04.Final Edge v5 Read online

  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.

  The people at the shelter where her mother had gone for help had called in assistance from the Child and Family Services, and they'd sent someone to assist Katherine and her newborn, a child Katherine had only called Baby, a child Katherine hadn't even given a name to six months after Lauralie's birth. The sisters at the convent orphanage held a contest to name Baby Blodgett, and the winner was Mother Orleans with Lauralie.

  Katherine had not acted alone in her decision to give up Baby for adoption. Somebody with a name and a life of her own had strongly influenced and encouraged Katherine. Mother could not be held completely responsible for her misguided actions, so that someone else must also pay. Lauralie meant to lash out at society as well as the individual responsible for the theft of a child's life. It was the system as a whole at fault, to allow such things to go on unchecked. A system that dealt in infant children as if they were unfeeling plastic dolls with glass eyes and empty insides, as if she were a mannequin.

  After killing Mother, she had walked down to the corner and boarded the Houston Metro for downtown and the Harris County courthouse, where she eventually uncovered and examined some extremely important eighteen-year-old documents, records that revealed the full name of that meddling Mary or Merl Someone her mother had confided in and trusted, a someone who'd promised Katherine—and by extension Lauralie—a reunion that never came, a someone now in need of a lesson about tampering with other people's lives—a Meredyth Sanger.

  Lauralie startled awake, brushing at her hair, having felt something crawly scuttle across her brow and into her bangs. She leapt to her feet, pine needles clinging to her cotton print dress. She shivered at the tingling in her skin, realizing she'd slept for several hours, the sun now on the other side of the clearing. She'd been baked somewhat, but had been saved by the shade of the tree. She got her bearings by locating the house.

  She knew Arthur was due back from his school duties soon. He'd complained of having missed too much class time, that he'd be missed, possibly called into the Dean's office and reprimanded. She had told him to go, that she could use some alone time.

  He'd be hungry when he got back, she imagined. She walked back to the house, trying to decide on opening a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli for him or a can of tuna for sandwiches.

  The greyhounds in the run barked at her as she neared the house. She threw rocks at them, shouting for them to shut up. Pushing through the door and entering the kitchen, she had to wiggle around the large freezer filling the room. "Just enough wiggle room," she said as she went about preparing a stack of tuna fish sandwiches for Arthur.

  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dirty window over the sink. "The little homemaker, yeah...that's me."

  LUCAS THREW HIS leather Stetson boots atop his desk, and leaning far back in his chair, scanning the Sims file again, he wondered if he'd missed a crucial piece of information. His phone rang. It was the front desk, Sergeant Stan Kelton, telling him that a large parcel had just arrived via UPS, addressed to Stonecoat care of the department. "Looking suspicious, no return address," Stan said, "so I called for the X-ray machine and—"

  "You didn't nab the delivery man?"

  "The delivery came through UPS, all legit, Lucas. We had no cause to hold him. I've got people looking into where the parcel originated from, both at the UPS address and the return address. Best we can do."

  "Jerk likely used cash with UPS. Credit card and we'd have 'im. So what's the return address?"

  "Lucas, we've got the X ray on it now."

  "The return address, Stan?"

  The numbers meant nothing to Lucas, an address down near the shipping channel on Lowe.

  "You'll want to come upstairs now and take a look at this for yourself, Lieutenant."

  "How bad is it, Stan?"

  "Bad? All I can say is that your creep's been playing footsie up till now. This one's god awful bad, my friend."

  "I'll be up there as soon as I alert Dr. Sanger and Detective North, Stan."

  "I've got people already alerting them, Lucas. You're all to come down to the conference room off Captain Lincoln's office. See you there."

  "Lincoln already knows about the package then?"

  "Lucas, he insisted I keep him informed of anything else suspicious coming into the squad room. After what occurred with Dr. Sanger, he wants to be kept informed. His orders."

  "Gotcha...understand."

