Carlotta gave her man a cold glare, her arms folded.
Lucas thanked them for their time and escorted Meredyth, clutching the yearbook to herself, out and onto Lowe Street. A ship came into view at the end of the street as if cruising the neighborhood, and it gave a blast of its fog horn, startling Meredyth. "Houston Ship Canal," Lucas explained as she watched the giant dark side of the ship disappear behind warehouses lining the canal. "Doubt you've ever had occasion to visit this side of town."
"What next?" she asked. "Raid Momma Croombs's house?"
"May be impossible to get a warrant. I spoke to Jorganson. He thinks we've got flimsy cause, a string of coincidences, he calls it, but he's going to wake up Judge Diehl. She's our best hope for a warrant."
"Meanwhile?"
"I'd like to see the police report on Katherine Croombs's death. How 'bout you?"
"Well...we have the date of death and her address. Getting hold of the report should be a simple matter."
They drove back for the precinct house and made inquiries, soon getting hold of a computer-generated copy of the police report on the death of one Katherine Croombs, occurring July 17th in the 29th Precinct. The body was autopsied in Leonard Chang's crime lab by Dr. Lynn Nielsen.
The police report, on the surface, appeared a routine mop-up after an unintentional death by overdose of sleeping pills and drink. Lucas commented on how cut and dried the report read, and in fact he thought aloud, "Perhaps too cut and dried."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning when cops don't want to spend all night in the station filling out a report, they resort to generalities like the ones we're seeing here. A cliche-ridden report is like a good paint job—covers a multitude of sins in quick time."
"What're you saying, Lucas?"
"In all my time with the COMIT program, going through all those thousands of Cold Case files, I know when a pair of cops have made up their collective minds to go along with surface appearances, and once an assumption of suicide or accidental overdose is made, it's hard to buck."
"You think this might be the case here?"
"If Lauralie is as dangerous as we've been led to think, yes. I may be out on a limb here, but the reports're too pat, the woman dying of an overdose without any question being raised, especially since—look here at the autopsy report."
She followed his finger to the line on the report he wanted her to read.
"She didn't swallow a lot of pills."
"Although her bottle was found empty on her night- stand," Lucas pointed out. "Cops at the scene made the assumption she swallowed the bottle of pills along with the alchohol."
"She died in bed in a peaceful pose," Meredyth said, pointing to one of the crime-scene photos he'd brought up on screen.
"That's screwy too. Death brought on by alcoholic poisoning doesn't fit with the neat, orderly position on the bed, folded arms, body perpendicular to the edge this way. Nahhh, no way."
"She laid down on her back, folded her arms, readying herself for death," Meredyth said, shrugging, playing devil's advocate.
"When people drink too much—and she had over three fifths of straight bourbon with gin chasers—they don't wake up all ready fixed and folded in bed. Someone posed her body after death. Now it may've been the neighbor who called it in...the one with the key...come in to check on her, but given testimony of the lady, it could've been her daughter, purportedly living with her and in Chicago at the same time."
Meredyth stared again at the digital computer images showing the deceased posed in death, as Lucas theorized— arms folded across her chest, ankles overlying one another. "Could still be an overdose, Lucas, and Lauralie, finding her mother in an unflattering position, poses her. Doesn't mean she killed her mother."
He nodded. "Could be...could be. Report does say she discovered the body and called it in." He paced the Cold Room floor now. "Could also be she did a lot more than pose Mommie Dearest."
"Could be she had to lift her off the floor, the sofa, the bathroom toilet," replied Meredyth, sitting cross-legged on the edge of his desk.
"That's where you find most falling-down drunks, and the investigators look the other way when a loved one moves the body out of a sense of...propriety."
"So you're not buying any of it."
"Lauralie is an effective actress, capable of lulling anyone into any belief she dangles before them. I believe she staged the body and the murder, just as she staged the death of the Mother Superior at age twelve."
"She does have a theatrical flare.
"Had Tebo's temperature rising, Father Will, and I'd bet a month's pay on Giorgio."
