Final Edge

CHAPTER 18

Lucas Stonecoat breathed in deeply, taking in the dawn air as it streamed in through the window of the moving vehicle. As they passed below a covered bridge, he smelled the aged, gray wood and the pleasant greenery that graced the banks of the little river below. He had memorized the way to Meredyth's home away from home. He could see the shimmering edges of the lake in the distance, the waning moon creating diamonds along the lake's placid surface. He made out the beginnings of acres of white rail fencing that seemed to move with the grass and the rolling hills. He soon made out the stand of trees around the main house, and beyond this the stables. He thought of Yesyado, the thoroughbred horse he'd ridden the last time he was here. He thought of their excursion in the canoe, and their lovemaking on the bank. He had grown so fond of Meredyth.

Fond, he thought, mulling over the euphemism they had now for so long substituted for the word love-the real feeling they held for one another. He kissed her head where it lay on his shoulder, taking in the smell of her perfumed hair. He kissed her a second time, realizing she was completely oblivious to him. "I love you, Meredyth Sanger. Do you hear me? I love you."

She squeezed his thigh, letting him know that she had indeed heard the endearing words. "I love you too, you dumb Cherokee. I've always loved you."

"You're awake?"

"Not really, but I will remember this in the morning…."

"We're almost home," he informed her, changing the subject.

"I can't wait to hit the bed."

"I hear you."

"You don't happen to have any peyote on you, do you? Maybe some stashed in the car?"

"Are you nuts? This is a police car."

"Hmmm… just wishful thinking."

"How 'bout some of that stockpile of brandy or wine in your cellar?"

"Dad's cellar… but I'm sure we can find something to agree upon."

She lapsed into silence for a few moments, then spoke again. "Lucas."

"Yes, dear?"

'Tell me again why you pursued the fifty-year-old case of Yolanda Sims."

"Somebody had to do it."

"No, seriously…tell me why. What power on earth led you to it in the first place?"

"I don't know really…it's a mystery. I was so fixated on finishing the transfers, you know, from hard copy to disks. Had all my people working down in the CC room overtime, weekends, Sundays, and racing through, when Donovan lifts a box and tilts it coming down from the ladder, and this murder book slips out and hits me in the eye. The photos of the girl littered the floor. Later, when I could see better, I opened the file up, thumbed through it, was about to hand it back to Bill when I decided to just hold on to it for a while."

"But why did you pursue it?"

"Maybe it was just for me; maybe I'd sleep better at night knowing I at least tried after looking into that little girl's eyes. Her death photos didn't do it, but that one full head shot of her alive, smiling, her eyes intense…it just told me I had no choice."

"That's what I love about you wild Texas Cherokee tough-guy types, that streak of intense empathy, that big heart. It's a rare man who cares as much as you do. There's not enough like you in this world."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

She lifted her lips to his, kissing him as they turned onto the long, winding dirt road leading up to her family home. In the distance, the first rays of the sun blinked over the horizon.

"Parents still in France?"

"Right, but even if they weren't, they hardly ever come out to the old place anymore. They're kinda sorta down to the one house now over in Clover Leaf. Closer to the action, shopping, theaters, and my condo."

"We've made it. We're here."

"At last," she replied. "Home… safe…perchance to sleep."

"I think it was perchance to dream, Mere."

"I'll settle for sleep this time round. What about you? You must be as exhausted as I am."

It had been an emotionally and physically taxing twenty-four hours, and Lucas knew that he too, laying his head on a pillow, would be instantly out. "Brandy and bed and your embrace?" he suggested.

"Sounds good to me…sounds very good to me."

The choking odor of last night's French-fry grease permeated the all-night, all-you-can-eat, empty-of- customers M amp;M Cafe, the lone waitress and cook sleepwalking through a routine of gearing up for the coming rush of their usual crowd here on Route 4. The local morning crowd, Lauralie Blodgett imagined, would be trickling through the doors within the hour; what passed for a rush. hour here, twenty-odd miles from any road that might take her to the Interstate and escape. Escape did not appear promising, not from here.

She thought of the effect the deaths of Dr. Sanger's lover and her parents would have on her, how the woman would suffer for the rest of her days. The thought sustained her.

Lauralie Blodgett sat in the booth that looked out on the parking lot and her BMW, trying to enjoy a quiet moment over a plate of home cooking-meat loaf, tumip greens, mash potatoes, and gravy-and sipping at a Coca Cola, when the brown police cruiser pulled into the spot alongside what had been Arthur's car. The two policemen were laughing over something, one shoving the other as they climbed from their cruiser. In the trunk of the BMW lay the plastic-wrapped half corpse of Mira Lourdes.

