Angel Fire

by Lisa Unger

  “There’s no way I’m letting you come out here alone.”

  In the next instant Jeffrey heard someone cut and run into the woods. He was after him in a heartbeat, following the large, dark form through the thick trees. The intruder’s flight was panicked, clumsy, but he was oddly fast for someone so large. Jeffrey could feel the distance between them growing and he picked up his pace, pushing aside the branches that slapped at his arms and face.

  “Jeffrey!” Lydia yelled after him, then ran into the house to get her shoes and her other gun.

  His call of “Freeze, motherfucker—” shot like a bullet through the night air, but it only served to urge the intruder on with greater speed. Jeffrey had been in law enforcement far too long to shoot a fleeing suspect in the back.

  Suddenly he lost sight of the form in the darkness. Jeffrey stopped when he realized that whoever it was had eluded him unexplainably. The night was alive with mysterious noises and bright stars above, but Jeffrey was alone with the sound of his own breathing, labored from the chase. He searched the area for any sign of the intruder’s escape route, but he was impeded by his poor eyesight, his glasses still sitting on the kitchen table. He sensed that he was alone, that no one was waiting in ambush for him. In the far distance, he heard the sound of a struggling ignition.

  He slipped his gun into the waist of his jeans and began walking back toward the house. He could not be sure how far he had come and he could not see the lights through the trees. The shapes around him were difficult to discern. His heart was still racing from adrenaline and exertion as he wiped the sweat from his brow with a quick, aggravated gesture.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  He was more than a little annoyed that the intruder had slipped away. It never would have happened a few years ago. Another reminder that he was getting older. Who was it? One of those kids Morrow was claiming caused so much trouble? A common burglar, vandal, vagrant? Even as the multitude of possibilities turned in his mind, he knew the answer. This case, which he had at first regarded with skepticism, was starting to take shape like the trees around him when the moon passed from behind the clouds. He had the sense of something sinister, something twisted, something connected to Lydia.

  Darkness, solitude; the two places where thoughts turned most often to her. Tonight his thoughts were edged with worry. Who was hiding in those trees? How long had he been there? Had he been waiting there when Lydia had come home alone?

  Jeffrey made his way more steadily now, feeling his way in the moonlight, treading carefully toward the gleam of the houselights he now saw in the distance. An anxiety, a fierce need to protect Lydia arose in him. He could see the look in her eyes just a few minutes before, feel her in his arms. He would die for her. If he could have caught his breath enough to break into a run to her, he would have.

  A perfect circle of light bounced before him. He was struggling to see what it was, straining his weak eyes in the darkness, when he heard Lydia calling his name.

  “I’m here,” he called, “stay still. I’ll come to you.”

  “You’re not hurt, are you?” she called.

  “No, just old, winded, and blind.”

  When she finally saw him, she ran to him but stopped herself from throwing her arms around him. Instead she touched him tenderly on his bad shoulder. He could see she had a .38 in a holster at her waist.

  “Did you see who it was?”

  “No. He got away. I don’t know how.… He was big and clumsy. But he was ten feet in front of me one minute and then it seemed like seconds later that I heard an ignition struggling a mile away.”

  “I called the police.”

  “All right.”

  She slipped her arm around his waist and he draped his arm across her shoulders in return. She leaned in close to him as they walked. “Who do you think it was?” she asked.

  “Who do you think it was?” he answered, knowing from her tone what she suspected but did not say.

  “It was him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I can feel it.”

  “You say that like it’s proof.”

  “It is for me.”

  They were silent as they walked toward the house, which was visible now through the trees.

  “What do you think, Jeffrey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But she knew him too well, knowing his heart and his meaning more by what went unsaid than by the words he uttered, understanding more from the protective tightening of his arm around her shoulder. She stopped walking and faced him, put her fingers to the rough stubble on his face.

  “Seems like you’re always rushing to my rescue.”

  “God knows you’ve come to my rescue a thousand times.”

