Final Edge

CHAPTER 5

At the crazy Calories Bistro on a one-block, one-way street in downtown Houston, two blocks from the precinct house, Lucas laid out the situation to Detective Jana North, starting with details of what some sick animal had forwarded to Meredyth and to him the night before.

"So you think the parts might be related to one of our more recent MPs, huh?"

"That's the prints I'm tracking, yeah."

"Damned ugly business, and if I can help you get this guy and clear a case, Lucas, just tell me where and when."

'Today, now. You can help me with the families, to ease the process of getting dental records for each of these young women." He pushed the hard copies run from the computer files across the table to her.

"I heard there were teeth in the mixed bag of goodies sent to you. You're saying none of these three have dental records on file?" she asked while thumbing through the paper files, caught by the photos. "Nice work, narrowing the subjects to three."

"I had help," Lucas said, explaining how he had gotten key search items from forensics, and how Purvis had revealed the victim had a serious vision problem.

"Still, I'm impressed."

"Computer did the rest."

"Thanks to our interfacing program, Lucas."

"And to your cooperation and all the hard work of months of loading all that information, Jana."

She nodded, smiled, and toasted. "To COMIT-MP, may it bring us some resolutions."

"Then you'll ride shotgun for me this afternoon, get these dental records I need?"

She frowned. "Drop everything and race to your aid? Hmmm…all right, as a favor to you and Meredyth."

"Thanks, I need this expedited. Any delay could cost us dearly."

She nodded. "Understood. I'll do what I can however I can."

"All I can ask."

They ate and spoke of lighter things, the weather, the lottery, the home teams, the "up" economy. Using her cell phone, Jana called ahead to the families, telling them to expect her visit. After leaving the restaurant, they would go to the first address where they had to obtain proper release signatures to gain access to the needed medical records.

They walked back to the precinct together, and from there took Lucas's unmarked radio car. As he drove, Jana North studied the files of the missing in more depth. "I remember this one case, Lourdes. Odd as hell how she disappeared."

'Tell me about it."

"Only what I know."

She began the story, and Lucas looked across at her from time to time as he drove. Jana North was an auburn- haired, beautiful woman with sparkling blue eyes.

The story of Mira Lourdes's disappearance, while sketchy, involved a so-called eyewitness. Lucas always took this news with more than a grain of salt, knowing that most eyewitness testimony proved false if not downright misleading.

Before Jana could finish her story, they arrived at the home of seventeen-year-old Helga Muncie, a habitual runaway. Runaways more often than not were penniless and relied on hitchhiking to make their way across the country to high-profile places from Aspen, Colorado, to Hollywood, or such destinations as Panama City or Daytona Beach, Florida-magnet communities for teens on the run. Teens on the street proved easy marks for rapists and killers who might encounter them along the thousands of miles of Interstate they traveled to their various false Meccas.

Lucas pulled into the driveway of the Muncie home, left the motor running, and they climbed from the car under the gaze of someone peeking out from behind a curtain. As they approached the house, Jana took note of the yellow ribbons strung about the porch. Lucas rang the bell, and when a middle-aged woman answered the door, Jana took the initiative, flashing her badge and saying, "I'm Detective North with Missing Persons, and Detective Stonecoat here is with the HPD's Cold Cases Division. Show Mrs. Muncie your badge, Lucas."

Lucas did as told, but the lady paid no mind to him, asking Jana through the screen door, "You have news of my Helga? Thomas! Come listen! They have news of Helga!"

"Not exactly, but we're here about Helga, yes, ma'am," replied Lucas.

"We'd like to get those dental records my office requested when you first filed the missing persons report on your daughter, Mrs. Muncie," said Jana.

The father, Thomas Muncie, had come to the door, a gray ghost behind the screen, shouting, "Then you've found her! Haven't you? Dead, dead?"

The woman went weak, collapsing into her husband's arms, as Jana North waved her arms and said, "No, no, no! We're only here to complete her file, Mrs. Muncie. We simply want the dental records in her file."

"Then you've found someone-a body-fitting her description?" pressed the husband. "You want to compare her dental records with a corpse."

"No, not exactly," replied Jana.

"What then?"

"We're investigating a possible homicide, Mr. Muncie," began Lucas, careful not to stir anywhere near the truth-a mutilation murder.

"We want to rule your daughter and two other young women out by process of elimination, sir, ma'am," added Jana. "We need you to sign the release form for the records." Jana held out both the form and a pen. "Just sign on the bottom. I'll fill out the rest. It'll expedite matters…for your daughter's good."

