Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [85]
“He was in his bed. Where do you think he was? He’s nothing but a child mentally. He doesn’t go out by himself at night. What is going on?”
Benny’s moaning grew louder. He rolled his head back and his mother tightened her grip on him.
“What about yesterday between the hours of six A.M. and eight P.M.?”
“I don’t know. That’s when I work. I’m an ER nurse at the hospital and I worked a double shift yesterday. Here probably, or at the church. He can’t drive.”
“Flowers,” Benny said, his breathing becoming shallow, “belong in the ground.”
In the next moment he fell to the floor, convulsing. And Greta, pulled with him, began screaming, “I told you! I told you not to upset him. This is what happens. Oh, God, Benny! Someone call 911. He’s having a seizure.”
Lydia ran to the kitchen phone and dialed 911. As she explained the situation and gave the operator their location, she noticed one of Father Luis’s crucifixes hanging on the wall above the phone.
—
Lydia watched as the paramedics loaded Benny’s unconscious body into the ambulance and Greta crawled in after him. She had felt guilty and sad as she instructed a police officer to remove Benny’s shoes to compare to the print mold they had taken. She recognized Benny as a pawn in the killer’s game—just like she was. She didn’t know how Benny had been involved, but she knew that he was, and that she had made him remember things he had probably been able to forget, causing him to seize. Through the back window of the ambulance Greta glared at Lydia with unabashed hatred as they pulled away, headed for the hospital. A squad car followed behind.
“I like flowers. They never do bad things. They’re just quiet.”
“Well, the shoes are the same size as the print we found at the park and the forensic report stated that the impression was made by someone upwards of two hundred fifty pounds,” Morrow said, startling Lydia as he came up behind her. “It looks like we might have our man.”
“You’re kidding,” said Lydia.
“You don’t think so?”
“No,” she said, incredulous. “He’s fucking retarded.”
She shook her head and walked away toward Jeffrey. Lydia had been starting to hate Morrow a little less, wondering if she had been too hard on him, even feeling a bit guilty for having held a grudge since St. Louis. Now she remembered why she disliked him so intensely. He hadn’t given a shit about the prostitutes that were killed in St. Louis. He’d just written them off. He’d said, “Johns kill whores every day, Miss Strong.” And he’d ignored her when she’d told him more would die if he didn’t listen to what she had to say. Whether it was because he was lazy or because he didn’t want to admit that something like that was going on under his nose, he’d shut the door on her. Three more women had died before the case was solved by the FBI. Now he was just jumping at the first person that came along as a suspect: someone who obviously couldn’t have committed these crimes, whatever his involvement turned out to be. Someone who would have a hard time defending himself.
“We are not going to let Benny take the fall for this just because these locals are looking for a victory here. He’s not the one,” she said to Jeffrey, as she passed him and went back into the house. She took the stairs up to Benny’s room.
Jeffrey watched her storm off and turned to see Morrow, who seemed to have had all the air knocked out of him. Morrow wasn’t aware that Jeffrey was observing him while he followed Lydia with his eyes. There was something in the way Morrow looked at her that made Jeffrey, unconsciously, put his hand on his gun.
Moving past the police officers who were overturning cushions and looking into drawers, she sat on Benny’s bed made up with Star Wars sheets. It was a child’s bedroom—shelves were filled with toys, posters of Power Rangers hung on the wall, an old computer sat on a blue faux-wood desk. A wastepaper basket was shaped like a football. An oversize polar bear sat on a wicker love-seat by the window. Next to Benny’s bed on the nightstand was a photography book filled with color shots