Cutting Edge

by Robert W. Walker

  Clarice, his secretary, a middle-aged but still handsome woman who'd been with him for years, urgently reminded him of his luncheon meeting with the deputy mayor, who would be interested in knowing the current dispensation of the Mootry matter. Donovan had given him all the data necessary to sound informed for the deputy mayor's benefit. Unfortunately, it appeared a case that might never be solved, as the killer or killers had left absolutely nothing in the way of useful clues.

  He thanked Clarice, dismissed her and again sat in the silence of his enormous office. He'd worked extremely hard to be in this chair. Mootry's death was hardly cause for great alarm at this time, but he meant to monitor the case every step of the way. He momentarily wondered if he shouldn't reconsider Phil Lawrence's appointment as captain. He wasn't sure exactly why, but it had to do with competence or incompetence, one or the other outweighing all else. But who did he have to replace Phil with? Who could he trust... who could he really, truly trust?

  He'd had to claw his way to the top of the crab heap, the others snatching, pinching, tearing at him the entire way. He had enemies in all the precincts, people who thought him inept, wrong for the job, dangerous, all manner of things, but none of them knew him; no one could ever know him entirely. Certainly not Phil Lawrence, Donovan, or any of his captains.

  Bryce had friends, but no one in police circles, not anymore. It was the price he'd paid.

  He snatched at the notes he meant to take to the deputy mayor, stood, and went for the door. He waved perfunctorily in Clarice's direction. Their affair had cooled many years before. He'd been good to her, keeping her on with him as he rose through the ranks, due in large measure to the fact that she respected his privacy and need for meditation. She had been like a rock and still remained a rock. Maybe he could trust her, but no one else on the inside, not anymore... not ever... Everybody wanted to bring him down, and he must accept that fact, live with it or die (in the political sense and perhaps every other sense) ignoring it.

  “Commander Bryce,” Clarice called out. “Sergeant Kelton's on line three.”

  “Kelton, huh?” Kelton was his eyes and ears in Lawrence's precinct. He needed to take this call, but he was running late.

  “Shall I take a message?” Clarice politely asked. 'Tell 'im I'll call after one.”

  “Yes, sir... understood...” Bryce marched out and Clarice forwarded his message word for word.

  SEVEN

  On their way back to pick up his car, Meredyth Sanger explained to Lucas Stonecoat what she'd gotten herself involved in, bringing him up to date on the Mootry investigation. As they drove, the images of the city floated by the car windows, rolled up tightly against the heat and city noise. He noticed that she ran her AC at full-tilt, so that her police band radio crackled with static as loud as a child's popgun.

  “Hobby?” he foolishly asked.

  “Business. Never know when you might be needed. The movies are the movies, the streets quite another.”

  He groaned. “How I know that.”

  “Anyway, when a first-timer discharges his weapon, we know he's going to have to talk to the likes of me. And sometimes... many times, in fact, even a vet needs my help. Sometimes I'm called in to help a victim or a family member, sometimes children who're involved.”

  “I guess you've seen a lot here, more so than in Washington?”

  “I saw my fill in Seattle, but yeah... this place is wild.”

  “So, fill me in more on this Mootry case.”

  “Mootry was a rarity, a well-liked Texas politician for most of his life, more recently a retired appellate court judge, although from a close scrutiny of his dealings, you might say he pretty much bought his way into the appellate court. He had amassed a fortune, led something of a Ross Perot life. A generous man, though.”

  “Where were his views on abortion?”

  “I've thought about that. He took the unpopular view that a woman's decision was a woman's decision where her body was concerned. He hedged a bit, calling the fetus a seed before the end of the first trimester. Anyway, I don't think he was killed by fanatical pro-lifers. His body was found mutilated, the head severed and taken away, along with other parts of him. I've never heard of an abortion-related murderer also being a hacker.”

  “Sex organs?”

  “Among other things.”

  “What other things are there?”

