04.Final Edge v5

by Robert W. Walker

  "But who is behind this circus of death, and why?" asked Lincoln. "Why all the care and preparation and surgical neatness and tidiness with each part after you've clumsily put an ax through someone's neck? Explain that one!"

  "He's deemed it time to show us exactly how Mira died," said Lucas, "rubbing it in our faces."

  "I fear it's more than that," added Meredyth. "It's almost as if the killer is playing some sort of endgame, the rules, boundaries, bonuses, and goals known only to him. He means to shock us, to make us play against our will, to force it on us. Behind it, I believe there's a cry...a cry for help."

  Dr. Davies, gnashing his teeth, suddenly exploded. "A cry for help, Dr. Sanger? You call what this freak is doing a cry for help? I suppose you think he needs coddling as well? Foul murdering heathen." Davies stood and added, "Between pulling the woman's eyes and teeth out and now this, I've seen enough to agree with the governor about the future of the electric chair in Texas, thank you." Dr. Davies paced to the opposite end of the room, as far from the severed head as he could get.

  After a silence, Chang continued. "Once Mira was dead, the killer began the autopsy cuts from the abdominal cavity, the removal of the eyes, die teeth, the hand most of us have seen."

  Meredyth replied, "Apparently the SOB was disappointed by our lack of response to his earlier parcels, likely dissatisfied with the lack of play he's gotten in the press as well."

  "Exactly," agreed Jana North. "Apparently he means to shock us more deeply into a greater response and achieve more media attention in the process."

  Lincoln asked Meredyth and Lucas to share their belief that the killer might simply be seeking serial-killer status and fame in all his efforts. The others listened to the theory, nodding, contemplating its validity and any weakness it might have. Davies returned to his seat, jaw clenched, listening to the conversation.

  Anna Tewes quietly and shyly reentered the room, going to her seat, which Lucas had righted and replaced at the table. She made no eye contact with anyone in the room, looking like a deer going for her nesting ground.

  "Put it away, Dr. Chang," said Gordon Lincoln of the severed head, echoing everyone's sentiments. "I think we've seen enough of this horror."

  Chang, with Nielsen's assistance, placed the head into a red and white ice-filled medical cooler, and Nielsen tagged it with a case number. The odors emanating from the head and the Styrofoam-lined cardboard box had begun to make people in the room choke and squirm in their seats.

  "So, let me see if I understand correctly, Dr. Sanger," said Dr. Davies, staring at Meredyth. "You believe that this homicidal nutcase is sending us a wake-up call of sorts, that in escalating the size and awfulness of the body parts he's forwarded, that he's saying play my game and give me more media attention or else?"

  "Quite possibly, yes."

  Catrina Purvis asked, "Or else what? That if we fail to share what we know with the six o'clock news, that he'll send larger sections of his victim, and possibly parts of another victim and another until he gets what he needs from us?"

  "He's always sent a written note before now, Dr. Chang," said Lucas. "You'll want to look closely inside the box."

  Meredyth, seeing confusion written across many of the faces in the room, explained. "In each of the earlier treats, the Ripper was considerate enough to forward a handwritten note, and in one case a CD."

  "Is there anything else in that bloody box, Leonard?" Lincoln asked.

  While Leonard tipped the box, searching for anything in addition, young Anna Tewes, a handkerchief over her mouth, her curiosity greater than her embarrassment, found her voice. "What kind of CD was it?"

  "Music from the film Dirty Dancing."

  " Time of My Life'?" Tewes asked.

  Lucas nodded to a collective groan.

  Leonard Chang announced, "There's something at the bottom of the box, a note, swimming amid the fluid left by the decaying head."

  "I am detecting the odor of formaldehyde below the odor of decay," said Nielsen.

  "Yes, quite," said Purvis. "The head spent some time in a formaldehyde solution."

  "Folded paper," added Chang as he fished for it and plucked it from the soup in the Styrofoam-lined box. As Leonard Chang held it up to the light, everyone stared at the spoiled, folded note that dripped of foul and runny liquid. Chang dropped the messy note onto the white sheet beside the medical cooler, which Nielsen removed to a chair beside her, giving everyone a clear view of the opening of the folded note.

