Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [47]
“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