They’re thinking of selling that house; that easily could have been their real estate agent. These fantasies are going to get you into more trouble than you can handle someday.’’
Lydia insisted. “Then just tell her that you saw a strange woman in her house.’’
“No. I’m not going to cause trouble like that. Shame on you, Lydia. You’re thirteen years old; you have no idea how complicated relationships are. In fact, though you think you’re a genius, you can’t imagine even a fraction of what goes on in the world. Claire and Taylor need to work out their problems on their own
– without meddling neighbors.’’
Her mother led her back up to her bedroom and closed the shades. Lydia fumed as Marion tucked her in for the second time. But she was tired and sick and fell asleep.
When she woke up that evening, she heard the sound of a woman crying. She walked quietly down the carpeted stairs and heard Claire’s voice from the kitchen. Claire had found another woman’s earring in her bed, the last straw in over a year of verbal abuse and suspected infidelity. Claire had packed a bag and was leaving that night to go to her mother’s home just a town away.
From her perch on the step, she saw her mother through the banister slats, though Claire had her back to Lydia. Her mother raised her eyes from Claire, sensing Lydia’s presence. Marion raised her eyebrows and shrugged sadly, as if to say, You were right. Too bad.
Lydia would remember this incident as the first of many that taught her a powerful lesson: an object out of place, a furtive gesture, something left unsaid could be indicators of a hidden truth. Most people, wrapped up in their own inner narratives, their own secrets, never noticed the subtleties of dishonesty. But very few things escaped Lydia’s notice.
She never acknowledged her peculiar ability with any gravity until the death of her mother years later. Until then, it was always a game. Life was a series of little mysteries and Lydia was a detective putting the clues together.
“Mom, I’m telling you, I’ve seen this guy before. He’s following us,’’ she told her mother urgently. She was imagining herself in an ABC Afterschool Special.
“Oh, Lydia, for Christ’s sake, he is not following us.’’
“He was standing in the parking lot watching us and when we drove away, he pulled out after us.’’
Her mother glanced uneasily in the rearview mirror. Lydia was making Marion nervous. She had seen the man and he looked very strange; Marion just thought he was some pervert leering at her daughter. And she had seen him pull out after them. She made a right turn suddenly without signaling. The red car went driving by without even slowing down.
“Wow, Mom. Good going, you lost him,’’ Lydia said dramatically.
Marion looked over at her daughter and they both started laughing. Lydia put the cap back on her blue eyeliner.
“I got the license-plate number,’’ she said.
“Good for you,’’ said Marion said, playing along. It was a game for her now, too. The threat, real or imagined, was gone.
But Lydia couldn’t drop it so easily. She was trying to remember where she had seen the man before. She knew she had. It was bothering her, making her feel uneasy.
She had the same feeling now, as she contemplated the clippings before her, the Santa Fe sun reaching into her window and heating the room like a greenhouse. It seemed like ever since the death of her mother she’d been hunting demons, trying to reveal their faces to the world so they couldn’t walk around masquerading as normal people, surprising innocent women in the night or little children as they slept.
She turned her mind to the Church of the Holy Name and how she had been there the night before and again in her dreams. What would it mean if all the pieces fit together as she imagined? She felt a tingling of the senses, as if she’d heard a scream in the night that had awakened her from sleep. As if she were lying, paralyzed in the dark, hearing the scream echo in the silence, hoping that it would come again so she could spring into action – but praying that it wouldn’t.
Five
Her study was the heart of the New Mexico house. It was a large room with a twelve-foot ceiling, decorated in warm browns and rusts, deep plum and evergreen, all the colors she found most soothing. The western wall was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, each shelf filled with the books she had read and written in her life. She kept them all, could never bear to throw any of them away. The southern wall, like most of the southern walls of the house, was glass, exposing the view she cherished. On the floor, a rich brown wall-to-wall carpet felt like velvet beneath her feet. Beside the glass wall a large sofa and overstuffed chair of sienna Italian leather faced each other. Over the couch she had draped a blanket given to her by a Tibetan monk. Velvet pillows of gold, green, and red picked up the colors of the blanket. Between the chair and table lay a huge wooden door she had purchased from an auction of an eighteenth-century Spanish castle and converted into a coffee table resting on a mahogany base. The wall behind the couch was a clutter of original black-and-white photographs from Alverez Bravo, Ansel Adams, Tara Popick, and a photo of herself taken by Herb Ritts for a profile written for New York magazine. A gothic iron candelabra sat on top of the table. On the floor over the carpet lay a large, elaborately embroidered Oriental rug.
Her desk, made of a rich, varnished mahogany, was nearly invisible beneath piles of notes, newspapers from around the country, videotapes, and her computer. Her chair was covered in the same Italian leather as the couch. The wall behind her desk was covered with awards she had won over the years, her Pulitzer the centerpiece among them.
The room, utterly silent, warm, and profoundly comfortable, was a womb. Here she found in turn solace, inspiration, seclusion. She had spent many hours sitting in her leather-bound chair, staring out the window, since she’d had the house built two years ago. She was untouchable here, completely relaxed. The only people who had ever been inside were Jeffrey and her grandparents when they came to visit. It was here she sat, surfing the Web, looking for more information on the items she had clipped from the paper.
The missing people Lydia had read about in the clippings clearly were not the concern of anyone important. Shawna Fox was a chronic runaway. It seemed like the investigation was half-assed, but the argument she had had with her foster parents led police to assume she had taken off just like she had from her three prior foster homes. The boyfriend, Greg Matthews, insisted vehemently that Shawna never would have left him, but no one seemed to give his opinion much weight. Christine and Harold Wallace were recovering addicts who had been in and out of rehab for most of their adult lives. Their disappearances probably wouldn’t even have been notable if every single thing they owned, including their wallets and car, hadn’t been left behind – and if they hadn’t owed two months rent to their landlord. He was the one who had reported them missing to the police. There were no detailed profiles of any of the victims in any of the papers. The bigger Albuquerque Journal did not even carry a mention of the events, except a small item about the surgical-supply warehouse break-in.
There was of course a slew of articles on the congresswoman’s son and his battle with leukemia, the missing dog, and the family’s graceful forbearance in the face of tragedy. The usual human-interest stuff. But Lydia could find nothing more on the Internet to expound on the Santa Fe New Mexican article that reported the dog’s body having been found mutilated at the Church of the Holy Name. So what do we have here, Sherlock? she asked herself in the sometimes mocking, sometime scolding tone that was her inner voice. It was partially her, partially her mother…Whoever it was, she could be a real bitch.
Not much, except the buzz. What she had was three of what the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit termed “high- risk victims,’’ people like prostitutes, drug addicts, or runaways whose lives or actions make them an easy mark for predators. She had arson and animal mutilation, two elements of the textbook “triad’’ of warning signs for a serial offender. Missing hospital supplies and a dog that had had his organs removed with “surgical precision’’ according to the local paper. And then there was the Church of the Holy Name and the blind man, whom she’d seen and dreamt about. The only thing connecting the church to the rest was that the dog had been found there. But still…
She typed the church name into the search engine, expecting a few listings for bingo games and charity
