'Then we have to dodge your place too.'
'And the precinct,' he half-joked. 'We could always return to the desert, sleep beneath the stars again. Maybe this time, you'll include me on the cloud of your dreams. Whataya say, me-lady?'
'The desert sounds nice, but I have a better idea.'
'Shoot.'
'My family's country house. She can't know about that. Hey, let's do it. Let's go there. It's on a beautiful lake, and I don't receive mail there.'
'Are you suggesting I meet your parents?' He half- smiled, staring into her eyes.
'No, they won't be there. They're in Paris.'
'Paris, Texas?'
'France, on holiday. So, we'll be alone, and you won't have any pressure whatsoever. We can pick up some groceries and bathing suits on the way.'
'How far is it?'
'Between here and Huntsville. Not to worry. We can be back in the city in an hour and a half.'
Lucas raised his hands as if arrested. 'All right, you got me, Doctor. I am in your hands completely tonight.'
'That sounds promising.'
'Lead on, please.'
'Interstate north,' she said, 'Derry Road exit, Madera Lake.' She nestled into the crook of his arm, closing her eyes, persuaded she could get far enough away to escape any further thoughts of Lauralie Blodgett tonight.
Arthur Belkuin’s gloved hands twitched ever so slightly where he gripped the freezer door over his head. The surgical gloves he wore made a stifled little barking rubber sound against the lid of the horizontal freezer. Arthur closed the lid over what little remained of Mira Lourdes where she lay inside her frozen coffin: a pair of legs held together by lower torso and hips, two severed arms-one missing a hand, another a finger.
Behind Arthur, her headless, armless upper torso lay on the stainless-steel operating table, where his rotary bone saw rested, silently dripping with blood. He stared at his reflection in the patent titanium blade, so efficient and clean was this blade. He defied any human eye to detect the microscopic tissue and bone fragments adhering to it. He'd have to give it a Muriatic acid bath to be certain the saw, like the ax, could not be DNA'd to Mira Lourdes, and so linked to him. He'd eventually wash down the table as well, whenever Lauralie finally resolved that they had come to the end of this dark journey she had set them on. At which time, he would take the table and all the tools far out to the desert, possibly as far as Mexico, dig an enormous hole, and bury it aU.
He silently thanked God that the blood was at a minimum, most of Mira's blood having been lost when she was killed, and the remaining blood, pooling in the lungs and back, remaining thick and gelatinous from the corpse's having been so long in cold storage. The solid flesh made cutting easier, cleaner. The torso itself had been opened earlier to get at the organs that he had sliced up in thin leaves for the first box sent to Detective Stonecoat. Lauralie had tossed what was left of those organs into the brook that ran through the property, a backwater creek off the Navasota River. He recalled how she'd delighted in watching the creek ripple along on its path, taking its natural course. 'On a mission, Arthur, like us,' she'd said of the stream as she fed Mira's internal organs to the fish.
The only untouched and undefiled of Mira Lourdes's organs was the heart, now swimming in a formaldehyde- filled jar on a shelf over Arthur's shoulder. Arthur had closed up the huge Y-section cut he had made to the torso and abdomen to get at the organs for Lauralie. The crude autopsy scar on the torso looked like the stitching on a bloated football, Arthur thought. He'd done the procedure quickly and with a shaking hand.
'Lauralie, damn it now, you promised you'd tell me the whole story, and I think it's high time. I think I've earned your trust and the right to know everything.'
'You are on a need-to-know basis, Arthur-you need, and I know.' She laughed, while outside his dogs, locked in the run, whimpered and whined for the warmth and light inside.
'Lauralie, your reason for doing all this!' he demanded, pointing at the dissected, sewn-up torso lying between them. 'You promised, remember?'
'You want rationalizations, Arthur? Will a good rationale help you get past your part in murder, Arthur, sweetie?'
'You promised. You said that you had a lifetime of reasons for what you've done, remember? And you promised to share them with me.'
'I remember telling you I'd tell you, Arthur, when the time came…when conditions were right, when I was good and ready. Do you remember that, Arthur, do you?'
'I need to know why, Lauralie, now! Why am I doing this?' How could I have agreed to this? Arthur wondered, but did not say. Arthur looked down over Mira Lourdes's armless torso and breasts, where he stood directly across the dissecting table from Lauralie. He imagined die eerie picture it must make, this meeting of the three of them, together again-Mira not entirely present physically, Lauralie not entirely present mentally, Arthur not entirely present emotionally-a strange bizarre twist on the eternal triangle, he thought.
Lauralie was angry with him, but she appeared to have calmed. Arthur had balked at her orders once again, balked at any further mutilation of the body. He dared voice his wish now. 'We should end this thing now, bury what's left of Mira in the desert, and be done with it.'
Lauralie only laughed, and between laughs, she said, 'Mira, Mira on the slab, who's the prettiest of the hags? You talk about her as if you knew her, Arthur. Get over it. Look at what she is for what she is, an unfeeling and empty shell.'
'She was a human being, Lauralie.'
'Was being the operative word! Look at her now! We've excised her eyes, her teeth, a hand, and her head, not to mention the finger I left at the convent, and now you're going soft on me, Arthur? Don't be a wimp!'
Arthur again looked down at the upper torso of Mira Lourdes lying before them. Lauralie had operated the circular bone saw to sever torso from lower abdomen and legs. With Arthur's guidance, she had done all the cutting this time, and she'd done it with a kind of gusto. In fact, she took a kind of otherworldly delight in carving up the frozen corpse, while Arthur again questioned her reasoning and motivation.
Lifting a scalpel now, she asked Arthur how best to remove the breasts.
'Why do that?' he asked.
'To gross them out. The idea is to gross them out as much as I possibly can. Now tell me how to begin and where to go with the scalpel.' Arthur did as instructed, swallowing his inner quaking and the sense of regret infiltrating his heart.
He forced one of the still-hard, cold breasts upward and using a red marker, made a line beneath and around the globe. He then did the same for the second breast. 'Begin at the bottom and follow the line up from the center, here, on either side.'
Holding the surgical scalpel against the marks he'd made, Lauralie carefully followed the ink path against Mira's flesh, soon removing the left breast. She smiled, her eyes delighted as it came away. 'That was easy, Arthur. You're an excellent teacher. Like slicing off a ham.'
Arthur was not surprised at the lack of blood, and the ease with which the breast came away. Seeing there was no stopping Lauralie's gleeful play, Arthur said, 'Give me the scalpel and I'll finish for you.'
'Call me Dr. Blodgett!' she teased, swinging the scalpel in the air like a Roman candle. 'No, Dr. Belkvin, sir, young Dr. Blodgett needs the experience and will finish the procedure.' And she did, severing the right breast with even more fanfare, and even less blood.
Lauralie had earlier prepared the box meant to receive the torso and breasts, but she hadn't planned well for the size of Mira's Joan Crawford shoulders and the girth of her torso. The fit was so snug and tight that Arthur had to help Lauralie force the torso into the Styrofoam-lined, colorful blue and green FedEx box. He then lifted the two breasts in his gloved hands, turning to take them back to the freezer.
'Now the severed breasts,' Lauralie ordered.
'What?'
'In the box. Stuff them into the box too.'
'But there's no room.'
'Make room!'
He tested the possibility, shaking his head, saying, 'How, where?'
