Robert Walker - Final Edge

Lucas didn't hesitate, leaping from his front seat out of the chopper, rushing ahead of her as if he meant to decide this for her. Meredyth climbed from the helicopter, seeing Lucas narrowing the gap between himself and the others now assembled before the broken-down farmhouse doorway-a shaken Captain Lincoln, a deflated Andrews, a businesslike Jana North, and Stanley Kelton in flack gear all huddling together, comparing notes on what was found at each structure. Leonard Chang's CSI van had been immediately called in, and it came right up to the front door, kicking up gravel and rock into a woodpile and pinging against a free-standing fuel oil drum.

Lucas stormed up to the group, anxious to know what they knew about the interior. The noise from the two choppers and the churned-up wind-sweeping debris-filled dirt devils taunting on all sides of them-added to the confusion. Lucas reached the others, and Meredyth saw Andrews throw up his hands as if to wash them of the operation. With Andrews stepping off and Captain Lincoln grabbing Lucas, keeping him from saying another word to Andrews, Meredyth gauged the level of emotions as being at the frayed. Kelton took Lucas aside, trying to calm him as the SWAT team retreated to a respectful distance, and Chang began orchestrating his small army of evidence techs, Lynn Nielsen overseeing the preparation of field lighting going inside the house. Meredyth cornered Lincoln, asking, "What's in there? What'd you find?" She had to speak over the whump-whump-whump of two helicopters until the earthbound one finally cut its engines. "It's the rest of Mira Lourdes, isn't it?" She imagined what little remained of the woman dangling on a tether hook.

"No…no sign whatever of the woman, only the freezer they kept her body in," replied Lincoln.

"Then it's just Belkvin and his dogs inside?"

Lincoln gulped down large doses of the cool night air like a man splashing water into his face, trying desperately not to vomit or show any sign of weakness before the telescopic cameras focusing in on him from some fifty-odd yards away where the press was held in check. Then overhead, a 2News helicopter began competing for space with the police chopper still lighting up the ground. Lincoln tore at the Velcro snaps of his bullet-proof vest, the vest responding with a rending sound, popping open like a loosed girdle, dropping Lincoln's generous stomach out and over his belt-line. "The man's heart, Meredyth, is literally on his sleeve."

Her mind immediately went to the old aphorism: He wore his heart on his sleeve. "She's still making jokes, taunting us."

"He must've had a real heart-on for her," Lincoln said, attempting a dark joke. "The thing is positioned in the crook of his well-posed arms. I think the message she means to convey is that dear old Arthur wore out his welcome in her demented world."

Lucas had stepped over the torn-away door and had gone into the house, and he now returned to Meredyth. "She opened up his chest, using a bone saw like a damned can opener, blood everywhere…cut out his heart and handed it to him, not to mention what she did to his Johnson. She cut off his whole package, including the balls."

"No sign of a car," commented Kelton, joining them.

"She's long gone," added Jana North. "You okay, Lucas?"

"What'd she do with Mira Lourdes's remains?" asked Meredyth. "Captain, we should have the area around the house and outbuildings, and the interior of the bam, the basement, root cellar all searched for Mira's remains. If we accomplish nothing else here tonight, let's bring her home."

"I'll so order Andrews, and we'll leave the fine-tuning sleuth work to Chang's CSI unit," replied Lincoln.

"I want a look inside," Meredyth said to Lucas.

"It's bad. Mere."

"I need to do this."

"Why? Why play her game?"

"Do I have any choice?"

Lincoln looked on, listening to their discussion, his features creased with concern. "I gotta go deal with the press."

"Arthur Belkvin's body is laid out on his own operating table, Mere, and-"

"We found the missing table."

"— and his two dogs, dead on either side of his feet, their bodies posed against the table struts like Egyptian statues, stiff as stone, intact, no violence done to their bodies. Poisoned, it seems. And there's a floor-model Freezer Queen taking up most of the room in the kitchen where a kitchen table ought to be."

"I gotta get inside, see what she wanted me to see," she firmly told Lucas.

Lincoln had stopped short, turned, and come back to them where they stood on the porch. "I want you two to know I've made up my mind. You're to stand down on this case after tonight. Too many eyes on us now, and you're both too emotionally involved, and it's time others had a shot at this madwoman."

"What others are you talking about, Captain?" asked Lucas.

"All right, Lucas…FBI's coming in on the case now. We need their resources and experience, and we need national and international jurisdictional cooperation. This crazed Blodgett woman could be anywhere in the U.S. by now, or across the border."

"I'm sure that line will play well on the ten o'clock news, Captain."

The comment turned Lincoln's calm features into those of an angry gargoyle. "Hold on there, Lieutenant! That's uncalled for!"

"You gotta give us more time!"

"The hell I do! And what's wrong with getting more help, Lucas?"

"It'll take days to bring them up to date, for one. And we both know that caving into them now is only good for the cameras. That it's all PR bullswallop!'

"Christ, Stonecoat! You know damn well the FBI's coming in on the case whether I invite them or not!"

"You can stiff arm 'em. You know they'll spend hours on disputing our findings, Meredyth's profile, all our hard-earned inches, every clue, and even after all that, if they are finally educated to what we have here, we've lost all those man hours away from-"

'Too late! At this point, it's out of my hands."

Lucas followed him down the steps and onto the gravel. "But Captain!"

"I held 'em off as long as I could. Tonight's raid was supposed to end in an arrest or a death-an end to this deviant bitch."

Lucas fell silent, staring at the earth, making a dust cloud of the dirt he displaced, his boot tip creating a lazy- eight configuration in the driveway, the symbol for infinity.

"Damn it all, Lucas, you have no idea the pressure I'm under. I don't always want to give into public pressure, pressure from the press, and certainly not from the damn Feds, but everybody's on this bandwagon, and I no longer have any choice."

"Sure…sure…" Lucas calmly replied, but the single word answer only added to Lincoln's distress.

"And what about you and her, Meredyth? You think you're Batman and Robin or something? You fucked up, the two of you. You both led me to believe we had the Blodgett girl and Belkvin cornered and outfoxed, dead to rights, finished! Finito! Not once but twice. But obviously she's made fools of you again, and now-and now! — the bitch is likely over the state line in California, Louisiana, New-or goddamn old-Mexico…for God's sake."

Lincoln stormed past the CSI van. Leonard Chang, with Nielsen's help, had just finished suiting up in full protective wear, including plastic laminate helmet. Nielsen too looked like a space man, covered from head to toe.

Lucas set his teeth and nervously studied the black woods off to their left. Anyone could be hiding there, just out of range of the helicopter's floodlights. Lincoln cornered Andrews, barking orders, and Elliot, in a show of bravado, led a contingent of SWAT members fanning out to search in all directions around the house for any sign of freshly turned earth. The men, women, and dogs of the SWAT poured into the surrounding dark without complaint, disappearing from the artificial safety of the camp fire circle created by the overhead floodlights.