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  He went through an enormous ballroom, which was “put up” in neat order. From there he found a lavatory large enough to put his entire apartment into, with room to spare.

  He moved on to a relatively small and cozy dining room, which was still large enough for a football squad to practice plays in. Nothing un toward here.

  Another door off this area led him into the spacious kitchen area, large enough to accommodate twelve chefs, if you could keep them from cutting one another's throats.

  The kitchen was also home to an enormous walk-in freezer, as well as two jumbo refrigerators, all stocked to bulging; there were large stainless steel cabinets with a huge chopping block running down the center, below which were additional cabinets and not two but three dishwashers.

  Apparently, the judge enjoyed lavishing his wealth about on others who came here for gala events and parties. Lucas recalled something in the news accounts about his employing his home as a place for fund-raising events on a grand scale, with such guests as Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Merle Haggard as his draws. One paper called him the most beloved benefactor in all of Houston, an altruistic horn-blower and enthusiastic supporter of the human spirit. People high up in such organizations as the March of Dimes, the American Diabetes Association, Al-Anon, Alzheimer's Research, AIDS Research, Cancer Research, Farm Aid, the Red Cross, Disaster Relief Fund of Greater Houston, Advocates for the Homeless—”You name it,” said one official.

  So, who could hate a guy like this? wondered Stonecoat as he moved about the kitchen, looking for exactly what he didn't know.

  Hate was the operative word—passionate hatred or fear.

  You didn't dismember someone after blowing a three-centimeter hole through his heart because you liked the guy. Maybe there was some irrational maniac involved, one whose fear of Mootry was so great that he must completely and utterly destroy the man to be free of his hatred or fear or both. In the legends spoken of by old men of his tribe, Lucas knew the steps one took to completely annihilate an enemy. You cut out his heart, you take his vital power—the privates—and you lay waste to his limbs and head, and to be doubly sure such a powerful enemy could not resurface, you buried each part in separate secret locations.

  Lucas Stonecoat wondered if he might be seeing the work of another Indian. There were all manner of American Indians living in the Southwest and Texas vicinity. There were, besides those on his home reservation, the Tonkawa, Tawakoni, Atakapa, Karankawa, and Coahiltec to the south, the Kichai and Waco to the north, the Apache, Commanche and Llanero all to the west, small pockets of all these peoples having at one time or another found their way back to Texas lands they considered theirs. This being the case, was one of Mootry's big fund-raising efforts in any way attached to a cause that might have embraced or disowned the American Indian?

  At any rate, Mootry had to have had some contact previously with his killer. It was looking more and more to Lucas like a family thing or a revenge killing, but Mootry's “family” extended to an untold number of guests regularly invited into his home.

  According to reports, police and servants, nothing was removed from the mansion, which ruled out theft as a motive. Besides, how many second-story men carried cross bows around with them? Lucas wondered who most benefited from the old man's demise; to whom did his estate and holdings fall? He made a mental note to check into this, a simple enough matter if he could get his hands on the case file, as it would likely finger the same recipient as Amelford's chief suspect at the moment: he who benefits most from another's death. A standard procedure in wrongful deaths and homicides.

  Still, something didn't smell right, feel right or taste right about this case; this didn't seem a standard case, so following standard measures might be a waste of time and effort.

  One thing was obvious. It was a premeditated homicide, quite possibly a contract killing. The question was, who took out the contract and who carried it out?

  Lucas looked about the kitchen just as he had the other rooms, even glancing into the large walk-in freezer, primarily concerned with eyeballing anything out of the ordinary. Nothing looked amiss. He saw no glasses, silverware or dishes in any of the seven or eight sinks. He next opened one of the dishwashers. It was completely empty, as was the second he glanced into. Opening the third, it too appeared empty, except for two glasses with long stems. They were, in fact, crystal goblets, most likely used for sipping brandy or wine. On closer inspection, they appeared to be ornate Waterford crystal, born in fire.

