Final Edge

CHAPTER 6

Once inside her inner office, Dr. Meredyth Sanger made a series of phone calls to the crime lab, asking about any new developments in her and Lucas's case. She was put through to Dr. Lynn Nielsen, who civilly and curtly brought her up to date on the progress being made. And while Nielsen was overtly courteous, she finally told Meredyth in a firm, controlled, and accented voice, "If we were left alone to do our jobs, then the information you and Detective Stonecoat want would be that much more forthcoming sooner."

Mereydth felt satisfied that Lucas had indeed spent the day as he had said, and that he had kept her abreast of each step he'd taken in the investigation. Checking up on a man? She chastised herself for going to such extremes. She had never done such a thing before. Maybe Lucas was right. Perhaps she was looking for any little excuse to cut off the legs of their newfound intimacy before it could walk off with her heart entirely. They had been friends for years, always testing one another, teasing, and had in fact been intimate at one time, but Tsali had destroyed that earlier attempt at a life together, and Meredyth wasn't about to go down that heart-wrenching road again. She just knew that he would never get over Tsali, that he had built up a romantic fantasy about life with her and her two girls that he'd always wonder about.

Dr. Nielsen came back on the line. "Detective Stonecoat left us with three sets of dental records, which we then left for Dr. Davies's perusal against the teeth. Dr. Davies has them now."

"Would you please have Dr. Davies contact me with the results as soon as possible, please."

"I'll do that, and Dr. Sanger, I am sorry that someone has victimized you in this appalling manner."

"Thank you for your concern, Dr. Nielsen."

"It is a horrible thing; I can only imagine how horrible."

The ice woman almost thaweth, Meredyth thought, but said simply, "Again, thank you, Doctor."

Sergeant Stan Kelton knocked on Meredyth's door and peeked into her office. "Heard you had come in. Dr. Sanger."

"Stan, do you sleep here at the precinct too? You seem to be here day and night."

"Pulling double shifts lately. Two men out with the flu. Hope to hell it isn't a West Nile virus thing."

"God, hope not."

"Anyway, two items for you." He held up an artist sketch in one hand and a hefty parcel wrapped in brown paper in the other. "Sketch is too damned generic to be of much help. Looks like any number of Bill Gates look a likes. Makes you want to believe your doorman, Stu Long, took the package from a guy who was simply paid to deliver it."

Meredyth only half-heard him as her full attention was on the compact little box he'd placed on the comer of her desk. For a moment, she pictured kindly Stan in cahoots with others trying to drive her insane.

Stan hadn't skipped a beat. "Still, if we could find the delivery guy….Any case, this package arrived for you. Been at central desk all day, except for the time spent in X ray with the bomb squad."

"X ray? Bomb squad?"

"Given what's up, regarding the incidents with you and Detective Stonecoat, I thought we'd best be cautious. The X ray cleared it, found it to be what it purports, office supplies from Staples."

She took the hefty package from Kelton and thanked him for his thoroughness, recalling making the order through her secretary.

"Sad day when we have to tiptoe around our own mail," he said as he closed the door behind himself.

Meredyth took a moment to examine the artist's sketch of the man Stuart Long, her doorman, had described. Kelton wasn't kidding. It was so generic, it could be mistaken for the Wal-Mart happy face, or any fourth person she might encounter on the street with a pudgy face and spectacles. The glasses perched on the nose didn't help to make the picture distinctive.

Alone with the unopened package, Meredyth now stared at it, realizing that until this madman was caught, she'd have to question every item of mail coming to her at home, here at the precinct, and at her private practice.

She grabbed up a letter opener and ripped open the small box forwarded from the office supply shop down the street. True, it was unmarked save for the shop's logo, and true, it could have been hiding something sinister beneath its brown wrap, explaining Kelton's caution over it, but why did she have to live like this? It recalled the anthrax- letter scare of the fall of 2001.

