“She’s gone,’’ he said, voice trembling, betraying a boyishness that his physical bearing did not. “Something terrible happened to her that night. I can just feel it, you know?’’
Lydia was thinking of Maria Lopez’s gutted body rotting in the woods.
He paused and looked away from Lydia. His voice was softer, almost a whisper when he began speaking again, and she noticed his hands were shaking slightly.
“I would have made her stay put if I could have. But no one could tell Shawna what to do, not even me. She had a real problem with authority. I wish she had listened to me only this once.’’
She didn’t have to be a mind reader to see how much Greg had loved Shawna, and that he would rather be dead than ever hurt her. There was no way to fake grief like that. Lydia hated to probe further, knowing that the more he had to recount for her, the more painful this conversation would get, but she needed to know who Shawna was, where she had spent time, what her routines were.
“Greg, tell me what you can about Shawna, what she was like. I need to get a sense of who she was.’’
“Other people only saw the worst of her, her bad temper, her lack of interest in school, her rebelliousness. But to me, she was an angel. God, she was sweet. Loving, thoughtful.’’
The earnestness in his voice moved Lydia more than she liked. She steeled herself against the wave of sadness and sympathy that welled within her.
“No one I know had a harder life than Shawna. Her parents both died in a plane crash when she was five and she was turned over to the state because she had no living relatives. A lot of people who take in foster kids do it for the money. They don’t really care about the children; some even resent them. Shawna had a real run of bad luck when it came to that. Most of the time she wouldn’t even talk about it. But she had scars all over her body – cigarette burns, a long gash on her back. If you raised your hand too fast, too close to her, she’d flinch. If I held her too tightly, too close to me, she’d panic, fight to get away like a coyote in a trap.
“Meg and Harden Reilley, her foster parents up the road, never hurt her, she said. But she was more than they could handle, stubborn and wild. They tried to love her, I think. But she wouldn’t let anyone close to her but me. She distrusted everyone – for the most part.’’
“‘For the most part’?’’
“She loved to go to church. She said it was the only place that gave her peace, the only place where she didn’t feel like a black sheep. She was close to Father Luis and his nephew Juno at the Church of the Holy Name. She helped out with things like the bake sale, bingo night, the Christmas party. She said they accepted her without judgment, like I did. Trusted her with responsibilities that no one else would dream of. They made her feel special, trustworthy. It was very important to her – the church. But she kept it a secret. She would sneak off there, like she was going to do something wrong. I asked her why she didn’t want anyone to know. She said she was afraid someone would take it away from her. She wanted to guard with her life the things she loved, always afraid of losing them. It broke my heart.’’
“So she spent most of her time at the church, at school, or with you. Was there any other place she hung out regularly?’’
He shook his head. “She didn’t really have any friends. She wasn’t one to go to the mall. She didn’t care much for movies. We stayed around here mostly.’’
A silent tear traveled down the landscape of his face. He put his head down in his hands and sat, his breathing shallow and quick. She wanted to reach out and touch his hair, or take this boy in her arms and tell him that the pain goes away – that it fades like the memory of Shawna’s face will fade. But she was locked up tight inside, unable to give him what she was still unable to give herself. And besides, maybe it wasn’t even true. Maybe his pain would never go away; maybe every woman’s voice would echo Shawna’s for him for the rest of his life; maybe he would keep thinking he saw her in crowds; maybe the color green would forever remind him of Shawna’s eyes.
Lydia sat across the table from him, watching his big shoulders tremble. She was not at all surprised to learn of Shawna’s connection to the church. Since a few hours ago, when they’d put everything together, she expected each of them to have left a silken, spider’s-web thread leading her back to Juno. She just needed to find the point at which it all converged and the killer would be there, waiting for her.
“I’m sorry,’’ Greg said finally, raising his head and wiping the tears from his eyes.
“Please don’t be. I understand.’’
“You’re the first person to hear me out that hasn’t treated me like a criminal or a fool whose girl ran away from him.’’
“In the days preceding Shawna’s disappearance, did you notice anyone strange hanging around or did she tell you of anyone bothering her?’’
“No, not that I remember. And I think I would remember. I was pretty protective of her.’’
“Just think for a minute. Anything she said, even in passing, someone she found creepy or didn’t like?’’ She saw something flicker in Greg’s eyes.
“Well, it’s pretty stupid. I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.’’
“What is it?’’
“The day before she disappeared we had a good laugh because Shawna made me promise never to buy a minivan, no matter how many kids we had. She said the past couple of days, she’d seen a green minivan a couple of times. She said, ‘Once you buy a minivan, you can kiss your youth and any hope you ever had of being cool again good-bye.’ But she never said where she’d seen it, or that she felt she was being followed.’’
“Did you see any other cars on the road that night when you went looking for her?’’
“Not one. Do you think someone was following her, Ms. Strong?’’
“It’s possible.’’
“Either I or her parents drove her almost everywhere.’’
“But she walked here often? From her house?’’
“Often enough.’’
Lydia pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Greg. “If you think of anything else that might help, call me day or night.’’
She stopped the tape machine and put it in her bag, rose, and took his outstretched hand. There was a warmth and gentleness to his grip. It was easy to see why Shawna loved him. He was a protector.
“Do you think she’s dead, Ms. Strong?’’
“I don’t know, Greg. I wish I did.’’
He nodded, closing his eyes. “Thank you, Ms. Strong.’’
He walked her to her car and opened the driver’s seat door for her. “You’ll keep me posted?’’ he asked.
“Of course.’’
As she did a U-turn and drove up the road away from him, she saw him in the rearview mirror, just standing and watching her drive away. He looked so sad and alone, so powerless, like a child who had lost his grip on a helium balloon and was watching it float into the sky.
She gripped the wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. She was angry, so fucking angry. She’d never admitted to anyone, not even Jeffrey, how furious she felt after interviewing the grief-stricken loved ones, the other victims of murderers. They had to live with what had been done to the person gone, they had to try to keep from imagining what that kind of pain and fear must be like, to keep from wondering what the last moments were like. When someone you love dies in a car wreck or a plane crash, there is always the possibility they died instantly, that they never knew death had come for them, that one minute they were on their way for milk at the store and the next…nothing. The families of murder victims didn’t have that luxury, that chance for peace. They were haunted always, forever altered.
Who are you? And what do you want? she thought as she turned onto the main road and gunned the engine.
They always wanted something; these kinds of killers always had an agenda. The pedophile, the rapist, he was driven by an urge he couldn’t control. Nature or nurture, biochemistry or psychosis, whatever compelled him was as much a part of him as the blood running through his veins. But a serial killer like this always had a reason – vengeance, fame, punishment.
Jed McIntyre had wanted to destroy lives. The killing of his victims, though he enjoyed it very much, was only a means to achieving an end goal, which was to destroy the life of the child left behind. Just as Jed’s life was destroyed when his father had killed his mother in front of him and was sent to the electric chair.
