Final Edge s--4 Page 14

  "Peter here is our resident expert on the new brain reader in there," she explained.

  "It's a BPR hooked to an IBM imaging computer that prints faster than you can blink," said Markson.

  "BPR?" Lucas asked.

  "BrainPrint 2232, deluxe model."

  The second polygraph inspector joined them, leaving Stokes alone inside, nervously snatching cables from his body and brain. The second operator handled the older polygraph using galvanic skin responses. He introduced himself to Lucas as Earl Harmond and he pumped Lucas's arm, his eyes wide with admiration. "Mr. Stonecoat…Detective… you're a hero and local legend. I–I'm so proud, sir, to be acting as HPD civilian support personnel on one of your cases. I've been a fan since I was a kid."

  "Your help is appreciated. What do your machines say about Dwayne Stokes?"

  "Rules him out. He's telling the truth."

  "No way he could be faking it," added Markson. "The BPR never lies."

  "You implying my machine does?" argued Earl.

  "I'm saying, Earl, our machines agree, and so can we." Markson led Lucas closer to the one-way mirror and pointed in to where Stokes was taking off the final electrodes.

  "See the electrode attachment cap for his head? This technology measures brain-wave patterns as well as galvanic skin response-a perfect blending of old and new technologies. We've got all the bases covered. Unless this guy is Houdini, he gets a pass."

  "Then we work on the assumption the abduction took place as he pieced it together from the neighbor," said Lucas, seeing that Earl had reentered the interrogation room, telling Stokes that he had passed with flying colors.

  Meredyth said, "We need to get the neighbor back to Houston. Get her to our sketch artist, hypnotize her, whatever it takes to get more details from her."

  Jana looked at her watch to punctuate her words. "I'm working on that now, but it's sometimes hard to get citizens to cooperate in an investigation. Too many have seen what happens to witnesses on The Sopranos and Law and Order. Look, I gotta go." She dashed off.

  "If the Jamaica connection calls, let us know!" Lucas shouted after Jana. Meredyth dug a heel into his boot.

  "Hey, what's that for?" he asked.

  "You don't have to be so chummy with Detective North, Lucas."

  "Hey, Mere, what the devil're you talking about?"

  "Men really are from Mars."

  "Why don't we get started on those old case files of yours."

  "I told you before, Lucas, confidentiality laws prohibit me from sharing patient information with cops. Haven't I always kept your confidences even though on occasion it meant breaking the law? How'd you like it if I shared what I know about you with, say, IAD? It'd put you behind bars, Lucas. See now why these rules of conduct and ethics need to be in place?"

  "All right…you and your intern can go over the shrinkology files, but there's nothing says I can't explore old cases brought to trial by you, me, or the both of us."

  "Fine, let's divvy the workload up that way, but I expect to find you up to your elbows in paperwork, not up to your ass in Jana North."

  She stormed back toward her office, a handkerchief dabbing at her eyes. He started after her, but stopped and shouted instead. "That's uncalled for, Mere!"

  Markson came around a comer with a cup of coffee paused at his lips. "Something wrong?"

  Lucas, ignoring the cadet wiz kid, shouted down the corridor at the fleeing Meredyth. "You're doing it again! Push me away! Go ahead! Create excuses out of thin air."

  She turned and with her teeth set in a firm jaw, began to speak, but only stammered.

  "It's all smoke and mirrors, your little magic show," Lucas shouted, "so you don't have to really deal with us, with what's happened between us over the last two days, Mere!"

  But she slipped into the elevator, disappearing from his sight. Lucas was left standing all alone, people around him politely pretending they'd heard nothing, going about their business. Lucas went for the stairwell, deciding the only safe place might be the Cold Room and his desk.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lauralie Blodgett breathed deeply, taking in the crisp cool morning air, leisurely strolling the woods around the farmhouse, a quaint little white clapboard home. She had convinced Arthur to rent the house and property for their purposes. Although it had a useless fallen-in barn and shed, there was a fenced-in dog run that appealed to Dr. Belkvin's dog-loving nature.