She then noticed an unopened manila envelope in her in box. It could be from another department in the precinct, it could be from another precinct, or it could be from him, the maniac that had taken a deviant interest in her and in Lucas.

Using the letter opener, Meredyth carefully unfastened the metal clip on the file-sized envelope. It proved to be routine papers on several uniformed cops, two plainclothes detectives, and a captain, all of whom needed her expertise in dealing with street shootings and work-related stress, and for routine psychological checkups. Every cop who fired his weapon, justified or not, underwent psychiatric review to determine how he or she was coping with the results of his or her actions. A cop who was having serious marital problems that had or could escalate to physical abuse, and some engaged in verbal and emotional abuse situations, looked to her for help. The yearly diagnosis, tests, and checkups were departmental policy.

Lately, there had been a rash of police-involved shootings. These things went in waves, it seemed to her, almost as if one police shooting begot another, as if news of one infected a squad. Perhaps it did. Someone ought to do a study, she thought, but good luck to the shrink who tried. As a group, cops proved the most uncooperative of clients she had ever treated.

She shut off her light and stood up, about to leave, when she heard someone in the outer office. Had Kelton returned? She called out, "Stan? Is that you?"

No answer.

She opened the door between her office and her secretary's office. No one there, but the door leading to the hallway stood ajar.

She rushed to the door and stared down the hallway. Empty of life, but she heard a door close and footsteps on the stairwell. She reached into her purse for the hefty little.38 Smith amp; Wesson that Lucas had taught her to fire. She inched toward the stairwell door and peeked through the crack to find the stairwell empty, but the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps rose from below, someone in a desperate rush. Known for his laid-back attitude and general laziness, Kelton was not one for rushing anywhere, and would surely have taken the elevator.

Meredyth pushed through the door marked STAIRS, and she rushed after the sound of the footfalls.

Whoever it was, he or she had gone to the basement, heading for the small police garage. Most of the units were parked in an open-air lot, but anyone servicing the building and willing to fight for a space in the underground lot, other than the spots reserved for police brass, might park there. There was no gate or toll booth to bother with in this first-come, first-served garage.

Pushing through the door to the underground lot, she saw a dark blue sleek Mercedes or BMW sedan rushing up the ramp, disappearing too quickly to scan the license plate. She neither saw nor heard another sound in the lot, the garage as silent as a tomb, a ghostly grayness filling the space all around Meredyth.

Then she saw it. A small package on the floor of the garage, just sitting there as in a dream, as in a Dali painting, out of place here, staring back at her. All her horror of the night before over opening the parcel containing the eyes and teeth came rushing back at her. She recalled the CD and the chilling lyrics, I had the time of my life….

She got on her cell phone and called Kelton upstairs, telling him she'd followed a man who'd entered her outer office and fled to the basement, where she now stood staring at yet another brown-paper-wrapped box the shadow man had left behind.

"Geeze, Doc, I just left you," Kelton lamented.

"Stan, he must've been right on your heels. I thought he was you!"

He remained dismayed. "We were just talking in your office!"

"Just please send a couple of broad-shouldered uniforms down here to take control of this…this box and this…possible crime scene, will you, Stan?"

"On it, Doctor."

"And get some of Chang's people down here."

"Soon as the bomb squad clears the package of explosives, Dr. Sanger. They're on alert and on the way with an X-ray device. They'll get a clear picture of what's inside the thing."

"Just get me some muscle down here for now."

She heard Kelton shout at two officers to rush to her aid. "Someone will be right there. Dr. Sanger," he said. "Stay calm."

'Trying to…trying to, Stan." She inched closer to the package. It was slightly larger than the one she'd gotten at home, but the familiar block lettering in her name and in the address of the 31st Precinct appeared to be by the same hand. Whoever had torn out of the lot had left it for her, knowing she was following.

She quickly dialed Lucas's cell phone.

