“Is it true, Pastor Morris, that you are friends with four women who have been killed in the last two weeks?”
“Where did they come from?” O’Shea growled.
“No comment.” Paul began shoving relentlessly through the throng of reporters.
“And Detective Collins, a dead body was found in your apartment? A body covered with insects?”
“No comment.” Keren kept moving. She had ignoring reporters down to an art.
“Are you and Pastor Morris both involved with these women, Detective?”
Keren was going to be seeing spots for a month from the flashing cameras. She waded toward her car. Someone caught her arm and tried to drag her to a halt. She recognized a woman reporter for the crime beat of a local television station and saw a video camera right behind her. Keren pulled free, trying not to be rough enough to provide good footage.
“Is the killer someone who wants revenge on both of you?”
Paul reached the front passenger-side door. O’Shea provided an escort for Keren around to the driver’s side.
“Is it true you and the pastor worked together when you were both on the force?”
“The Chicago Police Department gives a daily briefing at headquarters, as you all know,” O’Shea announced over the din. “All your questions will be answered then.”
“Even the question of whether Detective Collins and Pastor Morris are having an affair?”
Keren jerked to a stop and turned to see who had asked that. She saw a man smirking at her from one of the sleazier local tabloids. She glared at him, and it was like pouring blood in shark-infested waters. The snapping cameras went crazy.
“C’mon, Detective Collins, admit it.” The man tipped back his hat and sneered. “That’s why the killer is focusing on the two of you. The pastor is kicking up his heels with a lady cop, and this nut is offended.”
Paul had already gotten in the car. Keren prayed desperately that he hadn’t heard the insinuations. She tamped down hard on her temper and began moving again. O’Shea helped wrestle her door open. She slid in and slammed her door shut, hoping she’d catch a few fingers in it.
She glanced at Paul. His eyes flashed fire and his jaw was tensed into a firm line.
O’Shea climbed in the back. “Guess the press finally put all these cases together. Took ‘em long enough.”
Keren took another look at Paul. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where they got an idea like that.”
“They’re going to print that.” Paul reached for the door handle. Keren grabbed his shoulder and sank her fingernails into his sweatshirt hard enough that he turned on her.
He jerked against her grip.
“Get ahold of yourself, Paul.” Keren saw the photographers leaning against the windows, recording everything.
Fuming, Paul asked, “Do you know how many kids I’ve counseled about abstinence? Do you know the battle I fight every day against the single-mother culture that guarantees a life of poverty to so many women and children in my neighborhood? If they print something like that, it will undo years of work in a single day.”
He caught Keren’s hand to pull it loose.
“Don’t you dare open that door.” Keren let go of him and started the car. “If you go out there, I promise you I’ll leave you to those wolves.”
She backed out of the parking stall.
Paul didn’t get out.
Keren could see that it cost him.
He stared at his white-knuckled hands. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m so angry at Caldwell and so angry at these reporters. I haven’t had time to pray or read my Bible, and all of a sudden it’s like I’m losing my faith. Am I so weak that if I’m deprived of quiet time for prayer and daily exposure to God’s Word that I just forget what I believe?”
Keren heard a satisfying
Paul turned around. “Keren, you hit him!”
Keren glanced at Paul and smiled. “I’ve got too much respect for a man’s innate sense of self-preservation to stop.”
“It won’t hurt to thin the herd a little anyway,” O’Shea said. “Survival of the fittest. Darwin would be proud.”
Keren looked at Paul. There was a war inside him. She needed the cop, but she liked the pastor. She had been meaning to talk to him about it, but now wasn’t a good time. Despite herself, she asked, “Why do you think getting angry has anything to do with being a Christian?”
“Because it does,” Paul said vehemently. “It does for me. My anger has always been Satan’s greatest hold over me. When I first gave my life over to God, I had to fight the rage in myself constantly.”
Paul looked behind them. Keren glanced in her rearview mirror and saw the reporters racing toward their cars.
Paul turned forward again. “I can hear the devil whispering anger into my ear. Anger is what ruined my marriage, it was what drove me to work eighteen hours a day. It was what made me turn my back on my daughter.”
Paul took a deep breath and Keren saw his clenched fists open. “It took me years to get a handle on it, even after I was saved. Now it’s like all that time spent training myself to control my temper and respond to people with love is just gone.”
O’Shea said, “Only a moron wouldn’t get angry over a maniac like Caldwell.”
“Yeah,” Keren agreed. “And those reporters spend time in college learning how to annoy stories out of people. They’re masters at getting under your skin so you’ll react without thinking. I wanted to deck them myself.”
“Anger is a sin,” Paul said firmly. “Anger is rooted in hate and that’s the opposite of love. I try so hard to love the people I come in contact with at the mission. They’ve all been arrested and assaulted and ignored. Love is the only thing that has any hope of working with them.”
Keren was free of the mob of reporters now and she drove out of the parking lot, picking up speed to head back to the precinct. She saw several cars fall in line behind them. “Anger in itself isn’t a sin, Paul. Jesus got angry. Don’t forget about Him knocking over tables and driving the people selling doves out of the temple. I’ve got Him pictured as furious.”
“Jesus had one or two episodes of purely righteous anger.”
“What are you talking about?” Keren asked. “You went to Bible college, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I went to Bible college.” Paul gave her an annoyed look, like he was tired of her interfering when he was busy beating himself up.
“So was that just a name, or did you actually study the Bible?”
Paul turned on her. She smiled.
“Yes, we studied the Bible,” he growled.
Keren pulled up to a red light. “So, I remember Jesus spending half His time getting in someone’s face— always someone powerful—and telling them they were blind guides, hypocrites, fools. He got angry all the time.”
Paul gestured in front of them. “I, on the other hand, want to throw a fit every ten minutes, because I have to wait in traffic.”
“That hasn’t been my experience with you,” Keren said. “When you get angry, you’ve always had provocation.”
“Big-time,” O’Shea said.
Keren started the car moving again. “You’ve handled all this with incredible grace and Christianity.”
“Yeah,” O’Shea added. “And besides, there’s a big difference between wanting to punch some mouthy newshound in the face and actually doing it.”
Keren sensed Paul’s anger ebbing away as she opened up some space between themselves and the reporters and that ugly autopsy.