  "Hell, out here, you could let your dogs run free," she had told him. "Arthur, it's perfect!"

  Arthur said it could be a sign that she wanted some stability in their relationship, indeed, in her life, that she had never enjoyed before, being an orphaned child without security. She hadn't dispelled Arthur's cockeyed notions, but rather allowed them to build in his lightly dusted sandy-haired head.

  There were aspects of Arthur's little homey dreams that did appeal to Lauralie, but she had far too many unrealized plans to settle just yet into a life with anyone, much less a four-eyed Dr. Doolittle with a hairy mole on his right cheek.

  She shook off any further thought of it, wishing to enjoy the moment amid the freshly watered earth and grasses, the leaves dripping still with last night's cleansing rain. Nature taking a shower, replenishing herself, she thought. It'd been forever since Lauralie had replenished herself, or simply taken some time for herself. Having learned the where-abouts of the woman who had taken her from her mother, Lauralie had spent untold hours researching, following leads, examining clues, exploring evidence, learning, and stalking her prey, planning and deciding how best to destroy her. She didn't want Dr. Meredyth Sanger to die quickly, but rather to suffer a long and torturous harassment, to be made to feel responsible for the deaths of others, and to lose her hold on her sanity, a fittingly ironic end for a professional sanity peddler. After all that, then it might be Dr. Sanger who would spend eighteen years under the control of an institution, told when to get up, when to eat, bathe, take her pills, sleep, get up again, and relentlessly repeat the process without deviation or question. To die inside slowly over years, knowing she was the cause of Lauralie's pain and the death of everyone Meredyth loved.

  Birds chased one another among the juniper trees just ahead of Lauralie, catching her fascination, and the morning sun glistened on the still-wet dew. A faraway hawk cried out to its mate, no doubt spotting its prey on the ground. As she high-stepped through the tall grass, a soft murmur of insect activity surrounded Lauralie, creating a cloud of fairylike creatures captured in the morning sunbeams.

  The stream that ran along one end of the property trickled in her ear as she examined the leaves on the variety of trees here, every sort of hardwood. It was a bountiful, beautiful location, an oasis of green amid miles of brown and red earth on all sides, and she wondered what had happened to the family that had once farmed here. She imagined the children all grown up, that they had abandoned the life here, going off to the big city, taking jobs in factories and mills, leaving the land. No doubt their grandparents and parents had each in turn died in the old house.

  Lauralie fancied that she could feel their spirits in the clapboard farmhouse; she sensed their shock and amazement over her shoulder each time she wrapped and addressed a parcel filled with parts of the Lourdes woman. To anyone else, the old house stood empty and abandoned, but Lauralie knew better. While it had been abandoned by its previous tenants, it had never been completely abandoned by them. Fortunately, the ghosts of the house had no method of contacting the authorities about the use to which Lauralie had put the old place.

  She could see the house through the trees, the kitchen screen door and the large freezer unit that Arthur had purchased for her, one of his earliest tests. She gave thought to Arthur, and how malleable he was in her hands as she found that kind spot in his heart, the one all balled up with his sex drive. Yes, Arthur was so kind to her, giving in to her every whim.

  She strolled further from the house, deeper into the thicket, until she came on a neat little circle of grass surround
ed by bush, an Alice in Wonderland clearing. An area blanketed with pine needles, a cushion placed here for her to sit against a tree and let the sunshine play across her face and body, warming her through her clothing, a simple cotton dress.

  She thought that in another life she could easily have been happy simply being a farmer's wife. Perhaps she still could be, said a voice inside a niche inside a cubbyhole corner of her mind. After this was all over, perhaps she could convince Arthur to set up house here, to remain here for the rest of their lives. Arthur would do it too. He'd do anything for me, she thought, anything I want. Arthur is a dear.

  Of course she knew better, that she had no future. She began to feel an overwhelming need for sleep. She hadn't been getting much rest lately, her appearance telling the story, and so in closing her eyes, she felt the peaceful voice of slumber whisper in her ear, gently calling her name as in a chant, the lord of sleep, Morpheus, a motherly matron in Lauralie's estimation, luring Lauralie into her soft arms.