Lucas was halfway home to his apartment, picturing the henpecked Jack Tebo-urged on by Eunice- rehearsing how he would tell Lucas to take his things and get out of the flat by end of week. He wondered where he would go, and groaned at the thought of finding another place to live, dreading the idea of a move. He had put a lot of holes in Tebo's walls, hanging them with traditional blankets and his gun collection. Where else in the city would he be free to do that without hassle? He'd also miss the proximity of draft beer and hot meals. If Eunice was good for anything other than gossip, it was her fine Native American cooking. No one could beat her homemade cornbread and biscuits, her venison stew or Southwestern veal omelet.

With these thoughts sifting through his head, he almost missed the sound of his cell phone. Snatching it off his belt, he said, "Stonecoat."

"Lucas! It's me!"

"Mere? What's up?"

"My blood pressure, I need you again."

"What is it?" He recognized the fright in her voice.

She shakily informed him what had occurred. When she was still in mid-story, he made a U-turn, stopping traffic and garnering curses, horns, and gestures from the motorists around him. "I'm on my way back! Sirens and lights!" He placed the strobe light atop his car and switched on the siren. 'Ten minutes tops! Be there. Hold on."

By the time Lucas had returned, he found the police parking garage crawling with cops and crime-unit technicians, and among them, a bomb squad official and a bio- threat cop in protective wear sharing a light for their cigarettes, having already determined that the box contained nothing of interest to either of them. Lucas also saw Dr. Lynn Nielsen, and beside her, Dr. Leonard Chang carefully, painstakingly opening a wooden box with a Styrofoam lining, a mite larger than those they had seen the night before, but the packaging distinctively the same.

"Where's Meredyth?" Lucas asked, scanning the area for her when Stan Kelton rushed to him, telling him she was in the squad lounge upstairs with a pair of police-women and a cup of coffee, calming down.

Lucas was held in check when he saw what Leonard Chang's gloved hands now plucked from the white interior of the little coffin left for Meredyth. It was a human hand, a petite, feminine human hand, severed at the wrist in as neat and clean a cut as Lucas had ever seen. No jagged edges, nothing dangling, not so much as a thread of artery. The nearness of the cut gave it an unreal, mannequin appearance until Chang turned it over.

There was writing on the palm in black marker-a short laundry list of items. Everyone craned to see it more clearly. "What is it?" asked Ted Hoskins of Chang while Steve Perelli flashed shot after shot.

"What's the writing on the hand say?" asked Lucas at the same time.

"Reminders. Things she wanted to get on her next visit to Wal-Mart, I suspect," said Dr. Nielsen, her tall frame towering over Chang but not Lucas. "She was out of TP, hairspray, nail polish, and onions."

"She was left-handed," commented Chang, "to write this on her right hand."

Lucas recalled that Mira Lourdes was reportedly left- handed. He wondered if it could be her right hand he now stared at.

"At least we've got fingerprints now," said Dr. Nielsen, sighing.

Chang shook his head. "Look closer. No fingerprints." Chang put a magnifying glass over the fingertips, demonstrating how they had been burnt off with some sort of chemical. "The epidermal layers of skin have been altered."

"Acid bath?" asked Nielsen.

"Carefully applied. Likely over-the-counter item. Muriatic acid would be my guess."

"Kind you get at any pool store," muttered Lucas. "What the hell does this motherfucker want from Meredyth?"

"If we knew that, we might know better who he is," said Meredyth. She had materialized from the tunnel leading to the garage, two uniformed female cops with her. "We must have really pissed him off sometime… someplace."

Lucas wanted to go to her, hold her to him, and she read this clearly in his eyes, but they had made the pact to keep their renewed romance a secret for now. "We need to sit down, go over every case we ever worked together, and find this psycho before he decides to attack with more than these sick offerings," he said.

"I couldn't agree with you more," she replied.

The unspoken questions on everyone's mind were where the rest of the victim's body was, what would be forwarded next, and what kind of connection existed between the killer, Dr. Sanger, and Detective Stonecoat.

