Final Edge

CHAPTER 17

A long parade of police vehicles of every size and type rode the Interstate for the Canyon Park Road exit north of Houston. They had long since left the lights of the city for the deepening rural darkness of back-country roads, sagebrush, jack pine, and Texas juniper when the order was given to cut the strobe lights, and next the headlights. Running silent, the motorcade looked like a nighttime funeral procession, but for the reflective glow in the dark HPD logos, the SWAT logos, and the Waller County Sheriff's logos. Bringing up the rear, a pair of Houston ambulance and rescue vehicles followed Chang's CSI van. News crews followed at a respectful distance like camp followers, having gotten word of the raid, their satellite vans like so many pachyderms shouldering their way forward as in an elephant walk. At least this is how it all appeared from overhead in the HPD chopper where Meredyth and Lucas had set up their communication and command post. A second police helicopter impatiently held off as well. While Lincoln insisted on leading the main force through the front door of the farmstead, he had also insisted that Lucas and Meredyth remain at a safe distance and altitude until the suspect house and outbuildings were deemed all secure by the captain of the SWAT team, Elliot Andrews. "I mean to insure the successful conclusion of this horror personally," Lincoln had said, "and if that means locking you two up, Stonecoat, I'll do it. It's for your own safety and the safety of every officer going in. Detective North has told me how this madwoman has targeted you for death. Well, we're not going to bait her using you as a target, nor have you rush in there and set off some sort of deadly booby trap either. Understood?"

Lucas suggested they command the operation from the safety of the helicopter, and Lincoln thought it a perfect solution. Now hovering overhead and awaiting the SWAT team deployment, the police helicopter impatiently hung back, prepared to bathe the entire farmstead in light on Elliot Andrews's cue. For now, the two choppers hovered well out of sight, watching as Waller County units split off from the motorcade, going for key roadblock positions. The property was surrounded, locked down. The SWAT unit with Andrews and Lincoln at the helm had turned onto the tree-lined dirt road leading up to the farmhouse. A single light from inside the house seemed to wink up at them through the trees in a mocking manner.

Andrews's voice came over the headphones Lucas wore, using the code names they'd agreed upon. "Flying Wolf, this is Badger One. My men are deployed, and we are a go! Give us five minutes and light up the night."

Lucas replied, "That's affirmative, Badger One, Flying Wolf out." He communicated with the second chopper. They had clearly gotten Andrews's thumbs-up.

Just behind Lucas, watching from the bubble of the chopper, Meredyth saw what looked like toy soldiers come alive, having leaped from the two SWAT vans and run into the tree cover, now on their stomachs, some crouching, some moving left, others right as they encircled the farmhouse, the shed, and the bam. She watched them inch ever closer to the clearing around the home. In the dark, their forms looked like animated green brush, their camouflage making them living shadows. They were minutes away from an all-out assault on the farmhouse when one of the news vans shone a spotlight that revealed them and placed the men in danger.

"Damn those idiots!" cursed Lucas even as the light was doused. The element of surprise was compromised as the spotlight had flooded-for the half second it was on- directly into the living room window. Lucas ordered a move in, shouting to Andrews, "Go, Badger One! Now!" The two choppers flooded the entire area in huge circles of blinding light, and Elliot Andrews had not waited for Lucas's order, having already given the go order to his units at the moment of compromise. Andrews, along with Captain Lincoln, stormed in on the heels of the SWAT men who'd overwhelmed the place with forty-six AK-47 assault rifles pointed, men having spilled through every rammed door and shattered window. The shed and bam were simultaneously secured, Lucas and Meredyth hoping nothing untoward would happen to people on the ground, including the captain, Jana North, Andrews, and Stan Kelton.

No shots had rung out. Only the roar of the dueling rotor blades filled the air. Lucas and Meredyth saw some of Andrews's men already exiting the house, guns limp in their grasp, one or two on his knees as if in prayer, others bent over the porch rails, dejection on the heels of elation and adrenaline-pumping expectations now dashed. Others, their assault rifles shouldered, walked off in obvious defeat. The second chopper whirred low and over the scene.