  Damn, even his dark humor is subtle, she told herself.

  “His hands and feet.”

  “Both hands, both feet?”

  “You got it.”

  “Cut at the wrists?”

  “Forearms, actually. “Feet?”

  “At the calf.”

  “Somebody really wanted this dead man hobbled. You're the shrink, maybe you can help me.” She smiled, nodding. “However I can.”

  “I'll never fully understand hacking up the body in such a way after the guy's dead.”

  “Indians did it.”

  “Sioux, Cheyenne, and other Plains Indians did it to mark a kill during a battle to send a message, to demonstrate to all other enemies just who had sent this particular enemy—say George Custer—over to the other side. So why do white murderers do it?”

  She shrugged. “An FBI profile would likely come to the same conclusion as it might in a lovers' quarrel, that such an overkill means only one thing: that the killer knew his victim, had a vested, highly charged emotional interest in mutilating the body.”

  “Yeah, so the killer loved Judge Charles Mootry?”

  “Loved him or hated him. The emotions are, while opposites on the spectrum, extremely close if the spectrum is a circle.”

  “So, in any case, the killer wanted Mootry deader than dead. By eating an enemy's heart, a warrior takes on the courage of his enemy. Taking his head, I don't begin to understand, nor his hands or feet, unless...”

  “Go on,” she encouraged.

  “Old and foolish notions come to mind.”

  “I'm listening.”

  He shrugged. “There are ancient tribal stories among the Alabama that speak of supernatural creatures that fed on men; they were like vampires, and the only way to kill one was to strike it through the heart with a stake or spear.” He paused to look up at her, to see if she was getting this.

  “I'm with you so far,” she said, as if reading his mind.

  “It's foolish, but the old ones say you then cut off the monster's feet, so it can't walk, and the hands so it can't crawl, the head so it can't see, and the genitals so it can't reproduce.”

  She nodded. “All very sound reasoning when dealing with a supernatural enemy, I would think. Meanwhile, we're left with the torso sporting a high-tech, high-density, huge aluminum crossbow arrow straight through the heart. He died on impact.”

  Lucas's eyes widened, his breath coming short in a dry mouth. “He was killed by a... a crossbow, really?”

  “Really.”

  “I guess I should've heard about this, if nowhere else than in the locker room.

  Where'd it happen?”

  “In his bed.”

  “In his bed? Whereabouts?”

  “At his home in the Bay area, where the killer somehow gained entry without using so much as a screwdriver.”

  “Another indication the killer knew the man...” Lucas lingered over the suggestion, finding himself naturally caught up in the mystery.

  “It was believed he either forced his way in at gunpoint or talked his way past the threshold. Or he was someone known by the judge. Other than these possible scenarios... well, there's the sexual proclivities angle. Was the judge into sex games, auto erotica, anything of that nature? But this monster arrow made for one pretty deadly toy, if that's what was going on.”

  “Assuming it wasn't a lover of one sort or another, what's left? Who had reason to kill the judge? Was he a sentencing judge?”

  “He had some big and well-known cases, but he was one of a number of judges on the court, so really, he had no known enemies. He adjudicated cases
all his life, both criminal and civil offenses, nothing major except for the money involved.”

  “Until he bought his way into the hearts of the rich and powerful and found a seat on the appellate court, you mean?

  People who lose appeals are generally at the end of a long rope. Good enough reason for most people to take a life.”

  She tried to steer him back on course even as she steered the car. “The brutalization of the body... you see, there were no signs whatsoever of a struggle, or that Judge Mootry had the remotest chance of escaping, since he'd made no attempt to do so.”

  “No signs of a struggle? No blood trails? Coroner puts it as death first, mutilation afterwards,” he stated.

  “You hit the nail right on the head.”

  “So, how did the killer waltz in with a spear gun?”

  “Crossbow, actually,” she corrected him. “Very expensive, very high-tech. Sort you find in gun magazines for collectors.”