Lucas turned back to Chang. "What can you tell us about the victim from what this lunatic bastard has left us, Leonard?"

"Not much beyond her general size and weight. She was small-boned, not large, healthy by all reckoning. Freckled. The hand came from a fresh kill, like the eyes and organ slices. I'd need equipment and tests to tell you any more than that."

"Are you guessing it to be from the same victim?"

"One might suppose so, yes."

"Bastard is poaching off pieces of his victim to taunt us. It's sick."

Captain Gordon Lincoln, having heard of the latest incident in this growing cancer, drove into the lot, climbed from his car with some difficulty, and stood in a disarrayed overcoat thrown over his casual civilian clothes, a golf shirt and pants. His size and weight made him a force to be reckoned with, and he chewed on an unlit cigar. It was past nine P.M. and Lincoln's eyes burned with curiosity, confusion, and concern. "What in hell's going on, Stonecoat? Did I hear right? Another goody bag left for Dr. Sanger? After you gave chase to some phantom who breached the security of my precinct? Are you all right, Dr. Sanger?"

"Yes, I'm fine," she replied at the same time Lucas said, "You heard right, Captain. Some creep lured her here and saw to it she was alone with this sick gift he left behind. A human hand, female."

"We suspect it's from the same body as gave up the eyes and teeth, but we'll have to run tests to be certain. Captain," added Chang.

Lincoln exchanged a quick smile with Dr. Nielsen, nodded, and bent at his hefty waist for a closer examination of the severed hand. Nielsen leaned in and spoke in his ear, explaining both the lettering and the raw fingertips.

Lincoln mouthed the words written across the palm of the severed hand. "Sad business…terribly sad," he muttered.

"Handwriting on hand…printing actually, doesn't appear the same as on package," Chang said.

"I suspect the victim was in the habit of writing messages to herself on her hand. Lot of people do it," said Meredyth, who now had a chance to examine the awful contents of the third ugly parcel.

Lincoln straightened up with a mild groan. He ordered everyone's silence on the incident, knowing it would be the precinct buzz before midnight and leaked to the press before dawn. "Chang, I know this is already first priority in your lab," continued Captain Lincoln, pacing, "but anything…anything more you can do to speed up our evidence-gathering and knowledge of this SOB will be appreciated."

"We're doing all we can to expedite matters, Captain, I can assure you," replied Chang.

"I'm sure you are. Keep me posted." Lincoln took Lucas aside, escorting him to his car, out of earshot of the others. "Do you have any inkling as to who might be behind this, Lucas? Are any of your loony street connections or snitches telling you anything? Any word from anyone fresh off the reservation? Didn't you have some enemies on theres? Wasn't there a thing between you and a woman there that got messy?"

"That was my cousin's wife, Tsali, and it hasn't a thing to do with this, no."

"Any connection possibly to Zachary Roundpoint?"

"Sir, I can assure you there is none whatsoever."

"Then you do admit to knowing Roundpoint well enough to know he has nothing to do with this shit?"

"IAD's cleared me of all those charges, Captain. You got the report. I do not have any personal relationship with Roundpoint or anyone in his organization."

"But FBI approached you and suggested you help them to infiltrate Roundpoint's operation, to wear a wire."

"I turned 'em down. I got no juice with Roundpoint."

"All right…all right, don't get testy. I'm just throwing out ideas here, brainstorming. When you brainstorm a case, no idea is too radical for consideration. Nothing personal, and when and if the Feds start up anything with you, Detective, remember, you're under my command, and I stand by men under my command. Kee-mo-sabe?"

Lucas could feel his jaw tighten. He had a good idea where Lincoln would be standing if and when a federal grand jury were convened and Lucas were called to point a finger at Zach Roundpoint, one lone lieutenant of Native American descent against the power of the U.S. Government. An old story, Lucas told himself.

Lucas told his captain, "Meredyth and I suspect that whoever's behind these foul mailings will be someone we have a history with."