  Using his gloved hands and tweezers, Chang carefully plucked open the sticky folds of the note and plastered it down. Lucas came close, Meredyth inching alongside, both looking over Chang's shoulder. Perelli squeezed in as well, rolling film.

  "What the hell does it say?" roared Lincoln.

  Lucas read the note aloud, "'Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire....' It is written in poetic lines."

  "What the hell does that mean?" asked a frustrated Captain Lincoln.

  "Like his motives, the killer's little rhymes may only have meaning for himself, a kind of mirror only he is reflected in, you see," suggested Meredyth.

  "Come again?" asked Hoskins.

  "He's obviously psychotic, so it becomes necessary to appease only himself. Classic symptoms if we read between the lines."

  Jana North said, "Or his written messages and the music may be just another way to taunt you and Lucas, to piss you off, Meredyth."

  "The son of a bitch is doing a good job of that,"

  Meredyth agreed, feeling a smile flash over her, allowing a diminutive laugh to escape. But she didn't feel as brave as she wanted others in the room to think, as her eyes scanned the blurred words on the blood- and bile-stained note:

  Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire....

  CHAPTER 9

  CAPTAIN GORDON LINCOLN had given everyone a fifteen-minute break, "Time enough to call home, let your significant other know you're going to be running late, grab a snack, make for the johns, whatever cranks your shaft."

  That fifteen minutes had gone by in the blink of an eye, it seemed, and now they had reassembled at the conference table.

  "All right, people, quiet now...listen up," began Lincoln. "I want cooperation among you all, and I want this case cleared posthaste, pun intended. If there's any upside to this Postmortem Ripper guy, it's that we have only one victim to our knowledge, but the downside is this continued butchering of her body. Dr. Sanger informs me this may well have a powerful symbolic meaning for the killer, that he is killing her over and over with each severing.

  "Which likely means he's nurtured a long-standing hatred for this Mira Lourdes," concluded Lincoln. "Are we on her acquaintances, former boyfriends, relatives?"

  "We've cleared her live-in," said Jana, "and there's no one else who fits the bill, according to her parents. No one was stalking her, no one disliked her. She went from work to home and back again in a steady routine in which nothing untoward should ever have happened to her."

  "But it did," said Lincoln. "Canvas the neighborhood for perverts living in the area, anyone recently moved in, any recent sex offenders released from Huntsville. Talk to her friends at work too."

  "My team's all over that," Jana assured him.

  "The fact he's sending parts of a single victim over and over could signify his belief that life has screwed him over again and again, that it has cut him up slowly in pieces over the years," suggested Lincoln, playing at shrink himself now.

  Meredyth cut him off, saying, "The killer may also be sending pieces of his victim to us again and again to direct our attention to his powerful scorn and disdain for us, for law enforcement, and societal sanctions. A complete psych profile is being worked up. I'll get a copy to each of you by day's end."

  Lincoln thanked her for the input. "Whatever it takes, manpower, currency, overtime, you people are it for the time being—the front line in this twisted little war we have had thrust upo
n us. Time is our enemy along with this monster out there. So I want brainstorming and answers before this bastard forwards so much as another fingernail, understood? Damn it, I don't want any more pieces of her sent off like a Christmas package to Lucas or to Dr. Sanger. And I want it cleared before the press eats us alive on it, understood? And I don't want any more leaks coming out of the Three-one, clear?"

  "Captain, we had an obligation to inform the Lourdes family and her boyfriend, who made the initial missing persons report," said Jana.

  "Yes, I heard all about that, Jana." Lincoln looked in Lucas's direction. "It's done. Let's just not give any more guns to the Indians...ahhh..." Lucas had shot him a grim look, "I-I mean, ammo to the press, okay?"

  "You're going to have to deal with the press sometime, Captain," said Lucas. "They need to be handled."

