by Mary Nealy
nasty father, I said with perfect sincerity to this big, nasty kid, ‘I’m sorry you are possessed by a demon.’“
Paul couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“You can imagine how well that went over.”
Finally, he said, “You were pretty harsh.”
“I wasn’t trying to be. It was true. I thought they’d want to know. I’d never even said such a thing to my parents. Maybe the gift hadn’t come to me yet or maybe I’d never been near someone possessed by a demon before, but the whole thing was really unexpected by everyone. Me included.”
“Were your parents … how did they handle it?”
“They had a long talk with me and they supported me, believed what I’d said. And they got out the Bible and read 1 Corinthians 12 to me and talked about their own gifts. We had plenty of time for all this because I got suspended from school for three days. They helped me to appreciate my gift, but we decided I should maybe be a little more discreet about it. Then I got back to school and, well, let’s just say kids can be cruel. I’ve never … well almost never … talked about it again.”
“So you just ignore what you see?”
“No, but now I know better than to blurt something like that out in front of everyone. I’ve learned the art of thinking before I speak.”
“Some people never learn it.”
“Well, I did—the hard way.” Keren glanced at him as if she expected him to haul her up to his office and call her parents. “So anyway, that’s my gift. I discern spirits. I can tell when a demon has taken up residence in someone’s soul.”
“Every time?”
Keren seemed to give his question considerable thought. “I guess I don’t know if I can do it every time. I only know sometimes
I can. I assume God lets me see it because He wants me to know, either to help or to be careful.”
“That’s a beautiful gift, Keren. I’ve talked to a few people who believe they have such a gift, but it’s more subtle with them. They talk about being repelled by certain people, and they think that’s a sign that they have an evil spirit of some kind. But I’ve learned that people can be really bad without a demon being involved. Or at least God doesn’t always reveal a demon when I’m tangling with criminals. It’s not a well-understood gift.”
“I’ve never talked to anyone who claimed to have it.” Keren ran one hand back and forth over the steering wheel and seemed to be looking into the distance. “But then, I’ve never asked because I never talk about it.”
“You said you did one other time, outside your parents and that fourth grader. And it was bad. Tell me about that.”
Keren scowled at him. “You listen like you’re some kind of … of …”
“Pastor?” Paul smiled at her.
“Yeah.” She slumped in her car seat. “Just like a pastor.”
“Occupational hazard.” Then silence stretched, and Paul quietly prayed for her to feel safe with him, safe enough to tell what was obviously a very difficult story. And for himself to have some wisdom to offer. Wisdom didn’t seem to be one of his gifts when it came to Keren.
Apparently the silent treatment worked. Keren inhaled slowly and said, “I was engaged once.”
That caused a very basic, very unpleasant reaction.
Jealousy.
Paul was shocked at the strength of it. Now he was afraid to talk for fear of saying something stupid.
“What happened?” There, that sounded neutral enough.
“I had a lifetime of secrecy behind me, but I knew I really needed to be open with the man I wanted to marry. I kept putting it off more out of habit than anything.” Keren sounded guilty, like she blamed herself for the end of her relationship. “In fact, I put it off until the night he proposed. But he was a strong Christian. He was a decent man, someone I really thought God had chosen for me. It seemed so right.”
“It was obviously wrong.” Paul didn’t think he quite managed neutrality with that comment.
“Obviously.” Keren nodded. “I really didn’t think he’d be put off by it. He produced the ring and I said yes.”
Paul could hear the bewilderment and hurt in her voice.
“We spent hours that night talking about the future. He owned a house, but he offered to sell it, and we’d buy one together. We talked about me being a cop, and he wasn’t real thrilled with it, but I’d told him it was a calling and I expected to make a career of it and he seemed okay with it. We talked a lot about our faith and wanting to raise our children the way we’d been raised, and somehow we worked our way around to that story I just told you.”
“Fourth grade.”
Nodding, Keren said, “He was really taken aback by it. He started asking a lot of questions, really detailed stuff, because by then I’d already confronted a lot of people in trouble. The questions took a turn that was weird, accusatory. Honestly, it reminded me a little of that mess in fourth grade, and I kept expecting him to call the principal and my parents.”
“I wonder why he reacted so strongly. It seems strange that he would.”
“He changed the subject back to my work, and suddenly we were having a fight. The first real fight we’d ever had. We were so compatible. The whole thing was shocking. By the time the date came to an end, the engagement was over.”
“How long had you been dating?”
“Close to a year.”
“And that was it? You couldn’t work things out?”
“I couldn’t even get him to talk to me. I phoned a few times and he wouldn’t answer. I still thought it was about being a cop at that point. After a couple of weeks of him ducking me, I went to his house and waited for him one night, and when he came home, he had another woman with him.”
“In two weeks he’d found someone else?”
“When they walked up to me, the woman he was with said, ‘Is this the exorcist cop?’ “
Paul flinched.
“He asked me if I was going to add stalking to everything else.”
“You dated him for a year and never saw this side of him?”
“Not helping, Paul.” “Sorry.”
