Robert Walker - Final Edge

"Locked in a lifelong melee with alcohol, yes. Make no waves, I was told by Frank."

"Patterson. Figures. Feldman and Rowan investigate it, Patterson rubber-stamps it. But you saw the marks on her wrists and ankles," Lucas hammered now.

"Yes, true, but the case was-how you said- rubber-stamped, closed over my objections, so…"

"You also noted there was very little in the way of barbiturates in her system, while the police report said she had swallowed an entire bottle of pills," added Meredyth.

"They brought the empty pill bottle in a plastic bag along with six empty bottles of Jim Beam-six! She was killed by making excessive love to Jim Beam, they joked- right over her body, they joked! I never saw such a thing in my country."

Nielsen shivered with the recall. Lucas and Meredyth let her talk. "I knew it would come back to get me," she said.

"We're not interested in getting you, Dr. Nielsen, believe me."

"Dr. Chang will be disappointed to learn of it. He was out of the city then, on working vacation-Vancouver, giving a talk." Then speaking of Katherine Croombs, she said, "Poor woman looked like my grandmama, but hardly that age! She had two chipped teeth, and her lips were bruised too, a curious thing we see in abuse cases. It didn't make sense."

"And Frank didn't want to hear about this?"

She now climbed into her car, averting her eyes and face for the moment, fumbling with her seat belt. She turned the key, her Plymouth Voyager coming to life. "You must tell me why you think the Croombs autopsy is connected to the Post-it case we're now working. I must know if I am to bring all of this to Dr. Chang's attention and give in my resignation."

"What possible good can come of your resigning?" asked Meredyth through the car window.

"If anyone should be talking of resigning, it's Patterson. Trust Chang, yes. Confide the truth in him. You won't ever regret it," Lucas firmly told her.

"What is connecting the two cases?" she asked.

"It's a long story, and we'd truly like to tell you over dinner," Meredyth assured her.

She considered this. "All right, Michelangelo's, say in twenty minutes? I'll meet you there, and since it may be my last meal as Assistant M.E. here, be prepared to buy me the house specialty."

"It won't be your last meal, I promise," Meredyth replied. "We'll stand with you against Patterson. We know he put you in this position."

"I have been haunted by that Croombs woman."

She backed from her parking space and pulled out of the police lot, Lucas and Meredyth watching, hoping she'd show up at the restaurant.

They went for Lucas's car.

Before arriving at Michelangelo's Italian Eatery, Lucas had called District Attorney Harry Jorganson, asking if they'd gotten the warrant on the address he wanted. Jorganson informed him that he couldn't sell it to the judge. "No dice. Judge says she fails to see that we've actually connected enough dots here, Lucas. Sorry, I know your instincts are right on, but the judge was adamant, got on her high horse about my coming to her to turn a blind eye to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the American Civil Liberties credo, you name it, every time Houston PD is feeling public pressure."

"Did you tell her we suspect it has to do with the Post-it Ripper?" he asked.

"I told her, told her more than once, but she was on a tear. I understand she got turned over on appeal in the Edmunds case, which sucks, and we just got her at really the wrong time."

Lucas invited Jorganson to sit down with him, Meredyth, and Nielsen for dinner. "We can give you more of the details to go on."

"Sorry, Lucas, but ol' Jorganson's got two trials to prep witnesses on for a busy A.M. manana. Again, sorry about the warrant. Get me a bigger hammer to wield, okay? Drive that sucker home for you with the right tools, you know that, you know you do. Well, gotta run. Enjoy dinner."

Lucas broke the bad news to Meredyth, who said, "Damn…damn fool judge, and what's wrong with Harry Jorganson?" She scorned and fumed the rest of way to Michelangelo's.

At the restaurant, they were well into their main course by the time Lucas and Meredyth explained all their reasons for suspecting the girl fresh out of the convent school. "It's possible that her boyfriend is doing the actual killing, but we suspect she's pointing out the targets," said Lucas.

"Then you suspect that the Post-it Ripper is two people," said Nielsen.

"Yes, we do."

Meredyth added, "There've been clues intentionally leading us to Lauralie Blodgett, and I'm afraid the sudden reappearance of Lauralie in Katherine's life was not the touching reunion scene we usually see on television programs and in the movies."

Lucas told Nielsen what they had learned at the mortician's.

"I think that Lauralie was and remains traumatized by her childhood experience of growing up without anyone, feeling like a prisoner inside the walls of Our Lady of Miracles," added Meredyth.

Nielsen nodded. "And now she's out to perform a miracle of her own, the perfect crime."

"With enlisted help, yes."

"This is good news then, that you two have narrowed your search from a nonentity, a boogeyman, to two specific individuals, one of whom you have a name for."

"It's all based on a great deal of speculation," cautioned Lucas. "Not solid enough for the DA or to get a warrant, it seems."

"Educated speculation," corrected Meredyth. "Due in large part because Lauralie couldn't resist leaving us bread crumbs to follow, as if-"

"Bread crumbs?" asked Nielsen.

"Clues, as if there beats inside her the heart of a person who wants to be caught and punished," explained Lucas.

"More likely she wants her day-and-say before the cameras and in court, as if she feels we owe it to her to catch her and make her a star," said Meredyth. "It's why she's selected Lucas and me to come after her, and perhaps because I was instrumental in placing her at that orphanage back in 1984."

"Damn twisted story," commented Nielsen. "Sounds too much like fiction not to be true, if you understand my meaning. Beyond belief, so it makes it credible by virtue of being beyond belief. Anything that bizarre…well, we have a saying for in Sweden. It is the lunacy not yet dreamt of that will befall you."

"I like that," said Lucas. "Are you sure it wasn't stolen from the Cherokee?"

"Sad but true," Meredyth said of the aphorism, and then she added, "Now let me see if I have it right. The most incredible lunacy, not yet dreamt of, shall come to pass…and Jesus wept for all mankind." She toasted it with her wine glass.

They dined to the rattle of dishware and silverware, each nursing private thoughts for the moment. The waiter came, asked after their comfort, and left. The music was as authentically Italian as the cuisine, from an opera Meredyth recognized.

"What more can you tell us about the mother's death?" asked Meredyth of Lynn Nielsen.

"One of the first uniformed officers at the scene told me it may have been staged to look as if Katherine had killed herself, but he would never repeat it again afterwards. Detective Feldman, the lead investigator, seemed to have some personal interest in closing the case quickly. I think he needed to clear his homicide board for the month. Who knows?"

"Feldman's a jerk," Lucas muttered. "He's a nine-to- fiver, anxious to wrap up a case and go home."

"Always scratching himself in the crotch," she said. "Is this why they call him Itch?"

Lucas laughed, Nielsen and Meredyth joining in. Someone passing by jostled their table, an empty bottle of wine spilling out its last drop, telling Lucas to order a second.

Nielsen continued talking about the Croombs matter. "They took the statements of neighbors about the woman's on-again, off-again relationship with the bottle. Said she had it bad, her battle with booze. But one neighbor said she thought Katherine was doing better since she had rediscovered her daughter." Nielsen sipped her wine before continuing. "I read some of Feldman's remarks in the file. He cited a long police history with the address, numerous occasions of disorderly disturbances, fighting, you know. This was enough to sum it all up for the detectives. Relapse. And this time an overdose. Closed case. Death was chalked down to accidental overdose."