Angel Fire

by Lisa Unger

  The police also had had a visit from Shawna’s boyfriend, Greg Matthews, an eighteen-year-old dropout who worked at his father’s gas station. He insisted that Shawna never would have run away without telling him; that she loved him and was going to marry him. Greg had had a rap sheet of his own as a juvenile, but had been clean since working with his father for over two years. He had been investigated as a possible link to Shawna’s disappearance but no evidence of any foul play was uncovered. He provided a color photograph of Shawna, a close-up of her pixielike face, framed by short-cropped boyish blond hair. She had sparkling green eyes, and a pug nose, pierced with a small gold hoop. She wore a bright smile and a look in her eyes that told Lydia she was in love with whoever had snapped the photo, presumably Greg. Photographs of living people now dead always made Lydia angry. They were cold, eerie reminders of how easily life was lost, how vividly alive people remain in the memories of those who loved them, and how grief is the slick-walled, bottomless abyss between those places.

  A month after her disappearance, Shawna was still missing. There were no leads.

  “So why are we assuming that this girl didn’t just run away again?” asked Jeffrey.

  “One: She didn’t take anything with her like before; she had a habit of stealing from her foster parents before taking flight. But this time, nothing of theirs and not even her own belongings. Two: She had a boyfriend who clearly loved her. Show me one damaged teenage girl who runs away from love, probably more love than she’s ever had.”

  “What makes you think he loved her? Maybe he beat her. Maybe he killed her.”

  “Maybe, but it says here he visited the police station three different times to check on progress, insisting that she wouldn’t have run away.”

  “A lot of serial killers insinuate themselves into an investigation.”

  “He’s too young to be a serial killer. And he doesn’t fit the typical profile. Not smart enough, not antisocial enough.”

  They pinned Shawna’s picture on the board, and below it they placed index cards listing everything they knew for a fact to be true about her, vital statistics, date last seen, address. On the map board they placed a red pushpin at her last known address.

  Christine and Harold Wallace had had a troubled marriage, according to a state-appointed abuse counselor. Both frequently unemployed, both recovering methamphetamine addicts, their life together had not been an easy one. Pulling each other back and forth into and out of addiction, their relationship had been violent, ranging from a slap in the face to a brutal beating which left Christine in the hospital for three weeks, to a stab wound that just missed Harold’s vital organs.

  In the ten years they had been together, only three years had seen both of them out of prison or rehabilitation clinics at the same time. But at the time they went missing, they both had been off drugs for a year, both were holding down work-fare jobs cleaning the park in the middle of town, and there had been no incidence of abuse in more than eight months. Christine was studying for her GED.

  When they did not show up for work that first day, their supervisor did not call it in to the welfare board. He liked them and didn’t want them to get kicked out of the program that had been helping them move forward in their lives. But after the second day, he had to call it in. When counselors went to the Wallaces’ home in the barrio, a small two-room house, they found the door standing open. All their possessions remained; no evidence of struggle or forced entry. They were simply gone. Calls to each of their parents revealed that both had been estranged from their families for over ten years. No one was interested that they were missing and could offer no information.

  The last entry the social worker made in her file, a week before they disappeared, read: “I am so pleased with Christine and Harold’s progress. They are both working, drug-free, and seem to be healing their relationship. During our last session, they were holding hands.”

  The only pictures available of Christine and Harold were their respective mug shots. Though no one expects mug shots to be flattering photographs, it was clear that neither Christine or Harold were particularly attractive people. Both were painfully thin from years of drug addiction, with scraggly, longish hair, Christine blond and Harold brown. Harold had small brown eyes, a beakish nose and thin lips, protruding cheekbones, and one missing front tooth. Christine had a similarly gaunt face, but with big blue eyes that were moist and sad, and full pouting lips. She might have been pretty once, but years of abuse and self-neglect had ravaged her face and she just looked broken.

  “So again, why are we assuming that these people are not holed up in a crackhouse somewhere?” asked Jeffrey.

