Authors: Robert W. Walker
Lucas entered the precinct and went for the crime lab. He found the place empty save for a few medical personnel working at microscopes and a handful of others working on an autopsy. Chang was at the center of the postmortem, which looked as if it would go on for some time. Lucas looked around for anyone who might help him.
Dr. Lynn Nielsen stepped through a door and stood face-to-face with Lucas. The tall Scandinavian and the tall American Indian stared into one another's eyes. They had had few dealings with one another, she having only recently come on staff at the crime lab.
"Detective Stonecoat," she said, "we've found nothing but healthy tissue on the specimens found in your possession."
"Careful how you word that. I wouldn't want Internal Affairs thinking I had anything to do with excising those organ portions from someone's abdominal cavity."
"I'm certainly not proposing such a thing," she countered, as if angry he should suggest anything of the sort.
"Sorry," he heard himself saying. 'Translation problem," he suggested now. "At any rate, I have here three separate sets of dental records on possible matches, and the records need to go to Dr. Thomas Davies's team as soon as possible and put on priority."
"Oh, yes, Dr. Chang told me of your plans."
"Is Dr. Davies in?"
"He's promised to return after dinner and get right on it if we can have the records and the victim's teeth all in one place."
"Then you'll call him back, and he'll begin his analysis tonight?"
"You can be sure, Detective."
She took the three dental files from Lucas. "You work quickly," she commented.
"Is there any other way?" he asked, smiling. "Besides, if we can identify the victim, then we have a chance—"
"I know, we may be that much closer to the killer."
"Exactly."
"More so if the killer knew her."
"Precisely." Lucas thought of Dwayne Stokes. If the teeth belonged to Mira Lourdes, he would be elevated to suspect number one, but then why send her brutalized parts to him and to Dr. Sanger? What did Stokes have to gain by such a bizarre action? To throw them off his scent? Lucas could not fathom Stokes ever having that much cunning.
"Is everything all right, Detective?" she asked, seeing his troubled face.
"Yeah, fine. Just a passing thought. Okay, then you'll have Dr. Davies call me when he has results?"
She nodded, holding the dental records against her ample bosom with one hand and extending the other. As she shook his hand and said good night, she added, "I hope we have a long and fruitful working relationship, Detective." It sounded like a rehearsed line she had likely repeated often since coming on board.
"Yes, of course," he replied.
She then stiffly turned and went for her desk to make any necessary calls and arrangements. Her back to him felt like a dismissal.
LUCAS. TIRED AND hungry, left the crime lab and returned to his desk in the bowels of the precinct house, a building that had been built before the turn of the 19th century, in 1898, as a schoolhouse. The Spanish architecture and stone exterior gave it an Alamo appearance, despite all the modem improvements. Here in the closed-in Cold Room office in the dungeon like basement, its stone walls dripped with condensation. The conditions under which the old files had been housed since the early twenties had prompted the move to place them all on computer before they were entirely consumed by time, mold, and mites. In fact, some of the oldest of the lot had crumbled to dust and could not be saved.
Lucas stood over his desk and punched the memo pad on his computer for any messages. He had it rigged to play the familiar Indian warpath tune to alert on any messages. There were the usual number of reminders of investment opportunities for city employees, 40IK information briefings, AA meetings, town hall discussions on union issues, weekend fish fries and ball games, but nothing from Meredyth. He yawned and dropped into his chair, his arm batting the yellowed Yolanda Sims file, accidentally sending it over the side. Cursing, he bent to pick up the scattered reports and photos, finding Yolanda's image—a close-up of her looking like a death mask, staring back at him in what felt like an accusatory fashion, as if to say, "What've you done for me today?" Gnashing his teeth, Lucas gathered up the aged material, realizing that anyone else would have let it go long before.
"Nineteen fifty-six, Lucas?" asked Detective Harrelson, another cop who worked cold cases. "God, I thought we did away with all the hard copy stuff. Mind?" He lifted it from Lucas's grasp, examining it. "Hell, hardly enough here to call it a murder book. Real bottom-drawer, Lucas. How much time and energy you puttin' in on it?"
