Ten Plagues

It was a wasted trip. There must have been some morning break, because there was almost no one at the mission, except a woman in the kitchen who wouldn’t speak to Keren or make eye contact. But she was baking bread that smelled like heaven. Hunting in the back rooms of the mission, Keren found a group of ladies from a local church who were stuffing envelopes.

“Where is everybody?” Keren asked the group of gray-haired worker bees.

One of them smiled at her from behind her trifocals. “It’s the first of the month.”

“What’s that have to do with anything?”

“Welfare checks, social security checks, disability checks all come out today. Most of the people here will have money for the next few days. It gets pretty quiet.”

Frustrated, Keren headed for the station.

When she got there, O’Shea had more details. “We’ve narrowed the type of chisel down to a very specific artist’s tool.” He started talking before she had a chance to stick her purse in her desk drawer. “Only a half-dozen stores in the metro area handle them. The one Pravus threw was old, but we’re hoping he might be compulsive enough to need one exactly like it, so we’re monitoring the stores and any mail-order businesses that sell them.”

“Sounds good,” Keren said as she settled in. “What about the frogs?”

“The frogs were really interesting.”

Keren exchanged a look with Paul. He shrugged. “I thought they were pretty interesting when I was picking them out of my clothes.”

Keren shuddered, remembering. “How so?”

“Well, they’re not a usual kind of frog. They’re a really small tree frog, native to the southern part of the United States, mainly Louisiana. They can also be purchased in pet stores, but no stores would carry that many. The medics estimated there were over a hundred frogs crawling on LaToya and scads of them were hopping away in all directions. They got twenty in the ambulance with them because they seemed to kind of cling.”

“Tell me about it.” Paul rubbed at his stomach as if he could still feel the little wrigglers inside his shirt. “I’m going to go home for the night. I hope a shower helps me forget just what special little frogs they were.”

Paul nearly staggered as he climbed the stairs to his apartment that night. He would have gone back to the hospital directly from the station house, except he hadn’t showered or changed clothes since Sunday morning—two days ago. He was starting to disgust himself. A shower, a change of clothes, and right back to LaToya.

He opened his apartment door, jogging straight for the shower. The apartment smelled stale, like it had been closed up for too long, which it had. He felt like a jerk, leaving LaToya all day. As her pastor and her friend, not to mention the catalyst of this mess, it was his duty to be at her side. He rushed through his shower and pulled on a pair of blue jeans, a sweatshirt, and running shoes; then he ran to his tiny spare bedroom to snag his jacket.

He pushed the door open and the air hit him in the face. It was thick. It was alive. His mouth filled with choking dust that crawled down his throat.

Then the smell hit him.

Choking and covering his mouth, he fumbled for the light switch on the wall. The bare bulb was almost snuffed out by the swarms of gnats.

He could just make out the body on the floor. Covering his mouth and nose with one hand, he knelt and virtually pushed aside a solid wall of bugs. He felt for a pulse. There was none. The body was stone cold. She was long dead. But the smell of death had told him that before he’d touched her.

Gnats covered her body. They clustered on the hideous rust-brown painting on her death shroud. Paul lurched to his feet, suddenly remembering he was invading a crime scene. He backed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind him. He ran into his bathroom and spit gnats out of his mouth, clawed at his face to wipe them away, then pulled out his cell phone and called Keren as he rushed out into the hall.

O’Shea beat Keren there. Paul was leaning against the wall outside his door, posting himself as guard. He’d been thinking like a cop. Call it in. Preserve the crime scene.

“Where is she?” O’Shea pulled out a handkerchief and reached for the doorknob.

“No.” Paul moved to block O’Shea from going in. He wasn’t sure if it was to protect the crime scene or O’Shea. “It’s bad.”

“Melody Fredericks?” O’Shea didn’t protest.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s her, but I couldn’t see her really.”

“Why not?”

There was an extended silence. Finally, Paul said, “Gnats.”

Keren emerged at the top of the stairs as Paul spoke. She grimaced.

Paul repeated his orders to stay out. The three of them stood waiting.

When Higgins got there, Paul said, “Wait a minute.”

“I’m allowed in.” Higgins reached for the door.

Paul grabbed his arm. “You’re going to run into a million gnats when you get in there. Cover your mouth.”

“I’m not afraid of a few bugs.” Higgins looked at them like they were wimps.