"Damn it, Badger One, report back!" Lucas repeatedly sought information. "What've we got down there? What're we looking at?"

Through her headphones, Meredyth summed up her assessment of the body language on the ground. "If we have them, it's bad. A murder-suicide or a suicide pact perhaps?"

"Andrews! Andrews!"

"There he is," said the pilot, pointing as Andrews, alongside Lincoln, emerged from the front door. Both men looked disheartened and overcome.

"Look for the car, Belkvin's BMW," Meredyth said, but no vehicle whatsoever came into their considerable view from overhead.

"Badger One, report back," Lucas asked again from the police whirlybird. "God, I shoulda been down there." Then he angrily tore off his headphones and ordered the pilot to set the chopper down in a nearby field.

They had checked with DMV for Belkvin's license plate, and the information matched that given by his secretary-he had only the one car. An exhaustive search by Jana North's people to locate Arthur Belkvin's relatives had turned up nothing. He seemed to be without any familial ties, another clue to his isolation and contributing, no doubt, to his being the perfect beau for Lauralie.

"Damn, I don't see his car out here anywhere," Meredyth said, cursing their luck. "Likely they've made off for Mexico as you feared. If so, at least it means an end to the killings, at least for the time being."

From the headphone in his lap, Lucas heard the helicopter cop in the second hovering craft shouting a response to Meredyth's request. "No vehicles at all in the open. Still, could be tucked away in the barn."

"Andrews! What've we got at ground zero?" pleaded Meredyth as their helicopter wobbled to an unsteady standstill in the boulder-strewn field, the rotors and engine still roaring as Andrews's voice came over the radio, saying, "Flying Wolf, come in…come in."

"We're here, Elliot, out," said Meredyth as Lucas replaced the headset.

"We got what appears to be left of Arthur Belkvin, a pair of dead greyhounds, and enough scattered evidence to put Lauralie Blodgett away forever, but we don't have Lauralie."

Moments before the chopper had bathed the farmstead in brilliant blue-white, Lucas and Meredyth had been watching the single light winking back at them-on-off, on-off-the result of their speeding past the foliage surrounding the dark little farmstead. This light had been left on for them, obliterated now by the radiance of the chopper's floodlights. Meredyth wondered what Lauralie had left under the light inside. She wondered if she really wanted to know.

Lucas didn't hesitate, leaping from his front seat out of the chopper, rushing ahead of her as if he meant to decide this for her. Meredyth climbed from the helicopter, seeing Lucas narrowing the gap between himself and the others now assembled before the broken-down farmhouse doorway-a shaken Captain Lincoln, a deflated Andrews, a businesslike Jana North, and Stanley Kelton in flack gear all huddling together, comparing notes on what was found at each structure. Leonard Chang's CSI van had been immediately called in, and it came right up to the front door, kicking up gravel and rock into a woodpile and pinging against a free-standing fuel oil drum.

Lucas stormed up to the group, anxious to know what they knew about the interior. The noise from the two choppers and the churned-up wind-sweeping debris-filled dirt devils taunting on all sides of them-added to the confusion. Lucas reached the others, and Meredyth saw Andrews throw up his hands as if to wash them of the operation. With Andrews stepping off and Captain Lincoln grabbing Lucas, keeping him from saying another word to Andrews, Meredyth gauged the level of emotions as being at the frayed. Kelton took Lucas aside, trying to calm him as the SWAT team retreated to a respectful distance, and Chang began orchestrating his small army of evidence techs, Lynn Nielsen overseeing the preparation of field lighting going inside the house. Meredyth cornered Lincoln, asking, "What's in there? What'd you find?" She had to speak over the whump-whump-whump of two helicopters until the earthbound one finally cut its engines. "It's the rest of Mira Lourdes, isn't it?" She imagined what little remained of the woman dangling on a tether hook.

"No…no sign whatever of the woman, only the freezer they kept her body in," replied Lincoln.

"Then it's just Belkvin and his dogs inside?"

