"Then you have news one way or the other regarding the dental records and the teeth?"
"I do. We have a winner, a hit."
Lucas's fist clenched in the gesture of victory. "Great! Excellent."
"Want to take a stab at which of the three matched?" Davies offered.
Lucas recalled the M.E.'s determination that the hand found with the writing on it indicated a left-handed victim. "Mira Lourdes," he guessed.
"Uncanny," replied Davies. "Someone told me you were psychic."
"I had a lot of help on this one, Doc."
Davies went on. "The victim's teeth, an upper and lower, one bicuspid, the other a front tooth, matched perfectly with Lourdes's dental chart."
"No doubts or margin of error here, Dr. Davies?"
"I've made nineteen comparison points on one tooth, fourteen on the other. Enough to hold up in any courtroom in the land."
"That's good news. Doctor. You must have worked all night. Don't let anything happen to the evidence."
"Not to worry. After hearing about what occurred in the garage last night, I felt it best to make short work of it, Detective."
"Thanks again."
"My pleasure. Hope we can end this nightmare for the two of you."
"Mira Lourdes was a woman with a boyfriend who claims she disappeared when trying to sell her car. Claims she was abducted from her own driveway."
"It has happened before," Davies replied.
"Something screwy about the guy."
"If you say so, Detective. You seem to have terrific instincts. Look, I'll have a copy of my full report on your desk by mid-morning. The original will go to Dr. Chang to accompany the mounting evidence against our man, whoever he is."
"Yeah, now all we need is to answer the question of who would want Mira Lourdes dead and why."
"And why the game with the body parts?"
"Someone who can tell us all about what only he and we know."
"Chang says the hand was severed with a powerful rotary saw, exactly the sort used in an autopsy," added Davies. "Very odd game he is playing with you and Dr. Sanger, odd indeed. Well, I'm exhausted and am going home now."
"Yeah, kind of tired myself. Think I'll go take a shower."
"Good luck on tracking down this fiend, Detective."
"Thanks, I'm doing my damnedest."
Lucas hung up, deciding he could use that shower and some foreplay with Meredyth, and perhaps convince her that they should take the day off. He went toward the bed-room, stripping away his shirt and pants, going for the shower. Inside the bathroom, a steam cloud filled the space, billowing out at him and the adjacent bedroom. He stripped down completely now, dropping all his clothing and stepping into Meredyth's cloud, recalling her peyote dream of the other night.
When he opened the shower door and stepped through the cloud and into the cascading spray, he took her in his arms and kissed her, his long mane of hair blending with hers.
"Just what the hell're you doing?" she said in mock alarm.
"I've come to fulfill your dream."
"We're not the least conceited now, are we, Lucas Stonecoat?"
"No, I mean, I am stepping into your cloud...like in your dream? Coming into your dream cloud." He held his arms out to indicate the steam cloud around them.
She laughed. "Oh, yeah...I get it, stepping into my cloud."
"You see me now, don't you? That I belong in your cloud with you?"
"Perhaps clearly for the first time," she replied, wrapping her glistening, soap-covered arms around him. She kissed Lucas, and he returned the kiss. She ran her fingers through his long hair, saying, "Let me wash that long mane of yours, my Indian lover."
Lucas turned his back to her and allowed her to do exactly that.
BY MID MORNING THEY were driving to downtown Houston and the precinct. On the trip, Lucas brought Meredyth up to date on Dr. Davies's findings, that they had an identity for the Jane Doe whose body parts some geeky- looking wacked-out maniac was sending to them piece by piece.
When Lucas told her the name of the victim, Meredyth repeated it, "Mira Lourdes...Mira Lourdes...means nothing to me. What possible connection is there between us, Lucas? What do we know about her?"
Lucas told her all that they had learned of Mira Lourdes, and how she had supposedly disappeared. "I suspect her abduction was random, that it had to do with her placing the ad, and inadvertently letting her guard down, placing herself in a vulnerable position by going with this couple seen by the neighbor, unless the boyfriend's story is a complete fabrication. I'm sure we'll be talking a great deal more to him if he doesn't lawyer up."
