by Mary Nealy
Keren went on with her search. Paul walked the edges of the basement, checking every socket, every outlet.
“No, Reverend, scum like that never learn. They never change.”
Keren pulled the electric wires out of the jugs, then she looked behind a rusted-out furnace and a pile of toppled boxes and gasped with shock.
She hissed at Paul, “Keep him talking; there’s another socket behind this junk. I’ve disconnected it from the bomb, but I’ve got to unplug the cord. Even a spark could set this whole place off.”
Paul followed her to the dusky corner. All the while he kept talking, trying to buy her the time she needed as she scrambled over the debris. “They believed you, Pravus, and they fear you. I told them your people have been enslaved long enough. Come in here, Pravus, come and see how you’ve humbled them. Your message reached Pharaoh, just as Moses’ message did. It worked.
They’re going to let your people go.”
Keren slipped out of sight. Paul had to clench his jaw to keep from yelling at her to get out—save herself and let the building blow. Instead, he stood and listened to Pravus like a useless bystander.
“Do you think I’m a fool, Reverend? I don’t like to be treated as if I’m a fool.”
Paul leaned back and saw Keren wrestling with the plugs. The crackle of sand crumbling off the cement walls told Paul just how quickly and utterly this place would collapse if Keren didn’t get that connection broken in time.
“The trash in that house will die. LaToya will die. This time you will die along with them.”
Pravus hung up.
Keren pulled out the last stubborn plug. A snapping erupted from every outlet in the basement. But no sparks. Paul held his breath. The fumes didn’t ignite.
“He did it. That murderous lunatic pushed the button,” Paul said bitterly.
“We knew he would.” Keren sagged against the wall. “You held him off for long enough.”
Paul lifted the phone and quickly punched in the number he’d seen on his LCD screen. He was almost surprised when Pravus answered.
“What happened?” Pravus demanded. “What have you done?”
Keren quickly pulled out her phone and set it to record. Then she carefully picked her way out of the corner she’d gotten into.
Paul wanted to scream at Pravus, threaten him with lightning bolts and the wrath of God. He held a tight rein on his temper because of LaToya. “The bomb didn’t go off. Don’t you see, Pravus? God knew these people weren’t ready to die. It is God’s to give life and death.”
Keren hurried over to him, listening intently on her phone.
“I do the will of a greater God than yours,” Pravus shouted.
“There is no greater God than mine, Pravus. There is no other God than mine. And this destruction is not His will. He still has plans for these people. When your bomb didn’t go off, it was God telling you to stop. He was telling you to let LaToya go without further harm. You must accept God’s will.”
O’Shea appeared at the top of the staircase, and two uniformed officers were right behind him.
Stepping away from Paul, Keren spoke quietly to O’Shea. “Pravus is on the phone, be quiet. This basement is full of gas fumes. It’s a ticking bomb. If one of the crackheads so much as drops his pipe and strikes a spark, the whole place could still blow.”
O’Shea turned to give murmured instructions to the police gathering behind him.
“I’m doing His will! I’m trying to drive the evil out of the world!”
Paul felt sick at the violent fury in Pravus’s voice and what it meant for LaToya. God, please, tell me what to do.
All he felt was his own fury. The power of it was too strong to let the voice of God in. He continued to try to soothe a madman. “I’m the one you’re angry at, Pravus. Aren’t I the one who hurt you?”
“Yes! Yes, you hurt me,” Pravus screamed. “But you were such a fool. I saw them, the dancer and her mother. But you never knew.”
“Yes, I knew. I knew what you did to them.” Paul fumbled around, trying to make sense of Pravus’s ranting.
Laughter crackled through the phone line, the rapid shift from fury to humor to pure madness. “No, you never knew. No one did. From the first, I was too smart for this world.”
“Let LaToya go. Prove you’re strong. If you’re angry at me, come for me and leave her out of it.”
“I’ll come for you when it’s the plague of the firstborn. That’s your time. Until then, I’ll prove my strength one plague at a time.” Pravus’s voice rose until it was a scream.