"How then did she do her mother in? Simply by providing her with the booze? Going out to a movie and returning?"
"There were unexplained marks on her wrists and ankles, Mere."
"Where does the report say that?"
"Coroner's protocol here." He brought it on screen. "Chalked up to clumsy handling of the body, men holding onto wrists and ankles when moving her from bed to body bag. Called a coroner's contusion. They can tell if it occurred after death from the discoloration of the skin. There's a reason you grab the deceased under the arms, and there's a proper way to hold the ankles tucked against your body."
"Sounds like you've hefted a few."
"I have. Look here too, the broken neck—chalked up to what they call a coroner's fracture. Likely from the same manhandling. Not easy properly elevating and hauling deadweight."
"So you're suggesting the M.E. wrote off restraint marks to coroner transport wagon bruises?"
"Possibly, yes."
"Are you saying that the cops lied so they could get off duty on time? And that the M.E. helped them out?"
"No, no, no. I'm saying they made a tacit blanket assumption and acted on it, and they justified that assumption with their language on the report. They didn't he so much as they convinced themselves of what their eyes told them."
"So while the detectives on scene may have had misgivings, they all turned into smoke?"
"Look, I still have doubts about how Marilyn Monroe was supposed to've died. Why? The scene was too clean, too damned neat, and she lay posed in bed, her body recently washed clean and dressed for the coroner, dead of an overdose. But God forbid she be found under the bed. Gives a guy doubts."
"And I suppose you think Elvis still lives?"
"Only as an icon for his estate and his legions of fans. He lives in that he's still number one. But that's show biz. No, I can easily accept the prognosis of an overdose in Elvis's case."
"Why Elvis yes, but Marilyn no? Because the death scene was not doctored or candy-coated?"
"Exactly. Elvis, unlike the Queen of Hollywood, was found dead at the foot of his toilet. No posing of the body, no gussying it up. Now that's unquestionably an overdose no one had a hand in but Elvis—an honest-to-God unintentional suicide."
"You buy into Marilyn's having been murdered?"
"At least assisted into her overdose by someone. Most cops know the body would at least be half on, half off the bed, and not posed in a peaceful slumber against the pd- lows."
"Then you suspect Lauralie's desperate hunt for her birth mother all those years—"
"Desperate's not too far from determined, the word Mother Elizabeth used to describe her tenacity in the search for Mom and Dad."
"From the beginning, all that effort in order to kill Katherine?"
"Some reason, huh?"
Meredyth's mind filled with the thought. 'To search for so long, only to learn that no one was searching for her..."
"Sounds like a motive for anger, and take anger up a notch to hatred, ratchet it up to acting on your hatred, and whataya got?" he asked.
"Imagine, though, seeking out one's own mother for the express purpose of killing her. It's almost too much to comprehend."
"Yeah, but it'd make a hell of a movie of the week."
"Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, a falling-out, an argument that escalated to...to murd
er."
"Or assisted suicide?" asked Lucas.
"All we know for sure is that Lauralie did find her mother," she replied, clenching a fist.
"And within weeks of finding Mom, the daughter is having Mom prepped for burial at Greenhaven Cemetery by Giorgio and Carlotta. Or we could give little Lauralie, poor orphaned child, the benefit of doubt."
"Perhaps...perhaps she got caught up with—"
"Crazy Joe Boyfriend? Who not only planned and executed the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes, but who also offered her mother, and maybe is the brain who devised the eerie mailings to you and me, Mere. No, it has to be they're equally involved—her with a motive for vengeance, him with a means to that end and a skill for dissection."
"If she selected Mira as a victim because of Mira's name—Lourdes—if she did that, then perhaps she is directing all the traffic, planting the clues she wants us to find, planning the abduction, the murder, the mutilation...which begs the question—"
"—did she plan her own mother's death?" he finished.
"—and did she have help even then from the mysterious boyfriend? Damn, a person could go crazy trying to decipher what floats here and what doesn't."