"None, not really. Like you said, found in a bottom drawer upstairs and dropped on my desk," he lied.
"You're kidding. Sloppy, huh?"
'Too right."
"Well, calling it a night myself. Catch you in the A.M."
"Night." Lucas found a large brown envelope and dropped the thin murder file into it, not wanting anyone else to third-degree him on it. Harrelson was right. Hardly enough to call it a murder book, he told himself. No one in his right mind would waste valuable time on it; only a fool would pursue it. Lucas called out to Loma Mendez, the in- charge night person here, telling her he was gone for the evening, and going for the door, he stopped, fingered the file in the envelope, and snatched it up, taking it with him.
Outside in the cool evening air, he searched the sky, unable to find a star or a moon, the firmament shut out by a ceiling of artificial daylight, the reflective mirror of an entire city under a blanket of the orange glow of sodium- vapor lights. It made Lucas feel trapped, earthbound. He thought of what city dwellers gave up in the name of safety, wondering if Yolanda Sims might have lived that warm night in 1956 had her neighborhood been lit up then as it was now. No way to determine, no more so than deciding on rain, wind, lightning, hailstorm, an early frost, clear skies on the cusp of an Indian summer. No way to know—given the limited view from here on the precinct steps. On the reservation or in the hills, where his grandfather had taught him to read the desert signs both on the earth and in the sky, things were simpler, easier to read. In the cityscape, with its constant electrical pulse beating in the ears, a tracker like Lucas must travel down concrete canyons that cast deep shadows, and dig in the subterranean recesses for the scum-sucking trolls, the stone- hearted gargoyles, and the urban predators that flourished on this plain. For Lucas, the reward was in putting away such animals, a far cry from frightening off coyotes from the sheep herds with a .22-caliber smooth-bore.
Lucas made his way down the steps to the city's electrical pulse—stepping to the dull music—a reverberating echo rising out of a stone gorge, unrelentingly steady, distant yet near, hollow yet thunderous, the tempo taken up a notch, each time a siren joined in the melody of what was Houston's symphony. The daily Houston metropolitan symphony, he thought as squad cars came and went from the parking lot, uniformed officers bantering with one another, putting each other on, laughing, coaxing a boxing match here and there. Across the street a firehouse bustled with men returning from a fire call, and somewhere another siren sounded as a city bus belched and roared in its effort to accelerate, a kind of urban pachyderm putting everyone on notice, charging ahead. Lucas's nostrils pinched with the odors of the city, his throat clogged with the spent emissions, as his ears took in the sound of the city. How long, he wondered, before a man became absorbed by it all to no longer be apart from it?
Walking toward the lot, he caught the scintilla of a fresh coppery odor flit by—ozone. So there was electricity in the air overhead, promising rain to a parched city, teasingly so. Beyond this, Lucas smelled discarded and molding foodstuff and the trail of rats scurrying about the sewers underfoot. He thought of how just below the surface of calm lived the degenerates, the sociopaths, the kind of man who could slice up a woman and send parts of her to him and to Meredyth, and the kind of man who could take the life of a small child in 1956 and get away with it all these years, the kind of man who had no compunction about his crimes then or now.
"Lucas, that you?" asked a beefy uniformed cop passing him in the lot. "It's me, Pete."
"Pete Blackhorn! Been a while. I thought you were in the Two-five now." Blackhorn was one of the few other Native Americans on the force. He was an Alabama mixed Sioux, who went by Pete Black in the white world.
"Just transferred over. Heard about that nasty package you and Dr. Sanger got. Weird shit, man. What's up with that?"
Lucas and Blackhorn had been in the academy together, and while they occasionally bumped into one another on the job, they had not seen each other socially since those days at the academy.
"How'd you hear about it, Pete?"
Blackhorn blew out air. "You kidding? It's all over the precinct and the res. I've had calls from the family. Word out at the Coushatta is you and Billy Hawk have bad blood going again. That true?"
"Fuckin' gossips're going to make it true if they repeat it enough. Shit, aside from everything else, I'm going to have to look over my shoulder for that damned fool cousin of mine?"
"What is it the cowboys say, amigo? You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your kin?"
