Stan hadn't skipped a beat. "Still, if we could find the delivery guy….Any case, this package arrived for you. Been at central desk all day, except for the time spent in X ray with the bomb squad."
"X ray? Bomb squad?"
"Given what's up, regarding the incidents with you and Detective Stonecoat, I thought we'd best be cautious. The X ray cleared it, found it to be what it purports, office supplies from Staples."
She took the hefty package from Kelton and thanked him for his thoroughness, recalling making the order through her secretary.
"Sad day when we have to tiptoe around our own mail," he said as he closed the door behind himself.
Meredyth took a moment to examine the artist's sketch of the man Stuart Long, her doorman, had described. Kelton wasn't kidding. It was so generic, it could be mistaken for the Wal-Mart happy face, or any fourth person she might encounter on the street with a pudgy face and spectacles. The glasses perched on the nose didn't help to make the picture distinctive.
Alone with the unopened package, Meredyth now stared at it, realizing that until this madman was caught, she'd have to question every item of mail coming to her at home, here at the precinct, and at her private practice.
She grabbed up a letter opener and ripped open the small box forwarded from the office supply shop down the street. True, it was unmarked save for the shop's logo, and true, it could have been hiding something sinister beneath its brown wrap, explaining Kelton's caution over it, but why did she have to live like this? It recalled the anthrax- letter scare of the fall of 2001.
She then noticed an unopened manila envelope in her in box. It could be from another department in the precinct, it could be from another precinct, or it could be from him, the maniac that had taken a deviant interest in her and in Lucas.
Using the letter opener, Meredyth carefully unfastened the metal clip on the file-sized envelope. It proved to be routine papers on several uniformed cops, two plainclothes detectives, and a captain, all of whom needed her expertise in dealing with street shootings and work-related stress, and for routine psychological checkups. Every cop who fired his weapon, justified or not, underwent psychiatric review to determine how he or she was coping with the results of his or her actions. A cop who was having serious marital problems that had or could escalate to physical abuse, and some engaged in verbal and emotional abuse situations, looked to her for help. The yearly diagnosis, tests, and checkups were departmental policy.
Lately, there had been a rash of police-involved shootings. These things went in waves, it seemed to her, almost as if one police shooting begot another, as if news of one infected a squad. Perhaps it did. Someone ought to do a study, she thought, but good luck to the shrink who tried. As a group, cops proved the most uncooperative of clients she had ever treated.
She shut off her light and stood up, about to leave, when she heard someone in the outer office. Had Kelton returned? She called out, "Stan? Is that you?"
No answer.
She opened the door between her office and her secretary's office. No one there, but the door leading to the hallway stood ajar.
She rushed to the door and stared down the hallway. Empty of life, but she heard a door close and footsteps on the stairwell. She reached into her purse for the hefty little.38 Smith amp; Wesson that Lucas had taught her to fire. She inched toward the stairwell door and peeked through the crack to find the stairwell empty, but the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps rose from below, someone in a desperate rush. Known for his laid-back attitude and general laziness, Kelton was not one for rushing anywhere, and would surely have taken the elevator.
Meredyth pushed through the door marked STAIRS, and she rushed after the sound of the footfalls.
Whoever it was, he or she had gone to the basement, heading for the small police garage. Most of the units were parked in an open-air lot, but anyone servicing the building and willing to fight for a space in the underground lot, other than the spots reserved for police brass, might park there. There was no gate or toll booth to bother with in this first-come, first-served garage.
Pushing through the door to the underground lot, she saw a dark blue sleek Mercedes or BMW sedan rushing up the ramp, disappearing too quickly to scan the license plate. She neither saw nor heard another sound in the lot, the garage as silent as a tomb, a ghostly grayness filling the space all around Meredyth.
Then she saw it. A small package on the floor of the garage, just sitting there as in a dream, as in a Dali painting, out of place here, staring back at her. All her horror of the night before over opening the parcel containing the eyes and teeth came rushing back at her. She recalled the CD and the chilling lyrics, I had the time of my life….
She got on her cell phone and called Kelton upstairs, telling him she'd followed a man who'd entered her outer office and fled to the basement, where she now stood staring at yet another brown-paper-wrapped box the shadow man had left behind.
"Geeze, Doc, I just left you," Kelton lamented.
"Stan, he must've been right on your heels. I thought he was you!"
He remained dismayed. "We were just talking in your office!"
"Just please send a couple of broad-shouldered uniforms down here to take control of this…this box and this…possible crime scene, will you, Stan?"
"On it, Doctor."
"And get some of Chang's people down here."
"Soon as the bomb squad clears the package of explosives, Dr. Sanger. They're on alert and on the way with an X-ray device. They'll get a clear picture of what's inside the thing."
"Just get me some muscle down here for now."
She heard Kelton shout at two officers to rush to her aid. "Someone will be right there. Dr. Sanger," he said. "Stay calm."
'Trying to…trying to, Stan." She inched closer to the package. It was slightly larger than the one she'd gotten at home, but the familiar block lettering in her name and in the address of the 31st Precinct appeared to be by the same hand. Whoever had torn out of the lot had left it for her, knowing she was following.
She quickly dialed Lucas's cell phone.
Lucas was halfway home to his apartment, picturing the henpecked Jack Tebo-urged on by Eunice- rehearsing how he would tell Lucas to take his things and get out of the flat by end of week. He wondered where he would go, and groaned at the thought of finding another place to live, dreading the idea of a move. He had put a lot of holes in Tebo's walls, hanging them with traditional blankets and his gun collection. Where else in the city would he be free to do that without hassle? He'd also miss the proximity of draft beer and hot meals. If Eunice was good for anything other than gossip, it was her fine Native American cooking. No one could beat her homemade cornbread and biscuits, her venison stew or Southwestern veal omelet.
With these thoughts sifting through his head, he almost missed the sound of his cell phone. Snatching it off his belt, he said, "Stonecoat."
"Lucas! It's me!"
"Mere? What's up?"
"My blood pressure, I need you again."
"What is it?" He recognized the fright in her voice.
She shakily informed him what had occurred. When she was still in mid-story, he made a U-turn, stopping traffic and garnering curses, horns, and gestures from the motorists around him. "I'm on my way back! Sirens and lights!" He placed the strobe light atop his car and switched on the siren. 'Ten minutes tops! Be there. Hold on."
By the time Lucas had returned, he found the police parking garage crawling with cops and crime-unit technicians, and among them, a bomb squad official and a bio- threat cop in protective wear sharing a light for their cigarettes, having already determined that the box contained nothing of interest to either of them. Lucas also saw Dr. Lynn Nielsen, and beside her, Dr. Leonard Chang carefully, painstakingly opening a wooden box with a Styrofoam lining, a mite larger than those they had seen the night before, but the packaging distinctively the same.