  Lucas arrived at the conference center moments ahead of Meredyth and Jana, the two of them chatting as they entered the darkened room, going silent on seeing what awaited them. On the wall screen, they saw the fuzzy video of the interior of the box addressed to Lucas. Staring back at them were a pair of blank, horrific eye sockets that dominated the terrible image of a young woman's head. The X- ray photo was black and white, like an old Bogart movie still.

  "Some still life, hey, people?" asked Lincoln, stepping out of shadow and into the picture, blocking the screen.

  No one laughed at the dark joke. Meredyth, Lucas, and Jana could make out the woman's thick, dark hair and features. It was unquestionably Mira Lourdes's head. In the black-and-white, grainy X-ray photo, the empty eye sockets gave the still-fleshy severed head the look and feel of a skull.

  "It's her all right." Meredyth tore her eyes away from the image and dropped into a chair, holding back tears.

  "That'd be my guess," Lucas said, agreeing about the identity of the eyeless woman's cranium.

  Kelton stood by like a silent sentinel.

  "Chilling." Jana fell, disheartened, into a chair.

  "Crazy how even though we know Mira's body is out there someplace," began Meredyth, "that her body's in the asshole's freezer, chopped up to fit into boxes...and knowing the likelihood...the probabilities...that is, expectations being what they are...why then does this horrible puzzle piece have so devastating an impact as it has?" She wiped at tears with a handkerchief.

  "Such a callous game he's playing," added Jana.

  "A crude inhumane monster," agreed Lincoln, "desecrating her body like this."

  "Don't you see, it's the killer's body language," said Lucas.

  "What the hell're you talking about. Detective?" asked Lincoln.

  "The bastard's speaking volumes to us."

  "Lucas is right," said Meredyth. "He's showing us scorn, hatred, disdain. By deriding our societal beliefs, mores."

  "Can you speak in English, Dr. Sanger?"

  "For instance, our cultural and spiritual need to bury our dead, the concept of the sacrosanct body as temple of the soul, our core belief in the sanctity of familial ties, and on and on. He's pissing on all of it, and that's the message. Mira's body is merely the medium for his message."

  Everyone fell silent, contemplating this.

  "The medium is the message," said Lucas. "A severed eye, a severed tooth, a severed organ, a severed hand, and now the head. A pox on you and yours. A curse. He's cursing us."

  "Whatever the hell he's doing, cursing or scorning, damn it, people, I want an end to this post-office-happy fiend," shouted Lincoln. Calming, he added, "People, we have to end this madness and end it quickly. This can't go on; it can't drag on!"

  "We're on it, Captain," Jana said, trying to assure him. "We kn
ow something about this maniac. We know he's interested in trying to shake us up in a spectacular fashion."

  "Is that a fact?" Lincoln's sarcasm spewed forth thick and biting. "What we know is that this creep is creeping us all out, but he's particularly interested in you two, Dr. Sanger, Lucas. He's got a bug up his ass for you! Why? He's got something personal going with you two and...and g'damn it, I want to know what the fuck it is."

  "We think that he thinks that by choosing us as targets that he can grab off the front-page headlines, a most- wanted wanna -be," said Lucas.

  "Key-rice...please, not another one. Will the Lord of Joe-has-a-fit deliver us."

  "This monster is scratching to get into the Serial Killer Hall of Fame," Meredyth added. "Simple as that."

  Captain Lincoln walked around to stand over Meredyth, placing a hand on her shoulder, seeing how distraught she had become and how she fought to keep her eyes off the image on the wall or the still-closed box sitting at the center of the table. Captain Lincoln calmly asked, "You mean he wants John Walsh or the FBI to come after him?"

  "It's a theory."

  "A theory? I need more than a theory, Dr. Sanger."

  "What do you want from me, Gordon?"

  "You're the expert on psychotic behavior, the demented mind, the maladjusted, discontented, rage-filled disenfranchised aberrant soul out there on every street corner, so you tell me, Doctor, are you convinced this is the maniac's motive or not?"

  "I'm not completely convinced, no."

  "And why is that?" pressed Lincoln.

