"You are on a need-to-know basis, Arthur—you need, and I know." She laughed, while outside his dogs, locked in the run, whimpered and whined for the warmth and light inside.
"Lauralie, your reason for doing all this!" he demanded, pointing at the dissected, sewn-up torso lying between them. "You promised, remember?"
"You want rationalizations, Arthur? Will a good rationale help you get past your part in murder, Arthur, sweetie?"
"You promised. You said that you had a lifetime of reasons for what you've done, remember? And you promised to share them with me."
"I remember telling you I'd tell you, Arthur, when the time came...when conditions were right, when I was good and ready. Do you remember that, Arthur, do you?"
"I need to know why, Lauralie, now! Why am I doing this?" How could I have agreed to this? Arthur wondered, but did not say. Arthur looked down over Mira Lourdes's armless torso and breasts, where he stood directly across the dissecting table from Lauralie. He imagined die eerie picture it must make, this meeting of the three of them, together again—Mira not entirely present physically, Lauralie not entirely present mentally, Arthur not entirely present emotionally—a strange bizarre twist on the eternal triangle, he thought.
Lauralie was angry with him, but she appeared to have calmed. Arthur had balked at her orders once again, balked at any further mutilation of the body. He dared voice his wish now. "We should end this thing now, bury what's left of Mira in the desert, and be done with it."
Lauralie only laughed, and between laughs, she said, "Mira, Mira on the slab, who's the prettiest of the hags? You talk about her as if you knew her, Arthur. Get over it. Look at what she is for what she is, an unfeeling and empty shell."
"She was a human being, Lauralie."
"Was being the operative word! Look at her now! We've excised her eyes, her teeth, a hand, and her head, not to mention the finger I left at the convent, and now you're going soft on me, Arthur? Don't be a wimp!"
Arthur again looked down at the upper torso of Mira Lourdes lying before them. Lauralie had operated the circular bone saw to sever torso from lower abdomen and legs. With Arthur's guidance, she had done all the cutting this time, and she'd done it with a kind of gusto. In fact, she took a kind of otherworldly delight in carving up the frozen corpse, while Arthur again questioned her reasoning and motivation.
Lifting a scalpel now, she asked Arthur how best to remove the breasts.
"Why do that?" he asked.
'To gross them out. The idea is to gross them out as much as I possibly can. Now tell me how to begin and where to go with the scalpel." Arthur did as instructed, swallowing his inner quaking and the sense of regret infiltrating his heart.
He forced one of the still-hard, cold breasts upward and using a red marker, made a line beneath and around the globe. He then did the same for the second breast. "Begin at the bottom and follow the line up from the center, here, on either side."
Holding the surgical scalpel against the marks he'd made, Lauralie carefully followed the ink path against Mira's flesh, soon removing the left breast. She smiled, her eyes delighted as it came away. "That was easy, Arthur. You're an excellent teacher. Like slicing off a ham."
Arthur was not surprised at the lack of blood, and the ease with which the breast came away. Seeing there was no stopping Lauralie's gleeful play, Arthur said, "Give me the scalpel and I'll finish for you."
"Call me Dr. Blodgett!" she teased, swinging the scalpel in the air like a Roman candle. "No, Dr. Belkvin, sir, young Dr. Blodgett needs the experience and will finish the procedure." And she did, severing the right breast with even more fanfare, and even less blood.
Lauralie had earlier prepared the box meant to receive the torso and breasts, but she hadn't planned well for the size of Mira's Joan Crawford shoulders and the girth of her torso. The fit was so snug and tight that Arthur had to help Lauralie force the torso into the Styrofoam-lined, colorful blue and green FedEx box. He then lifted the two breasts in his gloved hands, turning to take them back to the freezer.
"Now the severed breasts," Lauralie ordered.
"What?"
"In the box. Stuff them into the box too."
"But there's no room."
"Make room!"
He tested the possibility, shaking his head, saying, "How, where?"
"Squish them in, Arthur! You can do it."
"Why not send them separately?"
"Separately?"