  “Sure, I've seen some at the gun shops. I've even hunted deer with one.”

  “Nobody knows for sure just how the killer got in or out. He got past Mootry's gates, his guard dogs, his alarm. Nothing, it seems, could save the judge that night. It's as if it were fated.”

  “Or well executed...”

  “Another pun and I'll execute you.”

  “Certainly must have known the place well. I don't suppose anything useful was left at the crime scene by the killer?”

  “Only a message written in the judge's blood.”

  “Really? What, on a wall?”

  “No, with pen on paper.

  “Really? Interesting...

  “It figures to be an old quill pen, according to the guys in Documents.

  They're studying the wording, the handwriting, everything.

  “What'd the message say?”

  “It's pretty straightforward: 'Cut off the limb of Satan.

  “Sounds biblical.”

  'They're running it down, but I have a girlfriend who is a biblical scholar, and she tells me it's not a direct quote from any of the various translations of the Old or New Testament.”

  “That's interesting.”

  “Joanna says that although the sentiment sounds Christian enough, it's not specific to any texts she knows. Still, I'm guessing that this guy has some kind of fixation on himself being some sort of savior, and that for some reason, he singled out Mootry as one of the demons he is meant to destroy—the so-called limb of Satan, maybe... you see?”

  “Or someone wants the authorities to believe it's all part of some bizarre shit.”

  “I knew you'd love it.”

  “You did, huh?” She had indeed read his record, he surmised. She simply knew too much about him. From the start, she had known all about Dallas as well. She was playing him like a fiddle, and he liked it.

  They were back at Tank's Place, the shabby little neighborhood bar with the unlit neon Schlitz sign in the window and the peeling tiles and the raunchy awning. Meredyth pulled in beside Lucas's car, an olive-green, departmental issue, unremarkable, and unmarked Ford. Lucas remained cautious, unsure of her motives or if he ought to get involved, so he promised that he'd make no promises beyond going over the files she'd logged in and out during the past week. “Can't promise you much beyond that, since all I am is a rookie in care of dead files in the necromancy chamber.”

  “Thanks, that's all I ask, Lucas.”

  “Until I scan the files, I'll reserve judgment.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He slid from her car and closed the door and leaned in when she automatically lowered the window. “My ancestors teach me caution in all matters...”

  “Oh, in all matters, no exceptions?”

  “A careless step can leave a man without a moccasin and perhaps some other vital items,” he joked.

  She liked his easy way, how he joked about his heritage. “Such as?”

  A heart, he wanted to say. “You name it,” he said. “All things in moderation, angels rush in where fools fear to tread...”

  “Now I know that's not sage Cherokee wisdom.” She smiled wryly. “And besides, you've got it backwards. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

  “Maybe it's not so backwards.”

  “What're you giving me, a compliment and a lecture? Rather backhanded of you.”

  “Did I say all that?” He quickly stepped away from her car and limped to his own.

  Something about him made the limp almost admirable, certainly distinguishable; he wore it like a badge of honor, something he'd earned, she thought, despite the fact that in earning it, he'd almost died, and he had lost a partner, a wife, a home, and a career in one fell swoop. The facial scar, too, disappeared once she'd gotten to know him a little better, and she had enjoyed watching this big, powerful man talk to the animals as he doled out tiny food pellets like a Scrooge. She liked the way he had shown respect for the trapped, domesticated zoo animals, as if each had a soul.

  Meredyth now watched his car pull from the curb, allowing Lucas to move off well ahead before she pulled into traffic. She wasn't any more anxious for people to see her with him than he was to be seen with her. She certainly didn't want anyone at the station house to see them returning together. God only knew what great palaver that'd create around the water cooler. Besides, the less others knew of her plans at this point, the better, including Lucas Stonecoat. “And another besides,” she told herself and the empty car, “he's dangerous.”