"Lies…lies," replied the man. "Examining the dental records means you've got a corpse."

"All right…Thomas!" shouted the wife. "We do what they tell us. We got no choice. We got to cooperate." She cracked the screen door enough to take form and pen inside, where after a moment's examination, she signed.

"If we thought we had your daughter, sir," said Jana through the screen, "we'd simply have you travel downtown with us to identify her remains."

Mrs. Muncie had regained her composure, and Thomas simply walked off. Mrs. Muncie apologized for her husband in a whisper, and then she said, "Her dentist is Dr. Sullivan, 1240 North Belmont. I'll call ahead, so she will know you're coming." Finished, she pushed the form and the pen back through the cracked screen door and into Jana's waiting hands. Through the screen mesh, she added, "I want you people to let me know when Helga has been ruled out like you say, all right?"

"Absolutely, Mrs. Muncie," Jana assured her.

"Absolutely, really? You young people nowadays use that word to mean nothing-bahhh, absolutely! Everybody at that police station tells me they will absolutely get back to me, but it has been a week and not a word until you two show up on my doorstep asking for dental records. Two people I don't know. Where is Detective Ambrose? Where is Detective Sculley?"

Lucas wanted to point out that it hadn't yet been a week, only seventy-seven hours, but he curbed his tongue. Jana handed the woman her card. "You can call me tomorrow afternoon, and any time. Detectives Ambrose and Sculley work for me, Mrs. Muncie."

The woman stared at Jana as if seeing her anew.

Lucas thanked Mrs. Muncie for the name and address of the dentist, and they stepped off her porch. "Moments like this make me feel ill," said Jana. "It's so difficult dealing with the loved ones."

"Empty feeling inside, I know. Makes me feel like a scavenging crow." Lucas stepped up the pace to his waiting car.

Leaning in over the top of the car, Jana said, "We try to get the relatives to forward us all medical and dental records when the case becomes official. Short of that, we try to get them to sign a release, so we can obtain records on our own, but a lot of people at that early stage simply have a psychological block about getting it done, you know?"

"Can't say as I blame them. Can't imagine the pain of losing a child to oblivion, the not knowing, or losing a child to a vicious murderer and knowing, for that matter."

"Not sure which is worse."

They got in the car. Inside, Jana said, "Short of a DNA sample, orthodontia ID is still the most reliable method. Sometimes the teeth are all that survive by the time we uncover the decayed body of a missing person stuffed in a trunk, behind a wall, in a pipe, or anchored below some watering hole, river, or lake."

Lucas backed down the driveway, nodding at her discourse.

She continued, asking, "You hear about that case where we found three bodies within close proximity of one another down on the Brazos?"

"Down around Rosharon?"

"Three prostitutes all murdered by strangulation."

Lucas pointed the car in the right direction and drove for North Belmont. "Yeah, yeah, I recall…all clumped together only twenty or thirty yards apart, killed over a period of weeks."

"Dogs sniffed out the bodies from aboard a flatboat."

"Aboard a boat?" Lucas glanced at her. "I heard they were found in the brush on shore."

"No, no! They were weighted down with dumbbells lashed to them with wire fencing."

"Dogs sniffed them out?"

"Amazing noses those dogs, how they just lean out over the side of the boat and strike on the odor of a decaying body some fourteen, fifteen feet below the surface of running water. Some noses on those babies."

"If memory serves, wasn't one of the victims so badly decomposed you had to call in a forensic anthropologist to reconstruct the facial features over the skull to get a likeness for the papers and TV?"

"Another case, Lucas."

"Shit, after a while, after so many, they begin to blend together. Sad commentary on American life."

"State's talking about renting property from private farms and ranches to build more potter's fields to bury all the Jane and John Does," she said.

"Nahhh…heard they're thinking now of buying up lands around the penitentiary at Huntsville for new fields and putting the inmates to work as grave diggers."

"That'll never happen. Violation of their civil liberties. Can't turn the prison force into a state work force."

"Legislature's sitting now, and they could change that. This is Texas, after all." Lucas swiped the hair from his eyes. "Yeah, I recall the case now," said Lucas of her original question as they turned onto North Belmont Avenue. "Guy doing the killing out at the Brazos park, wasn't he the-"

"Ran the rowboat concession at the lake."

"Right…right sick too."

"Fucker was fat like Gacey, and he gave out free rides to the girls."

"Pelhan, yeah…now sitting on death row, appealing his conviction, right. Tapping into his civil liberties."

