by Mary Nealy
“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, t
oo 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.
CHAPTER SIX
She made peace with Paul and immediately began longing for a return to war. Or at least a demilitarized zone—that would keep him far away from her.
After that long look and the electric heat of his hand on hers, she’d have gone right back to fighting if O’Shea hadn’t been keeping such a close eye on them to see if the cease-fire was real or phony. She was far more comfortable with her hostility than with the attraction. She’d learned in a terribly hard school to accept her lonely life. And she’d been content.
And now Paul had touched her and—as if that electricity had started a motor—suddenly she was alive and awake in a way she hadn’t been in years. Her solitary life wasn’t enough.
But solitary was safe. She liked safe.
“I got the hard copies of Detective Morris’s case files.” An eager young secretary rolled a cart in front of her, bearing the fruit of ten years of Paul’s workaholic ambition. She gave Paul a completely unnecessarily friendly smile and said only to him, “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes, Keren turned to the mountain of paperwork.
He’d been a patrolman for four years, a detective for six. With a suppressed groan and grudging respect, she could see he’d been more prolific than a wheat field full of bunnies.
“Start with the computer. We can thin this down.” O’Shea nodded at Keren. She took over the cyber war portion of this mess.
Before they’d gotten a good start the phone on O’Shea’s desk rang. After a few quick words he hung up. “The medical examiner is ready to autopsy our vic. Let’s go.”
Paul rose from his seat. “Can’t you call her Juanita?”
“No, we can’t,” Keren said, marching out of the room. Paul caught up to her and opened his mouth, probably to nag, as he dogged her.
For once O’Shea took her side, cutting him off. “We can’t, and you know why. It’s our job to identify with the criminal, get inside his head. If we start thinking about Juanita, then we’re inside the victim’s head. We’re not going to be able to solve this crime.”
“But it’s so—”
“Enough, Paul.” O’Shea unrolled his shirtsleeves and tugged on his suit coat as they jogged down the stairs toward the parking garage. “You know how it goes. Especially on a case like this, where the facts are so nasty. We can’t dwell on Juanita or get involved in sympathy. If we do, we can’t function.”
“I was a cop. I know how you rationalize your detachment. But from the outside looking in, you guys seem as cold blooded as the bad guys.”
“Well, we’re not,” Keren snapped as she jerked her car door open. “Don’t make this harder than it is. Detach as best you can, or you’ll be useless to us.”
Paul shoved his hands in his pockets and rode in silence in the backseat of Keren’s car to the coroner’s office.
As they pulled into the lot by the forensic lab, Keren caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “You don’t have to do this.”
He looked back with a sad kind of stubbornness. “Juanita died very likely because of an enemy of mine. I’m not going to protect myself by avoiding this.”
Keren tried one last time. “But why watch, Paul? Watching won’t make her any less dead. Any chance you have of remembering the vic … Juanita, when she was happy and whole, will be destroyed by witnessing her autopsy. You know how they are.”
“Yes, I know. Believe me I know.” He paused and looked at the Polaroid of Juanita that he must have lifted from the case file. It was the one Pravus had sent that Paul had left behind at the mission. He shouldn’t have it, but Keren didn’t say anything.
“This picture has burned itself into my memory. Seeing the autopsy won’t make it worse. Nothing can make it worse.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Keren warned.
It was so much worse, Paul didn’t even think of trying to sleep.
He went into the mission and found the usual crowd drinking coffee. There were several men sleeping in their chairs, dressed in clothes they’d found in the mission store. It was warm out so most of them wouldn’t stay here overnight. They were mostly alcoholics, but too many of them drank to quiet the tormenting voices in their heads. Bipolar, schizophrenic, crazy, whatever the currently popular word was for mental illness. They came in for supper, some would hang around for a while, then they’d go back on the streets. But a few stayed here, and a few had let Paul help them find an apartment. And a few, like LaToya and Juanita, had gotten their lives in order and were on their own.
Paul tried to reach all of them, get them help, get them off the street, but mostly he just cared for them, made sure they had food and warm clothes. A reasonably clean bed on winter nights. He saw himself as a servant.
Turning to the small group that sat at a table, talking quietly, Paul saw the kind of thing that kept him going. Made him believe he was doing what God called him to do.
Murray, Buddy, Louie, five others. These men and a group of women who sat at another table made it all worth it. Rosita was one of them. She waved and gave him a smile.
Paul said hello to everyone then grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down by the men.
“How are you, Pastor P?” Buddy was bipolar, near as Paul could tell. He had a beard, weathered face, and gray hair. He had moved into a low-rent apartment just recently, since his meds had started taking effect and he was thinking more clearly. But he still came in for meals and sometimes to help out. He complained about the way the medication made him feel, but he’d been a long way down in the gutter, and at least for now, he seemed to want to stay out of it.
“I feel like a building fell on me.” These men had all gone through plenty, and they liked hearing Paul had his own struggles. And gossip moved through this community like any other, so they knew what had happened to Juanita, how it connected to the explosion in Carlo’s building, and Paul’s part in it.
Murray nodded. “Find anything out?”
All eight men focused on Paul, and he weighed his words. He wasn’t going to talk about the autopsy. That might be enough to send all of them into a tailspin. Telling the truth didn’t mean telling everything he knew.
“The police want to keep working with me. I’m sorry I was gone the last couple of days. Looks like you got the meals served and everything cleaned up without me. I’m sorry to not be here to help.”
“We managed.” Murray had a full beard, black salted with gray, that he hadn’t trimmed in a decade. He was wire thin, full of barely controlled energy. He’d found a tal
ent for playing the guitar and helped with church services and had good managerial skills. When Paul was gone, Murray took over, even preaching a sermon now and then. He had just found an apartment away from the mission, though he still came in daily to work.
“Murray can sing, but his idea of preaching a sermon is to yell at all of us that we’re going to burn if we don’t change our ways.” Louie had just gotten out of prison after a five-year stretch and worked at the mission as part of his community service. The other men laughed softly. Murray was fervent for the Lord, no doubt about it.
“I’d like a turn preachin’, Pastor,” Louie added. “I’d especially like a turn passing the collection plate.”
More laughter. There was no collection plate at the Lighthouse Mission. No one had a dime to spare. Louie ran a hand over his thinning dark hair and slouched in his chair. He was able bodied and did his share of the work and a little more, but he showed no interest in finding a job outside the mission. He’d be gone as soon as he’d put in his time here. Paul hoped he’d reached him for the Lord. Louie said all the right words, but Paul couldn’t tell if the young man had taken salvation to heart.
Paul knew Murray could talk fire and brimstone, but he suspected Louie was reacting more to his own sense of guilt than to what Murray said. Louie had routine drug tests, and if he flunked one, he’d be back in prison immediately. So far, as near as Paul could tell, the young man was staying sober.
“Price of sitting through a meal,” Murray said. His approach might well be the best one. Paul leaned toward love and mercy in his sermons.
The men spent a few minutes good-naturedly teasing each other. Paul let their talk draw him out of the horror of sitting in on that autopsy. He should never have done it. He’d survived it by switching into cop mode. Now he was having trouble pulling out of it, and he let these men, his friends, his brothers in Christ, bring him back to himself. This day had reminded Paul of all the selfishness of the life he’d left behind. He settled back into his faith and rediscovered his servant nature while these men updated him on the day. By the time he finished his coffee, he was Pastor P again, and he thought he was exhausted enough to be able to sleep.
