Robert Walker - Final Edge

As they drove through the increasingly clinging fog-a fog doing battle with the orange glow of the city's lights- Meredyth's stress got the better of her. Lucas realized that she was sobbing beside him. He reached out and placed a hand around her neck, rubbing it tenderly.

"I can't believe we can't locate one convent girl recently released on her own from that place," lamented Meredyth, placing her head on his shoulder. "And that place. And the lessons of that place, what Lauralie took from there."

"And what would that be?"

"Just put yourself into her place. Imagine spending your entire life there, without a true home, without parents, without siblings…bullied by the older girls, possibly assaulted by them, possibly molested by a priest, learning only how to connive, he, cheat, steal, destroy people and things, how to sexually manipulate others, until your behavior escalated into something far more sinister…escalating to fire-setting and causing accidents that result in death."

"It's not your fault or doing, Mere. Don't put all that on your head."'

"No telling what kind of tyrant that Mother Orleans was. Do you think she drove Lauralie to kill her? First attempting to do it by fire, and later helping her down a flight of stairs?"

"We don't know any of this is true," Lucas objected.

"And-and as for Mother Elizabeth, I've never met anyone more in denial. She knows…down deep, Lucas, she knows Lauralie is a disturbed individual, and not another Rachel-not a child in need of coddling, but a child in need of a straitjacket."

"Exactly…got that right." He placed one arm around her as he drove on. "Time you got your mind off it tonight, sweetheart."

But she went on. "And us…look at us…two professionals going round in circles inside a labyrinth she has led us into…a maze created especially for us, and she's got to be laughing at us-Lucas, the big bad Texas Cherokee detective with an uncanny record for tracking down the monsters among us, and Meredyth Sanger, Ph.D, M.D., a forensic psychiatrist well respected in my field, and together we can't find a missing murderous child."

"Hey, Mere, damn now you've got to go easier on yourself-and me. After all, it's not as if we haven't gotten anywhere. We've come a long-"

"But we haven't. She's still out there somewhere free to do whatever her deranged mind-in cohort with Crazy Joe as you call him-can whip up! And we're no closer to stopping them."

"Oh, but we are! Thanks to your brilliant mind, we've put together a motive behind all this madness. Mere, not to mention we have put a name to one of the suspects in the abduction of Mira Lourdes. A name and a likeness, which will be placed on the all-points bulletin along with our Mr. X with the mole on his cheek. Tomorrow's papers will carry it, along with the news broadcast. It's on Captain Lincoln's desk."

"When did you do all this?"

"I used the graduation photo and made out a report while you were in the ladies' room, and left it with our fearless leader. Now, thanks to you, we're that much closer to ending this terror."

"No, no thanks to me, to her, Lauralie. She has consciously led us to her, Lucas; she wants us to put the puzzle together. Don't forget that. She not only wants to insult us, she wants to control us by controlling every step of the investigation against her. She's shrewd, calculating, and cruel-a terrible combination."

"All the same, we're a lot closer to closing this thing down than we were before going to the convent. You should take some comfort in that."

"Where're you taking me now, Lucas? I'm a nervous wreck, so worried about going home, finding another part of Mira Lourdes awaiting me."

"I don't blame you. I don't relish seeing another of Lauralie and Crazy Joe's gifts either."

"Then we have to dodge your place too."

"And the precinct," he half-joked. "We could always return to the desert, sleep beneath the stars again. Maybe this time, you'll include me on the cloud of your dreams. Whataya say, me-lady?"

"The desert sounds nice, but I have a better idea."

"Shoot."

"My family's country house. She can't know about that. Hey, let's do it. Let's go there. It's on a beautiful lake, and I don't receive mail there."

"Are you suggesting I meet your parents?" He half- smiled, staring into her eyes.

"No, they won't be there. They're in Paris."

"Paris, Texas?"

"France, on holiday. So, we'll be alone, and you won't have any pressure whatsoever. We can pick up some groceries and bathing suits on the way."

"How far is it?"

"Between here and Huntsville. Not to worry. We can be back in the city in an hour and a half."

Lucas raised his hands as if arrested. "All right, you got me, Doctor. I am in your hands completely tonight."

"That sounds promising."

"Lead on, please."

"Interstate north," she said, "Derry Road exit, Madera Lake." She nestled into the crook of his arm, closing her eyes, persuaded she could get far enough away to escape any further thoughts of Lauralie Blodgett tonight.

Arthur Belkuin’s gloved hands twitched ever so slightly where he gripped the freezer door over his head. The surgical gloves he wore made a stifled little barking rubber sound against the lid of the horizontal freezer. Arthur closed the lid over what little remained of Mira Lourdes where she lay inside her frozen coffin: a pair of legs held together by lower torso and hips, two severed arms-one missing a hand, another a finger.

Behind Arthur, her headless, armless upper torso lay on the stainless-steel operating table, where his rotary bone saw rested, silently dripping with blood. He stared at his reflection in the patent titanium blade, so efficient and clean was this blade. He defied any human eye to detect the microscopic tissue and bone fragments adhering to it. He'd have to give it a Muriatic acid bath to be certain the saw, like the ax, could not be DNA'd to Mira Lourdes, and so linked to him. He'd eventually wash down the table as well, whenever Lauralie finally resolved that they had come to the end of this dark journey she had set them on. At which time, he would take the table and all the tools far out to the desert, possibly as far as Mexico, dig an enormous hole, and bury it aU.

He silently thanked God that the blood was at a minimum, most of Mira's blood having been lost when she was killed, and the remaining blood, pooling in the lungs and back, remaining thick and gelatinous from the corpse's having been so long in cold storage. The solid flesh made cutting easier, cleaner. The torso itself had been opened earlier to get at the organs that he had sliced up in thin leaves for the first box sent to Detective Stonecoat. Lauralie had tossed what was left of those organs into the brook that ran through the property, a backwater creek off the Navasota River. He recalled how she'd delighted in watching the creek ripple along on its path, taking its natural course. "On a mission, Arthur, like us," she'd said of the stream as she fed Mira's internal organs to the fish.

The only untouched and undefiled of Mira Lourdes's organs was the heart, now swimming in a formaldehyde- filled jar on a shelf over Arthur's shoulder. Arthur had closed up the huge Y-section cut he had made to the torso and abdomen to get at the organs for Lauralie. The crude autopsy scar on the torso looked like the stitching on a bloated football, Arthur thought. He'd done the procedure quickly and with a shaking hand.

"Lauralie, damn it now, you promised you'd tell me the whole story, and I think it's high time. I think I've earned your trust and the right to know everything."

"You are on a need-to-know basis, Arthur-you need, and I know." She laughed, while outside his dogs, locked in the run, whimpered and whined for the warmth and light inside.

"Lauralie, your reason for doing all this!" he demanded, pointing at the dissected, sewn-up torso lying between them. "You promised, remember?"