"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.
Now he had listened to reports filtering in from both locations, learning of the ghastly discoveries at each site. He could not imagine what had tipped Lucas off to a body awaiting police at the courthouse, and he tried to picture two security guards having to wrestle Dr. Sanger in her Ivanna wear to the marbled courthouse floor for a gun. Even harder to picture was the disruption of a Mexican wake down at that funeral home. He tried to imagine the mayhem there, the mix of horror surrounding the discovery of the disembodied arms coming on the heels of the natural outpouring of grief with the passing of a loved one.
But he had made his priority Meredyth Sanger's safety and well-being, and to this end, he'd been calling around trying to determine where she might be, fearing she was in some holding cell in another precinct, when he'd gotten the call from Lucas on site at the courthouse informing him that she was with him. Those two're spending a hell of a lot of time together, he'd paused to note.
He had been assured by Lucas that both scenes, courthouse annex and funeral parlor, had been secured and an ongoing investigation was in the works at both locations. The use of the ITRT units, while hell on his budget, had proven Stonecoat's instincts correct all the same. The "medicine man," some in the department called him, and he did seem to have some kind of magical powers of investigation at times. Certainly, his reputation as a hunter- tracker was well deserved.
Given Lucas's assurances, Lincoln had seen no need to rush to either of the scenes, at least not yet. Later, as the CSI units were winding down and could give him a full report, then perhaps he could stand before the microphones and cameras and give a guarded statement.
He started for the window and once there, examined the traffic going down Kensington, wondering if the trip home would be in gridlock. He stared at his gold watch. It was nearing four P.M., and he'd wanted to get out of the city for an engagement party at the Threepenny Oaks Country Club for his daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law, a nice young man in a safe occupation, textiles. He didn't want his daughter, Serena, to be a cop's wife, a fireman's wife, or a soldier's wife, to suffer the unrelenting stresses of being in her mother's shoes. Her mother had heartily agreed, telling Lincoln, who'd been in the service, and had once been a fireman, "I wouldn't wish some of my nights on a dog. Still, Gordon, I wouldn't have had it any other way. I love you."
Do I want to deal with this shit now or not? he wondered of the Sanger business at the courthouse. He had remained standing at his desk, calling for his car to be brought around as soon as he had finished with Lieutenant Stonecoat and Dr. Sanger.
No sooner had he given the order than Lucas and Meredyth arrived in the outer office. The aide, Officer Kent, informed Lincoln of their arrival.
"Well, send them in now!"
"Yes, sir. Captain, oh…and you wanted me to remind you, sir, of Serena's engagement party tonight."
"Yes, yes, I remember, I'm not a dolt."
"But, sir, you asked me to-"
"Just send those two in, Kent! Get 'em in here now!"
Kent escorted them through the door and sullenly closed it behind him. "Something big's happened on the Post-it case," Lucas said.
Meredyth simultaneously said, "We believe Lauralie Blodgett is not some poor kid brainwashed and frightened, but in fact the leader and dominant force behind the Ripper killings."
"That's quite a leap. You want to tell me what's changed?"
"We suspect she's manipulating the boyfriend. She's demonstrated a history of manipulating people. She's behind the choice of Mira Lourdes as victim, to create a clue out of her very body that would take me back to 1984."
"Whoa, slow down. What's 1984 got to do with this case?"
Lucas rattled the air with the court document she'd gotten from the archives. 'Tell him about this, Mere. Tell Captain Lincoln the entire story from the moment we entered the convent school till we discovered Byron's body."
Lincoln sat down, an expectant look on his face, ready for the two of them to show him something. Meredyth leaned over the desk and said, "In the end, her fantasy is so off the wall, you have to suspend your natural tendency toward disbelief in order to believe it."
"Like any good fiction," Lincoln said, smiling.
"But this is not fiction. It's her game board."
"Game board?"
"She's a controlling, conniving woman, Captain, and she's laid all this out from the beginning," replied Meredyth.
"Really? From her photo, she looks like an innocent schoolgirl."
"We've known child killers before," countered Meredyth. "I'm staking my professional reputation on this, Captain."
"You may have already done so, given the theatrics at the courthouse, your having been pinned to the ground and reportedly transported off in a cruiser, and what, let off after being given a ride home? Meanwhile, your longtime friend is left behind murdered."
"I'll be proven right, when everything comes out…vindicated in time, I can prom-"
Lincoln put up a finger to gesture for her to hold on one minute. He made a call to his wife, explaining a break in the Ri
pper case had come and that he would not be making his daughter's engagement party on time if at all. After a bit of back and forth, he hung up with repeated apologies. He then turned back to Meredyth and said, "Now, start from the beginning, Dr. Sanger, and this better be good."