They fell silent as the car whizzed past gas stations, fast-food restaurants, newsstands, parking garages, bus stops, churches, mosques, all reflecting off the windshield. "Wonder what that chemical odor was that Stu smelled on the guy who delivered the package," she said, breaking the silence.
"Anything from disinfectant to formaldehyde, I suppose," replied Lucas. "Points again to a medical type of some sort."
"Do you really think we're dealing with some kind of medical Jack the Ripper?"
"The way the organs were sliced...the precision...the way her hand was severed so cleanly with a surgical saw. Not to mention the removal of the teeth, and the eyes intact. Yeah, I'd bet on it; our guy is a medical man."
"Or a butcher, or a carpenter, or a barber. Hell, he could be anyone, Lucas! A lousy failed gynecologist or Navy chef, any moke with the right tools for plucking out eyes and pulling teeth and cleaving off a hand."
"Whoever did this also opened up the chest cavity and removed internal organs. Mere. It requires some precision to make the cuts he left for me. Even Chang was impressed."
"Impressed? Nothing this monster can do to us can ever impress me, Lucas."
"Perhaps impressed is a poor choice of words." They had arrived at the precinct when Lucas's cell rang out. He lifted it and immediately acknowledged Jana North's voice, unaware that this made Meredyth stiffen alongside him. When he got off the phone, he told Meredyth, "Jana's waiting for us in your office. Wants to discuss the case with us. Seems she's talked to Dr. Davies and has informed the family that Mira Lourdes is being chopped into little pieces and put into boxes and forwarded to you and me."
"Jesus, Lucas, this thing's blowing up fast now, and we haven't a clue as to who is behind it. This is going to make us look like...like..."
"A couple of incompetents, I know. Shit! I can't believe Jana's done this."
"Why not? From a Missing Persons departmental point of view, she's solved her case. Mira Lourdes has been located, so to speak."
"Determined dead maybe, but Jana's got no corpus delecti."
"Only bits and pieces of the corpse."
"She damn sure could've waited on it, and given us more time."
"So, you still think Byron's the unnamed source we need to worry about? Just tell me this, Lucas Stonecoat..."
He gnashed his teeth, readying for her attack. "What?"
"Are you going to take Detective North to task?"
"Damn straight."
She inwardly smiled. "I want to see this."
DETECTIVE JANA N0RTH was awaiting them both in Meredyth's office. She and Meredyth exchanged perfunctory hellos, knowing one another professionally. "I've informed the parents and Mira's live-in, Dwayne Stokes, that we know Mira is dead and that parts of her are being sent to law-enforcement officials in a sick game of cat-and- mouse initiated by the killer."
"Jeeze, Jana, that information's gone out to the family and that idiot Stokes? It's going to be all over the six o'clock news."
"This is a Missing Persons case, Lucas. We have to keep the family informed. It's the way we work."
"No Jana, it's a murder case, a homicide. That takes precedence over your jurisdiction, and you know that. You also know we don't work homicide that way."
"Ease off, Lucas," Meredyth said. She addressed Jana. "God, it must've been extremely difficult breaking such news to the paren
ts." Meredyth felt a genuine guilt now, seeing that Jana was hurt by Lucas's words.
"They had to know, Lucas," said Jana. "Soon as I learned about the match made by Davies, I tried to find you. When I couldn't, I went over there to talk to the parents. I swore them to keep it confidential for now."
"Can't imagine the shock of it for the parents," Meredyth sympathetically added.
"But you didn't stop with the parents. You told Stokes what we have. Just wish you'd have held off, Jana." The annoyance in Lucas's voice hung in the air. "I would've liked to have seen Stokes's reaction."
"All right, maybe I should've held off."
"How'd Dwayne react to the news?"
"Devastated, as far as I could see."
"He's hiding something."
"He lost his legs and his breakfast. As far as the parents go, better they should get the news through us than hearing it on MSNBC or reading it in the Chronicle, and the way information's leaking from your precinct, Lucas, I think I did the right thing."
