Lauralie had returned her attention to the severed head again, its eyes staring wide at her from the shelf she had placed it on.
Blue and lustrous, seemingly alive yet still as stones are those eyes, Arthur had thought. He thought of how those eyes had pleaded with him for mercy and how he had had to ignore that plea. And then he thought that they still bored through him like a dual pair of drills, angry now, spiteful, furious in their blueness.
Lauralie noticed his having been frozen in place by the dead woman's eyes. She taunted him, saying, "Just imagine, Arthur, the life inside these so-called dead orbs"-she paused to touch the eyes with her fingers-"still in movement at the subatomic level, the only life left only seen through a microscopic lens. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"
"Wonder what?" he asked.
"Wonder if on some level, Mira can still see us in this world." She laughed. "When I harvest those baby blues of yours, Mira, they'll make a nice gift for someone, not to mention your other lovely parts…"
"Why, Lauralie? Why are we doing this? I gotta know; I have to understand."
"In time you will. In time even Mira here will under- "stand. Now, do that magic you promised me with your medical wizardry. I want two of her teeth and both her eyes from her head. From the body, I want slices of her major organs."
A failed medical student, Arthur had become a veterinarian in order to remain close to medicine. What Lauralie now proposed, carving up the body, he hadn't done since medical school, and he had never removed anyone's eyes, not even those of a cadaver, and he had never pulled a human tooth. Still, that night when Lauralie had come up to him in the bar, she had gotten him talking, and he had bragged about his abilities in animal surgery. She had easily talked her way into his bed that night, and soon he was making promises to her. He promised her that he could do any surgery necessary on any animal brought to him. It wasn't until much later that he learned the animal she was interested in slicing up was a human being. But by then, Arthur had said whatever was necessary to impress Lauralie, and now was the moment of truth.
He pulled on his surgical gloves, and using his bare hands, he dug a finger into the eye cavity and began to work the eyeballs loose from their moorings. Once he had them popped out, he used his scalpel to sever them from the optic nerve.
Lauralie was delighted beyond reason, beyond any delight she had ever displayed in Arthur's embrace.
Again the cry of his dogs stiffened Arthur's spine. He thought of getting up, giving up sleep altogether, and going out to his two babies outside in the cold. But it might wake her again. He'd better stay put.
Arthur rolled over onto his side, struggling with his mind to leave him in peace, to turn over one hour of blank- ness on the screen of his skull to slumber, but instead the images of horror kept up a constant barrage against him. "I'm not cut out for this kind of business. I'm too weak for this. God help me," he lamented.
Lauralie rolled over and placed her arm over him, saying, "Jesus H. Christ, Arthur, go to sleep, will you? You're keeping me awake again."
CHAPTER 3
Dr. Meredyth Sanger's tearful sea-green eyes widened on seeing Lucas at her door; she next threw the door open and leaped into Lucas's arms. In his arms, her body heaved, fearful and shaking in his fervent embrace. They had been close friends for a decade now, and they had tested the boundaries of that friendship to include a sexual interlude from which she'd backed off while Lucas had patiently awaited a time when they might renew their mutual passion for one another. She feared "losing herself" in him, analyzing what they had out of existence. They had argued heatedly, all that she'd needed to back further from the relationship and see to other men.
Lucas brushed her hair and held her against his chest. "It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right," he assured her, taking her face in his hands now, making her focus on his dark eyes. "I'm here now." Lucas wondered where her boyfriend, Byron Priestly, might be as she answered his thought for him.
"Byron left me alone with it…ran out the door."
"Are you kidding? He was with you when you opened the package, and he just ran out the door?"
"Said he could not put up with my patients and their sick claim on my time anymore, not after this. The sight of the eyes in the box scared the shit out of me, but it terrified him."
"Then I suppose he won't be back?"
"He wouldn't dare," she replied. "But Lucas, his prints're gonna be all over the wrapping."
"Why're his prints all over the packaging?"
"He insisted on opening it. I had put it aside…not wanting to deal with it tonight, in no rush, but him! No, his curiosity was burning a hole through his brain, so I gave in, chucked it to him, and told him to have a ball."
"And he got it right between the eyes, so to speak…two eyeballs. How prophetic."
"More like pathetic, his lack of balls."
"I can understand how a package with eyes might upset a fellow who calls himself By."
"Everything fell out, including the note, the CD, and the teeth…all over my carpet."
"Must've shook ol' By up."
"Shook us both up! Lucas, I've wracked my brain for anyone who might b? capable of this, and even my worst client is not capable of this-and to send a foul package to you as well. Lucas, who could be behind it?"
"On my way over, I wondered if one of your clients might be behind it. Perhaps one who somehow knows our history together? One who knows about our having worked cases together, and that we have been intimate with one another?" he asked.
"The first one I thought of was Herman Philip Teal, my weirdest at present, but as for knowing about the connection we have, Lucas, anyone reading the newspapers last spring, following the Walters case, would know how closely we work together." Meredyth had offered not only profiling advice on the case, but she had helped interview Samuel Irving Walters when Lucas had arrested him for the rape and mutilation murders of six teens-all male-all occurring in the concentrated areas of West University Place, Southside Place, and Bellaire.
Meredyth took a deep breath, nourishing her shattered nerves and calming in his presence. He had that effect on people. She focused on his reassuring power and gaze, and the soft words of encouragement and support. "You're all right now. We'll get past this together, Mere."
They still stood in the foyer, the door left to stand open, neighbors creeping from their doorways, curious but tentative. It was clear she wanted out of the apartment, to run out like her boyfriend before her; she certainly didn't want to go back into the condominium alone. But seeing the prying eyes of others, she pulled him inside and closed the door.
Lucas firmly said, "Point me in the direction of these wayward eyes, Mere."
Leaning against the door now, she simply pointed to the interior.
Across the room lay the pair of human eyeballs, still attached to the optic nerves that trailed after like the fantail of exotic jelly fishes. The sight had an unholy irreverence about it, the eyes lying askew in the thick pile of her plush gray carpet, fibers clinging to the gummy irises. The flesh was as freshly cut from a human corpse as the selection of human organ tissue sent to Lucas himself.
"What the hell's going on?" he asked aloud, expecting no answer but feeling a need to keep talking.
A step closer and the image was replaced, the eyes now looking like two smooth white Ping-Pong balls with tubular extensions, and strikingly dark, deep-blue seeds for pupils at each center. He wondered to whom the eyes had once belonged. Were they male or female? Mexican or American? Italian or Irish? Then he grotesquely heard the song lyrics "when Irish eyes are smiling " flit through his cop's brain. Had a roomful of cops been present, at least one or more would be humming the tune by now, putting into practice the time-honored black humor so necessary in dealing with such a horror as this pair of errant eyes presented. Eyes that followed you across a room…eyes that pinned an opponent, that popped a gasket, that darted for escape, that stabbed at the heart, that were windows to the soul, and that were only for you…All the cliches rushed to mind, doing little good against the edginess of the situation.