Ten Plagues

“We’ve got detectives and two FBI agents from the local office finishing up questioning them in the hospital. It doesn’t look like any of them know who set that explosive. Their enemies are all more the guns-and-knives type. I talked to a few before you called me over here.” It wasn’t even noon yet and she’d already put in almost a full day. “Now I know how a dentist feels.” Keren pulled her blazer close. “I spent all my time pulling teeth. Not a cop-friendly crowd.”

Keren wished she’d worn a coat instead of her gray wool blazer. It was a warm summer morning, but she couldn’t stop shivering. “If you’re checking for a Latin scholar, try a Catholic priest, an old one who used to do the Latin Mass.”

O’Shea shook his head in disgust. “Yeah, we were slow on that carving above her door.”

This was their case. O’Shea was the primary. Between the two of them they had nearly thirty years on the force, and both of them had missed it.

Keren reviewed the facts. “Juanita Lopez. Missing. Female. No sign of a struggle. No sign of anything wrong at her place, except for a few words carved into a sign, hung over her front door in the hallway. In that ratty building, no one was even sure if the sign was new. Coworkers reported her missing. No one had seen her for four days. Even so, we didn’t list her until forty-eight hours after they called.”

“A lot of them turn up on their own, Collins. Most of them. You know the drill.” O’Shea watched her intently. She suspected it was to check her for any sign she was a wimp.

“And then that call to Morris and the explosion. And now this.” Keren shook her head. They had come up with nothing. Keren had spent Wednesday at the site of the explosion; this morning she’d questioned witnesses, including Morris, who was due for release from the hospital tomorrow. Nothing. She’d hoped some of the gang members had seen something, but they were all clueless and uncooperative. Keren was afraid the trail was ice cold.

And now this morning, they’d gotten this call about a floater. The first cop on the scene hadn’t been able to translate the Latin words painted on the dress, but he’d heard about the missing woman and her connection to this neighborhood. Reverend Morris’s story had circulated through the department like wildfire.

At last the fountain quit bleeding. Someone had figured out how to turn off the recycling water. They both studied the obscene sight in front of them. Dr. Deidre Schaefer, the precinct’s most experienced medical examiner, pulled up in the county van.

Keren and O’Shea stepped away to give the forensics team room to work.

Dr. Schaefer pointed at the body and spoke softly to a photographer, who clicked away casually, as if he were taking pictures at a wedding.

Keren watched the professional behavior of the ME’s team. “In all this craziness let’s don’t forget routine procedure. We could miss something by putting all our faith in the Reverend.”

“You mean see if she’s got an abusive boyfriend or gambling debts?” O’Shea said with thinly veiled sarcasm.

“Yeah, right.” Keren looked at the bobbing corpse. “Routine.”

Keren washed her face, then she washed it again. She scoured her hands until they were red and raw. She was so obsessed with scrubbing, it took her awhile to figure out that she was trying to wash away the sight of Juanita Lopez floating in the crimson fountain. It didn’t make her feel less violated to realize what she was doing. But it did make her shut off the water.

She wasn’t just trying to wash this morning’s crime out of her head, she was also trying to wash away the desperate evil behind Juanita Lopez’s murder. This was a killer driven by his own personal demon in the truest sense of the word. Even after only one death, she was absolutely sure. Another thing she was sure of—there would be more.

When she came out of the bathroom, O’Shea was sitting behind her desk. Reverend Morris was there with him, looking as battered as ever, but a whole lot cleaner. He had on black sweatpants and a dark-red sweatshirt with a white lighthouse and the words, “Jesus is the light of the world” across his chest. His hair was dark and long enough to brush his collar. All his bandages were gone, including the sling. The three lines of stitches on his face made him look like a kinder, gentler Frankenstein.

She tamped down hard on her knee-jerk resentment.

“I’ve found our expert, Collins.” Mick jabbed his pen at Morris. “He’s agreed to work on the Latin stuff for us.”

Keren stopped so suddenly she almost stumbled over her own feet. She’d planned on a white-haired priest. Paul Morris wasn’t even close. She felt again a level of honor in the man and she remembered him whispering “pretty” while he held her filthy hair.

It wasn’t enough to override her hostility. Her antipathy was audible when she said, “You don’t speak Latin, Rev. You thought that sign was Spanish.”

Morris must have caught her caustic attitude. That didn’t exactly make him a genius.