Ten Plagues (28 page)

“Mounted police, maybe?” Keren tried to think of different kinds of animals that might be in danger. “Horses? A stable?”

“Could he be planning some kind of attack on a zoo?” O’Shea wondered.

“Zoos are sewn up pretty tight,” Keren said. “So far, he hasn’t done any high-tech breaking and entering.”

“He got into your apartment,” Paul reminded her.

“Yeah, but it looks like he used a sledgehammer on my patio door.”

“That’s low tech,” O’Shea agreed.

“He got into your apartment, too, Paul,” Keren pointed out. “And the lock wasn’t broken.”

“Yeah, but the mission is wide open. I don’t lock my door.”

“You don’t lock your doors?” O’Shea exploded. “What kind of dumb thing is that to do?”

“I’ve got nothing anybody wants.” Paul shrugged. “My furniture comes from donations. If someone needs my old couch enough to steal it from the fourth floor, then they’re welcome to it. I’ll just get another one from our used-furniture storehouse.”

“What about stealing your life? You’ve got enemies,” Keren warned. “Even before this nightmare, Carlo and a host of others weren’t overly fond of you.”

“ ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear?’“ Paul quoted.

“ ‘Don’t help a good boy go bad,’“ O’Shea tossed back, quoting from an old television commercial.

“Mine’s from the Bible, yours is from TV.”

“There’s truth in it, Paul,” Keren said. “You might be tempting someone if you make an attack on you too easy.”

“Maybe.” Paul shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t think the lock to my apartment door works, and I have no idea where the key might be. I’ll check into it.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Keren muttered. “Thanks for your help, Dee.”

Dr. Schaefer nodded then squared her shoulders and turned to get back to her ghastly work.

“Now.” Keren reached for the door. “Where do we look for beasts?”

They were considering the possibilities when they stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. A herd stampeded toward them and surrounded them. But these animals shouted questions.

“Is it true, Pastor Morris, that you are friends with four women who have been killed in the last two weeks?”

“Where did they come from?” O’Shea growled.

“No comment.” Paul began shoving relentlessly through the throng of reporters.

“And Detective Collins, a dead body was found in your apartment? A body covered with insects?”

“No comment.” Keren kept moving. She had ignoring reporters down to an art.

“Are you and Pastor Morris both involved with these women, Detective?”

Keren was going to be seeing spots for a month from the flashing cameras. She waded toward her car. Someone caught her arm and tried to drag her to a halt. She recognized a woman reporter for the crime beat of a local television station and saw a video camera right behind her. Keren pulled free, trying not to be rough enough to provide good footage.

“Is the killer someone who wants revenge on both of you?”

Paul reached the front passenger-side door. O’Shea provided an escort for Keren around to the driver’s side.

“Is it true you and the pastor worked together when you were both on the force?”

“The Chicago Police Department gives a daily briefing at headquarters, as you all know,” O’Shea announced over the din. “All your questions will be answered then.”

“Even the question of whether Detective Collins and Pastor Morris are having an affair?”

Keren jerked to a stop and turned to see who had asked that. She saw a man smirking at her from one of the sleazier local tabloids. She glared at him, and it was like pouring blood in shark-infested waters. The snapping cameras went crazy.

“C’mon, Detective Collins, admit it.” The man tipped back his hat and sneered. “That’s why the killer is focusing on the two of you. The pastor is kicking up his heels with a lady cop, and this nut is offended.”

Paul had already gotten in the car. Keren prayed desperately that he hadn’t heard the insinuations. She tamped down hard on her temper and began moving again. O’Shea helped wrestle her door open. She slid in and slammed her door shut, hoping she’d catch a few fingers in it.

She glanced at Paul. His eyes flashed fire and his jaw was tensed into a firm line.

O’Shea climbed in the back. “Guess the press finally put all these cases together. Took ‘em long enough.”

Keren took another look at Paul. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where they got an idea like that.”

“They’re going to print that.” Paul reached for the door handle. Keren grabbed his shoulder and sank her fingernails into his sweatshirt hard enough that he turned on her.

He jerked against her grip.

