"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."
"I want to change, freshen up. My place at around eight?" Meredyth suggested.
Lucas reached out an open palm to brush aside her falling hair from her eyes, but Meredyth shied off, saying, "I'd really like to keep our personal life to ourselves, Lucas, so if you don't mind, the precinct house parking lot isn't the place to display our affections."
Did she get a call from some exaggeration-monger telling her that he and Detective North had had a rendezvous here only moments before? Had she rushed over to catch a glimpse of Lucas in Jana's company to determine if she had something to worry about or not? He wanted to reassure her that nothing untoward was going on between him and Jana, but he realized that if he began down such a road, it would simply sound like a cover-up or even a lie, despite the truth.
'Trust me," Meredyth continued, reading his silence as a disagreement. "Romance in the workplace always wreaks havoc of one sort or another, so let's try to keep what we have a private matter."
"Sure it isn't your professional reputation that you're worried about?"
"I don't mind saying that that's part of it, yes."
"You ashamed of what we have. Mere?"
"I didn't say that! Never. It's just that the leeches and termites in the house will find ways to make it uncomfortable for both of us."
He nodded. "Of course, you're right, but you aren't having second thoughts about us… about this morning, are you?"
"Aren't you?"
"Then you are…having misgivings."
"Don't try to tell me you're not," she countered. "I mean, it all happened so fast, and we were both emotionally distraught, our nerves stretched to the sea and…and…" She stopped, seeing the accusatory look in his eye.
They both stood in silent scrutiny of one another, weighing up, trying to determine the depth of hurt their words and actions had already caused. Meredyth had backed away from him in the past, usually with a great deal more speed than presently. Finally, Lucas said, "I have no regrets, Mere. None whatsoever."
She gauged his sincerity, reading his body language and the deep brown eyes. "We'll have to keep talking about it. Later tonight then."
"See you later then."
She took the steps for the precinct, going inside to retrieve that file she'd forgotten, Lucas imagined. He climbed into his unmarked car and drove for home, wondering why she was afraid to love him unequivocally and unconditionally.
CHAPTER 6
Once inside her inner office, Dr. Meredyth Sanger made a series of phone calls to the crime lab, asking about any new developments in her and Lucas's case. She was put through to Dr. Lynn Nielsen, who civilly and curtly brought her up to date on the progress being made. And while Nielsen was overtly courteous, she finally told Meredyth in a firm, controlled, and accented voice, "If we were left alone to do our jobs, then the information you and Detective Stonecoat want would be that much more forthcoming sooner."
Mereydth felt satisfied that Lucas had indeed spent the day as he had said, and that he had kept her abreast of each step he'd taken in the investigation. Checking up on a man? She chastised herself for going to such extremes. She had never done such a thing before. Maybe Lucas was right. Perhaps she was looking for any little excuse to cut off the legs of their newfound intimacy before it could walk off with her heart entirely. They had been friends for years, always testing one another, teasing, and had in fact been intimate at one time, but Tsali had destroyed that earlier attempt at a life together, and Meredyth wasn't about to go down that heart-wrenching road again. She just knew that he would never get over Tsali, that he had built up a romantic fantasy about life with her and her two girls that he'd always wonder about.
Dr. Nielsen came back on the line. "Detective Stonecoat left us with three sets of dental records, which we then left for Dr. Davies's perusal against the teeth. Dr. Davies has them now."
"Would you please have Dr. Davies contact me with the results as soon as possible, please."
"I'll do that, and Dr. Sanger, I am sorry that someone has victimized you in this appalling manner."
"Thank you for your concern, Dr. Nielsen."
"It is a horrible thing; I can only imagine how horrible."
The ice woman almost thaweth, Meredyth thought, but said simply, "Again, thank you, Doctor."
Sergeant Stan Kelton knocked on Meredyth's door and peeked into her office. "Heard you had come in. Dr. Sanger."
"Stan, do you sleep here at the precinct too? You seem to be here day and night."
"Pulling double shifts lately. Two men out w
ith the flu. Hope to hell it isn't a West Nile virus thing."
"God, hope not."
"Anyway, two items for you." He held up an artist sketch in one hand and a hefty parcel wrapped in brown paper in the other. "Sketch is too damned generic to be of much help. Looks like any number of Bill Gates look a likes. Makes you want to believe your doorman, Stu Long, took the package from a guy who was simply paid to deliver it."
