Cutting Edge

by Robert W. Walker

  Lucas asked. “Then you're classified a genius?”

  “Only by those who need classification and labels.”

  They said their good-byes. Once outside, Meredyth said, “He didn't give away a thing. I couldn't read him.”

  “He gave away one thing.”

  “What's that?”

  “He was too damned cool.”

  “Personally, I find most genius-types that way. I don't know if there's anything there.”

  “Let's go see Dr. Washburn. See if he's as unflappable as Dalton.

  ” They next ran down Dr. Sterling Washburn at Mercy General Hospital, Houston, half a city away from Dalton's downtown offices. The hospital was in a run-down section of the city, and it appeared to have remained open in order to serve the needy in the dilapidated area in which it was located. Meredyth explained that once it was a very pleasant, upscale neighborhood but gang violence and a series of economic downturns had created a little war zone within the city, and the hospital found itself at the core of the battlefield.

  “This Sterling Washburn has to be dedicated to work here,” she said in Lucas's ear as they waited. Sterling was being paged, as he was not in his office.

  In a moment, a woman in a white coat stepped up to them. “Officer Stonecoat, Dr. Sanger, I presume?” she said.

  “We've been waiting twenty minutes to see Dr. Wash-burn,” fumed Lucas. “Is he or is he not in?”

  “I am Dr. Sterling Washburn. How can I help you?”

  “You?” asked Lucas, surprised, but pleasantly, staring at the lovely green-eyed, raven-haired woman. “I mean, your specialty is?”

  Meredyth wanted to both hit him and apologize for him, but she held her tongue instead. She introduced Lucas and herself to the doctor.

  “My specialty is heart surgery. I have a private practice, which is lucrative, and I give as much time as possible to the hospital here,” she answered Lucas's question and then some. “How may I be of assistance to you?”

  Meredyth jumped in. “We understand you were Judge Charles Mootry's physician?”

  “I had that dubious pleasure, yes.”

  “Dubious, you say?”

  “Charles hardly took my advice, but he and I enjoyed a long friendship, and his health was deteriorating along with his mind. Toward the end, he thought he could put his hands all over me.... It was, or had become, a distinctly uncomfortable position for me, but I owed him a great deal.”

  “You owed him? Money, you mean?”

  “He supported me through school. He was quite the gentleman about it, until recently, as I've said. It started with cute little old man gestures and remarks but had escalated to, 'You owe me, this, Sterling.'“

  “And did you feel obligated to him?”

  “I did, of course...”

  Lucas asked, “Since Texas Christian days?”

  “I wasn't a full-time student there; I was just picking up some credits, still in high school at the time. I went to Tulane in New Orleans. Charles made it possible. I knew I wanted to be a physician, and I wanted a head start. Charles... Charles encouraged me, became a big brother to me. He supported me, as I said and as I've told others. There was never any secret about our relationship. I did love Charles, just not what he'd become.”

  “So, your friendship began with a monetary favor?”

  “No, no... We met at a mutual friend's party. It wasn't until years later, when he heard about my situation, that he came to me with the idea of helping me out.”

  “And you returned the favor over the years by seeing to his medical needs?” asked Lucas.

  “Yes, you could say that, although he and I were more like brother and sister than... than patient and doctor. He seldom listened to my directions, but he wouldn't pay another doctor, he always said. He was a... a funny man, a wonderful man.”

  “Were you seeing to his pill supply, doctor?” Meredyth asked.

  She looked around to be certain no one was listening. “I was... But I only supplied him with what he needed to stay sharp. That's all.”

  Lucas replied, “You must have been devastated to learn of his death.”

  “I was. I had just left him hours before,” she said. “I feared he might've overdosed when I first heard the news he was dead. Then, as it turns out, he was... murdered. I could hardly believe it. But when I spoke to the police, I told them who I suspected and why.”

  “You saw him the night of his death?”

  “Who did you suspect?” Meredyth asked at the same time.

  She nodded to Lucas. “I told all this to the detectives investigating the case.”

