Mary Nealy - Ten Plagues

“Is there any chance you might choke to death on a meatball?”

“You don’t have that kind of luck.”

Finally, just to shut him up, she said, “Have you noticed that the preacher man is turning back into a cop?”

“Yeah, and it’s driving him nuts.” O’Shea nodded. “He falls into the lingo, changes his tone of voice and the way he holds himself. His whole attitude changes. Then he freezes up when he says something particularly cold blooded, and I can see the guilt. The poor guy’s struggling.”

“He asked me for a gun the night LaToya was dumped.”

“That was enough to make anyone fighting mad,” O’Shea said grimly.

“He asked for the gun in the heat of the moment, and he regretted it afterward,” Keren continued. “Then, only days later, when we went into Caldwell’s apartment building, he asked again. And this time he meant it. It wouldn’t surprise me if he shows up with a piece at the next dump site.”

“Does he have a license?” O’Shea, ever the cop, asked.

Keren shrugged. “They usually let former cops have one. I don’t know about concealed carry. That’s a little tougher.”

“They’d give him one,” O’Shea said with certainty. “Wanting to blow someone away has gotta be tearing him up inside. The day we first met him, in the hospital, I got the idea he was kind of meek. Strong in his convictions, but no dynamo, if you get what I mean.”

“Well, you were wrong—as usual.” Keren waited for O’Shea to turn red. He obliged her, then she laughed in his face. “He’s a tough cookie, even in preacher mode. But now he’s losing it. He’s a decent guy who left the hassles of law enforcement behind, and now it’s like he’s being taken over by it.”

“Is that admiration I hear?”

“Of course I admire him. He’s…” Keren caught herself again and fell silent.

“He could rejoin the force,” O’Shea said. “I’ve asked around. He was a good cop. As good as it gets.”

Keren shook her head. “I’d hate to see him do that. He has such peace in his life at that mission.”

“ ‘I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,’“ O’Shea said.

Keren was always startled when O’Shea came up with something Christian. She knew he was a man of faith, and she’d especially liked him because he respected her own strong beliefs, but he didn’t wear it on his sleeve.

“And we’re the sword, is that what you’re saying?” She was used to the idea that she battled evil, but she’d never heard it put quite that way before.

O’Shea hunched one shoulder. “On this case, with Caldwell, I’d say for sure we’re the sword. Somebody’s gotta be the sword, cuz this guy needs a sword taken to him—bad.”

Keren nodded and stared into space, thinking about how desperately they needed to stop Caldwell.

Finally, O’Shea broke the silence. “So what’s the deal with you and the preacher?”

Keren threw her coffee cup at him. She wished it was stoneware full of boiling hot coffee instead of Styrofoam and empty.

Keren crawled out of the lousy cot in the police lounge the next morning around five. “I want my apartment back,” she growled to no one, because no one else was stupid enough to sleep here.

Except she didn’t want her apartment back. No way did she want to sleep in that room with her memory of Katrina Hardcastle and all those flies.

She showered at the station house. She’d brought half her wardrobe in by now, and when she got out to her desk, O’Shea was waiting for her like the specter of death.

“Another one?” Keren should have saved her breath. The answer was obvious.

“I just got the word that a body was dumped. I don’t have any details, just an address.” O’Shea headed for the door. “A half a block from the mission.”

“We’ve got cops all over that area! How is he getting in?”

O’Shea shrugged and kept moving.

Keren fell into step alongside him. “Why do you suppose he writes in Latin?”

O’Shea said, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe when we get him, we’ll find a connection in his twisted brain to explain it. Maybe, in the end, he’s just a loon.”

“Boils this time,” Keren remembered. “Pestus ex ulcus, isn’t that right? The plague of boils?”

O’Shea didn’t answer her, and she didn’t want him to.

“Should I call Morris?” O’Shea had his phone out of his pocket.

“Leave him for now.” Keren started jogging down the stairs. “It’s so early you might wake him up. If he’s sleeping for once, let him get another hour or two. There’s no rush. We can just walk over and talk to him from the dump site. There’s nothing he can do anyway.”

“Identify her.”

Keren sighed. She was all too sure Paul would be able to identify her.

Keren moved faster, but what she wanted to do was run away.

Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields — both people and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree .

Pravus crooned to the woman in front of him, “I’ve got the perfect place for you. It’s going to be cold, but you won’t care for long.”

He was finding his work to be more of a chore. Eluding the police was heady, but the beast told him his victims were unworthy.

He didn’t even bother to call the preacher this time. Pravus hated to admit it, but he was becoming bored with his creations and living now only for the kill. He worked away, but he couldn’t put the love he needed into his art.

And then, like any true artist, he was inspired. He needed to pick a moment when the reverend was distracted, and he knew just how to do that—how to listen in on his room. Strike while the reverend slept.

He went to the window to look down on the mission, and the final piece of the next child he’d create came to him instantly, when he saw pretty little Rosita.

In spite of all the nickel-sized burn marks on her, Paul easily identified the schizophrenic Hispanic woman who came and went from the mission.

He had to fight back his rage when he stood over her, thrown away like garbage in an alley.

“I should be praying,” he said to O’Shea. “Or crying.”

O’Shea shrugged.

“If I look in a mirror, will my eyes be as detached and cool as yours?” Paul shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them from hitting something.

O’Shea looked away from the mutilated body. He stared at Paul but didn’t say anything.

Paul could feel his own cold-blooded cop personality oozing out of him. “Let’s get this over with.”

“The FBI just pulled Keren aside to ask her some questions. She’ll be back in a minute. She’ll want to hear your statement, maybe ask some questions.”

“I’m not waiting around.” He gave his statement, then he went straight back to the Lighthouse.

He went later to visit LaToya. She lay immobilized in the hospital bed. The beeping monitor was the only thing that proved she was alive.

Caldwell didn’t call.

The streets around the mission were so heavily patrolled that the vagrants and gangs were driven inside or underground. By the end of the day, there wasn’t a single person in the mission. No one showed up for the evening meal.

Paul ran down a list in his head of every woman he knew who lived on the streets. He tried to figure out a way to track them down and bring them inside for the night. Even thinking about it was a waste of time. He’d never find them, and if, by some fluke he did, they wouldn’t come with him unless he used force.