  “Again, because they took nothing with them. Their bank accounts have not been touched since they disappeared. They really did seem to be back on track.”

  “So then we are assuming that our alleged serial killer killed or abducted both husband and wife from their home. There’s no precedent for that.”

  “Son of Sam.”

  “David Berkowitz killed couples in their cars with a gun and ran away. He didn’t break into people’s homes, incapacitate or kill both of them, and then remove them somehow from the scene—leaving no evidence. That’s a huge undertaking, highly organized and taking tremendous motivation. Whatever this guy wants, he wants it bad enough to take outrageous risks and perform complicated assaults and abductions. He must have unquestioning faith in his agenda to have such a high-maintenance signature.”

  “So if you were going to kill or abduct a couple how would you do it?”

  “I would stalk them to determine when they were the most vulnerable. Wait for the perfect opportunity, neutralize the greater threat, and then overpower the weaker. Man first, woman second, under normal circumstances. I would have a van or truck parked close to the point of assault because dead or unconscious people are very heavy.”

  “So you’d have to be smart, organized, and fairly big and strong.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Well, I guess that rules you out as a suspect.”

  “Very funny.”

  Maria Lopez had been picked up twice for prostitution. But she hadn’t walked the streets in years and was a waitress at a local restaurant called Blue Moon Café. Last night, she had left work at eleven P.M. dressed to go out. She went to Smokey’s Sports Bar on Highway 434 that she frequented more or less nightly. She left with a man named Mike Urquia, who the police had picked up that afternoon and was being questioned as Lydia and Jeffrey spoke.

  Hair, fibers, blood samples, and fingerprints had been collected at the Lopez scene and sent to the state lab for analysis. But it would take at least twenty-four hours for any results to come back. Even then most of what had been found would only be useful to eliminate or confirm suspects. Unless they got very lucky, for example, a carpet fiber that came from a very rare rug, only sold in a certain location … something like that. Or in the best case scenario, the offender had a prior record and the prints could be matched to someone already entered in the FBI database. DNA results could take months, not like on television where they came back in hours.

  “So it may be that Mike’s our man,” said Jeffrey.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “I just don’t.”

  “Well, okay, then. Maybe you should get a job with Psychic Helpers.”

  “For starters, he’s Hispanic. There aren’t too many Hispanic serial killers.”

  “Richard Ramirez.”

  “It’s not him.” Lydia was firm, and Jeffrey had only been playing devil’s advocate.

  She placed the final index cards on the board and the final red pin on the map.

  She stood back and looked at them, wondering what it was they had in common. The problem child. The abuser. The abused. The prostitute. She could catch the scent of these lives, but their life force, their personal essence remained elusive.

  “It’s hard to really get a sense of these people. Whoever gave the cops the
ir information was distant, on the outside looking in, neighbors, bosses, social workers. No intimates, no friends except for Shawna Fox’s boyfriend, and no families. It’s almost like there’s no one to say who they really were.”

  “It’s a start,” he answered pragmatically.

  She paused, leaning forward on the desk, picking up a crystal paperweight and holding it up to the sun streaming in the southern window. Rainbow flecks of light danced on the wall behind her.

  “I wonder …” She drifted away, staring into the facets of the object in her hands.

  “What?” He hated it when she started a sentence and then let it float off into space, leaving him waiting for the finished thought.

  “I wonder if the lack of information is something in and of itself. Not even an incompetent like Morrow would fail to interview people close to the victims—especially a juvenile.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying maybe there was no one close enough to give a true picture of these people. Maybe that’s significant.” She walked over to him and sat close to him on the couch. She pulled her feet up beneath her and let her legs rest on his thigh. She looked up at him. “We’re going to need to do some digging on our own. Nobody leaves this world without showing someone their truest heart.”

  Her gray eyes stared past him at the boards then, her body leaning into his. She could feel his strong quadriceps beneath the soft rust-colored corduroy pants he wore, could smell the faint musk of his cologne.

