"Has Gordon been making noises?"
"Elephant stampedes through the department, sir. He's peeved you chose this time to disappear, you and Dr. Sanger at once, that is."
"Thanks." He looked across at Meredyth. Despite their attempt at being discreet, everybody at the Three-one knew about their romantic involvement. A precinct, like a reservation, was a breeding ground for rumors and gossip. Lucas had given thought to their hiding out on the res, but he was glad they'd found this place instead.
"What is it?" Meredyth asked him from outside the car, standing over him. "Everything okay?"
He reached a hand out to her. "Oh, yeah, just fine. Captain's happy we took some time off. Says it can only give us more objectivity when we come back at it fresh."
She accepted the lie because she wanted it to be true. Leaning into the car, she kissed his cheek and said, "The human mind can only take so much; the emotions can only absorb so much before a person shuts down. If I hadn't taken this step back, Lucas, I think I'd've lost it. Speaking for myself, I know I'll be more objective and sharper now that I've distanced myself both physically and mentally from the situation."
"I'm sure you're right."
"And none of the others on the task force have been personally assaulted as you and I have been. To have our homes invaded, our lives disrupted by these maniacs."
Lucas still sat in his car, and Meredyth, standing in the open doorway, climbed in, crowding him, putting her arms around him. "Been a long time since I made out in a car. Wanna climb into the rear?" As she spoke, she noticed the manila file folder on the rear seat. "What's this?" she asked.
"What's what?"
"This file." She reached into the backseat, retrieved the file, and attempted to pull free of his embrace, all the while struggling with Lucas, who said, "It's nothing. Leave it. Forget about it."
Tickling her and kissing her, he attempted to get her to drop the file, but she was determined. She pulled free of his grasp and straightened to a standing position outside the car, the file in hand. She couldn't make it out clearly in the dark. Lucas, alongside her now, grabbed for it, but she slipped around to the front of the car where Match light torches on the enclosed porch-meant to keep mosquitoes away-glowed round Meredyth's lovely ash-blond head and bathed her and the awful photos of the dead girl, Yolanda Sims, in light.
"Don't, Mere," Lucas pleaded, not wanting her evening spoiled.
She put up a hand to him, examining the manila folder further, realizing it to be a cold case file that Lucas had obviously been perusing.
"What's this all about?" she asked.
He put his arm around her and they walked back to the enclosed porch to escape the gnats and mosquitoes. "It's a long story."
"I've got all night."
"Are you sure you want to taint this beautiful place with the ugliness of my work?"
"It's all right, Lucas. You need to talk about it, and I'm supposed to understand that; it's my job, remember? If we're going to be together, romantically involved, then we share everything. So…tell me about Yolanda Sims."
Lucas began by saying, "Not much to tell you, young girl abducted, tortured, raped, and killed, her body dumped 'home,' but the killer got the wrong doorstep."
"Wrong doorstep?"
Lucas explained the killer's mistake.
"One block over…same address," Meredyth considered the error. "Curious," she commented.
"Sloppy, clumsy fellow. Sounds on the surface like an unplanned attack from a person unfamiliar with the territory."
She nodded. "Certainly a disorganized killer as opposed to an organized planner. Someone who did it on the spur of the moment."
"Investigators keyed in on an uncle for a time only because he had a record for burglary. Then they interrogated the hell out of an old man, a neighbor with a record for child molestation. To this date most believe this Paul Mick Ryan, now deceased, did it. They also grilled two neighborhood teens."
"But if these people were familiar with the neighborhood, and they knew the girl-"
"— who disappeared from her backyard doorstep-"
"— then why go after the neighborhood's usual suspects? They wouldn't have dumped her at the right address one street over."
"Right, none of the people interrogated could've gotten her address so screwed up-including Ryan, who fried for other killings."
"Then they never caught the guy who did it? Of course not, that's what makes it a cold case file!" She plowed a palm into her forehead, in a gesture of realization. "How stupid am I?"
"You're relaxed! Come on, put that file away." He gathered up the paperwork and crime photos, tucking them back into the manila file and dropping it back into the large brown clasp envelope.
"Whew…1956, Lucas…that's a hell of a long time ago."
"Remember that '48 case I solved?"
"Of course, but you had a great deal more to go on."
"Not much more. I'll keep at it."
"For Yolanda or for yourself?"
"Maybe for both of us."
"You're a good man, Lucas Stonecoat." She locked her arms around his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Under the torchlight, their shadows dancing, their passions flared once again. Lucas dropped the file folder on the porch swing, lifted her up into Ids arms, and carried her inside and to the bedroom.
