Cutting Edge

by Robert W. Walker

  “You don't cut any corners, Stonecoat. You go by the book up there in Oregon. You understand me?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  Lawrence cut off the conversation without fanfare, his anger still electrifying the receiver.

  “Did you have to tell him you spent the night with me?” she demanded. “He already thinks the worst of me.”

  “Oh, cheap shot, Doctor.” But at least he had dodged the bullet on the lab. Obviously, Lawrence knew nothing about that part of his “transgressions” yet.

  He offered verbal salve for her wounded ego. “Well, if Captain Lawrence already thinks the worst of you... what harm can it do for him to think you spent the night with me?”

  “Damn it, Lucas, I do have a life outside police circles which I would like to protect.”

  “Cops don't get to have personal lives. Why should you?”

  “Cops don't want personal lives.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I saw Conrad on your mantel.”

  “Good, then you see why I don't want Lawrence or anyone else down at the precinct to get the wrong idea— about us, I mean.”

  “All I said was we were going over the case files together.”

  “I don't think that's what he heard.”

  They were in the airport traffic now, exiting 59 at North Sam Houston. She drove for John F. Kennedy Boulevard, which was flanked on either side by runways. They need now only get a parking stub and slot and locate the hangar where military planes flew in and out. “I'm still angry you didn't spend the evening with me,” she said now.

  “Really?”

  “What I mean to say is... well, the least you could've done was call me after you went out there to the judge's place to tell me what you found. You didn't even bother doing that.”

  “I still hadn't made up my mind at that point I wanted to get this... this involved.”

  She stared across at him, studying his inscrutable Indian features. “With the case, I hope you mean?”

  “Yeah, with the case.”

  “So why'd you jump at the chance today when Commander Bryce said to get on a plane with me?”

  “An old Indian trick.”

  “What's that?”

  “Know when to surrender. I was surrounded, wasn't I? And what kind of choice was I faced with? Disobey my superior and go back to the Cold Room, or obey and see the skies over Oregon? What kind of incentive is that? I mean, you did orchestrate that whole thing back there in his office, and don't deny it. You went directly to Bryce, didn't you? Embarrassed hell out of Phil. And by the way, it appears— even though I missed the main event—you did a lovely bit of maneuvering back there. How'd you get the commander so agreeable in the first place?”

  “Call it a little extra incentive I brought to the party. Reach back there in the back seat and grab that file folder. I was going to save this for the plane trip, but since you're interested...”

  Lucas reached into the back of the small car and almost spilled the pages of the computer printout from the manila folder.

  “Go ahead, take a good, long look,” she said as if it were a dare.

  Lucas stared down at a list of other deaths caused by arrows across the nation, going back several years. Many were crossed out as if unimportant, but others were not. “Damn, this is impressive. Is this what got to Bryce and Lawrence? Why didn't you show it to me before?”

  “I didn't have it before.”

  “Randy Oglesby?”

  She nodded.

  “You just waved this in front of Bryce, and that's all it took? I don't buy it.

  “ They had found a dark little parking spot inside the towering parking garage fronting the terminals. She pulled the key and looked him in the eye.

  “I can play hardball, too. I'd warned Lawrence earlier. I made it clear that if we weren't allowed to pursue leads on this angle of the investigation with his approval, then this and all my notes that are currently sealed and safely put away would go directly to Commander Andrew Bryce. Phil called my bluff and so...”

  “Lawrence's boss. You cut the man deeply with your... blackmail.”

  “Call it what you like.”

  He laughed inwardly. “I kinda like calling it what it is, blackmail.” She laughed now. “The man left me very little choice, and you... you weren't any help. Now tell me, honestly, why'd you go over there to Mootry's? What got you moving? And why didn't you call me to help? With my badge, I could've gotten us past the guards easily enough.”

  “I didn't want you getting into trouble.”

  “Bull. Typical male crap. You thought because I'm a woman I'd slow you down somehow.”

