Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [64]
“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 they’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