Meredyth.
'Really? From her photo, she looks like an innocent schoolgirl.'
'We've known child killers before,' countered Meredyth. 'I'm staking my professional reputation on this, Captain.'
'You may have already done so, given the theatrics at the courthouse, your having been pinned to the ground and reportedly transported off in a cruiser, and what, let off after being given a ride home? Meanwhile, your longtime friend is left behind murdered.'
'I'll be proven right, when everything comes out…vindicated in time, I can prom-'
Lincoln put up a finger to gesture for her to hold on one minute. He made a call to his wife, explaining a break in the Ripper case had come and that he would not be making his daughter's engagement party on time if at all. After a bit of back and forth, he hung up with repeated apologies. He then turned back to Meredyth and said, 'Now, start from the beginning, Dr. Sanger, and this better be good.'
'I'll try to connect all the dots for you. Lucas can catch me if I forget anything. This case has more twists in it than a pretzel.'
'Start at the beginning and please, get on with it,' he ordered.
She did so. 'As I said, it starts in 1984 when I was an eighteen-year-old intern at the courthouse. It starts with a six-month-old child I helped place in an orphanage for adoption, a girl named Lauralie Blodgett.' She explained the significance of the victim's name, Lourdes, and how clues had been left for her and Lucas to connect the name to Our Lady of Miracles, to Mother Orleans and her questionable death, to Katherine Blodgett and her questionable death, coming full circle back to Meredyth's connection to Katherine and to her daughter in 1984. When finished, she held out the yearbook photo of Lauralie she had kept in her purse, so different from the head shot used in the press.
Lincoln studied the full body shot. 'Voluptuous for an eighteen-year-old graduate, isn't she?'
'And she knows how to use it,' remarked Lucas.
Meredyth continued, telling him about the record of how, as a young intern, she had signed off on Katherine Croombs giving up her daughter to the Catholic orphanage.
'I called Jack Tebo, my landlord, and asked him to look at the photo in the Chronicle,' Lucas told Lincoln. 'Jack ID'd her, saying she looked older than the girl in the photo, but that it was a dead ringer.'
'So he positively identified her as the courier?' asked Lincoln.
'No hedging, sir.'
'So we have her delivering a package, and you suspect her of multiple murder. But which of the two can you prove?'
'I believe if she's caught, she'll confess to all her crimes,' began Meredyth, stepping to the window and looking out on the late afternoon traffic below. 'In fact, I think that's precisely what she wants from us in the end.'
'Whoa, I don't follow you, Doctor. She wants what in the end?'
'Wants us to give her a forum, a courtroom in which she can vocalize her pent-up rage and anger at all of us, Captain, at you, me, Lucas, the system.'
'It's why she's playing the game, peppering the yellow brick road with clues for us to follow,' said Lucas. 'The Our Lady and Morte de Arthur's return addresses, the contempt shown for her father's grave site, the tackiness of how she buried her mother, the clues she left at the scene of her mother's murder, her selection of a victim named Lourdes purposely for us to make the connection, leading Meredyth to her own past association with Lauralie. And now these recent atrocities at the funeral home and the annex.'
Meredyth turned from the window and added, 'These aren't coincidences, but cries for help, pity, understanding- at least from Lauralie's perspective, she thinks she deserves our understanding, and perhaps, to some degree the monster was created by us.'
'Lauralie Blodgett just graduated. Where do graduates go?' asked Lincoln.
'Most go on a field trip to D.C. or Disneyland,' replied Lucas, 'but I think Lauralie went to Greenhaven Cemetery to deface her father's gravestone instead.'
'Many grads go on to college. Have you checked area colleges for a Lauralie Blodgett or Croombs registering for classes?'
'If not college, then an apprenticeship. Wait a moment.' Meredyth got on the phone and called Mother Elizabeth Portsmith. When she got her on the phone, Meredyth asked, 'What did Lauralie want to become when she grew up? What profession did she wish to pursue?'
'She loved animals. Always kept a small pet. They'd always die on her. She wanted to be a vet.'
'A vet. Did she have a school picked out?'
'She was looking at several in the area, but I don't know that she ever actually enrolled. Still, there's a chance she did.'
'Thank you, Mother Superior.'
'Will you please call me when and if you locate my girl?' she asked.
'Yes, surely.'
'Dreadful seeing her picture on the TV screen alongside that killer. You must stop such nasty rumors.'
'We'll see what we can do, Mother, and thanks again.
'Veterinary schools in the area. We need to check all of them,' she told the men.
'Then let's find her, and when we do, we drag her and her boyfriend in here, and we put them in the pressure cooker and grill their asses until we get a confession from one or the other or both.' Lincoln called Kent on the intercom to come in with a city directory.
Lucas now stood at the window with Meredyth, a protective hand on her shoulder. He said to Lincoln, 'That lunatic was at the courthouse, shadowing Meredyth for a reason. She's plotting to harm her physically now, now that she's already torn away at her emotionally. It's the reason she's been shadowing us, first at the convent, leaving the finger in the fount, and then at the courthouse.'
'All right,' said Lincoln, 'it's going to be a long night. Everyone on the team needs to be brought in on this. Let's pray she has a school transcript, and we work from the information there outward. We'll send cruisers to every damned veterinary school in the city and the suburbs if necessary, and we'll corner this young hellion.'
'Someone in this city has to have some idea where these two are holed up and who they are,' Lucas reassured Meredyth. 'No one is invisible.'
Kent entered with the Houston directory. Lincoln told him to go out and return with directories for the suburbs as well. 'And order us in some food.'
'What do you feel like, sir? Pizza, burgers, Chinese?'
'Anything, Kent, so long as it's hot. And close the door.'
Lucas had quickly found the listings for veterinary schools in the city. 'We'll start calling the task force together, Captain, bring them up to date, if you want to get out of here, attend that party for your girl.'
Meredyth added, 'We can get the word out on the vet schools just as well as you, Gordon. Go on. You can still make your daughter's day.'
'Thanks, Doctor, Lucas. Are you two sure you can handle things without me?'
'Sure we can,' replied Meredyth.
'All right then. Use my office as long as you need it. Food is on me.' He passed Officer Kent, whose arms were full with directories, on the way out, giving one last instruction to his aide. 'Get these two everything and anything they need, Kent, and call your wife, tell her you'll be pulling a double shift.'
Kent frowned and dropped the additional directories on his boss's desk.
Later that evening, the entire Post-it Ripper task force was brought together and brought up to date. Meredyth and Lucas again told their startling story of how Meredyth's friend Byron had died, and how she and anyone close to her had become targets of Lauralie Blodgett's obsession, and the twisted reasoning behind the postings of Mira Lourdes's body parts.
The late edition of the Chronicle carried both photos of Lauralie now alongside that of the mole-faced charcoal likeness of her accomplice. Along with this, the photo carried a cryptic history of how she was a recent graduate from Our Lady of Miracles School. Anyone with any information on Lauralie's whereabouts, or those of the mysterious Mr. X, was asked to call authorities immediately. Both suspects were considered armed and dangerous
