Final Edge s--4

by Robert W. Walker

  His assistant revved up a small rotary saw and went to work removing the section of wall in question. He'd take it back to the lab with him, study it in detail. Under the right light, and with the help of blood-spatter specialists, he would be able to tell in which order each of the Brodys were killed-father-mother-daughter, mother-father- daughter, or some other variation. The crime would be recreated down to its last detail. If it proved interesting enough, he could write it up in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Examiner. They paid well in both cash and cachet.

  The sound of the saw ended, and Patterson looked up to the top of the stairs, thinking Jennings an efficient man to finish with the wall so quickly, but Jennings hadn't finished. He'd merely stopped to allow Dr. Chang and Dr. Nielsen the right-of-way. They came down the stairwell now for a look at the cruel massacre here. "Anything I ought to know here, Frank?" asked Chang.

  "Dunno… little soon to tell, but it's pretty clear the victims were forced to tie one 'nother up. Probably with assurances nothing would happen if they cooperated. Looks like a page out of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. They cooperate and he-ahhh, she, if it proves to've been Blodgett, she blows their brains out anyway, all in the same manner, right here." He put an index finger behind Lynn Nielsen's ear to demonstrate the location of each entry wound, and said, "Pow! Just like a professional or someone familiar with the Godfather films."

  Nielsen pulled away, annoyed he'd chosen her head to demonstrate on, his finger jabbing into her head. "It does appear to be her work," she said.

  "And how would you know that from what little we have?" challenged Patterson, as had been his habit with her.

  "She wasn't a big woman, only one hundred ten pounds at most. She wisely used her victims' weight against them here, as with getting Kemper off the mower and into the boat."

  "What mower?"

  "It's why they were shot at the top of the stairs and allowed to tumble down. She didn't have to drag, carry, or push them here."

  "Good point," said Chang.

  "Of course it is," said Patterson. "It's why I'm having the wall removed. They were shot at the top of the stairs and their bodies came tumbling down."

  "What about the upstairs, the girl's room?" asked Chang. "Your guys finished there?"

  "Finishing, yes."

  "The other half of Mira Lourdes is on ice?" he asked.

  "Well, no, not that far along yet, but it'll get done."

  Chang gave a little nod to Nielsen. "Get up there and see to it Miss Lourdes's parts are bagged and put in the refrigeration van, Dr. Nielsen."

  "I can handle it, Leonard," said Patterson.

  "You've got your hands full here, Frank. Trust me, we've got enough autopsies to go around."

  With Nielsen gone and the saw renewing its work at the top of the stairs, Chang stepped over the bodies and surveyed the basement-a lovely rec room with a Ping Pong table, a bar with a neon Coor's sign over it, lit and blinking, and on the bar a family photo of the Brodys on holiday in a snowy Christmas scene with skis-Aspen, Colorado, Chang guessed.

  He continued examining the basement area. A washer- and-dryer unit at one end, little windows high overhead looking out on the earth. One comer sported a lounging area and a reading nook, with a bookshelf filled with dogeared paperbacks, assorted magazines, and a hardcover crime novel entitled Unnatural Instinct lying on one chair, a marker indicating the reader was halfway through the book. When Chang slipped it open, he saw the expensive bookmark was engraved with the name of Candice, the daughter.

  Patterson had shadowed Chang. "Frank, life is too short. I came down here from upstairs, from Candice's room. I saw what's been hanging there all this time."

  "What's the big deal, Leonard? I made the call. Priority one, the basement, two, the sweep of the kitchen-lotta things disturbed in the kitchen. Didya see that overturned, broken dining room table? And three, the upstairs rooms- not just Candice's but the master bedroom too. One that looks out on the forest out back."

  "You lied to me, Frank, and you didn't follow my orders either. Look, we both know you're unhappy working under someone you feel superior to, Frank-a slant-eyed Chink."

  "I never said anything of the kind. Who told you that?"

  "You tell me that, Frank, every day."

