Authors: Robert W. Walker
Lucas got back on the police radio and called Lieutenant Jana North at the funeral parlor raid. The sound of chaos came over the line before she finally came on. "What the hell's going on there? Sounds like a riot."
"We've cordoned off a wake here."
"A wake?"
"We didn't have any choice. It was in the open coffin."
"What was in the open coffin?
"A pair of disembodied arms, one missing a right hand."
He listened attentively to the details of her report, replying with a series of yeses, and finally he said, "See to it no one disturbs the scene before your CSI unit can process it."
"You ever try that with a roomful of irate loved ones? Dr. Patterson's got his hands full, and he's on the run."
"Christ, they sent out Frank with an ITRT unit?"
'Told me he volunteered when he heard it had to do with the Ripper case, even said something about how you and he were close, Lucas. How he wanted to help in any way possible."
"Weasel knows I fingered him and some others for this nasty business when I thought it was all a tasteless joke."
"Bad blood between you guys, heh? You'll have to tell me about it some evening over drinks."
"He lost some vital evidence on a case of mine once. Cost me." He then said, "Jana, you may's well know that Meredyth and I...that we are seeing each other, and that for the time being at least, we're seriously...together."
"Then I take it drinks are out."
"Yeah, drinks are out."
"I'd better go. The natives are getting restless here. You're right about Frank. He's managed to antagonize the owners, the wake crowd, and I suspect the dead woman in the coffin."
"Sounds like Patterson."
"The crowd is made up of some pissed-off Mexicans. Talk to you later."
Lucas tossed the radio back to Andrews. He said to Meredyth, "They've found something at the funeral home."
"Do I want to know what it is?"
"A pair of arms, one severed at the wrist, missing a hand. Presumed by Frank Patterson as those of a young woman. I think we can presume Mira Lourdes."
"Where were the arms found?"
"In one of the caskets about to be wheeled out for public viewing with one of Giorgio's masterpieces of makeup inside—a regular Ripley's Believe It or Not event—a body within a casket freshly wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape. North is waiting for Frank Patterson to finish up the CSI work there. 'Fraid Nielsen and the team'll be here a great deal longer."
"And in the meantime, what do we do, Lucas?"
"Meanwhile, I'm taking you outta here. Come on."
"Byron was a jerk, Lucas, but he didn't deserve this. My God...what am I to tell his mother, Agnes? His sister? Hell, I dare not go near them. We've got to end this thing, Lucas. We must and soon. What can we do?"
"We go back to Lincoln with everything we know, everything we suspect, everything we suspect we know about Lauralie Blodgett, including your run-in with her here, and the near run-in at the convent school."
"She used him, Lucas, to locate me. Following his movements...perhaps seeing him leaving my apartment, she and her boyfriend must have tailed him in their search for me, and where was I? Hiding from it all out at the ranch, Lucas. She'd been watching his movements to locate me. Thank God my parents are out of town, out of harm's way."
"Lincoln's got to be updated. He's got to know all we know now."
"Yes, should anything happen to us, what little we've unearthed about her, the miniscule hard evidence dies with us, and should we follow the way of Byron, no one's going to weave this convoluted, tangled web of murder together ever again....You saw Nielsen's face; you heard her words. She's not buying it." Meredyth looked in need of rest, and her eyes were bloodshot from tears.
"Come on. Let's go, Mere. Nothing more we can contribute here."
"She's watching it all, Lucas, from a safe distance, seeing us running about, all of us, SWAT people, CSI people, all of us back and forth, and her pulling the strings and getting high off the mix. Maybe...I don't know...maybe we, all of us, her mother, die church, the state...me...we all contributed to this day. We certainly created a stone-cold vampire."
"Byron's dead, Meredyth, but it's not your fault. Not any more than Mira Lourdes's death is your fault."
They'd made it to his car, newsmen shouting for a comment from Lucas. He instead urged Meredyth to get in, and he did likewise, shooting from the lot, successfully ducking reporters.
Driving for their downtown home, the 31st Precinct, Lucas got on the radio and was patched through to Gordon Lincoln's aide, who put him on with Lincoln.