"You know, to...to this Meredyth Sanger person instead of to Stonecoat?"
"It's a thought, would be freaky for the lady doctor, wouldn't it? But no...no, I want her to get the heart next, and I want him to get all of this area at once," she replied, her hands going to her own breasts, the scalpel in one hand, her other hand caressing her breast area.
"Everything is about what you want, isn't it, Lauralie?" he asked even as he worked the severed breasts into the tight area left him. "Well, what about what I want?" he demanded.
"Oh, Arthur, you can be so commanding when you try. What you want? I know what you want, Arthur," she said in her most coquettish voice, her smile a flirtatious snake as she bared a shoulder with the tip of the scalpel.
"Damn it, I want to know why we're doing all this, Lauralie! I want to know why we're not on a plane for someplace safe!"
"Some island in the Pacific, Arthur? Tahiti's full of tourists this time of year. It may's well be another state in the goddamn union."
"You saw the newspaper!" He held up the late edition of the Chronicle, waving the image before her. "They've got my likeness on the front pages! It'll be flashed on the tube by now. My clients will all see it. They'll fucking have me on America's Most Wanted."
"It's a lousy likeness, Arthur. Quit your worrying. It doesn't look anything like you."
"The mole, Lauralie. They've got the mole on my face. My black eyebrows, the thick glasses, my hair. It's close enough to nail me, I tell you. We've got to get out of the jurisdiction, to someplace where I'm not known."
"Christ, the mole's on the other side of your face," she said, slapping the newspaper into free flight and ripping through his likeness in a zipping Zorro strike of her scalpel. "Don't you go wimping out on me, Arthur! Don't do it."
"But we've got to be reasonable. What the hell're we going to do? What kind of escape route do we have? None. Can you imagine what will happen when I go back to the office, to the campus? I could be picked up, arrested at any moment for questioning."
"Fool, they don't arrest you for questioning...can't arrest you until they have absolute, certain proof. You've got rights. They can only ask you to come in for questioning. It's called an interrogation...custody, question and answer, then arrest, if you fail their litmus test for telling the truth."
"A lie detector? I don't think I could pass, not after what—"
"Yes, you can, Arthur. It wasn't you who did all this. It was me, my plan, I drugged her...I killed her. What'd you do? You cut into a cadaver. What can they do to you for that? Suspend your license?"
Lauralie had laid aside the scalpel and stood squeezing a set of black rosary beads. "I took these off a dead nun at the convent...long time ago," she said, her eyes dreamy, as if reliving the moment. "She took an unfortunate spill down a nasty flight of stairs, and at her advanced age, I didn't think she'd miss the beads."
He stared at the black beads, picturing her leaning over the dying nun. As if reading his mind, she added, "She was our mother superior. Believed in the old saying 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' I took a lot of crap from that old bat for a lotta years." Her eyes had roamed about the room as she spoke of Mother Orleans, but now they settled on him. "Look, Arthur, I understand your worries, but we can take steps, Arthur..."
"Such as?"
"We'll have the mole surgically removed."
"And who's going to do that?"
"How hard can it be? With just the right tools and your guidance, hell, I just removed two hot-air balloons from the cadaver." She replaced the b
eads in her hand with the scalpel. Its stainless-steel blade shone under the tensor lamp over the operating table.
"Me, operate on my own cheek by guiding you?"
"Why not? We've got the mirror." She swung a high- powered mirror on a swivel arm over the tabletop.
"I'd have to be alert, no anesthetic. It could be painful. I could pass out, botch the whole job."
"Damn wuss, Arthur. You tell me what to do, walk me through it, and I'll remove the bloody thing while you're under. We can use the chloroform, or we can just deaden the area around the mole, so you won't feel a thing." She appeared genuinely excited by the prospect of his being under her complete control. "You do trust me, don't you, Arthur?"
"A bandage over my cheek will only draw more attention."
"Then we bandage your whole damned head if need be. God, quit complaining."
"Forget about it. I'll take my chances with the mole."
"But if it'll help ease your worries, Arthur..."