  “You’re always here when things get out of hand.”

  “It’s my honor, Lydia.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Jeffrey. Give me time.”

  “How much more time do you need, Lydia? What are you so afraid of?”

  He pushed the hair out of her eyes and tilted her face upward with a featherlight touch under her chin. The yearning of years ached inside of her like a hunger she had never been able to sate, that made her weak and unsteady on her feet. He pulled her in close. There was no truer home to her than the one she knew in his arms. That was becoming more clear to her every day. She shivered as if someone were walking over her grave. Her desire and fear seemed almost audible, like sirens in the distance, moving closer from opposite directions, warning of danger.

  “Lydia.”

  The tone in his voice was a confession, mirroring her own. And in the second before his lips touched hers, the quiet night was pierced by a cacophony of sirens and the chaos of red-and-blue flashing lights on the street. In what seemed like seconds, the forms of at least ten police officers filtered in through the trees like wraiths.

  “Over here,” Jeffrey called out to the cops, supporting Lydia as she leaned against him, shaking her head against his chest. “We’re over here.”

  They walked onto the drive. Jeffrey borrowed an officer’s cell phone to call Morrow to tell him what had happened. While she was giving her statement to a young female officer, something near the front door to her house caught Lydia’s eye. She stopped speaking in midsentence and walked toward it. Jeffrey saw her and followed behind. Sitting on the low stone step before the door, was a box wrapped in newsprint.

  “I need some latex gloves, a letter opener or a knife, and some tweezers,” she said to the officer that had followed her.

  “Be careful with that,” said Jeffrey.

  “He’s not the Unabomber,” Lydia responded.

  “We don’t know what he is.”

  She shrugged and took a step back. She studied the package from a distance and could see that it was wrapped in the newspaper page featuring the article covering Maria Lopez’s disappearance. When the cop returned with the items she requested, she moved toward the package.

  “We should call the bomb squad,” said Jeffrey, touching her arm.

  “And wait two hours to find out what’s inside? I’ll take my chances. The psychology of the bomber is very different than the psychology of the serial killer.”

  He sat down on the step next to her as she carefully removed the adhesive tape with the penknife and unwrapped the package. Inside sat a bloodred-and-gold Montblanc pen. There was a small white gift card that read simply, Vengeance is mine.

  chapter sixteen

  Lydia lay on her king-size bed, her body wrapped in soft white Egyptian cotton sheets and a rose-colored chenille blanket, the down comforter in a twisted mound on the floor where she had tossed it during her restless night. What would it be like to wake up beside him every morning? What would it be like to wake up one day, have to wake up with the knowledge that he would never lie beside her again?

  “Anybody who ever said it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all is an idiot,” her mother said to her once on a rare occasion when th
ey’d discussed her father. “You can’t miss what you never had.”

  Lydia had met her father only once, on the day after her mother’s funeral. She sat alone in the living room staring out the bay window at the woods behind her house. The day was cool and sunny in cruel contrast to the way she felt. She heard the doorbell but paid no attention, assuming it was another neighbor come to offer their condolences. She dreaded having to smile politely, having to say she would be all right. Then she heard her grandfather’s voice as he opened the door, then a soft murmuring, then silence. To Lydia her grandfather sounded angry, but she thought she must be mistaken. Then she saw him at the door, his face tight and ashen.

  Hovering behind her grandfather, she saw a stranger with her eyes. Tall and slouching, poorly dressed, he held flowers and looked ashamed. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.

  “You don’t have to see him, Lydia,” her grandfather said.

  But her curiosity was great. It was the first feeling she’d had other than grief and horror since her mother died. “No. It’s okay, Grandpa.”

