Lucas stood over his desk and punched the memo pad on his computer for any messages. He had it rigged to play the familiar Indian warpath tune to alert on any messages. There were the usual number of reminders of investment opportunities for city employees, 40IK information briefings, AA meetings, town hall discussions on union issues, weekend fish fries and ball games, but nothing from Meredyth. He yawned and dropped into his chair, his arm batting the yellowed Yolanda Sims file, accidentally sending it over the side. Cursing, he bent to pick up the scattered reports and photos, finding Yolanda's image-a close-up of her looking like a death mask, staring back at him in what felt like an accusatory fashion, as if to say, "What've you done for me today?" Gnashing his teeth, Lucas gathered up the aged material, realizing that anyone else would have let it go long before.
"Nineteen fifty-six, Lucas?" asked Detective Harrelson, another cop who worked cold cases. "God, I thought we did away with all the hard copy stuff. Mind?" He lifted it from Lucas's grasp, examining it. "Hell, hardly enough here to call it a murder book. Real bottom-drawer, Lucas. How much time and energy you puttin' in on it?"
"None, not really. Like you said, found in a bottom drawer upstairs and dropped on my desk," he lied.
"You're kidding. Sloppy, huh?"
'Too right."
"Well, calling it a night myself. Catch you in the A.M."
"Night." Lucas found a large brown envelope and dropped the thin murder file into it, not wanting anyone else to third-degree him on it. Harrelson was right. Hardly enough to call it a murder book, he told himself. No one in his right mind would waste valuable time on it; only a fool would pursue it. Lucas called out to Loma Mendez, the in- charge night person here, telling her he was gone for the evening, and going for the door, he stopped, fingered the file in the envelope, and snatched it up, taking it with him.
Outside in the cool evening air, he searched the sky, unable to find a star or a moon, the firmament shut out by a ceiling of artificial daylight, the reflective mirror of an entire city under a blanket of the orange glow of sodium- vapor lights. It made Lucas feel trapped, earthbound. He thought of what city dwellers gave up in the name of safety, wondering if Yolanda Sims might have lived that warm night in 1956 had her neighborhood been lit up then as it was now. No way to determine, no more so than deciding on rain, wind, lightning, hailstorm, an early frost, clear skies on the cusp of an Indian summer. No way to know-given the limited view from here on the precinct steps. On the reservation or in the hills, where his grandfather had taught him to read the desert signs both on the earth and in the sky, things were simpler, easier to read. In the cityscape, with its constant electrical pulse beating in the ears, a tracker like Lucas must travel down concrete canyons that cast deep shadows, and dig in the subterranean recesses for the scum-sucking trolls, the stone- hearted gargoyles, and the urban predators that flourished on this plain. For Lucas, the reward was in putting away such animals, a far cry from frightening off coyotes from the sheep herds with a.22-caliber smooth-bore.
Lucas made his way down the steps to the city's electrical pulse-stepping to the dull music-a reverberating echo rising out of a stone gorge, unrelentingly steady, distant yet near, hollow yet thunderous, the tempo taken up a notch, each time a siren joined in the melody of what was Houston's symphony. The daily Houston metropolitan symphony, he thought as squad cars came and went from the parking lot, uniformed officers bantering with one another, putting each other on, laughing, coaxing a boxing match here and there. Across the street a firehouse bustled with men returning from a fire call, and somewhere another siren sounded as a city bus belched and roared in its effort to accelerate, a kind of urban pachyderm putting everyone on notice, charging ahead. Lucas's nostrils pinched with the odors of the city, his throat clogged with the spent emissions, as his ears took in the sound of the city. How long, he wondered, before a man became absorbed by it all to no longer be apart from it?
Walking toward the lot, he caught the scintilla of a fresh coppery odor flit by-ozone. So there was electricity in the air overhead, promising rain to a parched city, teasingly so. Beyond this, Lucas smelled discarded and molding foodstuff and the trail of rats scurrying about the sewers underfoot. He thought of how just below the surface of calm lived the degenerates, the sociopaths, the kind of man who could slice up a woman and send parts of her to him and to Meredyth, and the kind of man who could take the life of a small child in 1956 and get away with it all these years, the kind of man who had no compunction about his crimes then or now.
"Lucas, that you?" asked a beefy uniformed cop passing him in the lot. "It's me, Pete."
"Pete Blackhorn! Been a while. I thought you were in the Two-five now." Blackhorn was one of the few other Native Americans on the force. He was an Alabama mixed Sioux, who went by Pete Black in the white world.
"Just transferred over. Heard about that nasty package you and Dr. Sanger got. Weird shit, man. What's up with that?"
Lucas and Blackhorn had been in the academy together, and while they occasionally bumped into one another on the job, they had not seen each other socially since those days at the academy.
"How'd you hear about it, Pete?"
Blackhorn blew out air. "You kidding? It's all over the precinct and the res. I've had calls from the family. Word out at the Coushatta is you and Billy Hawk have bad blood going again. That true?"
"Fuckin' gossips're going to make it true if they repeat it enough. Shit, aside from everything else, I'm going to have to look over my shoulder for that damned fool cousin of mine?"
"What is it the cowboys say, amigo? You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your kin?"
"You get a chance, set the record straight. There's no feud going on between Billy and me, understood?"
"Then you don't think he sent you and your white friend those Care packages?"
"No, I don't. Eunice Tebo and her cronies are at it again, stirring up ancient history they can't let go of. They got no fucking life of their own, do they?"
"Not to speak of… not so's you'd notice, no. But it's you too, Lucas."
"Whataya mean, me?"
"It's 'cause you're you, Stonecoat, Houston's most decorated Native American cop. You kidding? On the res, you're like Jimmy Smits or Lou Diamond Phillips, man. Get used to it."
"Indian tabloid press headlines, I know, and I'm sick of it."
"Can't bury a story like this. It's got everything. Red hero, white blond heroine, old love in the background, and Billy Hawk playing the heavy."
"Blackhorn, it's most likely some nutcase who's seen me on TV or read about Meredyth in the papers and is going for his fifteen minutes of fame by targeting us."
"Yeah, that sounds more logical, agreed."
"Some lunatic demanding his place in the media spotlight beside the 'luminaries' of murder history."
"So you want me to put it on the grapevine like that for you?" Blackhorn had extensive family ties on the reservation, whereas Lucas's had dwindled to a handful of distant relatives.
"I'd appreciate it, yeah," he said to Blackhorn.
"You know, it's also all over the station house too, Lucas, and speculation's pointing a finger at that guy they call Itchy and some of his crowd."
"I'm aware," Lucas replied, his shoulders heaving in a gesture of defeat. "I had hoped for some time to work the case before it became gossip fodder. Next it'll be headline news."
"Wouldn't be the Three-one or Houston if it were otherwise, amigo."
Lucas failed to say that he had himself started the ball rolling downhill on Arnie Feldman and his pals, but as for the Houston Chronicle and papers like the Star Gazette getting hold of it this soon in the investigation, he hoped not. Still, given the sheer number of people involved in the crime-scene work, Pete was right. The newshounds would soon be all over the story. He wondered how best to protect his and Meredyth's identities when the story of this bizarre attack on a detective and a forensic psychiatrist broke. He'd have to rely on the discretion of an army of so-called professionals, some of whom did not particularly care about his comfort or discomfort.