Ten Plagues (6 page)

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.