Final Edge s--4 Page 4

  "What the hell's going on?" he asked aloud, expecting no answer but feeling a need to keep talking.

  A step closer and the image was replaced, the eyes now looking like two smooth white Ping-Pong balls with tubular extensions, and strikingly dark, deep-blue seeds for pupils at each center. He wondered to whom the eyes had once belonged. Were they male or female? Mexican or American? Italian or Irish? Then he grotesquely heard the song lyrics "when Irish eyes are smiling " flit through his cop's brain. Had a roomful of cops been present, at least one or more would be humming the tune by now, putting into practice the time-honored black humor so necessary in dealing with such a horror as this pair of errant eyes presented. Eyes that followed you across a room…eyes that pinned an opponent, that popped a gasket, that darted for escape, that stabbed at the heart, that were windows to the soul, and that were only for you…All the cliches rushed to mind, doing little good against the edginess of the situation.

  To add to the revulsion of the scene, Lucas saw the pair of human teeth-also scattered from the fallen box-lying at a distance from the eyes, each having taken different paths. He intuited the eyes making a soft landing and remaining fairly close to where they had made contact with the plush carpeting, but the teeth he saw bouncing wildly, like a pair of dropped earrings, when the parcel was overturned. This would explain how far they'd traveled from the epicenter of the large stain where the liquid residue of the spoiling eyes had slipped from the Styrofoam-laced box. From this, he determined precisely where Byron had been standing when he had insisted on tearing open the delivery and subsequently dropping it.

  Lucas went into the kitchen and banged around in search of something, the sound of silverware clattering off silverware as he rummaged, making her call out, "What're you looking for?"

  'Tongs…found 'em!" he said, returning and going to the discarded packaging, and using the white Teflon tongs, he crouched and reached for the crumpled paper that had been wrapped about the box to examine the handwriting.

  "Do you have to use my best tongs?" she asked.

  "All I could find. Look here," he said, turning the block lettering on the package to his eyes. "It's the same block lettering."

  He replaced the packaging precisely where it had lain. He then reached for the scripted note, another little poem from the look of it. "I'd swear it's the same handwriting as the package sent me. Only difference, return address is your private office downtown."

  "It's a ruse; no one from the office would do this, no one."

  "What about one of your patients?"

  "Perhaps. We could start there. I have handwriting on all my patients, but it's most likely whoever did this would disguise the hand."

  "Disguised or not, there'll be patterns. We'll get a top- notch handwriting expert to find them and rule in or out anyone you might suspect from your practice. Same for the cops you've counseled at the precinct, and any criminals you've interviewed recently."

  "How can you suspect any of the men at the Three-one, Lucas? They're all grateful for my help."

  "Does that include Lewis Adiwa, the guy you helped IAD nail for that prostitute murder?"

  "He's in jail clear 'cross the state in Shackleford State Penitentiary. Clear to Abilene, Lucas."

  Lucas shrugged. "Cells and bars don't keep men from operating on the outside. Not anymore. They've got civil liberties, phone calls, opportunities like never before. You see that new reality show on prison bands? Give me a break."

  "Maybe Adiwa should be examined. He did threaten my life, but I really doubt any of your colleagues at the precinct could be behind this."

  "I don't think you know how nasty cops can get when they're pulling off what they consider a joke."

  "A joke! This is no damned joke, Lucas."

  "I suspect it may be all a prank aimed at the two of us, concocted by Itchy Amie Feldman maybe, encouraged by others maybe, and given the means-the human tissues by Dr. Frank Patterson-whom I've had my run-ins with- maybe."

  "That's a lot of maybes."

  "Perhaps."

  "And besides, it's…it's just too…too darned crazy. They'd have to be fools! They could lose their jobs for this kind of insane prank."

  "Not if they come waltzing up to the door right now with a beer keg, pretzels, and claimed responsibility, and we all laugh it off."

  "I'd have their badges, and they know it."

