04.Final Edge v5

by Robert W. Walker

  "It's on its way to us now. Let me check the fax."

  They followed Stan to find the information waiting for them. Lucas and Meredyth closely studied Lauralie's registration form and signature. She'd signed up for three classes, two of which she was failing miserably. The third, Intro Surg Pro, she somehow had a B average in. The name of the instructor was A. Belkvin.

  "What the hell is Intro Surg Pro?" asked Kelton.

  "Introduction to Surgical Procedures. I know, makes your skin crawl in light of what we know about her," answered Meredyth. "And look at her signature, Lucas." Studying it, Meredyth added. "It may give us a glimpse into her personality. Notice the fanciful swirls, the looping Ls, the exaggerated crossing of the Ts, the G dipping so low, the capitals and the T's reaching so high."

  "Sorry to sound like a broken record, but what does it mean?" asked Kelton.

  "Means she's self-indulgent, a thrill-seeking exhibitionist freak, out for all the attention she can gather."

  Lucas added, "She ought to've put all this negative energy into the theater. Could've been a hell of an actress, the next Vivian Leigh."

  "She has her stage," countered Meredyth, "and her audience. All of us in the real world. The subject of an

  APB, a BOLO. Certainly has our attention...subject of a nationwide hunt being played out on the front pages. She's created this lady of satanic divination who frightens us all; the bogeyman has become bogeywoman."

  At the bottom of the faxed copy of Lauralie's registration form, in tiny, tight script, a hastily written note ran the length of the page. It'd been written, presumably by someone working in the registrar's office. It read: "Ms. L Blodgett is on verge of being dropped from classes due to failing grades and mounting attendance problems as she has failed to reply to repeated notices to see her counselor, Dr. Arthur Belkvin."

  "Belkvin, as in her instructor in Introductory Surgical Procedures? The one class she's passing?" asked Lucas.

  "Kind of odd, I agree," said Meredyth.

  "What? What's odd, the note scribbled on her registration form?" asked Kelton, trying to keep up.

  "That the only class she's getting a passing grade in is taught by her counselor," replied Lucas.

  Meredyth added, "And yet, according to the note, she has failed to report into him regarding problems with attendance. Looks and smells like a rat."

  "Certainly incongruous." Lucas reread the registration form. "She's signed up for Zoolog Anat—"

  "Zoological Anatomy," interjected Meredyth.

  "—and Ca Teeth Extr."

  "Canine Teeth Extraction." It made them both think of the teeth extracted from Mira Lourdes.

  Lucas said, "We need to talk to this guy Belkvin, see what he can tell us about our girl."

  "Are you kidding, Lucas? I want to meet this guy and see how he stacks up against our composite. He could well be our Crazy Joe Boyfriend."

  "Older man, weak, easy prey for her...knows how to use a scalpel, a bone saw." Lucas ran a hand through his long hair.

  Belkvin...Belkvin," Stan Kelton began to chant. "Sounds damn familiar somehow."

  "What's the number of the school, Stan?" asked

  Meredyth. "I want to get this Professor Counselor Belkvin on the line."

  Stan read the number off as Meredyth called from Stan's desk. The others listened to her side of the conversation. "I see...yes...agreed...absolutely. We can do that, uh-huh, yes, sir, Dr. Price. You have my word. We will look in on him. Can I get the address, phone number? That'd be good too, yes." She abruptly hung up, leaving Lucas and Stan to stare at her satisfied smile.

  "What?" asked Lucas.

  "Seems our Dr. Arthur Belkvin has been AWOL... classes canceled without notice twice over the past two mornings, and this A.M. he's again a no-show, but this time not even a notice given. The department chairman, Dr. Charles Price, said they've been unable to reach Dr. Belkvin at his home or his practice. Said it was becoming a concern for them."

  "Belkvin," muttered Stan Kelton. "I tell you, that sounds familiar. Hold on a minute."

  Stan returned to his desk, having to tell a growing number of people, both police officers and civilians, to hold their respective pants and requests while he conferred with his junior officer. Between the two men, they rifled though hundreds of phone-line tips as yet to be placed on the computer cross-referencing program. "Here's one of them, Sarge," said the junior officer.

