Robert Walker - Final Edge

Lucas kept hold of the radio and returned to Meredyth on the bench. She was sipping at a cup of coffee now, a slight shiver escaping her.

"Lincoln's changing the APB on Lauralie Blodgett to a Code Red BOLO."

"Be on the lookout for a witch on a broom?" she muttered. "Then Gordon understands what's going on?"

"He's standing behind you one hundred percent. Mere, we'll get her, now that her likeness is plastered everywhere and she's a Code Red. Her wading pool is growing ever smaller. Only wish we knew what she and Crazy Joe are driving."

"A vehicle description, hell, a Texas driver's license…it would all be good. Meantime, we're being led around by the nose by a child mental case playing lethal games."

Lucas got back on the police radio and called Lieutenant Jana North at the funeral parlor raid. The sound of chaos came over the line before she finally came on. "What the hell's going on there? Sounds like a riot."

"We've cordoned off a wake here."

"A wake?"

"We didn't have any choice. It was in the open coffin."

"What was in the open coffin?

"A pair of disembodied arms, one missing a right hand."

He listened attentively to the details of her report, replying with a series of yeses, and finally he said, "See to it no one disturbs the scene before your CSI unit can process it."

"You ever try that with a roomful of irate loved ones? Dr. Patterson's got his hands full, and he's on the run."

"Christ, they sent out Frank with an ITRT unit?"

'Told me he volunteered when he heard it had to do with the Ripper case, even said something about how you and he were close, Lucas. How he wanted to help in any way possible."

"Weasel knows I fingered him and some others for this nasty business when I thought it was all a tasteless joke."

"Bad blood between you guys, heh? You'll have to tell me about it some evening over drinks."

"He lost some vital evidence on a case of mine once. Cost me." He then said, "Jana, you may's well know that Meredyth and I…that we are seeing each other, and that for the time being at least, we're seriously…together."

"Then I take it drinks are out."

"Yeah, drinks are out."

"I'd better go. The natives are getting restless here. You're right about Frank. He's managed to antagonize the owners, the wake crowd, and I suspect the dead woman in the coffin."

"Sounds like Patterson."

"The crowd is made up of some pissed-off Mexicans. Talk to you later."

Lucas tossed the radio back to Andrews. He said to Meredyth, "They've found something at the funeral home."

"Do I want to know what it is?"

"A pair of arms, one severed at the wrist, missing a hand. Presumed by Frank Patterson as those of a young woman. I think we can presume Mira Lourdes."

"Where were the arms found?"

"In one of the caskets about to be wheeled out for public viewing with one of Giorgio's masterpieces of makeup inside-a regular Ripley's Believe It or Not event-a body within a casket freshly wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape. North is waiting for Frank Patterson to finish up the CSI work there. 'Fraid Nielsen and the team'll be here a great deal longer."

"And in the meantime, what do we do, Lucas?"

"Meanwhile, I'm taking you outta here. Come on."

"Byron was a jerk, Lucas, but he didn't deserve this. My God…what am I to tell his mother, Agnes? His sister? Hell, I dare not go near them. We've got to end this thing, Lucas. We must and soon. What can we do?"

"We go back to Lincoln with everything we know, everything we suspect, everything we suspect we know about Lauralie Blodgett, including your run-in with her here, and the near run-in at the convent school."

"She used him, Lucas, to locate me. Following his movements…perhaps seeing him leaving my apartment, she and her boyfriend must have tailed him in their search for me, and where was I? Hiding from it all out at the ranch, Lucas. She'd been watching his movements to locate me. Thank God my parents are out of town, out of harm's way."

"Lincoln's got to be updated. He's got to know all we know now."

"Yes, should anything happen to us, what little we've unearthed about her, the miniscule hard evidence dies with us, and should we follow the way of Byron, no one's going to weave this convoluted, tangled web of murder together ever again….You saw Nielsen's face; you heard her words. She's not buying it." Meredyth looked in need of rest, and her eyes were bloodshot from tears.

"Come on. Let's go, Mere. Nothing more we can contribute here."

"She's watching it all, Lucas, from a safe distance, seeing us running about, all of us, SWAT people, CSI people, all of us back and forth, and her pulling the strings and getting high off the mix. Maybe…I don't know…maybe we, all of us, her mother, die church, the state…me…we all contributed to this day. We certainly created a stone-cold vampire."

"Byron's dead, Meredyth, but it's not your fault. Not any more than Mira Lourdes's death is your fault."

They'd made it to his car, newsmen shouting for a comment from Lucas. He instead urged Meredyth to get in, and he did likewise, shooting from the lot, successfully ducking reporters.

Driving for their downtown home, the 31st Precinct, Lucas got on the radio and was patched through to Gordon Lincoln's aide, who put him on with Lincoln.

"Yes, sir…reporters? A sea of 'em, Captain. They get the call same as the units, listening in on the band. Yes, sir. Meredyth's with me, sir. Count on it. We're on our way to your office now, sir."

Meredyth only half-heard his end of the conversation. When he got free, she said to him, "I hate her, Lucas…hate her. I no longer give a damn what a lousy hand she was dealt, the fact she wasn't even given a name by her mother. The nun, Mother Sara Orleans, christened her Lauralie, did you know? Think of it, imagine it. No one cares enough to give you a name."

"Don't waste any sympathy on her, Mere. This girl has mutilated two people, complete strangers to her, so she can play god-games to feel superior to us. Don't forget that."

"Lincoln might take some convincing." She wrapped her arms about herself and put her head back, exhausted.

Lucas felt a barren, dry wave of fatigue like a desert wind wash over him now. This case was draining them both. Frustration and a growing hatred for their prey threatened to make them less effective, less objective, less professional. He knew they must combat it. The alternative was a spiral from which Meredyth and he might not pull out.

She sensed his fears, reached over to him, and took his hand in hers. "We've got to stay strong, Lucas. In the face of all of it, stay strong to bring this danse macabre to an end."

Captain Gordon Lincoln hung up the phone, having gotten word on the raids ordered by Stonecoat on a funeral parlor and the Harris County courthouse. The news from both locations was bad-but that coining out of the courthouse-an acquaintance of Meredyth Sanger's brutally, savagely knifed to death, his face slashed as an afterthought, his body stuffed in a maintenance closet-was truly disturbing. This news came on the heels of a call he'd gotten earlier from his friend Judge Wilfred Manning. Manning had conveyed a bizarre story of having witnessed an arrest in the hallway of the county courthouse. He'd relayed the shocking details of how, that very afternoon, not twenty-odd feet from Byron Priestly's murder, Dr. Meredyth Sanger had been "wrestled to the floor and a gun wrested from her" by security personnel who had then turned her over to city police officers. Lincoln's aide, Officer Jonah Kent, could not find any record of an arrest having been made.

Lincoln had assured Judge Manning that he would personally look into it, but that was when Kent had put through Sergeant Stan Kelton, who'd called to give his captain a heads-up regarding two ITRT raids authorized by Stonecoat-one on a funeral parlor, and the other on the Harris County courthouse annex building.