Authors: Robert W. Walker
He ran a hard copy of the three files he thought could be a match to the eyes and teeth. He'd spend the afternoon obtaining the dental records he required, knowing it would be tough to get these, as all three files indicated dental records had not been forwarded for any of them. He wondered how common an oversight this was in Missing Persons, and made a mental note to ask Jana North about this.
Now, unfortunately, it was left to him to locate first permission and then the actual dental records for each young woman. He must make the request via the next of kin, and had to impress upon them how urgent his need was. Such a request would trigger fears in family members, and since they didn't know him, they would be doubly wary, slowing him with questions, getting their hopes up, as well as arousing misgivings, old doubts, regrets, and fears. Dental records usually meant a match with a corpse if a match were to be made at all.
He knew at this stage he must involve Detective Jana North, Missing Persons. She had done most of the work of logging on all the MP files in the COMIT system. He knew her well and trusted her. She'd be an asset in going after the dental records of each of the girls Lucas proposed investigating. Certainly, she had far greater experience in dealing with anxiety-ridden, bereaved loved ones than most of the cops at the precinct put together. He rang her number.
"Have you had lunch yet?" he asked Detective North.
"Matter of fact I haven't, why?" replied Jana. "What'd you have in mind?"
"I haven't eaten either, and I have some cases to go over with you. Meet me at Crazy Calories in ten minutes?"
"I've been seeing your turkey track on the COMIT-MP interface. Something cooking?"
"You found me out."
"Has it to do with rumors I've been hearing about you and Dr. Sanger being targeted by a mad mailer sending packets of body parts?"
"You're well informed. Try to keep a secret around here."
"Make it fifteen minutes and you're on. See you at Crazy's."
Lucas strapped on his gun and put his Wellington overcoat on, going for the door. He called out to other detectives who manned Cold Case desks in the room that he was out for the day, 'Tracking leads," he announced.
"Lucky SOB!" Casey shouted in response.
Lucas had looked in on Itchy Arnie Feldman that morning for any sign of foul play on his part, but if Arnie was involved, his poker face gave nothing away. Not the slightest twitch or snicker. Lucas had also dropped in on the M.E., Frank Patterson, and dropped a few hints about what had occurred at his and Sanger's apartments, but didn't find Patterson the least bit edgy or revealing anything in his body language. The cruel incident looked, as time had passed and the day wore on, to have no hoaxsters behind it after all.
Lucas walked the short way to the bistro, his insides screaming for a roast beef sandwich and a drink. In the back of his mind, he knew that the missing persons avenue, while a logical and methodical step to take, might net nothing. Still, he had no other lead at the moment.
He stepped off a curb and a car screeched to a halt inches from his legs. Lucas stared at the driver, his jaw clenched as the man in the car laid on his horn and cursed. The irate driver then leaped from the car, rage on his face as he came toward Lucas with a tire iron.
Lucas snatched out his badge in one hand, his Glock 9mm in the other, extending both to the charging bull's eyes. The beefy red-faced Texan stopped cold, gestured for clemency, backed to his door, climbed into his pickup truck, and roared off, leaving Lucas standing in the street.
"What the hell's the matter with people?" he asked no one in particular as he holstered his weapon.
In a moment, he carried on toward the restaurant, hoping Jana wouldn't keep him waiting long.
CHAPTER 5
AT THE CRAZY Calories Bistro on a one-block, one-way street in downtown Houston, two blocks from the precinct house, Lucas laid out the situation to Detective Jana North, starting with details of what some sick animal had forwarded to Meredyth and to him the night before.
"So you think the parts might be related to one of our more recent MPs, huh?"
"That's the prints I'm tracking, yeah."
"Damned ugly business, and if I can help you get this guy and clear a case, Lucas, just tell me where and when."
'Today, now. You can help me with the families, to ease the process of getting dental records for each of these young women." He pushed the hard copies run from the computer files across the table to her.
"I heard there were teeth in the mixed bag of goodies sent to you. You're saying none of these three have dental records on file?" she asked while thumbing through the paper files, caught by the photos. "Nice work, narrowing the subjects to three."
"I had help," Lucas said, explaining how he had gotten key search items from forensics, and how Purvis had revealed the victim had a serious vision problem.
"Still, I'm impressed."
"Computer did the rest."
"Thanks to our interfacing program, Lucas."
"And to your cooperation and all the hard work of months of loading all that information, Jana."
She nodded, smiled, and toasted. "To COMIT-MP, may it bring us some resolutions."
"Then you'll ride shotgun for me this afternoon, get these dental records I need?"
She frowned. "Drop everything and race to your aid? Hmmm...all right, as a favor to you and Meredyth."
"Thanks, I need this expedited. Any delay could cost us dearly."
She nodded. "Understood. I'll do what I can however I can."
"All I can ask."
They ate and spoke of lighter things, the weather, the lottery, the home teams, the "up" economy. Using her cell phone, Jana called ahead to the families, telling them to expect her visit. After leaving the restaurant, they would go to the first address where they had to obtain proper release signatures to gain access to the needed medical records.
They walked back to the precinct together, and from there took Lucas's unmarked radio car. As he drove, Jana North studied the files of the missing in more depth. "I remember this one case, Lourdes. Odd as hell how she disappeared."
'Tell me about it."
"Only what I know."
She began the story, and Lucas looked across at her from time to time as he drove. Jana North was an auburn- haired, beautiful woman with sparkling blue eyes.
