"That's a lie. Who's feeding you all these lies about me?"
"— and in the bargain, you told the city the name of the victim whose parts have been scattered all over this county by Blodgett. Christ, did you give one damn thought to Mira Lourdes's family, their wishes, Frank?"
"Captain Lincoln might have something to say about all this bullshit. Doctor." Patterson contemptuously spat his final word.
"Captain Lincoln has had something to say about this, Frank, and he agrees with my decision."
"We'll just see about this." Patterson lifted his cell phone and speed-dialed Lincoln.
Chang stormed up the stairs, where the blood-spattered wall had been completely removed and lay now on the kitchen island block. Two men worked at spraying a clear plastic preservative and adhesive over its surface.
Frank always had a problem working with women. He would handpick those working under him, but Tory had been foisted on him at the last by Chang, who wanted her, like Lil, to gain some experience in the field.
Chang watched the two men spending so much time over the section of wall. He thought it an awful lot of effort to go through, preserving the blood- and brain-spatter evi-dence in such an old-fashioned form. The space it would take up alone threw it into question since a single state-of- the-art series of high-resolution photos could tell them the same thing in the hands of the right man, though in this case, it was Jeannie Wyatt, the right woman. But this was Frank's scene and so Frank's call.
Leonard found Nielsen had dealt with the remains of Mira Lourdes-bagged and in the caravan now. Chang ordered the van to take what they had directly back to the lab in Houston, calling for another larger vehicle to accept the Brodys when and if Frank ever finished inside.
"Best you not be here when Frank emerges from the basement," Chang told Nielsen. "I just fired his ass. Fool had the gall to suggest you and me were having an affair, and that I wanted to give you his job in return for sexual favors."
"That's so like him, Leonard. I can't tell you how I relish the idea of one day walking into the lab and finding him gone."
Together, they climbed back into Chang's car, preparing to leave the Brody home. "I'm placing you in charge of all the evidence collected on Meredyth's side of the lake, Lynn."
"What? Really?"
Chang drove back for the Sanger house. "See to it all the bodies and anything that's been bagged from all the various grids, the photos, the vehicles-that it all gets back to the crime lab and the morgue, and whatever you do-"
"Do not break the chain of command, I know."
"That goes without saying, but also do not turn anything over to Frank if he should have the impudence to try taking command."
She smiled widely at this. "You won't be disappointed, Leonard, I promise you. Count on me. But where're you going to be?"
"Hospital. Check up on my friends."
He dropped her at the Sanger house and heard her commands carrying all the way down the drive, and likely across the lake, as he made his way back toward the Interstate and Houston. As he drove, he punched on his radio, searching for music to get the images of this day out of his mind. Ads filled the airways, and the search button stopped on a news report: An army of FBI, ATF, Houston, and Harris County law-enforcement personnel descended on Madera Lake in the early hours of this morning to investigate multiple murders at two crime scenes there. Too early to tell, but the buzz is that somehow the Post-it Ripper case has invaded this sleepy, peaceful area near the Navasota River reservoir….
Chang popped on a Mozart CD, struggling to escape the news and the stress. He got on the phone and called home to his wife for the second time today. The first time was to inform her of Lucas's having been shot twice and about his being in hospital in serious condition. This time he began by asking how she was doing, asking after the kids, apolo-gizing about the forty-eight-odd hours or so he had seen none of them, ending with a retinue of complaints about the job, the system, Lincoln's pomposity, of having had to fire Frank because of Frank, and the general callousness of the world.
Finally, his wife Kim stopped him, saying, "Len-len, he is going to be all right. I just know Lucas is going to be all right."
"How do you know? Have you heard from Meredyth?"
"No, I just have one of those intuitions. I just know."
"Kim, the man is listed in critical, unstable condition. He's in a coma, and he lost so much blood." The strings of Mozart filled the cab and traveled through the phone connection to her ear.
"You once told me that coma is nature's way of dealing with shock."
"Yes, but-"
"And you once told me he's a fighter. He'll pull through."
"Are you clairvoyant?"
"I have faith, as so you must."
"How? How do you have faith, Kim, in the face of all…all I have seen on this day? All that this single crazed individual did to so many innocent people, the ripple effect to their families, to the collective fabric…to the soul of humankind?"
"Faith, Leonard. It's all we have left in the end, faith and one another."
He said nothing.
"My hand is covering yours, my lips cover yours, my arms are folding around you, Len."
He glanced at her photo, kept always overhead in his car, and he mentally embraced her. "I am holding you too. I love you, dear one."
She replied, "I know… you are a thoroughly married man with three children who love you too. My thoroughly caring husband."
"True, I love you thoroughly, my wife."
"Yes, and it makes me happy. When will you come home to us?"
"In two hours."
"Then you really mean four?"
"All right, four."
"You sound so tired. How can you work with such necessary precision if they don't let you get rest?"
"I've got to learn to delegate more now that I have someone capable of taking over for me…thoroughly."
"Dr. Nielsen?"
"I turned over a multiple-murder scene to her, Kim. You have to be proud of me for that. Isn't that what you want for me? Patterson could never be trusted to do things right."
"I am glad for you, Len-len, so why will it take you four hours then?"
"I'm on my way back to Houston now, but I want to stop over to see how Meredyth is doing, and to see Lucas for myself. Go over his charts. Give Dr. Sanger any slight hope I might find in them."
"Do you wish me to meet you there?"
"Yes…yes, I do."
East Houston, the Colony in the Glade home of Paul and Caroline Sanger
Wearing a cleaned and pressed new Colony Security uniform and hat, Mike Wilson pulled up to the Sanger home in his official Colony vehicle with but one thing on his mind-impress, caress, and best Miss Lauralie Sanger from out of town. She hadn't called him back, and his repeated phone calls to the house had gone strangely unan-swered. He went so far as to leave messages on the answering machine. The Sangers were due back today, but when he arrived, he saw no sign of their being home. Perhaps they'd been delayed at some point on their long journey home from Paris.
He skipped up the stone steps to the huge Colony in the Glade home on Will-o'-the-Wisp Court. It was the largest of the models, called the Palatial in the brochures. The Sangers hadn't owned it long. They had reportedly moved off a large estate in North Houston to the Clover Leaf area, the home there having become too much for them to care for since retirement, especially since they had become world travelers. "Can't imagine the size of the house that got away from them," he'd told Jake Everly, his friend and superior on dispatch duty today. Mike had boasted that he'd met the young daughter, and he'd wagered they'd be dancing at Cimarron Kate's Cow Bam tonight. If he had to, he'd teach Lauralie how to square-dance.
He rang the doorbell, humming an old tune he now tried to recall the lyrics to. "If you could read my mind, love…what a tale…what a story… what a…To hell with it. Come on, Lauralie…baby…answer the fucking door. Getting cold out here."