“If he had access to such a thing,” Higgins said doubtfully.
“Boils are nasty blisters. A plague of them, they’d cover your body.” Paul stared at the paper in Higgins’s hand, then he said under his breath, “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Go,” Keren said. “We’ve got nothing left, except to get the dead animals tagged and bagged.” She wanted Paul away from there. She wished she could order him out of the city.
“We’ll handle it,” she said.
Paul watched the coroner’s team start picking up dead animals, sacrificed to a madman along with poor, harmless Wilma. Then he jerked his head as if he had to force himself to look away and stalked off toward his friend from the mission.
“What’s the matter with him?” Higgins asked.
Keren watched Paul walk away, then she turned to Higgins. “He’s just trying to remember who he is.”
“That’s something I never waste time doing.” Higgins turned his tawny eyes on her. She wondered if he’d ever tried to hypnotize the truth out of perps.
“Why not?” Keren asked.
“Because I’m afraid if I figure it out, I won’t like what I find.”
Keren frowned. “I think, right now, Paul’s afraid of exactly the same thing.”
She went back to work gathering evidence. They found hundreds of poisoned pellets still scattered around.
Keren stayed alongside city crews, working into the night, so the plague of beasts could come to an end.
CHAPTER TWENTY–ONE
“Festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.”
Pravus raised the red-hot andiron out of the fireplace and turned to the woman. Her eyes widened in terror as he approached. She struggled against her bonds.
This was an experiment. He didn’t know quite how to raise satisfactory boils on a body. It wasn’t an art form he’d worked with before. But a true creator had to try new things. Finally, when he felt that his work was worthy to be one of his people, he turned his attention to the gown. This he understood. But it was almost impossible to paint. He felt like his blood raced faster. He felt like maybe he’d finally found his true calling. Torture as art.
The boils painted on the gown were hard to recognize.
Laughing, Pravus thought of how angry his father would be. How frightened his mother would be while she begged him to behave and make Father happy.
But neither one of them was here to stifle his power. The ability to create only possessed by a god.
He’d silenced those ugly, critical voices years ago. Shortly after the first glimpse of the beast had come and helped him, saved him.
Now, to do a poor, fast job of the gown suited Pravus and suited the beast. He was a genius. He wouldn’t be confined by anyone else’s vision of art. It didn’t matter if anyone else could see. The vision was his.
He got lonely for the sound of screaming again, but he didn’t have to live without it.
Smiling, he found another object and heated it, not quite so red hot this time.
Coming back to the mission was an act of cowardice.
Paul needed to stay on the job. He needed to keep tracking down leads, however slim. He thought of Wilma, poor, muddled Wilma, who never hurt anyone except herself. He thought of the slaughter of animals, so senseless. A madman’s idea of a joke. Right now he couldn’t stay with the police. Not even Keren. Especially not Keren, not after the way he’d treated her this morning.
Paul got back in time to serve supper. He worked with his flock, talking to them, loving them, but he didn’t find what he was looking for.
The mission always had empty beds in the summer. The homeless people preferred to sleep outside, but they came in to eat. Paul scooped up creamed corn alongside Murray and Roger. They’d taken up the slack in the kitchen.
He should call Keren. Get her down here to see if Murray was their killer.
Roger had proved to be invaluable with Rosita gone so much to be with her “sick friend.” After the food was dished up, Murray, who had rediscovered a love for music since he’d found God and sobriety, returned with his guitar and played quietly in the spot where Paul delivered his sermons.
Paul couldn’t stand the thought that Murray was the killer.
But who? Was it really one of these men here tonight?
When everyone, even the cooks and servers, were eating, Paul had a moment to himself behind the counter. He studied the room and tried to find the peace God had given him so abundantly since he had turned in his badge and gun and picked up a Bible.
It wasn’t there.
He despaired of the turmoil in his soul. “I’ve lost it, Lord. I’ve lost the tranquillity that has sustained me through good times and bad here at the mission.” He looked from face to face.
O’Shea’s words echoed in his head. “Caldwell is someone you know. “
Keren had said, “It may be someone staying at the mission. “
Buddy came wandering in and grabbed a tray and served himself.
Paul hated that he was looking for suspects among the men he was supposed to help, but he kept looking. He’d studied the pictures of Caldwell. No one here resembled him; but Francis Caldwell had been a meticulously neat man, well dressed, obviously well-to-do. That polished man could very easily disappear under ragged clothes, a beard, and a layer of dirt.
Paul didn’t know if the thought came from God or himself, but he looked closer. He had been a cop. Describing people was, at one time, his vocation. He knew Francis had a rather prominent Roman nose and a weak chin, but he had enough money to have plastic surgery if he wanted to disguise himself more thoroughly.
Louie came in just then with McGwire and Casey-Ray. All five were here. He reached for his phone again just as Roger got up. Roger had turned into someone Paul couldn’t recognize. With the demon thrown out, he was a new man. Roger went to talk with Buddy and the two of them left.
Paul used the analytical side of himself, the cop side, to note that Roger was about the same height as Francis Caldwell. For that matter, Murray and Buddy were, too. An inch or so taller, but that could be explained with thick soles on their shoes. And Roger had definitely had a demon.
Paul suddenly wondered if Keren could have sensed the demon in Roger, even cast it out, but, like Legion, there had been more. Maybe Satan even manipulated Keren. Yes, she’d felt the devil leave Roger, and Paul had seen the change in him, but later Keren had again sensed the demon.
Keren had felt Pravus at the kill site today and Roger had been there. Paul clenched his jaw. Kill site! That was something a cop would think, not a pastor. “Forgive me, Lord.”
Paul tried to reclaim the joy in Roger’s transformation, but—as they had since he’d come back to the mission—peace, joy, and love all evaded him.
Paul could just be reacting to all the tragedy he’d lived through in the last few days. He wished Keren were there to help him. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket to call her, then he shoved it back in. No! Not tonight! I’m not going to let the world come and drag me out of here tonight!
Instead, he listened while Murray sang of faithfulness and redemption. Buddy came back inside and offered to help Paul wash dishes. Paul was ashamed of himself for suspecting any of them.
Paul looked at this quiet man. Rosita had doubts about Buddy’s faith. And Paul didn’t have assurance that Buddy had truly given his heart over to the Lord. Buddy, a painfully thin man, with a perpetual baseball cap to cover his balding head and a full beard salted with gray, asked Paul what was happening with the police about Juanita’s and LaToya’s deaths.