“It was a betrayal like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Not just that he was so … repulsed. But that he’d obviously told this woman. Made a joke out of it.” She shook her head silently for a while. “I felt like God gave me a choice right there and then to serve Him or to have a man in my life. Well, I couldn’t believe it was right not to serve Him. So I decided marriage just wasn’t for me. Not in God’s plan for me. If I was called to be a police officer and given a gift that was so hard to understand, God’s will must be for me to remain alone. And that was it. I walked away. I haven’t dated. I certainly haven’t kissed a man since. And I’ve never talked about my gift to anyone again.”
“I’m glad you walked away. What did he want you to do? Ignore a gift that could help so many people?”
“No, I think he just wanted me to get away from him and stay away.” She pulled herself out of her dark mood enough to glare at Paul. “And there’s no could about it. I do help people.”
“Sorry.” Paul was glad to hear her temper, much better than the hurt. “I didn’t mean you didn’t. I’m honored that you felt like you could talk about it with me.”
“You should be.”
“I’d like you to come over to the mission. If I knew there was something more than simple human weakness involved with some of my people, maybe I could help them more.”
“There’s more.”
Paul said cautiously, “More gifts?”
“No … well, sort of. My gift is discerning spirits—that’s not only demons. I can also discern when the Holy Spirit is flowing strongly in someone.”
Paul looked at her for a long time. “That would be such a wonderful thing to see.”
“It is. I sensed the Holy Spirit in you the first time I saw you lying there all beat up in that hospital. You have a spirit of courage and joy that is so strong.”
“Was that before
or after you started yelling at me?”
Keren was silent for a few seconds. Sheepishly, she said, “Before.”
Paul looked at her.
She gave him a quick glance then went back to staring out the windshield. “Your spirit, your love for the people who come to your mission, it has an unusually powerful effect on me, Paul. I’m afraid I’m letting it confuse me.”
She rested her elbow on the open window and propped her head up with her fist. “That kiss—it shouldn’t have happened, but there’s something …” Keren shrugged.
“Let’s deal with the kiss later.”
Keren gave him a dry look, like she knew he didn’t want to deal with it at all, and she agreed; but they were still going to have to deal with it.
“So if you saw the Holy Spirit in me, why did you get so angry?”
Keren gave him a disgruntled look. “You really don’t remember me, do you?”
Paul sat straighter in his seat. With all the other revelations tonight, he had a feeling this was the one she wanted to talk about least, and therefore was the one that he needed to hear most. “I asked you if we met. We did. I knew it. But I can’t remember when.”
Keren shook her head and crossed her arms. She said in a disgusted voice, “We didn’t exactly meet. But you didn’t like the way I handled a case and tried to have me busted out of the police force. All I can guess is you must have done it so much that one little incident doesn’t carry much weight.”
“I did what?”
“You heard me.”
“When? What happened?”
“Let’s leave it for now,” Keren said. “I’m sorry I brought it up. You tried to paint me as an incompetent little girl who was too softhearted to arrest the bad guys, and I was tough enough to survive the suspension, plus the harassment from every cop who knew what happened.”
“You can’t make a statement like that and then let it drop.”
“You dropped the kiss. Now it’s my turn to drop something.”
“Keren,” Paul said, doing his best to sound threatening. He’d been good at threatening at one time. She gave him a You-don’t-scare-me look.
Finally, Paul said, “All right, fine. But I’m going to find out what it is. I’m a cop—”
“You were a cop,” Keren corrected him.
“I’ll track it down. Or maybe I’ll just pry it out of you.”
“Why don’t you just reread some of your old press clippings? You had enough of those.”
Paul heard the venom in her voice and wondered how they’d gotten from a kiss to this. He studied her mulish profile and tapped his foot on the floorboard irritably, then he decided to change the subject. For now. “You reacted so strongly when I told you Pravus was Latin for ‘demon’ because you sensed this about him?”
“It’s bad.” Keren nodded. “Evil is permeating every aspect of this case. Nothing bothers O’Shea, but the crime scene, the blood … it really shook him. And I’ve never seen Dr. Schaefer lose her cool. They don’t know it, but they’re sensing the demon in this, too.”
Paul thought of the ME’s unsteady voice during the autopsy.
“I’ve never had an experience like this,” Keren said. “Where I could feel the demonic presence even when the person hosting the demon isn’t around. I felt it at the explosion, at the fountain where we found Juanita, at the autopsy, in LaToya’s apartment …”
“Do you think you could sense him if he were near?”
“I don’t know. Whatever is inside of him is incredibly powerful. If I could focus on him with some internal radar, it would be the first time I ever have.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure? What do you mean?”
“Maybe you aren’t aware of it. Have you ever been pursuing a criminal and you picked the right alley to go up or the right door to look behind? You told me once that O’Shea says you have great instincts. Maybe, without you being aware of it, you’ve been able to track down evil better because of your gift.”
“I’ve never considered such a thing. You know, not every criminal I arrest has a demon. You’d think they would. Sometimes I see demons in the strangest places. I’ve seen the struggle in some people, and, if they are open to it, I’ve helped them.”