She pictured flirting with the two officers in their Smokey the Bear hats-state troopers. She imagined smiling, nodding, blinking, and pawing catlike at them the way men couldn't resist. She searched her brain for an explanation about the car, should they suspect it stolen or wanted in connection with the Ripper crimes. She imagined one officer captivated with her, while the other insisted she pop the trunk to display her cargo, and their subsequent shocked reactions. They'd be catapulted from their obscurity to national fame just by virtue of having stumbled upon her at their local watering hole, the heroes of Harris County.

"That'll be the day that I die," she muttered, and the heavily made up blonde-wigged waitress looked over in her direction, only to see the two state troopers beyond the window in the faded twilight.

"Maury! Troops've landed! Put on two double cheeseburgers and fries!"

"What?" Maury called back from the kitchen. "What you say, Mary?"

"Del and Nolan're here! Troops're here!" shouted the waitress, her manner telling Lauralie that the troopers were regulars who apparently came to the M amp;M diner routinely each dawn.

Lauralie's mind raced with concern about the police, watching them intently, while the answer to a puzzle played out in her head as well. Mary and Maury. She put it together with the M amp;M on the big neon sign outside; that waitress and cook must be the M and M who owned the place. Simultaneously Lauralie listened to the TV news anchors on the tube in an overhead corner. She reveled in having created so much chaos, fear, and wonder, and she was pleased with the coverage up till now. In fact, she had fed on the power of knowing she alone was in control of this situation the press had dubbed the Post-it Ripper killings. The TV news and talk shows were now talking about it virtually twenty-four hours a day. The talk show hosts and anchormen and women ghoulishly picking over Mira Lourdes's bones, trying desperately to put her death together with various police raids across the city of Houston and last night's raid on the farmhouse. Reports praised police work in raids that had netted information that connected the murdered Dr. Arthur Belkvin to the Ripper case and the fugitive, Lauralie Blodgett. They then flashed her school photos on the screen along with a hot-line number. The TV cut back to a roomful of commentators and armchair profilers, expectant and anxious, awaiting the next chapter in the story that Lauralie was writing. One even had a chart of which parts of the Lourdes body remained to be delivered to authorities, and which had already been severed. They didn't have her heart. Lauralie felt certain that Dr. Meredyth Sanger must understand the significance of the hearts she'd left on display at the farmhouse.

She only half-heard the TV now, her attention on the two cops coming through the door as one stopped and pointed back at the car beside their cruiser. "Two News has learned that two high-ranking officials with the Houston PD to whom the Ripper has communicated…" The two policemen made tentative steps back toward the lot and began inspecting her car, moving about it like a pair of flies, curious and growing more so.

"The killer in this case does not fit any of our normal typologies when it comes to serial-killer profiling," came the voice of a so-called FBI expert on the TV over the counter.

From her booth, Lauralie pointed to the TV and said, "I know more about that shit than anyone on the planet."

The waitress looked more closely at Lauralie now, studying her features as if trying to place her. "Yeah? Really? You don't look old enough to know a lot about crime fighting."

"I know more than that idiot profiler, more than any newscaster, more than anyone in law enforcement, more than all the damned politicians and religious leaders! More than even God himself if only there was a God, which I have never particularly relied upon, Mary."

The waitress unconsciously touched her name tag and recalled giving the young woman her name when first waiting on her. "You shouldn't say such things about God, honey."

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary, Mary, Mother of God… no, I don't hold faith in the Exalted One, despite or because of the years I've spent behind the black gates of Hell."

Mary stared at the stranger, trembling now, giving herself away in the eyes and wavering lower lip. They both realized in the same instant that Mary had recognized Lauralie's likeness as the woman law enforcement wanted for questioning. Considered armed and dangerous. The waitress's eyes moved off Lauralie a moment too late, going to the big plate-glass window, determining where the two troopers had gotten off to.

The TV news anchor was again relaying the story, with video, of an isolated farmhouse on Old Hazard Creek Road in Waller County, not terribly far from here, where the mutilated body of one Dr. Arthur D. Belkvin, a veterinary doctor and instructor at the Dean King School of Veterinary Medicine, was found in a commando-style raid by police-in an apparent failed attempt to locate Belkvin and an accomplice alive. The raid was the culmination of a week-long missing persons investigation in which authorities knew the missing woman had already been killed since her chopped-up remains had been mailed piece by severed piece to several high-ranking police officials in Houston.