  This reminded him of the two coasters in the living room that were not stacked with their counterparts. Lucas began searching the cabinets for the most expensive glassware, and when he came to one cabinet, he found a set of twenty-two goblets identical to the two in the dishwasher.

  Most people, even the idle rich, knew better than to place such expensive glassware into an automatic machine; most such easily breakable glassware was cleaned and polished by hand. Would a servant working for Judge Mootry make such a mistake?

  If Mootry knew his killer, and if he actually had shared wine or brandy with the assailant, then perhaps he was immobilized by something placed in his drink. After the killing, the assailant may have wiped the goblets clean of any fingerprints and placed them out of sight by putting them into the dishwasher. Even this, if it were true, told Lucas something about the killer: that he was of a cool mind when he left, that he went about his work in a methodical manner, that he was no young street punk or disorderly minded individual who stumbled in for sex with the judge and in a moment of passion decided to kill him. In the bowl of one of the goblets, there might remain trace residue of a sleeping potion.

  Lucas heard the sound of a number of voices Filtering through the huge house. He found a window that looked out over the drive and saw that there were new arrivals; possibly Amelford, his partner, more evidence techs with their electronic Magna brushes and infrared cameras in search of a blood trail or a usable print. Or the newcomers might be all of the above, returning from dinner together. Whoever it was, he didn't want to meet them, not here and not like this. The guy at the door had by now mentioned the fact that Jack Plumber had arrived from Dallas.

  His hands still gloved, Lucas quickly but carefully pinched first one and then the other crystal goblet between his finger and thumb, delicately placing each into its own plastic bag, which he'd found in one of the cabinet drawers. He concealed each goblet in his sports coat pockets.

  The others were coming, he could hear their approach, the sound like a replay of his pounding heart. He enjoyed the moment.

  He quickly replaced everything and shut all cabinets and the dishwasher; next he located a back door out of the kitchen, which freed him into a series of other rooms and passageways until he was returned to the ballroom. There he rushed for the curtained windows, and behind the heavy burgundy drapes, unlatched one of the doors, praying no alarm would be set off, certain the fools had been sure to turn off any alarms before they'd begun their investigation—if any had been turned on by the killer.

  No alarm sounded, and he felt the rush of Houston's hot, humid wall of air rush in at him as if its life depended upon getting inside. He held firm to the door and carefully eased it closed. Silently, he moved away from the house, taking a shadowed path around to where he'd left his car.

  It looked as if he'd make it out of here, if the cop at the house hadn't yet radioed ahead to his partner at the gate.

  He made a long sweep around the premises, and he could see that the search for him had advanced through the house; lights were going on even in some upstairs rooms. Hearing a footfall, knowing someone was skirting the perimeter in search of him now, Lucas crouched beside a hedgerow. When the man came into view, Lucas recognized him as the uniformed young man at the door. As soon as he was near enough, Lucas placed the cold steel of his .38 against the nape of the kid's neck, making him start.

  “Shut up and listen.”

  “Are you nuts, Plumber?”

  “Shut up, I s
aid.”

  The kid complied.

  “Drop your weapon and kick it away.”

  He did as told once again.

  “Radio the gate that everything is okay here, and your pal's to let Plumber exit peacefully.”

  The kid hesitated.

  “Do it, damn you!” He cocked his weapon and rested it again at the base of the kid's brain. He intentionally allowed the weapon to shiver as if he were nervous. The feel of the muzzle lightly shaking and raising the kid's hairs was enough to convince him.

  “All right, all right...” The young cop made the call and repeated precisely what Stonecoat wanted without hesitation or a quiver in his voice.

  “Well done and good night,” Stonecoat pronounced, striking a blow that sent the kid into unconsciousness. “Sorry, kid,” he apologized as he stepped over the young man.

  He quickly made his way to his car, got in, and started away, bringing his headlights up on the gate, where already the partner had hit the electronic gate opener. The gates rolled back, the open streets of Houston welcoming Lucas back into their anonymity.

