Meredyth broke the stillness, saying, 'There's too much here to be called mere coincidence, Lucas, and…and there's something else I have to tell you.'
He looked at her, her tone signaling a confession of some sort. 'What is it, Mere?'
'Almost twenty years ago, when I was a psychiatric intern doing social work for my degree, I had some dealings with the orphanage at Our Lady of Miracles.'
'Another strange harmony?'
'What astrophysicists call a concurrence, I think. Ongoing occurrences on a collision course.'
'Too close for comfort,' he agreed.
'But Lucas, it's the first real clue that the killer may have targeted me for some specific reason other than my notoriety as a forensic psychiatrist.'
'And what reason is that, Mere?'
'I…I didn't recognize the name of the convent orphanage right off, but since you mentioned it, I've been sitting here struggling, dredging up a twenty-year-old memory.'
'Connected to the convent?'
'It's our first real connection to the killer. My history with this place we're going to. The killer intentionally pointed us in this direction.'
'And what is the history, Mere? Were you once thinking of joining the convent? Did you go there as a child?'
'No, no! I had very little relationship with the convent really, and it was all so long ago.'
He turned sharply into a small street, causing a pedestrian a bit of distress, the man shouting an obscenity at Lucas.
Lucas merely waved and kept going. 'Go on,' he told Meredyth.
'I was a teenager, my first year of college, and I knew I wanted med school. I was a student trying to get brownie points by getting my sociology requirement out of the way early on, you know, to impress my academic counselor. I kinda had a crush on him.'
'That's the extent of your association with the convent? You did your sociology internship there? What, one quarter term? Seems pretty weak as connections go.'
'No, not even that. I did my internship with Child and Family Services with the county, and I helped place a handful of children with the convent orphanage. I spent all my time at the courthouse downtown. I never saw the orphanage itself. Never set foot in it actually.'
'That's it, huh?' He took another turn. They passed storefronts, taverns, eateries.
'I haven't been associated with them since those days in my first year of college. I represented indigent single mothers in cases involving newborns, to give them a home.'
'Damn lot of responsibility for a kid.'
'I was aggressive, and the caseworker I was helping out, she was swamped. I mean, case files to the ceiling. She was glad to have my help, and no one questioned it. Hell, it was 1984 and it was benevolent work.'
'So you worked in finding foster homes and making adoptions possible?' he asked. 'Benevolent work.'
'My responsibilities ended at the courthouse door. I merely counseled and helped out the mothers who turned their children over to the orphanage for adoption. The county, the court, the nuns, under the mother superior, they saw to the actual adoptions. I just facilitated the paperwork and acted as advocate for the mother, and by extension, the child.'
'Then your job was to…to…?'
'Expedite the transition for the mother; help her with her decision after weighing all options. Basically, all I signed off on was the mothers' understanding and state of mind…you know, sound mind, clear understanding of adoption. Had to make sure Mom knew what rights she was signing off on. It was just interview work.'
'I see, and you never actually handled the children involved?'
She shrugged. 'Occasionally, one of the infants was thrust into my arms when the mother needed to locate a proof of address or needed both her arms to sign papers.'
The drive had taken them onto the Interstate, and after passing several exits, Lucas found Crockett Avenue, where he exited onto the surface street. The grim and growing cloud bank had engulfed the city, thrusting them into a daytime night. The car now moved through a crowded little neighborhood of narrow streets and boxy houses.
Meredyth continued speaking in a level voice. 'Frankly, almost all of the women that I helped in my year of internship with the legal system didn't really have any options, hooked as they were on drugs.'
'You spent a year at this social work requirement?'
'Well, two college terms, eight credit hours, a fall and a spring.'
'And how long ago was this?'
'It was like two freaking decades ago, 1983…'84 may be.'
'Given the fact the killer has pointed us to the convent, we need to look over the records of your cases that year.'
'The case files should be on record with the courthouse downtown. I have no idea what sort of records we'll find at the orphanage or what condition they will be in, but my name isn't likely to be on anything there.'
'And you spent no time at the convent school?'
'Like I said, my job ended at the courthouse steps. The children were taken by the nuns from the judges' chambers.'
Lucas wondered aloud, 'How many kids are we talking about, Mere?'
'A handful…a dozen at most that I handled, certainly no more.'
He pulled the car over and parked outside a Starbucks. 'How about a cup of coffee and a grain of truth?' he asked.
'All right, I'll tell you about it.'
Lucas and Meredyth sat at a table inside the coffee shop and watched the drizzling rain against the windows. Tentatively sipping at her steaming coffee, Meredyth began her story.
'A terrible situation had evolved in the seventies and into the eighties, when I started this internship-against the wishes of my parents, I might add. I was more surprised than anyone when I found myself making life-and- death decisions for drug abusers and their children.'
'Were they all drug abusers?'
'To a woman, yes. Heroin, cocaine…hard-liners, most of them, their arms full of tracks, their noses pink red. I despised them, Lucas, for what they did to their babies. I was unable to have children, am unable to have children, Lucas. Something you have a right to know.'
He reached across and took her hands in his. 'Go on.'
'And here these women were, slaves to addiction, giving no thought to how they were harming their children's health, poisoning their unborn children. I took it all quite personally, and it wasn't long before I knew I couldn't do this kind of work objectively.'
'You were just a kid, Mere.'
'It was a time of rampant drug use among pregnant teens. This created so many thousands of crack mothers having crack babies. These typically single-parent mothers were unable to fend for themselves, much less take care of a sick child's multiple needs.' Meredyth paused to drink her cooling coffee.
Lucas picked at a giant cinnamon bun he'd placed between them to share. He said nothing, but she felt a disapproving coolness had come over him, something in his eyes, a judgment.
'Look, Lucas, organizations and high-minded institutions-'
'Like the Harris County court, the government, the Catholic Church?' he finished for her, interrupting.
'Yeah, like the Church…they took an interest in helping the children, many of whom were born with mental and emotional problems, some with serious, irreversible damage and retardation. Few doors were open to them, and there weren't a lot of people or resources to throw at the problem.'
He sipped at his coffee to the sound of FM music piped in, a Gordon Lightfoot tune…don't you come creepin' round my back stair…and angry words rising from another booth in the cafe. Lucas glanced at the couple arguing. Something deep within him wanted to go over and yank the man to his feet and plant a fist in his face. Instead, when Meredyth squeezed his hands, he returned his attention to her. 'Go on. I'm listening.'