"Liars!" Lauralie shouted at the TV. "They were only sent to the famous forensic shrink Dr. Meredyth Sanger and to her lover boy Lieutenant Lucas Stonecoat, and that's all. So why don't they name that bitch, huh? She's the cause of all this."

Mary, frozen in place, said nothing and did not move. Again Lauralie stared up at the TV to see her yearbook photos displayed.

"I got what I wished for, Mary. Finally…wanted." She laughed. "Wanted by everybody now…hell of a price on my head, you know that, Mary? Mary, Mother of God, you think you'd like to collect on that bounty, Mother dear?" Lauralie again laughed.

Maury called from the kitchen, saying, "'Nough yammering out there, Mary. Burgers'll be up in five!"

"If you want to stay safe, get down behind the counter, Mother Mary," Lauralie told her as she snapped open her purse, tilted it in Mary's direction, and flashed the muzzle of a gun lying within. The muzzle looked like the head of a snake to Mary, but she knew what it represented.

Lauralie had seen the activity of police vehicles going for the farmstead as she had filled the gas tank at a Mobil station on the main artery leading to her and Arthur's "sugar shack" as she'd called it. She had waited at a careful distance, watching as slowly the raiders came away, leaving the area. One car in particular, belonging to Lieutenant Lucas Stonecoat, she had followed to this vicinity, noting where the shrink and the cop had turned off, approving of the location.

"I can't stop them from knowing they've located Arthur's car," she told herself aloud, "but I can stop them from calling it in."

"What's that, honey?" asked the waitress, trying to bolster some courage in her heart and some feeling in her knees. Pretending ignorance and failing miserably. The heavyset blonde's makeup had melded with the grease here, her pores shining. "Did ya want something else? Some coffee maybe?" She lifted the steaming pot and took a step, coming out from behind the counter, when Lauralie lifted the 9mm Glock from her purse, causing Mary to drop the coffee on the counter and duck. The explosion of the coffee urn sounded like a gunshot inside the empty diner. Outside, the two state troopers snatched out their weapons.

She wasn't yet ready for capture. She pulled the trigger of the 9mm she'd purchased from Clive's Gun Emporium, two blocks distant from the orphanage, the day she walked out of Our Lady. The first shot exploded the plate-glass window dropping the closest trooper, his body slamming into the pebbled drive, his feet twitching in his boots. The exploding shards of glass had dug into the second trooper's face and eyes while he pulled off a single shot, narrowly missing Lauralie's head, hissing by her.ear. Her second shot created a bloody hole in the other trooper's chest as he fell back on the hood of the BMW, instantly lifeless, his body slumped down to the grille, where he appeared merely to be in a slumped repose.

Maury had come racing in from the kitchen, had grabbed Mary by the arm, and was guiding her out the door behind the counter, rushing for a rear exit. Lauralie calmly stood, shouldered her purse, and walked around the counter, almost slipping on spilled coffee, going for the couple, her weapon smoking in her hand.

As she made her way to the rear of the M amp;M, Lauralie imagined Meredyth Sanger lying in the crook of Lucas Stonecoat's arm right now, sleeping blissfully under the canopy of safety she enjoyed, while she, an orphaned child without home or family or loved ones, was engaged in killing people she did not even know in her effort to make Sanger feel fear and self-loathing for her part in all of this. Lauralie meant to shatter Dr. Sanger's every conscious and perhaps unconscious moment of well-being and comfort, whatever it took.

She'd narrowly escaped the farmhouse raid, thanks to a sixth sense that police had zeroed in on Arthur. She suspected it had unraveled because Arthur had babbled on too long with the realtor lady when they'd rented the farmhouse. This, along with the likeness in the newspaper, made Arthur a liability, and adding to her growing dislike of Arthur and his touch, she'd had to listen to his increasingly constant nagging about her motive for hating Meredyth Sanger, until finally she'd simply had enough.

Lauralie moved down the narrow passageway and examined the kitchen, searching for where Maury had taken his waitress bride. She yanked open the freezer door, her gun pointed at the frozen, hanging carcasses of beef. East Texas elk, and buffalo. She recalled seeing elk stew and buffalo burgers on the menu. She rushed from the kitchen, back into the shoulder-width corridor, going for the rest rooms.

No one in the women's room.

No one cowering in the men's room.

Back to the grimy cave of the corridor, and she flashed on a momentary thought that wily Maury had gotten past her and rushed out the front. Not likely.

