Lisa Miscione: Angel Fire

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 events in the New Mexican. Instead she found 243 matches from newspapers and national magazines across the country.

Juno Alonzo, the blind man she’d seen playing his guitar the night before, was a bit of a celebrity. In fact, there were those who believed he was a healer and a psychic. Juno had lived at the church since he was a child. His uncle, Father Luis Claro, had raised Juno since his mother had died.

Most of his life had passed without incident until just two years earlier, when a woman who had been blinded in a car accident claimed he had returned her sight. An autistic boy was allegedly cured by Juno’s touch. A man claimed that Juno had contacted his dead wife and solved the mystery of her death. Of course, upon these stories hitting the mainstream media, the sick, dying, and curious of the world had descended upon Angel Fire like locusts, accompanied by the obligatory media circus. Juno Alonzo had refused interviews, claiming he had nothing to do with any of the healings. He made only one statement to the media: “If the people who have come to see me have been cured of what ails them, then it is God’s will and has nothing to do with me.’’ And when a young boy Juno visited in the hospital died after a failed organ transplant, the melee died down. People went away and Juno was forgotten again.

As Lydia read on, she vaguely remembered hearing about the story. It was before she had bought her home in Santa Fe. She chalked it up as a sensational type of story common to the supermarket tabloids. People were always looking for miracles in the dark unknown of the world, forever looking for the face of the Virgin Mary on the side of buildings, looking for Elvis in Las Vegas, looking for order in the chaos of life. This type of searching tended not to interest Lydia. There was enough in the real world that needed figuring out. I guess it never occurred to anyone that if Juno was a healer, he probably could have cured his own blindness, she thought sarcastically. But maybe that was God’s will too.

At the end of the list of articles about Juno were two items from 1965. She couldn’t believe the local paper was so on the ball as to have digitized their archives back that far, but maybe they had a lot of time on their hands. The first item was about a Serena Alonzo, who had murdered her husband by setting their house on fire while he was passed out drunk. She claimed to have killed her husband because he beat her and she feared for the life of her unborn child. The item had come up in the search because her brother, Father Luis Claro, was a young priest at the Church of the Holy Name. Serena was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Which turned out to be a pretty short sentence, according to the next item, because Serena had died while giving birth to her son in a prison hospital. The boy, Juno Alonzo, was born blind. Father Luis took custody of him and planned to raise him at the Church of the Holy Name where he resided.

It was an interesting backstory, but Lydia wondered if anyone at the police department had information on current events they wanted to discuss. Though she doubted anyone would be rushing to the phone to take her call, Lydia knew most people she called were rarely happy to hear from her, especially the police. Chief Simon Morrow of the Santa Fe Police Department was certainly no exception. When she made a call, she had questions; for whatever reason, they usually seemed to be questions people weren’t eager to answer. She had been hung up on, sworn at, had her life threatened. She didn’t take it personally. And she was very persistent. Lydia had asked some hard questions of Chief Morrow in the past, questions that would lead to her Pulitzer. He had given answers that ultimately had led to his resignation from the St. Louis Police Department. She had thought his career was over then, deservedly so. But he had turned up in Santa Fe like a bad penny, as Lydia’s mother used to say.

Lydia was on hold, and she could almost see Simon Morrow rubbing his sweating middle-aged balding head unconsciously as he sat in front of his phone, trying to decide whether or not to take her call.

“Ms. Strong, how can I help you?’’

“Chief Morrow, it’s good to hear your voice,’’ she said with mock cordiality. “Really.’’

“How long have you been in town?’’

“Long enough to pick up on a few things.’’

“Such as?’’

“I was wondering about Lucky.’’

“Lucky?’’

“Yeah, the dog that was found mutilated at the Church of the Holy Name. You might remember, Lucky was missing a few vital organs when he turned up.’’