beard, madness. “But I’d be able to recognize him if I saw him. And so would you.”
“So we’re wrong about him hanging around my mission.”
“We’re not,” Keren insisted. “I know he was there, and we know he’s got inside knowledge.”
“Which means he’s a regular.” Paul nodded. “And he was there as recently as Sunday, and he’s most likely one of these five men.”
Paul lifted up the five pictures they’d chosen to focus on as the El’s brakes gave their high-pitched squeal and the train slowed. Keren caught the handrail.
“But we can’t be certain. If I were dead certain, I’d do whatever it took to point the FBI and all our police resources on these five.” Keren stuffed the pictures back in her file folder and shoved it in her oversized purse as they exited the train.
“The FBI is going to do some work on that photo of Caldwell. Age it. Try a few possible alterations in case he had plastic surgery. Give him a beard, lose the glasses.”
Keren marched down the hall to her apartment, wishing she had picked one on a higher floor. It ate at her just how accessible her home was to a lunatic. She tugged the barrette out of her hair as she walked and let the heavy mass of it fall down her neck. “I’ll never get a comb through this.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to be hours getting dolled up.”
Keren whirled around. Paul grinned at her.
Another smile.
Rolling her eyes, she decided to let him live. For now. She moved faster, ignoring her protesting muscles. Her feet echoed in her building’s hallway.
“You won’t have to wait long.” With a smug smile she added, “And I was just patronizing you before, about the bodyguard thing, so you’d let me take care of you. I’m fine without a watchdog.”
“Well, you’re getting one anyway. And if you don’t quit complaining about it, I’m telling everyone at the station your real name.”
Keren glared at him over her shoulder. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Try me,” Paul said lightly.
“I’m being blackmailed by a missionary.” Keren trudged when she wanted to jog. Her ribs reminded her of the little argument she’d lost with a Malibu grill. She probably had cracked ribs. One of her knees was determined to make her sorry for every step.
She wondered how Paul was holding up. “We’ve been at the hospital three nights now. I’m thinking of putting it on my next Christmas card: ‘Cook County: my home away from home.’“
“I’m getting close to liking the chairs in the hospital, now that my spine has been bent out of alignment enough to match them.” Paul wasn’t even breathing hard, the big jerk. “And I don’t know when they’ll let me back into my place.”
There was a stretch of silence, then Paul asked, “Do you think she’s going to wake up?”
Keren stopped and turned to face Paul. “Of course she’s going to wake up. Why would God have saved her the way He did in that park, if He didn’t have further plans for her?”
Paul nodded but without a lot of assurance. “She’s been out so long.”
“Three days isn’t that long when your injuries are as traumatic as LaToya’s. She needs to heal, then she’ll wake up.” Keren laid her hand on his arm. “I know she will.”
“And what about the two since then?” Paul covered her hand with his. “Melody Fredericks dead, Katrina Hardcastle missing. He’s escalating, Keren. You know he is. He’s on a rampage, and we’re not any closer to finding him than we were that first day.”
“Of course we’re closer. We’ve got his face sent out to every cop in town. The FBI has it entered on their database. And we’re tracking down those Internet bug sites. If he ordered from them, he had to give a mailing address. We’ll get him.”
“How could I have not thought of my wife and daughter right away? I actually knew the loon. Why didn’t I think of him?” Paul’s fist clenched. “We could have saved LaToya what she’s going through, and the other two women wouldn’t have even been hurt.”
“He already had LaToya by the time the dust settled from that first explosion. Figuring it out instantly wouldn’t have stopped that.”
“But the other two. If we’d have gotten his picture out—”
“Stop!” Keren cut him off. “You know better than to play this guilt game. Stop whining and pull yourself together.”
The General George Patton school of psychological counseling. Maybe she ought to slap the poor guy, too.
There was a visible battle inside of Paul and finally the kindhearted, worried pastor faded away, replaced by the police detective, eyes sharp, head nodding. “You’re right. Sorry. Wasting time. As soon as you’re ready to go back to work, we can sit in on Melody’s autopsy.”
Keren looked at him for a long time. She didn’t know quite what to make of his seesawing manner. As soon as she had some spare time, maybe she’d talk to him about his Pastor Jekyll and Detective Hyde personalities. For now, she just headed down the long hall again.
“Why doesn’t he call?” Paul groused. “We found the body at my place yesterday. Another woman disappeared the same day. Where has he stashed the latest vic?”
Vic? Keren glanced over her shoulder, but he was staring angrily at his phone, as if he could glare it into ringing.
“It’s flies this time, isn’t it?” Keren asked.
“Yeah, the fourth plague is flies. He can have a ball with that.”
They reached Keren’s apartment. The door swung open when she touched the knob. She immediately snatched her hand back. She heard a high-pitched whine. Then she smelled death.
Paul pulled out his handkerchief and gingerly pulled the door shut before more than a handful of flies could escape.
“I think we found Katrina Hardcastle.”
They backed away from the door. It was only after they were across the hall that they spotted the sign hanging over the door.
Paul translated: “The plague of flies.”
Keren swallowed hard then forced herself to lean against the wall across from her door, and called O’Shea.
A glance at Paul showed he was in pure cop mode. Keren thought this was more the time for the kindly pastor.
Keren left the autopsy with a headache she decided to blame on the chemicals in the lab. Dr. Schaefer escorted them out to make a few final points, complete with eight-by-ten glossies.
“This one is definitely different than the others,” Dr. Schaefer said with a considerable amount of gallows enthusiasm. “Her wounds are postmortem and they’re minimal, no bleeding. I suspect the blood on the shroud is his. We’re doing DNA testing.”
“We know who did this now.” Paul picked up one of Dr. Schaefer’s gruesome snapshots with no apparent emotion. “The test doesn’t help us find him.”
“DNA testing will be useful in court,” O’Shea reminded him.
“She had a skull fracture and a broken neck. Her right arm is crushed. There is a compound fracture of the tibia and femur, and massive trauma, particularly down the whole right side of her body. I’d say she either fell a long way, or, more likely, she was hit. Hard.”
Dr. Schaefer was making Keren sick, but there was no escape from the report. “There’s shattered glass imbedded in her skin. I’ll bet it proves to be the kind of glass used for headlights. She died instantly.”
“He ran her down?” O’Shea asked.
The ME looked up and nodded. “That’s what it looks like, Mick. I can pinpoint the time of death on her more exactly than on Juanita, too. She never spent time in a pool of an indeterminate temperature.” Dr. Schaefer