She looked past stacks of boxes-food and vegetable crates-to a blue door in the rear. Gone out the back, Jack, she thought, going for the door.

She heard a motor trying unsuccessfully to turn over just the other side of the blue rear door. As she pushed past boxes and cartons in her way, her sleep-deprived brain struggled to keep on task-on Mary and Maury-part of her saying, To hell with them…let them go… let them live to tell the tale of her great marksmanship… while another part of her mind drifted back to Arthur and the way she had left him at the farmhouse. At least I gave the dog man an everlasting home, a fucking stomping ground he can haunt unendingly, his very own personal eternal habitat, she thought, recalling how much she had liked the old place, and how he had completely spoiled it for her. Aside from killing Arthur-something she'd known she would do from the beginning-Lauralie had had to abandon the farmstead prematurely, before she was finished with her original plans. There remained a lot to carve up and forward to Dr. Sanger. But as in all things, one opportunity lost meant another found. Lourdes's entire bloated lower portions, like the racked carcasses in Maury's freezer, presented the largest and most shocking image Lauralie had imagined possible. Her next move against Sanger and Stonecoat necessitated that she wrap with care the rest of Mira Lourdes's body and transport it here.

She stood at the rear of the restaurant now, throwing up her arms and the gun to protect her eyes from stone and gravel spitting up at her from the barking tires of Maury's red Dodge pickup as it roared from the rear lot, ramming into a Dumpster and dragging it along with it. Lauralie leveled the gun, feeling a slight admiration for the M amp;M couple for making it this far.

Aiming for the back of Maury's head, his chef's hat still on, Lauralie steadied the gun with both hands and fired. The bullet zipped through the rear window, creating a little hole in both the window and the back of Maury's white hat, coloring it red, and opening up a gaping hole on the exit side, blood and brain matter all over the dash and dripping down the steering wheel as the truck plunged into a bank of public phones that now crumpled and jammed below the truck's demolished grille.

The red pickup held in place, its horn sent out a cry like a wounded, trapped animal. Only Mary, jammed in behind the passenger-side airbag, had any mobility left, should she leap from the disabled vehicle.

Lauralie looked around. Cars whizzed by on Highway 41 fronting the M amp;M Cafe. No one had pulled in, and no one had paid any heed to the scene at the diner.

Lauralie heard Mother Mary whimpering within the confines of the cab as she neared the disabled vehicle. Let the woman live. Think of the horror she now has to live with, if you let her live, Lauralie's head told her.

"No…not a time to take chances now…" she answered her doubts. Not until I make Sanger's life not worth living… not until I kill her man and maim her for life.

Again she leveled the gun, watching the stunned, blubbering Mary struggling against the duel problems of

Maury's weight and her imprisoning air bag, which had bloodied her face on impact. Her wig lay half on, half off her head. She tore with both hands at the ballooned air bag.

"Let me get that for you, honey," shouted Lauralie, firing into Mary's head, the bullet exiting and exploding Mary's brain and the air bag simultaneously.

Since the troopers had not acted quickly enough, no one would know that the random killings here had anything to do with Lauralie Blodgett, she reasoned.

She dropped the smoking gun back into her purse. "And they say there's no such thing as a free meal," she joked, stepping lively now for the front of the cafe and her car. Passing the dead trooper sitting upright against her grille, she suddenly felt a pair of icy hands wrap around her ankle. The dead trooper had reached out and latched on, but he hadn't the strength, and she flicked her ankle, freeing it, coming away with a bloodstained stocking.

She reached into her purse, fingering the gun again, but the trooper had again gone dead. She let it be, got into the car, turned the key, and pulled straight back from the parking space. One trooper lay in the painful pose of a swastika, his body going in four directions at once, while the other lay in repose where he had softly slid from her grille to the pebbled drive when she had backed out.

She turned and pulled out onto the highway, and drove north toward the Spring Brook area and Meredyth Sanger's secret getaway home on Lake Madera. From what she had been able to learn of Meredyth's parents, they seldom visited the Spring Brook home anymore, residing as they did in faraway Clover Leaf. She had learned that Mom and Dad would be arriving home from Europe tomorrow- information she had gleaned from a neighbor when Lauralie and Arthur had arrived at Mrs. Gaines's door, posing as realtors wishing to talk to the Sangers. Mrs. Gaines had been more than willing to help them, and she'd informed them that the Sangers were vacationing in France. Lauralie h^d gotten the Clover Leaf address when following Byron Priestly on his obsessive search for Meredyth the same day of his death. Now the ideal pair of wealthy parents would be blown up in their idyllic golf community, when they turned a key in the door to their picture-perfect, gas-heated retirement home. All it would take now, a single spark between lock and key. Lauralie had gained entrance by night, setting off the alarm, but she had charmed the bored, jaded young security guard who'd led a team of younger men to the location. She'd claimed to be the clumsiest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sanger, visiting from California, and promising the man a date while she was in town, and young Mike had bought it, waving off the other security guards.

