Robert Walker - Final Edge

"One pissed-off captain on our hands now," Jana North said to Lucas, at his side now.

"He's become quite the politician lately."

"Don't be too hard on him, Lucas. Like it or not, politics comes with the job, and his strategy for coping has always been to appease as many as possible without com-promising a case. He's not the worst sort of brass I've ever worked with. How 'bout you?"

"No. Lawrence, now there was a prick." He turned to stare again at the single light in the front room when he realized that Meredyth was no longer on the outside. He saw her form through the shattered window, standing over Arthur Belkvin's remains. He rushed inside, leaving Jana standing alone under the glare of the chopper.

Chang and Nielsen entered on Lucas's heels, Jana North following them. Stan Kelton stopped in the doorway, tall enough to see over the others.

On entering the death house a second time, Lucas was again struck by how the eyes were immediately lassoed and pulled to the single light over the stainless-steel table at the center of the front room on which lay the nude, mutilated body of a sandy-blond-haired man. It had been this medical tensor lamp hanging over the table that had winked at Lucas and Meredyth through the foliage.

Below the light, Arthur Belkvin's blood-spattered and tortured features, eyes wide in a kind of amazed horror, easily matched the photo of the veterinary doctor. As Lincoln had warned, two stiff-bodied greyhounds sat on their haunches, propped against the table, positioned at Arthur's feet.

Chang had gone straight to the body, but Nielsen had found Belkvin's discarded pants, and she carefully wrenched a wallet from a pocket. Holding out the open billfold to the driver's license, she pronounced it belonging to Dr. Arthur D. Belkvin. Chang had switched on a tape recorder attached to his belt, taping her reading of Belkvin's name, age, color of hair, eyes, nationality, and address.

As Chang worked, he continued to record their findings, stating that the dead man on the slab matched the photo ID, eyewitness descriptions, and now the driver's license information. He next began to describe the condition of the body as he hovered over Belkvin, when suddenly he bumped one of the dead dogs and it fell over with a noisy thud. Startled, he swore and stopped the tape long enough to shout at a pair of evidence techs, "Get these stinking dogs outta the way! Put them on ice. We'll autopsy them back in Houston."

Meredyth had stood frozen by the sight of Belkvin's heart in his hands, his chest splayed open, a bloody, meandering, flapping, puckering snake of a wound some one and a half to two feet in length from clavicle to navel. A handheld rotary bone saw had split him open. Lying nastily where his genitals ought to have been, between his bloodied thighs in a pool of crimson, the saw rested skewed to one side.

"Heart lying in crook of Belkvin's right arm. Appears cut from its moorings below the rib cage, ribs having been cut, presumably using saw found between victim's legs. Each arm neatly folded across the mutilated chest. Missing altogether are the genitals. Am making request of all present to find Mr. Belkvin's genitalia."

Everyone got the message, glad to have a chore to perform in this nightmare room. But try as they did, they could not locate the man's missing parts. Jana, spotting a jar on a shelf with human tissue inside, rushed to it, saying, "I've got them!" But she quickly corrected herself. "Sorry…don't know what this is, but it's definitely not Arthur's nuts and bolts."

Lynn Nielsen took the big Mason jar in hand, studying its contents. Another human heart, this one floating in formaldehyde.

She cradled it and carefully walked it to Chang, who agreed. "Yes, most likely from the Lourdes woman. A final memento to Dr. Sanger, I suspect."

The remark felt like a dagger plunged in her own chest, Meredyth thought, wondering if Chang, like others in the know, was beginning to consciously or subconsciously blame her for the string of deaths. She held a handkerchief over her nose, battling the odors, struggling to stabilize a sudden nausea and dizziness threatening to overtake her. Nielsen belatedly handed out scented surgical masks and gloves for them all.

"You all right, Dr. Sanger? You look a bit green. Want to go back out for air?" asked Jana. "We can try again later, after Chang finishes up."

"No…no, I want to see this through." She fought to compose herself as Steve Perelli appeared, chanting the single word damn-damn-damn over and over with each frame he shot.

Using a video camera, Perelli filmed every conceivable angle of Belkvin's body and the severed heart-lying in the crook of his folded arms. Then Lynn Nielsen pointed Perelli to the jar Chang had replaced on a nearby shelf, and she said, "Get a couple of shots of this, Steve."

"Should've filmed the dogs before you had them carted off, Dr. Chang," commented Lucas. "Juries respond nastily to dog killers."

Chang and Nielsen were again speculating on where they might find Arthur's genitals. "I bet you a day's wages, we'll find them in his mouth," Nielsen wagered, and using a tongue depressor, she began searching the throat. "Hmmm… damn, not here."

"I'll take the hole in the chest. They're stuffed in to replace his heart," guessed the evidence technician Ted Hoskins, who now carefully cradled the hefty little rotary saw in his gloved palms, cautious not to touch either the blade or the grip. "I'll take this out to the van… dust it for prints."

"My bet…the dogs," said Chang thoughtfully, removing his protective helmet, seeing it was useless to keep the crime scene from contamination with so many curious onlookers tramping through. He was a slightly built, slender man, and his protective suit, far too large for him, made him look the part of an escaped balloon from a Macy's parade.

"The dogs' what?" asked Nielsen.

"Whataya bet we find the genitalia in the dogs' stomach contents when we autopsy them?"

"Is that your final answer, Doc?" asked Hoskins. "She fed his penis and balls to the dogs."

"Won't know for a sure thing until we autopsy the greyhounds, but with this woman, I would not put it past her to have done so-after liberally packing the flesh with rat poison." Chang held up an empty yellow and brown container of D-Con.

"One wicked bitch," Hoskins said with a moan.

Lucas said, "I'm going to have a look at the back rooms." He eased down the cave like corridor to the back bedrooms to the sound of circling aircraft beating overhead. The police chopper had come in low again, assisting the men in the woods in their search. Lucas's gloved hands found the dust in two smaller rooms undisturbed, but the master bedroom had been used by the deadly couple. A duffel filled with men's clothing and a few toiletries lay at the foot of an unmade bed, and the bathroom showed signs of use-a bar of soap in the dish, a jar of Mennen Skin Bracer, a Bic razor, hairpins, a nail file, an eyeliner brush, wrappers in the trash can. Windows had been opened to air out this single bedroom alone, the sashes doing battle with the cobwebs. Someone had wiped clean the surfaces of the furniture, a faint whiff of lemon and Clorox in the air.

When he returned to the others, Lucas suggested Nielsen dust the right rear room for fibers and hairs in the bedding. "Maybe some DNA from the stains. Looks like another love nest for our happy couple. Other rooms are untouched." He held up his hands to display the dirt and grime clinging to his plastic fingertips. "No need wasting your time there."

"Thanks, Detective, that cuts out a lot of wasted effort," Nielsen replied.

Lucas watched only for a moment as Chang and Nielsen, using high-intensity flashlights, searched the enormous cavity in Arthur's chest and abdomen. "Thank God for small favors," Chang said. "She only removed the heart."