  She stood up and her father walked toward her. He held the flowers out to her. She took them, her eyes fixed on him. In all the fantasies she had had about him in her life, none of them had even come close to predicting the ordinary man who stood before her. She had imagined him as a great lover, dark and handsome; a motorcycle daredevil, reckless and brave; an international spy, suave and sophisticated. What other kind of man could have stolen her strong, beautiful mother’s heart and left her broken and forever sad? Surely some great danger or some irresistible intrigue had lured him from her mother and their child. In spite of what her mother said.

  “Don’t fantasize about your father, Lydia,” her mother told her numerous times. “He was just an irresponsible man, living for get-rich-quick schemes, always looking for something more than what he had.”

  She had never believed her mother until this moment, as he stood before her, eyes begging, hands quivering. It was like another death for her.

  She let the flowers drop to the floor, turned her back on him, and walked back to her perch by the window. She might have forgiven him for leaving them, for breaking her mother’s heart, but she could never forgive him for being so unremarkable. She could never forgive that he had obviously left them for nothing.

  There was a soft knock at the door. She closed her eyes and rolled over, feigning sleep. She heard Jeffrey push the door open and walk into the room. He sat on the bed beside her.

  “Lydia?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You want to get up? Morrow will be here in an hour to go over to the church.”

  He touched her shoulder tenderly. His hair was lightly tousled. Unshaven, clad in a white T-shirt and faded blue jeans, he seemed irresistible. But she resisted him.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll make some coffee.”

  Even in this moment she knew she could call him back to her.

  “Jeffrey.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Make it really strong.”

  “You got it.” He answered without looking at her as he eased the door shut.

  But in the end, I’m just a coward. What am I afraid of?

  It was a question she couldn’t answer. She only knew that when she thought of surrendering to Jeffrey, she was a child again standing in front of the open door of her mother’s house. That sinking fear, teetering on the edge, mere moments from total devastation. It consumed her, paralyzed her, forced her into loneliness.

  It wasn’t only him. It had been this way for as long as she could remember, with every person who had ever tried to get close to her. He was the only one who had stayed around, gauging perfectly when she needed him to be close or far. It wasn’t fair to him. She knew that.

  She flipped the covers back and got out of bed. The clock glowed 6:50 A.M. as she stretched, feeling her stiff muscles warm and relax. Arms in the air, back arched, then torso against each lean, tight thigh, her flexible body energized with each gentle movement, with each deep breath.

  She switched on the light and examined her naked body in the full-length mirror. Unlike most women, Lydia loved her body. It was lithe and lean, but muscular and strong, with a womanly fullness around her hips and breasts. She leaned in closer to examine her face, her creamy skin. Tiny lines had started to make their debut on her too-often frowning brow, around her eyes. She didn’t much care, wise enough to know the passage of time was one thing she could not control. Her cold beauty was hard-lined and knowing, sometimes brutal. Her gray eyes did not betray the child’s fear that lurked some days within her heart, or the fragility of her soul.

  “Good morning,” she said to the killer, staring at her own eyes in the mirror. “I’m coming after you today.”

  She thought about the package he’d left for her last night.

  “Well, he’s fucking with us now,” Jeffrey had said, annoyed. “He was right at your doorstep.”

  He’d been angry last night. Angry that the killer had been right within his grasp and got away, and angry at Lydia for the same reason, she imagined. They had sat again at the kitchen table after the police had left, taking the package to be analyzed at the lab. They were avoiding totally what had almost happened between them in the woods, avoiding Jeffrey’s obvious pain and frustration and talking about the “gift” the killer had left.

  “He obviously knows you, knows where you live, and knows what you do for a living. He gave it a lot of thought. Which means he gives you a lot of thought,” Jeffrey had said quietly.

  She had nodded, the impact of the visit finally pressing on her. “It means that I am part of his design, that I figure somehow into his plan.”

  “How did he know you were involved?”

  “Maybe that was always his intention, to draw me in somehow. I just beat him to the punch.”

  “He’s watching you.”

  “Yes, I believe he is.”

  “You don’t seem overly concerned.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we both just need to get some rest.”