Jana confided, "I had the chance to shoot the bastard down like a dog when we busted in on him. He raised a gun to me. I should have let him have it."

"Don't worry. He's bound for the execution chamber- eventually."

"Yeah, but it's the eventually that pisses me off. Ten fucking years eventually, if not more, while the victims' families have to relive their grief and anguish over and over again. Man, I hate the creep's lawyer almost as much as I hate him."

"Understood," said Lucas, squeezing her hand.

"Got to tell you, this is my first case where all we have are eyeballs and teeth to go on."

"Don't forget the salami slices sent to me."

"Strangest nutcase you ever chased, I'll bet, hey, Lucas?"

"Watch for the address, will you? Don't want to miss it."

"By the time we get to the third address on your list, it'll be after hours for dentists."

"Then we'll just have to continue this tomorrow morning, if you're free, that is."

"After Dr. Sullivan's, I'd suggest Mira Lourdes's address."

"Right, it's closer than the Nance place."

The stop at Dr. Sullivan's for Helga Muncie's dental records went quickly, and they pushed on. They found Mira Lourdes's live-in boyfriend at the address in the file, disappointed on learning he was not her husband and so could not grant them access to medical records.

Dwayne Ira Stokes told his own tentative version of how Mira had simply disappeared without a trace. Their last conversation had been about a car that sat glumly neglected out in the driveway, a car she was trying to sell.

Stokes repeated himself a lot, Lucas observed. "My last conversation with her was like over the g'damn phone, and it like centered around that damned cursed car of hers."

"What about the car? Why do you say it was cursed?" asked Lucas.

"Because it was! Like everything that could go wrong with it, like did, man. So finally, I like convinced her to like sell it, you know, put a sign on the damn thing, place an ad in the Penny Saver, see."

"And she was showing the car when she disappeared?" asked Jana.

"A neighbor saw her talking to a couple of people, yeah, and like she looked away to wipe a dish or something, and she looked back out to where Mira and these people were, and they were gone, but they left their car behind, so she- the neighbor-she like didn't think anything of it, you know. Why leave your car behind if you're going to abduct somebody, you know? That's like how Mrs. Paulis was thinking, she said. Me, I was at work at the time. I work retail, odd hours, always being called in even on what's 'spose to be my day off, which it was that night."

"Mrs. Paulis is the eyewitness I told you about," Jana told Lucas.

"They all three took off in the cursed car," added Stokes.

"And supposedly the abductors left their car behind?" Lucas asked, his tone incredulous.

"That's right."

"But the car she was selling is sitting in your driveway right now," began Lucas, pointing at the unfortunate, sad- looking Saab, its body littered with rust and dents. The FOR SALE sign was still in the rearview window.

"Right, that's it. Damn car has a curse on it. Like a bad penny, it keeps coming back, but not Mira, she didn't come back. She took off with this couple and like never came back! I mean, at first, I thought maybe she just ran off; like we haven't been getting along too good lately, like sniping and backbiting, no biggy, but like annoying twenty-four-seven all-the-time stuff, you know."

Lucas thought if he heard the words like or you know come once more out of Dwayne's mouth, he would strangle the kid. Dwayne appeared much younger than Mira's twenty-eight years. Lucas guessed him at "like twenty-two or three."

"Maybe we should talk to this neighbor of yours, Dwayne," suggested Jana. "Get more details from her. You say it was a couple. Do you mean a man and a woman or two men?"

"A man and a woman. That's what was so bizarre about it, why like Mrs. Paulis didn't think much of it, you know."

"There's no record of any of this in the Missing Persons file, Dwayne," Lucas pointed out.

"That's 'cause Mrs. Paulis's on vacation. The only one here having fun-in the Caribbean Sea someplace they say. Missing Persons people talked to me. Told the same story, but they said they needed to hear it from the party of the first part, some shit like that, but Mrs. P, she was booked on a cruise, and now she's in Jamaica, 1 think." He laughed lightly, displaying a missing tooth. "Where I'd like to be," he added, "Yeah, baby, Jamaica…."

"You don't remember me, Dwayne?" asked Jana. "I was — with the two detectives who questioned you that night."

"Oh, yeah, wait on a minute…sure, now I recall. You kinda stood back, and you checked out the car."

Lucas exchanged a side glance with Detective North, his accusing eye stem on hearing that Missing Persons officers had already gone over this ground and it seemed nothing had come of it. Jana ignored the accusatory glint in Lucas's eye and said to Dwayne, "Do you have a copy of the ad Mira placed in the newspaper?"

