'Squish them in, Arthur! You can do it.'
'Why not send them separately?'
'Separately?'
'You know, to…to this Meredyth Sanger person instead of to Stonecoat?'
'It's a thought, would be freaky for the lady doctor, wouldn't it? But no…no, I want her to get the heart next, and I want him to get all of this area at once,' she replied, her hands going to her own breasts, the scalpel in one hand, her other hand caressing her breast area.
'Everything is about what you want, isn't it, Lauralie?' he asked even as he worked the severed breasts into the tight area left him. 'Well, what about what I want?' he demanded.
'Oh, Arthur, you can be so commanding when you try. What you want? I know what you want, Arthur,' she said in her most coquettish voice, her smile a flirtatious snake as she bared a shoulder with the tip of the scalpel.
'Damn it, I want to know why we're doing all this, Lauralie! I want to know why we're not on a plane for someplace safe!'
'Some island in the Pacific, Arthur? Tahiti's full of tourists this time of year. It may's well be another state in the goddamn union.'
'You saw the newspaper!' He held up the late edition of the Chronicle, waving the image before her. 'They've got my likeness on the front pages! It'll be flashed on the tube by now. My clients will all see it. They'll fucking have me on America's Most Wanted.'
'It's a lousy likeness, Arthur. Quit your worrying. It doesn't look anything like you.'
'The mole, Lauralie. They've got the mole on my face. My black eyebrows, the thick glasses, my hair. It's close enough to nail me, I tell you. We've got to get out of the jurisdiction, to someplace where I'm not known.'
'Christ, the mole's on the other side of your face,' she said, slapping the newspaper into free flight and ripping through his likeness in a zipping Zorro strike of her scalpel. 'Don't you go wimping out on me, Arthur! Don't do it.'
'But we've got to be reasonable. What the hell're we going to do? What kind of escape route do we have? None. Can you imagine what will happen when I go back to the office, to the campus? I could be picked up, arrested at any moment for questioning.'
'Fool, they don't arrest you for questioning…can't arrest you until they have absolute, certain proof. You've got rights. They can only ask you to come in for questioning. It's called an interrogation…custody, question and answer, then arrest, if you fail their litmus test for telling the truth.'
'A lie detector? I don't think I could pass, not after what-'
'Yes, you can, Arthur. It wasn't you who did all this. It was me, my plan, I drugged her…I killed her. What'd you do? You cut into a cadaver. What can they do to you for that? Suspend your license?'
Lauralie had laid aside the scalpel and stood squeezing a set of black rosary beads. 'I took these off a dead nun at the convent…long time ago,' she said, her eyes dreamy, as if reliving the moment. 'She took an unfortunate spill down a nasty flight of stairs, and at her advanced age, I didn't think she'd miss the beads.'
He stared at the black beads, picturing her leaning over the dying nun. As if reading his mind, she added, 'She was our mother superior. Believed in the old saying 'Spare the rod, spoil the child.' I took a lot of crap from that old bat for a lotta years.' Her eyes had roamed about the room as she spoke of Mother Orleans, but now they settled on him. 'Look, Arthur, I understand your worries, but we can take steps, Arthur…'
'Such as?'
'We'll have the mole surgically removed.'
'And who's going to do that?'
'How hard can it be? With just the right tools and your guidance, hell, I just removed two hot-air balloons from the cadaver.' She replaced the beads in her hand with the scalpel. Its stainless-steel blade shone under the tensor lamp over the operating table.
'Me, operate on my own cheek by guiding you?'
'Why not? We've got the mirror.' She swung a high- powered mirror on a swivel arm over the tabletop.
'I'd have to be alert, no anesthetic. It could be painful. I could pass out, botch the whole job.'
'Damn wuss, Arthur. You tell me what to do, walk me through it, and I'll remove the bloody thing while you're under. We can use the chloroform, or we can just deaden the area around the mole, so you won't feel a thing.' She appeared genuinely excited by the prospect of his being under her complete control. 'You do trust me, don't you, Arthur?'
'A bandage over my cheek will only draw more attention.'
'Then we bandage your whole damned head if need be. God, quit complaining.'
'Forget about it. I'll take my chances with the mole.'
'But if it'll help ease your worries, Arthur…'
Arthur grabbed the scalpel from her, cutting himself, cursing and tossing the instrument onto a tray behind him, where it clattered and where she couldn't reach it. 'Enough with that. It's not happening.'
'God, Artie, baby, take it easy. You hurt yourself. I was only funning you.' She quickly wrapped his bleeding finger in a bandage.
'You changed the subject on me. I want to know why you're so bent on destroying this Dr. Sanger and this detective.'
Outside, a long, rumbling thunderclap got the dogs braying again. Lauralie replied, 'That bitch, Sanger… she destroyed me!'
'Sweetheart, love…you're not destroyed. You are beautiful and vibrant and alive and-and young, with- with your whole life ahead of you. We should be busy making a life together, a life for ourselves, a life with a future. I love you, Lauralie.'
'When I'm done with Sanger and her man, then we'll talk about a life and a future, darling, but not before. Now stuff her breasts into the damned box. I knew I should have gotten the larger one!'
Arthur forced the severed second breast into the impossible space allotted. Lauralie closed the flaps and taped it shut. She placed the label over the top, patted the bulging box, and said, 'It's done, all ready for overnight shipment.'
'You're not going to be happy until you use up every part of the Lourdes woman, are you?'
'Arthur, you are beginning to get on my nerves. Now, what do you say to my removing that disgusting mole on your cheek?'
'Damn it, Lauralie, I thought we were off that subject for tonight.'
'You think the cops and the news people are going to be off that subject tonight? We've got to do something about the damn mole. I never told you, but it has always bothered me, like…like the old man's dead eye in Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.'
'W-what's that supposed to mean?' He unconsciously touched the mole on his left cheek.
'I look at you, and it's all I see sometimes.'
'Cutting the damn thing off may be the only way I can escape capture, but my students, my colleagues, my patients-that is my patients' owners-they know what I look like, Lauralie.'
'No one'll ever believe you could possibly be the Post- it Ripper, Arthur. Everyone loves you. You make their animals well!'
'Mrs. Toohey's dog died in my care last month! Look, I know the police sketch isn't perfect, but it is close, and any one of the people that come into my practice, my receptionist even, could make the connection, and all it takes is a single telephone call, and I'm sitting behind bars being grilled by professionals who know how to make a man incriminate himself. They can even do it to an innocent man. Imagine what they can do to me!'
She allowed the thought to sink in. 'All right, all right…so what you're saying is that even if you had the mole removed, some people who know you would become suspicious because you had the mole removed, and there's no getting away from this damnable mole either way, right? Out, out damned spot, like Lady Macbeth. So… Arthur, no small operation on that mole is going to help us now. Correct?'
'I suppose, yes, yes, that's what I'm saying, so it makes sense to maybe go overseas. I have some money saved up and-and-and I'm thinking of your safety too, sweetheart…sweetheart. I would hate myself if…if, you know, if anything should happen to you, to us.'
