pair of cops have made up their collective minds to go along with surface appearances, and once an assumption of suicide or accidental overdose is made, it's hard to buck.'
'You think this might be the case here?'
'If Lauralie is as dangerous as we've been led to think, yes. I may be out on a limb here, but the reports're too pat, the woman dying of an overdose without any question being raised, especially since-look here at the autopsy report.'
She followed his finger to the line on the report he wanted her to read.
'She didn't swallow a lot of pills.'
'Although her bottle was found empty on her night- stand,' Lucas pointed out. 'Cops at the scene made the assumption she swallowed the bottle of pills along with the alchohol.'
'She died in bed in a peaceful pose,' Meredyth said, pointing to one of the crime-scene photos he'd brought up on screen.
'That's screwy too. Death brought on by alcoholic poisoning doesn't fit with the neat, orderly position on the bed, folded arms, body perpendicular to the edge this way. Nahhh, no way.'
'She laid down on her back, folded her arms, readying herself for death,' Meredyth said, shrugging, playing devil's advocate.
'When people drink too much-and she had over three fifths of straight bourbon with gin chasers-they don't wake up all ready fixed and folded in bed. Someone posed her body after death. Now it may've been the neighbor who called it in…the one with the key…come in to check on her, but given testimony of the lady, it could've been her daughter, purportedly living with her and in Chicago at the same time.'
Meredyth stared again at the digital computer images showing the deceased posed in death, as Lucas theorized- arms folded across her chest, ankles overlying one another. 'Could still be an overdose, Lucas, and Lauralie, finding her mother in an unflattering position, poses her. Doesn't mean she killed her mother.'
He nodded. 'Could be…could be. Report does say she discovered the body and called it in.' He paced the Cold Room floor now. 'Could also be she did a lot more than pose Mommie Dearest.'
'Could be she had to lift her off the floor, the sofa, the bathroom toilet,' replied Meredyth, sitting cross-legged on the edge of his desk.
'That's where you find most falling-down drunks, and the investigators look the other way when a loved one moves the body out of a sense of…propriety.'
'So you're not buying any of it.'
'Lauralie is an effective actress, capable of lulling anyone into any belief she dangles before them. I believe she staged the body and the murder, just as she staged the death of the Mother Superior at age twelve.'
'She does have a theatrical flare.
'Had Tebo's temperature rising, Father Will, and I'd bet a month's pay on Giorgio.'
'How then did she do her mother in? Simply by providing her with the booze? Going out to a movie and returning?'
'There were unexplained marks on her wrists and ankles, Mere.'
'Where does the report say that?'
'Coroner's protocol here.' He brought it on screen. 'Chalked up to clumsy handling of the body, men holding onto wrists and ankles when moving her from bed to body bag. Called a coroner's contusion. They can tell if it occurred after death from the discoloration of the skin. There's a reason you grab the deceased under the arms, and there's a proper way to hold the ankles tucked against your body.'
'Sounds like you've hefted a few.'
'I have. Look here too, the broken neck-chalked up to what they call a coroner's fracture. Likely from the same manhandling. Not easy properly elevating and hauling deadweight.'
'So you're suggesting the M.E. wrote off restraint marks to coroner transport wagon bruises?'
'Possibly, yes.'
'Are you saying that the cops lied so they could get off duty on time? And that the M.E. helped them out?'
'No, no, no. I'm saying they made a tacit blanket assumption and acted on it, and they justified that assumption with their language on the report. They didn't he so much as they convinced themselves of what their eyes told them.'
'So while the detectives on scene may have had misgivings, they all turned into smoke?'
'Look, I still have doubts about how Marilyn Monroe was supposed to've died. Why? The scene was too clean, too damned neat, and she lay posed in bed, her body recently washed clean and dressed for the coroner, dead of an overdose. But God forbid she be found under the bed. Gives a guy doubts.'
'And I suppose you think Elvis still lives?'
'Only as an icon for his estate and his legions of fans. He lives in that he's still number one. But that's show biz. No, I can easily accept the prognosis of an overdose in Elvis's case.'
'Why Elvis yes, but Marilyn no? Because the death scene was not doctored or candy-coated?'
'Exactly. Elvis, unlike the Queen of Hollywood, was found dead at the foot of his toilet. No posing of the body, no gussying it up. Now that's unquestionably an overdose no one had a hand in but Elvis-an honest-to-God unintentional suicide.'
'You buy into Marilyn's having been murdered?'
'At least assisted into her overdose by someone. Most cops know the body would at least be half on, half off the bed, and not posed in a peaceful slumber against the pd- lows.'
'Then you suspect Lauralie's desperate hunt for her birth mother all those years-'
'Desperate's not too far from determined, the word Mother Elizabeth used to describe her tenacity in the search for Mom and Dad.'
'From the beginning, all that effort in order to kill Katherine?'
'Some reason, huh?'
Meredyth's mind filled with the thought. 'To search for so long, only to learn that no one was searching for her…'
'Sounds like a motive for anger, and take anger up a notch to hatred, ratchet it up to acting on your hatred, and whataya got?' he asked.
'Imagine, though, seeking out one's own mother for the express purpose of killing her. It's almost too much to comprehend.'
'Yeah, but it'd make a hell of a movie of the week.'
'Perhaps there were extenuating circumstances, a falling-out, an argument that escalated to…to murder.'
'Or assisted suicide?' asked Lucas.
'All we know for sure is that Lauralie did find her mother,' she replied, clenching a fist.
'And within weeks of finding Mom, the daughter is having Mom prepped for burial at Greenhaven Cemetery by Giorgio and Carlotta. Or we could give little Lauralie, poor orphaned child, the benefit of doubt.'
'Perhaps…perhaps she got caught up with-'
'Crazy Joe Boyfriend? Who not only planned and executed the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes, but who also offered her mother, and maybe is the brain who devised the eerie mailings to you and me, Mere. No, it has to be they're equally involved-her with a motive for vengeance, him with a means to that end and a skill for dissection.'
'If she selected Mira as a victim because of Mira's name-Lourdes-if she did that, then perhaps she is directing all the traffic, planting the clues she wants us to find, planning the abduction, the murder, the mutilation…which begs the question-'
'— did she plan her own mother's death?' he finished.
'— and did she have help even then from the mysterious boyfriend? Damn, a person could go crazy trying to decipher what floats here and what doesn't.'
'Easy, Mere.'
'And I hate it…I hate the thought of my contributing to all this insanity, however unwittingly.'
He lifted her off his desk and into his arms, holding her close. 'I'd say let's talk to the investigators on Katherine Croombs's overdose case, but it'd likely be a waste of time. No one's going to admit to sleepwalking
