the garage as silent as a tomb, a ghostly grayness filling the space all around Meredyth.
Then she saw it. A small package on the floor of the garage, just sitting there as in a dream, as in a Dali painting, out of place here, staring back at her. All her horror of the night before over opening the parcel containing the eyes and teeth came rushing back at her. She recalled the CD and the chilling lyrics, I had the time of my life….
She got on her cell phone and called Kelton upstairs, telling him she'd followed a man who'd entered her outer office and fled to the basement, where she now stood staring at yet another brown-paper-wrapped box the shadow man had left behind.
'Geeze, Doc, I just left you,' Kelton lamented.
'Stan, he must've been right on your heels. I thought he was you!'
He remained dismayed. 'We were just talking in your office!'
'Just please send a couple of broad-shouldered uniforms down here to take control of this…this box and this…possible crime scene, will you, Stan?'
'On it, Doctor.'
'And get some of Chang's people down here.'
'Soon as the bomb squad clears the package of explosives, Dr. Sanger. They're on alert and on the way with an X-ray device. They'll get a clear picture of what's inside the thing.'
'Just get me some muscle down here for now.'
She heard Kelton shout at two officers to rush to her aid. 'Someone will be right there. Dr. Sanger,' he said. 'Stay calm.'
'Trying to…trying to, Stan.' She inched closer to the package. It was slightly larger than the one she'd gotten at home, but the familiar block lettering in her name and in the address of the 31st Precinct appeared to be by the same hand. Whoever had torn out of the lot had left it for her, knowing she was following.
She quickly dialed Lucas's cell phone.
Lucas was halfway home to his apartment, picturing the henpecked Jack Tebo-urged on by Eunice- rehearsing how he would tell Lucas to take his things and get out of the flat by end of week. He wondered where he would go, and groaned at the thought of finding another place to live, dreading the idea of a move. He had put a lot of holes in Tebo's walls, hanging them with traditional blankets and his gun collection. Where else in the city would he be free to do that without hassle? He'd also miss the proximity of draft beer and hot meals. If Eunice was good for anything other than gossip, it was her fine Native American cooking. No one could beat her homemade cornbread and biscuits, her venison stew or Southwestern veal omelet.
With these thoughts sifting through his head, he almost missed the sound of his cell phone. Snatching it off his belt, he said, 'Stonecoat.'
'Lucas! It's me!'
'Mere? What's up?'
'My blood pressure, I need you again.'
'What is it?' He recognized the fright in her voice.
She shakily informed him what had occurred. When she was still in mid-story, he made a U-turn, stopping traffic and garnering curses, horns, and gestures from the motorists around him. 'I'm on my way back! Sirens and lights!' He placed the strobe light atop his car and switched on the siren. 'Ten minutes tops! Be there. Hold on.'
By the time Lucas had returned, he found the police parking garage crawling with cops and crime-unit technicians, and among them, a bomb squad official and a bio- threat cop in protective wear sharing a light for their cigarettes, having already determined that the box contained nothing of interest to either of them. Lucas also saw Dr. Lynn Nielsen, and beside her, Dr. Leonard Chang carefully, painstakingly opening a wooden box with a Styrofoam lining, a mite larger than those they had seen the night before, but the packaging distinctively the same.
'Where's Meredyth?' Lucas asked, scanning the area for her when Stan Kelton rushed to him, telling him she was in the squad lounge upstairs with a pair of police-women and a cup of coffee, calming down.
Lucas was held in check when he saw what Leonard Chang's gloved hands now plucked from the white interior of the little coffin left for Meredyth. It was a human hand, a petite, feminine human hand, severed at the wrist in as neat and clean a cut as Lucas had ever seen. No jagged edges, nothing dangling, not so much as a thread of artery. The nearness of the cut gave it an unreal, mannequin appearance until Chang turned it over.
There was writing on the palm in black marker-a short laundry list of items. Everyone craned to see it more clearly. 'What is it?' asked Ted Hoskins of Chang while Steve Perelli flashed shot after shot.
'What's the writing on the hand say?' asked Lucas at the same time.
'Reminders. Things she wanted to get on her next visit to Wal-Mart, I suspect,' said Dr. Nielsen, her tall frame towering over Chang but not Lucas. 'She was out of TP, hairspray, nail polish, and onions.'
'She was left-handed,' commented Chang, 'to write this on her right hand.'
Lucas recalled that Mira Lourdes was reportedly left- handed. He wondered if it could be her right hand he now stared at.
'At least we've got fingerprints now,' said Dr. Nielsen, sighing.
Chang shook his head. 'Look closer. No fingerprints.' Chang put a magnifying glass over the fingertips, demonstrating how they had been burnt off with some sort of chemical. 'The epidermal layers of skin have been altered.'
'Acid bath?' asked Nielsen.
'Carefully applied. Likely over-the-counter item. Muriatic acid would be my guess.'
'Kind you get at any pool store,' muttered Lucas. 'What the hell does this motherfucker want from Meredyth?'
'If we knew that, we might know better who he is,' said Meredyth. She had materialized from the tunnel leading to the garage, two uniformed female cops with her. 'We must have really pissed him off sometime… someplace.'
Lucas wanted to go to her, hold her to him, and she read this clearly in his eyes, but they had made the pact to keep their renewed romance a secret for now. 'We need to sit down, go over every case we ever worked together, and find this psycho before he decides to attack with more than these sick offerings,' he said.
'I couldn't agree with you more,' she replied.
The unspoken questions on everyone's mind were where the rest of the victim's body was, what would be forwarded next, and what kind of connection existed between the killer, Dr. Sanger, and Detective Stonecoat.
Lucas turned back to Chang. 'What can you tell us about the victim from what this lunatic bastard has left us, Leonard?'
'Not much beyond her general size and weight. She was small-boned, not large, healthy by all reckoning. Freckled. The hand came from a fresh kill, like the eyes and organ slices. I'd need equipment and tests to tell you any more than that.'
'Are you guessing it to be from the same victim?'
'One might suppose so, yes.'
'Bastard is poaching off pieces of his victim to taunt us. It's sick.'
Captain Gordon Lincoln, having heard of the latest incident in this growing cancer, drove into the lot, climbed from his car with some difficulty, and stood in a disarrayed overcoat thrown over his casual civilian clothes, a golf shirt and pants. His size and weight made him a force to be reckoned with, and he chewed on an unlit cigar. It was past nine P.M. and Lincoln's eyes burned with curiosity, confusion, and concern. 'What in hell's going on, Stonecoat? Did I hear right? Another goody bag left for Dr. Sanger? After you gave chase to some phantom who breached the security of my precinct? Are you all right, Dr. Sanger?'
'Yes, I'm fine,' she replied at the same time Lucas said, 'You heard right, Captain. Some creep lured her here and saw to it she was alone with this sick gift he left behind. A human hand, female.'
'We suspect it's from the same body as gave up the eyes and teeth, but we'll have to run tests to be certain. Captain,' added Chang.
Lincoln exchanged a quick smile with Dr. Nielsen, nodded, and bent at his hefty waist for a closer examination of the severed hand. Nielsen leaned in and spoke in his ear, explaining both the lettering and the raw