Meredyth only half-heard him as her full attention was on the compact little box he'd placed on the comer of her desk. For a moment, she pictured kindly Stan in cahoots with others trying to drive her insane.
Stan hadn't skipped a beat. "Still, if we could find the delivery guy….Any case, this package arrived for you. Been at central desk all day, except for the time spent in X ray with the bomb squad."
"X ray? Bomb squad?"
"Given what's up, regarding the incidents with you and Detective Stonecoat, I thought we'd best be cautious. The X ray cleared it, found it to be what it purports, office supplies from Staples."
She took the hefty package from Kelton and thanked him for his thoroughness, recalling making the order through her secretary.
"Sad day when we have to tiptoe around our own mail," he said as he closed the door behind himself.
Meredyth took a moment to examine the artist's sketch of the man Stuart Long, her doorman, had described. Kelton wasn't kidding. It was so generic, it could be mistaken for the Wal-Mart happy face, or any fourth person she might encounter on the street with a pudgy face and spectacles. The glasses perched on the nose didn't help to make the picture distinctive.
Alone with the unopened package, Meredyth now stared at it, realizing that until this madman was caught, she'd have to question every item of mail coming to her at home, here at the precinct, and at her private practice.
She grabbed up a letter opener and ripped open the small box forwarded from the office supply shop down the street. True, it was unmarked save for the shop's logo, and true, it could have been hiding something sinister beneath its brown wrap, explaining Kelton's caution over it, but why did she have to live like this? It recalled the anthrax- letter scare of the fall of 2001.
She then noticed an unopened manila envelope in her in box. It could be from another department in the precinct, it could be from another precinct, or it could be from him, the maniac that had taken a deviant interest in her and in Lucas.
Using the letter opener, Meredyth carefully unfastened the metal clip on the file-sized envelope. It proved to be routine papers on several uniformed cops, two plainclothes detectives, and a captain, all of whom needed her expertise in dealing with street shootings and work-related stress, and for routine psychological checkups. Every cop who fired his weapon, justified or not, underwent psychiatric review to determine how he or she was coping with the results of his or her actions. A cop who was having serious marital problems that had or could escalate to physical abuse, and some engaged in verbal and emotional abuse situations, looked to her for help. The yearly diagnosis, tests, and checkups were departmental policy.
Lately, there had been a rash of police-involved shootings. These things went in waves, it seemed to her, almost as if one police shooting begot another, as if news of one infected a squad. Perhaps it did. Someone ought to do a study, she thought, but good luck to the shrink who tried. As a group, cops proved the most uncooperative of clients she had ever treated.
She shut off her light and stood up, about to leave, when she heard someone in the outer office. Had Kelton returned? She called out, "Stan? Is that you?"
No answer.
She opened the door between her office and her secretary's office. No one there, but the door leading to the hallway stood ajar.
She rushed to the door and stared down the hallway. Empty of life, but she heard a door close and footsteps on the stairwell. She reached into her purse for the hefty little.38 Smith amp; Wesson that Lucas had taught her to fire. She inched toward the stairwell door and peeked through the crack to find the stairwell empty, but the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps rose from below, someone in a desperate rush. Known for his laid-back attitude and general laziness, Kelton was not one for rushing anywhere, and would surely have taken the elevator.
Meredyth pushed through the door marked STAIRS, and she rushed after the sound of the footfalls.
Whoever it was, he or she had gone to the basement, heading for the small police garage. Most of the units were parked in an open-air lot, but anyone servicing the building and willing to fight for a space in the underground lot, other than the spots reserved for police brass, might park there. There was no gate or toll booth to bother with in this first-come, first-served garage.
Pushing through the door to the underground lot, she saw a dark blue sleek Mercedes or BMW sedan rushing up the ramp, disappearing too quickly to scan the license plate. She neither saw nor heard another sound in the lot, the garage as silent as a tomb, a ghostly grayness filling the space all around Meredyth.
Then she saw it. A small package on the floor of the garage, just sitting there as in a dream, as in a Dali painting, out of place here, staring back at her. All her horror of the night before over opening the parcel containing the eyes and teeth came rushing back at her. She recalled the CD and the chilling lyrics, I had the time of my life….