Lincoln gulped down large doses of the cool night air like a man splashing water into his face, trying desperately not to vomit or show any sign of weakness before the telescopic cameras focusing in on him from some fifty-odd yards away where the press was held in check. Then overhead, a 2News helicopter began competing for space with the police chopper still lighting up the ground. Lincoln tore at the Velcro snaps of his bullet-proof vest, the vest responding with a rending sound, popping open like a loosed girdle, dropping Lincoln's generous stomach out and over his belt-line. "The man's heart, Meredyth, is literally on his sleeve."

Her mind immediately went to the old aphorism: He wore his heart on his sleeve. "She's still making jokes, taunting us."

"He must've had a real heart-on for her," Lincoln said, attempting a dark joke. "The thing is positioned in the crook of his well-posed arms. I think the message she means to convey is that dear old Arthur wore out his welcome in her demented world."

Lucas had stepped over the torn-away door and had gone into the house, and he now returned to Meredyth. "She opened up his chest, using a bone saw like a damned can opener, blood everywhere…cut out his heart and handed it to him, not to mention what she did to his Johnson. She cut off his whole package, including the balls."

"No sign of a car," commented Kelton, joining them.

"She's long gone," added Jana North. "You okay, Lucas?"

"What'd she do with Mira Lourdes's remains?" asked Meredyth. "Captain, we should have the area around the house and outbuildings, and the interior of the bam, the basement, root cellar all searched for Mira's remains. If we accomplish nothing else here tonight, let's bring her home."

"I'll so order Andrews, and we'll leave the fine-tuning sleuth work to Chang's CSI unit," replied Lincoln.

"I want a look inside," Meredyth said to Lucas.

"It's bad. Mere."

"I need to do this."

"Why? Why play her game?"

"Do I have any choice?"

Lincoln looked on, listening to their discussion, his features creased with concern. "I gotta go deal with the press."

"Arthur Belkvin's body is laid out on his own operating table, Mere, and-"

"We found the missing table."

"— and his two dogs, dead on either side of his feet, their bodies posed against the table struts like Egyptian statues, stiff as stone, intact, no violence done to their bodies. Poisoned, it seems. And there's a floor-model Freezer Queen taking up most of the room in the kitchen where a kitchen table ought to be."

"I gotta get inside, see what she wanted me to see," she firmly told Lucas.

Lincoln had stopped short, turned, and come back to them where they stood on the porch. "I want you two to know I've made up my mind. You're to stand down on this case after tonight. Too many eyes on us now, and you're both too emotionally involved, and it's time others had a shot at this madwoman."

"What others are you talking about, Captain?" asked Lucas.

"All right, Lucas…FBI's coming in on the case now. We need their resources and experience, and we need national and international jurisdictional cooperation. This crazed Blodgett woman could be anywhere in the U.S. by now, or across the border."

"I'm sure that line will play well on the ten o'clock news, Captain."

The comment turned Lincoln's calm features into those of an angry gargoyle. "Hold on there, Lieutenant! That's uncalled for!"

"You gotta give us more time!"

"The hell I do! And what's wrong with getting more help, Lucas?"

"It'll take days to bring them up to date, for one. And we both know that caving into them now is only good for the cameras. That it's all PR bullswallop!'

"Christ, Stonecoat! You know damn well the FBI's coming in on the case whether I invite them or not!"

"You can stiff arm 'em. You know they'll spend hours on disputing our findings, Meredyth's profile, all our hard-earned inches, every clue, and even after all that, if they are finally educated to what we have here, we've lost all those man hours away from-"

'Too late! At this point, it's out of my hands."

Lucas followed him down the steps and onto the gravel. "But Captain!"

"I held 'em off as long as I could. Tonight's raid was supposed to end in an arrest or a death-an end to this deviant bitch."

Lucas fell silent, staring at the earth, making a dust cloud of the dirt he displaced, his boot tip creating a lazy- eight configuration in the driveway, the symbol for infinity.

"Damn it all, Lucas, you have no idea the pressure I'm under. I don't always want to give into public pressure, pressure from the press, and certainly not from the damn Feds, but everybody's on this bandwagon, and I no longer have any choice."