  "Not if it can't be proven, and if The Itch-that is, Feldman, has someone working the inside of the lab with him, the lab guy will've known to use parts from a body long since buried or even cremated. Wouldn't take much to fudge the records and rob off pieces from a John or a Jane Doe autopsy."

  "You think so? How do you do that, Lucas? Get into the heads of such sickos? It can't be easy or fun."

  "A gift or a curse. I have a hell of an imagination, you might say."

  She took a deep breath, considering more seriously his theory. "It almost makes me feel better, at least in one sense, to think it's all some sort of inside joke by the boys of the Thirty-first-as sick as that may be, but why pick on us, Lucas?"

  "How many people you know that're jealous of a close bond, Mere? We have that. Others dislike us for it. Simple Psych 101."

  "If it's true, it'll certainly narrow our search."

  "I plan to watch their reactions tomorrow when I go in; you do the same."

  "Damned juvenile behavior… typical cop crap," she muttered. "Bastards."

  Lucas had offered an explanation she could handle with a great deal more ease, at least tonight. He mentally patted himself on the back for having calmed her. She was visibly more at ease, so long as she kept her eyes off the eyes. A hoax seemed far preferable to this being a horrible prelude to worse psychological attacks. It had the added virtue of an end in sight. Lucas asked if she would make coffee, sending her into the kitchen, away from the disagreeable objects littering her living room. She had taken a step toward the kitchen when a loud knock at her door sent a new shock wave through her.

  "CSI Team, Houston Police Department! Open up, please!"

  Lucas stepped to the door and opened it for young Ted Hoskins, a pale-faced twenty-six-year-old evidence tech with the CSI unit whose thick glasses, thin mustache, and stylishly cut hair made him look like a college boy. Behind Ted stood two others, a crime-scene photographer named Steve Perelli, and a young female intern he only knew as Lil. With them, hanging back, was the doorman who'd led them up to the Sanger condo.

  "Detective Stonecoat," began Hoskins. "Guess this must be the place, the Sanger residence? Something to do with human body parts being found?"

  "This is the place," Lucas informed them, and the two men filed into the living room area, followed sheepishly by the intern, being careful as they formed a kind of circle around the obvious evidence.

  The concerned doorman called in to Meredyth, asking if she were all right. He'd been taken by surprise by the arrival of the CSI van with the city coroner's logo.

  "I'm all right, Max," she said, going to the door and assuring him of the fact.

  "Who died?" he asked her.

  "No one, Max…I mean, no one that I know of. It's likely just a joke in extremely bad taste, but we have to be thorough all the same."

  Meanwhile, Lucas explained to Hoskins, "Dr. Nielsen contacted me via dispatch as I drove here from across town. I received a similar package around the same time at my place. I briefed Nielsen on what to expect at both locations, and I assured her that it had nothing to do with anthrax."

  "Where'd she get that notion?" asked Hoskins.

  "Don't know where she got that idea."

  A number of additional evidence technicians filtered in now.

  "You still want that coffee, Lucas?" Meredyth asked.

  "Sure…let's make ourselves scarce. Get outta the way here." He guided her back into the kitchen. She brewed a pot of coffee, while Lucas made a phone call to a friend on the force, Sergeant Stan Kelton. He informed Stan of what had happened, asking him if he'd heard or seen any
thing unusual about the station house that might cement Lucas's theory that it was all a stupid prank.

  Kelton assured him, "If any such nonsense were afoot at the Three-one, Lucas, I'd've gotten wind of it. All the same, I'll sniff around, let you know."

  "Let's get some air on the terrace," Meredyth suggested.

  Taking their coffee with them, Lucas escorted Meredyth out onto the deck overlooking the twinkling lights of downtown Houston, the ever-changing cityscape in the near distance. They were thirty stories up.

  Meredyth came from old money, and could easily have lived the quiet country club life of her friends-like Byron Priestly-and relatives, but she had chosen instead to become a forensic psychiatrist. Lucas admired her for the dedication and determination to achieve her goals and live up to her ideals.

