Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [55]
In a way, Lydia had grown to see him as someone fighting isolation, someone trying to create a community for himself, a brethren of misery. He had come to symbolize pure human evil to her. Not Evil in some cosmic sense, not the embodiment of Satan, but evil born of unspeakable psychic pain and cruel injustice, the victim become the victimizer with a vengeance.
But this killer … what was his agenda? What did these people mean to him? She was driving fast, taking the winding roads too hard as the faces of Shawna, Christine and Harold, and Maria swam in her mind. Usually it was so easy for her to see, like in the case of the Cheerleader Murders. All the girls were similar physically and, they later found out, just wicked, nasty young people. Once she knew what they shared in common, it was easy to deduce what type of person would want them, or want to be rid of them. But with these victims, even though she was sure that the church would be the point at which their lives intersected, she just couldn’t see what characteristic they shared, what attracted the killer to them.
A deep fatigue was setting in behind her eyes as she relaxed her grip on the wheel. Her hands felt cramped from gripping it so hard. She sighed, rolling her neck from side to side to relieve the tension gathering there. She had never denied being obsessive about her work. But this case was different; it was her heart and not her brain that was driving her. Maybe that’s what Jeffrey was sensing when he said he’d never seen her like this. She’d never felt like this. Rather than trying to solve something that had already happened, she felt inexplicably that she was racing to prevent something. Not only another murder, which was highly possible, but something even more than that. And that if she failed … well, she couldn’t fail. Failure was not an option.
chapter fifteen
It was nearly ten o’clock when Lydia’s Kompressor pulled into the dirt parking lot of Smokey’s Sports Bar. The dilapidated building was a caricature of itself, of a dive bar by the side of the deserted road. The gray wood building sagged and was covered with graffiti. A wide variety of pickup trucks, with shotguns mounted on the back windows, sat waiting for their drunk drivers to try to get them home in one piece. God, how grim, Lydia thought as she eyed the flickering neon sign. Most of the letters had gone dark and not been repaired, so the sign just read, “m. .e. .s … S.”
“Mess is right,” muttered Lydia as she sat mustering the strength to enter. She was stepping out of the car when her cell phone chirped.
“What’s up?” she answered, sinking back into the leather interior.
“I was just wondering where you were.”
She smiled to hear Jeffrey’s voice, hoping that he wasn’t angry with her anymore. She knew she could be a bitch and she was eternally grateful that he always forgave her.
“I’m at Smokey’s Sports Bar. I thought I’d have a few drinks and see if I couldn’t get any action.”
“Sounds like it’s right up your alley. You still mad at me?”
“No. Are you still mad at me?”
“You know I can never stay angry at you. Besides, you were right.”
There was a moment of silence before he said, “Her heart is missing, Lyd. Removed with surgical precision.”
“Like Lucky.”
“Yeah, except everything else is still intact … more or less.”
“Did you come up with anything out there?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, I think so. I talked to Greg. Turns out Shawna was involved with the Church of the Holy Name. He also said that she had seen a green minivan a couple of times in the days before she disappeared.” She could hear him flipping through the pages of a file.
“He never said anything about that before.”
“No, he said it was just something she mentioned when they were kidding around. It’s probably nothing but if we came up with