"Maybe you ought to take some time off, visit a relative or friend. Leastways go stay at your parents' house in Clover Leaf like Leonard said."
"Get outta Dodge, you mean? Run and hide? Nice try, and thanks for the protective thoughts, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let some nutcase chase me from my home and duties. No, I've got a full calendar both at the precinct and at my private office downtown. So, if you don't mind, sweetheart, get me there on time."
As they pulled up to Meredyth's condo, he pointed out the doorman and asked, "Is that the fellow who delivered the bundle of eyes to your door, Mere?"
"No, that's Max. You want the day man, Stu. Max comes on at ten P.M."
"So when does Stu come on duty?"
"Nine, nine-thirty in the morning, somewhere in there."
"Someone needs to grill him about who handed him the package. Maybe we can get a composite going."
"I'm sure he'll cooperate. I'll ask him to drop by the Thirty-first on my way out. Now stop worrying," she said, exiting the car. "You do love me, don't you?"
"I do, Mere. I've always loved you, but you know that."
"I haven't…not always, not when you were with Tsali."
"That was a mistake. I know that now."
She leaned in though the window and kissed him goodbye.
"Are you sure you're up to driving?" he asked.
"Worrywart. Lucas, I want my own car, and I want to walk through that door and up to my home without fear. I won't be run out of my apartment any more than I'll be run out of my life."
"Despite my misgivings, I respect your motives and wishes, so I am smiling and saying see you later, my white Anglo beauty."
Meredyth waved him off as he pulled away from the curb. In his rearview, he watched her go toward the safety of her door. Earlier, he had scanned the entire street, looking in all directions for anyone appearing suspicious or overly interested in either of them. The only one seeming to take notice of Meredyth was the night-shift doorman, who courteously opened the door for her as he chimed, "Good morning, Dr. Sanger. I do hope all is resolved and you won't have any further problems."
"Thanks, Max, and would you have Stuart ring me upstairs when he comes on? I have to speak with him."
"Sure, sure, Dr. Sanger."
"Thanks, Max, and for your concern last night and this morning."
"Don't mention it, ma'am. Only wish I coulda done more, Dr. Sanger. If you'd like, I could ride up to your place with you, have a look around before you go inside, if you'd like, I mean."
"That won't be necessary, Max. I'm the only one with a key, and it's thirty floors up. Not likely to be anyone lurking inside, but thanks for the thought all the same."
Max tipped his hat to her and nodded. "You're welcome, ma'am, Doctor."
She went for the elevator, feeling Max's eyes on her, curious or sympathetic, most likely both. She also wondered at the creeping inchworm of doubt that suggested that Max or Stu or any number of people she saw on a daily basis in the building could have had something to do with frightening the hell out of her and Byron the previous night. Foolish thought, she reasoned, but when the elevator door opened, she had to smile at four people exiting the building who smiled back, all long-term tenants save one, the newest face in the building, a petite but buxom young girl in jogging suit, her Jack Bull terrier straining at his leash as they exited the elevator.
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Morning."
They all sounded genuine; they all looked harmless enough. They all also had heard something about police and a coroner's van having descended on their condo homes. She could only imagine the buzz at the next owners association meeting.
How much did her neighbors know? How much had Max already revealed to the people living in the building? Who was that new girl? What'd she do for a living? Wasn't there some association rule about dogs in the building when she had bought into her condo? What had happened with that?
The elevator doors closed on Meredyth, and she found herself alone with all the dizzying bombardment of questions and the whirring vibration of the cab ascending to her floor. "Who's wanting to make me fear my own neighbors?" she asked aloud.
She arrived at her floor, glad to exit the confining cab and briskly walked to her door. But she was stopped on seeing a note tucked beneath the knocker. It made her pause.
"Likely just a concerned neighbor," she told herself. She stepped up to the door and snatched the note open.
It was from Byron. A note of apology. Said he'd been back to look in on her. Felt panicked at being unable to reach her by phone. Tried her parents' house in Clover Leaf. When that failed, tried driving out to Lake Madera to the ranch house getaway, but car threw a gasket. Repair took hours. Returned here by cab, knocked knuckles raw. Gave up. Again sorry for rude behavior in having abandoned her when she most needed him. Signed By.
"Fuck you, Byron," she replied, pushed the door open, and stepped into her home.
The message light on the phone blinked so rapidly it seemed to be screaming at her. Byron, no doubt.
As she changed, she thought of how best to break it off with him. What she really wanted to break off, however, would get her jail time.
Once at his Precinct 31 basement office, Lucas Stonecoat found his wide oak desk as cluttered as ever with pending caseload work-Houston criminal cases gone unsolved for generations, known as cold cases. Cold casework had become Lucas's expertise, as he had spearheaded tracking the backlog for a decade now. When he had first come on as a Cold Case detective, he'd found the basement offices here a cluttered library filled with dust- laden files and boxes bulging with the murder books on people whose often violent and mysterious deaths had gone unanswered and untangled. Confronted by whole walls from floor to ceiling filled with files Lucas had transferred to computer disks. The old files themselves were in the process of being destroyed, most already at the city dump incinerators, but one murder file had intrigued Lucas, had in effect called out to him, and so he had set it aside, saving it from destruction. Its uploaded counterpart on the computer screen didn't have the same aura of spirit surrounding the hard file and the actual crime-scene photos, only three of which could be transferred to the database, that number having been agreed upon by those in charge in order to save on memory.
Lucas had stockpiled hundreds of murder-scene photos dating as far back as the 1890's with the intention of creating a publishable book with comments on each photo from a forensic photographer-Perelli, a forensic shrink- Meredyth, and a murder cop-himself. But the project had bogged down as all of them were kept so busy in their respective fields, and while Lucas himself dealt with overseeing the enormous task of transferring hard files to disk. While he had a crack team of men and women under his direction who worked independently and well without a lot of supervision, the Cold Room created its own steady stream of work-related headaches.
Lucas had been assigned the Cold Room files from the moment he had walked into Precinct 31, and he had made the task his own, coordinating with every precinct in the city to create a database of Cold Cases for use across the city, the state, and the nation. While the COMIT program had limitations, he had had the files cross-referenced with Detective Jana North's Missing Persons division. She had unsolved cases dating back to the 1920's. She'd admired what he had done with the Cold Case murder bonks, and now she was coordinating MP files in other jurisdictions with her own, modeling the COMIT in her area of expertise. Other cities, across the state and the nation, had begun to fashion similar programs after the Houston model, and as a result, Lucas had often been called away to assist in developing those programs. Even the FBI had taken an interest in COMIT, giving Lucas an opportunity to visit Washington, D.C., and to meet such luminaries as the Director of the FBI and forensic guru Dr. Jessica Coran.