Arthur grabbed the scalpel from her, cutting himself, cursing and tossing the instrument onto a tray behind him, where it clattered and where she couldn't reach it. "Enough with that. It's not happening."
"God, Artie, baby, take it easy. You hurt yourself. I was only funning you." She quickly wrapped his bleeding finger in a bandage.
"You changed the subject on me. I want to know why you're so bent on destroying this Dr. Sanger and this detective."
Outside, a long, rumbling thunderclap got the dogs braying again. Lauralie replied, "That bitch, Sanger... she destroyed me!"
"Sweetheart, love...you're not destroyed. You are beautiful and vibrant and alive and—and young, with— with your whole life ahead of you. We should be busy making a life together, a life for ourselves, a life with a future. I love you, Lauralie."
"When I'm done with Sanger and her man, then we'll talk about a life and a future, darling, but not before. Now stuff her breasts into the damned box. I knew I should have gotten the larger one!"
Arthur forced the severed second breast into the impossible space allotted. Lauralie closed the flaps and taped it shut. She placed the label over the top, patted the bulging box, and said, "It's done, all ready for overnight shipment."
"You're not going to be happy until you use up every part of the Lourdes woman, are you?"
"Arthur, you are beginning to get on my nerves. Now, what do you say to my removing that disgusting mole on your cheek?"
"Damn it, Lauralie, I thought we were off that subject for tonight."
"You think the cops and the news people are going to be off that subject tonight? We've got to do something about the damn mole. I never told you, but it has always bothered me, like...like the old man's dead eye in Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart."
"W-what's that supposed to mean?" He unconsciously touched the mole on his left cheek.
"I look at you, and it's all I see sometimes."
"Cutting the damn thing off may be the only way I can escape capture, but my students, my colleagues, my patients—that is my patients' owners—they know what I look like, Lauralie."
"No one'll ever believe you could possibly be the Post- it Ripper, Arthur. Everyone loves you. You make their animals well!"
"Mrs. Toohey's dog died in my care last month! Look, I know the police sketch isn't perfect, but it is close, and any one of the people that come into my practice, my receptionist even, could make the connection, and all it takes is a single telephone call, and I'm sitting behind bars being grilled by professionals who know how to make a man incriminate himself. They can even do it to an innocent man. Imagine what they can do to me!"
She allowed the thought to sink in. "All right, all right...so what you're saying is that even if you had the mole removed, some people who know you would become suspicious because you had the mole removed, and there's no getting away from this damnable mole either way, right? Out, out damned spot, like Lady Macbeth. So... Arthur, no small operation on that mole is going to help us now. Correct?"
"I suppose, yes, yes, that's what I'm saying, so it makes sense to maybe go overseas. I have some money saved up and-and-and I'm thinking of your safety too, sweetheart...sweetheart. I would hate myself if...if, you know, if anything should happen to you, to us."
"Come here, sugar." Her hands and arms, empty now, opened wide to him, inviting him in.
"What?"
"Come the hell over here, lover, now!"
He came around the table toward her.
"I think you need a good hug and a feel," she said.
Arthur dropped his head in a hangdog fashion, grinned, and opened his arms to her. She wrapped him in her arms where they stood against the stainless-steel table she had backed him into. "Want to make love on the steel?" she asked.
"Whataya mean? Now?" He looked over his shoulder at the table, empty of any of Lauralie's parts, but alongside the saw resting there, the surface was littered with bits and pieces of chewed flesh and bodily fluids.
She pressed herself tighter against him. "Now, right now," she whispered naughtily in his ear.
"But it's all filthy from the cutting and—"
"Just get naked. I'll spray it down with the hose while you get naked for me, okay?"
"It's going to be cold as hell against the skin."
"Arthur, get undressed and lay down! You're going to have the time of your life." She lifted the saw, putting it aside, found the hose, and rinsed off the operating table with warm soapy water. Water and human tissue and debris swept down the built-in sewage drain along each side of the table, taking the residue and blood to a tank that Arthur had ingeniously attached to the underside of the table.