  Now that Lauralie's birth mother had crossed over, Lauralie felt certain the woman had come to a new realization of the error of her ways; Mother had learned her lesson, and she too beckoned with a soft voice inside Lauralie's head, asking to curl up alongside her daughter now. Sleep, sleep, with sunshine warming the eyelids.

  As she dozed, her mind took her back to her upbringing at the convent for orphaned girls. She had been put up for adoption at birth, and only recently had she learned who her mother was, and more importantly, where the woman had been all these years. The horrible truth was that her mother hadn't been a world away, not thousands or even hundreds of miles off as Lauralie had always imagined, but worse, here in Houston all these eighteen years.

  She recalled in her dream how she had shown up at her mother's doorstep unannounced, surprising the woman, who looked strangely like herself. "Are you Katherine Anne Croombs Blodgett?”

  Her mother didn't have to answer, but the woman's parched lips parted, and she mouthed the word yes as if expecting this day to come all her life. From the first glance, and given die nature of the question, and the way in which Lauralie had put it to her, the woman calling herself Katherine Croombs nowadays knew the young woman on her doorstep was her daughter. The daughter she had abandoned stood before her, and after an awkward silence, Katherine invited young Lauralie into her ramshackle home on Groilier Street in a run-down neighborhood in the shadow of the Interstate overpass. As Lauralie entered the house, she heard the noise and felt the vibration from traffic overhead on the Interstate. Cars exceeding the fifty- mile-an-hour limit, whistling by at sixty-five and seventy, literally shook the little two-flat tenement rental home.

  After their initial meeting, Lauralie took her time getting to know Mother Katherine Croombs and her lifestyle. She worked hard and patiently to win the older woman's trust. Lauralie provided her with money and stockpiled her with what seemed most important to Katherine-alcohol.

  Later, when {Catherine died, no one questioned the woman's death by alcoholic poisoning, certainly not the authorities. No one ever knew or guessed the truth, that on the night of her death, Katherine Croombs Blodgett had learned the full extent of Lauralie's wrath.

  Lauralie had tied her down to the bedposts, and she had force-fed whiskey into Katherine until it was coming out her pores. Officially, she drank herself to death. Unofficially, Lauralie had seen to it.

  Lauralie had fulfilled her desire to kill her mother, but not before weeks of working her mother around to explain it all, to tell Lauralie how she could possibly have given away her own flesh and blood daughter. "Me, me, Lauralie, Mother. How could you give me away like I wasn't worth your time?"

  After Lauralie's visits had become somewhat routine, Katherine, having had enough drink to loosen her tongue, finally tried to explain her actions, prefacing her words with, "Now…this isn't any excuse. I–I-I can't offer no excuse," she stuttered, "but-but-but it kinda explains where I–I was at, at the time, where my head was at…how bad it got. You see…sweetheart…I…I…I had a mental disorder, and a drug habit on top of that."

  "You coulda gotten help!"

  "Damn it, honey, I pleaded for help! I wanted help. I–I-I sought help, but they took you away from me because…because…I don't know the reason why, because I was so out of it, I–I-I couldn't follow what was going on, and so I–I put my trust in a woman working for the child welfare people."

  "You were unwed too, and you didn't know who the father was, did you? You still can't tell me who my father is, can you?"

  "He died a few years ago of a brain tumor."

  "You lived together? As man and wife?"

  "John and me, we ran into one 'nother on the street seven or eight years after I gave you up. He was limping badly, crippled from a construction accident. He was in bad shape, and I–I felt sorry for him and took him in. We lived together for the last ten years, helping one 'nother out. I guess you could say we loved one 'nother."

  "John what? What was his name?" she pressed, even though she already knew the answer.

  "Blodgett, I gave you his name, Blodgett."

  'Tell me about Daddy."

  "He was three-quarter Indian, Native American, part Mexican."