"Regardless of Stokes's theatrics, Jana, I think we need to get him in here and grill his ass for all he's worth," said Lucas. "I think he knows more than he's telling."
"I'm on top of it, Lucas."
"How, Jana, are you on top of it?"
"He's in interrogation now, and has stuck tenaciously to his story. That she was abducted by a couple to whom she was showing the Saab."
Meredyth piped in, saying, "Whoa, it was my understanding that he never actually saw the couple, that he only heard about them."
"Right."
"Then how is he sticking to the story?"
Jana looked firmly in Meredyth's green eyes. "Doctor, I meant he is sticking to his alibi—that he was at work at the taco stand in the mall where he is the night manager, and his multiple alibis are being checked. In the meantime, he's cooperated in helping us to get the neighbor to take a deposition as a witness through official contacts we've made in Jamaica. So both of you, ease off Jana, okay?"
Lucas and Meredyth exchanged a look and each apologized to Jana. Lucas then asked, "What about the impounded Saab? Anything found there?"
Jana made herself comfortable, taking one of two chairs facing Meredyth's desk. Meredyth sat behind her desk, and Lucas took the seat beside Jana.
"A CSI team is going over the Saab. So far, they've found a stain on the front passenger side, the cloth seat. Nielsen says it's chloroform."
"Chloroform, really?"
"Which explains how she was subdued," said Meredyth.
"The abductor likely took her from behind while inside the car, from the rear seat," explained Jana.
Lucas, nodding, added, "Which suggest two perps at work here, one driving, one attacking."
"All of which verifies Dwayne's story—or rather Mrs. Paulis's story."
"Really? Then Stokes is off the hook?"
"Perhaps. Waiting for a call from Jamaica."
"Still, good ol' Dwayne may've hired the couple that abducted and killed her."
"Possibly," she agreed, "but as much as he hated the car, don't you think he would've paid them to take it as well?" asked Jana, smirking.
Lucas smiled wryly and nodded.
"Any case, he's agreed to a lie detector test. That's being arranged as we speak."
"Any other news?"
"Well, you asked about the car. CSI did find strands of Mira's hair, and fibers from the cloth seat in the trunk, not unusual since it's her car, but it could indicate she spent some time locked away there."
"Imagine the gall," said Meredyth, picturing it as Lucas had described the circumstances surrounding Mira Lourdes's disappearance, "leaving his own car at the scene of the abduction... taking Lourdes back to her own driveway...switching cars and switching Mira from the Saab to the car he arrived in... and finally driving off with her."
"We need the woman in Jamaica to give a description of the guy's car," said Lucas. "Get what you can from her on it."
"The bastard did it all with the passive assistance of the girlfriend or the wife, whoever she was—likely in great fear of him," Meredyth added. "So she assists in abducting a surrogate."
"Surrogate?" asked Jana North.
"A stand-in for herself."
"Stand-in for what?"
"A punching bag, a sex slave, a torture chamber victim, you name it. The wife or girlfriend tires of being these things that pleasure him, so together they strike up a plan to abduct someone to fill the role, so the wife-girlfriend can step out of that role of victim. Both partners are happy with the new arrangement. He gets a new sex partner to bully and torture, and she gets shed of his bullying and torturing."
"Then her role in abducting and premeditated torture isn't so passive after all, is it?" asked Jana.
"No, not always, not entirely. If she sat in back while he drove, for instance, she attacked Mira and sent her into a defenseless unconsciousness."
Lucas added, "I've seen such domination of women myself. Meredyth could be right."
The three sat for a moment in silence, contemplating the new developments.
Then Jana asked, "Does the name Mira Lourdes mean anything at all to you, Dr. Sanger?"
"Nothing. A total blank."
"We haven't found any connection between us and Lourdes," Lucas assured Detective North.
"So where does that leave us?"
"The connection is to the killer," concluded Meredyth. "Mira Lourdes is somehow connected to her killer, not us, not Lucas and me."
"But this abduction seems random. According to her family and the boyfriend, she had no enemies." Jana shook her head. "What does that mean, Dr. Sanger?" she challenged.
