'Damn it, Badger One, report back!' Lucas repeatedly sought information. 'What've we got down there? What're we looking at?'
Through her headphones, Meredyth summed up her assessment of the body language on the ground. 'If we have them, it's bad. A murder-suicide or a suicide pact perhaps?'
'Andrews! Andrews!'
'There he is,' said the pilot, pointing as Andrews, alongside Lincoln, emerged from the front door. Both men looked disheartened and overcome.
'Look for the car, Belkvin's BMW,' Meredyth said, but no vehicle whatsoever came into their considerable view from overhead.
'Badger One, report back,' Lucas asked again from the police whirlybird. 'God, I shoulda been down there.' Then he angrily tore off his headphones and ordered the pilot to set the chopper down in a nearby field.
They had checked with DMV for Belkvin's license plate, and the information matched that given by his secretary-he had only the one car. An exhaustive search by Jana North's people to locate Arthur Belkvin's relatives had turned up nothing. He seemed to be without any familial ties, another clue to his isolation and contributing, no doubt, to his being the perfect beau for Lauralie.
'Damn, I don't see his car out here anywhere,' Meredyth said, cursing their luck. 'Likely they've made off for Mexico as you feared. If so, at least it means an end to the killings, at least for the time being.'
From the headphone in his lap, Lucas heard the helicopter cop in the second hovering craft shouting a response to Meredyth's request. 'No vehicles at all in the open. Still, could be tucked away in the barn.'
'Andrews! What've we got at ground zero?' pleaded Meredyth as their helicopter wobbled to an unsteady standstill in the boulder-strewn field, the rotors and engine still roaring as Andrews's voice came over the radio, saying, 'Flying Wolf, come in…come in.'
'We're here, Elliot, out,' said Meredyth as Lucas replaced the headset.
'We got what appears to be left of Arthur Belkvin, a pair of dead greyhounds, and enough scattered evidence to put Lauralie Blodgett away forever, but we don't have Lauralie.'
Moments before the chopper had bathed the farmstead in brilliant blue-white, Lucas and Meredyth had been watching the single light winking back at them-on-off, on-off-the result of their speeding past the foliage surrounding the dark little farmstead. This light had been left on for them, obliterated now by the radiance of the chopper's floodlights. Meredyth wondered what Lauralie had left under the light inside. She wondered if she really wanted to know.
Lucas didn't hesitate, leaping from his front seat out of the chopper, rushing ahead of her as if he meant to decide this for her. Meredyth climbed from the helicopter, seeing Lucas narrowing the gap between himself and the others now assembled before the broken-down farmhouse doorway-a shaken Captain Lincoln, a deflated Andrews, a businesslike Jana North, and Stanley Kelton in flack gear all huddling together, comparing notes on what was found at each structure. Leonard Chang's CSI van had been immediately called in, and it came right up to the front door, kicking up gravel and rock into a woodpile and pinging against a free-standing fuel oil drum.
Lucas stormed up to the group, anxious to know what they knew about the interior. The noise from the two choppers and the churned-up wind-sweeping debris-filled dirt devils taunting on all sides of them-added to the confusion. Lucas reached the others, and Meredyth saw Andrews throw up his hands as if to wash them of the operation. With Andrews stepping off and Captain Lincoln grabbing Lucas, keeping him from saying another word to Andrews, Meredyth gauged the level of emotions as being at the frayed. Kelton took Lucas aside, trying to calm him as the SWAT team retreated to a respectful distance, and Chang began orchestrating his small army of evidence techs, Lynn Nielsen overseeing the preparation of field lighting going inside the house. Meredyth cornered Lincoln, asking, 'What's in there? What'd you find?' She had to speak over the whump-whump-whump of two helicopters until the earthbound one finally cut its engines. 'It's the rest of Mira Lourdes, isn't it?' She imagined what little remained of the woman dangling on a tether hook.
'No…no sign whatever of the woman, only the freezer they kept her body in,' replied Lincoln.
'Then it's just Belkvin and his dogs inside?'
Lincoln gulped down large doses of the cool night air like a man splashing water into his face, trying desperately not to vomit or show any sign of weakness before the telescopic cameras focusing in on him from some fifty-odd yards away where the press was held in check. Then overhead, a 2News helicopter began competing for space with the police chopper still lighting up the ground. Lincoln tore at the Velcro snaps of his bullet-proof vest, the vest responding with a rending sound, popping open like a loosed girdle, dropping Lincoln's generous stomach out and over his belt-line. 'The man's heart, Meredyth, is literally on his sleeve.'
Her mind immediately went to the old aphorism: He wore his heart on his sleeve. 'She's still making jokes, taunting us.'
'He must've had a real heart-on for her,' Lincoln said, attempting a dark joke. 'The thing is positioned in the crook of his well-posed arms. I think the message she means to convey is that dear old Arthur wore out his welcome in her demented world.'
Lucas had stepped over the torn-away door and had gone into the house, and he now returned to Meredyth. 'She opened up his chest, using a bone saw like a damned can opener, blood everywhere…cut out his heart and handed it to him, not to mention what she did to his Johnson. She cut off his whole package, including the balls.'
'No sign of a car,' commented Kelton, joining them.
'She's long gone,' added Jana North. 'You okay, Lucas?'
'What'd she do with Mira Lourdes's remains?' asked Meredyth. 'Captain, we should have the area around the house and outbuildings, and the interior of the bam, the basement, root cellar all searched for Mira's remains. If we accomplish nothing else here tonight, let's bring her home.'
'I'll so order Andrews, and we'll leave the fine-tuning sleuth work to Chang's CSI unit,' replied Lincoln.
'I want a look inside,' Meredyth said to Lucas.
'It's bad. Mere.'
'I need to do this.'
'Why? Why play her game?'
'Do I have any choice?'
Lincoln looked on, listening to their discussion, his features creased with concern. 'I gotta go deal with the press.'
'Arthur Belkvin's body is laid out on his own operating table, Mere, and-'
'We found the missing table.'
'— and his two dogs, dead on either side of his feet, their bodies posed against the table struts like Egyptian statues, stiff as stone, intact, no violence done to their bodies. Poisoned, it seems. And there's a floor-model Freezer Queen taking up most of the room in the kitchen where a kitchen table ought to be.'
'I gotta get inside, see what she wanted me to see,' she firmly told Lucas.
Lincoln had stopped short, turned, and come back to them where they stood on the porch. 'I want you two to know I've made up my mind. You're to stand down on this case after tonight. Too many eyes on us now, and you're both too emotionally involved, and it's time others had a shot at this madwoman.'
'What others are you talking about, Captain?' asked Lucas.
'All right, Lucas…FBI's coming in on the case now. We need their resources and experience, and we need national and international jurisdictional cooperation. This crazed Blodgett woman could be anywhere in the U.S. by now, or across the border.'
'I'm sure that line will play well on the ten o'clock news, Captain.'
The comment turned Lincoln's calm features into those of an angry gargoyle. 'Hold on there, Lieutenant! That's uncalled for!'
'You gotta give us more time!'
'The hell I do! And what's wrong with getting more help, Lucas?'
'It'll take days to bring them up to date, for one. And we both know that caving into them now is only good for the cameras. That it's all PR bullswallop!'
'Christ, Stonecoat! You know damn well the FBI's coming in on the case whether I invite them or not!'
'You can stiff arm 'em. You know they'll spend hours on disputing our findings, Meredyth's profile, all our hard-earned inches, every clue, and even after all that, if they are finally educated to what we have here, we've lost
