by Mary Nealy
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?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There 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.
Keren gave him a frantic shake of her head. Of course, it was too late.
There was an extended silence on the phone. Finally, when Caldwell spoke, it wasn’t with his usual cultured tone. His voice had the snarl of an angry beast. “So you finally figured it out, did you? I suppose it was inevitable. But you proved to be so stupid before, I really doubted if you’d ever identify me.
“There you were, ranting and raving about my careless driving.” Caldwell’s voice lightened as he reminisced. “What a pathetic excuse you were for a policeman.”
A laugh erupted from the phone so shrill Keren jerked the phone away from her ear.
“The truth is, I planned for your wife and child to die months before I finally killed them. I thought of every detail. I savored watching them and learning about them. Your wife was very careless about closing her curtains, you know. You could train her to be more modest, if she were still alive. I even arranged for you to be living away from home. I planted the evidence your wife found that made her throw you out of the house. You got angry when she accused you of being unfaithful, but you never asked yourself where she got that idea. I watched the two of you fight. A few times I watched … when you didn’t fight.”
Paul’s eyes were neutral, cool. He didn’t react to this sick invasion of privacy.
“I’m surprised you could stand to touch her, Reverend,” Caldwell went on. “Your wife was not a nice woman. She deserved everything that happened to her. I created the whole thing … the car trouble, the battery failing on her cell phone. I slipped in behind her at the dance recital, got her purse from under her folding chair, took her battery out, and returned everything. No one saw me in the dark auditorium. I even took pains to keep you away from that school program, so you wouldn’t be there to help. Having her husband be a policeman made it all the sweeter. Even then, I was controlling you like a god.”
“Why them?” Paul sounded angry now, but it was a cold kind of anger, all the more frightening for the depth and control he exerted over it. “Why kill my wife and daughter?”
“Your wife worked at the art gallery where I wanted to display my work. She humiliated me, when she should have been kissing my feet for doing her the honor of choosing her.”
“You mean she thought your artwork was lousy, and you killed her for it,” Paul taunted.
“Your wife was the first one. I saw the evil in her. The evil needed to be destroyed so my art could be let go into the world.”
“And my daughter? What had she done?”
“Your daughter needed to die so your wife would understand what she’d done. I enjoyed making her witness her daughter’s death. Your wife was still alive after I hit her the first time. So I went back and made sure she was dead. Your wife deserved to die, and your daughter would have been another one just like her.”
“And did your mother stand by and watch you be hurt, Francis?”
“She only wanted me to be free. She wanted what was best for me,” Caldwell raged.
“Were you bad, Francis?” Paul jeered.
“Yes, I was bad,” Caldwell seethed. “But my father helped me learn discipline and control. And my mother understood and supported me in my art.”
“If you turned yourself in, it would go easier for you.”
“Easier?” Caldwell laughed. “How much easier? Life in prison instead of a lethal injection? That’s not a very tempting offer.”
“There’s more than prison for you if you come in, Francis. There’s help. You need help.” Paul fell silent.
There was an extended pause, then Caldwell returned to the chanting voice he’d used at first. “Did you enjoy finding you had company when you got home last night, my pretty Keren?”
Keren glanced up at Paul, then the two of them scanned the area in all directions.
“Yes, I know you’re listening. And I know all about you carrying on with the reverend. You don’t think that reporter came up with the idea on his own, do you? You’re a part of this now, just like the good reverend is. That’s why I sent you your own little gift. If you set out to catch me, then you have to accept that you’ve become part of what is between me and the reverend.”
Anger flushed Paul’s face. Keren glanced at her watch and decided to talk to Caldwell to keep him on the phone.
Before she could speak, Caldwell said, “I wonder who will get my next present. There are so many who are worthy to be honored. I’ve already got her, you know. But I’m not sure what door you carve your message on when a woman is homeless. I guess I’ll just carve it in her back.”
“Francis, you can’t do this. Let me help you,” Paul said fiercely.
“I didn’t really choose her, Reverend. You did, that first day. I warned you not to talk to anyone on your way to the building.”
“I didn’t talk to anyone,” Paul insisted.
Then Keren heard screaming through the phone line and Caldwell’s high-pitched laughter.
“Pastor P, help me!”
Paul’s eyes flared in recognition. “I ran into her, knocked her shopping cart over. She doesn’t know anything about this.”
The phone clicked off.
Paul pressed the phone against his forehead. “He’s got Wilma.”
Keren called Higgins to report Wilma’s kidnapping. Higgins cut her off before she could tell him.
“We got a location on him,” the FBI agent said exuberantly. “We’re moving on the place now!”
“The call gives you probable cause,” Keren said.
“We don’t need to wait for any paperwork. We can kick the door in.” Higgins rattled off the address.
“We’re already in the parking garage.” Keren headed for her car at a fast clip.
Paul was right with her. He shoved her toward the passenger side. “I’ll drive, you talk.”
Keren didn’t like the take-charge attitude, but they didn’t have time to haggle. She said to Higgins, “We’re on our way.”
“You’ll be ahead of us by a couple of minutes.” Keren could hear Higgins breathing hard. Even now he was charging toward his car. Paul started hers and squealed the tires as he backed out of the space. He was roaring for the exit before she got her seat belt fastened.
“We’re going in quiet, Collins,” Higgins shouted into the phone. “I’m sending the SWAT team so we can secure the entire building. I don’t want him to have any warning. Don’t you two go in alone.”
“We won’t. We’re going to do this right.” Keren clicked the phone.
“He’s been right across the street from the mission?” Paul asked in shock. “No wonder he knew everything about me.” Paul went in quiet, but he went in fast.
“He’s probably been studying you for weeks.” Keren got another call from Higgins and learned more.
“Longer if he knows about Juanita and LaToya. Why didn’t we search those buildings?” Paul clutched
the steering wheel as he skidded around a corner.
“It’s impossible.” Keren twisted her hair and refastened her barrette to hold some of the escaping tendrils. “The mission is surrounded by buildings—thousands of apartments. We’d spend months going door-to-door.”
“He probably picked all ten girls before he hit Melody Fredericks by accident.”
“Then he figured out a new way to torment you.” Keren heard about ten thousand miles’ worth of tread being burned off her tires and only wished Paul would drive faster. “It wasn’t necessary to kill your friends, which was getting harder with all the warnings we’ve been putting out. There were other ways to make it personal.”
“What else did Higgins tell you? Does he have more information on the guy?”
“They ran the building occupants as soon as they got an address. One person rents the whole top floor.”
“Name?” Paul looked away from the traffic as he ran a stale yellow light. Horns honked but he floored it and raced on.
“He didn’t have that yet. Even in a run-down tenement, how can anyone afford to rent a whole floor?”
“He had money,” Paul remembered. “We checked his bank accounts that he’d emptied.”
“This is close enough.” Keren unhooked her seat belt before they came to a complete stop, prepared to hog-tie Paul to keep him from going in before SWAT arrived.
“He’s hurting her. Right now, he’s in there torturing Wilma.” Paul pulled up well away from the building and stared at it as if he could bore a hole in the wall with his eyes and see where Wilma was.
Keren wondered how long she could keep him in the car. She wondered how long she could keep herself in the car.
“So a rich man lives on the fifth floor of that wreck of a building,” Keren said, craning her neck to see to the top. “He’s got a clear view of two sides of the mission, and it’s tall enough he can see most of what’s going on, on the other sides.”
“And with a telescope set up in the right place, he could watch most of what he’s sent me to do. He saw me plow into Wilma that first morning he contacted me. Wilma.” Paul fell silent.