"I got a copy on the porch, yeah." He went to fetch it. Returning with the thin local Penny Saver, he pointed out the ad. Jana began reading for any clues that might help them. It merely gave the year, model, and make of the car, condition, mileage, and contact number. Call Mira or Dwayne at 555-1220.

Lucas had stepped away from Dwayne and Meredyth, stepping down from the steps of the brownstone home and going toward the small car on the lawn with the FOR SALE sign on it, staring at the Saab, wondering if anything in the interior or the trunk might tell a tale of violence. "Do you know it's against the law to park a car on your lawn, Mr. Stokes?"

"It is?" he said from the steps. "Didn't know that, but look-it, it's not on the lawn. It's in the driveway."

"We'll have to impound the car, Dwayne. Any objections?" Lucas asked, his own instincts leaning toward Dwayne's having made Mira disappear. "Any objections to us hauling off the car, Mr. Stokes?" he shouted.

Dwayne stood shaking his head, saying, "Oh, hell, no. Haul it off anytime. I got nothing stashed in that ol' thing."

Lucas ciphered it out. Mira had placed an ad in the local Penny Saver, had had a few interested calls, and she felt certain she was on the way to unloading the Saab, according to Stokes, when she simply vanished after a male/female team interviewed her, not for the car but for Mira. It seemed a bit far-fetched and fortunate for Dwayne that the only so- called witness to the abduction was gone to Jamaica. The story seemed a well-orchestrated fiction, the clever twist in it being that a couple and not an individual had abducted Mira.

"Are you sure Mira isn't simply hiding from you, Dwayne?" Jana asked.

Her question was dripping with sarcasm, but it went well over Dwayne's head, and he excitedly answered. "No way. Like I checked with every member of the family- hers and mine-and like every single friend, close and like not so close even. I tell you, I'm worried shitless about Mira. She's a good woman, certainly my better half."

Lucas had studied Dwayne's body language and speech, his hands and eyes. His concern appeared genuine; he was shaken and certain something awful had happened to Mira. His act, if it were an act, was well rehearsed and performed; either that or the weed Dwayne had been smoking was good stuff.

Jana reminded Lucas of the reason they had come, and she suggested they not bother with the car at the moment.

Overhearing, Dwayne said, "I told her mom to forward the medical records card thing you guys left with me when I filed the report."

"Well, Mrs. Lourdes has failed to carry through," Jana assured him.

"The woman thinks Mira wanted to get shed of me, and that Mira ran off and doesn't wanna be found. She's sitting around waiting for a phone call from her," Stokes confided about the mother.

He gave them a phone number and an address, and as they walked away from Stokes, he added, "Crazy mother of hers thinks maybe I did something to Mira! Don't listen to none of her bullshit. It's a lie!"

They left for the mother's house, and along the way, Lucas got on the phone to the CSI unit downtown, getting Nielsen on the phone. "I've got a Saab story for you, Dr. Nielsen."

"Oh?"

He explained that he wanted Mira Lourdes's Saab impounded and detailed for possible clues in her abduction, whether she was a match to his case or not. He gave her the address. "The boyfriend has okayed our taking the car, but you best get a warrant anyway, to cover our behinds."

"Will do."

"And please contact me should you get there and find the vehicle mysteriously gone."

"I will call you in such an eventuality, Detective."

Once at the home of Mira Lourdes's parents, they went through a similar tirade as with Dwayne, except here both parents had nothing but vile words and suspicions sur-rounding Dwayne. They had a hatful of stories illustrating Dwayne's mistreatment of Mira that included physical and emotional abuse. Finally, the parents allowed Jana to get what they had come for, the release signature and the name and address of the dentist they must see.

Lucas and Jana arrived next at Irma Nance's home, as it was closer than Mira Lourdes's dentist. The seventeen- year-old's parents were a pair of drunks who talked over one another, trying to top each other for stories of how Irma was no good, but that she always came home with money from her job. When asked about the type of work she did, neither parent knew anything of how she earned "enough to keep them in booze." This was followed by a gaggle of laughter. The Missing Persons report had been filed by an aunt and uncle, while the mother and father "expected Irma to walk through the door at any time." They hadn't filed a dental release form because they didn't think she was truly missing, claiming that Irma was in the habit of disappearing for days at a time.

"Probably at a friend's house. She sleeps over a lot." Mother took another sip on her beer bottle.

"You guys like a beer?" asked Father.

"Do you know her friend's address or phone number?" asked Jana.