  He casually waved to the gatekeeper, who waved back, and Lucas felt the weight of the crystal wine goblets in each pocket. They felt good, he felt great, better than he had in a long, long time. He thought of how much more fun and how much more dangerous tonight would have been if Wallace Jackson had been with him.

  FOURTEEN

  Lucas lay on his own bed now in his own small apartment, feeling foolish and harebrained and thinking now just how small his place was compared to how the rich lived, and he stared the whole while across the room at the two crystal goblets still in their cellophane sheaths. He'd placed them on his dresser, where they were busy catching and reflecting the light, the colors bouncing off the mirror in a variegated, miniature world of crazy mazes, dancing about the walls as if some spectral campfire from an ancient time had invaded Lucas's room.

  The goblets' jewel-like multifaceted cuts were like fire in more ways than one. They would fetch a few good bucks at any of the hundreds of pawnshops in the city or in nearby Galveston. They could also bring him suspension, sanctions, possible other disciplinary action. He was angry with himself for having gotten sucked into this by Sanger, and even angrier at himself for having foolishly lifted these glasses from a taped crime scene. It was enough, alongside striking another officer, to get him thrown off the force.

  He momentarily wondered if subconsciously the shining fire glass had symbolized for him his former self, his burning flame—lost for some years now; it also represented his old idiocy. Perhaps it was an idiocy handed down from former generations, an idiocy of the genetic kind, one he could never truly hope to escape. He had heard stories all his life of Indian ancestors who “counted coup,” men who dared death, flaunted their prowess as warriors, even brave Cherokee women of the Wolf clan and other clans, known as War Women, who fought alongside their men in battles lost to time and oblivion. But the Cherokee did not make war for territorial or political reasons; they made war for one reason only, to restore the natural order of the universe when one of their brothers was killed. They made war only in retaliation for murder, in order to avenge fallen brothers of the same fire. This thought, as always, made him curious about a missing people who called themselves the

  Ani-yun-wiya, the Principal People who were at the known center of the world, and about Kana'ti and Selu, the first man and woman, who most certainly faced enormous obstacles in their lifetimes.

  As with all life, change came, sometimes violently, with the clash of cultures, and so came war and reasons for war with it, along with the Cherokee idea of what constituted bravery. As Cherokees were pushed westward, first to Oklahoma Territory on the Trail of Tears, some later migrating from there to Texas, they adapted many of the Plains Indians ideas of war and bravery, learning that bravery could mean making a fool of a white man, sometimes simply by stepping into an enemy camp, slapping an enemy's face, and escaping with his horses to return to a village as a hero.

  Stonecoat's very name had come about on one such foray into the camp of a sleeping band of conquistadors. His ancient ancestor had led a band of Cherokee into an enemy stronghold, surprising the “stone coated” one in his sleep, attacking and wiping out the Spanish detachment in retaliation for earlier wrongs. When his renowned ancestor had killed the leader of these men, he had taken the man's breastplate and henceforth worn it in battle, and so his followers came to call him Stonecoat. The first Stonecoat survived many battles and died in old age, probably forty or forty-five, and was buried with his silver breastplate as a warrior. Lucas had always wondered if the man, like Lucas, might not have simply been crazy.

  Lucas wondered now if Meredyth Sanger was, in a sense, a War Woman, if she wouldn't fit right in with the Wolf clan. He admired her tenacity, but he also wished now he had never met the woman. He recalled at the same time their stroll through the Houston city zoo, what a wonderful time he had had with her, and how lovely a person she actually was, and how he had liked having her sitting across from him in his apartment, and how that was likely something he'd never see again. At the same time his mind raced with the question of how he was going to find an independent lab in this town that could discreetly analyze the fire glasses for fingerprints and chemical residue. At the same instant, another voice in his head told him not to bother, that no prints would be found on the glasses, that he killer was too damned smart for that, that he would have wiped them clean of prints before putting them into the dishwasher, and he'd have cleansed them of any chemical residue.

  “Then why didn't he put them up with the other twenty-two goblets on the shelf?” Lucas asked the room.