  "What was his excuse for never coming for me? All the days and nights of my life, believing that one day one or both of you would come and take me home!"

  Katherine turned her gaze away and walked off. She wrung her hands and shook her head, unable to find words.

  "He never knew? You never told John Blodgett, did you, ever?" Lauralie asked. "You gave me his name on my birth certificate, but you never told him, did you?"

  "No…no, I never told him. Not even on his deathbed."

  "But why?" Lauralie pleaded. "Were you ashamed of me, your half-breed daughter? Was that another nail in my coffin, another reason to keep me your dirty little secret?"

  "No, it was never like that. I–I-I was ashamed of myself, of what I'd become and for…for having to give you up, and too afraid of John's reaction by then, that he might leave me. He could have a violent temper at times too."

  "I want a picture of dear old Dad then."

  Katherine found a wallet-sized photo of a dashing, young man with a roguish smile below a full mustache. He had dark skin and black eyes, and the eyes looked mischievous and bold. Lauralie put the picture into her purse.

  "I want to know more about this woman with Child and Family Services, the one who helped you out so much when you needed it. The one who took me away from you."

  "But why do you want to dwell on that awful time, Lauralie? We have the here and now to make up for all those years."

  "I want to know all about her, Katherine, Mother, please." Lauralie kept her drinking.

  "She was a young woman, younger than me, but very smart about the law and legal aid, all that. In fact, she was a young medical intern, I think."

  "Medical intern? Studying to be a doctor?"

  "A psychologist, I think."

  "Her name, Mother. In case I want to look her up, you know, thank her for all she did for you when you were completely alone."

  "It's been so many years, dear. She most likely doesn't even live in Houston anymore."

  "Her name, Mother, her name!"

  "Mary or Merl or something; I can't recall the last name. Anyway, she led me into court, and next thing I know, you were being put in an orphanage, and me…I–I- I got so down on myself after that, well, I–I-I thought you'd be better off once you were adopted, once they found a good home and a loving family for you."

  "I understand all that. I know you put your trust in this woman."

  "I put my trust in the court, Harris County, the system, all these people telling me what I should be doing next. It was their job to…to find you a good home, something I couldn't've given you in a hundred years, baby."

  "But you never checked to find out whatever became of me, did you, Mom? If you did, you'd've known I was never adopted. I've spent my entire life in that prison you condemned me
to, that convent school."

  "I'm sorry…so, so sorry."

  'Tell me more about the woman who took me away from you! I want to know everything, every word she said to you."

  "She came to the house, picked me up in a nice car, brought me down to the county courthouse, and she spoke up for me. She made out like she would see to it I got off drugs, away from the booze, that I'd get me a job, you know, and get better, rehabbed, and that someday…someday I could get you back…someday, but that day just never came, honey."

  "How old was I then, Katherine…Mommie? How old?"

  "Six months."

  "Six months into the year of my birth." Lauralie calculated the month in 1984 of her mother's court appearance, and since Katherine hadn't changed cities in all these years, Lauralie knew where the court records would be housed for her case.

  After killing her biological mother that night and sleeping alongside her for the first time in her life, Lauralie, the following morning, went searching for this Mary or Merl who had taken her away from the life she should have enjoyed with Mother. The chief cause of all Lauralie's grief, her Lifelong agony, the woman who had lied to her mother. The woman who'd stolen Lauralie's childhood.

  Going out the door, waving to Mother's corpse that morning, Lauralie had felt a great sense of accomplishment. She had amassed a lot of information in a short amount of time without setting off the powder keg of emotions that might easily have led to an explosion between her mother and herself, which would have accomplished nothing. This way, Lauralie had gleaned all she needed to know; she had garnered useful stuff, ranging from her father's having died of a brain tumor and her mother's bipolar disorder-explaining much of Lauralie to herself- to Mother's drug problem, and how a separation in Lauralie's sixth month of life had been pushed through the courts by a court-appointed welfare worker with connections to the convent and the Houston medical community. An intern working her way up the ladder whom Lauralie meant to find and destroy.