"Yes, sir...reporters? A sea of 'em, Captain. They get the call same as the units, listening in on the band. Yes, sir. Meredyth's with me, sir. Count on it. We're on our way to your office now, sir."
Meredyth only half-heard his end of the conversation. When he got free, she said to him, "I hate her, Lucas...hate her. I no longer give a damn what a lousy hand she was dealt, the fact she wasn't even given a name by her mother. The nun, Mother Sara Orleans, christened her Lauralie, did you know? Think of it, imagine it. No one cares enough to give you a name."
"Don't waste any sympathy on her, Mere. This girl has mutilated two people, complete strangers to her, so she can play god-games to feel superior to us. Don't forget that."
"Lincoln might take some convincing." She wrapped her arms about herself and put her head back, exhausted.
Lucas felt a barren, dry wave of fatigue like a desert wind wash over him now. This case was draining them both. Frustration and a growing hatred for their prey threatened to make them less effective, less objective, less professional. He knew they must combat it. The alternative was a spiral from which Meredyth and he might not pull out.
She sensed his fears, reached over to him, and took his hand in hers. "We've got to stay strong, Lucas. In the face of all of it, stay strong to bring this danse macabre to an end."
CAPTAIN GORDON LINCOLN hung up the phone, having gotten word on the raids ordered by Stonecoat on a funeral parlor and the Harris County courthouse. The news from both locations was bad—but that coining out of the courthouse—an acquaintance of Meredyth Sanger's brutally, savagely knifed to death, his face slashed as an afterthought, his body stuffed in a maintenance closet—was truly disturbing. This news came on the heels of a call he'd gotten earlier from his friend Judge Wilfred Manning. Manning had conveyed a bizarre story of having witnessed an arrest in the hallway of the county courthouse. He'd relayed the shocking details of how, that very afternoon, not twenty-odd feet from Byron Priestly's murder, Dr. Meredyth Sanger had been "wrestled to the floor and a gun wrested from her" by security personnel who had then turned her over to city police officers. Lincoln's aide, Officer Jonah Kent, could not find any record of an arrest having been made.
Lincoln had assured Judge Manning that he would personally look into it, but that was when Kent had put through Sergeant Stan Kelton, who'd called to give his captain a heads-up regarding two ITRT raids authorized by Stonecoat—one on a funeral parlor, and the other on the Harris County courthouse annex building.
Now he had listened to reports filtering in from both locations, learning of the ghastly discoveries at each site. He could not imagine what had tipped Lucas off to a body awaiting police at the courthouse, and he tried to picture two security guards having to wrestle Dr. Sanger in her Ivanna wear to the marbled courthouse floor for a gun. Even harder to picture was the disruption of a Mexican wake down at that funeral home. He tried to imagine the mayhem there, the mix of horror surrounding the discovery of the disembodied arms coming on the heels of the natural outpouring of grief with the passing of a loved one.
But he had made his priority Meredyth Sanger's safety and well-being, and to this end, he'd been calling around trying to determine where she might be, fearing she was in some holding cell in another precinct, when he'd gotten the call from Lucas on site at the courthouse informing him that she was with him. Those two're spending a hell of a lot of time together, he'd paused to note.
He had been assured by Lucas that both scenes, courthouse annex and funeral parlor, had been secured and an ongoing investigation was in the works at both locations. The use of the ITRT units, while hell on his budget, had proven Stonecoat's instincts correct all the same. The "medicine man," some in the department called him, and he did seem to have some kind of magical powers of investigation at times. Certainly, his reputation as a hunter- tracker was well deserved.
Given Lucas's assurances, Lincoln had seen no need to rush to either of the scenes, at least not yet. Later, as the CSI units were winding down and could give him a full report, then perhaps he could stand before the microphones and cameras and give a guarded statement.
He started for the window and once there, examined the traffic going down Kensington, wondering if the trip home would be in gridlock. He stared at his gold watch. It was nearing four P.M., and he'd wanted to get out of the city for an engagement party at the Threepenny Oaks Country Club for his daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law, a nice young man in a safe occupation, textiles. He didn't want his daughter, Serena, to be a cop's wife, a fireman's wife, or a soldier's wife, to suffer the unrelenting stresses of being in her mother's shoes. Her mother had heartily agreed, telling Lincoln, who'd been in the service, and had once been a fireman, "I wouldn't wish some of my nights on a dog. Still, Gordon, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I love you."
