Ten Plagues (5 page)

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 W
ANTED
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.”

T
his 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.

E
AMUS
.

And enjoyed the work of his hand. The way she cowered and cried inspired him to greater heights.

M
EUS
.

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.

N
ATIO
.

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.

M
EARE
.

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.