"Easy, Mere."
"And I hate it...I hate the thought of my contributing to all this insanity, however unwittingly."
He lifted her off his desk and into his arms, holding her close. "I'd say let's talk to the investigators on Katherine Croombs's overdose case, but it'd likely be a waste of time. No one's going to admit to sleepwalking through a case."
"What about talking to the M.E. in charge of the death?"
"That'd be Dr. Lynn Nielsen, very sharp. No way she couldn't've had doubts, but she'd just come on—new woman on the totem pole. Perhaps she held back pursuing it as a result."
"Do you think she'd admit that?"
"No, not unless we can convince her of its relevance to what's going on now. Maybe then..."
"You mean it's worth a try?"
"Let's do it."
He made a call and Frank Patterson answered, telling Lucas that Nielsen had just put on her coat and disappeared into the elevator.
"Thanks, Doctor."
"Anything I can do for you, Detective?" But before Patterson could finish his sentence, Lucas had slammed down the phone, grabbed Meredyth by the hand, and rushed her out.
"Nielsen's on her way out of the building. Let's catch her."
When they found Dr. Lynn Nielsen, she'd already exited the elevator on the main floor, but she'd been held up by an intern from a lab who'd chased her down with a clipboard and a form she had to sign. Nielsen briskly signed, waved good night to the young intern, and made for the exit.
Lucas and Meredyth caught her on the stairs outside the precinct, one on each side, Lucas proposing they buy her dinner.
"What is it you two want from me?" she asked. "Come now. I know the American mind now. No such thing as a free lunch."
Lucas smiled and held up his hands as if caught. "Information on a case of yours that goes back to July 17th."
"That would be on file in the computer."
"A woman named Katherine Croombs."
"Croombs...Croombs..."
"Found in a state of alcoholic poisoning in which you noted two key elements that went ignored by your immediate supervisor, our Dr. Patterson, and the detectives on the case, who appeared in heat to sign off on it," Lucas explained.
She turned up her collar against the annoying drizzle, said nothing, and began skipping down the steps. Lucas and Meredyth followed.
"Do you recall the case?" asked Meredyth in her ear.
She stopped and looked into Meredyth's eyes. "Yes, I recall the one named Croombs. Acute liver damage, skin jaundiced to a tea-green color, other internal organs shriveled and saturated with the booze."
"Why do you recall her case so vividly, unless you have good reason to?" asked Lucas. "Say, because it haunts you?"
"I've said enough. Good night." She rushed for her car. They pursued.
"We suspect she was helped along that night toward her death. Dr. Nielsen," said Meredyth, catching her at her car.
Nielsen shakily worked to dig her key into the lock.
"We believe the woman's daughter not only killed her, Dr. Nielsen, but that she is involved in the mutilation murder of Mira Lourdes."
Nielsen had snatched her door open, about to leave, but this stopped her cold. She looked back at them. "The daughter? The two cases are somehow related? Everyone involved strongly encouraged me to believe the prevailing wisdom."
"Which was that the old woman died as she lived, OD-ing in a weekend war with her own worst enemy—her drunken self?" asked Lucas.
"Locked in a lifelong melee with alcohol, yes. Make no waves, I was told by Frank."
"Patterson. Figures. Feldman and Rowan investigate it, Patterson rubber-stamps it. But you saw the marks on her wrists and ankles," Lucas hammered now.
"Yes, true, but the case was—how you said— rubber-stamped, closed over my objections, so..."
"You also noted there was very little in the way of barbiturates in her system, while the police report said she had swallowed an entire bottle of pills," added Meredyth.
"They brought the empty pill bottle in a plastic bag along with six empty bottles of Jim Beam—six! She was killed by making excessive love to Jim Beam, they joked— right over her body, they joked! I never saw such a thing in my country."
Nielsen shivered with the recall. Lucas and Meredyth let her talk. "I knew it would come back to get me," she said.
"We're not interested in getting you, Dr. Nielsen, believe me."
