Angel Fire (21 page)

“What service station is it at, Father?” Morrow asked. “No disrespect, of course, but we’ll need to take a look at it.”

“It’s at the Amoco station in town. I’ll call and let them know you’ll be dropping by.”

“Anyone else you can think of?” asked Morrow.

“No, but I’ll certainly keep my eyes open.”

The priest was kind and eager to help, but Lydia was sure he had something to hide. The fact that he owned a green minivan had thrown her a bit. She turned the possibilities around in her mind. Was he protecting someone? Was he involved in some way? She looked at him, his eyes filled with emotion and empathy, his large soft hands, the slight paunch of his belly. It didn’t seem likely.

“Father, have you noticed anyone strange lurking about the church? Someone who has recently started coming to mass but that you haven’t met before?” she asked. “Someone whose behavior has struck you as odd?”

Lydia saw something in the priest’s eye—a thought he considered voicing but dismissed.

“No, all my parishioners have been coming here for years, many of them as children themselves.”

“The man I saw today?” said Jeffrey. “He was large-framed, with sandy-blond hair. He wore beige coveralls. He appeared to be … you know, a bit on the slow side. Does this sound like anyone you know to be a volunteer here?”

“Well, there is Benny. He doesn’t go to the school I mentioned. But he is somewhat impaired. According to his mother, he has the intelligence of a twelve-year-old. He does come by occasionally and do some work for us. He loves to work in the garden. In fact, his name and number are on the list I gave you. Benjamin Savroy.”

“Thank you for your time, Father, Juno,” said Jeffrey, shaking each hand. “You can expect us to be stopping by again.”

Lydia said her good-byes as well. “Father, Juno, if you think of anything—no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to you, please call us.”

—

T
he three left and the church was quiet and peaceful again. The air still tingled with her essence, even as Juno listened to their cars pull away. Lydia’s scent still lingered, mingling with the odor of wood, candle wax, and incense.

Juno had remained silent throughout his uncle’s interview. He felt strongly that something horrible had befallen all the missing people. He had little doubt they had met with a fate similar to Maria’s. Juno was not an emotional person by nature and though he was deeply saddened by these events, they failed to move him to tears, as they did his uncle. Juno possessed an unflappable inner peace. Though he had great empathy, and a tremendous capacity to feel, the core of him, his faith in God, in the order of His universe, remained solid. No matter how horrible a tragedy occurred, no matter how people suffered, Juno knew in his heart that he and all people were part of a plan, God’s plan. After death, all suffering would fade from memory and the plan would be revealed. This is what his Bible and his heart told him.

And as he had listened to their conversation, something had begun to tickle at the edge of his consciousness. Like a whisper from a distant place, he caught the scent of lavender, of rose, of Lydia. His thoughts had turned to her many times since they had met. To touch her was like an electric shock, blue heat. He had seen her so clearly that first day—her power, her emotion, her fear and vulnerability. The different shades of her, the black and white of her soul and the internal battle that was waged there, intrigued him, excited him. It was so unlike anything he had known in his own inner life.

He realized that his uncle was sitting in the pew in front of him but hadn’t said a word since they had been alone. “Uncle, will you be all right?”

The pause was pregnant with sorrow, and when the priest
spoke, his words were taut with tears. “Yes. But it is not for myself that I am afraid.”

“Of course.”

The priest rose and left Juno alone in the church. In the silence Juno contemplated Lydia and Jeffrey. The rising temperature in the church told Juno that it was nearing noon. Jeffrey’s tone had been quiet and professional but the sound of Lydia’s name on his tongue was liquid with love. In the way Jeffrey’s lips touched those three syllables, Juno could feel his passion for her, taste Jeffrey’s painful restraint.

At wedding services, Juno often played guitar. Seated on his wooden stool, he perched at the altar, to the right of Father Alonzo. He could hear the bride and groom exchange their vows, and could sense almost instantly who married for money, for fear, for lack of any better opportunities. On only a few occasions had he heard the sound of fierce, tremulous love in the voices of both being joined before the eyes of God. Only rarely had he heard the melodic pitch of two souls bound long before they had reached the church to exchange their earthly vows.