Lucas looked on stoically holding onto his calm. The father, scratching beneath his T-shirt and ogling Jana, replied, "She don't tell us who her friends are. How're we supposed to know who they are, much less have a number on 'em. Could we interest you two in a cold one?" he repeated.

"No, just please sign the medical release for her records, sir, and we'll be on our way," Jana said, her skin crawling.

Lucas escorted her off as soon as Mr. Nance released the pen and returned the signed card. When they got out of earshot, Jana whispered, "Missing Persons runs the entire gamut of human experience, Lucas, trust me. We see all kinds."

"Sad part is that they're parents. Ought to have a DMV- type office where people have to register before having r kids."

Now they raced to a Dr. Patel's office for Irma's records, getting there just at closing. The Pakistani doctor didn't want to be bothered, something about his kid's soccer game, but Lucas urged the doctor into cooperating, pointing out that he could be liable in a lawsuit if someone's child died because he was too busy to cooperate with police. They got the records.

Calling ahead to Mira's dentist, Dr. Edward Palmer, they got the answering machine. Too late for office hours, but in case of emergency dial Dr. Palmer at 555-9293.

Lucas made the emergency call, and got Palmer on a cell phone in his sports car, Lucas listening to the rev of the powerful engine in the background. Palmer, in sharp contrast to Patel, was instantly curious and interested in helping in any way that he could, promising to meet Lucas and Jana at his office.

"I'm turning around right now," he said. "Mira's a lovely, wonderful person, beautiful bicuspids."

They met Palmer outside, and he eagerly opened his office to them without question, hardly glancing at their badges. "I got a call earlier from her mother, but when you guys didn't show, I guessed you'd get around to it tomorrow. Any rate, here are her records. I had them pulled earlier." He lifted the file filled with Mira's charts from his desk and handed it to Lucas. "God, I hope she's all right. She's a great soul, that one. Full of life, always with a bright smile and kind word for everyone, you know? Wonderfully cared-for teeth."

Not any more if she's our girl, Lucas painfully thought.

"Thanks for your cooperation, Dr. Palmer," said Jana, who caught the doctor eyeballing her straight, bright teeth as if he wanted to get a closer look at them.

Outside, Jana congratulated Lucas on achieving the impossible, gathering up three dental records in one afternoon.

"I owe it all to your help," he countered. "Couldn't have done it without you. Fact is, if you hadn't like been with me to like deal with Dwayne Stokes, I might have like shot him."

She laughed at this. "I'm thirsty. Let's stop for a drink somewhere, shall we?"

"First things first. Next step, get all the data into Dr. Davies's hands and hope for a match."

"All work and no play, Lucas. You haven't changed."

Lucas drove Jana back to the precinct and thanked her for her help. It had grown late, and Jana decided to call it a night, so they parted on the street in front of the station house. "I hope you find the bastard who set you and Meredyth up, Lucas. And if there's anything else we can do over at Missing Persons, don't hesitate. Fact is, should there be a match with one of our girls, you'll have to include us."

"Will do."

"Good luck and good night."

"Thanks again, Jana."

"Nothing succeeds like results, Lucas, and you get results. It's why people respect you. You're no ordinary detective on the force, you are a force."

Lucas caught a light in her eye and a curl to her lips, a subtle invitation to call her at any time. She waved as she stepped away, again saying good night, adding, "It's been fun."

Overhead, in a precinct window, other detectives stared down on the scene, and Lucas could almost hear their catcalls and whistles behind the windowpane. He saw several of his colleagues raise hands and wave in the universal gesture that all men recognized as "go get 'em." Lucas knew instantly that rumors would be flying about Jana and him.

Lucas entered the precinct and went for the crime lab. He found the place empty save for a few medical personnel working at microscopes and a handful of others working on an autopsy. Chang was at the center of the postmortem, which looked as if it would go on for some time. Lucas looked around for anyone who might help him.

Dr. Lynn Nielsen stepped through a door and stood face-to-face with Lucas. The tall Scandinavian and the tall American Indian stared into one another's eyes. They had had few dealings with one another, she having only recently come on staff at the crime lab.

"Detective Stonecoat," she said, "we've found nothing but healthy tissue on the specimens found in your possession."

"Careful how you word that. I wouldn't want Internal Affairs thinking I had anything to do with excising those organ portions from someone's abdominal cavity."

"I'm certainly not proposing such a thing," she countered, as if angry he should suggest anything of the sort.

