Robert Walker - Final Edge

"Watch me."

"Living up to your Wolf Clan heritage, are you?"

"I'm passionate about you, Mere."

"Shut up and kiss me."

The following day Lucas and Meredyth reluctantly returned to the world in which they had to honor their responsibilities, Precinct 31, each feeling the remorse of having to leave their secret retreat behind. It seemed the only place where the killer had not found them.

They split up at the precinct house front desk under Stan Kelton's watchful gaze, Lucas going for Captain Lincoln's office as Kelton advised, and she for her office, but not before Stan shared the morning Chronicle with them. Lauralie Blodgett's graduation picture stared back at them from its placement beside the unnamed assailant and mur-derer known only as the Post-it Ripper. Lauralie was wanted for questioning in relation to the case. A brief biography and the mention of Our Lady of Miracles as her last known address appeared below the photo, along with the phone number for Crime Line.

Soon after checking in with her secretary, Meredyth announced she could be found at the county courthouse. She quickly located her car in the street lot where she had left it, and drove to the nearby courthouse in search of the records she felt she must review, the cases she oversaw during her year-long internship with Child and Family Protective Services in 1984.

As a forensic psychiatrist for the HPD, Dr. Sanger was well known at the Harris County courthouse, as her casework often involved testifying in various proceedings for the DA, and sometimes for the PD. Whether offense or defense, she, like any forensic investigator, had a duty to the truth, whatever it may bring, whomever it helped or harmed. She was called on to decide if a person under arrest or indictment was legally sane, whether the defendant proved capable of knowing right from wrong at the commission of a crime, whether the defendant proved capable of standing trial, whether he or she proved culpable in criminal premeditation, and to make any number of other determinations.

Of course, her most heart-wrenching determinations came in cases where the killers were children, largely unheard of when she began her practice, but now all too common. She blamed the culture of violence created since the advent of TV, films, and video games that exploited the basest, darkest reaches of the human psyche-the thrill of the kill. What child, unable to resist the slightest brainwashing over what brand-name shoes to wear, could possibly combat such exploitation of the worst instincts in mankind at the hands of computer-generated animation characters bent on mass destruction and murder? The lauding of serial killers by media and merchandisers? The lauding of killing for killing's sake in increasingly violent Hollywood films and video games, even in music videos born out of a generation fed on such bloodletting "classics" as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Cult followers had grown up with technology that now made virtual murder, sniping, knifing, mutilating, so real as to be virtually the real thing. Murder without consequence. Murder without concern for the life force, the soul of another human being. Children had learned this lesson over several generations now, and also that bloodletting for dollars was now a mega-business reaching into the billions each month.

She wondered, however, how Lauralie Blodgett, having an upbringing largely protected from the culture of violence, having limited access to computer games, Hollywood violence, and TV carnage, could become the demon she had become. Perhaps there was some truth to the argument that a genetic predisposition toward violence also existed. How a Charles Manson or a Ted Bundy figured into such musings, perhaps only future science into the human genome system might tell. She wondered if at some future time a gene- zapping laser might be developed to eradicate the genetic predisposition to violence and murder, a kind of watchdog technology that could eliminate the ape-killer genes before such seeds could be firmly planted, and before the infant saw the light of this world.

It smacked of that Spielberg film Minority Report, only better, she thought as she entered the courthouse from the parking garage where her permit was good until December.

She was stopped short by Byron Priestly. "Meredyth! Where've you been? I've tried contacting you every which way I could. Went out to your parents' house in Clover Leaf. No one there and-"

"Byron, we-you and I-we are through, Byron, so you don't have to worry about me any longer, understood? And what're you doing going to my parents? Can't you take a hint?"

"Mere, can't we talk? Work things out?" Byron's blond hair lifted in the wind. His eyes pleaded, his brow creased in consternation. "You're hardly being fair."

"Fair? Byron, you wouldn't know fair if it swallowed you whole. Now, I'm busy. Out of my way."

He threw up his hands as if giving up, and he stood aside, bowing exaggeratedly to allow her to pass.

Realizing she was wearing down the enamel on her teeth, grinding so hard at having the run-in with Byron, she eased off her jaw. She wondered how he had learned she'd be here at the courthouse this morning. He must have weaseled it out of her secretary, whom she'd sworn to secrecy if and when Mr. Priestly should call. She hadn't the time or energy for Byron right now.

She pushed through a succession of doors in an area of the building that offered no access to the courtrooms, so she didn't have to go through a metal detector and give up her.38 Smith amp; Wesson. She quickly found her way down to the subterranean world where old files from the county clerk's office were stored.

She knew the way well, having often done research here over the years. Fortunately, once at the office. Meredyth encountered no obstacles from the staff or the machinery, and soon she had in her hands the paper- thin microfiche records she needed for 1984. She then settled into an uncomfortable plastic seat before a giant gray screen, searching through the records, which ran screaming through the microfiche scanner here in the semi darkened bowels of the old county courthouse. County officials remained cheap, so the old files and the old technology had not seen any change other than the layer of dust here.

Meredyth now listened to the whirring of the old microfiche tape as it continued to speed past 1982, 1983, and whirred down like the sound of a train slowly stopping at a station until she found 1984 under her fingertip.

"Gotcha." Her single word echoed in the Texas courthouse dungeon around her.

She had slowed the fiche to a crawl now, and then to a complete stop when she came to the fall of 1984. It was harder to control the film at a crawl than it ought to be, but she took pains and carefully surveyed each of the adoption files handled by the county in 1984 and '85 for her own name, for Katherine Croombs, for Blodgett, or the convent orphanage name.

Meredyth brought the film record to a standstill to briefly review any document that appeared relevant, then she moved on. As she did so, she tried to recall being of college age in '84. She could hardly believe she was ever that young. In 1984 she was in her late teens, working toward her undergraduate degree. She had to have two terms of practical, applied sociology and psychology under her belt to move through the program to advanced applied courses, and what better way to achieve it than working within the Child and Family Protective Services that fall of '84 and spring of '85.

She recalled how she had excelled at the work in Child and Family Protective Services, how much of it boiled down to detective work and psychiatry. She was good at it, so much so that Mrs. Hunter almost convinced her to go into social work instead of carrying on with her plans to become a psychiatrist. She recalled how arrogant and hardworking and well liked by those in charge young Meredyth Sanger was, and that as a result, she was given far more responsibility that year than she had ever dreamt possible under the auspices of the social worker she interned with, a Mrs. Viola Hunter, a matronly woman with a prim bun and spectacles. Mrs. Hunter had been delighted to unload some of her crushing casework on an eager-to-please workaholic.