Robert Walker - Final Edge

Tebo frowned and muttered under his breath as he wiped at his two-day-old stubble. "Seems there's plenty of room between the lines for bad blood, and-"

"Not on my part!"

"— and a desire to avenge family honor, whether-"

"Bullshit!"

"— whether you've sworn off her or not!"

"Jack!"

"Either on Billy's part or hers."

Lucas pictured the beautiful, young Tsali of his childhood, the one he'd wandered the banks of the Trinity River with, the one he had made love to before leaving for Viet Nam. The one who had rejected him when he chose to live among the whites, marrying his cousin, Billy Hawk, instead. He gave a thought to the short, stocky Billy as well, a henchman now for the local Indian crime boss, Zachary Round- point. "What're you suggesting, Jack?" Lucas stepped back to the kitchen, pointing to the awful package stinking up his sink. "That Tsali could do something like this?"

"A scorned woman, all that, you know."

"I know her too well. Tsali wouldn't do something like this. I know her."

"How well do any of us know what others are capable of, Lucas?"

"Drop it, Jack. Tsali is doing well; I speak to her from time to time. She doesn't hate me. As for Billy, I haven't had any dealings with him whatsoever since he's taken up with Roundpoint's crowd." As much as he grudgingly admired Zach Roundpoint, Lucas's being a Houston police detective prevented any public dealings with the man.

"All right, smart guy, then who?" asked Tebo. "Who's got the cajones to send you something this bloody nasty?"

Lucas took a deep breath of air. "This's more likely the work of those bonehead idiots down at the precinct, testing me."

"Yeah…sure, that's it!" Tebo smiled wide. "When you get in tomorrow, they'll be studying your reaction. You'll see." Tebo laughed, his belly rising and falling. He decided he liked this solution.

"They will've read all the reports to see if I freaked out…see if I called in the bomb squad or a CSI unit, all of it, no doubt."

Both men breathed easier with this notion, and Lucas offered Tebo a beer from the fridge, and together they relaxed a moment, Lucas switching on a Houston Astros game. Tebo lifted the note with the cryptic poem on it.

To the backdrop of the announcer, Tebo mused, "Lousy at poetry, whoever the jerk-or jerks-are. So, you think they got the parts from Chang's crime lab or the morgue?"

"That'd be my guess. Sometimes waste isn't disposed of properly, you know…hear about it all the time. One of those bozos like itchy Arnie Feldman is in the morgue maybe…maybe on legitimate business when he sees this, sneaks the stuff out, wraps it up, and sends it to me."

"This's the guy everybody calls The Itch?"

"Yeah."

"Why The Itch? He got a bad case in his BVDs?"

"Well, joke goes that he's never had an itch he didn't scratch. Anyway, to add to the mystery, The Itch hires a little prostitute off the street to dress up in a Catholic school uniform to deliver the package."

"Yeah…yeah!" Tebo's eyes lit up. "She was maybe a hooker or a stripper dressing the part, pal," Tebo said, toasting with his beer. "She was no little kid. Kick-ass body. Had that uniform bulging. Lot of makeup, eyelashes, eyeliner, rouge, lipstick as thick as molasses."

"Gotta be Feldman scratching another itch. He spent a lot of time in vice, knows every prostitute on the street."

After a long silence, Tebo asked, "Suppose you're wrong."

Lucas silently considered this. If it weren't a stupid prank, if it had come from some enemy, it presented a real threat, a warning of some kind, or it could be someone's reaching out, pleading for the Cherokee detective to put an end to his killing again. No way to be sure. Not a clue. To Tebo he simply said, "Got to be a prank."

Lucas's red face somewhat camouflaged his scarred right cheek and neck, until the scar flinched with his consternation, as was the case now. The twinge called to mind how he had gotten the scar in a fiery shootout early in his career as a police officer in Dallas. Now a detective in Houston, he had little desire to relive that day many years before, but he could not escape it either, tattooed as it was on his countenance.

Tebo considered the worried look on his friend's face, and he thought how tall and angular Lucas was even here in his sitting position.

The phone rang, and Lucas grabbed it up as if it might be a lifeline to take his mind away from the package and what it portended.

Dr. Meredyth Sanger, the precinct psychiatrist, gasped out her words. "I need you right away, now, to come over here, Lucas. Can you come over now?"

He heard the desperation in her voice. "What's happened?"

"Something awful… arrived in the mail… can't fathom it."

Lucas thought she must mean some bad news, a death in the family perhaps. "I have something I've got to deal with right here at the moment that requires my presence here. Believe it or not, my apartment may be in need of a crime-scene unit."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I got a strange package in the mail," he explained, "extremely strange."

"Is it…in any way human body parts?" Meredyth's voice rose.

"How did you know?" Lucas nearly shouted.

"I got a package too."

"Body parts in a Styrofoam-lined box?"

"Eyes…a pair of eyes, Lucas, and two teeth! I freaked out."

'Take it easy. Tebo and I wanna believe it's some of the guys down at the precinct, pulling a hoax, you know, using autopsy debris."

"It's a pair of eyes, Lucas. Hardly autopsy culls. Some sick SOB has mailed me a pair of bloody eyeballs and… and teeth… with a crumpled note and a CD."

"Eyes, teeth, a note, and a CD," he repeated, "Christ."

On hearing this, Tebo switched off the TV and leaned in to listen.

Lucas added, "This is too foul even for Feldman and Patterson. Tell me, what does the note say? And have you played the CD?"

"It's fashioned in poetic lines." She read the note to him. " 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, I give you peace beyond the confessional booth.' Whoever sent it knows I'm Catholic."

"Sounds similar to what I have here. Whoever it is, he's targeted us both, and if it isn't the idiots downtown…if it's for real, we need to protect ourselves, Mere."

"Agreed. Sounds like a revenge motive of some twisted sort. Listen to what's on the CD."

Coming over the line were the lyrics and music of the song "(I Had) The Time of My Life" from the hit film Dirty Dancing. In the context of the moment, given that someone had cut out the eyes and organs of a body and sent it to the two police officials, the lyrics proved chilling.

Lucas pictured Meredyth, her tall frame shivering at the circumstances, and yet she had steeled herself enough to have played the CD while alone with the heinous package she had opened. Lucas found her beautiful and intelligent as well as courageous, as he had worked many cases with the ash-blond psychiatrist's invaluable help.

When she came back on the line, she said, "Maybe it's somebody we put away."

"No. Everyone we've put away is either dead or still behind bars."

"Someone's behind it…someone who hates us both. Perhaps orchestrating it from behind prison bars," she persisted. "Whoever did this must hate me a great deal, Lucas."

"We'll find out who's behind it. Mere. Trust me. Where are the eyes now?"

"Spoiling my gray carpet in the living room. I dropped them the moment I realized what I had in my hands."

"How was the package delivered, by hand or via the mail, what?"

"Left with the doorman, who brought it up for a tip."

"Any return address on the package?"

"My private office downtown. It looked harmless enough."

"I'm on my way. Go to a separate room until I get there."

"I already have. I'm calling from outside on the deck."