  “Whoa, wait up now!”

  “Isn't that it?”

  “No, I—”

  “That maybe I couldn't climb a fence or run fast enough. But if I'd been with you, there would have been no call for climbing in and out of windows, running or hitting some poor schlepp over the head.”

  He held up his hands as if under arrest. “I just wanted to check things out for myself. You should be grateful.” He was instantly sorry he'd used the word, but it was too fast off his tongue and too late to exchange if for another.

  “Grateful? Grateful... Just like a man.”

  “For all you knew, I had canned any thought of getting involved. I had turned you down, remember? And meantime, you're working to tie me to the case anyway, so what is that if it's not typical female... procedure?”

  She hesitated a bit, pursed her lips and took in a deep breath. He smelled less of alcohol today and more of cologne. “All right, but on the plane, I want to hear everything in detail.”

  “Everything?”

  “

  “Everything you saw, heard, touched, felt, smelt, and tasted out there. I know you're an intuitive cop, a good investigator. I don't want any secrets between us, Lucas.”

  “All right. Then afterwards, you can tell me all about Conrad.”

  “Conrad's got nothing to do with the case. That's private life, and it remains private. Let's go.”

  They located a burly skycap, and he found a maintenance crewman to take them and their bags on a cart across the airport taxi strips to a row of Quonset huts and hangars set apart from the commercial passenger terminals. Some of the huts and hangars here housed UPS, FedEx, Flying Tigers Cargo, and other businesses, but there was one large hangar marked U.S. Army Corps. It was here they were deposited.

  They easily located the pilot waiting for them, and after quick introductions, boarded the plane. The pilot wasted no time in getting clearance, and they were airborne within minutes, while passenger planes were jammed like so many pachyderms along a water route.

  Stonecoat hadn't flown too often, and each time he did it was both an exhilarating experience and one that filled him with awe. He still could not believe that a building could fly, and the military jet was the size of a small office building. It was equipped with a small conference area complete with table and comfortable chairs—unusual for military transport, but on boarding, their pilot had explained that the local FBI often engaged their services, so the plane was modified for in-flight conferencing.

  “Hell,” he had bragged, “we once had none other than Dr. Jessica Coran aboard.”

  “Who?” Meredyth had replied.

  “You know, the federal M.E. who solved the Queen of Hearts killings over in New Orleans? We were part of a search party for an escaped madman who was believed to be in the Oklahoma vicinity at the time. The feds got him, too.”

  After takeoff and leveling, they availed themselves of coffee, the cushioned chairs, and the conference table.

  “So, tell me about Mootry's,” she pressed Lucas.

  “But I already told you everything.”

  “I want a play-by-play; every detail. Detective.”

  He corrected her. “I'm no longer a detective, Doctor, and you know that.”

  “If you don't mind, I chose your help on the basis of your record as a detective, Detective, and if it helps my c
onfidence in you to call you a detective, then I'm going to go right ahead and do so, Detective.”

  “Helps you, huh?”

  “Yeah, me.”

  He dropped his gaze, guffawed, and said, “All right.”

  “Now give me every detail; leave nothing out.”

  He began at Judge Mootry's gate and told her how he had gained entrance. He found talking to her was easy, even cathartic somehow.

  She eagerly hung on his every word, fascinated by his having lain down in the exact spot where the judge had died in order to get a fix on the room.

  Then he explained why he had taken the two glasses from the kitchen.

  “Let me get this straight, Lucas,” she stopped him.

  “You took the two goblets believing you'd find no prints on them? You took them anyway?”

  “I did.”

  The look of sheer incredibility on her face spoke volumes. “Amelford and Pardee may've seen them, too. May have assumed the same as you, but they left them. But not you .... “I had my reasons.”

  Her look said, I'm sure you did. But she remained silent.

  “Well, would you like to hear them?”

  “If I don't, I'll go on wondering what made me believe you were some sort of Cherokee Sherlock Holmes. Please, do go on.”