  She sat at the patio table, a light breeze playing whimsy fairy with her hair, rustling between the buttons of her blouse, causing a mild flap. The cool night air felt refreshing against her face and skin. Lucas stood behind her, his hands squeezing her shoulders as he surveyed the skyline. Here on the terrace, Meredyth had plants growing, and Lucas, hoping to distract her from what was going on in her living room, asked, "Whataya call these plants here? Is this one a geranium? Maybe plants is what I need at my place, you know, to brighten it up a bit."

  She looked over her shoulder at him, frowning. "Other than that cactus flower in the comer, which you dug up and gave me for Christmas, Lucas, I've never put you together with plants, but you sound positively Martha Stewart tonight."

  "No, I'm really interested."

  "Yes, that's a geranium, no longer in full bloom, but the others at the end of the terrace, they're all hibiscus plants."

  "Okay, you give them individual names, like pets?"

  She laughed lightly. "I'm not one of these people who gives names to her plants, Lucas."

  "I take that as a good sign."

  "I love the cactus flower most, you know."

  "Courtship," he said.

  "What?"

  "On the res, when a boy gives a girl a cactus flower, it's the beginning of their courtship."

  "All this time and I never knew. Why didn't you tell me before?"

  Lucas didn't reply, going to the plants at the terrace edge instead, running his fingers lightly over them. "Hibiscus…they're called hibiscus, huh? Sounds Greek."

  "Greek or perhaps Latin, I'm sure."

  "Interesting word, hibiscus. Interesting lilt to it, a single word with its own melody is rare. Hibiscus…think I bet on a racehorse once with that name."

  "I'm sure you have."

  He returned from the edge to stand again behind her where she sat sipping her now-lukewarm coffee. He placed both hands on her shoulders, saying nothing.

  "Listen, Lucas, thanks for rushing over like you did."

  "What else is a friend to do under the circumstances?"

  "Most friends I have would do like Byron and run the other way under the circumstances."

  "I didn't do much."

  "Your being here is enough. So trust me when I say you don't have to make small talk and-"

  "Small talk?"

  "— and pretend an interest in my potted plants, Lucas."

  "Whoa up there, Doctor. I'll remember that if and when I should make small talk and idle chitchat," he countered.

  "All I'm saying is that you don't need to resort to pretense to please me or in some vain attempt to distract me from the fact someone's mailed me a set of human eyes and a pair of teeth, and that my living room's become a crime scene, and that my personal security-my home in the clouds here-has been breached and defiled."

  "Easy, sweetheart."

  She reached up with both hands and covered his where they continued to squeeze her shoulders. "That feels good," she told him.

  They continued to hold hands while the evidence techs created a crime grid of her living room. "Do you really think the whole horrible thing is an elaborate stinking joke, Lucas, or was that just another attempt to get me to calm down?"

  "If it is a hoax, the bastards've let it go too far now. The costs involved in sending out a CSI unit, the time and manpower in running all this as evidence in a crime, hell… can you imagine the heads that'll roll?"

  "You've never liked Frank Patterson, have you? And as for Feldman, how long has that feud been going on?"

  "Creeps, both of 'em, cut of the same cloth. One concern in life, self-gratification now! Couple of pricks of the first caliber."

  "Sounds like you know it's them and calling it in to the crime lab was to get back at them maybe?"

  "Stir their stew counterclockwise, you mean?"

  "They cooked this up, and you plan to cook their gooses? You're as much a juvenile as they are, Lucas."

  He came around to face her, hands extended. "No way I would be disrespectful of human organs, desecrating someone's body or bodily parts this way. You can't put me in the same nincompoop class as they're in."

  "No, I don't…I mean, I didn't mean to imply that, Lucas. I have great respect for you, but be careful not to allow them to pull you down to their level."

  He dropped into the cushioned metal chair across from her. "Not a chance. Look, so far as I know right now, Mere, what you and I received via hand-delivered mail is a felony, and it smacks of a far worse crime, murder. That's the way I'm playing this out for now." He leaned in over the table as he spoke, his body language and eyes sincere.