"Sorry," he heard himself saying. 'Translation problem," he suggested now. "At any rate, I have here three separate sets of dental records on possible matches, and the records need to go to Dr. Thomas Davies's team as soon as possible and put on priority."

"Oh, yes, Dr. Chang told me of your plans."

"Is Dr. Davies in?"

"He's promised to return after dinner and get right on it if we can have the records and the victim's teeth all in one place."

"Then you'll call him back, and he'll begin his analysis tonight?"

"You can be sure, Detective."

She took the three dental files from Lucas. "You work quickly," she commented.

"Is there any other way?" he asked, smiling. "Besides, if we can identify the victim, then we have a chance-"

"I know, we may be that much closer to the killer."

"Exactly."

"More so if the killer knew her."

"Precisely." Lucas thought of Dwayne Stokes. If the teeth belonged to Mira Lourdes, he would be elevated to suspect number one, but then why send her brutalized parts to him and to Dr. Sanger? What did Stokes have to gain by such a bizarre action? To throw them off his scent? Lucas could not fathom Stokes ever having that much cunning.

"Is everything all right, Detective?" she asked, seeing his troubled face.

"Yeah, fine. Just a passing thought. Okay, then you'll have Dr. Davies call me when he has results?"

She nodded, holding the dental records against her ample bosom with one hand and extending the other. As she shook his hand and said good night, she added, "I hope we have a long and fruitful working relationship, Detective." It sounded like a rehearsed line she had likely repeated often since coming on board.

"Yes, of course," he replied.

She then stiffly turned and went for her desk to make any necessary calls and arrangements. Her back to him felt like a dismissal.

Lucas, tired and hungry, left the crime lab and returned to his desk in the bowels of the precinct house, a building that had been built before the turn of the 19th century, in 1898, as a schoolhouse. The Spanish architecture and stone exterior gave it an Alamo appearance, despite all the modem improvements. Here in the closed-in Cold Room office in the dungeon like basement, its stone walls dripped with condensation. The conditions under which the old files had been housed since the early twenties had prompted the move to place them all on computer before they were entirely consumed by time, mold, and mites. In fact, some of the oldest of the lot had crumbled to dust and could not be saved.

Lucas stood over his desk and punched the memo pad on his computer for any messages. He had it rigged to play the familiar Indian warpath tune to alert on any messages. There were the usual number of reminders of investment opportunities for city employees, 40IK information briefings, AA meetings, town hall discussions on union issues, weekend fish fries and ball games, but nothing from Meredyth. He yawned and dropped into his chair, his arm batting the yellowed Yolanda Sims file, accidentally sending it over the side. Cursing, he bent to pick up the scattered reports and photos, finding Yolanda's image-a close-up of her looking like a death mask, staring back at him in what felt like an accusatory fashion, as if to say, "What've you done for me today?" Gnashing his teeth, Lucas gathered up the aged material, realizing that anyone else would have let it go long before.

"Nineteen fifty-six, Lucas?" asked Detective Harrelson, another cop who worked cold cases. "God, I thought we did away with all the hard copy stuff. Mind?" He lifted it from Lucas's grasp, examining it. "Hell, hardly enough here to call it a murder book. Real bottom-drawer, Lucas. How much time and energy you puttin' in on it?"

"None, not really. Like you said, found in a bottom drawer upstairs and dropped on my desk," he lied.

"You're kidding. Sloppy, huh?"

'Too right."

"Well, calling it a night myself. Catch you in the A.M."

"Night." Lucas found a large brown envelope and dropped the thin murder file into it, not wanting anyone else to third-degree him on it. Harrelson was right. Hardly enough to call it a murder book, he told himself. No one in his right mind would waste valuable time on it; only a fool would pursue it. Lucas called out to Loma Mendez, the in- charge night person here, telling her he was gone for the evening, and going for the door, he stopped, fingered the file in the envelope, and snatched it up, taking it with him.

Outside in the cool evening air, he searched the sky, unable to find a star or a moon, the firmament shut out by a ceiling of artificial daylight, the reflective mirror of an entire city under a blanket of the orange glow of sodium- vapor lights. It made Lucas feel trapped, earthbound. He thought of what city dwellers gave up in the name of safety, wondering if Yolanda Sims might have lived that warm night in 1956 had her neighborhood been lit up then as it was now. No way to determine, no more so than deciding on rain, wind, lightning, hailstorm, an early frost, clear skies on the cusp of an Indian summer. No way to know-given the limited view from here on the precinct steps. On the reservation or in the hills, where his grandfather had taught him to read the desert signs both on the earth and in the sky, things were simpler, easier to read. In the cityscape, with its constant electrical pulse beating in the ears, a tracker like Lucas must travel down concrete canyons that cast deep shadows, and dig in the subterranean recesses for the scum-sucking trolls, the stone- hearted gargoyles, and the urban predators that flourished on this plain. For Lucas, the reward was in putting away such animals, a far cry from frightening off coyotes from the sheep herds with a.22-caliber smooth-bore.