“Get ahold of yourself, Paul.” Keren saw the photographers leaning against the windows, recording everything.

Fuming, Paul asked, “Do you know how many kids I’ve counseled about abstinence? Do you know the battle I fight every day against the single-mother culture that guarantees a life of poverty to so many women and children in my neighborhood? If they print something like that, it will undo years of work in a single day.”

He caught Keren’s hand to pull it loose.

“Don’t you dare open that door.” Keren let go of him and started the car. “If you go out there, I promise you I’ll leave you to those wolves.”

She backed out of the parking stall.

Paul didn’t get out.

Keren could see that it cost him.

He stared at his white-knuckled hands. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m so angry at Caldwell and so angry at these reporters. I haven’t had time to pray or read my Bible, and all of a sudden it’s like I’m losing my faith. Am I so weak that if I’m deprived of quiet time for prayer and daily exposure to God’s Word that I just forget what I believe?”

Keren heard a satisfying
thunk
as she backed into a particularly foolish reporter, who thought she’d stop rather than run a man down.

Paul turned around. “Keren, you hit him!”

Keren glanced at Paul and smiled. “I’ve got too much respect for a man’s innate sense of self-preservation to stop.”

“It won’t hurt to thin the herd a little anyway,” O’Shea said. “Survival of the fittest. Darwin would be proud.”

Keren looked at Paul. There was a war inside him. She needed the cop, but she liked the pastor. She had been meaning to talk to him about it, but now wasn’t a good time. Despite herself, she asked, “Why do you think getting angry has anything to do with being a Christian?”

“Because it does,” Paul said vehemently. “It does for me. My anger has always been Satan’s greatest hold over me. When I first gave my life over to God, I had to fight the rage in myself constantly.”

Paul looked behind them. Keren glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the reporters racing toward their cars.

Paul turned forward again. “I can hear the devil whispering anger into my ear. Anger is what ruined my marriage, it was what drove me to work eighteen hours a day. It was what made me turn my back on my daughter.”

Paul took a deep breath and Keren saw his clenched fists open. “It took me years to get a handle on it, even after I was saved. Now it’s like all that time spent training myself to control my temper and respond to people with love is just gone.”

O’Shea said, “Only a moron wouldn’t get angry over a maniac like Caldwell.”

“Yeah,” Keren agreed. “And those reporters spend time in college learning how to annoy stories out of people. They’re masters at getting under your skin so you’ll react without thinking. I wanted to deck them myself.”

“Anger is a sin,” Paul said firmly. “Anger is rooted in hate and that’s the opposite of love. I try so hard to love the people I come in contact with at the mission. They’ve all been arrested and assaulted and ignored. Love is the only thing that has any hope of working with them.”

Keren was free of the mob of reporters now and she drove out of the parking lot, picking up speed to head back to the precinct. She saw several cars fall in line behind them. “Anger in itself isn’t a sin, Paul. Jesus got angry. Don’t forget about Him knocking over tables and driving the people selling doves out of the temple. I’ve got Him pictured as furious.”

“Jesus had one or two episodes of purely righteous anger.”

“What are you talking about?” Keren asked. “You went to Bible college, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I went to Bible college.” Paul gave her an annoyed look, like he was tired of her interfering when he was busy beating himself up.

“So was that just a name, or did you actually study the Bible?”

Paul turned on her. She smiled.

“Yes, we studied the Bible,” he growled.

Keren pulled up to a red light. “So, I remember Jesus spending half His time getting in someone’s face—always someone powerful—and telling them they were blind guides, hypocrites, fools. He got angry all the time.”

Paul gestured in front of them. “I, on the other hand, want to throw a fit every ten minutes, because I have to wait in traffic.”

“That hasn’t been my experience with you,” Keren said. “When you get angry, you’ve always had provocation.”

“Big-time,” O’Shea said.

Keren started the car moving again. “You’ve handled all this with incredible grace and Christianity.”

“Yeah,” O’Shea added. “And besides, there’s a big difference between wanting to punch some mouthy newshound in the face and actually doing it.”

Keren sensed Paul’s anger ebbing away as she opened up some space between themselves and the reporters and that ugly autopsy.