  She had heard and read enough about his accident, and his run at suing the City of Dallas for damages, to know that he was indeed a dangerous ally, and she knew enough about herself to know that she liked having a little danger in her life. She knew that this particular, tall, handsome Cherokee man was a tinderbox ready to explode at the slightest provocation. If rumors started flying that he was seeing her personally, there was little telling what might happen. One thing was certain. She didn't want to frighten him off now.

  Despite the automobile accident that had nearly cost him his life, Lucas Stonecoat barked his tires and rammed home his fist into his horn at every turn. He drove with the abandon of a man who truly believed that every other driver on the road was completely insane, and that to escape any injury or accident, he must race ahead or around the maniacs surrounding him. He had long since lost any sight of Dr. Sanger's vehicle.

  Lucas thought about Dr. Meredyth Sanger all the way back to the Thirty-first Precinct house. Meeting her in a social setting, opening up to her, strolling about the city zoo alongside her... it almost made going back to his cell bearable. The two bourbons hadn't harmed him any, either. Maybe there was hope for him here in Houston, despite the shock of the Cold Room and the rather nasty possibility that Phil Lawrence had placed him there due to both his past history and his genes.

  But it had to figure that Dr. Meredyth Sanger—Mere, as he liked to think of her—also had her ulterior motives, since she was both white and a shrink. He'd had his fill of shrinks and others who talked in riddles and circles and never-ending meanderings, their meaningless loops like so many petroglyphs so far as he was concerned. Not that his own race wasn't guilty of the same. Some of his grandfather's talk was like falling into a bottomless spiral, the riddles within riddles endless. When it confused an enemy, true Indian gibberish was a thing of beauty, he told himself now.

  Maybe Sanger was different, maybe not. Either way, she certainly seemed to delight in challenging him at every turn, and how gracefully she carried that disquieting little smirk which magically turned into a disarming smile whenever she wanted her way. As charming as a multicolored diamondback rattler; he thought. The more colorful, the more poisonous, and she could mean plenty more trouble than he'd been looking to find—in more ways than one.

  Maybe if she wasn't a psychiatrist... then there might be a snowflake's chance; since she was, he wondered why the question was even wafting through his head. It was a preposterous notion, that maybe he and Dr. Sanger could be more than just friends, when in fa
ct they weren't even friends and weren't likely to become friends... ever.

  Still, she wanted an alliance against Phil Lawrence, who represented a threat to her. “And that's all she wants, you fool,” he told himself, “an alliance, backup, to build her case... possibly a fall guy if things go badly, and that's all she's interested in.”

  He wheeled the car sharply at the next corner, squealing already burning tires. The police band calls rattled about the cab, still nothing he might reasonably respond to.

  Lucas was just glad that he'd remained cautiously aloof, and wary of her motives—the reserved Indian. There was little telling what her hidden agenda might be.

  He didn't care for her constant need to know everything about him, her prying questions, yet he'd volunteered much. Still, what was there to volunteer? She had known it all before in one form or another. On the drive back to the bar, she'd asked him where he had grown up.

  “Born and raised on the Coushatta Indian Reserve,” he had replied.

  “But you got out... ahh, off, I mean?”

  “Scholarship to Yale,” he'd joked, making her laugh again. He liked teasing a laugh from her.

  “You'll have to tell me about it sometime.” Which translated to: You'll have to tell me the truth sometime.

  He made no such promises.

  For all he knew now, an alliance of any sort with Meredyth Sanger could make matters worse for them both, and he was particularly concerned about his rookie standing, and the fact that one day he wanted very much to get shed of the Cold Room and all the duties that went along with it. After all, Lawrence was holding the cards, yanking the chains, in charge in toto, so pissing the man off would be sheer suicide. Maybe if he played by the rules for a while... maybe if he could impress Lawrence...

  Obviously, he wasn't going to impress Lawrence by joining Meredyth Sanger in some crusade to declare Mootry's death one of several in a series, the work of the same killer.