Lucas made his way down the steps to the city's electrical pulse-stepping to the dull music-a reverberating echo rising out of a stone gorge, unrelentingly steady, distant yet near, hollow yet thunderous, the tempo taken up a notch, each time a siren joined in the melody of what was Houston's symphony. The daily Houston metropolitan symphony, he thought as squad cars came and went from the parking lot, uniformed officers bantering with one another, putting each other on, laughing, coaxing a boxing match here and there. Across the street a firehouse bustled with men returning from a fire call, and somewhere another siren sounded as a city bus belched and roared in its effort to accelerate, a kind of urban pachyderm putting everyone on notice, charging ahead. Lucas's nostrils pinched with the odors of the city, his throat clogged with the spent emissions, as his ears took in the sound of the city. How long, he wondered, before a man became absorbed by it all to no longer be apart from it?

Walking toward the lot, he caught the scintilla of a fresh coppery odor flit by-ozone. So there was electricity in the air overhead, promising rain to a parched city, teasingly so. Beyond this, Lucas smelled discarded and molding foodstuff and the trail of rats scurrying about the sewers underfoot. He thought of how just below the surface of calm lived the degenerates, the sociopaths, the kind of man who could slice up a woman and send parts of her to him and to Meredyth, and the kind of man who could take the life of a small child in 1956 and get away with it all these years, the kind of man who had no compunction about his crimes then or now.

"Lucas, that you?" asked a beefy uniformed cop passing him in the lot. "It's me, Pete."

"Pete Blackhorn! Been a while. I thought you were in the Two-five now." Blackhorn was one of the few other Native Americans on the force. He was an Alabama mixed Sioux, who went by Pete Black in the white world.

"Just transferred over. Heard about that nasty package you and Dr. Sanger got. Weird shit, man. What's up with that?"

Lucas and Blackhorn had been in the academy together, and while they occasionally bumped into one another on the job, they had not seen each other socially since those days at the academy.

"How'd you hear about it, Pete?"

Blackhorn blew out air. "You kidding? It's all over the precinct and the res. I've had calls from the family. Word out at the Coushatta is you and Billy Hawk have bad blood going again. That true?"

"Fuckin' gossips're going to make it true if they repeat it enough. Shit, aside from everything else, I'm going to have to look over my shoulder for that damned fool cousin of mine?"

"What is it the cowboys say, amigo? You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your kin?"

"You get a chance, set the record straight. There's no feud going on between Billy and me, understood?"

"Then you don't think he sent you and your white friend those Care packages?"

"No, I don't. Eunice Tebo and her cronies are at it again, stirring up ancient history they can't let go of. They got no fucking life of their own, do they?"

"Not to speak of… not so's you'd notice, no. But it's you too, Lucas."

"Whataya mean, me?"

"It's 'cause you're you, Stonecoat, Houston's most decorated Native American cop. You kidding? On the res, you're like Jimmy Smits or Lou Diamond Phillips, man. Get used to it."

"Indian tabloid press headlines, I know, and I'm sick of it."

"Can't bury a story like this. It's got everything. Red hero, white blond heroine, old love in the background, and Billy Hawk playing the heavy."

"Blackhorn, it's most likely some nutcase who's seen me on TV or read about Meredyth in the papers and is going for his fifteen minutes of fame by targeting us."

"Yeah, that sounds more logical, agreed."

"Some lunatic demanding his place in the media spotlight beside the 'luminaries' of murder history."

"So you want me to put it on the grapevine like that for you?" Blackhorn had extensive family ties on the reservation, whereas Lucas's had dwindled to a handful of distant relatives.

"I'd appreciate it, yeah," he said to Blackhorn.

"You know, it's also all over the station house too, Lucas, and speculation's pointing a finger at that guy they call Itchy and some of his crowd."

"I'm aware," Lucas replied, his shoulders heaving in a gesture of defeat. "I had hoped for some time to work the case before it became gossip fodder. Next it'll be headline news."

"Wouldn't be the Three-one or Houston if it were otherwise, amigo."

