04.Final Edge v5 Page 23

  "Educated speculation," corrected Meredyth. "Due in large part because Lauralie couldn't resist leaving us bread crumbs to follow, as if—"

  "Bread crumbs?" asked Nielsen.

  "Clues, as if there beats inside her the heart of a person who wants to be caught and punished," explained Lucas.

  "More likely she wants her day-and-say before the cameras and in court, as if she feels we owe it to her to catch her and make her a star," said Meredyth. "It's why she's selected Lucas and me to come after her, and perhaps because I was instrumental in placing her at that orphanage back in 1984."

  "Damn twisted story," commented Nielsen. "Sounds too much like fiction not to be true, if you understand my meaning. Beyond belief, so it makes it credible by virtue of being beyond belief. Anything that bizarre...well, we have a saying for in Sweden. It is the lunacy not yet dreamt of that will befall you."

  "I like that," said Lucas. "Are you sure it wasn't stolen from the Cherokee?"

  "Sad but true," Meredyth said of the aphorism, and then she added, "Now let me see if I have it right. The most incredible lunacy, not yet dreamt of, shall come to pass...and Jesus wept for all mankind." She toasted it with her wine glass.

  They dined to the rattle of dishware and silverware, each nursing private thoughts for the moment. The waiter came, asked after their comfort, and left. The music was as authentically Italian as the cuisine, from an opera Meredyth recognized.

  "What more can you tell us about the mother's death?" asked Meredyth of Lynn Nielsen.

  "One of the first uniformed officers at the scene told me it may have been staged to look as if Katherine had killed herself, but he would never repeat it again afterwards. Detective Feldman, the lead investigator, seemed to have some personal interest in closing the case quickly. I think he needed to clear his homicide board for the month. Who knows?"

  "Feldman's a jerk," Lucas muttered. "He's a nine-to- fiver, anxious to wrap up a case and go home."

  "Always scratching himself in the crotch," she said. "Is this why they call him Itch?"

  Lucas laughed, Nielsen and Meredyth joining in. Someone passing by jostled their table, an empty bottle of wine spilling out its last drop, telling Lucas to order a second.

  Nielsen continued talking about the Croombs matter. "They took the statements of neighbors about the woman's on-again, off-again relationship with the bottle. Said she had it bad, her battle with booze. But one neighbor said she thought Katherine was doing better since she had rediscovered her daughter." Nielsen sipped her wine before continuing. "I read some of Feldman's remarks in the file. He cited a long police history with the address, numerous occasions of disorderly disturbances, fighting, you know. This was enough to sum it all up for the detectives. Relapse. And this time an overdose. Closed case. Death was chalked down to accidental overdose."

  "Chalked up," Lucas corrected her.

  "Yes, and I was strongly urged to get it off my desk and get onto the sixty-four or so other cases awaiting me."

  "Dr. Chang never looked over the findings?" asked Lucas.

  "No, he was away at the time, and Patterson was in charge. Not likely I would have gone over Frank's head in any case, being new on the job and not yet knowing how to tiptoe around him like I do now."

  "If you had had full responsibility and freedom to pursue the case at the time, what would you have done differently, Dr. Nielsen?" asked Meredyth.

  "I would have done more than simply express my condolences to the daughter as Feldman and the others did, releasing the body and ordering it sent to an undertaker of her choosing. They should have questioned the daughter far more extensively about her alibi; instead, they listened to her sob story of how she had just found and reunited with her mother. The men were falling all over her as I recall."

  Meredyth displayed the photo of Lauralie. "Is this the daughter?"

  Nielsen studied the photo. "Yes, that is her."

  "We think she left us a gift at the convent," said Lucas. "Found this and a few ounces of blood in the baptismal at Our Lady." He showed her the index finger from what they suspected was Mira Lourdes's left hand.

  "Like I said, no such thing as free lunch," Nielsen replied, wincing at the amputated digit.

  "Sorry," said Lucas. "I thought all you coroner types were immune to such things as runaway body parts."