He detected such a bond between Lydia and Jeffrey. But the chorus of her fears was louder.

L
ydia dragged on her cigarette, face like stone, eyes staring at the road in front of her. She drew smoke into her lungs, its drug soothing her, cooling her agitation like ice water in her veins. Jeffrey rolled down his window as he watched her slender arm move from the steering wheel to her lips. It was a graceful, sensuous movement—more so because it was unconscious.

“I want to stop by the station and see what they’ve come up with on that list of park visitors. I want to cross-check it against
that list of volunteers,” Lydia said, again driving too fast up the winding road away from the church.

“And I want to go talk to that slow kid,” said Jeffrey, forever politically correct.

“So, what do you think?” she asked him.

“I’m not sure. That priest has something to hide, though.”

“I picked up on that, too. You think he’s involved?” she answered, her words punctuated by a sharp exhalation of smoke.

“He drives a green minivan, he made the crosses that were found at each scene, he had knowledge of and proximity to all the victims. If he wasn’t a priest, I might have taken him in,” Jeffrey said, only half joking. “I don’t think he’s involved directly. But I think he knows something. I’m going to have Morrow put some men on the church, have them lurk about, make people uncomfortable, and see what shakes loose. We also need to get a tech out to that minivan.”

“Jeffrey?”

“Yeah?”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“As long as I need to.”

A leaden silence fell between them. He waited for her to say something to clarify the meaning of her question. But she just reached for the ashtray and stubbed out her cigarette.

“Why?” he asked finally. “Do you want me to get a room somewhere?”

“No,” she said quickly, sharply, glancing over at him. “Of course not. Don’t you dare.”

“Then why?”

“I was just wondering,” she said, quickly lighting another cigarette with one hand. After she took a drag, she added, “I just don’t think I can get through this without you.”

“Well, you won’t have to. In fact, you never have to get through anything without me, if you don’t want to. As you well know.”

He stared out the window as he said this, and she looked over at him, her heart tight in her chest. He put his hand on her knee and she did not remove it.
Why are you more afraid of him than you are of serial killers?

T
he minivan lead was a weak one but it was all they had right now. So Lydia sat in an uncomfortable orange plastic chair, in a rickety carrel housing a computer that might have been older than she was. The sun beating in through a window in the police station’s computer center warmed her back as she entered into the Division of Motor Vehicles database the license-plate numbers of vehicles that had entered Cimarron State Park in the hours between Maria Lopez’s time of death and the discovery of her body.

This was grunt work pure and simple but she had wanted to do it. Jeffrey and Morrow went with forensics to the service station to have a look at the priest’s minivan. It was a reasonable thing to do, but it just didn’t work for her. She couldn’t reconcile the priest she had met with the killer in her mind. However, maybe the killer had access to the van, had been using it without the priest’s knowledge. It was certainly worth looking into. But her time was better spent going over what they had. Morrow had been surprised that Lydia wanted to run the lists. But she knew that no one would be more likely to pick up an inconsistency or make a match than she would.

Meanwhile, the only prints recovered from the Lopez crime scene were Maria’s and those matching Mike Urquia, who they already knew had been there. The killer must have been wearing gloves. It was also likely that he had worn gloves when delivering
Lydia’s “gift” last night, as no prints or DNA had been found. A local homicide detective was visiting area shoestores and searching the Web for boot treads that matched the footprint left at the dump site. In the absence of any substantial physical evidence, the best they could hope for was a lucky break. And that Lydia’s “buzz” would lead them to it.

So, she started with the list of 123 vehicles that had entered the park on the day following the Lopez murder. Of those cars, 60 had been rented from Albuquerque Airport rental-car offices, two were school buses shuttling kids in for a nature walk, and the remaining 61 belonged to private citizens in the area.

