her misguided actions, so that someone else must also pay. Lauralie meant to lash out at society as well as the individual responsible for the theft of a child's life. It was the system as a whole at fault, to allow such things to go on unchecked. A system that dealt in infant children as if they were unfeeling plastic dolls with glass eyes and empty insides, as if she were a mannequin.
After killing Mother, she had walked down to the corner and boarded the Houston Metro for downtown and the Harris County courthouse, where she eventually uncovered and examined some extremely important eighteen- year-old documents, records that revealed the full name of that meddling Mary or Merl Someone her mother had confided in and trusted, a someone who'd promised Katherine-and by extension Lauralie-a reunion that never came, a someone now in need of a lesson about tampering with other people's lives-a Meredyth Sanger.
Lauralie startled awake, brushing at her hair, having felt something crawly scuttle across her brow and into her bangs. She leapt to her feet, pine needles clinging to her cotton print dress. She shivered at the tingling in her skin, realizing she'd slept for several hours, the sun now on the other side of the clearing. She'd been baked somewhat, but had been saved by the shade of the tree. She got her bearings by locating the house.
She knew Arthur was due back from his school duties soon. He'd complained of having missed too much class time, that he'd be missed, possibly called into the Dean's office and reprimanded. She had told him to go, that she could use some alone time.
He'd be hungry when he got back, she imagined. She walked back to the house, trying to decide on opening a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli for him or a can of tuna for sandwiches.
The greyhounds in the run barked at her as she neared the house. She threw rocks at them, shouting for them to shut up. Pushing through the door and entering the kitchen, she had to wiggle around the large freezer filling the room. 'Just enough wiggle room,' she said as she went about preparing a stack of tuna fish sandwiches for Arthur.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the dirty window over the sink. 'The little homemaker, yeah…that's me.'
Lucas threw his leather Stetson boots atop his desk, and leaning far back in his chair, scanning the Sims file again, he wondered if he'd missed a crucial piece of information. His phone rang. It was the front desk, Sergeant Stan Kelton, telling him that a large parcel had just arrived via UPS, addressed to Stonecoat care of the department. 'Looking suspicious, no return address,' Stan said, 'so I called for the X-ray machine and-'
'You didn't nab the delivery man?'
'The delivery came through UPS, all legit, Lucas. We had no cause to hold him. I've got people looking into where the parcel originated from, both at the UPS address and the return address. Best we can do.'
'Jerk likely used cash with UPS. Credit card and we'd have 'im. So what's the return address?'
'Lucas, we've got the X ray on it now.'
'The return address, Stan?'
The numbers meant nothing to Lucas, an address down near the shipping channel on Lowe.
'You'll want to come upstairs now and take a look at this for yourself, Lieutenant.'
'How bad is it, Stan?'
'Bad? All I can say is that your creep's been playing footsie up till now. This one's god awful bad, my friend.'
'I'll be up there as soon as I alert Dr. Sanger and Detective North, Stan.'
'I've got people already alerting them, Lucas. You're all to come down to the conference room off Captain Lincoln's office. See you there.'
'Lincoln already knows about the package then?'
'Lucas, he insisted I keep him informed of anything else suspicious coming into the squad room. After what occurred with Dr. Sanger, he wants to be kept informed. His orders.'
'Gotcha…understand.'
Lucas arrived at the conference center moments ahead of Meredyth and Jana, the two of them chatting as they entered the darkened room, going silent on seeing what awaited them. On the wall screen, they saw the fuzzy video of the interior of the box addressed to Lucas. Staring back at them were a pair of blank, horrific eye sockets that dominated the terrible image of a young woman's head. The X- ray photo was black and white, like an old Bogart movie still.
'Some still life, hey, people?' asked Lincoln, stepping out of shadow and into the picture, blocking the screen.
No one laughed at the dark joke. Meredyth, Lucas, and Jana could make out the woman's thick, dark hair and features. It was unquestionably Mira Lourdes's head. In the black-and-white, grainy X-ray photo, the empty eye sockets gave the still-fleshy severed head the look and feel of a skull.
'It's her all right.' Meredyth tore her eyes away from the image and dropped into a chair, holding back tears.
'That'd be my guess,' Lucas said, agreeing about the identity of the eyeless woman's cranium.
Kelton stood by like a silent sentinel.
'Chilling.' Jana fell, disheartened, into a chair.
'Crazy how even though we know Mira's body is out there someplace,' began Meredyth, 'that her body's in the asshole's freezer, chopped up to fit into boxes…and knowing the likelihood…the probabilities…that is, expectations being what they are…why then does this horrible puzzle piece have so devastating an impact as it has?' She wiped at tears with a handkerchief.
'Such a callous game he's playing,' added Jana.
'A crude inhumane monster,' agreed Lincoln, 'desecrating her body like this.'
'Don't you see, it's the killer's body language,' said Lucas.
'What the hell're you talking about. Detective?' asked Lincoln.
'The bastard's speaking volumes to us.'
'Lucas is right,' said Meredyth. 'He's showing us scorn, hatred, disdain. By deriding our societal beliefs, mores.'
'Can you speak in English, Dr. Sanger?'
'For instance, our cultural and spiritual need to bury our dead, the concept of the sacrosanct body as temple of the soul, our core belief in the sanctity of familial ties, and on and on. He's pissing on all of it, and that's the message. Mira's body is merely the medium for his message.'
Everyone fell silent, contemplating this.
'The medium is the message,' said Lucas. 'A severed eye, a severed tooth, a severed organ, a severed hand, and now the head. A pox on you and yours. A curse. He's cursing us.'
'Whatever the hell he's doing, cursing or scorning, damn it, people, I want an end to this post-office-happy fiend,' shouted Lincoln. Calming, he added, 'People, we have to end this madness and end it quickly. This can't go on; it can't drag on!'
'We're on it, Captain,' Jana said, trying to assure him. 'We know something about this maniac. We know he's interested in trying to shake us up in a spectacular fashion.'
'Is that a fact?' Lincoln's sarcasm spewed forth thick and biting. 'What we know is that this creep is creeping us all out, but he's particularly interested in you two, Dr. Sanger, Lucas. He's got a bug up his ass for you! Why? He's got something personal going with you two and…and g'damn it, I want to know what the fuck it is.'
'We think that he thinks that by choosing us as targets that he can grab off the front-page headlines, a most- wanted wanna — be,' said Lucas.
'Key-rice…please, not another one. Will the Lord of Joe-has-a-fit deliver us.'
'This monster is scratching to get into the Serial Killer Hall of Fame,' Meredyth added. 'Simple as that.'
Captain Lincoln walked around to stand over Meredyth, placing a hand on her shoulder, seeing how distraught she had become and how she fought to keep her eyes off the image on the wall or the still-closed box sitting at the center of the table. Captain Lincoln calmly asked, 'You mean he wants John Walsh or the FBI to come after him?'
'It's a theory.'
'A theory? I need more than a theory, Dr. Sanger.'
'What do you want from me, Gordon?'
