Robert Walker - Final Edge

"The Lady of Miracles, do you know who she was in life, in the history of the Church?"

"I assume the Virgin Mary? Right? I mean doesn't she represent everything to the Catholic believer?"

"Yes, and Our Lady of Miracles is Our Lady of Lourdes-Lourdes. Get it?"

"Whataya mean, as in our victim, Lourdes?"

"A French village, city now…Lourdes, France, Our Lady of Lourdes…the movie they made of it, Song of Bernadette? About the village girl to whom the Virgin Mary appeared, thus Our Lady of Lourdes. She is said to have appeared on several occasions."

"I've heard of it, of course. Bernadette had visions when she was a child. An angel told her where water would spontaneously appear out of the earth, right?"

"At the mouth of a grotto, yes."

"A cave."

"Yeah, like a cavern mouth, and to this day, a spring created by the Angel of Lourdes wells up in the town, and it has been made a shrine to which people the world over make pilgrimages in hopes of a miracle cure for various illnesses."

"Lourdes, sure. Didn't they make the little girl a saint?"

"Not before she was put through hell. Religious celebrities are put through the ringer by the Vatican."

'Tell that to Joan of Arc."

"Eventually, after years of examinations and investigations, Bernadette was made a saint, but by then, she could not live comfortably in Lourdes. She joined a convent and spent her adult life in the service of Christ."

"So now you're thinking there's a definite link between Our Lady of Miracles convent and our victim, Mira Lourdes, that it's too much coincidence to be just a twist of fate or happenstance?"

"The killer's hand is all over this chance fluke. He gave us the convent as a return address, and he gave us enough of Mira to identify her-her teeth and next her head. And how many times have you told me that you don't believe in coincidences in a murder investigation?"

"Touche. So our killer is a saint killer?"

"Perhaps contemptuous of Catholic icons-pictures, symbols, idols, and saints."

"So we're chasing someone who might have a history of destroying or disfiguring…say…a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi?"

"Or even a crucifixion cross, or a painting of mother and child-the Pieta-an altar, or an image of the baby Jesus."

Lucas drove with one hand and used his radio with the other, calling into headquarters and speaking to Kelton. "Get the word out, Stan, that we're interested in any reports of religious vandalism in Catholic churches, schools, graveyards, anywhere in the city, understood?"

Kelton replied, "We get calls like that all the time, Lucas."

"Anything recent, say in the past week?"

"Usually turns out to be corner-hugging teens so bored out of their skulls they don't give one damn thought to the consequences of their actions," Kelton replied.

"Any unsolved, recent vandalisms of religious icons, gravestones, statues, or paintings, Stan?"

"Fact is, we got an outstanding on a grave site at Green- haven Meadows off Berwyn."

"Whose grave, Stan?"

"Some guy named Blood…John Blood, as I recall. I can look up the report. Came in from the caretaker. Said the dirt around the grave was disturbed, and the stone was cracked from what had to be a sledgehammer."

"Anything else? Anything to do with a church?"

"No, nothing."

"Keep an eye out for such things, Stan."

"I'm on it." Kelton was gone.

They drove on in silence under the increasingly overcast sky, each taking silent counsel, she with her training in human nature, he with his grandfather's words in his head, and both weaving what little they knew of the killer with the puzzling scraps they had collected thus far, and now this new notion involving the Catholic Church. Meredyth's profession didn't like coincidences of this size any more than did Lucas's Native instincts. This matter of Our Lady of Miracles being Our Lady of Lourdes, and their victim being a Lourdes. Had the poor young woman paid the ultimate price because she bore the name of the convent?

Meredyth broke the stillness, saying, "There's too much here to be called mere coincidence, Lucas, and…and there's something else I have to tell you."

He looked at her, her tone signaling a confession of some sort. "What is it, Mere?"

"Almost twenty years ago, when I was a psychiatric intern doing social work for my degree, I had some dealings with the orphanage at Our Lady of Miracles."

"Another strange harmony?"

"What astrophysicists call a concurrence, I think. Ongoing occurrences on a collision course."

'Too close for comfort," he agreed.

"But Lucas, it's the first real clue that the killer may have targeted me for some specific reason other than my notoriety as a forensic psychiatrist."

"And what reason is that, Mere?"

"I…I didn't recognize the name of the convent orphanage right off, but since you mentioned it, I've been sitting here struggling, dredging up a twenty-year-old memory."

"Connected to the convent?"

"It's our first real connection to the killer. My history with this place we're going to. The killer intentionally pointed us in this direction."

"And what is the history, Mere? Were you once thinking of joining the convent? Did you go there as a child?"

"No, no! I had very little relationship with the convent really, and it was all so long ago."

He turned sharply into a small street, causing a pedestrian a bit of distress, the man shouting an obscenity at Lucas.

Lucas merely waved and kept going. "Go on," he told Meredyth.

"I was a teenager, my first year of college, and I knew I wanted med school. I was a student trying to get brownie points by getting my sociology requirement out of the way early on, you know, to impress my academic counselor. I kinda had a crush on him."

"That's the extent of your association with the convent? You did your sociology internship there? What, one quarter term? Seems pretty weak as connections go."

"No, not even that. I did my internship with Child and Family Services with the county, and I helped place a handful of children with the convent orphanage. I spent all my time at the courthouse downtown. I never saw the orphanage itself. Never set foot in it actually."

"That's it, huh?" He took another turn. They passed storefronts, taverns, eateries.

"I haven't been associated with them since those days in my first year of college. I represented indigent single mothers in cases involving newborns, to give them a home."

"Damn lot of responsibility for a kid."

"I was aggressive, and the caseworker I was helping out, she was swamped. I mean, case files to the ceiling. She was glad to have my help, and no one questioned it. Hell, it was 1984 and it was benevolent work."

"So you worked in finding foster homes and making adoptions possible?" he asked. "Benevolent work."

"My responsibilities ended at the courthouse door. I merely counseled and helped out the mothers who turned their children over to the orphanage for adoption. The county, the court, the nuns, under the mother superior, they saw to the actual adoptions. I just facilitated the paperwork and acted as advocate for the mother, and by extension, the child."

"Then your job was to…to…?"

"Expedite the transition for the mother; help her with her decision after weighing all options. Basically, all I signed off on was the mothers' understanding and state of mind…you know, sound mind, clear understanding of adoption. Had to make sure Mom knew what rights she was signing off on. It was just interview work."

"I see, and you never actually handled the children involved?"

She shrugged. "Occasionally, one of the infants was thrust into my arms when the mother needed to locate a proof of address or needed both her arms to sign papers."

The drive had taken them onto the Interstate, and after passing several exits, Lucas found Crockett Avenue, where he exited onto the surface street. The grim and growing cloud bank had engulfed the city, thrusting them into a daytime night. The car now moved through a crowded little neighborhood of narrow streets and boxy houses.