"I'll try to connect all the dots for you. Lucas can catch me if I forget anything. This case has more twists in it than a pretzel."
"Start at the beginning and please, get on with it," he ordered.
She did so. "As I said, it starts in 1984 when I was an eighteen-year-old intern at the courthouse. It starts with a six-month-old child I helped place in an orphanage for adoption, a girl named Lauralie Blodgett." She explained the significance of the victim's name, Lourdes, and how clues had been left for her and Lucas to connect the name to Our Lady of Miracles, to Mother Orleans and her questionable death, to Katherine Blodgett and her questionable death, coming full circle back to Meredyth's connection to Katherine and to her daughter in 1984. When finished, she held out the yearbook photo of Lauralie she had kept in her purse, so different from the head shot used in the press.
Lincoln studied the full body shot. "Voluptuous for an eighteen-year-old graduate, isn't she?"
"And she knows how to use it," remarked Lucas.
Meredyth continued, telling him about the record of how, as a young intern, she had signed off on Katherine Croombs giving up her daughter to the Catholic orphanage.
"I called Jack Tebo, my landlord, and asked him to look at the photo in the Chronicle," Lucas told Lincoln. "Jack ID'd her, saying she looked older than the girl in the photo, but that it was a dead ringer."
"So he positively identified her as the courier?" asked Lincoln.
"No hedging, sir."
"So we have her delivering a package, and you suspect her of multiple murder. But which of the two can you prove?"
"I believe if she's caught, she'll confess to all her crimes," began Meredyth, stepping to the window and looking out on the late afternoon traffic below. "In fact, I think that's precisely what she wants from us in the end."
"Whoa, I don't follow you, Doctor. She wants what in the end?"
"Wants us to give her a forum, a courtroom in which she can vocalize her pent-up rage and anger at all of us, Captain, at you, me, Lucas, the system."
"It's why she's playing the game, peppering the yellow brick road with clues for us to follow," said Lucas. "The Our Lady and Morte de Arthur's return addresses, the contempt shown for her father's grave site, the tackiness of how she buried her mother, the clues she left at the scene of her mother's murder, her selection of a victim named Lourdes purposely for us to make the connection, leading Meredyth to her own past association with Lauralie. And now these recent atrocities at the funeral home and the annex."
Meredyth turned from the window and added, "These aren't coincidences, but cries for help, pity, understanding- at least from Lauralie's perspective, she thinks she deserves our understanding, and perhaps, to some degree the monster was created by us."
"Lauralie Blodgett just graduated. Where do graduates go?" asked Lincoln.
"Most go on a field trip to D.C. or Disneyland," replied Lucas, "but I think Lauralie went to Greenhaven Cemetery to deface her father's gravestone instead."
"Many grads go on to college. Have you checked area colleges for a Lauralie Blodgett or Croombs registering for classes?"
"If not college, then an apprenticeship. Wait a moment." Meredyth got on the phone and called Mother Elizabeth Portsmith. When she got her on the phone, Meredyth asked, "What did Lauralie want to become when she grew up? What profession did she wish to pursue?"
"She loved animals. Always kept a small pet. They'd always die on her. She wanted to be a vet."
"A vet. Did she have a school picked out?"
"She was looking at several in the area, but I don't know that she ever actually enrolled. Still, there's a chance she did."
"Thank you, Mother Superior."
"Will you please call me when and if you locate my girl?" she asked.
"Yes, surely."
"Dreadful seeing her picture on the TV screen alongside that killer. You must stop such nasty rumors."
"We'll see what we can do, Mother, and thanks again.
"Veterinary schools in the area. We need to check all of them," she told the men.
"Then let's find her, and when we do, we drag her and her boyfriend in here, and we put them in the pressure cooker and grill their asses until we get a confession from one or the other or both." Lincoln called Kent on the intercom to come in with a city directory.
Lucas now stood at the window with Meredyth, a protective hand on her shoulder. He said to Lincoln, "That lunatic was at the courthouse, shadowing Meredyth for a reason. She's plotting to harm her physically now, now that she's already torn away at her emotionally. It's the reason she's been shadowing us, first at the convent, leaving the finger in the fount, and then at the courthouse."
"All right," said Lincoln, "it's going to be a long night. Everyone on the team needs to be brought in on this. Let's pray she has a school transcript, and we work from the information there outward. We'll send cruisers to every damned veterinary school in the city and the suburbs if necessary, and we'll corner this young hellion."