“If LaToya dies, you’ll never prove it to me.”
“I’ll prove it! I’ll prove it for all the world to see.” A hollow dick, and Pravus was gone. And LaToya was alone with a lunatic.
CHAPTER NINE
Paul hit the REDIAL button, but this time there was no answer on the other end.
“We’ve got to get back to the files,” O’Shea said as soon as Paul gave up on his phone.
“Whatever this is about is rooted in your work as a policeman.” Keren took Paul’s arm and urged him toward the stairs. “He made another reference to your past as a cop. Somewhere you brushed up against a serial killer who was just getting started. You must have stopped him somehow but not nailed him for what he really did.”
Paul nodded. He flipped open the phone again and reached for the REDIAL button. Keren wrestled the phone away from him. “Not now, Paul. Let him cool off a little.”
“He killed Juanita after his last call to me,” he said in a voice so weak and frightened Keren wouldn’t have recognized it as his if he hadn’t been standing right in front of her.
Keren glanced up at O’Shea. She saw her partner’s face twist into a look of compassion. O’Shea shook his head and left to finish rousting the people from the house.
“No, Paul.” Keren grabbed Paul’s arm. “That’s not right. The ME said Juanita was killed hours after the explosion. And if he killed her at that fountain—or even just before he took her there—we have a chance of anticipating where he’ll go. We have to keep pushing.” She shook him, hoping to shake some courage into him. “We go on the assumption we have time to save her.”
“But we didn’t thwart his explosion before. You heard him, he was so furious he was raving. He’s killing her right now.” Paul faltered, and Keren worried that he might collapse. “I can’t get to her. She trusted me, maybe the first person she’s ever trusted in her life, and now she’s dying because of it.”
Keren knew she ought to yell at him, goad him, and harass him to bring out the cop in him. When he was being his old, logical self he was more useful; unfortunately, she couldn’t stand him when he acted that way. She was drawn to the gentle pastor, but he felt everything so deeply he couldn’t function. Not in the face of this insanity.
She’d seen the pictures of LaToya on the wall in her apartment, and she’d seen pictures of her from old arrest records. The change in the young woman was enough to prove to anyone there was a God. It was possible that a sweet, redeemed woman was dying horribly right this moment, and Keren couldn’t play tough with Paul right now, even if it might help solve the case.
So she hugged him instead.
In the midst of the gas fumes and dinginess and thwarted destruction, he grabbed her and clung until she couldn’t draw a breath. She hung on, knowing she was only feeling a fraction of his despair.
When Keren trusted her voice, she said, “We’ve got to keep trying.” She lifted her head off Paul’s chest and put her hands on his shoulders. He straightened away from her, and she looked him square in the eye. “Our only other option is to do nothing.”
Paul held her gaze for a long time. She could feel him gathering his strength. He knew they didn’t have any choice.
“All right.” His voice broke. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Let’s get to work on those files.”
Keren nodded silently and led him upstairs and toward the back of the house, where she’d left h
er car. The inhabitants of the crack house were emerging from their rooms, grousing and threatening the cops. She turned back to these people who were alive because a man had risked his life for them. They were throwing their lives away, with no notion of what a precious gift they’d been given.
“Bust every one of them,” she snapped. “Lock ‘em up and keep ‘em there. We don’t have to charge them for forty-eight hours, so stall the bond hearing. Maybe the idiots will sober up enough to realize they’re lucky to be alive.”
“It’s for their own protection,” O’Shea added. “There’s a demon after them.”
“Does browbeating these poor, sleeping people make you two feel better?” Paul asked.
O’Shea tipped his head and shrugged and nodded. “Yeah.”
“A little.” Keren hauled him out the back door.
The FBI was at the station when they got back.
They’d commandeered a small office, and when they called Keren, Paul, and O’Shea in, they made a tight fit. Keren had met several of the local agents over the years and usually worked fairly well with them.