  He explained his convoluted reasoning. “Whoever killed Mootry knew him.”

  “You got that from the no prints on the glass?”

  “If no prints show, yes. The killer knew Mootry well.”

  “Well? How well?”

  “Perhaps intimately.”

  “Intimately sexually or intimately intimately alone?”

  “Intimately enough to have had a drink with him before tucking him in, I believe.”

  “Whoa-up there. You mean, from what little you evidenced there, you somehow have come to the conclusion that Mootry trundled off to bed with the killer in the house with him, knowing he was not alone.”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  The look of incredulity began to cloud her face again.

  “Well, I will say the case has to date lacked a certain imaginative input by the detectives working it.”

  “That's the problem with a lot of cops,” he agreed. “N< imagination...” He then changed the direction of their discussion. “What do you hope to find in Oregon?”

  “I don't know. Use your imagination.”

  Randy Oglesby was in Muncie's New York Style Deli awaiting his pastrami on rye and currently on the telephone He was also in seventh heaven, getting to play a mole within the system, getting to play one cop—Lucas Stonecoat— pretending to be another cop—Jim Pardee. This was like complex computer game to him, pretense heaped upon pretense, circles within circles, and the result would please the beautiful, talented lady he worked for, Dr. Meredyth Sanger. He was up for it.

  From his desk, he had done as the mysterious Lucas Stonecoat had requested, telephoning Renquist Labs hourly for an update on the progress of the testing they were doing for him—Detective James Pardee. He laid it on thick, saying it was possibly the most important case in Texas history since John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, certainly more important than the Sydney Fielding socialite killing in which her doctor husband had been indicted.

  The technician he finally got through to ate it all up, and why not? They had said they would hustle on this one now that the paperwork had been forwarded, and they had.

  “So, what're the results?” he asked. “Any usable, clean prints, Darlene?”

  Darlene, the technician, her voice an octave lower than the last time Randy called, now replied, “I'm sorry, there was nothing.”

  “Nothing? Whataya mean, nothing?”

  “Detective Pardee,” she said in a tone that implied she might as well say,

  What part of nothing don 7 you understand? 'There were no prints on either glass.”

  “None?”

  “Crystal is difficult anyway, the many surfaces, you know, but—”

  “Sounds like you guys blew it.”

  “No, no, sir, no one blew anything. There was not one trace of any human secretions whatever on the glass surfaces. Soap residue, wine residue in the bowls, some sleep-inducing drugs, but no prints whatever.”

  “Whoa, hold up there. Sleep-inducing drugs?”

  “A mild sedative, probably harmless, but in such trace elements, nothing could really be determined. Like the prints you apparently thought would be there.”

  Yeah, I see... Thanks, Darlene. Didn't mean to get my back up. It's just... just... well, I don't admit to cop stress, but maybe this time I will.”

  “A frustrating case, Detective?”

  “Yeah, very.”

  “It sounds like you are a very dedicated man.”

  She sounded Oriental, he thought, but with a name like Darlene, he wondered. “You sound very hardworking and dedicated yourself, Darlene, and I want to thank you for being so”—he gulped as if it might help him find the word he wanted—”thorough and professional in getting this information for me in such a... a timely manner.”

  “I only wish that it could be better news for you, but you know we can't... fabricate”—she had a little trouble pronouncing the word, and Randy thought it cute—”evidence, you know. We must be finding the truth only.”

  “Yeah, sure... I understand that. Look, about the sleeping drug.”

  “Yes?”

  “Was it detected in both goblets or just one?”

  “Just one.”

  “Thanks, that may be of some help,” he replied. “Later on in the investigation, you know?”

  She promised to send the results to him.

  “Oh, tell you what. Have them sent directly to Detective Lucas Stonecoat, Thirty-first Precinct.”

  “But I thought they go to you.”

  “Detective Stonecoat is overseeing this part of the investigation after today, you see.”