"Both of you?"

"Yes, both of us. It'll be someone we may've put away, or a relative of someone we put away. Remember the vengeance Jimmy Lee Purdy took out on Judge DeCampe after his death? Through the twisted thinking of his deranged father?"

Lincoln breathed deeply of the stale parking lot air and fumes, considering the horror of the case that had brought Lucas Stonecoat so much federal attention, the case of an abducted and cruelly tortured appellate court judge and personal friend of Lincoln's. Maureen DeCampe had been abducted in a municipal underground parking lot, not unlike this one, forced into a coffin, and transported across the country to a deserted farmhouse. The sentence against her was carried out by a maniacal old man thinking himself a prophet of God or some such nonsense. Isaiah Purdy, hearing his executed son's voice in his head, believing his son to be God or God's angel, had followed Jimmy Lee's orders to fulfill his last request. Isaiah lashed her to his son's decayed body, holding her hostage to a slow death for a week before Lucas and Meredyth had helped to discover her and put an end to her misery. The old man's plan was to kill her via rotting her flesh as it came into contact with the rotting flesh of his dead son. The poor woman still had lingering psychological scars. Cooperating with the FBI, Lucas and Meredyth had helped save the judge's life. However, Lucas had come under suspicion by the Feds himself when they targeted Roundpoint for a series of killings in North Dakota, all related to a hate crime involving a young Native American. Someone had seen to it that the boy's killers met their end when federal prosecutors announced they hadn't enough evidence on anyone to bring charges.

"Canvas the old cases you've worked together," said Lincoln now. "Beyond that, shake loose the talk on the street. Somebody somewhere has to know something."

"Currently, we're working up a victim profile, awaiting more information from our dental forensics man, Davies."

"Yeah, the teeth…good idea…good work."

"Narrowed down three recently reported cases of missing persons who fit Chang's assessment of the age range, size, and weight estimates."

Lincoln climbed back into his car, waved Lucas off, and drove up the ramp and out of the garage. Lucas's eyes followed his car until it was out of sight. He and Lincoln hadn't always been in agreement; they had had their battles. Still, the captain was genuinely concerned about the awful thing happening to him and to Meredyth.

Lucas returned to Meredyth, and he saw that Chang was through with the evidence-gathering and photo-taking at the secondary crime scene. In the back of everyone's mind was the question of the primary crime scene or scenes, where the killer had first abducted his victim, and where he had chopped her into multiple pieces.

"Come with me," Chang told Nielsen, "and we'll get a closer look at that."

"At what?" asked Lucas.

"Dr. Nielsen asks a good question. She wonders how the hand can look so fresh if the victim is the same. It has been twenty-four hours difference and still not a single spot of decay."

"What does that suggest?"

"I suspect under the electron microscope, we will find ice crystals beneath the skin."

"So he's keeping the body in a freezer now?" asked Lucas.

"That would be my guess."

"We found a cloth fiber and hair inside the box too," said Nielsen.

"The fiber and hair are likely the victim's, but we could get lucky…they may belong to our killer," Chang added.

Lucas thanked the two M.E.'s for their extra effort on the case, and then he took Meredyth aside. "I'm taking you home now, Meredyth. No arguments."

"I'd like that. Thank you, Lucas."

Lucas escorted her to his car and opened her door, but she stopped, looked into his eyes, and began relating the story of exactly what had happened to her.

"Save it for the ride. Mere. Let's get out of this place." She climbed in and he closed the door, came around the car, entered, and pulled out.

"Whoever this creep is, he came up from the garage to my office," she said. "He wanted to leave the package in my office. He was sneaking around up there when I heard a noise, and I stepped out to the outer office to investigate. From there, he beat it back down to the garage. Not seeing my car in the garage, he'd thought I wasn't in, so he'd brought the package up the elevator or stairwell with him to leave on my desk."

"But he panicked."

"I think so, yes."