  Lucas bit his lower lip and asked, “Did you share drinks or wine with the judge that night before leaving him?”

  “Why, yes, I did. He had just returned from a trip to Dallas-Fort Worth where he'd helped to raise a half-million dollars for AIDS research, and he felt like celebrating, or so he said. He was also exhausted. I prescribed a mild sedative and saw to it that he went to bed. He wasn't so old as he appeared, but he had a crippling arthritic condition, and he'd gone prematurely gray, and he had problems remembering things. His days on the bench, he truly missed. He was a lovely man, really...”

  “So, who did you immediately suspect and why?” Meredyth asked point-blank.

  “Over the past several years, some priest with some weird order was coming around, pretending to be Charles's spiritual advisor.”

  “Does this priest have a name?”

  “Aguilar. Don't ask me where he lives or where his church is. I don't know, but he was some strange person. I only met him a few times, usually leaving Charles's house. I never quite trusted him.”

  Outside the hospital, Meredyth asked Lucas, “Well? Have you had enough? It appears Mootry's friends were devoted to him.”

  “Let's go see the priest.”

  While Lucas drove, she answered his questions.

  “What do we know about the three people Randy came up with for us?”

  “Not much. The lawyer likes to dive.”

  “Underwater diving, deep-sea diving?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Might mean Dalton's also into spear guns?”

  “That sounds like reaching to me, Lucas. But he's also into big-game hunting in Utah, Wyoming, and, get this, South Dakota and North Dakota, as well as Canada.”

  “Which may well mean he's had some experience with crossbows?”

  “It doesn't say so, but yes... precisely. He is a collector.”

  “Collector of what?”

  “Weapons.”

  “Really?”

  “As for Dr. Sterling Washburn... she—how did Randy miss this?—she's a well-respected surgeon with oodles of hours of community service.”

  “Naturally,” replied Lucas, skepticism infiltrating each syllable.

  “You know what you are, Stonecoat?” she asked. “You're a biased snob.”

  “Me, biased? Me, a snob?”

  “Bias, prejudice, call it what you like, but you're a snob toward snobs.”

  “Oh, that's clever and funny.”

  “You think because someone's well-to-do, because someone's successful, and socially successful, at that, then there's something inherently wrong with her.”

  “Bingo.”

  “God, you can be irritating.”

  He ignored her ire. “And the priest?”

  “Father Aguilar, according to what Randy's come up with, is, or was, Judge Charles Mootry's best friend and confidant.”

  “Sounds to me like they all were his best friend and confidant.”

  “Father Aguilar, however, was given heaping donations by the judge, and a good deal of the estate went to Aguilar's church, a monastic church in an older section of the city, the Third Order of the Sacred Sepulcher of Houston, Texas.”

  “The Third Order of what?”

  “The Sacred Sepulcher.”

  “Got it, I think...”

  “I don't imagine, nor can you, that Mootry was killed for the sake
of the church.”

  “If these assassins are stamping out vampires and evil, and can take the vampire's financial holdings, too, why not?”

  “I wonder if the Vatican or the FBI knows about this Sepulcher church,” said Lucas.

  “Not likely.”

  'Tell me more about Father Aguilar. Of the three, he does sound the most tempting as a suspect. Don't ask me why, but I've never fully trusted religious leaders, not even among the Cherokee.”

  “Mootry leaned heavily on the priest for spiritual guidance, and he paid him well for his time.”

  “Aguilar could have come and gone freely from the house, could have easily gotten close to Mootry.”

  “If we're playing guessing games, then maybe he pulled the same scam on Palmer after the tragic death of Palmer's fiancee. Palmer would need all the spiritual guidance he could afford after that, wouldn't you think?”

  “I think... I think... I don't know what to think.”

  TWENTY-S EVEN

  They had arrived at the ancient spired cathedral that was the centerpiece of the monastery. The structure dwarfed them and their little car. It was like looking up at an ominous, squatting dragon ready to breathe fire. They could smell smoke, and looking down an alleyway, they saw smoke spiraling up from a foundry like smokestack that rose skyward.