  So they had parted with much unsaid and unresolved between them. She had almost turned back to him as she walked up the stairs. They had been so close. If they hadn’t been interrupted by the police, there was little question as to what would have happened.

  She was some combination of disappointed and relieved as she walked into the adjoining bathroom and felt the cool hard tile beneath her feet. The room was a study in the varied uses of white marble—the floor, countertop, and sink were all formed of the beautiful stone. With mirrored walls and bright marquis bulbs, no inch of the room escaped reflection except the steam-room and shower, which were enclosed behind frosted-glass doors that reached from floor to ceiling. The countertop was a pretty clutter of the finest cosmetics and toiletries, expensively packaged soaps and lotions, bath salts, powders, fragrances. Lydia loved the smell, the feel of these things. They were a tiny indulgence she afforded herself, in honor of her mother. Marion, too, had cherished the luxury of a beautiful bathroom, filled with products that pleased the senses and soothed the skin. But Marion had never allowed herself the pleasure of the costly items she saw in magazines. Lydia would have lavished her mother with such things, had Marion lived to share her wealth. So instead she bought them for herself.

  The cold water of the shower braced her skin, shocking the last sleepy cobwebs from her head. She lathered herself with lavender soap, at first enduring and then enjoying the frigid water raising goose bumps on her flesh. She washed her hair twice and then conditioned, letting the cold water beat on her back while she let the conditioner sit, making her hair soft. When she emerged, her body glistening, she dried herself with one of the plush black towels that hung on the wall. Then she wrapped herself in it and brushed her teeth.

  Jeffrey placed a mug of coffee on her bedside table. He heard the shower and shivered, knowing that it was ice cold. Cold showers for the morning; hot shower
s at night. He could hear her saying the morning was the beginning of the day, no time for luxury or relaxation—it was time to get moving. He smiled at the thought, but he held a sadness inside of him, mourning the moment that had passed between them last night. He knew that it could not be recaptured, and could already feel her laying distance between them. He let her do it, aware that she would have to come to him. Like a lunar eclipse, that moment could not be forced—only anticipated. He walked from the room and closed the door as Lydia emerged from the bathroom.

  The sight of the steaming coffee at the bedside made her want to smile and cry at the same time.

  Lydia and Jeffrey followed behind in the Kompressor as Morrow’s beat-up squad car led the way to the church. High winds whipped sand around the car and rushed loudly through Lydia’s partially opened window, making conversation between them difficult. Not that there was any conversation. The silence between them was like barbed wire. If he tried to get through it, it probably wouldn’t kill him. But it would hurt like hell. So Jeffrey kept quiet, watching the landscape pass and preparing for the interview ahead.

  In Jeffrey’s imagination, the Church of the Holy Name had taken on cathedral-like proportions. Maybe because of the significance it seemed to hold for Lydia. So, he was a bit surprised when they pulled up beside the tiny adobe church, with its simple wood doors, unassuming bell tower, and cross-shaped windows.

  “This is it?” he asked.

  “This is it,” Lydia answered. She walked up the three small steps and pushed the heavy doors in, followed by Jeffrey and Morrow.

  A frail, dark-haired man wearing faded but well-washed and pressed jeans and a white oxford shirt approached them, and Jeffrey was again surprised when Lydia introduced him as Juno. From Lydia’s description he had expected to see Gabriel in flowing robes, ensconced in a heavenly light. As he took the hand Juno offered, Jeffrey was delighted by the blind man’s entirely earthly, rather plain appearance.

  As Juno disappeared through a door beside the altar to get Father Luis, Jeffrey, Lydia, and Morrow moved over to the glass case by the church entrance. Laid out on a red-velvet cushion beneath the glass were two leather-bound Bibles, three rosaries, and a hand-carved crucifix. Morrow removed an evidence bag from the pocket of his J. Crew-style barn jacket and held it on top of the case. The crucifix contained in the plastic bag was identical to the one in the case.