  “Lucas Stone Coat?” she repeated as if writing it down. “Very well.” She was saying good-bye now, about to hang up.

  He wondered if he dared ask her for a date, but as who?

  Randy Oglesby or Jim Pardee? Lucas Stonecoat, maybe? He let the phone go dead.

  His thoughts and imaginations regarding Darlene and her exquisite voice quickly faded with the realization that Lucas Stonecoat had placed him, his computer, and Dr. Sanger in jeopardy for what? For absolutely nothing. Still, there were traces of sedatives in the bowl of one goblet.

  However, as Darlene had said, it was most likely simply mild sleeping pills. Now he couldn't help but wonder at the costs involved in the useless testing of those goblets taken from the Mootry crime scene. He wondered about Stone-coat's legendary reputation, wondered if it hadn't gone by the wayside, along with a few other things about him since Dallas. He had seen the files on Dr. Sanger's desk, and while he had not read them word for word, he had gotten some feel for what was going on, and he had heard about Lucas Stonecoat through the police grapevine and the support services grapevine as well.

  While Randy was no cop, unable to pass muster in the academy, he had determined to remain as close to police work as he could get and utilize his specialized knowledge as best he might for crime fighting. He hadn't planned on working in the Thirty-first Precinct alongside Dr. Meredyth Sanger, and at first he hadn't liked the idea of working so far from the action, for a police shrink instead of a police captain, perhaps. But Dr. Sanger, whose name ought rather be Dr. Danger, had changed his mind about police psychiatry. It was often quite dangerous. She had to deal not only with cops who walked into her office with their guns strapped to their hips, cops who might or might not be mentally unstable, but she had to go down to the jails and face the criminals, too; many of whom were of the criminally insane variety. She often had Randy come along to take dictation if the case warranted it.

  Randy was fleet of finger, capable of typing and computing 130 words a minute. He was also an expert on the Net, and he'd proven his worth to Dr. Sanger with the “list,” t
he one she had used as leverage this morning with Captain Lawrence.

  If Lawrence had any brains, he'd transfer Randy down to his division, but he wasn't that smart. Randy's sandwich and drink arrived at his table. He started to go for the food, his stomach growling for it, but on impulse, he rang Renquist once again and asked for Darlene.

  She came right on, as if waiting for his call. “Yes, this is Darlene Muentes.”

  “South American, maybe?” he asked.

  “What?”

  'This is—”

  “I know it's you, Detective.”

  “I was just guessing that maybe you were from South America? You have a lovely accent.”

  “I work hard to be rid of my accent.”

  “You shouldn't hide it. I like it. Everybody else talks the same; it gets boring. Your voice is not... boring.”

  “Is there something else I can do for you, Detective?”

  “Ahh, the bill.

  Can you tell me how much?”

  “Oh, well... with lab time and testing, let me see. I can give you a rough estimate, but the actual bill, it does not come from here, my lab, I mean.”

  “How old are you?”

  “What?”

  “How much?”

  “Ahh, maybe seven, seven-fifty.”

  “Seven hundred dollars for nada?”

  “Nada? It took a lot of work to find nada!” she replied.

  He nodded into the phone. “Sorry, it's just my boss is not going to be terribly pleased.”

  “I…... sorry for that, and I am twenty-three.”

  It was his first indication she was interested. “I'm twenty-two,” he replied. “Look, I'm having lunch at the grill on Elgin, not far from the university, and I know your lab's nearby, so what do you say? Are you hungry?”

  “Where is this place?”

  He gave her the name and location, and she recognized it. “I can be there in fifteen minutes. How will I know you?”

  “Last booth on the left as you walk in. I'll order for us.”

  “That sounds delightful. See you then, Detective.”

  “James... call me Jim,” he lied. Returning the phone to the wall, he cursed his situation. But then again, Detective Jim might be a great deal more relaxed and in control than would be comp-nerd Randy, so maybe he had made the right choice after all. Besides, she could turn out to be anything but what he imagined.