"Someone in this city has to have some idea where these two are holed up and who they are," Lucas reassured Meredyth. "No one is invisible."
Kent entered with the Houston directory. Lincoln told him to go out and return with directories for the suburbs as well. "And order us in some food."
"What do you feel like, sir? Pizza, burgers, Chinese?"
"Anything, Kent, so long as it's hot. And close the door."
Lucas had quickly found the listings for veterinary schools in the city. "We'll start calling the task force together, Captain, bring them up to date, if you want to get out of here, attend that party for your girl."
Meredyth added, "We can get the word out on the vet schools just as well as you, Gordon. Go on. You can still make your daughter's day."
"Thanks, Doctor, Lucas. Are you two sure you can handle things without me?"
"Sure we can," replied Meredyth.
"All right then. Use my office as long as you need it. Food is on me." He passed Officer Kent, whose arms were full with directories, on the way out, giving one last instruction to his aide. "Get these two everything and anything they need, Kent, and call your wife, tell her you'll be pulling a double shift."
Kent frowned and dropped the additional directories on his boss's desk.
Later that evening, the entire Post-it Ripper task force was brought together and brought up to date. Meredyth and Lucas again told their startling story of how Meredyth's friend Byron had died, and how she and anyone close to her had become targets of Lauralie Blodgett's obsession, and the twisted reasoning behind the postings of Mira Lourdes's body parts.
The late edition of the Chronicle carried both photos of Lauralie now alongside that of the mole-faced charcoal likeness of her accomplice. Along with this, the photo carried a cryptic history of how she was a recent graduate from Our Lady of Miracles School. Anyone with any information on Lauralie's whereabouts, or those of the mysterious Mr. X, was asked to call authorities immediately. Both suspects were considered armed and dangerous in this updated version forwarded to the press. On page three, the story of an unnamed body found in a closet in the court-room annex appeared with sketchy details. The story of the bizarre shutdown of a funeral parlor across the city in which police found severed arms inside the casket during an ongoing wake said the severed arms lay across the chest and were discovered by loved ones at the casket just as police arrived. The story went on to detail the name of the parlor and the deceased woman, hinting at some connection to the Post-it Ripper case. It quoted Dr. Frank Patterson as having said, "Mrs. Zoradia Ortiz's family members were questioned, but none of them are believed to have played any part in this unfortunate event. Crime-scene analysis both here and at the courthouse annex today points
to the Post-it Ripper, who appears to have found another way to send his message, in a larger box, so to speak. A cryptic note left in the casket and tissue analysis is expected to confirm this."
A bank of phones had been secured along with men and women to man them, and calls were being made to every veterinary school in and around Houston in an attempt to locate one registered student by name. Meanwhile, the rest of the task force was introduced to the idea that an orphaned girl had been both the motivating and driving force behind the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes. It required Meredyth's having to go through the details once again, and as the inexplicable tale began to unfold, all the others sat in rapt attention, curious over the next twist and the final turn.
"A story worthy of an Agatha Christie novel," said Leonard Chang, who had by now read both Nielsen's and Patterson's field reports. Chang, Nielsen, the others in the CSI unit. Detective North and her partners who had interrogated Dwayne Stokes, the young sketch artist, Anna Tewes, Sergeant Kelton, Dr. Catrina Purvis, and Dr. Tom Davies all now had a better understanding of why the killers, Lauralie Blodgett and her unnamed associate, had committed two hideous murder mutilations. They were also apprised of the suspicious deaths of Sara Orleans, Katherine Croombs, and the brutal details in the stabbing death of Byron Priestly.
Questions flew. Everyone wanted answers. Mistakes and oversights became apparent, especially in the handling of the presumed overdose death of Katherine Croombs. Frank Patterson had slipped in as they revisited the Croombs case. Frank quietly found a chair in a comer as there was no room left around the conference table. He sat silent in shadow, not contributing or objecting.
"All this is very intriguing and compelling," said Jana North, "and you two obviously believe in this pure and twisted revenge theory, but we're no closer to finding this woman, and we still have no idea who the accomplice is. No one seems to know the extent of his involvement, that is, what his motives or rewards are. Why has he done her bidding? Who is he to her? Are they related? What sort of a relationship do they share? What binds him to her? Is he merely following her orders, or is he an encourager, a cheerleader, possibly the leader, dominating her and pushing her over the edge? Or is it the other way around? Is she the driving force in their twisted relationship as Lucas and Meredyth have come to believe?"
Final Edge s--4 Page 29