Lucas darted in and out of the traffic of the bustling city, listening attentively for the details while the lights, horns, sirens, and shouting of people bounced off the rolled-up windows. It had become darker still, a faintly chilly nip in the air, and the promise of rain had gone unrealized. "Nice night for a desert drive. You want to get out of the city for a while, find the stars?" he asked.

"Damn it, Lucas, you're not hearing me. This guy has been watching my every move. He knows my habits. I wasn't supposed to be in the office this late."

"All right, I hear you. We've got some sort of wacko stalker on our hands. But you need to get some respite from it. I'm not leaving you alone again until this bastard's caught, so where to? Your place or mine? I gotta warn you, though, that-"

"What were you saying about the desert stars?"

"I know a place where we can spread a blanket."

"You got a blanket?"

"In the trunk, sure."

"Stars…maybe some moonlight? Sounds good, yeah."

"Great choice." Lucas took the Interstate west, exiting onto a small highway, finding a still-smaller two-lane on which they found a family-run restaurant where the proprietors and their children-Mexicans-all knew Lucas and welcomed him like an old friend, while Meredyth stood back observing, smiling, nodding as Lucas chatted in Spanish with them.

In a matter of minutes, the father held out a fully packed picnic basket with cold cuts, bread, cheese, and wine, and Meredyth took it while Lucas pushed money into the man's hands.

A few miles down the road, Lucas turned onto a deserted desert road, tall cactus looking on like silent sentries while Lucas's car sent up a flume of particles and sand. A dirt cloud followed them like a dervish as they raced for the lavender-hued rocks beneath the moon and stars in the distance.

The moonlit night painted the hills and corresponding gulches with a variety of colors, deep and abiding, yet changing from moment to moment, like the breeze itself. Meredyth was caught up in the sights, the peace, and the feel of this hideaway he wished to share with her. "I come here alone a lot," he said. "When I have more time, I go out farther, all the way to the Diablo Spinata-Devil's Spine. Now there's a mystical place, filled with ghosts and spirits of the past."

'Take me there sometime," she replied.

"I will."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

From the trunk of his car, Lucas produced an Indian blanket, beautifully woven, and with the basket of food and drink in hand, he escorted her to a favorite spot, spread the blanket, and welcomed her to partake. Together they lay for a time beneath the twinkling lights of the firmament.

Pointing back in the direction of Houston, she asked, "What's that strange light in the distance?"

"That'd be Houston."

"Houston, really?"

"Lights of the city."

"I thought it was a kid's ball field all lit up."

"Nope…trust me, it's the dome of light over Houston." He then pointed to the crisp, clear sky directly overhead. "No show like this in Houston," he said, falling back on his elbows and going into a deep silence.

After a long moment of listening to the desert sounds, she said, "Thanks, Lucas, for bringing me here."

"You must be hungry. Let's eat."

She reached over and grabbed hold of his shoulders, pulling him down over her, kissing him passionately. For the moment, the food was forgotten.

"Ever spend the whole of a night in the desert?" he asked.

"Well…no…not till now."

Dr.Arther Belkuin couldn't stop shaking. He was almost caught inside a police station with a box containing the severed right hand of Mira Lourdes. It had been the second package he had delivered to Dr. Meredyth Sanger, while Lauralie had delivered a second package to Detective Lucas Stonecoat. And still she had not explained why they were doing this.

He thought of his practice, his livelihood, his clients, and the multitude of animal patients he helped each day, and he thought of how it would play in the newspapers if it should ever come out that he, Dr. Arthur Belkvin, Professor of Animal Surgery at the Dean King School of Veterinary Medicine, had been arrested for misusing his surgical skills to pick apart a dead woman's corpse for sexual favors from a woman half his age, one of his students. Being a murder accomplice somehow did not bother him so much as the humiliation he'd brought down on his profession, a profession that had its own Hippocratic Oath- to do no harm.

