Angel Fire (11 page)

He’d been drinking then. Heavily. Maybe that’s why he didn’t pay much attention to the prostitute murders. Maybe that’s why he ignored Lydia’s warnings until it was too late. Maybe. Six months in rehab and some therapy had helped him deal with his mistakes. He’d been the police chief in Santa Fe for over five years now and done a competent job. Of course, nothing ever happened here. Until now.

Lydia’s presence in town gave him an ugly déjà vu. He hated that she was here now, of all times. It was like some kind of fucked-up karma. He knew once this hit the papers, she’d be all over him.

He left two uniformed police officers to guard the scene until the detectives arrived. “Nobody touch anything until they get here. Don’t make a sandwich, don’t make a phone call, just stand at the door,” he barked as he put the cross in a plastic bag, careful to note in his log where he found it. “Tell Keane to look for an address book. I didn’t find one.”

He looked around the tiny apartment again, noting there were no photographs. He was fairly sure that when the detectives started looking through drawers and in closets, they would find no address book, no letters, no photo albums. This was the apartment of someone utterly alone. Someone unconnected. The furniture was cheap and temporary, looked like the kind you would assemble yourself.

He pressed the redial button on the telephone.
“You have reached Psychic Helpers. Welcome to your future!”

He hung up. Then he pressed *69, the sequence which would tell what the last incoming call was. He dialed the number and got a recording from the electric company telling him to call back during business hours. He placed the receiver down gently, though he wanted to slam it.

He thought about the others. It was the same with them. Christine and Harold Wallace didn’t even have a phone. Sad people. Lonely lives. If a life is lost and no one mourns it, is that death still a tragedy? Regardless, this death was still a crime.

He stripped off the rubber gloves and shoved them in his pocket.

“Tell whoever comes from State to be in my office by noon with whatever information they are able to gather by that time.”

H
e walked to his son’s room and pulled on a pair of scrubs over his bloodied clothes, then he removed a clean scalpel from the tray. He regarded Maria’s lifeless body, her open mouth, her glassy eyes. He wiped the hair away from her face.

“ ‘An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked. There is no fear of God before his eyes.’ ”

“ ‘The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the treachery of evil,’ ” he said, cutting away Maria’s bloodied nightgown. His voice was thick with passion, growing louder as he spoke.

“ ‘Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and goodwill, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is the finder of lost children.’ ”

He cut into Maria’s chest with the scalpel, pushing through the intercostal muscle, and made an incision down to her navel.
Then he picked up the small saw and turned it on. Its frenetic whir and the high-pitched scream of metal against bone as he cut away her rib cage was virtually orgasmic. Sweat beaded on his brow and his hands quivered with excitement.

“ ‘I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath.
Then they will know that I am the Lord when I take vengeance upon them.
’ ” He was nearly yelling as he made the final cut.

L
ydia sat on the plush couch in her living room and watched as the sun rose over the mountains. When she had opened her eyes in bed earlier, she felt warm and safe, remembering that Jeffrey was in the guest bedroom down the hall. His presence had eased the restless, wandering feeling that had plagued her in the days before his arrival. The next thought in her head was about Shawna Fox, wondering if she had ever risen feeling safe and warm. Or had she always felt alone in her foster homes, never fitting in, forever missing her mother? The grainy photo of Shawna in the paper, a school portrait, had made Lydia sad. She wondered who would want that photo, if it would go in someone’s photo album; if anyone would remember Shawna five years from now, ten years from now. What about Christine and Harold? Was anyone lying awake at night worrying for their safety? Is it possible to live a life that touches no one, that no one remembers? Lydia needed to know the answer to that question.

Usually when she was working a case with Jeffrey or writing something, she wanted only the details of a victim’s life: what he did for a living, who he knew, what his habits were. But she wanted as little personal information as possible. She didn’t want to get to know them, feel their personal essence. Like turning off a television screen to escape a violent image or suppressing
a traumatic memory, she shut them out. She didn’t want to feel even the slightest twinge of pity or sorrow. She didn’t want even the smallest part of their tragedy to become her own.

She knew that the people she interviewed, families, loved ones, were often shocked by her lack of concern for the victims of the people and crimes she wrote about, insulted by her refusal to even pretend to want to know about them. Her manner was always clipped and professional. People couldn’t believe how little she cared. But in fact she cared too much. The sight of grief, the thought of people being violated, dying in terror and unspeakable pain, was more than she could bear. It cast a light on her soul that crept into dark crevasses where even she was afraid to peer.

But she felt differently about Christine and Harold, and especially Shawna. It was as if their memories were orphans that no one would take in. As if the worried question “Where are they?” had not been asked by anyone who cared about the answer. She felt a fierce need to shelter and feed these lost souls, to know who they had been. It was a sensitive business, sorting through the debris of an abandoned life. The layers needed to be peeled back with gentle fingers one after another, like the skin on an onion, to reveal the essence of a person true and ripe. She certainly didn’t trust a hack like Morrow to do it properly.

She wondered if the police had connected the disappearances to one another, if she was the only one who could see the shadow of something sinister behind the collection of strange events. Jeffrey certainly wasn’t convinced by what she’d told him. But this did not deter her; she trusted herself. She just needed more information on the victims, to find out what they had in common, where their paths had crossed, what experiences they might have shared. At the intersections of their lives, she suspected, she would find a madman.

She began plotting in her mind the various ways she could gain access to the information she wanted—some more legal than others—if Morrow wouldn’t cooperate. She believed her best bet was to see if Shawna’s boyfriend was willing to talk.

J
effrey was watching her from the second-floor balcony that looked down onto the living room, smiling to himself. He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind. She sat on the living room sofa, her back against the armrest, legs tucked up beneath her. She stared absently out the window, biting on her thumbnail. Dressed in black leggings and a pink T-shirt, with her hair wet and no makeup, she looked like a teenager.