"There may be no connection in our reality, Jana, that is, the real world, but maybe there is a connection in his reality, his warped mind."
"I see, a warped fantastical notion that Mira Lourdes belongs to him is all the connection he needs. But that could just as well apply to his attraction to you since, obviously, Mira Lourdes did not work out."
Meredyth stared at Detective North and swallowed hard. Lucas contemplated the ramifications of what Jana had just said.
"If that is the case," said Meredyth, "then some nut-ball is stalking me for a surrogate slave, and his woman is helping him in this fantasy turned on me. But such a theory doesn't take into account his taunting Lucas."
Meredyth paced to the window and stared out to the busy street below. "As far as connecting with me or Lucas...well, the creep could well've seen us on the tube, you know, during the Walters case, or even the Casde trials, or being interviewed when we broke that Internet murder ring ten years ago for all we know."
"Yes, well, that's true. You two have made news. You both come with the badge of notoriety as a result."
Meredyth returned to her seat and dropped into it, looking defeated. "Maybe it's time to change professions."
Lucas leaned across the desk and said to her, "Mere, I know it has occurred to you that the killer is simply interested in the notoriety that he can achieve or...or create for himself."
"Big bucks these days in murderabilia," she replied.
"Murderabilia?" asked Jana.
"You know, the peddling of murder paraphernalia, serial-killer collectables and trading cards...."
This set Lucas's teeth on edge, and he further explained. "Buying and selling of anything connected with sociopaths and psychos, from John Wayne Gacy's clown suit, his circus clown paintings, to Danny Rollings's nose clippers and the radio knob offa Ted Bundy's Volkswagen, or the car itself, all going for auction on eBay."
"Christ, perhaps that's all he wants, to be ranked among the big boys of criminal history," suggested Jana, her forehead creasing with the implications of such a notion.
"In which case he may believe he knows us, but we don't have any idea who he is or any connection whatsoever to him in our reality, only in his, as I said," Meredyth added. "His relationship with Mira Lourdes may well've been another twist in the same path. Say he saw her at her place of work, inte
racted with her, and she became a luminary star for him."
"That's scary," replied Jana. "Reminds me of an obsessive boy who tagged me as his special angel when I was only sixteen."
"When was that, last year?" asked Meredyth, smiling.
"Thanks for the compliment."
"So we're talking stalking behaviors, stalker-think, that all too familiar brand of magical thinking affecting too damn many American males nowadays," said Lucas.
"If we're dealing with a guy with a psychosis, perhaps he's a patient or former patient of yours, Dr. Sanger," Jana suggested, moving about the room now, thinking on her feet. "I'm sure you've considered that possibility."
"We're going to spend the day going over recent and old cases and patients," Lucas assured Jana.
"I mean, it could just be a guy with a grudge," cautioned Jana. "A screwy revenge motive connection that has nothing to do with die media spotlight?"
"Quite possible," conceded Meredyth.
"Either way, I guess the killer has selected you two for his purposes, and he thinks you have a personal relationship, twisted as that may be," said Jana. "I suggest you need a third partner in this, someone with a bit more objectivity, and since the victim is one of my missing persons cases, I'd like to be that person."
"I have no objection," Meredyth replied. "Given Captain Lincoln's order to catch this freak before things get any further out of hand, we welcome your help, Jana."
"Lucas? What do you say?"
They shook on it and together they went downstairs to interrogation to see what progress, if any, had come of the Dwayne Stokes polygraph test. Lucas joked with Jana along the way, asking, "Will the questions like be couched in phrases beginning with like, dude?"
Jana laughed. Meredyth kept her eyes on Lucas, and she hoped her plan, to keep her rival for his affections—the enemy—close, might work.
Jana's best interrogation team had Dwayne hooked up and sweating out every answer to questions. He was hooked up to two machines simultaneously, a typical lie detector/polygraph, all looking normal, and a state-of-the- art, computer interface polygraph with a computer screen for a readout and electrodes that attached to a skullcap placed on the head, looking like something out of a modem-day Frankenstein tale—a modem-day, extremely intimidating he detector that purported to read lies via brain-wave activity.
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