any discharges. That's all Chang could tell us.'
'Yeah…forgot…sorry.'
'Could possibly be some of her DNA on these sheets.' She called out to one of her people, 'Get a CSI unit to scour the place with blue lights for blood spatters and finger-prints, and bag the sheet.' She'd already folded the sheet in on itself with gloved hands to preserve any fibers, hairs, and fluid stains. Setting the bundle aside now, she next upended the mattress, revealing more pornography beneath, this special cache displaying women in horrible submission and bondage, the pictures arousing some deep inner sexual feelings better left unaroused, she silently warned herself. But she was drawn to the photos of women roped and wrapped, their eyes covered, mouths gagged, and was mesmerized until Merrick startled her, yanking the bondage book from her hands, gazing at it liberally himself. 'Still, like I said, can't put this guy away for porn and horn.'
Jana ordered her men to box it all up. She then shouted for help, and with another detective, she upended the box springs. Below the bed, she finally found a place in need of vacuuming, dust bunnies flying.
'Damn it. He hasn't been using the place, not for some time,' she told Merrick and the others. 'We'd have to view the tapes he kept to determine if there's anything what so-ever bearing on the Ripper case.'
'Who knows, you might get lucky,' said Merrick. 'Maybe he taped the abduction, murder, and mutilation of Mira Lourdes and left the video here for you guys to discover.'
Exasperated and angry, Jana gave a fleeting moment's thought to the excitement and expectation that had catapulted her from headquarters to here. She had come with a great hope, that they would find a mountain of evidence here to tie Belkvin to Lauralie Blodgett, and signs pointing a direct route to her whereabouts, and that this preponderance of evidentiary material would bury them both. Leaving with a box of videos, magazines, and dirty books, along with a couple of photos of a guy who might, in a pinch, pass for the man in the artist sketch, was a crushing blow.
She hated the thought of breaking the bad news to Lucas and Meredyth. She hated what this awful woman was doing to Meredyth, hurting Lucas in the bargain. She'd come to realize, watching how Lucas behaved around Meredyth, how very much he did love her, in a way she herself hoped one day to be loved. For this reason, it pained her greatly to see the two of them so victimized. She, like many on the task force, had made a personal vow to not sleep until the person responsible for the ungodly packaging up of human remains to traumatize good and caring people was caught and the assaults ended. And with the murder of Byron Priestly, the resolve had become even greater.
A little corner of her brain also told her she could be misconstrued as being close to Meredyth Sanger-a girlfriend! She could be killed next because of a wrongful perception, the victim of Lauralie Blodgett's semi-random, somewhat predictable violence. But then so could Lucas; in fact, Lucas presented a large and looming target. She wondered if he'd given any thought to the threat hovering over him, that he, more than anyone else in the Ripper's viewfinder, represented Meredyth's present and future happiness and pleasure.
Jana secretly loved Lucas and would willingly die for him; she wondered if he'd take her seriously if she offered to stand bodyguard over him. Not likely. Not likely he would allow it. The macho shit-head.
'What now?' asked one of her men as they were exiting the house with the single box of confiscated pornography.
Neighbors on each side of the apartment and from across the street had gathered, watching and wondering. Jana North pointed to the small gathering of housewives and retired folk and said to her man, 'You and the others, fan out, and let's start interviewing. You know what to ask about. We got his vehicle info from papers found inside, and we've got his personal phone book. What we need are eyewitnesses to her comings and goings here.'
Jana gave a fleeting thought to Lucas's tying her up like one of the women in Belkvin's bondage book. How she would enjoy being at the Cherokee's complete mercy.
'Damm it, North, get a grip,' she muttered.
'What's that, Detective?' asked Merrick.
'Nothing…not a thing.'
'I really am sorry nothing useful was found; despite my cynicism, I truly wanted this to go your way. From what I've read and seen of reports on this case, and what I've learned from my sources in police circles and forensics, this is one sick mother fucking little momma you guys are chasing.'
'You know, Merrick, you aren't a half-bad-looking guy when you're not being so damn cynical.'
'Really? Perhaps I ought to lighten up a bit, if it makes me more attractive to someone as attractive as you.'
This got her attention, and she looked more closely at his eyes-good, strong, clear, moist icy-blue eyes. 'Why, thank you, Merrick.'
'Why don't you call me by my first name.'
'I will if you will.'
Across town, Lucas and Meredyth took the warrant from Harry Jorganson's outstretched hand as if it were a baton in a footrace. Jorganson held back, wishing them good luck as they entered the Bright Day Animal Clinic. Dr. Arthur D. Belkvin's name was emblazoned on the sign below the clinic's name. Lucas and Meredyth held high but tempered expectations of finding evidence to prove this was the location of Mira Lourdes's murder.
Earlier, as they raced to the location, Lucas had confided, 'Where else would he do her but at the site where the tools are readily available, his own cozy operating room in his own clinic? Where else would he feel safe to perform his deadly operations than in surroundings so familiar?'
'Perform is the right word, if he did it for Lauralie.'
Inside, they found a blocky small building reminiscent of someone's basement, a small waiting room area scrunched against the reception desk, and a door leading to the rear, where two separate rooms for examinations and operations stood like barriers to the kennel in the rear.
'You hear that?' asked Lucas as they looked around, flashing their badges for Ms. Jones.
'What? I don't hear nothing,' said MariLouise Jones.
'That's just it, a silent kennel.'
'Oh, well…no, we haven't been operating so well since Dr. B's been gone.'
A quick scan of the place revealed a storage room off the kennels, where the metal cages stood empty of occupants. It was a crowded little area, hardly worthy of the name kennel-a holding place for sick animals. The odors pinched Lucas's nerves.
However, the place was neat, tidy, and clean-too well cleaned, Lucas thought. If they were going to find evidence, it would be masked, he thought. Then he realized there was a gaping space in one of the examination rooms where once a steel table most assuredly had stood bolted to the concrete floor. 'What's not in this room?' he asked Ms. Jones.
Ms. MariLouise Jones, a slender black woman with a pompadour hairdo and manicured nails painted red, stiffened at the question before answering. 'Dr. Belkvin…he had to cut back on his practice sharply in the last few weeks, and he…he tol' me he had da sell one of his operating tables.'
'Anything else sold recently?' pressed Lucas.
'I noticed some of his older surgical tools gone one day.'
'Recently?' asked Meredyth.
'Yeah, recently.'
'Would those tools include a scalpel and a rotary bone saw?' asked Lucas.
'Am I in some kinna trouble here?' she asked where she stood between the two strangers interrogating her. 'Do I need a lawyer?'
Lucas bit his lower lip and instantly pulled out his cell phone, moving back toward the front of the clinic. Stepping just outside, out of earshot of Ms. Jones, he dialed. His call was to Leonard Chang's crime lab. Kelton, standing by here with a handful of other uniformed cops, had assured him that Chang was on standby alert.
In a moment, Chang came on. 'Leonard, it's me. Get a team and a photographer over here pronto, preferably Steve Perelli. We may have something here.'
'Terrific, then you like this guy for the mutilation murder, Lucas?'
'I like him mightily for it, yeah.'
'The bastard chopped her up at his clinic, didn't he?'
'I'd bet my eyeteeth on it. Get this, not only has he wiped the place clean, he's ripped out one of two