He shivered at the thought of being found out. Of being called out. Of being labeled a man who had once been a fine upstanding practitioner in the art of saving life, but who now dealt in death. But I've killed no one, he told himself. She's done the killing. I couldn't even swing the ax hard enough. Anyone can see that I'm not the monster here. No, he told himself now, I'm not a monster… just an Igor to her twisted Frankenstein.

As Arthur drove home, anxiously checking his rearview for the flashing lights in pursuit, certain that at any moment they would come, he wondered at his own hold on reality. Common sense told him that most certainly someone had taken down his license plate, but another voice kept saying he could-if caught-end it all here and now! Flag down a cop and put the blame where the blame belonged, square on Lauralie, whose very presence turned him into a spineless lapdog. God, someone had to know why he did what he had done.

How certain he felt that someone had recognized the make and model of the car. He pulled down the street on which he lived, for the first time calming as he saw his apartment come into view. He could see his two greyhounds in the window grown big with excitement on seeing his approach. Smart boys, they knew his car from sight. Lauralie was somewhere inside the apartment as well, likely watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which he hated.

Lauralie awaited him inside, but he hesitated going any further toward the steps. "Am I crazy? This isn't me! I don't behave like this. I'm not a psychopathic maniac, but what I'm doing…that's psychopathic, man! What the hell else do you call going about the city delivering parcels stuffed with the remains of a dead woman! Maybe 1 am mad. And to what purpose? And to whom do I owe this deviant behavior if it's not to please Lauralie? And what is her purpose in all this?"

A neighbor, walking a dog, having watched him talking to himself in such animation, embarrassed at now being seen, waved and called out, "Howya doin', Dr. Belkvin? Nice night, huh? Not too many good ones left before that old East Texas cold's going to set in."

"Doing fine, thanks." Lauralie's shadow was doing a sensual dance behind the blinds, music blaring. The neighbor watched her form gliding about for a moment before saying, "Well…got to walk dinner off. Later, Dr. Belkvin."

"Later. Harvey."

Harvey would have something to talk about when he got home, Arthur thought.

Lauralie now peeked elflike from behind the drapes, having put the dogs into the back bedroom. So lithe and beautiful a prize Lauralie represented, a symbol of an ideal of sorts, something of a joie de vivre that raced around in his brain-a Tinkerbell, always fragile, always just out of reach even when you had her in hand, Arthur thought. Joy, yes, but she was also an annoying ethereal scratch across Arthur's soul, because Arthur knew that he denied the truth that lay in wait, that Lauralie would never be possessed by anyone, and could never truly be his. She was like the lover who sang in the song, We'll sing in the sunshine, we'll laugh every day-yay…and then I'll be on my way. That folk-song character promised a year before she had to leave, and Arthur knew that he'd have even less time before Lauralie flew away, despite her protestations and promises and declarations of love.

She gestured for him to hurry up, her large lips puckering into a teasing kiss against the glass. No doubt she was anxious for his report on tonight's success. She'd want to know all about it, every detail of how he had infiltrated Sanger's world. He'd have to make it good; he must keep her happy, but what about his own happiness? He was far from happy, he told himself as he made his way to the front door.

He jammed the key in the lock. "Well, God damn it, it's time I got some details," he shouted to the empty night.

"I couldn't agree with you more," she said, pulling open the door, revealing herself as nude, and tugging him inside.

Arthur fell into her warm arms, his determination to get to the bottom of her obsession with Dr. Sanger put on hold. Lauralie's young body, radiating a passionate heat, her eyes aglow in the soft light of the apartment, her arms tightening around him, her thighs wrapping about him, inviting him into her, to become one with her, all conspired to melt away his fears, doubts, questions, and agitation.

Arthur couldn't resist. He embraced her, and she kicked the door closed, passionately pawing at his clothing and alternately kissing him and pleading for the details just as he'd expected. "How did it go? Did you place the package on her desk like I told you to?"