“I’m Special Agent Lance Higgins.” A tall man with golden eyes so predatory, Keren had a feeling those eyes would be the last thing a lot of bad guys would see when Higgins pounced. He had black hair swept off his forehead like a mane. He was leaning against the wall behind the gray metal desk in the office, and he uncoiled and stepped forward with leonine grace. He offered Keren his hand.
Keren couldn’t help responding to the man’s powerful strength. She shook his hand just a second too long before he pulled away. Higgins turned to Paul and O’Shea and gave them the same greeting. He was wearing the standard FBI black suit, but on him it looked great. Two other black-suited men Keren knew were from the Illinois FBI office were standing against the wall on Keren’s right.
Higgins gestured to the left. “This is our profiler, Agent Mark Dyson.”
With one glance, Keren decided Dyson must be extremely good at what he did or the FBI would never put up with him. Agent Dyson towered over all of them, six foot six and beanpole thin. His long hair was bleached white. He had manic curls almost as wild as hers, pulled back into a ponytail. He wore wire-rimmed glasses so thick they magnified his light-blue eyes, hole-riddled jeans, and a green button-down shirt with the sleeves turned up to his elbows. The shirt was a mass of wrinkles, and it hung, untucked, most of the way to Dyson’s knees. He clasped her hand in both of his, and Keren had the weird feeling that the guy could profile her just from the way she shook hands. His magnified eyes seemed to penetrate her mind rather than look at her face.
“I’ve been combing the Pravus file for over an hour,” he murmured. “I have questions.”
He waved them into three folding chairs. The FBI agents all stayed on their feet. “You’re sure it’s a man?”
“Yes. The voice is soft, but it’s definitely male,” Keren answered.
Dyson periodically glanced at Paul or O’Shea. Keren felt like the guy was boring into everyone’s brain, reading every changed expression. But he aimed all his questions at Keren. She felt like she was connected to a human lie detector and fought down a mild resentment. Surely Paul was the one who ought to be questioned.
“The first murder victim is Hispanic, the second black.” Dyson tried to drill into her brain with his eyes. Keren could feel the bore holes.
“There’s only one murder victim,” Paul snapped. “The second is still a kidnapping. We hope that she can be rescued.”
“We should be going through Pastor Morris’s case files,” O’Shea said impatiently. “You don’t need to talk to all of us at once.”
“Most serial killers pick victims of their own race.” Dyson ignored Paul and O’Shea to focus on Keren. “Usually they’re acting out rage against an abusive childhood, and they’re trying to punish their mother or father or some significant person in their lives.”
“Obviously that’s not the case here, Agent Dyson,” Keren said with some sting, “since he’s already picked girls of different races.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Detective Collins. Maybe his mother was biracial, or maybe his mother was one race and his father another. Those are the kinds of details that could identify him for us.”
“Great.” O’Shea rubbed his hands together as if preparing to dig into a great meal. “If you can guarantee he’s biracial, we can throw out all the files except those.”
No one missed his sarcasm.
Agent Higgins said, “Not helpful, Detective.”
O’Shea rolled his eyes.
The interrogation went on and on. It took Keren about five minutes to realize every question Dyson asked was already answered in the file he’d been studying. Keren saw Paul grow fidgety and begin glancing at his wristwatch.
An hour had crept by when Paul lunged out of his chair. “We can’t sit here anymore. You’ve got enough. Pravus could be out there right now killing LaToya. I have to do something besides talk!”
“If our profiler can narrow this down, we could go straight to the person responsible for this.” Higgins glared at Paul.
Paul grabbed the doorknob. Keren could see him trying to force himself to stay in the room. He said through clenched teeth, “Agent Higgins, you’re right to an extent. Agent Dyson can help. We know how profiling works. But this is a pure waste of our time. There is nothing we’ve said that isn’t in our report.”
“That may not be true.” Higgins stood and went to the door to stand close to Paul. “Sometimes people have impressions that they haven’t put in their report. You may not even be aware of them, but they can come out under questioning.”