"Sure…sure…" Lucas calmly replied, but the single word answer only added to Lincoln's distress.

"And what about you and her, Meredyth? You think you're Batman and Robin or something? You fucked up, the two of you. You both led me to believe we had the Blodgett girl and Belkvin cornered and outfoxed, dead to rights, finished! Finito! Not once but twice. But obviously she's made fools of you again, and now-and now! — the bitch is likely over the state line in California, Louisiana, New-or goddamn old-Mexico…for God's sake."

Lincoln stormed past the CSI van. Leonard Chang, with Nielsen's help, had just finished suiting up in full protective wear, including plastic laminate helmet. Nielsen too looked like a space man, covered from head to toe.

Lucas set his teeth and nervously studied the black woods off to their left. Anyone could be hiding there, just out of range of the helicopter's floodlights. Lincoln cornered Andrews, barking orders, and Elliot, in a show of bravado, led a contingent of SWAT members fanning out to search in all directions around the house for any sign of freshly turned earth. The men, women, and dogs of the SWAT poured into the surrounding dark without complaint, disappearing from the artificial safety of the camp fire circle created by the overhead floodlights.

"One pissed-off captain on our hands now," Jana North said to Lucas, at his side now.

"He's become quite the politician lately."

"Don't be too hard on him, Lucas. Like it or not, politics comes with the job, and his strategy for coping has always been to appease as many as possible without com-promising a case. He's not the worst sort of brass I've ever worked with. How 'bout you?"

"No. Lawrence, now there was a prick." He turned to stare again at the single light in the front room when he realized that Meredyth was no longer on the outside. He saw her form through the shattered window, standing over Arthur Belkvin's remains. He rushed inside, leaving Jana standing alone under the glare of the chopper.

Chang and Nielsen entered on Lucas's heels, Jana North following them. Stan Kelton stopped in the doorway, tall enough to see over the others.

On entering the death house a second time, Lucas was again struck by how the eyes were immediately lassoed and pulled to the single light over the stainless-steel table at the center of the front room on which lay the nude, mutilated body of a sandy-blond-haired man. It had been this medical tensor lamp hanging over the table that had winked at Lucas and Meredyth through the foliage.

Below the light, Arthur Belkvin's blood-spattered and tortured features, eyes wide in a kind of amazed horror, easily matched the photo of the veterinary doctor. As Lincoln had warned, two stiff-bodied greyhounds sat on their haunches, propped against the table, positioned at Arthur's feet.

Chang had gone straight to the body, but Nielsen had found Belkvin's discarded pants, and she carefully wrenched a wallet from a pocket. Holding out the open billfold to the driver's license, she pronounced it belonging to Dr. Arthur D. Belkvin. Chang had switched on a tape recorder attached to his belt, taping her reading of Belkvin's name, age, color of hair, eyes, nationality, and address.

As Chang worked, he continued to record their findings, stating that the dead man on the slab matched the photo ID, eyewitness descriptions, and now the driver's license information. He next began to describe the condition of the body as he hovered over Belkvin, when suddenly he bumped one of the dead dogs and it fell over with a noisy thud. Startled, he swore and stopped the tape long enough to shout at a pair of evidence techs, "Get these stinking dogs outta the way! Put them on ice. We'll autopsy them back in Houston."

Meredyth had stood frozen by the sight of Belkvin's heart in his hands, his chest splayed open, a bloody, meandering, flapping, puckering snake of a wound some one and a half to two feet in length from clavicle to navel. A handheld rotary bone saw had split him open. Lying nastily where his genitals ought to have been, between his bloodied thighs in a pool of crimson, the saw rested skewed to one side.

"Heart lying in crook of Belkvin's right arm. Appears cut from its moorings below the rib cage, ribs having been cut, presumably using saw found between victim's legs. Each arm neatly folded across the mutilated chest. Missing altogether are the genitals. Am making request of all present to find Mr. Belkvin's genitalia."