"You get a chance, set the record straight. There's no feud going on between Billy and me, understood?"
"Then you don't think he sent you and your white friend those Care packages?"
"No, I don't. Eunice Tebo and her cronies are at it again, stirring up ancient history they can't let go of. They got no fucking life of their own, do they?"
"Not to speak of... not so's you'd notice, no. But it's you too, Lucas."
"Whataya mean, me?"
"It's 'cause you're you, Stonecoat, Houston's most decorated Native American cop. You kidding? On the res, you're like Jimmy Smits or Lou Diamond Phillips, man. Get used to it."
"Indian tabloid press headlines, I know, and I'm sick of it."
"Can't bury a story like this. It's got everything. Red hero, white blond heroine, old love in the background, and Billy Hawk playing the heavy."
"Blackhorn, it's most likely some nutcase who's seen me on TV or read about Meredyth in the papers and is going for his fifteen minutes of fame by targeting us."
"Yeah, that sounds more logical, agreed."
"Some lunatic demanding his place in the media spotlight beside the 'luminaries' of murder history."
"So you want me to put it on the grapevine like that for you?" Blackhorn had extensive family ties on the reservation, whereas Lucas's had dwindled to a handful of distant relatives.
"I'd appreciate it, yeah," he said to Blackhorn.
"You know, it's also all over the station house too, Lucas, and speculation's pointing a finger at that guy they call Itchy and some of his crowd."
"I'm aware," Lucas replied, his shoulders heaving in a gesture of defeat. "I had hoped for some time to work the case before it became gossip fodder. Next it'll be headline news."
"Wouldn't be the Three-one or Houston if it were otherwise, amigo."
Lucas failed to say that he had himself started the ball rolling downhill on Arnie Feldman and his pals, but as for the Houston Chronicle and papers like the Star Gazette getting hold of it this soon in the investigation, he hoped not. Still, given the sheer number of people involved in the crime-scene work, Pete was right. The newshounds would soon be all over the story. He wondered how best to protect his and Meredyth's identities when the story of this bizarre attack on a detective and a forensic psychiatrist broke. He'd have to rely on the discretion of an army of so-called professionals, some of whom did not particularly care about his comfort or discomfort.
"Let's get a beer sometime, Lucas," Pete suggested. "I'd like to see that gun collection of yours."
"Right, we really ought to do that. Give me a call."
"Night."
They parted just as Meredyth Sanger drove into the lot. She Would normally be parking in her reserved spot in the small underground lot, but she had spotted Lucas in his Aussie-looking Wellington leather coat out here with Blackhorn, so she drove in waving to him. "There you are," she said to him as she climbed from her car. "Where've you been?"
"I've spent the last several hours gathering dental records on those three missing persons we ID'd this morning."
"Great, anything shake out?"
'Too early to tell for sure. Tried reaching you around two, but you'd bugged out."
"I see, and next you'll be saying that you missed me."
"I did actually."
"I'm sure that Detective North took your mind off such bothersome thoughts as me."
"Hey, whoa up there, cowgirl. Where's this coming from?" He wondered how she'd learned of his having spent the better part of the day with Jana North. "Jana smoothed the way for the family introductions and the permissions. She was a great asset. No way I could've gotten through it in such a short time without her help, believe me."
"I'll bet she was just that, a big asset."
"Are you deliberately picking a fight, or are you merely jealous?" he asked.
"Not in the least." She didn't sound convincing.
"Not in the least to which? Fight for fighting's sake, honey-be-mine, or jealousy for jealousy's sake? 'Cause while the jealousy thing is flattering, the fighting just looks like the old arm's length excuses of the past, Mere. So, which is it?"
"Damn it...I just thought you'd call."
"Mere, I did call, but I missed you. You were busy, remember, in meetings? Then I got super-busy. You know how that goes. What're you doing back here anyway?" he asked.
"I want to get a file I left in my office."
"Sure you didn't race over here to catch me with Jana, only to find me with Pete?"
"I came back for the file, Lucas."
"Come here." He hugged her close.
"So what did you two find on the missing persons front?" she asked, changing the subject. "You must've learned something?"
"Very little, but let me take you to dinner, and I'll fill you in."