  "So you've called the town crier-Sergeant Kelton- posited the theory of it's being a hoax in his head, so you don't even have to point a finger. Before daybreak, it'll be all over the precinct."

  "I know, out in the open."

  "Dr. Chang and Captain Lincoln will hear the story that human remains were stolen from the crime lab."

  "And the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan. But Mere, at this stage, it's as good a theory as any we have."

  "Look, if it is a horrible hoax perpetrated by some bozos, I want the bastards to pay dearly for it. Don't get me wrong."

  "Then we're on the same page."

  They fell silent for a moment, in one ear the sounds of the people bagging and collecting the evidence inside, in the other ear the sounds of traffic and the city.

  "You know, Lucas, I like the way you call me Mere. Have I ever told you that you're the only one I know who calls me Mere, that is, aside from my mom and dad?"

  "No, you've never shared that with me, Mere."

  "My dad used it kiddingly. Called me Night-Mere sometimes!"

  Lucas laughed lightly at this. "That's a good one."

  "Fits, you mean."

  "Maybe that too."

  From inside, the click-click-click of the digital photographs being taken filtered out to them. They heard Dr. Leonard Chang's distinctive voice now, ordering that the poetic note and the CD be bagged and taken into evidence as well.

  "I'm going to check on Chang's progress, and let him know about Byron's prints being on the wrapper. You might best stay out here. Can I bring you a drink from the fridge?"

  "Yeah, there's some iced tea in the flask."

  Lucas returned to the living room, where it appeared the techs were closing down their investigation. He saw that each eye and each tooth had been placed into separate baggies, and while each tooth was dropped into a pocket within a black valise, the two eyes were dropped into a medical cooler filled with ice.

  Dr. Leonard Chang slowed Hoskins up, wanting to look once more into the depth of the eyes, holding them now in his gloved hands, staring through the cellophane bags. When Lucas came alongside him, asking him what he thought, Chang erupted from his inscrutable silence. "How horrible this must have been for Meredyth. How is she holding up?"

  "She's gutsy; she's holding up." He told Chang about Byron Priestly's having handled the package. "Leonard, I'd like you and maybe Dr. Nielsen to investigate your labs for missing tissues, eyes, teeth."

  "My labs? What're you meaning to imply, Lucas?"

  "These items and those se
nt to my place-autopsy slices of human organs as far as I can tell-may've originated in-house as a sick joke against me and Meredyth."

  "That would be in the worst taste imaginable."

  "Yeah, tasted bad at my place too."

  "What kind of package did this fiend send you?"

  Lucas described the packaging as identical down to the Styrofoam-lined interior that soaked up much of the liquid residue coming off the warm contents. "The hand-printing job and the scripted poems appear the work of the same person, so I'm wondering the same thing you are right about now."

  "Which is?" The slight Chinese M.E. looked piqued that Lucas should suggest that his thoughts could be read.

  "Are the body parts from the same victim, and who is the victim? And could the victim have been a resident of your morgue?"

  "I'll hang anyone who might have taken human tissues and organs from our labs, Lucas. There will be no mercy for such actions. No one working under my direction can take such despicable liberties. It can't happen, not in my morgue."

  "Come on, Leonard. You know who I have in mind. Scratch the surface of the man and what've you got?"

  "You want me to question Frank Patterson about this?"

  "Just watch him carefully, and I'll keep my eye on Detective Feldman."

  "Itch? Itch and his friend Frank. Scratch the surface, you say. Should we say it is a game of itch and scratch? You can't truly believe it, Lucas. That they could be so stupid, so irresponsible, so…"

  "Despicable?"

  "Exactly."

  "Hey, only a hunch, but the two of them've become quite chummy lately, and Feldman's done worse, and he's a bad influence on Frank."

  "I hope you're wrong. Meantime, analysis of the tissues will tell us something about the victim or victims- certainly whether or not all the tissues come from the same female and how long she's been dead."

  "You already know she's a she?"

  "Eyes are small but mature, feminine eyes, my guess."