He breathed slowly and seemed to relax. Finally, he said, “Thanks. I appreciate the support. But you don’t know what churns around inside me. The anger I’m fighting is sin. I can’t let it get the best of me, and you shouldn’t encourage me to let it loose.”

Keren opened her mouth to talk about her own anger and the struggle she, and most likely every human being, had.

O’Shea butted in. “Okay, feel guilty all you want.” He reached between Keren and Paul and offered them the list of Internet companies. “But do it in your spare time. We’ll track these down online, then we’ll go kick some doors in. They mostly sound like suppliers for laboratories, although one of them might supply fish bait.”

Paul looked at the list. “Lab experiments?”

“Sure, everything from medical research to insecticide testing to high school biology class,” O’Shea said, as if he’d known it all along.

Keren said dryly, “You don’t think a biology teacher had to personally go out and catch those frogs we had to dissect, do you?”

As if she’d known it all along.

Paul tightened his grip on the list. “I hadn’t thought of that. But it shouldn’t take long to track him down. How many orders can there be?”

T
here were thousands.

Most of the orders were massive and had shipped to well-known companies, so they could be eliminated immediately. But Keren was relieved to find there weren’t that many suppliers. Four in the Chicago area. Far more if the lunatic Caldwell had them shipped in from out of town.

“We’re going to have to go into these places with a court order.” Keren hung up from talking to the second bug mail-order house. “We ought to be able to get to all of them this afternoon. I guess they have more than their share of trouble with animal rights activists. They’re very careful with their customer lists.”

“Animal rights extend to gnats now?” Paul asked incredulously.

“Apparently.” Keren called and set the wheels in motion for four search warrants.

When she got off the phone, Paul said, “I’ll bet you anything a gnat lands on someone from PETA, they swat the itchy little pest just like everyone else.”

“Who’d have thought you could order a case of gnats.” Keren shook her head in wonder. “This really is a great country, isn’t it?”

“Let’s get the paperwork in order and start tracking this down. It’s possible he’s ordering from out of town, so we’d better find out quick if we need to expand our search.”

“O’Shea’s out trying to narrow down the exact location where Melody Fredericks got hit. He’s hoping to find a witness. It’s up to us to check out the labs.” Keren grabbed her last clean blazer off the back of her chair. She had to go shopping, and she wasn’t spending money on good clothes ever again. “Let’s head for the first one. The search warrants will be waiting for us by the time we get down to the front desk. I’m getting unbelievable cooperation on this case.”

She shoved her arms into her blazer. Paul helped her slip it on, then he lifted her hair out of the collar. She had put it in its usual messy bun this morning, but she had a nagging headache after breathing formaldehyde all through the autopsy. She’d let it loose, hoping that would help. It hadn’t.

But finding out this company might have an address on their perp did. She glanced over her shoulder. “Thanks. I get used to being treated like one of the guys.”

Paul rested his hands on her shoulders. “We’re due a break in this case. Maybe this is it.”

They picked up the search warrants and headed to the police parking garage. Paul’s phone rang. They both froze. It was the first call they’d gotten from Caldwell since they’d found Melody Fredericks’s body.

“Let me call Higgins.” Keren had the agent on speed dial. “Maybe we can get a trace on this loon.”

Paul backed against a cement block wall while his phone rang and Keren talked.

“Do you have the recorder ready?”

She took a glance at Paul when she heard the detached tone in his voice. He was in full cop mode. Keren finished talking to Higgins and pressed the required buttons on her phone.

Paul stared at his LCD panel. “Caller ID says he’s using a new number. Why don’t people keep better track of their phones?”

She remembered the last time he’d talked to Caldwell in this mood and dreaded what she was going to hear. “Higgins said to try to keep him talking. Tracking a cell phone doesn’t take long.” She took a deep breath and said, “Okay, answer it.”

Paul flipped the phone open. “Morris.”

Keren listened on her own phone and stepped closer to Paul, as if she could protect him from the oily voice that was taunting him.

“You have been a very bad boy, Francis.” Paul didn’t sound like he needed protection.