Everyone got the message, glad to have a chore to perform in this nightmare room. But try as they did, they could not locate the man's missing parts. Jana, spotting a jar on a shelf with human tissue inside, rushed to it, saying, "I've got them!" But she quickly corrected herself. "Sorry…don't know what this is, but it's definitely not Arthur's nuts and bolts."

Lynn Nielsen took the big Mason jar in hand, studying its contents. Another human heart, this one floating in formaldehyde.

She cradled it and carefully walked it to Chang, who agreed. "Yes, most likely from the Lourdes woman. A final memento to Dr. Sanger, I suspect."

The remark felt like a dagger plunged in her own chest, Meredyth thought, wondering if Chang, like others in the know, was beginning to consciously or subconsciously blame her for the string of deaths. She held a handkerchief over her nose, battling the odors, struggling to stabilize a sudden nausea and dizziness threatening to overtake her. Nielsen belatedly handed out scented surgical masks and gloves for them all.

"You all right, Dr. Sanger? You look a bit green. Want to go back out for air?" asked Jana. "We can try again later, after Chang finishes up."

"No…no, I want to see this through." She fought to compose herself as Steve Perelli appeared, chanting the single word damn-damn-damn over and over with each frame he shot.

Using a video camera, Perelli filmed every conceivable angle of Belkvin's body and the severed heart-lying in the crook of his folded arms. Then Lynn Nielsen pointed Perelli to the jar Chang had replaced on a nearby shelf, and she said, "Get a couple of shots of this, Steve."

"Should've filmed the dogs before you had them carted off, Dr. Chang," commented Lucas. "Juries respond nastily to dog killers."

Chang and Nielsen were again speculating on where they might find Arthur's genitals. "I bet you a day's wages, we'll find them in his mouth," Nielsen wagered, and using a tongue depressor, she began searching the throat. "Hmmm… damn, not here."

"I'll take the hole in the chest. They're stuffed in to replace his heart," guessed the evidence technician Ted Hoskins, who now carefully cradled the hefty little rotary saw in his gloved palms, cautious not to touch either the blade or the grip. "I'll take this out to the van… dust it for prints."

"My bet…the dogs," said Chang thoughtfully, removing his protective helmet, seeing it was useless to keep the crime scene from contamination with so many curious onlookers tramping through. He was a slightly built, slender man, and his protective suit, far too large for him, made him look the part of an escaped balloon from a Macy's parade.

"The dogs' what?" asked Nielsen.

"Whataya bet we find the genitalia in the dogs' stomach contents when we autopsy them?"

"Is that your final answer, Doc?" asked Hoskins. "She fed his penis and balls to the dogs."

"Won't know for a sure thing until we autopsy the greyhounds, but with this woman, I would not put it past her to have done so-after liberally packing the flesh with rat poison." Chang held up an empty yellow and brown container of D-Con.

"One wicked bitch," Hoskins said with a moan.

Lucas said, "I'm going to have a look at the back rooms." He eased down the cave like corridor to the back bedrooms to the sound of circling aircraft beating overhead. The police chopper had come in low again, assisting the men in the woods in their search. Lucas's gloved hands found the dust in two smaller rooms undisturbed, but the master bedroom had been used by the deadly couple. A duffel filled with men's clothing and a few toiletries lay at the foot of an unmade bed, and the bathroom showed signs of use-a bar of soap in the dish, a jar of Mennen Skin Bracer, a Bic razor, hairpins, a nail file, an eyeliner brush, wrappers in the trash can. Windows had been opened to air out this single bedroom alone, the sashes doing battle with the cobwebs. Someone had wiped clean the surfaces of the furniture, a faint whiff of lemon and Clorox in the air.

When he returned to the others, Lucas suggested Nielsen dust the right rear room for fibers and hairs in the bedding. "Maybe some DNA from the stains. Looks like another love nest for our happy couple. Other rooms are untouched." He held up his hands to display the dirt and grime clinging to his plastic fingertips. "No need wasting your time there."

"Thanks, Detective, that cuts out a lot of wasted effort," Nielsen replied.

Lucas watched only for a moment as Chang and Nielsen, using high-intensity flashlights, searched the enormous cavity in Arthur's chest and abdomen. "Thank God for small favors," Chang said. "She only removed the heart."

