'Hey, what's that for?' he asked.
'You don't have to be so chummy with Detective North, Lucas.'
'Hey, Mere, what the devil're you talking about?'
'Men really are from Mars.'
'Why don't we get started on those old case files of yours.'
'I told you before, Lucas, confidentiality laws prohibit me from sharing patient information with cops. Haven't I always kept your confidences even though on occasion it meant breaking the law? How'd you like it if I shared what I know about you with, say, IAD? It'd put you behind bars, Lucas. See now why these rules of conduct and ethics need to be in place?'
'All right…you and your intern can go over the shrinkology files, but there's nothing says I can't explore old cases brought to trial by you, me, or the both of us.'
'Fine, let's divvy the workload up that way, but I expect to find you up to your elbows in paperwork, not up to your ass in Jana North.'
She stormed back toward her office, a handkerchief dabbing at her eyes. He started after her, but stopped and shouted instead. 'That's uncalled for, Mere!'
Markson came around a comer with a cup of coffee paused at his lips. 'Something wrong?'
Lucas, ignoring the cadet wiz kid, shouted down the corridor at the fleeing Meredyth. 'You're doing it again! Push me away! Go ahead! Create excuses out of thin air.'
She turned and with her teeth set in a firm jaw, began to speak, but only stammered.
'It's all smoke and mirrors, your little magic show,' Lucas shouted, 'so you don't have to really deal with us, with what's happened between us over the last two days, Mere!'
But she slipped into the elevator, disappearing from his sight. Lucas was left standing all alone, people around him politely pretending they'd heard nothing, going about their business. Lucas went for the stairwell, deciding the only safe place might be the Cold Room and his desk.
CHAPTER 8
Lauralie Blodgett breathed deeply, taking in the crisp cool morning air, leisurely strolling the woods around the farmhouse, a quaint little white clapboard home. She had convinced Arthur to rent the house and property for their purposes. Although it had a useless fallen-in barn and shed, there was a fenced-in dog run that appealed to Dr. Belkvin's dog-loving nature.
'Hell, out here, you could let your dogs run free,' she had told him. 'Arthur, it's perfect!'
Arthur said it could be a sign that she wanted some stability in their relationship, indeed, in her life, that she had never enjoyed before, being an orphaned child without security. She hadn't dispelled Arthur's cockeyed notions, but rather allowed them to build in his lightly dusted sandy-haired head.
There were aspects of Arthur's little homey dreams that did appeal to Lauralie, but she had far too many unrealized plans to settle just yet into a life with anyone, much less a four-eyed Dr. Doolittle with a hairy mole on his right cheek.
She shook off any further thought of it, wishing to enjoy the moment amid the freshly watered earth and grasses, the leaves dripping still with last night's cleansing rain. Nature taking a shower, replenishing herself, she thought. It'd been forever since Lauralie had replenished herself, or simply taken some time for herself. Having learned the where-abouts of the woman who had taken her from her mother, Lauralie had spent untold hours researching, following leads, examining clues, exploring evidence, learning, and stalking her prey, planning and deciding how best to destroy her. She didn't want Dr. Meredyth Sanger to die quickly, but rather to suffer a long and torturous harassment, to be made to feel responsible for the deaths of others, and to lose her hold on her sanity, a fittingly ironic end for a professional sanity peddler. After all that, then it might be Dr. Sanger who would spend eighteen years under the control of an institution, told when to get up, when to eat, bathe, take her pills, sleep, get up again, and relentlessly repeat the process without deviation or question. To die inside slowly over years, knowing she was the cause of Lauralie's pain and the death of everyone Meredyth loved.
Birds chased one another among the juniper trees just ahead of Lauralie, catching her fascination, and the morning sun glistened on the still-wet dew. A faraway hawk cried out to its mate, no doubt spotting its prey on the ground. As she high-stepped through the tall grass, a soft murmur of insect activity surrounded Lauralie, creating a cloud of fairylike creatures captured in the morning sunbeams.
The stream that ran along one end of the property trickled in her ear as she examined the leaves on the variety of trees here, every sort of hardwood. It was a bountiful, beautiful location, an oasis of green amid miles of brown and red earth on all sides, and she wondered what had happened to the family that had once farmed here. She imagined the children all grown up, that they had abandoned the life here, going off to the big city, taking jobs in factories and mills, leaving the land. No doubt their grandparents and parents had each in turn died in the old house.
Lauralie fancied that she could feel their spirits in the clapboard farmhouse; she sensed their shock and amazement over her shoulder each time she wrapped and addressed a parcel filled with parts of the Lourdes woman. To anyone else, the old house stood empty and abandoned, but Lauralie knew better. While it had been abandoned by its previous tenants, it had never been completely abandoned by them. Fortunately, the ghosts of the house had no method of contacting the authorities about the use to which Lauralie had put the old place.
She could see the house through the trees, the kitchen screen door and the large freezer unit that Arthur had purchased for her, one of his earliest tests. She gave thought to Arthur, and how malleable he was in her hands as she found that kind spot in his heart, the one all balled up with his sex drive. Yes, Arthur was so kind to her, giving in to her every whim.
She strolled further from the house, deeper into the thicket, until she came on a neat little circle of grass surrounded by bush, an Alice in Wonderland clearing. An area blanketed with pine needles, a cushion placed here for her to sit against a tree and let the sunshine play across her face and body, warming her through her clothing, a simple cotton dress.
She thought that in another life she could easily have been happy simply being a farmer's wife. Perhaps she still could be, said a voice inside a niche inside a cubbyhole corner of her mind. After this was all over, perhaps she could convince Arthur to set up house here, to remain here for the rest of their lives. Arthur would do it too. He'd do anything for me, she thought, anything I want. Arthur is a dear.
Of course she knew better, that she had no future. She began to feel an overwhelming need for sleep. She hadn't been getting much rest lately, her appearance telling the story, and so in closing her eyes, she felt the peaceful voice of slumber whisper in her ear, gently calling her name as in a chant, the lord of sleep, Morpheus, a motherly matron in Lauralie's estimation, luring Lauralie into her soft arms.
Now that Lauralie's birth mother had crossed over, Lauralie felt certain the woman had come to a new realization of the error of her ways; Mother had learned her lesson, and she too beckoned with a soft voice inside Lauralie's head, asking to curl up alongside her daughter now. Sleep, sleep, with sunshine warming the eyelids.
As she dozed, her mind took her back to her upbringing at the convent for orphaned girls. She had been put up for adoption at birth, and only recently had she learned who her mother was, and more importantly, where the woman had been all these years. The horrible truth was that her mother hadn't been a world away, not thousands or even hundreds of miles off as Lauralie had always imagined, but worse, here in Houston all these eighteen years.
She recalled in her dream how she had shown up at her mother's doorstep unannounced, surprising the woman, who looked strangely like herself. 'Are you Katherine Anne Croombs Blodgett?”
Her mother didn't have to answer, but the woman's parched lips parted, and she mouthed the word yes as if expecting this day to come all her life. From the first glance, and given die nature of the question, and the way in which Lauralie had put it to her, the woman calling herself Katherine Croombs nowadays knew the young woman on her doorstep was her daughter. The daughter she had abandoned stood before her, and after an awkward silence, Katherine invited young Lauralie into her ramshackle home on Groilier Street in a run-down neighborhood in the shadow of the Interstate overpass. As Lauralie entered the house, she heard the noise and felt the vibration from