  The silence between them was rocklike. Chang broke it. "Look, I don't want to argue this here, not now. When this case settles, once all the reports are in, all the dots dotted and Ts crossed, you can defend your actions involving this case in a full rebuttal, okay? But Frank, I say it's time you started floating your resume."

  "What? Whataya mean, Leonard? Are you firing me? You can't fire me, not without the approval of the board."

  "I have their okay, Frank."

  "You son of a-"

  "My mother is descended from a royal Chinese princess, Frank. You never knew that, did you? So I'll forgive your calling her a bitch."

  "You think this is the last word on this, Leonard? You couldn't be more wrong."

  "See if ATF or FBI is interested in your talents, Frank."

  "I'm a good M.E., Leonard."

  "That's the shame of it, Frank. That's the shame of it. You are a kick-ass clinician. No one can touch you in the lab, but there's more to this job than slides, test tubes, and microscopes, and I've got to be a pragmatist. You're never going to be the people person you need to be, to deal with the public, the families, the detectives, your own peers in the lab."

  "You want me out so you can put Nielsen in my spot. Whataya doing, Leonard-a good family man like you? You two sleeping together? Have a fucking good time at the Longhorn Inn down the road?"

  "I've got a friend at County General lying in a coma, Frank, a man who may or may not live through the day. I've got another friend sitting at his side, holding his hand, talking him through. I'm finished here for the day, and I suggest you quit making graphs and measuring the distance from the top of the stairs to the bottom, and close this scene down."

  "Fuck you, Chang. I'll say when it's time to close my crime scene down and not before. How many times've I listened to you, shut down a scene, only to wish I had taken more time at the scene? Too many to count, so it's when I say it's time."

  "This place has given up all the clues it has to give, Frank, and as for the table, the legs were ripped off by Lucas and Meredyth to use as weapons. We found one at the stable where Lucas was shot."

  "I still have say-so on how long we hold this place for forensic analysis. That much is still my call. That much you can't take away from me."

  Chang looked over his notes, trying to collect his thoughts, how best to say what he must to Dr. Patterson to get it through to him that his career in the HPD Crime Lab was over. "Frank, you didn't just go over my head this time around; this time you went behind my back."

  "What?" His look of exaggerated shock Chang thought laughable.

  "You leaked sensitive information from my crime lab to the press, including Meredyth's and Lucas's names as the ones targeted by the Post-it Ripper, and-"

  "That's a lie. Who's feeding you all these lies about me?"

  "— and in the bargain, you told the city the name of the victim whose parts have been scattered all over this county by Blodgett. Christ, did you give one damn thought to Mira Lourdes's family, their wishes, Frank?"

  "Captain Lincoln might have something to say about all this bullshit. Doctor." Patterson contemptuously spat his final word.

  "Captain Lincoln has had something to say about this, Frank, and he agrees with my decision."

  "We'll just see about this." Patterson lifted his cell phone and speed-dialed Lincoln.

  Chang stormed up the stairs, where the blood-spattered wall had been completely removed and lay now on the kitchen island block. Two men worked at spraying a clear plastic preservative and adhesive over its surface.

  Frank always had a problem working with women. He would handpick those working under him, but Tory had been foisted on him at the last by Chang, who wanted her,
like Lil, to gain some experience in the field.

  Chang watched the two men spending so much time over the section of wall. He thought it an awful lot of effort to go through, preserving the blood- and brain-spatter evi-dence in such an old-fashioned form. The space it would take up alone threw it into question since a single state-of- the-art series of high-resolution photos could tell them the same thing in the hands of the right man, though in this case, it was Jeannie Wyatt, the right woman. But this was Frank's scene and so Frank's call.

  Leonard found Nielsen had dealt with the remains of Mira Lourdes-bagged and in the caravan now. Chang ordered the van to take what they had directly back to the lab in Houston, calling for another larger vehicle to accept the Brodys when and if Frank ever finished inside.