After Mike had finally gone, Lauralie wandered the luxurious house, and she watched the fish in the aquarium self-feed from a dispenser, and then she opened a gas line and left. The deadly gas had now had a twenty-four-hour buildup, and it would be forty-eight hours when the cab from the airport pulled up tomorrow. "What a homecoming for Momma and Papa Sanger," she said to the empty car.

From Paris to paradise, she mused, locating the niche off Highway 41 that led into the Madera Lake Estates. She needed sleep badly and wondered who on the lake might accommodate her.

Tonight she would strike Sanger at her heart, "And just when the bitch thinks she can't possibly stand another blow, she'll learn about Mom and Dad dying in an inferno."

Sleep… rest now, her mind told her. She could not recall the last peaceful sleep she'd had. Her mind seemed always in turmoil, always racing, if not with what she must do, then what she had done, examining, questioning, shoring up, and tearing down.

Her eyes closed, the sound of traffic going by on the paved road just the other side of the stand of trees filtering into her consciousness. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the faint whine of sirens. A ghastly discovery at the local diner, no doubt. She saw a mailbox with the family name carved into the wood-The Brodys-and turning in, she followed a winding dirt road toward the lake, when the Brody house peeked from behind the forest wall. She stopped short, viewing the house in the wood. It loomed large and lovely, a beautiful wraparound porch, several turret like pinnacles, a Cape Cod design. She also spied a row- boat this side of the lake at the pier.

She backed up a bit and pulled into a clearing among the trees, parked, shut down the engine, and considered her options. Somewhere on this same lake, Meredyth Sanger and Lucas Stonecoat were enjoying the warmth of their bed, wrapped in one another's embrace.

Sitting in the morning gloom, Lauralie thought of how she had posed Arthur's body, his heart on his sleeve, his dogs at his feet. She'd wanted Sanger and the others to find him in the mocking pose, and to find Mira's heart in the jar. After posing Arthur, she'd had to struggle with Mira's frozen half-corpse alone, wrapping her and transporting her to the car, breaking her nails and scarring her hands in the process. She had intentionally left her DNA in the freezer. Any idiot could put her together with the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes by now. The investigation was a farce; any leads they enjoyed had, after all, been supplied by the Ripper herself.

"Catch me if you can, but not before I let you," she said to the empty woods around as she exited the car and began to walk the distance to the house, her purse slung over her shoulder, the weight of the gun pulling it down.

"Time for a neighborly visit…"

Cognac. Lucas and Meredyth had, early that morning, settled on aged, expensive cognac, and after a playful contest of who could hold the most liquor before falling into a much-needed, deep slumber, they had nestled into one another's arms and had melded into one another's cognac dreams. Now, at three in the afternoon, they awakened after eight hours of sleep to cognac hangovers.

Meredyth asked herself if she had keyed in the security code downstairs before they had gone to bed. The log cabin-style home was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system, and was built to be impenetrable from the outside-no exposed wires, no weak spots. She brought up the memory of punching in the code, and she also recalled having taken both her cell phone and Lucas's off ring to accept messages only, so as to get some uninterrupted sleep.

Now it was mid-afternoon and Lucas was administering more cognac to combat the hangover, and it worked. They showered together and made love under the warm spray until they took their lovemaking back to the bed. There they luxuriated in one another's embrace, passions, and playfulness.

Sated, lying in one another's arms again, they were moved by hunger to dress, go downstairs, and raid the kitchen for anything they could find in the fridge and on the shelves. As she prepared sandwiches for them, Lucas joked that a typical reservation house could fit into Meredyth's kitchen.

"Is that designed to make me feel guilty?" she asked, punctuating her words with the knife in her hand.

"No…just an observation."

"Well, I hear the Indian casinos are making a bundle," she countered. "So not everyone on the res is piss poor."

"Casinos pay a petty tribute to the tribe, not enough to make a difference to the common good. In effect, an Indian tribe on a modem reservation is a commune-everyone helping everyone, everyone doing his part, all that. But it doesn't ever work out that way, now does it?"

"No…it doesn't. Human nature being what it is."