  A waiter stood over them, gasped, and threw down the bill before Lucas realized he'd been traumatized by the thing nestled in the handkerchief. Meredyth grabbed the hanky, folding it away, but Lucas managed to grab it back. "Hey, that's still evidence."

  "What're you going to do with that thing, Lucas? Take it to the witch doctor out at the Coushatta Reservation? See if we can get some voodoo input on the case?"

  "Cherokee magic might surprise you, Mere."

  "No amount of tobacco twisting and burning is going to help us here, Stone Man," Meredyth replied.

  "Hey, I know you're frustrated, but you shouldn't knock what you haven't tried, Doctor," he fired back.

  Meredyth dropped her gaze and wrung her hands together. "I'm sorry, Lucas. It's just this case is getting to me... she's getting to me."

  "If you would care to leave the finger with me, Lieutenant," said Nielsen, "I can match the tissue against what we have, make a certain determination as to whether or not it is Lourdes's digit."

  Lucas joked, "I thought I'd make a necklace of it, make it my Cherokee magical icon, but I am tiring of carrying it around." He handed it, wrapped in the handkerchief, to Dr. Nielsen. As he did so, Meredyth grabbed for the check. Lucas caught her hand and retrieved the check.

  "I'm paying," she said.

  "The hell you are."

  Their waiter suddenly and noisily stormed out of the restaurant, tossing his apron at the boss. "Look at that, Lucas. The guy quit his job. I hope you're proud of yourself. Now give me the check. You've caused enough trouble tonight." Meredyth held one end of the check between her fingers, and he held the other end in a tug of war that ripped it in two.

  Lucas firmly said, "It's my treat. You can leave the tip."

  "Leave the tip for whom?" asked Nielsen, amused at the two.

  "You are such a...a man!" Meredyth sternly said.

  Nielsen laughed and said, "Are you two sure you're not married?"

  Lucas laughed at this, and tossed down several bills to cover the meal.

  In the parking lot outside, they said good night to Dr. Nielsen and asked her to keep their discussion private for now, sharing it only with Leonard Chang. She agreed without reservation.

  "Whatever you do, say nothing to Frank Patterson on the matter," Lucas said.

  "I have no intention of doing that."

  They parted company with Lynn Nielsen. As they went for the car, Meredyth said, "Wish we had some notion of Lauralie's whereabouts."

  "We find her, we find the boyfriend, and we can shut them down."

  "Wish I could be a hundred percent certain one way or the other of any part I played in helping shape this woman's obsession. Wish I could see those records at the courthouse."

  'Tonight? Open the Harris County courthouse records? That'd also take a warrant signed by a judge. Tomorrow's another day, Mere."

  "Another day and possibly another horrible mailing to you or me or both of us."

  He pulled her into his arms and hugged her close. "It'll be all right. I promise you, it's going to be all right."

  They drove from the restaurant down a series of meandering streets until Lucas pulled to the curb in a residential neighborhood. An Interstate overpass sliced the street in two, and cutting his engine, Lucas said, "I want you to stay right here, Mere. I'll be right back."

  "Where the hell are we, Lucas? And where're you going?"

  "Katherine Croombs's house. There're lights on inside. I'm going to have a look-see."

  "But without a warrant, what'11 happen?"

  "I'm not going to break in, just determine if she's inside or not," he said, climbing from the driver's seat.


  "And how're you going to do that?"

  "Old Indian sleuth trick," he said, standing in the rain.

  "What trick?"

  "I'll knock." With that, he sprinted to the door.

  Meredyth nervously watched him climb the stairs of the rundown tenement house. She listened to the whirring, whining, and roaring of cars, trucks, and buses whizzing by on the Interstate overhead. "Think I'd drink myself to death if I had to listen to this all day long," she muttered to the interior of the car. She glanced again at Lucas, now speaking to someone on the porch, an elderly lady who had probably caught him peeking in at Katherine's windows.

  Then she saw Lucas coming back to the car. He opened the door, got in, turned on the ignition, and started away from the curb. "Dead end," he said.

  "Whataya mean, dead end? What did you learn from the neighbor?"

  "Says no one's been living below her. She's had an eye out for the daughter herself, wants to know who's going to pay the water and electric bills, neither of which were turned off. Says she's having it all turned off if she doesn't hear from Lauralie by morning."

