. I mean, I don’t know who did it or anything.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” O’Shea muttered. “Life just isn’t that sweet.”

“I was at the gang hangout this afternoon,” Keren said. “I was looking for Juanita Lopez when the building exploded.”

“Juanita.” Morris’s eyes closed. “Poor Juanita.” He shook his head and flinched with pain. “Sorry, some of it’s a blur.”

Keren said, “Tell us what happened.”

“I got this phone call.” Morris raised his uninjured hand to his head. “But before that, a delivery man dropped off a package. Or no … pictures. He dropped off pictures of Juanita, and a sign.”

Morris shook his head. “I’m not making sense. I’m sorry. The doctor has given me some pain medication. I’m not thinking too clearly.”

“Just start at the beginning, Pastor Morris. Tell us what happened first.”

“I was just back from my morning run. Before I got inside, a delivery man came up to me with a large manila envelope. I went into the mission and ripped the envelope open. I found …”

The beautiful writing was done with ink too coarse to be a marking pen. Paint of some kind. It made Paul uneasy, for no reason he could define. He slipped his thumb under the flap. The paper ripped open. He reached inside just as his cell phone rang.

He answered. “Hello?”

“I’m an artist, you know.” A man spoke, his voice so smooth and quiet he purred. “I’ve given you something priceless.”

“Who is this?”

“Wood isn’t my
favorite
medium, but I’m very good with it. Every new creation is like a child. And who can create a child? A father. Or God.”

God?

Paul realized at the same moment the man spoke, that he held a piece of wood in his hands. It was a rectangular plaque about an inch thick, sanded satiny smooth, stained to a dark brown.

“Are you the one who sent this wood carving?” Paul turned his attention from the gift to the caller. It wasn’t that unusual to receive gifts from people who supported his mission.

Pravus
was etched in a delicate script in the lower right corner.

“It would be worth a fortune if I’d gone into art as a living.” The voice was soft, almost singsong, with a tone that made the hair on the back of Paul’s neck stand up.

“Who is this?” Paul repeated. “I’d … uh, like to send a thank-you note. This is beautiful.”

And it was. There was delicate carving across the front. Letters that spelled words Paul couldn’t read, although they struck a chord.
Natio
. That was Spanish maybe, which he spoke adequately but couldn’t read.
Natio
meant “nation” or maybe “tribe.”

“My true creation is in the photographs.” A sigh of ecstasy hissed across the phone lines.

There’d been a time when Paul’s instincts had kept him alive. Those instincts kicked in hard. Paul dropped the envelope on the table and used a pen to tip it. Polaroid pictures slid onto the table. The instant he saw them he knew what kind of paint the caller had used to write the address.

Blood.

“What have you done?” It had been five years since he’d been a cop, and he no longer had the detachment he needed to survive this kind of thing.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

Sickened by the pictures, Paul forced himself to study them, desperate to understand what this caller wanted. Then his eyes fell shut. He whispered, “Juanita.”

“Yes, that’s right, Juanita. I’d forgotten her name. She’s just canvas to me, not as nice to work with as wood.”

“What have you done to her, you …” Biting back rage, Paul knew then he could turn back into a cop. All the reflexes were still there.

“Now, now, Reverend, I expected better from you than that. We’re in this together.”

Gripping the phone until his fingers ached, Paul asked, “What are we in together? Why are you calling me? Where is she?”

“She’s going to stay right where she is unless you deliver a message for me, Reverend.”

“Message? What message?”

A scream sliced through the phone line.

“No,” Paul roared. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you want.”

The screams increased. Paul couldn’t think. Not as a pastor. The old coldness that at one time had cost him his faith, his family, and almost his life, settled on him. “Tell me what you want, Pravus.” Paul heard the level tone of his voice and couldn’t believe he sounded like that while his heart thundered with fear.

“Take the sign to the address I included in the envelope. Don’t call the police. Don’t talk to anyone. Hang it on that building and wait for me to phone.”

“Hang it on the building? Wait! How do I do that?”

“That’s your problem, Reverend. When you have delivered your message,” Pravus cooed, “I’ll tell you where to find this harlot.”

Juanita’s cries increased, broken by screams of pain.

“I’ll do what you want, and then, if you want to survive this, you’ll give me Juanita.”

There was an extended silence on the phone. Pravus said, “You sound more like a policeman than a man of God. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

T
here was an address in the envelope. I found it and I ran.” Paul studied Detective Collins as he muddled through to the end of his story. She was filthy. Her hair looked like a bale of straw had been given an electric shock. Then all of her had been liberally coated with white dust. He vaguely remembered a woman at the explosion helping him, but he never would have recognized her.

“I called 911. All I remember after that is thanking God for the car.”

“Okay, Reverend,” Detective Collins said. “Now, I have a couple of questions.”

An hour later, she flipped her notebook closed. But she wasn’t done talking. The woman never got done
talking
.

“And as far as you know, the sign this man who identified himself only as Pravus gave you burned up with the tenement?”