"Most of the casinos are run by shrewd half-breeds who are as shameless as any CEO you have trading on Wall Street, NYC," he said.

"It can't be that bad."

"You haven't been out to the Coushatta."

"Well…perhaps we can get a little public awareness going, start a drive, have a marathon or something, generate some funds."

"You don't understand. It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

"Because of who we are-American Indians. We have been made charity cases by the state-the U.S. Government-for almost two hundred years now, since the 1820s."

"What's that got to do with what I'm proposing?"

"Damn, it's got everything to do with it. The Cherokee were robbed of their Eastern ancestral lands, an area covering most of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and portions of Kentucky. They were given Oklahoma before the Okies arrived, and it became an Indian state. My ancestors migrated from the Tallaquah, Oklahoma, promised lands to here, East Texas, and we cohabited with the Alabama, Coushatta, and other western tribes. What I'm saying is that the Texas Cherokee in particular didn't want any handouts from the U.S. Government. My people left the ancestral lands before Andrew Jackson forced all the southern tribes out of the Southeast on the Trail of Tears. They saw the writing on the wall, so to speak. They next left Oklahoma before the white man's treaty there was made and broken again. In Texas, we found a third home so as to not accept the white man's charity along with his worthless, stinking treaties."

"Nice history lesson, but I still don't see what it has to do with raising awareness and funds for the reservation families and children."

"They don't want your charity, however heartfelt it may be, Mere. Don't you get it?"

"You don't have to shout!"

He raised his hands as if arrested. "Sony…let's eat."

"I didn't know it was such a touchy subject with you."

"Not me…I'm no reservation Indian, remember? I got off the res a long time ago."

"I'm sorry White America has treated your people so wrongly, Lucas. I wish there was something I could do, that's all."

"Meredyth, no one, least of all this clansman, holds you responsible for the thefts and rapes and lies committed in the past by the U.S. Government and military in the name of Manifest Destiny and assimilation of the aboriginals. So let's leave it at that…and while we're at it, you've got no business feeling guilty in the least for Lauralie Blodgett's becoming a twisted and cold-blooded killer either."

"You saying that maybe I take on too much responsibility on my shoulders?"

"Precisely, yes."

They fell silent for a time, listening to the robins and sparrows circling and darting through the trees outside the kitchen window in what seemed an eternal dance, but was in fact a series of short-lived bursts of energy in a chase of give-and-take, back-and-forth. A Texas raven cried off in the distance, while hummingbirds, tasting of the nectar of oleander bushes, silently hovered about the windows. A mild scent of oleander wafted into them. Meredyth smiled and pointed at the hummingbirds, telling Lucas they had once had a family of hawks visit the cabin and take up residence for two months before they'd disappeared.

Together, they made their way out on the wide screened porch, taking their sandwiches and drinks with them. Here they looked out over the lake to one side, the horse stables to the other. "What shall we do now?" she asked. "Water play or horse play?"

A phone rang somewhere deep in the house. "That sounds like my cell phone," he said. "And I left it upstairs in the bedroom."

"It's most likely mine. I switched it back on when we woke. My secretary at the practice is likely wanting to know when she can begin scheduling patients again."

"So where's your cell?"

"Upstairs alongside yours. But I didn't activate yours again," she lied.

"So not even Sophia knows the phone number to the cabin?"

"Not even Sophia, no, since there is no phone in the house. It's my one sinful indulgence, this place, and I vow it will never be spoiled by TVs, telephones, radios, computers, E-mail, or any other gadgets of labor. If I have to make a call out from here, it's done on my cell."

"You mean to tell me you don't have one TV or radio in the entire house?"

"I thought you knew that from your last visit."

He blew out a lungful of air. "Guess I was having too much fun to notice."

"The only radio is the one in your car, Lucas."

"Hmmm…I see. And you're not curious about what's going on downtown?" he asked. "I mean with the case, any results on the APB on the girl or the car?"

"Not in the least, not today."

"I can't help but wonder if there've been any sightings of her… what her whereabouts might be… any new developments we should be paying attention to… that sort of thing, you know."

"Lucas, listen to yourself. No wonder you're so tightly wound."

"Whataya mean?"

"You left the scene of a grisly murder maybe ten, eleven hours ago, one in which you were relieved of command by your superior-remember that?"

"Yeah, yeah, but-"

"But nothing! You as much as told Lincoln to cram it."

"I did? I don't remember telling him to-"

"You told him he could rely on Jana North to assist the FBI, implying you wouldn't be available for such duty, and he took you up on it, Lucas."