"She seems to have left in a hurry. Had to know someone would eventually recognize Arthur from the sketch, his students, people at the clinic, his neighborhood."

Lucas, hearing Jana North and Meredyth conversing in the kitchen, where they'd migrated, joined them. When he entered, Jana was in mid-sentence. "…doing that to a man she presumably had some use for!"

"In psychiatric terms, emasculating a man says as much about the woman as it does the man," replied Meredyth. "I'm sure it had great symbolic and cathartic meaning for her."

"Imagine what she'd do to a man she had no use for."

"It would appear his usefulness came to an abrupt end, unless his missing parts show up on my doorstep tomorrow."

"She's got balls, as they say…literally," Lucas said, following up on Meredyth's remark.

Jana laughed at the black humor and erupted with a cop joke of her own. "Like a bad blues song. We'll call it, 'What I Lost for Love.'"

Meredyth silenced the laughter, saying, "For God's sake, the man lost a lot more than his dick. He lost, Jesus, everything he had in this world, not just his life. He lost his reputation…his career…friends, family, colleagues, and finally, after all the emotional and psychological emasculation, she performs a physical emasculation on him. Poor deluded devil probably thought she loved him."

Chang, overhearing from the other room, called out, "Mercifully, he was dead when she emasculated him. Can't say the same for the blade going through his chest."

"That's gotta be some consolation to Arthur," Lucas dryly called back. Lucas had learned to take Leonard Chang at his word. He knew no one who made better forensic judgments with the naked eye. Chang had showed him on earlier occasions how he could determine which wound of several was first, second, and third in order of coloration and blood loss.

Lucas focused now on the large floor-model freezer unit, seeing that it not only dominated the kitchen area, but that it had been examined already-presumably searched immediately for any sign of Mira Lourdes's remaining parts. An overhead bare bulb lit the old kitchen. Looking down into the cavernous, ice-walled unit, they saw that the frosty bottom was littered with bits and pieces of what appeared to be flesh, blood, and fluid stains. One section looked like the spoilage of an upturned rainbow snow cone, save the colors were muted reds and browns.

The sound of Perelli's camera filled the kitchen now as he too had discovered the freezer unit. Steve did a pirouette about the freezer, creating his video record of the exterior and interior of the thing. "Chang damn sure has his work cut out for him," he said to Lucas.

"You got that right." Lucas then asked Meredyth, "Seen enough?"

"Where the hell is Lauralie, Lucas?"

"Not in Mexico."

"Agreed. Yeah… she's not finished in Texas yet, is she?"

The question made Jana North stare at Meredyth and then at Lucas.

Outside, the discordant barking and howling of search dogs fashioned a counterpoint to the whirring of the police chopper.

Jana asked, "Are you saying. Dr. Sanger, that she's taken what's left of Mira Lourdes with her? That she intends more surprises and packages?"

"Through Christmas if she can. That'd be my guess, Detective."

Lucas sensed some tension between the two women.

"We should hold judgment, give the dogs time to determine that," cautioned Jana.

"They won't find her, Jana," Lucas said.

Meredyth added, "Lauralie still has her…what's left of her, that is."

"We don't know that for sure, Meredyth." Jana had gone to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing, but Meredyth pulled away, stepping to the far side of the room.

Meredyth looked across the top of the now-closed freezer unit and into Jana's eyes. "Arthur Belkvin's posed body, his exposed heart, and his private parts notwithstanding, Lauralie is still on a mission."

"A mission?" asked Jana.

"A quest as obsessive as any crusade, as mad as any religious fixation," replied Meredyth, her voice calm. "The fixed, tightly packed, impenetrable idea to end what she has begun. And that adds up to my life-or the destruction of my peace for the rest of my life. And she meant for us to find two hearts here instead of one. It was no mistake, her leaving Mira's heart on a shelf, his on his sleeve. It's how the bitch views us, Lucas, me and you-my heart on a shelf and yours in your hand. Her cunning little assessment of our relationship."