  Really? Who have you shown your truest heart to? He put his arm around her and rested his chin on her head.

  “In fact,” she mused, “it’s really the only thing that connects them.”

  “What is?”

  “That no one seemed to care when they were gone. That and poverty.”

  “And religion.”

  He handed her the picture of the crucifix that Simon Morrow had showed him. He had told her about the crucifixes when he recounted his conversation with Chief Morrow, but her jaw dropped when she looked at the picture. The crucifix was large, made of a highly varnished red wood—the Christ figure intricately detailed. The feet were neatly folded over one another, nailed viciously to the cross, a single drop of blood falling like a tear. The knees were bent together to one side in a feminine, almost demure manner, like a curtsey. The rib cage and collarbone strained against taut flesh and the neck was arched in agony and the face uplifted, contorted in an expression of profound pain and anger. It was just so human, so emotional, just like the statue of the Virgin Mary in the garden at the Church of the Holy Name.

  “What’s wrong?” Jeffrey asked, peering at her over his Armani eyeglass frames.

  “I’m so stupid,” she said. “I didn’t even think of it when you mentioned the crucifixes. When I went to the church before I picked you up at the airport yesterday, I saw a statue of the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus. It was remarkable for its humanism and Juno said that his uncle had sculpted it. He mentioned that his uncle carved wood crucifixes and sold them to parishioners. Looking at this picture … it must be the same person, the same artist.”

  She walked over to the map. “All these people, they all live within five miles of it. The church is the connection.” She was excited but not really surprised. She felt the pieces start shifting into place like the squares on a Rubik’s Cube, though the puzzle wasn’t close to being solved.

  “Wait a minute. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still don’t know for sure that these people have been murdered.”

  “Jesus, Jeffrey, what do I need to convince you?”

  “A body for starters. Any body. Have you lost all perspective on this, Lydia? We’re nowhere yet.”

  She sank into the chair across from him, as distant as she was close a moment earlier.

  “I need evidence. We can’t conduct a murder investigation without a body,” he continued.

  “Spare me the FBI rhetoric,” she said sharply.

  “It’s not rhetoric, Lydia. We have four missing people … one of them probably violently murdered, I’ll give you that. If their crucifixes all came from your church, then okay, that’s weird. I’ll give you that, too. But there are no bodies, no actual proof of anything. I’m not with you on this. Do you want there to be a serial killer running around? Are you going to be happy if it turns out you’re right?”

  “Of course I’m not going to be happy. I also don’t want to be sitting on my hands while he’s picking his next victim. I thought this is why you left the FBI in the first place. Because you didn’t want to always play by the rules that sometimes allow people to be killed in the name of protecting civil rights.

  “Remember when families had to wait twenty-four hours before reporting a child missing? Remember when women had to wait to be assaulted or killed before anyone did anything about their stalkers? Serial killers don’t always advertise. We’re not hurting anyone by looking into this. We may be killing someone if we don’t.”

  It was an old argument that never ceased to infuriate him. Lydia had a knack for pressing his buttons and making him more angry than anyone else he had ever known. One moment they could be as close as it was possible for two people to be. Then, in a heartbeat, they were spitting fire.

  Suddenly she jumped up and ran from the room. In the distance he could hear the phone ringing. He sat and stared at the sunset, the sky painted in brilliant pastels, the sun dipping below the mountains in the west. He became aware of a powerful, irrational feeling of jealousy that she had gone to the church yesterday and again today. Why did she go there? To see the blind man? The one she dreamt about?

  A moment later she was standing in the door.

  “Well, you got your wish,” she said, smug and smiling bitterly. “They found Maria Lopez’s body.”

  chapter fourteen

  Someone had gutted Maria Lopez like the dog Lucky. It was a disturbing sight for the hunters who found her, in an open body-bag, sloppily half-covered with the dirt and sand from the ground around her, deep in the woods at Cimarron Canyon State Park. I guess you thought the animals would get to her, you cold bastard, thought Morrow as he stared down at her decomposing body.