  "Here's the other," announced Kelton. He then handed the two reports to Lucas and Meredyth to review while he helped clear away the growing numbers confronting him.

  'Two calls, both saying their vet fits the description of Mr. X in the Chronicle," said Lucas. "You'd think we'd have some similar tips from the guy's students at this King vet school."

  "Students don't read anything but what's on the curriculum these days, and as for picking up a newspaper or watching CNN, they're too busy with role-playing video games and going to the movies to concern themselves with current events. I've taught, I know. When the D.C. Sniper shootings were going on, none of my students had an inkling until I put them onto it, and you know how saturated our lives had become with it."

  "Scary."

  "I got Dr. Arthur Belkvin's full name, SS number, street address for home and practice from Dr. Price," Meredyth told him. "And maybe now Jorganson can ram through search warrants for us?"

  "If the bastards won't give us a go-ahead, we'll call in the ITRT again, but for the sake of building a case against this guy and Lauralie, who I suspect we will find living with him, let's go the warrant route first."

  "So long as we put this investigation in motion."

  Lucas grabbed the desk phone and called the D.A.'s office, telling Harry Jorganson what they'd uncovered. "Sounds like plenty of probable cause, and since the courthouse incident, I don't think I'm going to have trouble finding a sympathetic judge, Lucas. Meet you at the man's practice. The home warrant will come by way of my legal aide, Phil Merrick."

  "We'll make the raids simultaneously. I think the noose is around the right neck, Harry."

  No sooner had he hung up Stan's desk phone than his cell phone rang into life. He picked up to find Jana North speaking in an excited manner. "We got a an interesting development over here in Missing Persons, a report filed on a doctor of veterinary medicine gone missing for forty- eight hours, Lucas. The report was filed by his receptionist, a MariLouise Jones."

  "Go on."

  "Says her boss has missed appointments, surgeries, and such. Also says he looks a little like the artist sketch on our killer. This doggy doc's name is—"

  "Arthur Belkvin," Lucas finished for her.

  "Right, but how the hell'd you know?"

  "We've got a warrant for his practice and home in the works. We have reason to believe he's the male half of the Post-it Ripper duo."

  "I want in, Lucas."

  "You've got it. Take a team of your best to this address."

  He gave her the home address. "Phd Merrick from the D.A.'s would meet you there with a warrant. We'll cover the man's practice. Careful, these people are armed and dangerous."

  "Imagine it, Lucas, our big bad boogeyman who cuts people into cubes turns out to be an animal lover...a doggy doctor."

  Lucas hung up. "Let's get over to the clinic. Detective North's people're going to coordinate the raid on the house."

  "I'll be damned," said Meredyth.

  "What's that?" asked Lucas.

  "Lauralie's little game takes on a new twist. She selects a man named Arthur at a vet school named King to do her bidding. King Arthur...Morte de Arthur's, the funeral home? Is it only coincidence?"

  "A king with a set of surgical tools and hairy mole on his cheek."

  "She's using him just as she's used people all her life."

  Lucas said, "Says here his office is on JFK Drive, South, the seedier side of the Sixth Ward."

  "Let's go."

  "I want in," Kelton said.

  "For sure, Stan. Get us a tactical team for back
up, and put Chang on notice we may call for him or Dr. Nielsen at either or both scenes. Ahhh, tell him we'd prefer Frank Pat-terson be kept out of it. Will you do that, Stan?"

  "Consider it done. And I'll bring Lincoln up to par as well."

  "See you at the kennel and surgery then, Stan."

  "Count on it."

  Lucas and Meredyth located his car, a sense of hope, of impending closure wanting to rush into their hearts, but they warned one another against it, keeping it at bay, dammed up by a cop's normal caution in the face of optimism, a reining-in emotion called prudence, which spoke the language of care and vigilance. They had been wrong before; eyewitnesses had been proved wrong in case after case. The professor and veterinarian could well be missing for a thousand and one reasons, none having the remotest to do with Lauralie Blodgett or a murder spree. They could be entirely wrong about Belkvin.

  Nevertheless, Lucas intended serving two warrants to open up his entire life to their scrutiny.