"You really give her too much credit, Meredyth," Jana replied to this. 'Tell her, Lucas. Go on, tell her."

"Perhaps you are overstating it, Mere."

"She took time enough to pose her boyfriend in that grotesque manner with his spirit guides-his animals."

"Okay, so what?" he asked.

"What is it you Cherokees believe in? Anima-the sacred spirit of animal guardians-the anima in man, the bear, the wolf, the fox, the turtle-all manifestations of the Great Spirit, all spirits put here to guide mankind."

"What does any of that have to do with-"

"Lauralie knows all about you, Lucas, and your heritage, the culture of the First People, and your penchant for blood vengeance on any who take the life of a family member. She knows you often make decisions based on passion, the heart."

"You're reaching, Mere."

"Am I? She also knows me, Lucas. All things Meredyth. For instance, she knows how long now I have put my heart on hold…like a heart in a jar on a shelf put safely up, out of harm's way. So for me, she left Mira's heart."

"I'm sorry, Dr. Sanger," said Jana, "but this all sounds just a little too far out there for me, and I've seen some strange shit in my eleven years on the force. Couldn't it just be that she rushed outta here just ahead of our coming and in her haste simply forgot Mira's preserved heart? I mean, it looks to me as if she'd prepped it for her next mailing to you."

"I thought you suspected that would be Arthur's balls," countered Meredyth.

They stood clearly sizing one another up now. "Did I say that, or was that Lucas's line?" asked Jana.

"Lauralie meant for us to have two silent non-beating hearts, Lucas," Meredyth said to him. "One male, one female…one for you, one for me."

Lucas went to her and put an arm around her, saying, "Enough. I'm taking you home." He pointed to the nearest exit, the kitchen door that looked out on the rear of the property where on the map the creek bottom ran. Standing open to the night, the door represented a welcome escape from this hell. "Come on. What do you say?"

She stared at the shattered creaking door that seemed to breathe in and out, swaying in response to the wind created by the hovering chopper-a breeze that eddied about the frame, marred by a torn screen door, partially ripped away, clinging to a single hinge. The black exterior of forest beyond the door made up a horizon that enveloped this horror house on all sides. The shadows created by men and dogs searching the grounds appeared in, and as quickly disappeared from, the rectangle of the door frame. The cloudless, onyx sky and the freedom of it beckoned Meredyth to step out, to dare the at-hand darkness of the Texas night, to abandon the safe walls of the brightly lit kitchen where, for days now, Mira Lourdes's remains had lain in cold storage. Meredyth had a quick sense of it, the need to act on her courage or to lose it entirely, here and now.

Under Lucas's guiding hand, she moved toward the door. All the true darkness in the world had come to visit this once-peaceful, uneventful farmstead, coloring it with the evil hues of dark spirits now haunting its deep corners, closed doors, cupboards, nooks, and crannies. While Lucas had been off examining the back rooms, Jana and Meredyth had braved with flashlights the grim darkness of the root cellar, a cubbyhole of a basement below the kitchen. Meredyth felt the cold fingers of the earth in the cellar close round her soul again now, the long fingers of tainted banshees saturated with the odor of mold and mildew that had washed the cellar's stone walls with a luminescent green.

Once a benevolent home, the farmstead was now forever stained by the violent danse macabre of Lauralie's insanity. The evidence of evil promenading in shadow-box fashion here would soon fill a murder book fleshed out with Perelli's film tape and Chang's observations, but the stains on the floors, the walls, the curtains, the very DNA of the two dead here, and the one who walked away would remain indelibly on this house no matter the amount of ammonia and bleach used to combat it. The ugly dark dye of evil this way had spread, Meredyth thought, and its palpable presence remained inside the farmhouse, as if on a phantom plane, yet here too on this quantifiable plane, reaching out to the living with ghostly fingertips that scratched the ethereal nerves of angels.

But worse than having turned this old farmstead into an eternally dark interior place, was the darkness let loose on the exterior world from here-as if spirited away on a black-hearted demon's back. She should have seen it while hovering over the chimney below, how the evil had swept up and out the chimney on a spectral beast. Worst of all was the darkness lurking free now, outside somewhere, and going by the name of Blodgett… Lauralie Blodgett.