  “He couldn't find the others. He was in a rush, so he shoved them into the machine just to get them out of sight,” he answered himself.

  He nodded to his own inner counsel and replied, “You know something, Indian man? You're probably right.”

  So, if there wasn't so much as a damned trace of a print on the goblets, why'd / steal them? he wondered. Am I that hard up for trouble?

  He got up, went to the mirror, and stared at his reflection before answering himself.

  “I borrowed them as evidence,” he tried to convince himself, “because... if they are thoroughly an absolutely clean, then the glasses were wiped clean and shoved into the dishwasher. Why? This means the killer was careful to clean up after himself.”

  Stonecoat paced the floor until someone below banged on the ceiling, sending him back to his bed where he placed his hands behind his head and resumed thinking and talking to himself. “After he drank wine with the judge, he killed the old man and then took great pains to clean up the evidence. He knew his victim. If that's the case, the old man went to bed with the killer, slept with him or her? Or allowed the killer to take a bed just down the hall from him, likely in one of his guest rooms, where the killer patiently waited for the old man to nod off, as in Poe's story The Tell-Tale Heart.”

  Like The Tell-Tale Heart, this crime involved hearts, but unlike Poe's story of guilt and anxiety and stress overcoming the murderer, Lucas didn't expect to hear of anyone's claiming responsibility for Judge Charles D. Mootry's murder—save the habitual lunatic confessors found in every major metropolitan city. No... no sociopath who might be psychotic enough to drive a steel stake through the heart of the judge was likely to unburden himself at having killed old Uncle Charlie.

  This thought brought him back around full circle to himself and self-protection and a concern for self-preservation. What kind of fool—or rather, how many kinds of fools—had he played tonight? He hadn't taken such risks since... since before the death of Wallace Jackson, since before the accident nearly costing him his own life as well as Jackson's. The night had been great, uplifting, filled with risks. It had rejuvenated him in many ways, and he had Sanger to curse or to thank for his troubles now.

  Had Dr. Sanger known of his buried need for a life of risk-taking? Had she read him so thoroughly and easily?
<
br />   But perhaps the risks were too great, too gaping huge should he tumble. He had so much to lose, and what was in it for him if he went out of his way to solve the Mootry case, anyway?

  Certainly there were no guarantees. The department, once they learned of how he had approached this case, how he had circumvented the law, would not look kindly on his intervention, despite a favorable outcome. He knew this all too clearly. Even if he did succeed, there would be sanctions.

  So what's in it for me? he silently asked himself, his room, the goblets, the dead judge, his own ancestors.

  At near two A.M., he closed his eyes on the madness he'd become a part of. He was only certain of one thing at the moment of sleep. He did not wish to get any more involved with either the Mootry case or Dr. Meredyth Sanger.

  He wanted rather to crawl back into that safe place where he had been before meeting her. But that meant returning like a dog with his tail between his legs to the goddamned Cold Room and pretending nothing had changed. He wasn't completely convinced he could do that, but a stem and cautionary voice deep within told him he bloody well had no other choice.

  Meredyth Sanger had tried to sleep, but her frustration and her feeling of resentment toward everyone associated with the Houston Police Department—and especially Lucas Stonecoat now—had boiled anew to the surface and had actually awakened her in the night. A look at her clock told her that it was 3:11 A.M. The entire day before, she had hoped to hear from Lucas Stonecoat, that he had had time to really think things through, and that he realized his earlier mistake in not instantly and readily joining forces with her. It all seemed so obviously the right thing to do, at least in her mind's eye. Besides, what better offer was he holding out for?

  She sat upright in bed, feeling like a windswept prairie, her throat parched. She reached for the water beside her bed and gulped at it. She mentally began to browbeat herself for having sunk so low as to go out stalking and pleading with the big bear for his help. “To hell with him,” she reiterated for the hundredth time since he'd declined helping her in her quest. “As a trained psychiatrist,” she told herself aloud, “you should've known better. You'd think you would be a better judge of character after all this time, dealing with the abnormal, the aberrant, the psychos.”