"You can't be serious," she teased.
"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 ga
mes, 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.
The experience could not have been more educational, inside a system both flawed and overtaxed as well as upholding ideals so lofty as to be unreachable.
Meredyth finally came upon the one record she had come for, the Croombs-Blodgett case. Katherine Croombs had agreed to give up her then-nameless child if the child could go to a nice Catholic adoption agency. Katherine had been raised Catholic, and now Meredyth recalled promising her that they would find a good Catholic home to place the baby girl in. Katherine had put down the father's name on the birth certificate, and had wanted the child to have her father's name, Blodgett, her father's full name being John Dancing Blodgett.
Meredyth's hand was all over the case; she had indeed managed the logistics of getting the newborn from Mercy Hospital and into the hands of a Sister Orleans at Our Lady of Miracles in 1984. It had been Sister Orleans-not yet mother superior-who had signed the necessary documents for a child she had christened Lauralie.
"Lauralie's revenge… her sick motive… it's all here," Meredyth said to the silence around her.
Meredyth tried to pull all the loose ends together, to make sense of this senseless attack on her, one which involved the murder of Mira Lourdes simply because of her name, Lourdes, as a puzzle piece, a crumb to spread before Meredyth, to guide her to the understanding of why…why Lauralie had in essence hired or lured a killer to do her bidding, to abduct and murder Lourdes in order to have the human body parts to wrap up and forward to Meredyth, and to the man she most loved, Lucas. "Literally piece by bloody piece, she means to wreak her revenge," Meredyth muttered to the screen as she saw a strange birdlike shadow flit across the glassine surface. In an instant, she realized that it had been someone's reflected movement directly behind her. She swept around, banging her knee in the fixed plastic seat attached to the microfiche screen. "Damn!" she cursed in response to the painful injury, the bang reverberating around the room.
Looking about, she found no one in her view, despite the reflection that had been right behind her, uncomfortably close.
But whoever had been there was gone, moving down the stacks toward the rear of the room. One of the staff, Meredyth decided, just flashing by.
Meredyth turned her attention back to the adoption papers, studying her own naive signature on the form, wondering if it was even truly official since she did not technically work for the department in which she was interning as a student. After all, this was an official document, and she had been a college student, not a licensed social worker.
"Shit," she muttered, "why'd I ever get so involved at the time? Why didn't I argue with Mrs. Hunter about taking on such responsibilities? I didn't have the right…way in over my head." Even so, she thought, how could anyone have predicted Lauralie's going on a rampage and becoming a multiple killer? Meredyth checked herself. If the clues were correct, the girl had begun killin
g at a young age with the murder of Sara Orleans.
She heard the pitter-patter of the staff person who had gone by, this time returning with more noise in her wake, as if not wishing to startle Meredyth. At least her mind said it must be a staff person or someone else doing research.
Then she saw the image of a young feminine face leering out at her from the screen, reflected from over her shoulder. Meredyth wheeled around a second time, catching a glimpse of someone ducking from sight. The image was young enough and pretty enough to be Lauralie Blodgett, but Meredyth could not be certain. Could the disturbed woman have followed her here from the precinct?
She heard something like a footfall beyond the stacks in front of her, and she inched toward the sound. Turning a comer of the stacks, she found no one and not a sound.
Whoever it was, she had ducked behind the stacks, hidden now by the shelves filled from floor to ceiling with binders and file boxes. Meredyth then noticed a mirror perched in a comer of the ceiling above the door, and in it she saw the movement of light and shadow that followed this mystery person's wake, but even this slight hint was gone as quickly as it appeared.
"Who's there?"
No one answered.
"Is there someone there?" she said, louder this time, reminded of the convent church, the finger in the holy water. This felt like dej vu!
Nothing, no answer.
"Damn you, who is there?"
A young black woman stepped from behind the stacks, asking, "Are you talking to me?"
"I'm being stalked," Meredyth told the stranger. "Did you see anyone else in here?"
"Not by me, lady."
"Did you see anyone else in the stacks?"
She replied, "There was a woman bumped me going down the aisle, but no guy, no."
Meredyth pulled out the photo of Lauralie Blodgett that she had ripped from The Lady yearbook and kept in her purse. "Is this the woman you saw? The one who bumped you?"
The young black woman squinted and bit her upper lip. "You saying you're being stalked by another woman?"
"Was it her? Is it her?"
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