O’Shea checked his notebook. “Paul Morris.”
Paul Morris! Keren’s stomach took a dive. No, it wasn’t that uncommon of a name. It couldn’t be the same guy.
“Where is Paul Morris?” Keren yelled over the din in the emergency room.
A harassed nurse actually balled her fist. Keren got ready to duck.
“Find him yourself! I’m busy!” The nurse walked away before Keren could threaten the poor woman into cooperating.
There were bleeding people everywhere. Some injured. Others, obviously worried family, crying and dragging on the arm of anyone who looked official. Every cubicle was jammed with cots.
“How, in all this chaos, are we supposed to find anyone?” Keren shook her head at the chaos.
O’Shea shook his head, then he shook it again as if he were trying to shake out the vision of bleeding, weeping, grieving people. “You start in the cubicles. I’ll start asking around out here.”
“Okay, that should only take ten or twenty hours,” Keren said.
“I’m open to suggestions.” O’Shea glared at her.
“If that means I have to use my brain, forget it. I’m sucking fumes. Just start. Even if we could get a nurse to talk to us, she probably wouldn’t know where he is in this mess.”
O’Shea waded into the crowd. Keren heard him asking, “Do you know a Paul Morris? Is one of you Paul Morris?”
Keren sighed and went into the first cubicle.
It was over an hour later when she found him. She peeked between two poorly closed curtains and saw a man sleeping on a gurney, amid five other occupied beds.
It was him. The man who’d run up to the tenement building with that wooden sign and been shoved inside. The man who’d risked his life to save those kids.
She was surprised at the strength of the image she had of strangling him with her bare hands. The neck brace wouldn’t save him. Not if she threw herself into it.
With the same insight that had washed a demonic presence over her at the bomb site, she knew she was looking at a good man. Sometimes she got a mild impression of good or evil dwelling inside a person. Sometimes it hit her so hard it almost knocked her to her knees. Right now, she was taking a hit.
Paul Morris, whatever he had been when he’d stomped Keren under his heel, was now a man of powerful faith. She found herself moving into the room—drawn to him, even in his sleep, wishing she had as strong and bold a spirit.
He was wearing the tattered remains of sweatpants, and Ace bandages where his shirt should be. Besides the neck brace, he had a bandage covering half his head. One of his arms was in an inflatable cast, strapped to his chest with a blue sling. Bruises blackened his face. Stitches lined his temple, jawline, and lower lip.
Keren stared at him and felt forces clashing inside her. She wanted to talk to him, share her faith, and learn about his.
She wanted to break his other arm.
Was Morris even going to remember her? He’d done all his damage long distance, taking down several young detectives when he’d stormed through their lives. Keren was the only one who had put up with the reprimands and suspension and stayed on the force. Now, she could sense the goodness in him. It was completely at odds with the glory-hogging, career-destroying rat he’d been. So, maybe he’d changed, or maybe he’d always had both goodness and cruelty in him. Keren had never before gotten close enough to him to get a positive impression.
There was no point in dredging up the past. If she did mention it, he’d probably demand another police officer. Keren wondered if he really knew anything now, or was he just in the right place at the right time? He’d left the force. Maybe he missed having his name in the paper.
She stepped out of the cubicle and waved to get O’Shea’s attention over the crying and shouting injured. O’Shea nodded. She went back for one more look before she schooled her features into neutrality for O’Shea’s benefit. She sucked in a deep breath and tried to remember it wasn’t Christian to hate someone’s guts. She’d take Morris’s statement then get back to real police work.
Paul Morris was the guy who’d run into the building, and that meant he hadn’t set the bomb. She’d just lost her prime suspect. She had hoped to find a man on whom she could blame this whole mess. It wasn’t going to happen.
O’Shea slipped into the cubicle.
Keren had never told O’Shea about Morris and why she’d been assigned to the evidence locker. After six months of pushing paper, she’d helped O’Shea crack a case, and he’d asked for her to be assigned as his partner. She wasn’t about to go into it now. “Paul Morris?”
His eyes popped open so quickly, and his focus was so clear, Keren doubted he’d been sleeping.
“Yes. Pastor Paul Morris, Lighthouse Mission.”
Pastor? Keren checked the ceiling to see if pigs were flying overhead. “I’m Detective Keren Collins, Chicago PD. We got a call that you had information about today’s bombing.”
“At last.” A sigh of relief almost wiped the pain and concern off his face. Almost. “I’ve been asking to talk to the police. I have some idea what happened this morning. I mean, I don’t know who did it or anything.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” O’Shea muttered. “Life just isn’t that sweet.”
“I was at the gang hangout this afternoon,” Keren said. “I was looking for Juanita Lopez when the building exploded.”
“Juanita.” Morris’s eyes closed. “Poor Juanita.” He shook his head and flinched with pain. “Sorry, some of it’s a blur.”
Keren said, “Tell us what happened.”
“I got this phone call.” Morris raised his uninjured hand to his head. “But before that, a delivery man dropped off a package. Or no… pictures. He dropped off pictures of Juanita, and a sign.”
Morris shook his head. “I’m not making sense. I’m sorry. The doctor has given me some pain medication. I’m not thinking too clearly.”
“Just start at the beginning, Pastor Morris. Tell us what happened first.”
“I was just back from my morning run. Before I got inside, a delivery man came up to me with a large manila envelope. I went into the mission and ripped the envelope open. I found…”
The beautiful writing was done with ink too coarse to be a marking pen. Paint of some kind. It made Paul uneasy, for no reason he could define. He slipped his thumb under the flap. The paper ripped open. He reached inside just as his cell phone rang.
He answered. “Hello?”
“I’m an artist, you know.” A man spoke, his voice so smooth and quiet he purred. “I’ve given you something priceless.”
“Who is this?”
“Wood isn’t my
Paul realized at the same moment the man spoke, that he held a piece of wood in his hands. It was a rectangular plaque about an inch thick, sanded satiny smooth, stained to a dark brown.
“Are you the one who sent this wood carving?” Paul turned his attention from the gift to the caller. It wasn’t that unusual to receive gifts from people who supported his mission.
“It would be worth a fortune if I’d gone into art as a living.” The voice was soft, almost singsong, with a tone that made the hair on the back of Paul’s neck stand up.
“Who is this?” Paul repeated. “I’d… uh, like to send a thank-you note. This is beautiful.”
And it was. There was delicate carving across the front. Letters that spelled words Paul couldn’t read, although they struck a chord.
“My true creation is in the photographs.” A sigh of ecstasy hissed across the phone lines.