"All right…I remember… but you know as well as I do that we're both too much a part of this case to simply step off."

"Lauralie has seen to that, and up to this point, she's been pulling all the strings, pal, but not anymore…at least not my strings. I'm more highly invested in this case than anyone, Lucas, but I'm not playing her game any longer. I am stepping off this lunatic's merry-go-round."

"Bravo! I think that's excellent advice you're giving yourself, Mere. Go for it."

"I intend to. Maybe Patterson and Lincoln are right, Lucas. Maybe you and I should have turned over the investigation from the moment we realized the killer's mania was focused on me and you."

"Well, now you've got your wish. Removed from the case, way out here in a place where she can't get at you…it's the right thing to do. Mere, absolutely."

"You make it sound as if I'm washing my hands of any responsibility."

"No, not at all. I don't mean to suggest anything of the sort."

"What's the alternative? Go on the offensive? Attack this crazy young woman where she lives? I might like the plan except for the fact we don't know where the fuck she is or where the fuck she will be in an hour, a day, a week. And you, Lucas 'Wolf Clansman' Stonecoat, what do you do given an opportunity to wash your hands of it? You fight it tooth and nail!"

"All I'm suggesting is we answer the cell phone, Mere."

The ringing from upstairs stopped.

"Bullshit. At least be honest with me, Lucas."

"What?"

"My restless Cherokee detective. You want to leap back into the chase with both feet. You're chomping at the bit like Says who and Yesyado when Jeff jingles their reins. You are that anxious to get back to tracking that bitch."

"All right, I admit that I'm a little eager to know what, if anything, has come to light since we put out the APB on the car."

"Do you have to be a cop twenty-four-seven?"

"What about you, Doctor? Heal thyself. Do you have to be a shrink twenty-four-seven?" he countered.

"Touche, mon amour. I guess we both know each other better than most couples, hey, Lucas?"

"That's usually a good thing, isn't it?"

"Dr. Phil would say so, but sometimes there's such a thing as too much honesty."

"Really? And when is that?"

"When the truth is clearly that two people are incompatible."

"You think that's the case with us?" he asked.

"Do you?"

"What kind of word games are we playing here, Mere?

What's more important than the truth that… that I love you?"

This silenced her for a moment. She raised her lips to his, kissing him. "I love you too, Lucas, truly."

The noise of birds skimming over the lake at the bottom of the lawn rose up to them. "Then we have no problem we can't overcome."

"You buy into that? That love can overcome any problem, any obstacle?" she asked.

"In my culture, aside from God, it is the most powerful force in the cosmos."

"Once you loved Tsali, and once she loved you, but what happened to your powerful force then?"

He dropped his gaze and sipped at his lukewarm coffee. She saw that she had hurt him, her words stinging. "That was young love. Our love, Meredyth, makes us feel young, but it's more solid, grounded. We have much more in common than you had with Byron and I had with Tsali, and we learn from each other each day."

She wrapped her arms around him. "So much evil is done in the name of love, like this love-starved, love- seeking Blodgett girl, searching for the attention of the world because she couldn't get it from her own mother."

"Every beat cop and detective on the force knows that love kills," he replied, holding her tight. "If it's not a prostitute murder, it's a stalking-ex murder, and if not that, the father who kills his family, why? Because 'I loved them too much.'"

"So many deaths all balled up with love and its many permutations. And yet so many beautiful and wondrous outcomes have resulted from pure, genuine love."

"Let's don't ever take our love for granted, Mere."

"Agreed. Let's celebrate it often."

"Right you are. All the same, sweetheart, I am curious to know if anything's come of our APB."

"Christ, Lucas, it's not our APB anymore. Ahhh," she mock-screamed. "I give up. Make the call. No! Wait a minute. Hold on!" She had pushed him away from her and stepped back. "If you love me, you'll get it off your mind for a while."

"Celebration time, you mean?" he asked, holding his arms out for her to return to him.

She fell into his arms. "I'm not referring to sex. I'm talking about having some fun-F-U-N!"

He held her at arm's length, staring into her sea-green eyes. "Hell, you're right. I've forgotten how to spell it. As for the Ripper business, it's not even my case anymore. Let them deal with it."

She pulled away and went to the porch swing, pulling herself into a ball there. "I really don't want to hear another word about the fucking case, Lucas." She pulled her feet up and under her. The swing swayed only slightly, unhappily.

