"Yeah, now all we need is to answer the question of who would want Mira Lourdes dead and why."
"And why the game with the body parts?"
"Someone who can tell us all about what only he and we know."
"Chang says the hand was severed with a powerful rotary saw, exactly the sort used in an autopsy," added Davies. "Very odd game he is playing with you and Dr. Sanger, odd indeed. Well, I'm exhausted and am going home now."
"Yeah, kind of tired myself. Think I'll go take a shower."
"Good luck on tracking down this fiend, Detective."
"Thanks, I'm doing my damnedest."
Lucas hung up, deciding he could use that shower and some foreplay with Meredyth, and perhaps convince her that they should take the day off. He went toward the bed-room, stripping away his shirt and pants, going for the shower. Inside the bathroom, a steam cloud filled the space, billowing out at him and the adjacent bedroom. He stripped down completely now, dropping all his clothing and stepping into Meredyth's cloud, recalling her peyote dream of the other night.
When he opened the shower door and stepped through the cloud and into the cascading spray, he took her in his arms and kissed her, his long mane of hair blending with hers.
"Just what the hell're you doing?" she said in mock alarm.
"I've come to fulfill your dream."
"We're not the least conceited now, are we, Lucas Stonecoat?"
"No, I mean, I am stepping into your cloud…like in your dream? Coming into your dream cloud." He held his arms out to indicate the steam cloud around them.
She laughed. "Oh, yeah…I get it, stepping into my cloud."
"You see me now, don't you? That I belong in your cloud with you?"
"Perhaps clearly for the first time," she replied, wrapping her glistening, soap-covered arms around him. She kissed Lucas, and he returned the kiss. She ran her fingers through his long hair, saying, "Let me wash that long mane of yours, my Indian lover."
Lucas turned his back to her and allowed her to do exactly that.
BY MID MORNING THEY were driving to downtown Houston and the precinct. On the trip, Lucas brought Meredyth up to date on Dr. Davies's findings, that they had an identity for the Jane Doe whose body parts some geeky- looking wacked-out maniac was sending to them piece by piece.
When Lucas told her the name of the victim, Meredyth repeated it, "Mira Lourdes…Mira Lourdes…means nothing to me. What possible connection is there between us, Lucas? What do we know about her?"
Lucas told her all that they had learned of Mira Lourdes, and how she had supposedly disappeared. "I suspect her abduction was random, that it had to do with her placing the ad, and inadvertently letting her guard down, placing herself in a vulnerable position by going with this couple seen by the neighbor, unless the boyfriend's story is a complete fabrication. I'm sure we'll be talking a great deal more to him if he doesn't lawyer up."
They fell silent as the car whizzed past gas stations, fast-food restaurants, newsstands, parking garages, bus stops, churches, mosques, all reflecting off the windshield. "Wonder what that chemical odor was that Stu smelled on the guy who delivered the package," she said, breaking the silence.
"Anything from disinfectant to formaldehyde, I suppose," replied Lucas. "Points again to a medical type of some sort."
"Do you really think we're dealing with some kind of medical Jack the Ripper?"
"The way the organs were sliced…the precision…the way her hand was severed so cleanly with a surgical saw. Not to mention the removal of the teeth, and the eyes intact. Yeah, I'd bet on it; our guy is a medical man."
"Or a butcher, or a carpenter, or a barber. Hell, he could be anyone, Lucas! A lousy failed gynecologist or Navy chef, any moke with the right tools for plucking out eyes and pulling teeth and cleaving off a hand."
"Whoever did this also opened up the chest cavity and removed internal organs. Mere. It requires some precision to make the cuts he left for me. Even Chang was impressed."
"Impressed? Nothing this monster can do to us can ever impress me, Lucas."
"Perhaps impressed is a poor choice of words." They had arrived at the precinct when Lucas's cell rang out. He lifted it and immediately acknowledged Jana North's voice, unaware that this made Meredyth stiffen alongside him. When he got off the phone, he told Meredyth, "Jana's waiting for us in your office. Wants to discuss the case with us. Seems she's talked to Dr. Davies and has informed the family that Mira Lourdes is being chopped into little pieces and put into boxes and forwarded to you and me."
"Jesus, Lucas, this thing's blowing up fast now, and we haven't a clue as to who is behind it. This is going to make us look like…like…"
"A couple of incompetents, I know. Shit! I can't believe Jana's done this."
"Why not? From a Missing Persons departmental point of view, she's solved her case. Mira Lourdes has been located, so to speak."
"Determined dead maybe, but Jana's got no corpus delecti."
"Only bits and pieces of the corpse."
"She damn sure could've waited on it, and given us more time."
"So, you still think Byron's the unnamed source we need to worry about? Just tell me this, Lucas Stonecoat…"
He gnashed his teeth, readying for her attack. "What?"
"Are you going to take Detective North to task?"
"Damn straight."
She inwardly smiled. "I want to see this."
Detective Jana North was awaiting them both in Meredyth's office. She and Meredyth exchanged perfunctory hellos, knowing one another professionally. "I've informed the parents and Mira's live-in, Dwayne Stokes, that we know Mira is dead and that parts of her are being sent to law-enforcement officials in a sick game of cat-and- mouse initiated by the killer."
"Jeeze, Jana, that information's gone out to the family and that idiot Stokes? It's going to be all over the six o'clock news."
"This is a Missing Persons case, Lucas. We have to keep the family informed. It's the way we work."
"No Jana, it's a murder case, a homicide. That takes precedence over your jurisdiction, and you know that. You also know we don't work homicide that way."
"Ease off, Lucas," Meredyth said. She addressed Jana. "God, it must've been extremely difficult breaking such news to the parents." Meredyth felt a genuine guilt now, seeing that Jana was hurt by Lucas's words.
"They had to know, Lucas," said Jana. "Soon as I learned about the match made by Davies, I tried to find you. When I couldn't, I went over there to talk to the parents. I swore them to keep it confidential for now."
"Can't imagine the shock of it for the parents," Meredyth sympathetically added.
"But you didn't stop with the parents. You told Stokes what we have. Just wish you'd have held off, Jana." The annoyance in Lucas's voice hung in the air. "I would've liked to have seen Stokes's reaction."
"All right, maybe I should've held off."
"How'd Dwayne react to the news?"
"Devastated, as far as I could see."
"He's hiding something."
"He lost his legs and his breakfast. As far as the parents go, better they should get the news through us than hearing it on MSNBC or reading it in the Chronicle, and the way information's leaking from your precinct, Lucas, I think I did the right thing."
"Regardless of Stokes's theatrics, Jana, I think we need to get him in here and grill his ass for all he's worth," said Lucas. "I think he knows more than he's telling."
"I'm on top of it, Lucas."
"How, Jana, are you on top of it?"
"He's in interrogation now, and has stuck tenaciously to his story. That she was abducted by a couple to whom she was showing the Saab."
Meredyth piped in, saying, "Whoa, it was my understanding that he never actually saw the couple, that he only heard about them."