  “Whataya suppose they're burning?”

  A street person, her face like a baked apple gone bad, cackled witchlike and replied to Lucas's question, “Don't know what they burn but sins; stinks to high heaven some days. Complain to the cops, but they don't do a damn thing, not once. Off limits, I 'spect.” Then she cackled more.

  “Let's step around to the front, shall we?” suggested Meredyth.

  “Oh, don't you be so uppity-pissy, missy,” complained the old woman. “Someday, if you live to my age, you'll be as dried-up as I am!” Again the woman erupted in a rooster's cackling as she strode off.

  “Grab a cauldron and two more like her, and we can call you Macbeth,” Meredyth told Lucas.

  Oddly enough, perched on each of the huge front door handles was a book, a candle, and a stark black raven, all lit by the eye of God. Over the door were some Latin letters, inscribed there from the day the church began, which Meredyth translated loosely to read God brooks no evil here.

  “Well, I guess we can go home,” Meredyth joked lightly.

  Lucas said nothing, merely rang the bell when he found the doors locked.

  “This place is positively medieval.” She kept talking as if it might dispel the gloom that descended over her spirit even here, standing in the blinding, burning sun of a Houston morning. “Everything but a moat,” she continued.

  “They say there were more murders per capita during medieval times than there are today,” ventured Lucas on noting a date at the base of the stairs that told them that the place was built at the turn of the century. High overhead, at the pinnacles, gargoyles stared down at them.

  A small door, a peephole, opened up in the door and a pair of dark eyes ran over them. “Can we help you?” asked the man behind the door.

  “Police officers,” declared Lucas, holding up his gold shield to impress the man. “I'm Detective Stonecoat, and this is Dr. Meredyth Sanger. We're with the Houston Police Department. Here to see Father Frank Aguilar.”

  “Really? Indeed? Does Father Aguilar... is he expecting you? Do you have an appointment?”

  “No, we're here conducting an investigation into the murder of Judge Charles Mootry, and we have a few questions for him.”

  “But you have no appointment?”

  Lucas sighed heavily. “No, didn't see the need, but if you like, we can return with a warrant.” Lucas thought the man behind the door was being testy, and he gave him the same.

  “Is Father Aguilar in to see us?” Meredyth said in her most pleasant voice.

  The eyes behind the door darted about, a pair of pin balls seeking an answer. “I'll ring him, let him know you're here.” He snapped the peephole closed and they heard his footsteps echo off.

  After fifteen minutes of standing about the hot stone stairs, they'd located a place in the shade where they might sit. “This place is built like a fortress,” she said.

  “Yeah, storming it would be a trick. You've got to wonder if the bars on the windows and the locks on the doors are to keep the rats out or in.”

  'To keep the world and evil out, no doubt.”

  He nodded. “But evil has a way of seeping through a hairline crack.”

  “I wonder where they got this magnificent stone?” She didn't expect an answer, and Lucas wasn't providing one, so when they heard an answer, they both looked up to see a man in a cloak and cowl who had inched the heavy door open.

  'This magnificent structure was built in 1900 with stones shipped up from Mexico via Veracruz and Galveston.” The man's smile was wide, white-toothed, and genuine. “I am Father Aguilar.” His hair was white and gray, a beautiful peppered color. He appeared bronzed by the sun, in his fifties, perhaps, but virile, strong and straight beneath the great monastic garb he wore. Meredyth was reminded of the actor Sean Connery. The man had a magnificent presence and grace about him. “I am here to help you with your questions to the best of my humble ability. Brother Leonard tells me it is about the unfortunate business with my friend Charles Mootry. How can I help you?”

  “Can we come inside, out of the sun, Father?” asked Meredyth.

  “Oh, yes, of course, forgive my ignorance. We can go to my office in the library. This way.”

  Lucas was reminded of The Name of the Rose as they passed along the corridors inside this dark, magnificent place.