  “Cover her up,” he said to the uniformed officer standing beside him. He felt badly for her. No one had come to the station to report her missing, no one could be found to notify about her death. And there was no one to question about her life except her boss at the restaurant and Mike Urquia, who was the last person to see her alive. He was the prime suspect, only because there were no other suspects. But there was no evidence so far to indicate that he had done anything but sleep with her, and looking into his eyes, Morrow knew it wasn’t him. This was something much bigger than a good fuck gone wrong. Something so much uglier.

  He took the number Jeffrey Mark had given to him and called from his cell phone. The phone rang a couple of times at Lydia’s before she picked it up.

  “You and Jeff might want to meet me at the station. We think we found Maria Lopez’s body.”

  “I want to see where he dumped the body. You didn’t move it yet, did you?”

  “No, but …” Morrow didn’t really want her at the crime scene. He didn’t want her to have a front-row seat to this investigation, even though he’d agreed to have them on board.

  “Good,” she said, like she was talking to a student. “Tell me how to find you.”

  He told her to take Highway 64 north for thirty miles and that he would have a squad car waiting for her at the park entrance so she and Jeffrey could find the way to the remote spot in the woods.

  “Fine, we’ll be there.” She hung up the phone without another word. A little civility was perhaps too much to ask from someone like Lydia Strong.

  An hour later the pair arrived at the crime scene. Lydia brushed by Chief Morrow without a word and walked straight to the covered body. She asked the uniformed officer for a pair of surgical gloves, which he handed her, and she removed the light plastic tarp from the victim’s body.
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br />   “Was this tarp sterile?” Morrow heard her ask the officer. “Because if it wasn’t, you just contaminated the crime scene.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “ ‘Yes ma’am,’ what?”

  “Yes, it was sterile.”

  That was exactly why Morrow hadn’t wanted her here, looking over his shoulder, second-guessing every fucking move he made. Waiting for him to screw up again so she could ruin him for good.

  “Hey, Chief,” Jeff said as he approached Morrow. “Who found the body?”

  “Some hunters from New York were looking for big game and they came across the body instead.” He motioned to a group of men, who for all their weathered toughness, rifles, and orange hunter’s attire, looked pale and shaken.

  Lydia regarded the grotesque body of Maria Lopez. Throat slashed, a gaping wound from her sternum to her belly, eyes wide and glassy, skin tinged black-and-blue, the naked body lay discarded by the killer without regard. Lydia could tell instantly by the careless disposal that the killer did not care for Maria, had not known her in life. She was less than trash to the person who had killed her. Lydia wondered if the killer was becoming disorganized, descending into a careless rage to murder Maria so brutally and then dispose of her like a hated piece of furniture. Or maybe he was becoming cocky, having killed, presumably, three times without even raising suspicion.

  She did not feel moved by the body. Life had abandoned it. It was nothing more than an object, arousing only wonder in her, as if she had spied a single shoe lying dirty and flattened in the middle of a city sidewalk. She stood up and circled the body. This was a dump site and not a true crime scene. He had not killed her here. There was not enough blood. He had carried her here in the body bag and opened the zipper, hoping, probably, that the scavengers would find her before the park visitors did.

  It had not rained since Maria was taken from her apartment, but the ground was soft and damp so maybe they would get lucky—footprints, tire tracks. He could have driven only part of the way to the dump site. He would have had to then park the car on the dirt road below and carry her up the incline that Lydia and Jeffrey had just ascended, moving through the trees. Had he known this area well? Or had he just driven in during regular park hours and dumped her, hoping he wouldn’t be seen? It was very risky behavior, if that’s what he had done. Maybe, more likely, he had come and stayed at one of the campsites and done his deed under the cover of night. She wondered if there was a visitor registry or a list of license-plate numbers of park visitors. “Lydia, check this out,” Jeffrey called.