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.”
He looked around at his place; it was a shambles of opened and unopened boxes. He had never fully relaxed here, wasn't one hundred percent sure he meant to stay. There was a guy across the hall who sometimes sent out banshee wails when he went into delirium tremens, a real alcoholic of the old schooclass="underline" He lived on booze alone. The man looked like death walking. Fleckner was his name, and every time Stonecoat looked into his dead eyes, he feared the reflection, knowing that he himself could be Fleckner at any time, anytime he wanted to give up and give in…
ELEVEN
Over a shared pot of black coffee, the former detective and the police psychiatrist stared at one another. Meredyth got up from the single chair in the apartment, which he'd graciously offered her, to walk about the place and comment on its hardwood floors, and the pictures he'd hung, and the Cherokee blanket hanging from one wall. She began to think aloud as she gazed about the place, saying, “Your Indian bearing, your surroundings, and your natural good looks remind me of Lou Diamond Phillips, the actor, but you're taller, more broad-shouldered.”
Lucas remained stonily cool to all her remarks, some of which were designed to bring him out, to relax him. He knew what she was trying to do. “So,” she finally said, “what'd you think of the fifth case, the Gunther case?”
This case took place back in 1979, and it involved a younger man who really seemed to have nothing whatever in common with the other victims, as he was not a home owner or successful or wealthy in any sense of the word. In fact, he was a metalworker, something to do with automotive bodywork. His name was David Ryan Gunther, but he'd been somewhat new to the greater Houston area, and no one knew from where he had arrived. His body, or what little remained of it, had been discovered in a wooded area, in a little pit hastily covered over by brush and stone and earth, the head severed and missing while all other limbs and parts and members had remained intact. His name was known because of an ID found in the shallow grave. But after repeated police requests for help, including an appearance on the tube by cartoon Officer Take-a-bite-outta-crime, no one had ever come forward to claim the young man's remains.