  "Yes, but most of the Lourdes woman's remains... well, remain missing, Lucas, and until we can say we have all one hundred percent of her in our safekeeping, well...I suspect we'd best keep this in-house. Is that understood?"

  Lucas lunged in, adding, "It's already out there, Captain. They're coming for us on all sides. Some sort of press conference or at least a release needs to be put together to stave 'em off."

  Lincoln sighed heavily, heaving his gut; he ground his teeth so hard it hurt others in the room to hear it. "Why the hell can't we keep a lid on our own fucking cases?"

  "We already brain-graphed and polygraphed Lourdes's boyfriend and he sailed through the tests," Lucas replied, "so now he's out there on the street with what he knows and what he suspects."

  Jana added, "And if an idiot like Stokes can read the papers, he can put two and two together...."

  "He's likely selling his story to the National Inquirer right now," Lucas said.

  Meredyth added, "Any number of uniformed cops at my place, at Lucas's, in the garage the other night, not to mention civilian personnel. They're all talking about the choice of delivery system—the variety of method, and what's going on between this creep and us, Lucas and me. Sorry, Captain, but there's no lid big enough to put atop this thing, not anymore."

  Lincoln looked as if he wanted to roar, but he calmly said, "All right, so I guess we should expect a barrage of embarrassing publicity."

  "Which, if Dr. Sanger is correct, will feed the killer's appetite and hopefully appease him," added Jana, "but I rather doubt that any amount of publicity for his crimes will ever be enough, not once he gets a taste for it. Like a wild animal that acquires a taste for human blood, he'll be back for more."

  "We have to be smart and use the media to our advantage," Lucas suggested. "See if we can get at him through a judicious use of the press. Give him an E-mail address where he can contact us, chat with us. Start by releasing some choice photos of the packages from Steve's collection along with Anna's new and improved sketch of the suspect." Lucas gave a thought to Jack Tebo's having failed to come downtown to work with Anna Tewes on a sketch of the girl who'd delivered Lucas's first parcel.

  Lincoln gave in, outvoted. "I'll get our best PR people on it. Play up the fact we're closing in on the creep, banter the catchphrase Postmortem Ripper, is it? Put out the fact we've got a face to go with the victim within forty-eight hours of receiving the first package, all that."

  "Post-it Ripper," corrected Nielsen. "Postmortem is what I do."

  "Oh, yes, sorry." Lincoln's eye lingered & moment too long on die lanky coroner. "Okay, well, then...what was I saying? Oh, yes. Then that means you people in this room are going to have to show some progress beyond learning the name and address of the victim."

  Meredyth addressed the others from where she sat, her voice firm, the occasional crack in her tone contradicting her outward resolve. "We have already discovered a great deal about our man in the short time we've had to work this case. He's got a hard-on for Lucas and me, but there may or may not be a connection there; it may be he has seen us on TV in the past and simply zeroed in on us, but we will be going over clients I've counseled as well as perverts we've encountered in the line of duty, ruling them out as we go in a process of elimination. Fact is, that process is already under way."

  "Still, it's going to require considerable man hours and manpower, given how long we've both been in the business of putting perverts away," added Lucas. "As we come up with possible leads and suspects, we may call upon any one of you to follow up, whatever that entails, from getting a search warrant to using your special talents."

  With that said, Lincoln declared, "Thank you all for being here and withstanding the assault on your sensibilities that Dr. Chang, Dr. Nielsen, and I orchestrated, but I wanted you all as committed to this as Dr. Sanger and Detective Stonecoat, so I wasn't sparing anyone's ahhh...ahhh...what's the word?"

  "Emotions?"

  "Senses?"

  "Yeah, those things."

  The wrapping paper and the note were bagged, destined for the documents experts already poring over the previous handwriting. The cooler containing the head was carried off by Nielsen, destined for the freezer in Chang's lab. This time the foul contents purported to have originated at an address in the 2700 block of Lowe Boulevard, a grimy business district off Clinton Drive, near the ship channel, a stretch of urban real estate devoid of apartments or homes. Lucas had earlier jotted down the address.