  "Then Lauralie did live there for a time after the mother's death?"

  "Yes, for a month and a half. She says the girl went from saccharine sweetness when she first arrived to a bitch during and after the funeral."

  "So the woman—"

  "—Mrs. Crane—"

  "—saw Lauralie at the funeral?"

  "She was at the funeral, no thanks to Lauralie. She had to get the information from the police report in the Chronicle, and from there she called the funeral home for the details of when and where. Says Lauralie didn't invite her or any of Katherine's cronies, and when Mrs. Crane arrived with several others in tow, Lauralie hadn't a word for her or any of Katherine's few friends and neighbors. She also said that Katherine had been off the bottle and was making an effort to please Lauralie, allowing her to live with her, feeding her, buying her things, all that. But Mrs. Crane says Lauralie never showed the least gratitude or appreciation for Katherine's efforts. It's likely what drove her back to drinking that night, she says."

  "So where is Lauralie now?"

  "Got to be she's with the boyfriend, Mr. Mystery, his pad."

  "Her personal butcher. You think he helped her in poisoning her mother?"

  "According to Mrs. Crane, she never once saw Lauralie with a man. She came to think her a lesbian, and you recall Rachel's take on that back at the convent."

  Meredyth mulled it over. "AC-DC as her needs required, depending on whom she felt a need to control or manipulate at any given time, be it Father William, Rachel, her mother, and perhaps the killer."

  As they drove through the increasingly clinging fog—a fog doing battle with the orange glow of the city's lights— Meredyth's stress got the better of her. Lucas realized that she was sobbing beside him. He reached out and placed a hand around her neck, rubbing it tenderly.

  "I can't believe we can't locate one convent girl recently released on her own from that place," lamented Meredyth, placing her head on his shoulder. "And that place. And the lessons of that place, what Lauralie took from there."

  "And what would that be?"

  "Just put yourself into her place. Imagine spending your entire life there, without a true home, without parents, without siblings...bullied by the older girls, possibly assaulted by them, possibly molested by a priest, learning only how to connive, he, cheat, steal, destroy people and things, how to sexually manipulate others, until your behavior escalated into something far more sinister...escalating to fire-setting and causing accidents that result in death."

  "It's not your fault or doing, Mere. Don't put all that on your head."'

  "No telling what kind of tyrant that Mother Orleans was. Do you think she drove Lauralie to kill her? First attempting to do it by fire, and later helping her down a flight of stairs?"

  "We don't know any of this is true," Lucas objected.

  "And—and as for Mother Elizabeth, I've never met anyone more in denial. She knows...down deep, Lucas, she knows Lauralie is a disturbed individual, and not another Rachel—not a child in need of coddling, but a child in need of a straitjacket."

  "Exactly...got that right." He placed one arm around her as he drove on. "Time you got your mind off it tonight, sweetheart."

  But she went on. "And us...look at us...two professionals going round in circles inside a labyrinth she has led us into...a maze created especially for us, and she's got to be laughing at us—Lucas, the big bad Texas Cherokee detective with an uncanny record for tracking down the monsters among us, and Meredyth Sanger, Ph.D, M.D., a forensic psychiatrist well respected in my field, and together we can't find a missing murderous child."

  "Hey, Mere, damn now you've got to go easier on yourself—and me. After all, it's not as if we haven't gotten anywhere. We've come a long—"

  "But we haven't. She's still out there somewhere free to do whatever her deranged mind—in cohort with Crazy Joe as you call him—can whip up! And we're no closer to stopping them."

  "Oh, but we are! Thanks to your brilliant mind, we've put together a motive behind all this madness. Mere, not to mention we have put a name to one of the suspects in the abduction of Mira Lourdes. A name and a likeness, which will be placed on the all-points bulletin along with our Mr. X with the mole on his cheek. Tomorrow's papers will carry it, along with the news broadcast. It's on Captain Lincoln's desk."

  "When did you do all this?"

  "I used the graduation photo and made out a report while you were in the ladies' room, and left it with our fearless leader. Now, thanks to you, we're that much closer to ending this terror."

