pretty well created a hell from which there appeared no escape, save perhaps Dr. Meredyth Sanger's plans for Lucas, anyway…
It was a convoluted mess already, and he hadn't done a thing beyond reading the files. So he worked, trying to see all she saw in the files, hoping to learn what, by God, had alerted her to the similarities in the first place-such as they were. Some of the answers, particularly regarding her, eluded him like a trout in two feet of water. He could see the prize, but picking it up was going to be near impossible, like falling in love with a woman who had devoted herself to a lifetime of love for a mission, a spirit, or God. He may as well declare it a useless enterprise and “step back,” as the rappers would say.
“Maybe it's me,” he told himself, sipping at what remained of his beer, wondering if he ought to spike it with some Red Label. He would have to use some sort of drug or drink to get any sleep tonight, to get past the three- pronged problem of pain, insomnia and loneliness.
Sure, there was a great deal of similarity between the other cases, beyond the obvious fact that they remained unsolved: The victims had all died of a massive blow to the heart or chest with a spear or arrow. Once again, semantic errors abounded in the reports, arrow and spear being confused. A spear was a lance, sometimes six times the size of an arrow, but these were white cops filling out reports at two and three in the morning, and words like spear and arrow were interchangeable in a brain of putty. But there were also distinctly dissimilar crime scene facts here. Not all the victims had been mutilated after the initial kill, and some only partially, but none perfectly matched the extensive mutilation damage done in the more recent cases of Palmer and Mootry.
Maybe Palmer and Mootry were connected, and the connections seemed clear, but not so with the other bodies, at least not on paper.
A fellow by the name of Bennislowe-poor slob-along with his wife and daughter were all slain in brutal fashion, all three with metal arrows fired nastily through their hearts, but their bodies were not mutilated-no chopping off of hands, feet, head, or private parts. Also, this awful occurrence had taken place many years before, in 1981 in the Brier Forest area, the outskirts of Harris County. When it had been unofficially closed and detectives put to other duties-murder cases technically remained open for ten years-relegated to the Cold Room, in 1984, with no likely suspects, the Palmer killing had been less than two years off.
Were the HPD cops at the time blind, careless, stupid or all of the above? A careful check showed that each case had been handled by different detectives in differing precincts. Lucas wondered how many had retired between these incidents and gone to Florida or California. In any event, no one save Meredyth Sanger had considered the cases together, as a whole. He again wondered why her… why had Meredyth of all people come upon this startling string of events? What had been her springboard? What had first prompted her to ask, What if?
Prior cases also involved high-tech, tempered-steel arrow shafts, one of these again fired through a window- an open window this time-directly into the victim's chest, missing the heart but causing such trauma as to leave him dead nonetheless. This fellow's name was Charlton Whitaker, and his head had been lopped off and carried away by the ghoul who'd killed him. The head had never been recovered, the killer never found. Sometime later, Whitaker's grave was disturbed, his family crypt opened, and additional mutilation to the body occurred: hands and feet fiendishly severed and carted off, along with private parts.
Lucas winced at the thought of lying peacefully in a grave somewhere, already missing his head, and here come grave-robbing ghouls to take his privates and extremities- why and for what purpose? It sounded cultish, and certainly these days there were enough cults to choose from. However, the records showed that police investigated every known cult in the area for any hint of involvement, only to come up completely empty-handed.
Whitaker's wife, parents, and all others in the crypt were disturbed in the process, arrows placed through the corpses at the heart as well, the “dead victims” left like so many staked vampires.
The trail of Whitaker's killer or killers led detectives down multiple paths and directions ending in frustration, making some believe that the death of the wealthy financier had been tied into some sort of international intrigue beyond the kin and scope of the Houston Police Department. A second theory involved neo-Nazis and hatred of Jews, as Bennislowe was Jewish. Another theory had Charlton Whitaker somehow mixed up in a weird religious cult of some sort which had exacted this ritual vengeance on him. None of these theories had gotten detectives anywhere.
The phone rang, and he had to search a moment to find it among the debris of boxes. Picking it up, he asked, “Yes?”
“Stonecoat?” It was Meredyth Sanger. “Have you had an opportunity to look over some of the files I suggested?”
“You don't waste time, I see.” A quick glance at his watch showed him it was almost two A.M.
“So, whataya think?”
“I think you're reaching.”
“Maybe… or maybe you don't want to see what's before your eyes? I know it will mean bucking some broncos, cowboy, and maybe you're not quite up for that these days? Perhaps you prefer a quiet little desk job in the base-”
“Hold on, there, Dr. Sanger. Hell.” Lucas stopped himself, covering the mouthpiece in order to mutter to himself, “Damn, but she's got some nerve.” Then he said to her, “Look, if the goddamned detectives who handled the cases at the time, the men who were that close to the case and time frame of the murder couldn't do anything about it, what kind of fool am I to think that I can step in and pick up a scent on this, after all these years.”
“Still, there's the Mootry case.”
“What about it?”
“It's still warm and palpitating.”
He involuntarily nodded and thought, Yeah, and for some unknown reason, it has enticed Dr. Meredyth Sanger to all these additional gruesome events.
He finally said, 'Taken separately, these cases might simply be random acts of violence.”
She seemed to agree, saying, “The mindless work of the inhuman types who walk upright and look like men, but whose minds are those of monsters, their occupation that of stalking the streets of every city in America, the kind of men police routinely call depraved, self-indulgent animals.”
She was speaking of a sort Stonecoat had seen time and again in his long years as a peace officer. The sort who- having had a few snorts of cocaine-decide to pull into any driveway, scale any wall to attack the nearest man, woman or child they could lay their bestial hands on just for the sheer hell of it, for a thrill only the truly criminal- minded understood, as kicks to ward off the boredom and monotony which so characterized their otherwise dull and miserable lives.
Lucas said, “So far as I can make out, neither Whitaker nor Bennislowe had anything remotely in common with either Palmer or Mootry, save strong ties to the community and an upstanding and exemplary life. Tying the cases together in one neat package just isn't going to happen, Dr. Sanger.”
“Meredyth,” she mildly corrected him.
“I mean, you've got a retired judge, a surgeon, a real-estate broker, a car salesman turned megabucks- filthy-rich when a theme park bought up his family's old homestead to build on. The other victims seem only afterthoughts, incidentals who happened to be in the… the way when… when-”
“When the random act of violence was in full swing?” she facetiously asked.
“All right, I admit there are some questions, lingering doubts, loose ends,” he replied.
“Look, would you mind terribly if I came up to your place and we talked further about this?”
“Where are you?”
“At a place called Bonevey's, across the street.” Bonevey's was the all-night diner across the street. He could see the place from his window. “How did you know where I live? Never mind. You ever been under psychiatric care, Doctor?”
“Whataya mean, physician heal thyself?”
“I'm just not sure I care to be stalked, even if you are-”
“Are what?”
“-A beautiful woman.”
“Trust me, Lucas Stonecoat. My interest in you is purely professional.”
He hesitated a moment before saying, “I'll put some coffee on.”
“Don't go to any trouble on my account.”
This made him laugh. “I'm apartment 15B, but then you know that. Come on up.”