  "Best you not be here when Frank emerges from the basement," Chang told Nielsen. "I just fired his ass. Fool had the gall to suggest you and me were having an affair, and that I wanted to give you his job in return for sexual favors."

  "That's so like him, Leonard. I can't tell you how I relish the idea of one day walking into the lab and finding him gone."

  Together, they climbed back into Chang's car, preparing to leave the Brody home. "I'm placing you in charge of all the evidence collected on Meredyth's side of the lake, Lynn."

  "What? Really?"

  Chang drove back for the Sanger house. "See to it all the bodies and anything that's been bagged from all the various grids, the photos, the vehicles-that it all gets back to the crime lab and the morgue, and whatever you do-"

  "Do not break the chain of command, I know."

  "That goes without saying, but also do not turn anything over to Frank if he should have the impudence to try taking command."

  She smiled widely at this. "You won't be disappointed, Leonard, I promise you. Count on me. But where're you going to be?"

  "Hospital. Check up on my friends."

  He dropped her at the Sanger house and heard her commands carrying all the way down the drive, and likely across the lake, as he made his way back toward the Interstate and Houston. As he drove, he punched on his radio, searching for music to get the images of this day out of his mind. Ads filled the airways, and the search button stopped on a news report: An army of FBI, ATF, Houston, and Harris County law-enforcement personnel descended on Madera Lake in the early hours of this morning to investigate multiple murders at two crime scenes there. Too early to tell, but the buzz is that somehow the Post-it Ripper case has invaded this sleepy, peaceful area near the Navasota River reservoir….

  Chang popped on a Mozart CD, struggling to escape the news and the stress. He got on the phone and called home to his wife for the second time today. The first time was to inform her of Lucas's having been shot twice and about his being in hospital in serious condition. This time he began by asking how she was doing, asking after the kids, apolo-gizing about the forty-eight-odd hours or so he had seen none of them, ending with a retinue of complaints about the job, the system, Lincoln's pomposity, of having had to fire Frank because of Frank, and the general callousness of the world.

  Finally, his wife Kim stopped him, saying, "Len-len, he is going to be all right. I just know Lucas is going to be all right."

  "How do you know? Have you heard from Meredyth?"

  "No, I just have one of those intuitions. I just know."

  "Kim, the man is listed in critical, unstable condition. He's in a coma, and he lost so much blood." The strings of Mozart filled the cab and traveled through the phone connection to her ear.

  "You once told me that coma is nature's way of dealing with shock."

  "Yes, but-"

  "And you once told me he's a fighter. He'll pull through."

  "Are you clairvoyant?"

  "I have faith, as so you must."

  "How? How do you have faith, Kim, in the face of all…all I have seen on this day? All that this single crazed individual did to so many innocent people, the ripple effect to their families, to the collective fabric…to the soul of humankind?"

  "Faith, Leonard. It's all we have left in the end, faith and one another."

  He said nothing.

  "My hand is covering yours, my lips cover yours, my arms are folding around you, Len."

  He glanced at her photo, kept always overhead in his car, and he mentally embraced her. "I am holding you too. I love you, dear one."

  She replied, "I know… you are a thoroughly married man with three children who love you too. My thoroughly caring husband."

  "True, I love you thoroughly, my wife."

  "Yes, and it makes me happy. When will you come home to us?"

  "In two hours."

  "Then you really mean four?"

  "All right, four."

  "You sound so tired. How can you work with such necessary precision if they don't let you get rest?"

  "I've got to learn to delegate more now that I have someone capable of taking over for me…thoroughly."

  "Dr. Nielsen?"

  "I turned over a multiple-murder scene to her, Kim. You have to be proud of me for that. Isn't that what you want for me? Patterson could never be trusted to do things right."

  "I am glad for you, Len-len, so why will it take you four hours then?"

  "I'm on my way back to Houston now, but I want to stop over to see how Meredyth is doing, and to see Lucas for myself. Go over his charts. Give Dr. Sanger any slight hope I might find in them."

  "Do you wish me to meet you there?"