  "Because...because I keep feeling like there's a bell tolling in my ear, and it's ringing specifically for me and Lucas, that he's more interested in destroying our peace of mind than he is in acquiring a legendary reputation as a blackguard of negative fame. But on the other hand, perhaps he wants both."

  Lincoln paced back around the conference table. He contemplatively muttered, "For whom the bell tolls, huh? It tolls for thee."

  "All I'm saying is I feel we're being stalked for reasons other than his wanting media attention," Meredyth added.

  Lincoln continued to pace the room. "I want everyone who has been involved on the case in any way, shape, or form to come down and have a look at what this mother-fucker's shoved in our faces in our own house. Call in Chang, his CSI team, Purvis, Davies, anyone in your department who's been helping out, Detective North, Dr. Sanger, and get them all down here pronto! We begin to end this terrorism here and now. Call it an ad hoc task force, but get them here. We'll open your UPS box, Lucas, with Chang's people in attendance. All right, everyone, go out, make the necessary calls, get your heads together, and get back here ASAP."

  IN A MATTER of twenty minutes, everyone who had had any hand whatsoever in the strange case of what was being called the Post-it Ripper stepped through the doors of the darkened conference room to stand and stare at the ugly image on the wall. Dr. Tom Davies was the last to enter, finding a seat near Chang and Nielsen. At one end of the table sat Jana North and the two men who had interrogated and polygraphed Dwayne Stokes. In addition, Jana had called in the two men who'd gone over Mira Lourdes's Saab. Stan Kelton, Lucas, and Meredyth sat at the other end. Between and among them sat various evidence technicians who had handled segments of the evidence gathering and/or specimen analysis from the crime scenes at either Meredyth's place, Lucas's apartment, or the police garage. Among them were photographer Steve Perelli and evidence tech Ted Hoskins. Alongside them, Dr. Catrina Purvis sat tapping a pencil nervously atop a notepad.

  Finally, Anna Tewes, the sketch artist, was moving about the room, averting her eyes from the screen, busy handing out the updated description of the suspect. The new sketch, a blending of actor Richard Thomas's features with those of Microsoft's Bill Gates and director Ron Howard, included the hairy mole, black eyebrows, blond head, larger ears, and thicker glasses. The additions, courtesy of Stu the doorman, had transformed the bland "happy face" original.

  With all assembled, Captain Lincoln pointed to the eyeless image of the severed head on the wall, and informed them, "Our crack team of detectives here, armed with a photo of a missing person, has told me this box you see at the center of the table contains the severed head of a young woman named Mira Lourdes, ladies and gentlemen."

  A photo of Mira Lourdes was thrown up on the wall beside the X-ray image of the head in the box, and Leonard Chang maneuvered the photo image to overlay the X-ray image. It formed a perfect match, down to the high cheekbones.

  "Now you know who you've been gazing at since your arrival. A young murder victim, and the bastard that killed her, this Post-hole guy the press is chewing up our asses to know more about, has the temerity to dump this on my doorstep, here at the Thirty-first—our house, folks." Lincoln moved around the room, pausing to let this sink in. "Mira Lourdes's severed head."

  "This is the fourth parcel this creep has forwarded to us, all addressed to either Dr. Sanger or myself," said Lucas.

  Lincoln continued, saying, "We are now going to open the second little present addressed to Lieutenant Stonecoat care of the department via UPS. Lights up, please."

  Someone near the switch gratefully brought up the lights. "Dr. Chang, I bow to you," Lincoln said, dropping into a chair in a near genuflection. "Open the damned box, and we'll all have a firsthand look at what this madman has seen fit to send us."

  "In the flesh, so to speak," commented Hoskins in a lame attempt to lighten the moment if only by a hair.

  Chang and Nielsen had laid out a white sheet on the table and placed the parcel atop it. "The sheet will catch any fibers or hairs that might go airborne on opening the box," Chang explained.

  "Steve, get photos of this from beginning to end, please," said Lincoln.

  Steve Perelli instantly found his feet and moved about the table, obviously glad to be working instead of staring. Using a compact film camera, he quickly began creating a photo history.

