Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [54]
“Please don’t be. I understand.”
“You’re the first person to hear me out that hasn’t treated me like a criminal or a fool whose girl ran away from him.”
“In the days preceding Shawna’s disappearance, did you notice anyone strange hanging around or did she tell you of anyone bothering her?”
“No, not that I remember. And I think I would remember. I was pretty protective of her.”
“Just think for a minute. Anything she said, even in passing, someone she found creepy or didn’t like?” She saw something flicker in Greg’s eyes.
“Well, it’s pretty stupid. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.”
“What is it?”
“The day before she disappeared we had a good laugh because Shawna made me promise never to buy a minivan, no matter how many kids we had. She said the past couple of days, she’d seen a green minivan a couple of times. She said, ‘Once you buy a minivan, you can kiss your youth and any hope you ever had of being cool again good-bye.’ But she never said where she’d seen it, or that she felt she was being followed.”
“Did you see any other cars on the road that night when you went looking for her?”
“Not one. Do you think someone was following her, Ms. Strong?”
“It’s possible.”
“Either I or her parents drove her almost everywhere.”
“But she walked here often? From her house?”
“Often enough.”
Lydia pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Greg. “If you think of anything else that might help, call me day or night.”
She stopped the tape machine and put it in her bag, rose, and took his outstretched hand. There was a warmth and gentleness to his grip. It was easy to see why Shawna loved him. He was a protector.
“Do you think she’s dead, Ms. Strong?”
“I don’t know, Greg. I wish I did.”
He nodded, closing his eyes. “Thank you, Ms. Strong.”
He walked her to her car and opened the driver’s seat door for her. “You’ll keep me posted?” he asked.
“Of course.”
—
As she did a U-turn and drove up the road away from him, she saw him in the rearview mirror, just standing and watching her drive away. He looked so sad and alone, so powerless, like a child who had lost his grip on a helium balloon and was watching it float into the sky.
She gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. She was angry, so fucking angry. She’d never admitted to anyone, not even Jeffrey, how furious she felt after interviewing the grief-stricken loved ones, the other victims of murderers. They had to live with what had been done to the person gone, they had to try to keep from imagining what that kind of pain and fear must be like, to keep from wondering what the last moments were like. When someone you love dies in a car wreck or a plane crash, there is always the possibility they died instantly, that they never knew death had come for them, that one minute they were on their way for milk at the store and the next … nothing. The families of murder victims didn’t have that luxury, that chance for peace. They were haunted always, forever altered.
Who are you? And what do you want? she thought as she turned onto the main road and gunned the engine.
They always wanted something; these kinds of killers always had an agenda. The pedophile, the rapist, he was driven by an urge he couldn’t control. Nature or nurture, biochemistry or psychosis, whatever compelled him was as much a part of him as the blood running through his veins. But a serial killer like this always had a reason—vengeance, fame, punishment.
Jed McIntyre had wanted to destroy lives. The killing of his victims, though he enjoyed it very much, was only a means to achieving an end goal, which was to destroy the life of the child left behind. Just as Jed’s life was destroyed when his father had killed his mother in front of him and was sent to the electric chair.
Jed was alone with his rage for so many years, so isolated by his circumstances, by the horror he witnessed, by the impenetrable loneliness that surrounded him. He watched people go about their lives, fellow students, then co-workers, knowing that their perception of