Meredyth went ahead of Lucas, stepping through the doorway and out into the night air, breathing deeply of its clean purity, reclaiming it as her right, and daring the dark to descend upon her. Courageous, defiant girl, she told herself, remembering her father's words once when she had had to get stitches in her knee for a terrible gash.

"She's out there someplace, Lucas, with all that pent-up hatred and rage toward us all," she quietly said, sensing him beside her as she searched the darkness.

Lucas, his hand on her shoulder, replied, "You can't see it for the helicopter light, but just beyond is a harvest moon…the stars. Light in the firmament."

"Lucas, I want to look beyond tonight, beyond this case, and I want to make a future with you. I want to share your heart, and for you to share mine."

"Who knows what irony Lauralie has wrought, that she has inadvertently brought us closer than we have ever been before. All stemming from her hatred and lunacy. Ironic."

"She hates everyone she perceives has let her down, and all men have failed her miserably, as did we all, miserably. As far as she's concerned, all men are interested in only one thing, gratifying what's between their legs. So her emasculating Arthur is classic behavior; it fits with her worldview of currying favor with men for sex. But this thing with the hearts, I tell you, that runs even deeper. Her own heart has been turned to stone."

"Yet she was a child born of passion,"

"At least we see her coming. We understand her somewhat. Arthur didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell." She began walking toward the front of the house, Lucas at her side. "This dark in her soul, Lucas, it's a real black place, an abyss like the one the Biblical monster Abbaddon crawled up from. She's filled with this inky blackness. And she's out there someplace in the world lying in wait for us."

Six hours and too many cups of coffee to count later, Chang and company shut down the crime scene, and everyone left the farmstead while it was still dark, leaving yellow police-line tape over the doors and windows.

Chang had the two dogs transported to his lab along with Belkvin's body. Still the man's genitals had yet to be found. The two hearts were placed in separate coolers, each labeled and numbered. Each was also initialed with the supposed name of the owner: ADB and ML.

Meredyth and Lucas had remained until the end, and with the APB that had been placed on Arthur Belkvin's BMW and on Lauralie Blodgett, they felt relatively sure that someone somewhere soon must spot the vehicle and/or its occupant and call in for the reward.

Yawning, tired, headachy, Meredyth now lay her head on Lucas's shoulder as he drove for her ranch home. They had informed Captain Lincoln that since he intended on turning the case over to the FBI, they were taking some time away. Jana North could play host to the FBI, Lucas had told the captain, who, not wishing for any argument, had agreed. "You two have done a remarkable job of taking the case to first and goal, Lucas," Lincoln summed up in football terms. "Time others carried the ball into the end zone."

"Lauralie's the one who'll select the end zone. Captain. Watch out for her."

"She's eluded us, I'll give her that," Lincoln replied, "but not for long now. I think it's a good idea, you two stepping back, getting out of harm's way for the time being. Take a trip; get out of Texas altogether for a time. You are her primary target, Meredyth. Makes sense your not wanting to be a sitting duck here. When she learns she can't find you, she'll become frustrated, and she'll make a hasty, foolhardy move, and we'll be ready for the misstep."

The agreement was that any further packages arriving for either Lucas or Meredyth, either at their homes or at the precinct, would be handled by the FBI.

Lucas yawned again, needing oxygen to the brain. He feared he'd fall asleep and run off the road. He flicked on the car radio for music or a talk show to keep awake. It was miles yet to Meredyth's getaway. She'd fallen asleep on his shoulder altogether now.

A pair of headlights roared up behind him and around the car at a good twenty miles an hour over the limit, a sporty-looking expensive car, but he let it pass without thought. No way was he going to get involved with a speeder, and to get on the horn, he'd have to wake Meredyth off his shoulder. Besides, the sun would soon be up, and he wanted a bed and sleep, not a police station and paperwork to fill out.

Another pair of headlights came up on the rearview, but this driver remained at a safe, sensible distance, maintaining the limit.