“What are you scheming, Lydia?” he asked.

She was too cool to be startled; turned her eyes up to him slyly, catlike. “I’m thinking about what you are going to make me for breakfast.”

“You know,” he said dryly, “you’ve never once made a meal for me in all the time I’ve known you.”

“That is patently untrue,” she answered with mock indignation. “I cooked dinner for you every night after you got shot.”

“You ordered in,” he said, smiling as he walked down the spiral staircase.

“Whatever.”

“Do you have anything in this house besides coffee and cigarettes?”

“Eggs and wheat bread. Maybe some milk.”

“Great,” he muttered, walking into the kitchen.

Lydia pulled on her sneakers to walk to the mailbox for the paper. Outside, the morning was crisp, the sky blue and close. That was one of the things she loved most about New Mexico.

Almost thirteen thousand feet above sea level, you dwelled in the sky. It was all around you, not just above. She took the clean air into her lungs, thinking she needed to run later. She would avoid the church.

She was halfway back up the driveway with the paper in her hand before she glanced at the headline.

Lydia ran the rest of the way up the drive and burst in through the front door. Jeffrey was standing at the stove, scrambling eggs.

“Look at this,” she said, throwing down the paper.

He turned off the stovetop, took his glasses from his shirt pocket, and scanned the article. The fact that this event had taken place in the late-night hours and was in the first edition of the morning newspaper, coupled with the fact that the police had “no comment,” indicated this story had been leaked to the press. Someone at the crime scene had a contact at the paper and had called the story in—always a bad thing when hunting a serial killer, not that he was convinced that they were in fact looking for a serial killer. In spite of the glaring headline, the article contained few details. A late-night anonymous call to the police had led them to the apartment building. The door had stood open, so they could easily see the blood and signs of struggle, and had probable cause to enter. The missing woman was a waitress at a local restaurant near Angel Fire. She had a short rap sheet for solicitation. Her name and picture had not been released because relatives had not yet been located.

“Do you think this ties in with the others?” he asked, trying not to sound skeptical.

“It could,” she answered.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because now there are four missing persons. In a town this size, that’s an anomaly. There was obviously a mortal struggle. And the body was removed from the scene.”

“But there was no sign of a struggle or foul play with any of the other missing people.”

“That only means that this situation got out of control. If this woman had been killed and her body found in the apartment, then I would not be inclined to think that it was connected. But someone took her body. For what? If someone was trying to hide the crime, he would have cleaned up the scene … or at least closed the door. The most important thing to him was to take her with him. It’s a signature behavior. He has another agenda. He probably just did a cleaner job of it with the others.”

Lydia and Jeffrey sat at the kitchen table with the newspaper between them. She had leaned across the table, looking at him intently. He had to admit, she did have some good points.

“All right, I think I’m going to talk to Morrow. Maybe he has some missing pieces that will help us determine if there is something here.”

“Alone?”

“I just think it might be best.”

“Bullshit, Jeffrey. I didn’t ask you to come down here to play the Great White Hope. I need to be a part of this.”

“You are. I just think Morrow will cooperate more readily without you there at this stage.”

“Why?”

“Because you have a bad history with him. And … you have a way of putting people on the defensive.”

“The only people who are defensive with me are people who have something to hide.”

“Come on, Lydia. Charm isn’t going to work on me,” he said, a sarcastic smile on his face. He reached out for her hand, which she pulled away. She wanted to kick him in the shin. But she knew he was right.

She crossed her arms across her chest and glared at him. “Fine. But you have to swear to tell me everything. Every last detail.”

“I promise. Did you pitch this story to someone already?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so worked up? I’ve never seen you like this.”

“I just need to know what happened to these people.” She turned her gaze away from him and looked out the window.

He kept his hand outstretched on the table for hers.

“I won’t do another thing without you. Just let me go there alone first, okay?”

“All right,” she said, and gave him her hand, grudgingly.

He squeezed it and then stood up from the table and started clearing the dishes he had set out for the breakfast they were not going to eat now.

“Leave them. I’ll take care of it. You just go talk to Morrow,” she said.

He placed the dishes in the sink and walked from the kitchen. “Don’t be angry,” he said over his shoulder, without waiting to hear her response.

She took a pillow from the window seat and threw it at him. It missed its mark by a few feet and lay soft and harmless on the Italian-tile kitchen floor.

She sighed. The thought of sitting and waiting for him to come back was unbearable for her; the hours stretching before
her were heavy with boredom and anticipation. She needed to do something.

She walked into her bedroom, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, put on a pair of running shorts and an old T-shirt, and slid three quarters into her jog bra. She put on her Nikes at the door and was gone, running down the driveway toward the road.

From the window on the second floor, Jeffrey watched her go. He hated it when she left without saying good-bye. She seemed so ephemeral at the best of times. Watching her run away, he wanted to throw the window open and call her back. But he couldn’t—not now, not ever. He just had to hope she’d come on her own. He watched her until he lost sight of her.

S
he counted her breathing in time with her footfalls on the dirt road. Running was painful because she had bad knees and she was smoking more now than she had in months, but still it set her free. Her form was perfect, shoulders straight but relaxed, abs tight, heels landing firmly on the ground with each stride. Here, it was enough to think of nothing. She could focus on nothing but driving herself to go one more foot, one more mile, before she could go no farther. Soon her worries would seem imaginary and far away. Soon she would be submerged in her effort and in enduring the pain of her joints and in her lungs. She took a masochistic pleasure in it. But today she didn’t seem to be able to run far enough or fast enough to silence the thoughts inside her head, or to quiet the emotions that simmered inside her chest.