Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [76]
“That’s the one,” Jeffrey said, and the local officers groaned.
“Someone else,” Jeffrey continued, “needs to start going over the crime-scene notes and photographs. Go back to the locations and poke around, get the feel of them, make sure nothing was missed. Then start going to places like the bar, the restaurant where Maria worked, the church. Observe, ask questions, start making people uncomfortable.
“Does anybody have any questions?”
When no one spoke, Morrow stood up. “Okay. Let’s get to work,” he said, as he starting handing out assignments to different officers at the table. In pairs the officers filed out, each with their tasks before them, looking a little overwhelmed, Lydia thought.
“Is there anything else you think I should do, Jeff?” Morrow asked when he was finished.
“Chief, you are the hub of this whole operation. You probably have a better overall picture of this community and its crime activity than anyone does. Spend time thinking back on anything over the last few months or even as long as a year that has struck a chord with you.”
“You got it,” Morrow said, with alacrity. He walked away feeling like the clumsy kid finally chosen to play on the softball team.
Jeffrey looked around the room for Lydia, then caught sight of her through the window, leaning against her car, smoking and staring off into space. She was waiting for him. He walked out of the station house and approached the car. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until this is over. And don’t even think of pulling another stunt like you pulled this afternoon.”
“Yes sir,” she answered sarcastically.
“Lydia, I’m serious. There’s no reason for you to be a renegade. What were you hoping to prove by going there alone?”
“Nothing,” she said, shrugging. “I just didn’t want to wait for you to get back.”
“But you’re not going to do anything like that again, right?”
“Right.”
“I want to drive,” he said, nudging her aside playfully with his shoulder and reaching for the driver’s-side door.
chapter seventeen
It was late evening before Jeffrey and Lydia returned to her house. They stopped at the bottom of the drive and picked up the mail, which Lydia sorted through as they pulled into her garage.
“Any letters from the president?” asked Jeffrey, after noticing a prison seal on one of the envelopes.
“The president?”
“The president of your fan club?”
Most of the letters that arrived from her fan club of the world’s most sick and twisted Lydia threw away unopened, the way they had been forwarded from her publisher’s office, particularly those that came from correctional facilities across the country. Initially she had been interested enough in what these people had to say to her to open them. A lot of them were the incoherent ramblings of damaged minds; some were from families of murder victims. Some were from people who claimed to be serial killers on the loose and she forwarded those to the FBI. But there was a person who had written to her every month since the publication of With a Vengeance.
When she received the first letter, in a way, she wasn’t even surprised.
Dear Bitch,
I fucked your mother and then I killed her. She was very satisfying.
I liked your book. You really put your finger on it. You really got into my head. But you know that, don’t you.
You like being inside my head? It makes you feel like you understand? Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. Maybe I can make you understand a whole lot better one day.
I take great satisfaction in you, too. I made you what you are today. Don’t forget it.
Fuck you,
Jed McIntyre
After the first letter, Jeffrey called the publisher’s office and insisted that her mail