  "It's most likely a phony address to throw us off, like the convent school," he told Kelton, handing the note to him and asking Stan to check it out and report back to him on what he learned.

  "Should not take long. I sent a cruiser over to the address to eyeball it. Probably got round to it by now."

  "If not, goose 'em for me, will you, Stan?"

  "Sure thing."

  Leonard Chang doled out assignments to the remaining CSI members with respect to the newly acquired evidence. Meanwhile, Tom Davies wondered aloud to Meredyth and Lucas why he needed to have been in on this meeting, feeling he had already done all that he could to further the investigation along, "Unless," he confided in her, "you can bring me some of the killer's teeth to work with."

  Lucas replied, "I'd like nothing better than to kick this mother's teeth out of his sick head, believe me."

  Dr. Davies nodded, smiling, and quickly followed Catrina Purvis and Anna Tewes out the door. Meredyth now looked long and hard into Lucas's eyes. "Do you think this maniac is sending us all these parts because he thinks we can put Mira back together again?"

  "All the king's horses and all the king's men, you mean? Hadn't occurred to me, but who knows...maybe...maybe he's that damned batty."

  "What's he going to send us next, Lucas? Her heart? Her torso? He is attempting to shock us more and more by escalating the vileness of his gifts to us, and I gotta say, it's working."

  "I'm going to the convent this afternoon, poke around there, ask a few questions of the people in charge. You want to join me?" he asked.

  "Convent? What convent? I heard you mention something to Stan about a convent." Her squint told him clearly that she was confused.

  "Our Lady of Miracles, a church and girls convent—an orphanage for girls. Not too far from my place."

  "But why?"

  "It was the return address on the first package I received, remember?"

  "No, I don 7 remember."

  "And the delivery was made by someone sporting a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform, according to Tebo."

  "You never told me any of this."

  "But you were there, at my place, when Chang and I were talking about it."

  "No, I wasn't all there. I was extremely upset that night, and I didn't pay close attention, not after what I'd been through, not that night. Tebo saw a Catholic schoolgirl deliver the package?"

  "I'm not sure she was a girl. He seemed to think she was heavily made up, older than a schoolgirl, but she wore a Catholic school uniform."

  Meredyth considered this, picturing the killer luring some young woman to do his godless bidding for him.

  "I'm fairly sure it's just a ruse to send us on a wild-go
ose chase, so I haven't given it top priority. But at the moment, I'm at a loss for what our next step should be, so..."

  "So, let's go see the nuns. Ask them if they've noticed any unusual person hanging around the school."

  On their way out of the precinct house, going past the front desk, Lucas was stopped when Stan Kelton called out to them. Stan gestured for them to come near.

  "What's up, Stan?" he asked the big Irish sergeant.

  Kelton had come around his front desk and whispered conspiratorially, "That address on Lowe..."

  "Yeah? You got it pinned down?"

  "Morte de Arthur's."

  "A restaurant with medieval cuisine?" guessed Lucas.

  "No, it's a mortician place, funeral home—a chain mortuary."

  "What's a chain mortuary, Stan?"

  "A chain of mortuaries. Supposed to be cheaper way to send off your loved one. They're listed with penny stocks. Have their own website where, if you like, you can bury your dead on-line. Don't ask me how that works. The lady said she'd happily send over brochures."

  "I'm sure she did. A chain-store undertaker's you can buy into? A franchise?" asked Lucas, amazed. "What'll they think of next?"

  Meredyth, listening in, tried to put the fact of the mortician and convent as return addresses together with the return address on her two packages—both indicating her downtown office. She tried to put it all together with the various poems and the CD. "Creep is just yanking our chains, Lucas, having a gay ol' time."

  "Then I guess we follow where the yanking chain takes us."

  "Play his game out to the end? That could be dangerous."

  "What choice have we at this point? He's holding all the cards damned close to his chest, so come along, Mere."

  "All right."

  "If there's time enough, we'll visit Morte de Arthur's after we visit the house of miracles and nuns."

  Kelton waved them off, saying, "Good luck, you two!"