Arthur stripped as she worked to clean the table. "We'll warm up this ol' steel right quickly, Arthur," she was saying as he tested the cold steel, first with his hands, then, climbing onto the flat surface, with elbows and knees. He squinted with the chill of it, despite the warm water she'd used. She turned the warm water hose on him now, laughing.
Finally, he eased onto his back, the sensation creating a trembling in him, the exact opposite of sliding down into a steaming hot tub of water, this gradual getting used to a chilling surface.
His eyes closed against the cold pain to his backside, Arthur said, "Never imagined I'd ever be making love to a beautiful young woman on one of my operating tables."
"One of your dogs maybe!" she joked, snickering.
'Told my receptionist we had to sell the table to pay for the increase in rent on the office. She bought it, but when she sees the books again, she'll know I was lying. Guess I'll have to drop a hint that I've been gambling again. She knows about my habit with the horses."
"Arthur, please shut up, close your eyes, baby, and get your mind off all these worries."
He closed his eyes, comfortable now on his back, hardening at her gentle touch. "God, Lauralie, I wish we were in Paris or maybe London...at the race track even...you, me together without a care, just enjoying the breeze, the ponies, the excitement of the race, sex afterwards..."
"Dream on, Artie, baby," she said, bringing down the rotary saw against his chest, clicking the on switch, and plunging its biting, grinding titanium steel into his heart.
His startled brown eyes flew open at the sound of the saw long enough to catch the geyser of blood that blinded him, a spray that likewise discolored Lauralie's features, making a fiend of her—the last thing he saw before dying.
"No more goddamn questions out of you," she muttered over the still-twitching body. "And you needn't worry that the cops are going to put you away, Arthur. Nobody can hurt you now, and you never have to worry about hurting me or incriminating me in any way. Such a dear you've been and so patient throughout this long ordeal."
CHAPTER 13
IT HAD BEED a long time since Lucas had completely relaxed, but here at Meredyth Sanger's favorite hideaway, her family's country ranch retreat, a majestic log cabin and stables, proved dreamlike, convincing them both to call in the next morning to take the day off.
Both of them had been physically and mentally exhausted by the pace of events, and Doctor Sanger had prescribed a full day of horseback riding, canoeing, swimming, and making love. The day became an idyllic Huckleberry Finn extravagance, a day without responsibilities or worries to plague them. Doctor and detective, for a time, freed their minds of the horrors Lauralie and her boyfriend had dealt them unrelentingly for days now. For the time being, the couple had gotten their lives back, while others back in Houston continued to work their more objective and scientific angles on the ongoing case of the Post-it Ripper, a name being used now in the press for the odd-looking, mole-faced killer gracing the tube and the front pages of the papers.
As was protocol, Captain Gordon Lincoln would have to make the decision to release the photo of Lauralie Blodgett and her name as a person of interest, wanted for questioning in the case.
Lucas and Meredyth breakfasted and went out for a romantic mid-morning swim off the pier on Madera Lake, a loon somewhere in the reeds calling out, acting as a melodic backdrop to their water sport. They returned, had lunch, went to the stable and had a pair of horses saddled, and they rode about the property. She pointed out natural features, told him about neighbors around the lake, how they got together on occasion, barbecues and holidays. She said the Brodys directly across were especially friendly and nice. She pointed out a small home at the edge of her property where a lady and her two sons who maintained the stables and the machines on the ranch lived rent-free.
Nearing dusk, they went exploring by canoe among the reeds along the shore as they watched the sun calmly wink and drop from sight behind the juniper forest that tickled the underside of the darkening sky.
All day long they had visited Meredyth's childhood secret places, and she'd made love to him in each one of them. After dark, Lucas and Meredyth sat on the swing porch out front of the lavish log cabin home, listening to the insect and bird activity and staring out at the lake where loons continued gathering and playing their melodic tune. Here on Madera Lake, Houston and its problems, especially the Mira Lourdes case with its cruel dissonance, seemed a vague memory a world away. Still, as wonderful a day and evening as they had, thoughts of the case seeped into consciousness like water through rock, always winning out in the end.
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