Lucas failed to say that he had himself started the ball rolling downhill on Arnie Feldman and his pals, but as for the Houston Chronicle and papers like the Star Gazette getting hold of it this soon in the investigation, he hoped not. Still, given the sheer number of people involved in the crime-scene work, Pete was right. The newshounds would soon be all over the story. He wondered how best to protect his and Meredyth's identities when the story of this bizarre attack on a detective and a forensic psychiatrist broke. He'd have to rely on the discretion of an army of so-called professionals, some of whom did not particularly care about his comfort or discomfort.

"Let's get a beer sometime, Lucas," Pete suggested. "I'd like to see that gun collection of yours."

"Right, we really ought to do that. Give me a call."

"Night."

They parted just as Meredyth Sanger drove into the lot. She Would normally be parking in her reserved spot in the small underground lot, but she had spotted Lucas in his Aussie-looking Wellington leather coat out here with Blackhorn, so she drove in waving to him. "There you are," she said to him as she climbed from her car. "Where've you been?"

"I've spent the last several hours gathering dental records on those three missing persons we ID'd this morning."

"Great, anything shake out?"

'Too early to tell for sure. Tried reaching you around two, but you'd bugged out."

"I see, and next you'll be saying that you missed me."

"I did actually."

"I'm sure that Detective North took your mind off such bothersome thoughts as me."

"Hey, whoa up there, cowgirl. Where's this coming from?" He wondered how she'd learned of his having spent the better part of the day with Jana North. "Jana smoothed the way for the family introductions and the permissions. She was a great asset. No way I could've gotten through it in such a short time without her help, believe me."

"I'll bet she was just that, a big asset."

"Are you deliberately picking a fight, or are you merely jealous?" he asked.

"Not in the least." She didn't sound convincing.

"Not in the least to which? Fight for fighting's sake, honey-be-mine, or jealousy for jealousy's sake? 'Cause while the jealousy thing is flattering, the fighting just looks like the old arm's length excuses of the past, Mere. So, which is it?"

"Damn it…I just thought you'd call."

"Mere, I did call, but I missed you. You were busy, remember, in meetings? Then I got super-busy. You know how that goes. What're you doing back here anyway?" he asked.

"I want to get a file I left in my office."

"Sure you didn't race over here to catch me with Jana, only to find me with Pete?"

"I came back for the file, Lucas."

"Come here." He hugged her close.

"So what did you two find on the missing persons front?" she asked, changing the subject. "You must've learned something?"

"Very little, but let me take you to dinner, and I'll fill you in."

"I want to change, freshen up. My place at around eight?" Meredyth suggested.

Lucas reached out an open palm to brush aside her falling hair from her eyes, but Meredyth shied off, saying, "I'd really like to keep our personal life to ourselves, Lucas, so if you don't mind, the precinct house parking lot isn't the place to display our affections."

Did she get a call from some exaggeration-monger telling her that he and Detective North had had a rendezvous here only moments before? Had she rushed over to catch a glimpse of Lucas in Jana's company to determine if she had something to worry about or not? He wanted to reassure her that nothing untoward was going on between him and Jana, but he realized that if he began down such a road, it would simply sound like a cover-up or even a lie, despite the truth.

'Trust me," Meredyth continued, reading his silence as a disagreement. "Romance in the workplace always wreaks havoc of one sort or another, so let's try to keep what we have a private matter."

"Sure it isn't your professional reputation that you're worried about?"

"I don't mind saying that that's part of it, yes."

"You ashamed of what we have. Mere?"

"I didn't say that! Never. It's just that the leeches and termites in the house will find ways to make it uncomfortable for both of us."

He nodded. "Of course, you're right, but you aren't having second thoughts about us… about this morning, are you?"

"Aren't you?"

"Then you are…having misgivings."

"Don't try to tell me you're not," she countered. "I mean, it all happened so fast, and we were both emotionally distraught, our nerves stretched to the sea and…and…" She stopped, seeing the accusatory look in his eye.

They both stood in silent scrutiny of one another, weighing up, trying to determine the depth of hurt their words and actions had already caused. Meredyth had backed away from him in the past, usually with a great deal more speed than presently. Finally, Lucas said, "I have no regrets, Mere. None whatsoever."

She gauged his sincerity, reading his body language and the deep brown eyes. "We'll have to keep talking about it. Later tonight then."

"See you later then."

She took the steps for the precinct, going inside to retrieve that file she'd forgotten, Lucas imagined. He climbed into his unmarked car and drove for home, wondering why she was afraid to love him unequivocally and unconditionally.