films glorifying the evil genius of killers such as Hannibal Lecter, ninety-nine percent of murderers were far too stupid to know how to divert attention away from themselves, and in practice, when they tried, it created a net thrown over themselves. In this case, the two boys' families alibied for them and they too were released.
Lucas read on. A year passed without any breaks in the case, and the thin little emaciated murder book traveled from upstairs to here, the dungeon of dead case files, and here it had remained all these years for Lucas to regard as one of thousands that deserved special heed. He didn't know why it deserved his care now, but it did. Maurice Remo had jumped in on it, when it arrived on his desk, the same desk Lucas sat at now, and the great Remo had not been able to crack the case either. In fact, Remo appeared to have given it short shrift, but he did write some marginal notes indicating that he, like Lucas, ruled out the girl's uncle, the old man, Perry, and the two boys as the killer based on the known evidence. Remo's signature on a routing sheet hinted at more information, perhaps a second volume to the investigation, but Lucas could find no additional tombstone in the paper cemetery he called home.
Maurice Remo was likely in a Florida retirement community by now, if not passed away Lucas pushed the file to a corner of his desk, as if the gesture would put an end to its nagging him; he firmly told himself that pursuing it would only be a waste of time.
In an effort to escape Yolanda Sims, he got on the phone and called upstairs to Chang's lab, anxious now to learn anything new about the god awful packages forwarded to Meredyth and him. When he located Leonard in his morgue, he asked, 'Anything you can tell me about last night's findings at my and Meredyth's place?'
'Blood and serum tests show it's all from same body as I suspected. DNA typing is ongoing. Will take more time. Pretty sure now we have a young female, somewhere between seventeen and twenty-nine or thirty…healthy tissues, all of it.'
'Then it's either from a murder victim or materials stolen from some medical facility, likely a morgue.'
'So far as I can tell you, we here can account for all human tissues and organs, nothing missing or stolen.'
'So far?'
'I have Dr. Lynn Nielsen doing the work, investigating two weeks of intake and output, paperwork to burial, and what's remaining in our freezer units. Of course, most of the bodies we process go either to one of the potter's fields or into the hands of family, and in turn into the care of a local mortician who preps 'em for funeral and burial services. Along that route, any number of people might have absconded off with body parts, especially if it's a close-lid affair.'
'With missing eyes, I should hope so.'
'News out of Florida has been full of unscrupulous morticians, but I don't know of any who's packaged up body parts and forwarded them to police personnel, do you?'
'No…no, that's a new wrinkle, Leonard.'
'So far, Dr. Nielsen has found no discrepancies to indicate anyone stole anything from us,' Chang reiterated. 'They don't call me No Waste for nothing, Lucas.'
'I always thought that referred to your slim waist. Doc.'
'Both, I'm told. Of course, you know, Lucas, the parts could have come from another lab, morgue, or medical school.'
'And you found no indication of cause of death, no toxins, no disease?' Lucas asked.
'No, nothing points to cause of death. Eyes show none of the microscopic hemorrhaging, no telltale signs of strangulation in the tissue. Nor do any of the tissue cuts show any sign of toxins or disease.'
'A perfectly healthy woman without a name or a face.' Lucas leaned back in his chair, his weight making it squeal. 'What's our next step, Leonard?'
'Well, on the chance the human materials were stolen from someone's care, I took the liberty and contacted every hospital in the state with its own morgue where autopsies can be legally performed by trained pathologists. The number is considerably smaller than you might think. Only a few counties still allow hospital morgues to perform autopsies, and even these must be affiliated with a medical school or with the city or state Medical Examiner's Office.'
'That's a good thing, isn't it?'
'Better reporting of suspicious and unknown cause of death, yes.'
'I guess the number of funeral parlors in and around greater Houston is too astronomical to begin to contemplate. And I doubt anyone's going to phone in to tell us they've lost a pair of eyes, teeth, and four slices from a cadaver's abdominal organs.'
As usual, Leonard did not always follow Lucas's sarcasm. He flatly replied, 'Not all morgues have responded yet, but so far, none admit to having lost any human tissue whatsoever on the scale we are talking about here.'
Lucas momentarily wondered if Chang meant to imply that there was an acceptable scale of medical waste and tissue loss in most hospitals, that this was chalked up to the cost of doing business. 'Any way to get help from the teeth?' he asked.
'Absolutely, yes. DNA from the marrow is being matched to DNA from the organ parts. And if we find someone to match teeth to, then they will be of great benefit.'
'My money's on it all coming from the same body…same person.'
'I told Dr. Sanger this is my suspicion too.'
'She called you?'
'Stopped by.'
'Then she's in her office?'
'I suspect so by now, yes.'
'Thanks, Leonard. I'm going to interface with Missing Persons. See if anything pops there.'
'Pops?'
'Matches, makes any connection.'
'Ahh, I see…yes. But first you may want to speak with Dr. Purvis, our expert forensic ophthalmologist. She knows a lot more about eyes than I do, so I left the eyes with her.'
'Purvis, sure. I'll do that.'
'Oh, and by the way, Lucas, Kim and the kids keep asking me to have you over again. You were a big hit with my girls.'
'Yeah, I'd like that sometime soon, Leonard. Say hello to the kids and your beautiful wife for me.'
Lucas hung up and called Dr. Catrina Purvis. She could only add in a painfully strident voice that the eyes were in need of correcting, that the owner would have worn a serious prescription with more than one prism. 'She could not have worn contacts. Somewhere there's a pair of relatively thick, certainly expensive glasses gone missing. She would have worn them everywhere.'
'You can tell that from dead eyes?'
'With today's technology, yes.'
'Thanks, that helps, Doctor.'
Lucas then telephoned Sergeant Stan Kelton at the front desk, asking if Meredyth Sanger's day doorman, Stu, had either called or come into the precinct. Kelton had not heard from the man. Lucas suggested he call Meredyth, get the number, and strongly urge Stu to come down to help with a composite on the delivery person. Kelton, who knew only what was the buzz about the case, agreed to take care of the matter. 'And call Jack Tebo to come in and do the same. He spoke to the delivery person who showed up at my place.' Lucas gave him Tebo's number.
Lucas hung up and then opened his computer, logging on and going to the MP files. He scanned for recent missing females-recent disappearances, females between the ages of seventeen and thirty, according to Change's estimates of age, gender, and the freshness of the stolen human tissues.
Just then Meredyth came through his door. The Cold Room was open to any and all detectives and personnel who might have a vested interest in a Cold Case, and consequently, the door was opening and closing all the time. Lucas's focus was on his computer, and he assumed whoever had entered would sign for anything they'd come for, be it a hard copy file or a floppy disk. Lucas kept working.
Meredyth reached her hands out to him, taking his shoulders in her grasp, causing him to flinch in surprise. 'Hey, Wolf Clan man, it's only me,' she said, soothing him, refer-ring to his clan name. 'God, you're as tense as I am over this thing, aren't you?' Then seeing the array of photos of young women on his screen, she half-joked, 'What're