Do I want to deal with this shit now or not? he wondered of the Sanger business at the courthouse. He had remained standing at his desk, calling for his car to be brought around as soon as he had finished with Lieutenant Stonecoat and Dr. Sanger.
No sooner had he given the order than Lucas and Meredyth arrived in the outer office. The aide, Officer Kent, informed Lincoln of their arrival.
"Well, send them in now!"
"Yes, sir. Captain, oh...and you wanted me to remind you, sir, of Serena's engagement party tonight."
"Yes, yes, I remember, I'm not a dolt."
"But, sir, you asked me to—"
"Just send those two in, Kent! Get 'em in here now!"
Kent escorted them through the door and sullenly closed it behind him. "Something big's happened on the Post-it case," Lucas said.
Meredyth simultaneously said, "We believe Lauralie Blodgett is not some poor kid brainwashed and frightened, but in fact the leader and dominant force behind the Ripper killings."
"That's quite a leap. You want to tell me what's changed?"
"We suspect she's manipulating the boyfriend. She's demonstrated a history of manipulating people. She's behind the choice of Mira Lourdes as victim, to create a clue out of her very body that would take me back to 1984."
"Whoa, slow down. What's 1984 got to do with this case?"
Lucas rattled the air with the court document she'd gotten from the archives. 'Tell him about this, Mere. Tell Captain Lincoln the entire story from the moment we entered the convent school till we discovered Byron's body."
Lincoln sat down, an expectant look on his face, ready for the two of them to show him something. Meredyth leaned over the desk and said, "In the end, her fantasy is so off the wall, you have to suspend your natural tendency toward disbelief in order to believe it."
"Like any good fiction," Lincoln said, smiling.
"But this is not fiction. It's her game board."
"Game board?"
"She's a controlling, conniving woman, Captain, and she's laid all this out from the beginning," replied Meredyth.
"Really? From her photo, she looks like an innocent schoolgirl."
"We've known child killers before," countered Meredyth. "I'm staking my professional reputation on this, Captain."
"You may have already done so, given the theatrics at the courthouse, your having been pinned to the ground and reportedly transported off in a cruiser, and what, let off after being given a ride home? Meanwhile, your longtime friend is left behind murdered."
"I'll be proven right, when everything comes out...vindicated in time, I can prom—"
Lincoln put up a finger to gesture for her to hold on one minute. He made a call to his wife, explaining a break in the Ripper case had come and that he would not be making his daughter's engagement party on time if at all. After a bit of back and forth, he hung up with repeated apologies. He then turned back to Meredyth and said, "Now, start from the beginning, Dr. Sanger, and this better be good."
"I'll try to connect all the dots for you. Lucas can catch me if I forget anything. This case has more twists in it than a pretzel."
"Start at the beginning and please, get on with it," he ordered.
She did so. "As I said, it starts in 1984 when I was an eighteen-year-old intern at the courthouse. It starts with a six-month-old child I helped place in an orphanage for adoption, a girl named Lauralie Blodgett." She explained the significance of the victim's name, Lourdes, and how clues had been left for her and Lucas to connect the name to Our Lady of Miracles, to Mother Orleans and her questionable death, to Katherine Blodgett and her questionable death, coming full circle back to Meredyth's connection to Katherine and to her daughter in 1984. When finished, she held out the yearbook photo of Lauralie she had kept in her purse, so different from the head shot used in the press.
Lincoln studied the full body shot. "Voluptuous for an eighteen-year-old graduate, isn't she?"
"And she knows how to use it," remarked Lucas.
Meredyth continued, telling him about the record of how, as a young intern, she had signed off on Katherine Croombs giving up her daughter to the Catholic orphanage.
"I called Jack Tebo, my landlord, and asked him to look at the photo in the Chronicle," Lucas told Lincoln. "Jack ID'd her, saying she looked older than the girl in the photo, but that it was a dead ringer."
"So he positively identified her as the courier?" asked Lincoln.
"No hedging, sir."