“Yes, I know that, but we’re trained policemen.” Paul stopped talking for a long minute, then he went on. “I mean they are trained policemen and I used to be one. We know how instincts work and how to pinpoint minor clues from tone of voice and background noise. Your methods are very useful with civilians, but they are a waste of our time.”
“You’ve been a minister for five years, Reverend Morris. You haven’t used those instincts for a long time.”
“Oh, but they’re still there.” Paul stood away from the door and crossed his arms, his head hung down until his chin nearly rested on his chest. “Despite my best efforts to rid myself of them, all my old habits are right there, dying to spring to life.”
Dyson seemed to have ignored the whole exchange between Paul and Higgins. “I want to listen to the recorded messages again. I heard the ones from last night, but the one you brought in this morning is new.”
“Fine.” Keren rose from her seat. “Listen to the tapes while we get to work.”
“Sit down, Detective.” Higgins wasn’t making a suggestion.
Keren didn’t answer to the FBI. Despite the strong first impression of Higgins’s competence, she longed to shove his orders down his throat. But she did want to hear this morning’s tape, so she sat.
The first two tapes had nothing new. Paul said, “You hear where he talks about what I did to him? We think—”
Dyson waved his hand abruptly at Paul as if he were an annoying bug. Paul fell silent and stood by the door with his jaw clenched so tight Keren thought he might break some teeth.
The last tape, when Paul called Pravus back in the basement of the crack house, held all their attention. Paul sounded steady and strong as he tried to reason with Pravus. Keren thought of how he fell apart afterward.
He was a courageous man with the power of God in his voice. She suddenly decided she’d find time to sit in on one of Paul’s sermons, even if she had to steal a shopping cart and live on the street for a few days to qualify for admittance. She knew he’d be riveting when he spoke of his faith. God was using him powerfully, or he could never have led two girls as lost as LaToya and Juanita to the Lord.
Pravus’s voice pulled her attention back to the tape. “I saw them, the dancer and her mother. But you never knew.”
Keren had forgotten he’d made that statement.
&
nbsp; “What does that mean, the dancer and her mother?” Keren hit the PAUSE button. “Can you remember a case involving a dancer, either as the victim or the perp?”
Paul shook his head. “It doesn’t ring a bell.”
“That would be the two people,” O’Shea said. “A dancer and her mother. Were there any mother and child murders in those files?”
Dyson said, “You’re assuming the dancer is a child. Why is that?”
“Good point.” Keren nodded. “We could be reaching. The dancer could be a boy or a man, or an adult woman. Adults have mothers.”
“I don’t remember a mother and daughter murder,” Paul said, “but there were a couple of child murders. Let’s look more closely at them.”
“He might mean something else,” Higgins cautioned. “Narrow your search for now, but don’t get married to this theory.”
“We won’t,” Keren said. “It’s just a starting place.”
Keren glanced at Higgins. “Are you done with us?”
“For now.” Higgins waved at the door.
They left the office, but Keren could still feel Dyson’s probing eyes hunting around in her brain.
O’Shea stood and went to the coffeepot. “It’s been nearly twelve hours since his last contact. Why don’t you try the phone again, Paul?”
“I’ve tried every hour on the hour and a dozen more times when I couldn’t control myself.” Paul was dialing before O’Shea quit talking. “He’s got it shut off. He’ll leave it shut off until he has something to say to me.”
“Don’t drink that coffee, O’Shea. You’ve got to go home and get some sleep.” Keren pressed the heels of her hands to her burning eyes. “I’m losing my ability to read the English language, let alone Latin. I haven’t slept since about three yesterday morning. We’ve got our people and the FBI going twenty-four hours a day.”
“And chances are,” Paul said in a bleak voice, “we’re going to wake up tomorrow with the discovery of LaToya’s body.”
“It was two days before we found Juanita, Paul. We might get tomorrow still. And our synapses are going to french fry the rest of our brains if we don’t sleep.”