"Isn't that what I just said? Am I missing something here?" Lucas watched her sulk, and then he stared down at the movement around the stables. Men who worked the horses and saw to their needs had already begun to exercise some of the animals. "Let's go for a ride, shall we?" he suggested.

She remained balled up, but her eyes found his. After regarding him for a moment, she smiled. "Now your're talking."

"Walk you to the stables?"

"You're on." Meredyth's smile broadened, lighting up her features.

"Is this how you intend to always get your way with me?" he asked.

"Whatever are you talking about?" She pushed open the porch screen door and skipped down the stairs. "I have no modus operandi that you don't know about."

He followed her down the steps and along the gravel drive to the path leading to the stables. "I meant the way you had me come to the deduction you wanted."

"Are you suggesting that I would stoop to some sort of Aristotelian third degree to bring you around to the conclusion you'd already logically deduced, Detective, in the subterranean depths of that big head of yours?"

"Aristotelian…is that a shot?" He grabbed her and began tickling. She ran ahead of him with Lucas giving chase. Their laughter joined with the robins and the sparrows nipping at one another, flitting in and out of the trees. Their laughter echoed in the quiet and rumbled down to the workmen at the stables, who looked in their direction, and the laughter traveled across the lake.

Now, arms entwined, they sauntered the rest of the way down the path toward the stables, hibiscus bushes and a thicket of trees lining their way. "Kind of like Oz for grown-ups here," Lucas confided. "I really like this place, Mere."

"Good…I'm glad you do. Strange thing is, Lucas, it's always been special for me and my parents, but now, having you here to share it…well… it's positively dreamlike."

"I know what you mean…the sharing of it, like we shared the desert that night-that's what makes it doubly special."

A tractor down at the stables roared into animation. Behind them, just out of earshot, Lucas's police-band radio crackled into life as well, and Stan Kelton's voice came over, asking, "Lucas? Lieutenant Stonecoat? If you can hear me, please respond."

After a pause, Kelton cursed and broke off.

In the house, on Lucas's cell phone, Jana North was leaving a message at the same time. "Lucas…I tried Dr. Sanger's cell and now I'm trying you. There's been an unusual shooting at a cafe in the Spring Brook area, not far from the Waller County line and the farm we raided. Four dead, two civilians, two state troopers. Looks like a hell of a firefight, but the troopers only got off one round. And, Lucas, a silver-gray BMW was seen leaving the scene."

A groundskeeper who came in and did the landscaping once a month arrived, pulling in alongside Lucas's unmarked squad car. He regarded the car as something unusual, and seeing the house had been opened, he guessed one or more of the family had come up from Houston for the weekend. Surveying the stables, he saw Dr. Sanger and a guest waiting for a pair of fine-looking, eager horses to be saddled up. Howard Kemper wondered at the injustice in the world, that some people had all this freaking free time and lavishness in their lives, while he had played the Texas and Louisiana lotteries religiously for the past ten years, to win the occasional fifty or a hundred bucks.

He shook his head, climbed up on the back of his truck, sat on the lawn mower, and turned the ignition key. He drove it down the ramp and out onto the thick grass, where he began the chore he would normally have completed by now if circumstances in his life hadn't gotten so hectic this morning. Riding high on the mower, Kemper thought he saw something shiny and reflective off in the trees down by the lake. When he looked again, it was gone, whatever it was. Likely just the way the sun had spanked the surface of the lake right now, he guessed. Damn beautiful lake, and unless you were native to the area, you'd never guess it a man-made lake.

After a moment of feeling odd, as if someone were watching him, Howard began cutting grass in earnest, and whenever he did so, his complete attention went to the job. He and his machine became one; for Howard, it was a kind of Zen thing, cutting grass.

In what other profession could a potbellied, middle- aged man with no education or desire for one, with a pickup and the right tools, make a living riding around on his rump, enjoying the sun, the fresh air, the view, the squirrels, and the birds in the trees? The Zen of Lawn Maintenance. He thought it'd make a great book title and a bundle of money, a book like that, but he wondered how he could get it written. Mr. Brody, across the lake, was rumored to have made his money writing paperback Westerns and suspense novels centering around a turn-of-the- century Sherlock Holmes type. He reportedly wrote two books a year-living off advances and royalties. Perhaps Brody'd be interested in co writing the lawn maintenance book if Howard proposed dictating it to him, but then Brody seemed pretty disinterested in his own damn lawn, leaving all decisions regarding that green nuisance, as he called it, to Howard's judgment. Brody claimed to hate grass and anything smacking of lawn work. How does any man ever cultivate such an attitude toward his own lawn? Kemper wondered.