“Can you cast demons out?” Paul’s heart started pounding.
“I don’t cast them out the way Jesus did. The people I’ve helped have done it themselves. I’ve encouraged them and prayed for them, but I’ve never found an ability to just tell the demon to come out and it works. Remember the demon that the disciples couldn’t cast out?”
“Yes, the story is in Matthew and Mark. I’m always particularly interested in the seemingly small stories that occur in more than one book. They must have left a strong impression. And I think God wants us to understand that they have special meaning.”
“Well, in Matthew, Jesus is pretty hard on His disciples, saying they don’t have enough faith. But in Mark He says this kind of demon only comes out with prayer and fasting. That’s the way I approach demons. I begin praying. I only speak in the kindest way to the person who is possessed. I pray every second I’m with them. I can tell if they are interested in my help or not.”
“And if they are?” Paul prompted.
“Then we pray together.”
“And it works?” Paul was fascinated.
“It works. It works a surprising amount of the time, because part of my discernment seems to be … well, usually… I think I can discern a spirit in someone who is open to being free of it. Because I usually help them, so it stands to reason, right? God gave me that type of understanding as the true purpose of my gift. Leading them to Jesus Christ always has to be part of it. I’m afraid I’ll leave them empty and more demons will come and take up residence.”
“That’s from Luke.” Paul was impressed. “You’ve really done your homework on Biblical demons.”
“Can you blame me? It’s a huge part of my life. It’s why I became a police officer.”
“To chase demons?”
“No, because sensing them and seeing the damage they do, both to the ones they possess and those around them, gave me a special heart for the people who struggle with them. I’ve found my gift very useful as a cop.”
There was a lull while Paul considered the strange conversation. “And our killer’s demon is bad news?”
“The worst news imaginable,” Keren replied.
“So, Juanita was killed by a demon, and now he has LaToya at his mercy.”
“God is holding LaToya in the palm of His hand, Paul. And Juanita is being bathed in His love. No demon really has any power over God, you know that. Good is stronger than evil.”
“I do know that.” But Paul was glad she’d reminded him. “And I know that to live is Christ, and to die is gain. I tell Rosita that every morning when she scolds me for jogging through the neighborhood.”
“I like Rosita.” Keren grinned at him.
“I like her, too, but she’s a nag.” His eyes had adjusted to the dark until he could see every nuance of her face, the moonlight casting her skin in blue, her eyes a glowing, ghostly gray.
“So we do our best, and we leave the rest to God.” Keren shifted in her seat as if it made her impatient to accept that. “I’d lose my mind at work if I couldn’t.”
“I never could leave anything to anyone, least of all God, when I was a cop. I let the job consume me until it almost ate my heart out.” Paul snorted. “What almost? It did eat my heart out. I lost my wife. I lost my daughter. What were they if not my heart?”
Paul paused then whispered, “I was a bad father.”
“Hush.” Keren reached for him then pulled her hand back. “You know better than to waste time with regret. Your faith won’t allow that kind of wallowing. Turn to face God and the challenges of today, and let the past go.”
“Sounds easy.”
“Not easy, simple. There’s a difference.” Keren ran her hands into her hair and fiddled with her hair tie.
>
She was self-conscious now because he’d done something so stupid as kiss her. “Simple to say but not so simple to do.”
“Like I said, simple, not easy.”
She was going to quit touching him, and only now was he aware that almost no one ever touched him. He often rested a hand on the shoulder of the homeless people he served, but they didn’t touch him back. He suddenly missed the touch of a human hand desperately. And he knew exactly who he wanted to touch him.
He turned to face her. “Maybe it’s time we talked about that kiss.” He closed the distance between them.
A patrol car pulled up to Keren’s door. Paul threw himself across the car seat, away from Keren. He saw her gun come up to just below the window. She was on edge, even though the car was marked and both men in it wore uniforms. One of them got out and came up to her window.
“Are you Detective Collins?” He was young and eager. It saddened Paul to think how soon those eyes would become cynical.
“Yes.” Keren flashed her badge at him. “Let me see your badge, officer.”
Keren kept her gun out of sight.
The man tapped his chest where it was clearly pinned.
Keren studied it for a long minute before she slipped her gun into its holster without the young officer even knowing she’d had it ready. The kid wasn’t nearly scared enough.
“Were you informed of why you were needed here?”
“You suspect that the man who blew up that building downtown might use that pond over there as a dump site for his latest vic.”
Paul realized Keren had gotten used to saying LaToya. She glanced at him. He’d wanted them to be less detached when they talked about Juanita and LaToya. Keren had told him no, but somewhere along the way he’d converted her, and now this officer’s language chilled him.
“That’s right. This guy is a stone-cold killer.” Keren jabbed her finger in the cop’s face. “Don’t either one of you sleep. Don’t daydream. Don’t let your guard down for a second. Don’t let someone drive up to you or walk up to you. Assume everyone’s got a gun and will open fire as soon as they’re in range.”
