Bracer, a Bic razor, hairpins, a nail file, an eyeliner brush, wrappers in the trash can. Windows had been opened to air out this single bedroom alone, the sashes doing battle with the cobwebs. Someone had wiped clean the surfaces of the furniture, a faint whiff of lemon and Clorox in the air.
When he returned to the others, Lucas suggested Nielsen dust the right rear room for fibers and hairs in the bedding. 'Maybe some DNA from the stains. Looks like another love nest for our happy couple. Other rooms are untouched.' He held up his hands to display the dirt and grime clinging to his plastic fingertips. 'No need wasting your time there.'
'Thanks, Detective, that cuts out a lot of wasted effort,' Nielsen replied.
Lucas watched only for a moment as Chang and Nielsen, using high-intensity flashlights, searched the enormous cavity in Arthur's chest and abdomen. 'Thank God for small favors,' Chang said. 'She only removed the heart.'
'She seems to have left in a hurry. Had to know someone would eventually recognize Arthur from the sketch, his students, people at the clinic, his neighborhood.'
Lucas, hearing Jana North and Meredyth conversing in the kitchen, where they'd migrated, joined them. When he entered, Jana was in mid-sentence. '…doing that to a man she presumably had some use for!'
'In psychiatric terms, emasculating a man says as much about the woman as it does the man,' replied Meredyth. 'I'm sure it had great symbolic and cathartic meaning for her.'
'Imagine what she'd do to a man she had no use for.'
'It would appear his usefulness came to an abrupt end, unless his missing parts show up on my doorstep tomorrow.'
'She's got balls, as they say…literally,' Lucas said, following up on Meredyth's remark.
Jana laughed at the black humor and erupted with a cop joke of her own. 'Like a bad blues song. We'll call it, 'What I Lost for Love.''
Meredyth silenced the laughter, saying, 'For God's sake, the man lost a lot more than his dick. He lost, Jesus, everything he had in this world, not just his life. He lost his reputation…his career…friends, family, colleagues, and finally, after all the emotional and psychological emasculation, she performs a physical emasculation on him. Poor deluded devil probably thought she loved him.'
Chang, overhearing from the other room, called out, 'Mercifully, he was dead when she emasculated him. Can't say the same for the blade going through his chest.'
'That's gotta be some consolation to Arthur,' Lucas dryly called back. Lucas had learned to take Leonard Chang at his word. He knew no one who made better forensic judgments with the naked eye. Chang had showed him on earlier occasions how he could determine which wound of several was first, second, and third in order of coloration and blood loss.
Lucas focused now on the large floor-model freezer unit, seeing that it not only dominated the kitchen area, but that it had been examined already-presumably searched immediately for any sign of Mira Lourdes's remaining parts. An overhead bare bulb lit the old kitchen. Looking down into the cavernous, ice-walled unit, they saw that the frosty bottom was littered with bits and pieces of what appeared to be flesh, blood, and fluid stains. One section looked like the spoilage of an upturned rainbow snow cone, save the colors were muted reds and browns.
The sound of Perelli's camera filled the kitchen now as he too had discovered the freezer unit. Steve did a pirouette about the freezer, creating his video record of the exterior and interior of the thing. 'Chang damn sure has his work cut out for him,' he said to Lucas.
'You got that right.' Lucas then asked Meredyth, 'Seen enough?'
'Where the hell is Lauralie, Lucas?'
'Not in Mexico.'
'Agreed. Yeah… she's not finished in Texas yet, is she?'
The question made Jana North stare at Meredyth and then at Lucas.
Outside, the discordant barking and howling of search dogs fashioned a counterpoint to the whirring of the police chopper.
Jana asked, 'Are you saying. Dr. Sanger, that she's taken what's left of Mira Lourdes with her? That she intends more surprises and packages?'
'Through Christmas if she can. That'd be my guess, Detective.'
Lucas sensed some tension between the two women.
'We should hold judgment, give the dogs time to determine that,' cautioned Jana.
'They won't find her, Jana,' Lucas said.
Meredyth added, 'Lauralie still has her…what's left of her, that is.'
'We don't know that for sure, Meredyth.' Jana had gone to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing, but Meredyth pulled away, stepping to the far side of the room.
Meredyth looked across the top of the now-closed freezer unit and into Jana's eyes. 'Arthur Belkvin's posed body, his exposed heart, and his private parts notwithstanding, Lauralie is still on a mission.'
'A mission?' asked Jana.
'A quest as obsessive as any crusade, as mad as any religious fixation,' replied Meredyth, her voice calm. 'The fixed, tightly packed, impenetrable idea to end what she has begun. And that adds up to my life-or the destruction of my peace for the rest of my life. And she meant for us to find two hearts here instead of one. It was no mistake, her leaving Mira's heart on a shelf, his on his sleeve. It's how the bitch views us, Lucas, me and you-my heart on a shelf and yours in your hand. Her cunning little assessment of our relationship.'
'You really give her too much credit, Meredyth,' Jana replied to this. 'Tell her, Lucas. Go on, tell her.'
'Perhaps you are overstating it, Mere.'
'She took time enough to pose her boyfriend in that grotesque manner with his spirit guides-his animals.'
'Okay, so what?' he asked.
'What is it you Cherokees believe in? Anima-the sacred spirit of animal guardians-the anima in man, the bear, the wolf, the fox, the turtle-all manifestations of the Great Spirit, all spirits put here to guide mankind.'
'What does any of that have to do with-'
'Lauralie knows all about you, Lucas, and your heritage, the culture of the First People, and your penchant for blood vengeance on any who take the life of a family member. She knows you often make decisions based on passion, the heart.'
'You're reaching, Mere.'
'Am I? She also knows me, Lucas. All things Meredyth. For instance, she knows how long now I have put my heart on hold…like a heart in a jar on a shelf put safely up, out of harm's way. So for me, she left Mira's heart.'
'I'm sorry, Dr. Sanger,' said Jana, 'but this all sounds just a little too far out there for me, and I've seen some strange shit in my eleven years on the force. Couldn't it just be that she rushed outta here just ahead of our coming and in her haste simply forgot Mira's preserved heart? I mean, it looks to me as if she'd prepped it for her next mailing to you.'
'I thought you suspected that would be Arthur's balls,' countered Meredyth.
They stood clearly sizing one another up now. 'Did I say that, or was that Lucas's line?' asked Jana.
'Lauralie meant for us to have two silent non-beating hearts, Lucas,' Meredyth said to him. 'One male, one female…one for you, one for me.'
Lucas went to her and put an arm around her, saying, 'Enough. I'm taking you home.' He pointed to the nearest exit, the kitchen door that looked out on the rear of the property where on the map the creek bottom ran. Standing open to the night, the door represented a welcome escape from this hell. 'Come on. What do you say?'
She stared at the shattered creaking door that seemed to breathe in and out, swaying in response to the wind created by the hovering chopper-a breeze that eddied about the frame, marred by a torn screen door, partially ripped away, clinging to a single hinge. The black exterior of forest beyond the door made up a horizon that enveloped this horror house on all sides. The shadows created by men and dogs searching the grounds appeared in, and as quickly disappeared from, the rectangle of the door frame. The cloudless, onyx sky and the freedom of it beckoned Meredyth to step out, to dare the at-hand darkness of the Texas night, to abandon the safe walls of the brightly lit kitchen where, for days now, Mira Lourdes's remains had lain in cold storage. Meredyth had a quick sense of it, the need to act on her courage or to lose it entirely, here and now.