  As they moved along, Father Aguilar pointed out favored pieces of artwork on the walls and in the vestibules. “We nowadays have to keep the church doors locked; so much vandalism and theft, and no way to police it all. Everyone wonders how the world will end one day, by fire, water, ice, you know. I think it will come through moral decay, long before the earth's forces take us all.”

  “That's a rather cynical view, isn't it, Father?” Lucas asked.

  “Working in these streets, like you, Detective... Ahh—”

  “Stonecoat.”

  “Yes. Stonecoat. Well, you should know of cynicism, and I admit to an occasional indulgence myself. But, of course, I've repented for it.”

  How often? Lucas wanted to ask, but didn't.

  They were ushered into Aguilar's office, a spacious room with a window overlooking the mammoth library. Lucas's eyes played over the bric-a-brac, ancient photos on the walls, and the office machinery here. He nudged Meredyth when his eyes fell on the state-of-the-art computer behind Father Aguilar's desk. Father Aguilar noticed their interest in his PC, and he began extolling the virtues of the miraculous machine. He rattled off the many uses it held for such a place as his, the day-to-day bills, the operation of the place. “And, of course, we can keep an eye on the stock exchange through our monitor,” he added. “We are heavily invested these days, but then, what church isn't?”

  “I see, and is the Vatican interested in your... investments?” asked Meredyth with a glimmer of a smile.

  “You mustn't misunderstand the Order of the Sepulcher. We long ago tore away from the Church and their iconoclastic teachings. Look around you.” He hesitated, to allow them time to gaze about his office and the temple like library. “Here you will find no icons. My followers have given me full control, and so long as I can pay the rent and keep operations going here, I have no trouble with the Vatican. Have you any idea the number of such churches and monasteries that have closed over the past ten or fifteen years, Dr. Sanger? Most of them adhering to Vatican rule?”

  “No, I can't say that I have.”

  “Appalling, absolutely appalling. Therefore, it has been my duty to brook no such interference here, so long as there is breath in the order.”

  “So, your computer is used to follow the daily transactions on Wall Street?” Lucas said with a nod. “Maybe if my people were smarter,
they'd play the white man's big money game, too.”

  Aguilar ignored Lucas. “I use the computer primarily to watch the board, yes, but also to monitor the day-to-day here.”

  “Strange, I should have thought computers, like many other modern devices, would be shunned by an order such as yours. Father,” Lucas said.

  “We have to adapt with the times.”

  “Sort of fighting fire with fire?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You know, turn the devil's own devices against him.”

  “We have been known to do that over the years, but I don't personally perceive technological advances as belonging to Satan, no. In the right, capable hands, computers, TVs, movies can and often are uplifting to the moral spirit of man.”

  When they were all seated in the plush leather chairs here, Lucas studied the priest's eyes, which seemed etched in pain. He had obviously fought back the devil in all his many disguises, Lucas thought.

  “So, please, how can I help you?”

  “We have reason to believe that you were with Judge Mootry the night he was killed.”

  “Really? But I told Detectives Pardee and Amelford that I was out of town that evening, gave them the exact location and time, and this was all verified. The detectives questioned me, but they said it was routine to question all of the deceased's closest relatives and friends, and I counted myself among his—”

  “You shared a nightcap—wine, you and the judge; we found the glasses—goblets, actually,” bluffed Lucas, “and there were prints on them.”

  The priest smiled, looking amused. “You must be trying to bait me, Detective. Someone's prints, perhaps, but not mine,” he insisted, holding his own. “Look, I understand why you're here, but—”

  “You do?” asked Meredyth.

  “Because my church was awarded a goodly sum from the judge's estate, but that was his wish’s—nothing foisted on him. My God, you can't possibly believe I would kill the old gentleman for his inheritance, can you?” He stared at their poker faces and then added, “Perhaps if you had an independent audit of our books here. You're welcome to do so. In fact, we're due for an audit, and if the Houston Police Department would like to pay an auditing firm to come in—”