Anna Tewes quietly and shyly reentered the room, going to her seat, which Lucas had righted and replaced at the table. She made no eye contact with anyone in the room, looking like a deer going for her nesting ground.
"Put it away, Dr. Chang," said Gordon Lincoln of the severed head, echoing everyone's sentiments. "I think we've seen enough of this horror."
Chang, with Nielsen's assistance, placed the head into a red and white ice-filled medical cooler, and Nielsen tagged it with a case number. The odors emanating from the head and the Styrofoam-lined cardboard box had begun to make people in the room choke and squirm in their seats.
"So, let me see if I understand correctly, Dr. Sanger," said Dr. Davies, staring at Meredyth. "You believe that this homicidal nutcase is sending us a wake-up call of sorts, that in escalating the size and awfulness of the body parts he's forwarded, that he's saying play my game and give me more media attention or else?"
"Quite possibly, yes."
Catrina Purvis asked, "Or else what? That if we fail to share what we know with the six o'clock news, that he'll send larger sections of his victim, and possibly parts of another victim and another until he gets what he needs from us?"
"He's always sent a written note before now, Dr. Chang," said Lucas. "You'll want to look closely inside the box."
Meredyth, seeing confusion written across many of the faces in the room, explained. "In each of the earlier treats, the Ripper was considerate enough to forward a handwritten note, and in one case a CD."
"Is there anything else in that bloody box, Leonard?" Lincoln asked.
While Leonard tipped the box, searching for anything in addition, young Anna Tewes, a handkerchief over her mouth, her curiosity greater than her embarrassment, found her voice. "What kind of CD was it?"
"Music from the film Dirty Dancing."
" Time of My Life'?" Tewes asked.
Lucas nodded to a collective groan.
Leonard Chang announced, "There's something at the bottom of the box, a note, swimming amid the fluid left by the decaying head."
"I am detecting the odor of formaldehyde below the odor of decay," said Nielsen.
"Yes, quite," said Purvis. "The head spent some time in a formaldehyde solution."
"Folded paper," added Chang as he fished for it and plucked it from the soup in the Styrofoam-lined box. As Leonard Chang held it up to the light, everyone stared at the spoiled, folded note that dripped of foul and runny liquid. Chang dropped the messy note onto the white sheet beside the medical cooler, which Nielsen removed to a chair beside her, giving everyone a clear view of the opening of the folded note.
Using his gloved hands and tweezers, Chang carefully plucked open the sticky folds of the note and plastered it down. Lucas came close, Meredyth inching alongside, both looking over Chang's shoulder. Perelli squeezed in as well, rolling film.
"What the hell does it say?" roared Lincoln.
Lucas read the note aloud, "'Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire….' It is written in poetic lines."
"What the hell does that mean?" asked a frustrated Captain Lincoln.
"Like his motives, the killer's little rhymes may only have meaning for himself, a kind of mirror only he is reflected in, you see," suggested Meredyth.
"Come again?" asked Hoskins.
"He's obviously psychotic, so it becomes necessary to appease only himself. Classic symptoms if we read between the lines."
Jana North said, "Or his written messages and the music may be just another way to taunt you and Lucas, to piss you off, Meredyth."
"The son of a bitch is doing a good job of that,"
Meredyth agreed, feeling a smile flash over her, allowing a diminutive laugh to escape. But she didn't feel as brave as she wanted others in the room to think, as her eyes scanned the blurred words on the blood- and bile-stained note:
Works of magic oft do require cool heads of logic and fathomless eyes of fire….
CHAPTER 9
Captain Gordon Lincoln had given everyone a fifteen-minute break, "Time enough to call home, let your significant other know you're going to be running late, grab a snack, make for the johns, whatever cranks your shaft."
That fifteen minutes had gone by in the blink of an eye, it seemed, and now they had reassembled at the conference table.
"All right, people, quiet now…listen up," began Lincoln. "I want cooperation among you all, and I want this case cleared posthaste, pun intended. If there's any upside to this Postmortem Ripper guy, it's that we have only one victim to our knowledge, but the downside is this continued butchering of her body. Dr. Sanger informs me this may well have a powerful symbolic meaning for the killer, that he is killing her over and over with each severing.
"Which likely means he's nurtured a long-standing hatred for this Mira Lourdes," concluded Lincoln. "Are we on her acquaintances, former boyfriends, relatives?"
"We've cleared her live-in," said Jana, "and there's no one else who fits the bill, according to her parents. No one was stalking her, no one disliked her. She went from work to home and back again in a steady routine in which nothing untoward should ever have happened to her."
"But it did," said Lincoln. "Canvas the neighborhood for perverts living in the area, anyone recently moved in, any recent sex offenders released from Huntsville. Talk to her friends at work too."
"My team's all over that," Jana assured him.
"The fact he's sending parts of a single victim over and over could signify his belief that life has screwed him over again and again, that it has cut him up slowly in pieces over the years," suggested Lincoln, playing at shrink himself now.
Meredyth cut him off, saying, "The killer may also be sending pieces of his victim to us again and again to direct our attention to his powerful scorn and disdain for us, for law enforcement, and societal sanctions. A complete psych profile is being worked up. I'll get a copy to each of you by day's end."
Lincoln thanked her for the input. "Whatever it takes, manpower, currency, overtime, you people are it for the time being-the front line in this twisted little war we have had thrust upon us. Time is our enemy along with this monster out there. So I want brainstorming and answers before this bastard forwards so much as another fingernail, understood? Damn it, I don't want any more pieces of her sent off like a Christmas package to Lucas or to Dr. Sanger. And I want it cleared before the press eats us alive on it, understood? And I don't want any more leaks coming out of the Three-one, clear?"
"Captain, we had an obligation to inform the Lourdes family and her boyfriend, who made the initial missing persons report," said Jana.
"Yes, I heard all about that, Jana." Lincoln looked in Lucas's direction. "It's done. Let's just not give any more guns to the Indians…ahhh…" Lucas had shot him a grim look, "I–I mean, ammo to the press, okay?"
"You're going to have to deal with the press sometime, Captain," said Lucas. "They need to be handled."
"Yes, but most of the Lourdes woman's remains… well, remain missing, Lucas, and until we can say we have all one hundred percent of her in our safekeeping, well…I suspect we'd best keep this in-house. Is that understood?"
Lucas lunged in, adding, "It's already out there, Captain. They're coming for us on all sides. Some sort of press conference or at least a release needs to be put together to stave 'em off."
Lincoln sighed heavily, heaving his gut; he ground his teeth so hard it hurt others in the room to hear it. "Why the hell can't we keep a lid on our own fucking cases?"