  CHAPTER 16

  DETECTIVE JANA NORTH had the door knocked in by SWAT team operatives, and instantly Dr. Arthur Belkvin's private little world became public.

  The men who stormed in and locked down each area, room by room, shouted out their findings. "Clear!"

  "Clear in the kitchen!"

  "Bedroom's secure."

  "No one here!"

  "Basement, all clear."

  "Garage, all clear."

  Jana began combing the rooms for any sign of Mira Lourdes ever having been here. She found instead a tidy, well-kept little apartment home with a garage out back, neighbors at each elbow, their windows close enough to spit into. She found plaques, certificates, licenses, awards, blue ribbons for first prize in area and state championship dog shows, and proud postings of the champions, a pair of greyhounds. In fact, animal photos adorned every wall and passageway. Whoever Arthur was, he proved a fanatical dog lover and a competitive one.

  Evidence of several missing dogs, she mentally noted from food dishes with flies in them to photos of Belkvin with a large Dalmatian and two greyhounds, all caught in play, each photo pinned to the fridge by tiny dog-bone magnets. Turning the most prominent Dalmatian photo in her hand, she saw the block printing on the back read, Pongo and me, 1997. "Wonder where ol' Pongo must be now," she said, handing the photo over to Merrick.

  Merrick's thin face pinched as he studied the photo. "Likely pounded someplace nearby. Maybe at Belkvin's practice. Looks like he loves the mutt, don't it. Guy looks as harmless as my brother-in-law."

  She lifted another photo with Belkvin crouched between two greyhounds. The inscription on the back read, Petie and Fritz, Fall 2001.

  Search as she might, she could find not a single item in the house that could be of the least importance to their case.

  "All right, take this place apart!" she ordered her detectives. "I don't want a single unturned matchbook."

  "Don't look to be a smoker to me," replied Phil Merrick, the warrant folded beneath the two dog pictures he'd laid over it now. "You guys got a bum steer. Look at this place. Guy has at least two, maybe three dogs, and it looks like the house that Mr. Clean built. My place, my kids have a hamster, but the house looks like a tornado ripped through."

  "All the same, we're going to search thoroughly. I'm checking the back bedroom." She entered Belkvin's bedroom and angrily tore out bureau drawers, throwing clothing in the air. She came across sexually explicit magazines, X-rated videos, massaging vibrators, plugs, and assorted adult toys.

  "Can't prosecute a guy for being horny, Detective," said Merrick from behind her.

  She paid no heed to the junior D.A., going to the bed and tearing away the neat, tidy afghan and blanket to reveal soiled sheets.

  Ahh-ha! Finally, evidence this jag-off actually ever spent time and bodily fluids here," taunted Merrick.

  "Shut up or step outside, will you, Mr. Merrick. If Mira Lourdes was held here against her will, tied to this bed—"

  "Was she sexually molested?"

  "No way to know for certain with only her head to examine and none of her lower genitalia. Mouth was free of any discharges. That's all Chang could tell us."

  "Yeah...forgot...sorry."

  "Could possibly be some of her DNA on these sheets." She called out to one of her people, "Get a CSI unit to scour the place with blue lights for blood spatters and finger-prints, and bag the sheet." She'd already folded the sheet in on itself with gloved hands to preserve any fibers, hairs, and fluid stains. Setting the bundle aside now, she next upended the mattress, revealing more pornography beneath, this special cache displaying women in horrible submission and bondage, the pictures arousing some deep inner sexual feelings better left unaroused, she silently warned herself. But she was drawn to the photos of women roped and wrapped, their eyes covered, mouths gagged, and was mesmerized until Merrick startled her, yanking the bondage book from her hands, gazing at it liberally himself. "Still, like I said, can't put this guy away for porn and horn."

  Jana ordered her men to box it all up. She then shouted for help, and with another detective, she upended the box springs. Below the bed, she finally found a place in need of vacuuming, dust bunnies flying.

  "Damn it. He hasn't been using the place, not for some time," she told Merrick and the others. "We'd have to view the tapes he kept to determine if there's anything what so-ever bearing on the Ripper case."

  "Who knows, you might get lucky," said Merrick. "Maybe he taped the abduction, murder, and mutilation of Mira Lourdes and left the video here for you guys to discover."

