Robert Walker - Final Edge

"No way Father William didn't notice her," whispered Lucas to Meredyth. "Given his nervousness when asked about her, I wouldn't put it past him to have put a move on her."

"Or she on him for favors."

Lauralie stood almost a head taller than any of her classmates. In both photos, she wore an expressionless face, but her eyes rose up from the flat page and seemed to bum with a strange, penetrating radiance. Dark-skinned, exotic in appearance, she might pass for Mexican or Indian. When Lucas asked about her nationality, William said, "Mexican… she was Mexican and Caucasian."

"No, Father Will, she was Irish on her mother's side, Croombs, and a mix of Mexican and Native American on her father's side."

"Croombs?" asked Meredyth.

"She showed me her father's photo once, and a photo of the woman she had located, Katherine Croombs. Quite the Caucasian, looked like the Irish stereotype."

Lucas and Meredyth thanked the woman again for her time and hospitality as they prepared to leave. Mother Elizabeth, forgiving them their trespasses against Father William, suddenly insisted that they must remain for the dinner meal, 'To see how well the children prepare the meal, wait the tables, and clean up afterwards."

Meredyth begged off, saying they hoped to get to the county clerk's office before the Children and Family Services Department shut down for the evening. "As it is, we may not make it."

"All the more reason to stay for the meal. Father William always stays for dinner."

The mother superior had earlier asked Father William to replace the holy water in the fount, and he'd seemed anxious to fulfill her wish and had eagerly gone to the front vestibule for the chore. Lucas went to Father William now and asked, "You have no idea of Lauralie' s current whereabouts? Where we might find her? We really need to ask her a few routine questions."

"Sorry…as Mother Elizabeth can tell you, none of us have seen or heard from Lauralie in months."

"She was a pretty girl, Father."

"All children are beautiful in the eyes of the Lord, Detective."

"I'm sure they are." Lucas put a mental note in the back of his head to talk to Rachel again someday about Father William. Instinct told Lucas that the man was not the saint he purported to be, and that perhaps Rachel and others here were not so demure as they were frightened.

Lucas and Meredyth left, to Mother Elizabeth's and Sister Audrey's smiles and waving of hands as Lucas pulled from the lot, Sister Audrey again electronically opening and closing the gate.

"Place is like a small castle missing a drawbridge and a moat," said Lucas. "There must be ways in and out the students alone know about."

"What're you suggesting? That we have the church staked out?"

"Maybe…"

"Whoever's playing games with us, she knows the lay of the grounds here, the ins and outs, and Rachel mans the kitchen door. Suppose Rachel is still being dominated by Lauralie. Suppose Rachel's suspicion that Mother Orleans's accident was no accident is true. Maybe the fire was no accident either, but a first attempt on the old mother nun's life? Rachel might make an excellent witness for the prosecution if Lauralie is as involved in the abduction and death of Mira Lourdes as she seems to be."

"Where is Lauralie?"

"I'd like to get Rachel out of that place and into a real interrogation room downtown."

"Rachel knows a lot, agreed. Like someone who has spent her entire life here should know."

"And I'm telling you now, Mere, there's something not kosher with that priest. He may deserve a great deal more thrashing than I gave him."

"He did seem odd, defensive, especially when you were strangling him with his own robes!" She laughed recalling the image.

Both Meredyth and Lucas felt great relief at passing from the church grounds and back into the world of the city of Houston. "Poor Rachel," Meredyth said. "I feel like we ought to've hidden her in the trunk of the car and rescued her from all those characters."

"I know…me too, but then that'd be agin the law."

"Mother Elizabeth is a strange mix of strength, intelligence, and naivete, isn't she?"

"I think her heart's in the right place, but no one's playing by her rules, not really."

"Behind those bars, she's created a fanciful fantasy existence, a place apart for her separate peace, yet she's convinced herself that she's preparing those girls for the real world."

"Still, I liked her. Heart of gold. I been searching for a heart of gold…and I'm growin' old," he sang out.

Meredyth insisted they try to make the downtown courthouse before closing time, but Lucas replied, "In this traffic, no way we can make it before the offices close. We may as well call it a day, Mere."

"Damn it, Lucas, I can't recall if there was an infant named Lauralie Blodgett or Lauralie Croombs as one of my first cases or not. But given the mounting coincidences, I'm assuming I did handle the case. It's got to be why I've been targeted by this maniac, and Lauralie has got to be at the center of it all. Maybe the Post-it Killer is her boyfriend; maybe he has made promises to her."

"Promises?"

"Promises to help her wreak revenge on me. She could be the brains behind the hand of this Frankenstein."

"Why target me then?"

"Because, Lucas, they've gone to school on me, so they know all about me and my surroundings, my likes and dislikes, and so they know I'm…that is, that we are close, and by hurting you, they know they hurt me."

"Is that an admission of love?" he asked.

"A great and abiding fondness with a capital F," she replied.

He laughed at this and drove on. After ten minutes of silence, he said, "You know me, Mere. I don't normally leap to assumptions and conclusions on a case, but it's increasingly clear that someone, most likely this Lauralie someone, has it in for you so badly that it borders on a kind of religious abhorrence she has against you."

"To've mailed those body parts to us, and to've placed that severed finger for me to find in the holy water…Indeed it is a furious hatred she's harboring for me."

'True whether she's done all of this herself, in person, or has had others following her orders. Kinda like you!" he joked.

"She certainly knows how to control people."

"Yeah, even men of the cloth like Father William."

"You really didn't like Father William, did you?"

"Call it an instant dislike."

"But how do you see him helping Lauralie-or whoever is behind Mira Lourdes's death and mutilation?"

"Small favors, I suspect, for sexual favors perhaps. I get a bird-of-prey kind of thing coming off that beak-nosed priest. He curries favors with all the girls, I suspect, but maybe Lauralie became too much for him to handle. I get the feeling he's damned glad he hasn't seen her in some time and doesn't know her whereabouts and wants to keep it that way."

"That's quite a leap, Lucas."

"Suspicious mind of mine has kept me alive this long."

"Well, one thing I believe we can agree on is that our female courier is not so innocent. The finger was not tucked away in a box. She knew what she was defiling the holy water with."

"Which means that our Post-it Ripper is not a he but a they, a couple out to panic Houston, and bent on destroying you and me in the bargain, like…like a jealous lover."

"I know it'll only sound paranoid to anyone looking at the circumstances from the outside," Meredyth said. "Hell, as a shrink, I'd say the same thing of someone coming to me with a story as convoluted and crazed as this…but after all, it was a man-and-woman team who abducted Mira Lourdes, and why Lourdes, if not to make a point with the convent? And-and, Lucas, why'd they mark the return address on the first parcel to you as Our Lady of-" She stopped herself in mid-sentence, pondering something new.