  "No, no thanks to me, to her, Lauralie. She has consciously led us to her, Lucas; she wants us to put the puzzle together. Don't forget that. She not only wants to insult us, she wants to control us by controlling every step of the investigation against her. She's shrewd, calculating, and cruel—a terrible combination."

  "All the same, we're a lot closer to closing this thing down than we were before going to the convent. You should take some comfort in that."

  "Where're you taking me now, Lucas? I'm a nervous wreck, so worried about going home, finding another part of Mira Lourdes awaiting me."

  "I don't blame you. I don't relish seeing another of Lauralie and Crazy Joe's gifts either."

  "Then we have to dodge your place too."

  "And the precinct," he half-joked. "We could always return to the desert, sleep beneath the stars again. Maybe this time, you'll include me on the cloud of your dreams. Whataya say, me-lady?"

  "The desert sounds nice, but I have a better idea."

  "Shoot."

  "My family's country house. She can't know about that. Hey, let's do it. Let's go there. It's on a beautiful lake, and I don't receive mail there."

  "Are you suggesting I meet your parents?" He half- smiled, staring into her eyes.

  "No, they won't be there. They're in Paris."

  "Paris, Texas?"

  "France, on holiday. So, we'll be alone, and you won't have any pressure whatsoever. We can pick up some groceries and bathing suits on the way."

  "How far is it?"

  "Between here and Huntsville. Not to worry. We can be back in the city in an hour and a half."

  Lucas raised his hands as if arrested. "All right, you got me, Doctor. I am in your hands completely tonight."

  "That sounds promising."

  "Lead on, please."

  "Interstate north," she said, "Derry Road exit, Madera Lake." She nestled into the crook of his arm, closing her eyes, persuaded she could get far enough away to escape any further thoughts of Lauralie Blodgett tonight.

  ARTHUR BELKUIN’S GL0VED hands twitched ever so slightly where he gripped the freezer door over his head. The surgical gloves he wore made a stifled little barking rubber sound against the lid of the horizontal freezer. Arthur closed the lid over what little remained of Mira Lourdes where she lay inside her frozen coffin: a pair of legs held together
by lower torso and hips, two severed arms—one missing a hand, another a finger.

  Behind Arthur, her headless, armless upper torso lay on the stainless-steel operating table, where his rotary bone saw rested, silently dripping with blood. He stared at his reflection in the patent titanium blade, so efficient and clean was this blade. He defied any human eye to detect the microscopic tissue and bone fragments adhering to it. He'd have to give it a Muriatic acid bath to be certain the saw, like the ax, could not be DNA'd to Mira Lourdes, and so linked to him. He'd eventually wash down the table as well, whenever Lauralie finally resolved that they had come to the end of this dark journey she had set them on. At which time, he would take the table and all the tools far out to the desert, possibly as far as Mexico, dig an enormous hole, and bury it aU.

  He silently thanked God that the blood was at a minimum, most of Mira's blood having been lost when she was killed, and the remaining blood, pooling in the lungs and back, remaining thick and gelatinous from the corpse's having been so long in cold storage. The solid flesh made cutting easier, cleaner. The torso itself had been opened earlier to get at the organs that he had sliced up in thin leaves for the first box sent to Detective Stonecoat. Lauralie had tossed what was left of those organs into the brook that ran through the property, a backwater creek off the Navasota River. He recalled how she'd delighted in watching the creek ripple along on its path, taking its natural course. "On a mission, Arthur, like us," she'd said of the stream as she fed Mira's internal organs to the fish.

  The only untouched and undefiled of Mira Lourdes's organs was the heart, now swimming in a formaldehyde- filled jar on a shelf over Arthur's shoulder. Arthur had closed up the huge Y-section cut he had made to the torso and abdomen to get at the organs for Lauralie. The crude autopsy scar on the torso looked like the stitching on a bloated football, Arthur thought. He'd done the procedure quickly and with a shaking hand.

  "Lauralie, damn it now, you promised you'd tell me the whole story, and I think it's high time. I think I've earned your trust and the right to know everything."