Ten Plagues

There’d been a time when Paul’s instincts had kept him alive. Those instincts kicked in hard. Paul dropped the envelope on the table and used a pen to tip it. Polaroid pictures slid onto the table. The instant he saw them he knew what kind of paint the caller had used to write the address.

Blood.

“What have you done?” It had been five years since he’d been a cop, and he no longer had the detachment he needed to survive this kind of thing.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

Sickened by the pictures, Paul forced himself to study them, desperate to understand what this caller wanted. Then his eyes fell shut. He whispered, “Juanita.”

“Yes, that’s right, Juanita. I’d forgotten her name. She’s just canvas to me, not as nice to work with as wood.”

“What have you done to her, you…” Biting back rage, Paul knew then he could turn back into a cop. All the reflexes were still there.

“Now, now, Reverend, I expected better from you than that. We’re in this together.”

Gripping the phone until his fingers ached, Paul asked, “What are we in together? Why are you calling me? Where is she?”

“She’s going to stay right where she is unless you deliver a message for me, Reverend.”

“Message? What message?”

A scream sliced through the phone line.

“No,” Paul roared. “Don’t hurt her. I’ll do what you want.”

The screams increased. Paul couldn’t think. Not as a pastor. The old coldness that at one time had cost him his faith, his family, and almost his life, settled on him. “Tell me what you want, Pravus.” Paul heard the level tone of his voice and couldn’t believe he sounded like that while his heart thundered with fear.

“Take the sign to the address I included in the envelope. Don’t call the police. Don’t talk to anyone. Hang it on that building and wait for me to phone.”

“Hang it on the building? Wait! How do I do that?”

“That’s your problem, Reverend. When you have delivered your message,” Pravus cooed, “I’ll tell you where to find this harlot.”

Juanita’s cries increased, broken by screams of pain.

“I’ll do what you want, and then, if you want to survive this, you’ll give me Juanita.”

There was an extended silence on the phone. Pravus said, “You sound more like a policeman than a man of God. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

CHAPTER THREE

There was an address in the envelope. I found it and I ran.” Paul studied Detective Collins as he muddled through to the end of his story. She was filthy. Her hair looked like a bale of straw had been given an electric shock. Then all of her had been liberally coated with white dust. He vaguely remembered a woman at the explosion helping him, but he never would have recognized her.

“I called 911. All I remember after that is thanking God for the car.”

“Okay, Reverend,” Detective Collins said. “Now, I have a couple of questions.”

An hour later, she flipped her notebook closed. But she wasn’t done talking. The woman never got done talking.

“And as far as you know, the sign this man who identified himself only as Pravus gave you burned up with the tenement?”

Detective Mick O’Shea grunted as he scanned his notes.

“For the fifth time,” Paul said, “as far as I know, it burned or is buried in the rubble. I don’t know. What about Juanita?”

Detective Collins gave him a glowering look, like he was a hostile witness. Had he been this tedious and annoying when he was a cop? Not possible.

“Whichever kid took it away from me might have kept his hands on it when he ran. I could identify most of the gang members I saw, and you could question them.” Paul had been as cooperative as he could, and he’d deliberately waited until the end to ask his own questions. “You don’t have any idea how many of them got out, do you?”

“No,” Detective Collins said briskly.

Paul looked at her under the dust and grit. Both she and O’Shea were so filthy he doubted he’d be able to pick them out of a lineup if his life depended on it. She’d been treating him like a suspect, and he’d had to fight to control his temper. Paul might not have succeeded if he hadn’t seen what looked like the tracks of tears cutting through the dirt on her face.

Detective O’Shea said, “We had a body count of twenty last I knew. Most of them were vagrants living in the adjacent buildings, which also collapsed. The buildings were all condemned, so it didn’t take much to bring them down.”

Paul closed his eyes as he thought about the people he’d come to love. The oddballs, the outcasts. Losing them, some of them before they’d had a chance to turn to God, left him with a crippling feeling of failure.

“There was a little boy, Chico. I carried him away from the building. He was bleeding badly. I think they transported us in the same ambulance… it’s all pretty foggy after the medic came—” Paul’s heavy eyelids dropped closed with the weight of this defeat.

O’Shea interrupted, “We just don’t know, Pastor Morris. We nosed around the ER, looking for you, but we saw a lot of kids—”

“This one was young, early elementary, Hispanic.”

“You just described every child in the place,” Collins said with a dismissive shrug. “It was a Hispanic neighborhood.”

“I know what neighborhood I was in.” Paul clamped his mouth shut to stop yelling. It also helped his control that yelling hurt. He closed his eyes against the pain then found he couldn’t get them open again. “If you could just check.” The sound of his desperation echoed inside his head.

He tried to sit up straighter so he didn’t lose his train of thought. His ribs punished him for the shift of his weight, and his neck sent a razor-sharp jolt of pain all the way down his spine.

“Reverend Morris,” Collins said, “don’t move. You’ll only make it worse.”

A note of compassion had sneaked into her voice, the first she’d shown him. Paul forced his eyes open. Thank You, God, that I’m no longer a cop. Her penetrating look was common to all cops. But he had a sense that there was more to it. She didn’t like him for some reason.

If only he could make her understand. “I know you’re busy. I know you’re tired.” He fumbled for the edge of his mattress. “If I could only get to my feet I could do it myself. These cracked ribs will quit aching once I’m on my feet.”

She caught his hand before he could get a grip on the mattress. “They’ll quit aching unless you breathe or walk or talk. I’ve had cracked ribs. I know how they feel.”

He squeezed her hand until he was afraid he was hurting her, but thinking of Chico was driving him crazy. And what was he doing worrying about one boy when there were so many hurt? What was he doing lying here when there was so much need? What about Juanita?

“It’s just that I felt like God was guiding me when I ran.” Tears burned at Paul’s eyes and he tried to pull away from her. “Surely God didn’t do that and then let the boy die.”

The lady detective had a grip like iron. “You’re near collapse, Reverend. Let me ask the doctor if it’s time for more pain medication. There’s nothing more you can do tonight.”

She wouldn’t let him up, even if he could have managed it, which he doubted. Paul shook his head, or tried to. He wasn’t sure if he got it to move. He had to tell her he wasn’t tired. Sure,

he was banged up, but it was only cuts and bruises and a sprained wrist. The IV drip and the neck collar were all part of the doctor’s fiendish plan to keep him prisoner. He had no internal injuries, no broken bones. He