She was turned on, her body heat permeating through his clothing. She swallowed his mouth in hers, sucking in his tongue. Gasping for breath, he pulled away only to hear more words spilling from her. 'Tell me… damn it, out with the details!" she insisted as her hands roamed over his clothing, tearing away at his buttons and his belt.

He replied with lies between panting breaths and kisses, "Yes, yes…just as planned. Went smooth as silk."

"Tell me everything…while we make love. Tell me what her office looked like." She went to her knees, ripping his pants and under shorts away to get at the prize she wanted, and he hoped that with her mouth around him, she would be stopped from asking any more questions.

"Like… any…office, but big, large."

"What kind of pictures did she have on her desk? You see a photo of her parents? I've got to learn more about them." She somehow talked with him inside her mouth.

The alternating of talk-suck, talk-suck, talk-suck only heightened Arthur's delight, making him gasp out answers he snatched from his imagination while at the same time seeing lights exploding in his head.

She had him on the floor now, and he was in her and pumping with eager anticipation over her, driving into her, glad she had finally shut up with the questions, when she asked, "W-what… k-kinda pictures a-and paint-ings…she h-have on…her walls?"

"Pictures?"

"Paintings, photographs, prints, what?" She choked him with both hands. 'Tell me! Fuck me and tell me!"

"I…didn't really… pay…much…" He gasped. "Heed!"

Arthur came inside her and fell atop her.

"Think!" she demanded, pushing him off and onto the rug where they had remained in the foyer. "What graced her walls? And what little knickknacks did she have on her shelves and on her desk? A paperweight with a photo inside, a Waterford crystal ball, a letter opener, a calendar, blotter? Any trinkets or mementos? Personalized pen set?"

"Jesus, I was only there a second or two when someone came waltzing by and I had to rush out, Lauralie."

She pushed away from him, getting to her knees over him. "You've got to remember something!"

"All right…all right…she had a Van Gogh print on one wall."

"Which one?"

"Which wall?"

"No, damn it, which Van Gogh?"

"Ahhh…the one with all the stars."

"Sure…yeah…Starry, Starry Night. That figures. She's one of those eternal optimists, I bet. The bitch. So what did she have on her shelves?"

"Books, lots of books, and one of those plastic models of the brain, and…and a photo of that guy, Stonecoat, and a lot of papers, stacks of papers," he continued to lie.

"The bitch has a full life, doesn't she. An excellent job, good money, the lover she wants. All of it is coming to an end…and soon, soon."

Arthur wondered why the very paintings on the other woman's walls were so important to Lauralie, and he wondered if she would ever learn of his lies. He wondered if at some time this Sanger woman had taken a lover away from Lauralie, if maybe it was this guy Stonecoat or that other guy Lauralie had mentioned, Byron Priestly.

Arthur wondered how Lauralie would react if she ever learned that he had no idea what was on Sanger's walls and shelves and desk. That he had not gotten past the shrink's outer office to have one damn look in her actual office. He certainly couldn't tell Lauralie the truth at this point, that he'd had to leave the parcel in the garage for Dr. Sanger as she pursued him out the building. It was a secret he felt best kept in a vault inside his head.

He propped himself up on his elbow. "When are you going to tell me what this is all about and why you hate her so much?" he pressed Lauralie.

"I want to hurt her, hurt her badly."

"That's rather obvious, but why? What's it got to do with her cop lover, Stonecoat? Did the two of them once hurt you?"

"She did."

"And him, Stonecoat? Did he hurt you?"

"It's enough that she loves him. I hurt him, I hurt her. Simple as that."

"How did she hurt you?"

"Enough. I don't want to fucking talk about it." She lowered herself over him and swallowed up his penis in her mouth again to shut him up, her hair tickling his stomach and groin as she worked to make him groan and end his list of questions.

When she finished, she propped herself on her elbow and said, "I left the big package for Stonecoat with UPS addressed to him at the precinct. It'll arrive tomorrow. This one'11 kick ass."