"Dr. Chang will be disappointed to learn of it. He was out of the city then, on working vacation—Vancouver, giving a talk." Then speaking of Katherine Croombs, she said, "Poor woman looked like my grandmama, but hardly that age! She had two chipped teeth, and her lips were bruised too, a curious thing we see in abuse cases. It didn't make sense."
"And Frank didn't want to hear about this?"
She now climbed into her car, averting her eyes and face for the moment, fumbling with her seat belt. She turned the key, her Plymouth Voyager coming to life. "You must tell me why you think the Croombs autopsy is connected to the Post-it case we're now working. I must know if I am to bring all of this to Dr. Chang's attention and give in my resignation."
"What possible good can come of your resigning?" asked Meredyth through the car window.
"If anyone should be talking of resigning, it's Patterson. Trust Chang, yes. Confide the truth in him. You won't ever regret it," Lucas firmly told her.
"What is connecting the two cases?" she asked.
"It's a long story, and we'd truly like to tell you over dinner," Meredyth assured her.
She considered this. "All right, Michelangelo's, say in twenty minutes? I'll meet you there, and since it may be my last meal as Assistant M.E. here, be prepared to buy me the house specialty."
"It won't be your last meal, I promise," Meredyth replied. "We'll stand with you against Patterson. We know he put you in this position."
"I have been haunted by that Croombs woman."
She backed from her parking space and pulled out of the police lot, Lucas and Meredyth watching, hoping she'd show up at the restaurant.
They went for Lucas's car.
CHAPTER 12
BEFORE ARRIVING AT Michelangelo's Italian Eatery, Lucas had called District Attorney Harry Jorganson, asking if they'd gotten the warrant on the address he wanted. Jorganson informed him that he couldn't sell it to the judge. "No dice. Judge says she fails to see that we've actually connected enough dots here, Lucas. Sorry, I know your instincts are right on, but the judge was adamant, got on her high horse about my coming to her to turn a blind eye to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the American Civil Liberties credo, you name it, every time Houston PD is feeling public pressure."
"Did you tell her we suspect it has to do with the Post-it Ripper?" he asked.
"I tol
d her, told her more than once, but she was on a tear. I understand she got turned over on appeal in the Edmunds case, which sucks, and we just got her at really the wrong time."
Lucas invited Jorganson to sit down with him, Meredyth, and Nielsen for dinner. "We can give you more of the details to go on."
"Sorry, Lucas, but ol' Jorganson's got two trials to prep witnesses on for a busy A.M. manana. Again, sorry about the warrant. Get me a bigger hammer to wield, okay? Drive that sucker home for you with the right tools, you know that, you know you do. Well, gotta run. Enjoy dinner."
Lucas broke the bad news to Meredyth, who said, "Damn...damn fool judge, and what's wrong with Harry Jorganson?" She scorned and fumed the rest of way to Michelangelo's.
At the restaurant, they were well into their main course by the time Lucas and Meredyth explained all their reasons for suspecting the girl fresh out of the convent school. "It's possible that her boyfriend is doing the actual killing, but we suspect she's pointing out the targets," said Lucas.
"Then you suspect that the Post-it Ripper is two people," said Nielsen.
"Yes, we do."
Meredyth added, "There've been clues intentionally leading us to Lauralie Blodgett, and I'm afraid the sudden reappearance of Lauralie in Katherine's life was not the touching reunion scene we usually see on television programs and in the movies."
Lucas told Nielsen what they had learned at the mortician's.
"I think that Lauralie was and remains traumatized by her childhood experience of growing up without anyone, feeling like a prisoner inside the walls of Our Lady of Miracles," added Meredyth.
Nielsen nodded. "And now she's out to perform a miracle of her own, the perfect crime."
"With enlisted help, yes."
"This is good news then, that you two have narrowed your search from a nonentity, a boogeyman, to two specific individuals, one of whom you have a name for."
"It's all based on a great deal of speculation," cautioned Lucas. "Not solid enough for the DA or to get a warrant, it seems."
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