“I wonder sometimes if we’re not living in that time,” Keren said. “I wonder if Satan hasn’t been released from his prison.”
“Ask the people in Africa dying of AIDS, or the people in North Korea who are starving to death, or the people in Saudi Arabia who are being put to death for becoming Christians, if they think Satan isn’t loose,” Paul said.
“You may not need to go so far afield,” Keren said. “How about we ask LaToya?”
“You really are a believer, aren’t you?” Paul felt the assurance in his heart even before she answered. She wasn’t the kind of Christian he was used to. She was too cold, too busy, too grouchy. Of course, they’d met under nasty circumstances. He hadn’t exactly been on his best behavior, either.
“I really am.” She stood. “I’ll get rid of the cups, then we’ll go see if our ‘time-out’ is over and Mick’ll let us quit sitting in the corner and get back to work.”
Paul wasn’t perfectly satisfied with their new harmony. He knew there was something else going on. Her jaw never really relaxed. Her piercing eyes, so pale they were breathtaking, watched him until he thought she could have performed laser surgery with them. But she wasn’t attacking him anymore, so he didn’t push.
Paul handed her his empty cup. Her hand closed over his. He was bemused by the strength and softness of her hand. He glanced up and their eyes caught. A soft breeze blew one of those corkscrew curls across her gently sculpted cheekbone. She was so extraordinarily pretty and delicate. He towered over her, but her size didn’t diminish her strength. Her white teeth bit nervously into her bottom lip. Her full lips held his attention.
They both dropped the cup at the same time. Paul jumped back. He told himself it was to avoid getting splashed with the nonexistent contents of his empty cup. He looked at Keren again, unable to stop himself. She was extremely busy picking up the cup. Silently, they walked back into the station house together. Paul weighed the pros and cons of going back to open warfare.
For the first time in the history of the world, war sounded like the most peaceful option.
CHAPTER SIX
She made peace with Paul and immediately began longing for a return to war. Or at least a demilitarized zone—that would keep him far away from her.
After that long look and the electric heat of his hand on hers, she’d have gone right back to fighting if O’Shea hadn’t been keeping such a close eye on them to see if the cease-fire was real or phony. She was far more comfortable with her hostility than with the attraction. She’d learned in a terribly hard school to accept her lonely life. And she’d been content.
And now Paul had touched her and—as if that electricity had started a motor—suddenly she was alive and awake in a way she hadn’t been in years. Her solitary life wasn’t enough.
But solitary was safe. She liked safe.
“I got the hard copies of Detective Morris’s case files.” An eager young secretary rolled a cart in front of her, bearing the fruit of ten years of Paul’s workaholic ambition. She gave Paul a completely unnecessarily friendly smile and said only to him, “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Unable to stop herself from rolling her eyes, Keren turned to the mountain of paperwork.
He’d been a patrolman for four years, a detective for six. With a suppressed groan and grudging respect, she could see he’d been more prolific than a wheat field full of bunnies.
“Start with the computer. We can thin this down.” O’Shea nodded at Keren. She took over the cyber war portion of this mess.
Before they’d gotten a good start the phone on O’Shea’s desk rang. After a few quick words he hung up. “The medical examiner is ready to autopsy our vic. Let’s go.”
Paul rose from his seat. “Can’t you call her Juanita?”
“No, we can’t,” Keren said, marching out of the room. Paul caught up to her and opened his mouth, probably to nag, as he dogged her.
For once O’Shea took her side, cutting him off. “We can’t, and you know why. It’s our job to identify with the
“But it’s so—”
“Enough, Paul.” O’Shea unrolled his shirtsleeves and tugged on his suit coat as they jogged down the stairs toward the parking garage. “You know how it goes. Especially on a case like this, where the facts are so nasty. We can’t dwell on Juanita or get involved in sympathy. If we do, we can’t function.”
“I was a cop. I know how you rationalize your detachment. But from the outside looking in, you guys seem as cold blooded as the bad guys.”
“Well, we’re not,” Keren snapped as she jerked her car door open. “Don’t make this harder than it is. Detach as best you can, or you’ll be useless to us.”
Paul shoved his hands in his pockets and rode in silence in the backseat of Keren’s car to the coroner’s office.
As they pulled into the lot by the forensic lab, Keren caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “You don’t have to do this.”
He looked back with a sad kind of stubbornness. “Juanita died very likely because of an enemy of mine. I’m not going to protect myself by avoiding this.”
Keren tried one last time. “But why watch, Paul? Watching won’t make her any less dead. Any chance you have of remembering the vic… Juanita, when she was happy and whole, will be destroyed by witnessing her autopsy. You know how they are.”
“Yes, I know. Believe me I know.” He paused and looked at the Polaroid of Juanita that he must have lifted from the case file. It was the one Pravus had sent that Paul had left behind at the mission. He shouldn’t have it, but Keren didn’t say anything.
“This picture has burned itself into my memory. Seeing the autopsy won’t make it worse. Nothing can make it worse.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” Keren warned.
It was so much worse, Paul didn’t even think of trying to sleep.
He went into the mission and found the usual crowd drinking coffee. There were several men sleeping in their chairs, dressed in clothes they’d found in the mission store. It was warm out so most of them wouldn’t stay here overnight. They were mostly alcoholics, but too many of them drank to quiet the tormenting voices in their heads. Bipolar, schizophrenic, crazy, whatever the currently popular word was for mental illness. They came in for supper, some would hang around for a while, then they’d go back on the streets. But a few stayed here, and a few had let Paul help them find an apartment. And a few, like LaToya and Juanita, had gotten their lives in order and were on their own.
Paul tried to reach all of them, get them help, get them off the street, but mostly he just cared for them, made sure they had food and warm clothes. A reasonably clean bed on winter nights. He saw himself as a servant.
Turning to the small group that sat at a table, talking quietly, Paul saw the kind of thing that kept him going. Made him believe he was doing what God called him to do.
Murray, Buddy, Louie, five others. These men and a group of women who sat at another table made it all worth it. Rosita was one of them. She waved and gave him a smile.
Paul said hello to everyone then grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down by the men.
“How are you, Pastor P?” Buddy was bipolar, near as Paul could tell. He had a beard, weathered face, and gray hair. He had moved into a low-rent apartment just recently, since his meds had started taking effect and he was thinking more clearly. But he still came in for meals and sometimes to help out. He complained about the way the medication made him feel, but he’d been a long way down in the gutter, and at least for now, he seemed to want to stay out of it.
“I feel like a building fell on me.” These men had all gone through plenty, and they liked hearing Paul had his own struggles. And gossip moved through this community like any other, so they knew what had happened to