  His hands gloved and steady, Leonard Chang next carefully cut away the plain brown wrapping from the box to reveal a liquor box beneath, the words Jim Beam prominently displayed. Chang then proceeded to cut away the tape holding the box closed. He next carefully pulled back the flaps, Perelli continuing to record it all with his camera.

  Chang's face twitched slightly as he stared down into the box, and Perelli focused over his shoulder, both men privy to the still-vibrant color of auburn that was Mira's hair. Chang reached into the box and lifted out the dismembered head to the combined gasps of the men and women present, while Perelli somehow continued to roll film.

  Chang held the head by a fistful of the wilted auburn hair, and he gently turned the eyeless face, examining all sides of the cranium for fractures or abrasions, but he found none. "Hair is damp, possibly indicating it was washed by killer, or simply wet from thawing out."

  Liquid gruel dripped from the open gullet held over the white sheet. Chang reached a gloved hand up and into the gullet, stating, "The semicircle of the hyoid bone is shattered so horribly, it is unlikely she was strangled to death. Likely shattered by an ax."

  No one said a word. The only sound was the quiet hum of Perelli's camera. Finally, Lucas asked, "How do you know it was done with an ax?"

  'Two blows," replied Chang. "First blow not so neat as second strike of the ax, Lucas. My best guessestimate with naked eye."

  Chang continued. "The lack of coloration around the wounded eyes indicate she was mercifully dead when the eyes were removed."

  "Thank God for that much," muttered Dr. Purvis, holding a handkerchief over her mouth and nostrils, fending off the ever-growing odor of the contents of the box. She contemplated the eyeballs that she'd declared those of a young woman.

  "However, coloration at the neck wounds—at least two wounds from what I can see," continued Chang, his eyes so close to the severed neck that his nose might be touching her hair, "gives me suspicion that she was alive when her head was chopped off."

  "What kind of weapon do you suspect?" asked Jana North.
r />   "A guillotine of some sort?" asked one of the polygraph men.

  "A blunt blade, not a surgical tool, likely an ax, a dull one. Notice the jagged edges, the puckering and pigmentation of the skin around the wound, and the scarring at two separate angles."

  Everyone remained silent, picturing such an attack.

  The young sketch artist, Anna Tewes, suddenly and noisily knocked over her chair as she stood and pushed away from the table, rushing for the door, holding back her morning's breakfast. She had brought a cup of coffee into the room with her, and its contents had spilled over the white sheet, creamy brown rivulets creating competing little serpent trails moving toward the severed head that Chang had plunked there. Lynn Nielsen threw a cloth over the coffee while others in the room stared at Tewes's exit, thinking they'd like to make an escape as well, but everyone remained seated, calm save for Dr. Purvis's coughing jag into her handkerchief.

  No one could miss the jagged edges, dirt, and particles adhering to the gullet; all of it spoke of a messy, blunt ax job. "Lizzy Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks," commented Ted Hoskins. The comment didn't lighten the mood around the table.

  Dr. Lynn Nielsen leaned in toward Chang for a closer look at the assaulted neck. "Dr. Chang is correct. There is nothing of the care we saw taken with the removal of the hand." Nielsen's Scandinavian voice echoed in the silent room, deep and rumbling. "That bit of butchery we determined to be accomplished with a rotary medical saw of the sort we use in autopsies."

  "Those things are loud as hell, aren't they?" asked Lincoln.

  "Only when going through bone or the skull," Nielsen countered.

  "So whoever this creep is, either people are used to his noise, or it's perfectly normal given the circumstances, as in a butcher's shop," suggested Stan Kelton, who'd remained stoically silent until now.

  "Yes, Stan, or an autopsy room," added Chang.

  "Or he's in an area where the noise can't be heard," suggested Lucas.

  Chang, expanding on these comments, added, "None of the previous parts of our Jane Doe—now Mira Lourdes—indicated cause of death, but now we know how she died. Here is our answer, a ruthless and clumsy beheading."