  "Yes…yes, I do."

  East Houston, the Colony in the Glade home of Paul and Caroline Sanger

  Wearing a cleaned and pressed new Colony Security uniform and hat, Mike Wilson pulled up to the Sanger home in his official Colony vehicle with but one thing on his mind-impress, caress, and best Miss Lauralie Sanger from out of town. She hadn't called him back, and his repeated phone calls to the house had gone strangely unan-swered. He went so far as to leave messages on the answering machine. The Sangers were due back today, but when he arrived, he saw no sign of their being home. Perhaps they'd been delayed at some point on their long journey home from Paris.

  He skipped up the stone steps to the huge Colony in the Glade home on Will-o'-the-Wisp Court. It was the largest of the models, called the Palatial in the brochures. The Sangers hadn't owned it long. They had reportedly moved off a large estate in North Houston to the Clover Leaf area, the home there having become too much for them to care for since retirement, especially since they had become world travelers. "Can't imagine the size of the house that got away from them," he'd told Jake Everly, his friend and superior on dispatch duty today. Mike had boasted that he'd met the young daughter, and he'd wagered they'd be dancing at Cimarron Kate's Cow Bam tonight. If he had to, he'd teach Lauralie how to square-dance.

  He rang the doorbell, humming an old tune he now tried to recall the lyrics to. "If you could read my mind, love…what a tale…what a story… what a…To hell with it. Come on, Lauralie…baby…answer the fucking door. Getting cold out here."

  He rang the bell, rocking on his heels. He watched his breath escape him like cigarette smoke. The thermometer had plummeted overnight, calling for a high of only forty- two. It felt like winter, but it was only late September. Weird for East Texas.

  He again rang the bell.

  He wondered if he ought to let it slip that he'd been an Ail-American at Tyler High in Tyler, Texas, and would've gone on to play for the University of Texas if not for an injury that sidelined him from the game for life. He wondered if he played it just right, if she wouldn't find that special spot of sympathy in her heart that inevitably led to necking. I can take it from there, he told himself.

  Still no answer at the damn door.

  An odd faint odor reached his nostrils, but Mike couldn't quite place it. Still no answer. Had she gone back to…where was it? Someplace in California, San Bernardino someplace, she'd said, by way of Phoenix.

  She said she'd come in to surprise the folks, so where the hell was she? Maybe she's in the
shower. Maybe she can't hear the bell.

  He rapped his knuckles loudly against the door and slammed down the brass knocker several times for good measure. Enough to wake the dead, he thought. But still no one came to the door.

  He was getting antsy…downright edgy.

  Mike yanked at his sagging gun belt and tucked his shirt in better. He took in a deep breath and went to the window to peer into the interior through the sheer drapes. He squinted hard, trying to make out any movement inside. Seeing no one and no movement, but catching his reflection in the glass, he fixed his hair and admired his wide shoulders and thick neck bursting at the collar. Again came the odor he couldn't quite place. He'd been doing battle with a ragweed allergy, and lately could smell nothing, but this pungent on-off odor ran ahead of him. Still admiring his reflection in the window, he now noticed something odd about the complete stillness within. Something looked wrong, and even though he couldn't quite put his finger on it, he felt compelled to stare through at the living room until it hit him, and it did. Through the gauzy haze of the sheer cloth drape, he saw that the big fish tank along the living room wall was as devoid of life and movement as the surrounding room.

  Squinting harder, he studied the tank, realizing some kind of strange layer of scum floated across the surface. Staring harder, he realized it was not scum but the residents of the tank-all the fish were lying belly-up at the top of the tank.

  "Weird. Something's wrong inside. Lauralie could be in trouble inside." He imagined saving the damsel in distress and being lauded a hero in the papers-a not-uncommon fantasy since childhood.

  He got a whiff of the strange odor again. The cold air seemed to heighten the odor one moment, mask it the next, but there it came again, teasing his nostrils. Then it came to him. Gas! Natural gas!