She got on her cell phone and called Kelton upstairs, telling him she'd followed a man who'd entered her outer office and fled to the basement, where she now stood staring at yet another brown-paper-wrapped box the shadow man had left behind.
"Geeze, Doc, I just left you," Kelton lamented.
"Stan, he must've been right on your heels. I thought he was you!"
He remained dismayed. "We were just talking in your office!"
"Just please send a couple of broad-shouldered uniforms down here to take control of this…this box and this…possible crime scene, will you, Stan?"
"On it, Doctor."
"And get some of Chang's people down here."
"Soon as the bomb squad clears the package of explosives, Dr. Sanger. They're on alert and on the way with an X-ray device. They'll get a clear picture of what's inside the thing."
"Just get me some muscle down here for now."
She heard Kelton shout at two officers to rush to her aid. "Someone will be right there. Dr. Sanger," he said. "Stay calm."
'Trying to…trying to, Stan." She inched closer to the package. It was slightly larger than the one she'd gotten at home, but the familiar block lettering in her name and in the address of the 31st Precinct appeared to be by the same hand. Whoever had torn out of the lot had left it for her, knowing she was following.
She quickly dialed Lucas's cell phone.
Lucas was halfway home to his apartment, picturing the henpecked Jack Tebo-urged on by Eunice- rehearsing how he would tell Lucas to take his things and get out of the flat by end of week. He wondered where he would go, and groaned at the thought of finding another place to live, dreading the idea of a move. He had put a lot of holes in Tebo's walls, hanging them with traditional blankets and his gun collection. Where else in the city would he be free to do that without hassle? He'd also miss the proximity of draft beer and hot meals. If Eunice was good for anything other than gossip, it was her fine Native American cooking. No one could beat her homemade cornbread and biscuits, her venison stew or Southwestern veal omelet.
With these thoughts sifting through his head, he almost missed the sound of his cell phone. Snatching it off his belt, he said, "Stonecoat."
"Lucas! It's me!"
"Mere? What's up?"
"My blood pressure, I need you again."
"What is it?" He recognized the fright in her voice.
She shakily informed him what had occurred. When she was still in mid-story, he made a U-turn, stopping traffic and garnering curses, horns, and gestures from the motorists around him. "I'm on my way back! Sirens and lights!" He placed the strobe light atop his car and switched on the siren. 'Ten minutes tops! Be
there. Hold on."
By the time Lucas had returned, he found the police parking garage crawling with cops and crime-unit technicians, and among them, a bomb squad official and a bio- threat cop in protective wear sharing a light for their cigarettes, having already determined that the box contained nothing of interest to either of them. Lucas also saw Dr. Lynn Nielsen, and beside her, Dr. Leonard Chang carefully, painstakingly opening a wooden box with a Styrofoam lining, a mite larger than those they had seen the night before, but the packaging distinctively the same.
"Where's Meredyth?" Lucas asked, scanning the area for her when Stan Kelton rushed to him, telling him she was in the squad lounge upstairs with a pair of police-women and a cup of coffee, calming down.
Lucas was held in check when he saw what Leonard Chang's gloved hands now plucked from the white interior of the little coffin left for Meredyth. It was a human hand, a petite, feminine human hand, severed at the wrist in as neat and clean a cut as Lucas had ever seen. No jagged edges, nothing dangling, not so much as a thread of artery. The nearness of the cut gave it an unreal, mannequin appearance until Chang turned it over.
There was writing on the palm in black marker-a short laundry list of items. Everyone craned to see it more clearly. "What is it?" asked Ted Hoskins of Chang while Steve Perelli flashed shot after shot.
"What's the writing on the hand say?" asked Lucas at the same time.
"Reminders. Things she wanted to get on her next visit to Wal-Mart, I suspect," said Dr. Nielsen, her tall frame towering over Chang but not Lucas. "She was out of TP, hairspray, nail polish, and onions."
"She was left-handed," commented Chang, "to write this on her right hand."
Lucas recalled that Mira Lourdes was reportedly left- handed. He wondered if it could be her right hand he now stared at.
"At least we've got fingerprints now," said Dr. Nielsen, sighing.
Chang shook his head. "Look closer. No fingerprints." Chang put a magnifying glass over the fingertips, demonstrating how they had been burnt off with some sort of chemical. "The epidermal layers of skin have been altered."
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