  Exasperated and angry, Jana gave a fleeting moment's thought to the excitement and expectation that had catapulted her from headquarters to here. She had come with a great hope, that they would find a mountain of evidence here to tie Belkvin to Lauralie Blodgett, and signs pointing a direct route to her whereabouts, and that this preponderance of evidentiary material would bury them both. Leaving with a box of videos, magazines, and dirty books, along with a couple of photos of a guy who might, in a pinch, pass for the man in the artist sketch, was a crushing blow.

  She hated the thought of breaking the bad news to Lucas and Meredyth. She hated what this awful woman was doing to Meredyth, hurting Lucas in the bargain. She'd come to realize, watching how Lucas behaved around Meredyth, how very much he did love her, in a way she herself hoped one day to be loved. For this reason, it pained her greatly to see the two of them so victimized. She, like many on the task force, had made a personal vow to not sleep until the person responsible for the ungodly packaging up of human remains to traumatize good and caring people was caught and the assaults ended. And with the murder of Byron Priestly, the resolve had become even greater.

  A little corner of her brain also told her she could be misconstrued as being close to Meredyth Sanger—a girlfriend! She could be killed next because of a wrongful perception, the victim of Lauralie Blodgett's semi-random, somewhat predictable violence. But then so could Lucas; in fact, Lucas presented a large and looming target. She wondered if he'd given any thought to the threat hovering over him, that he, more than anyone else in the Ripper's viewfinder, represented Meredyth's present and future happiness and pleasure.

  Jana secretly loved Lucas and would willingly die for him; she wondered if he'd take her seriously if she offered to stand bodyguard over him. Not likely. Not likely he would allow it. The macho shit-head.

  "What now?" asked one of her men as they were exiting the house with the single box of confiscated pornography.

  Neighbors on each side of the apartment and from across the street had gathered, watching and wondering. Jana North pointed to the small gathering of housewives and retired folk and said to her man, "You and the others, fan out, and let's start interviewing. You know what to ask about. We got his vehicle info from papers found inside, and we've got his personal phone book. What we need are eyewitnesses to her comings and goings here."

  Jana gave a fleeting thought to Lucas's tying her up like one of the women in Belkvin's bonda
ge book. How she would enjoy being at the Cherokee's complete mercy.

  "Damm it, North, get a grip," she muttered.

  "What's that, Detective?" asked Merrick.

  "Nothing...not a thing."

  "I really am sorry nothing useful was found; despite my cynicism, I truly wanted this to go your way. From what I've read and seen of reports on this case, and what I've learned from my sources in police circles and forensics, this is one sick mother fucking little momma you guys are chasing."

  "You know, Merrick, you aren't a half-bad-looking guy when you're not being so damn cynical."

  "Really? Perhaps I ought to lighten up a bit, if it makes me more attractive to someone as attractive as you."

  This got her attention, and she looked more closely at his eyes—good, strong, clear, moist icy-blue eyes. "Why, thank you, Merrick."

  "Why don't you call me by my first name."

  "I will if you will."

  ACROSS TOWN, LUCAS and Meredyth took the warrant from Harry Jorganson's outstretched hand as if it were a baton in a footrace. Jorganson held back, wishing them good luck as they entered the Bright Day Animal Clinic. Dr. Arthur D. Belkvin's name was emblazoned on the sign below the clinic's name. Lucas and Meredyth held high but tempered expectations of finding evidence to prove this was the location of Mira Lourdes's murder.

  Earlier, as they raced to the location, Lucas had confided, "Where else would he do her but at the site where the tools are readily available, his own cozy operating room in his own clinic? Where else would he feel safe to perform his deadly operations than in surroundings so familiar?'

  "Perform is the right word, if he did it for Lauralie."

  Inside, they found a blocky small building reminiscent of someone's basement, a small waiting room area scrunched against the reception desk, and a door leading to the rear, where two separate rooms for examinations and operations stood like barriers to the kennel in the rear.

  "You hear that?" asked Lucas as they looked around, flashing their badges for Ms. Jones.

  "What? I don't hear nothing," said MariLouise Jones.

  "That's just it, a silent kennel."