Going down the list of vehicles, she punched each plate number into the DMV database. On the screen before her a name, picture, and address popped up. She checked each name against the list of parishioners, then plugged it into VICAP, the FBI’s database of violent offenders. If the plate was a rental, she would check the lists already delivered from the rental-car offices this morning to find the corresponding driver and go through the same cross-referencing process. She wanted to see faces, look into eyes—even if they were just license photos.

Armed with the list of church parishioners and volunteers, the log of visitors to Cimarron State Park, and lists of rental-car customers, Lydia had felt the “buzz” big time. She had
known
there was something hiding in the lists in front of her. But now nearly done with the list and no minivans, no matches with VICAP, and no church parishioners matching visitors to the park, she was starting to feel tired and frustrated. None of the people whose pictures popped up on the computer screen had a big tattoo on their forehead reading “Serial Killer.”
You’re missing something. Something so obvious
.

She entered the next plate number and it turned out to be
a rental. She crossed-referenced it with the lists and found that it was a green 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee picked up at Avis at six
P.M
. the night Maria Lopez was murdered. It was rented to a Vince A. Gemiennes of 124 Black Canyon Road in Angel Fire, New Mexico. It wasn’t a minivan but he was the only local resident to have rented a car that day. She entered his name into the DMV database and was surprised to be informed that there were no matches.
It must be a fake name
. She entered it into VICAP, hoping that it would pop up as an alias but she had the same results … no match. She sat for a moment, tapping her pen against the side of the carrel. She reached for her cell phone to call Jeffrey and then changed her mind. Instead, she wrote down the address Vince A. Gemiennes gave to Avis and left the station without a word to anyone.

She felt another momentary pang of guilt as she got into her Kompressor.
You should at least bring a uniformed officer with you
, she thought. But instead, she checked the Glock in her glove compartment to make sure it was loaded, raced out of the parking lot, and headed up Highway 64 toward Eagle Nest Lake alone.

She took the turnoff onto Black Canyon Road—though “road” was a vast overstatement for what basically consisted of a wide dirt trail. Heavily wooded by towering aspen on either side, the road was so dark, Lydia had to turn on her headlights to see the inconspicuous numbers on the widely spaced mailboxes. She was familiar with the road from her property search and she knew that each private drive led to the beautiful custom log “cabins” that were common in the resort area. Most of them had spectacular views of Eagle’s Nest Lake and were wildly expensive. She went back and forth up the road looking for number 124 and eventually ascertained that it must be the only turnoff without a number and a mailbox.

She made a right off Black Canyon Road and took the steep, winding drive up until the trees parted and she reached a clearing where the drive ended. It was an empty lot. She took the Glock out of her glove compartment where she had put it as they left the house that morning, placed it in her bag, and got out of the car.

It was so quiet she could hear the sound of her engine cooling. She turned when she heard a quiet rustling and saw a doe staring at her, wide-eyed and poised for flight. The sky was moody, scattered with clouds, and the air hinted of cooler temperatures on the way. She smelled pine and the scent of burning wood as she looked down into the valley, onto Eagle’s Nest Lake surrounded by the Touch-Me-Not Mountains. It was a spectacular view and it dawned on Lydia slowly that she had seen it before—had, in fact, been at this very lot.

The real estate agent she had spoken to had shown her this property, thinking Lydia might want to design and build her own house, since Lydia’s ideas about what she wanted were so “particular,” as the real estate agent haltingly phrased it. And though it was a beautiful piece of property, Lydia hadn’t liked that she could see other people’s homes from the lot.

Her mind began to race. She looked at the piece of paper in her hand at the name written there. Vince A. Gemiennes … There was something about the name, something off and something familiar at the same time. It was too big a coincidence that the address she had found was an empty lot she herself had almost purchased. But if she had been led here, then this man had constructed all of his planning to do that, and it would mean he had been watching her for years. She wasn’t sure which of those two possibilities was more far-fetched. Had the killer somehow known she would become involved in the solving of his crimes? Had she
somehow been part of his design all along? The thought chilled her as she mentally retraced her visits to New Mexico.