The story of Mira Lourdes's disappearance, while sketchy, involved a so-called eyewitness. Lucas always took this news with more than a grain of salt, knowing that most eyewitness testimony proved false if not downright misleading.
Before Jana could finish her story, they arrived at the home of seventeen-year-old Helga Muncie, a habitual runaway. Runaways more often than not were penniless and relied on hitchhiking to make their way across the country to high-profile places from Aspen, Colorado, to Hollywood, or such destinations as Panama City or Daytona Beach, Florida—magnet communities for teens on the run. Teens on the street proved easy marks for rapists and killers who might encounter them along the thousands of miles of Interstate they traveled to their various false Meccas.
Lucas pulled into the driveway of the Muncie home, left the motor running, and they climbed from the car under the gaze of someone peeking out from behind a curtain. As they approached the house, Jana took note of the yellow ribbons strung about the porch. Lucas rang the bell, and when a middle-aged woman answered the door, Jana took the initiative, flashing her badge and saying, "I'm Detective North with Missing Persons, and Detective Stonecoat here is with the HPD's Cold Cases Division. Show Mrs. Muncie your badge, Lucas."
Lucas did as told, but the lady paid no mind to him, asking Jana through the screen door, "You have news of my Helga? Thomas! Come listen! They have news of Helga!"
"Not exactly, but we're here about Helga, yes, ma'am," replied Lucas.
"We'd like to get those dental records my office requested when you first filed the missing persons report on your daughter, Mrs. Muncie," said Jana.
The father, Thomas Muncie, had come to the door, a gray ghost behind the screen, shouting, "Then you've found her! Haven't you? Dead, dead?"
The woman went weak, collapsing into her husband's arms, as Jana North waved her arms and said, "No, no, no! We're only here to complete her file, Mrs. Muncie. We simply want the dental records in her file."
"Then you've found someone—a body—fitting her description?" pressed the husband. "You want to compare her dental records with a corpse."
"No, not exactly," replied Jana.
"What then?"
"We're investigating a possible homicide, Mr. Muncie," began Lucas, careful not to stir anywhere near the truth—a mutilation murder.
"We want to rule your daughter and two other young women out by process of elimination, sir, ma'am," added Jana. "We need you to sign the release form for the records." Jana held out both the form and a pen. "Just sign on the bottom. I'll fill out the rest. It'll expedite matters...for your daughter's good."
"Lies...lies," replied the man. "Examining the dental records means you've got a corpse."
"All right...Thomas!" shouted the wife. "We do what they tell us. We got no choice. We got to cooperate." She cracked the screen door enough to take form and pen inside, where after a moment's examination, she signed.
"If we thought we had your daughter, sir," said Jana through the screen, "we'd simply have you travel downtown with us to identify her remains."
Mrs. Muncie had regained her composure, and Thomas simply walked off. Mrs. Muncie apologized for her husband in a whisper, and then she said, "Her dentist is Dr. Sullivan, 1240 North Belmont. I'll call ahead, so she will know you're coming." Finished, she pushed the form and the pen back through the cracked screen door and into Jana's waiting hands. Through the screen mesh, she added, "I want you people to let me know when Helga has been ruled out like you say, all right?"
"Absolutely, Mrs. Muncie," Jana assured her.
"Absolutely, really? You young people nowadays use that word to mean nothing—bahhh, absolutely! Everybody at that police station tells me they will absolutely get back to me, but it has been a week and not a word until you two show up on my doorstep asking for dental records. Two people I don't know. Where is Detective Ambrose? Where is Detective Sculley?"
Lucas wanted to point out that it hadn't yet been a week, only seventy-seven hours, but he curbed his tongue. Jana handed the woman her card. "You can call me tomorrow afternoon, and any time. Detectives Ambrose and Sculley work for me, Mrs. Muncie."
The woman stared at Jana as if seeing her anew.
Lucas thanked Mrs. Muncie for the name and address of the dentist, and they stepped off her porch. "Moments like this make me feel ill," said Jana. "It's so difficult dealing with the loved ones."
"Empty feeling inside, I know. Makes me feel like a scavenging crow." Lucas stepped up the pace to his waiting car.
Leaning in over the top of the car, Jana said, "We try to get the relatives to forward us all medical and dental records when the case becomes official. Short of that, we try to get them to sign a release, so we can obtain records on our own, but a lot of people at that early stage simply have a psychological block about getting it done, you know?"
"Can't say as I blame them. Can't imagine the pain of losing a child to oblivion, the not knowing, or losing a child to a vicious murderer and knowing, for that matter."
"Not sure which is worse."
They got in the car. Inside, Jana said, "Short of a DNA sample, orthodontia ID is still the most reliable method. Sometimes the teeth are all that survive by the time we uncover the decayed body of a missing person stuffed in a trunk, behind a wall, in a pipe, or anchored below some watering hole, river, or lake."
Lucas backed down the driveway, nodding at her discourse.
She continued, asking, "You hear about that case where we found three bodies within close proximity of one another down on the Brazos?"
"Down around Rosharon?"
"Three prostitutes all murdered by strangulation."
Lucas pointed the car in the right direction and drove for North Belmont. "Yeah, yeah, I recall...all clumped together only twenty or thirty yards apart, killed over a period of weeks."
"Dogs sniffed out the bodies from aboard a flatboat."
"Aboard a boat?" Lucas glanced at her. "I heard they were found in the brush on shore."
"No, no! They were weighted down with dumbbells lashed to them with wire fencing."
"Dogs sniffed them out?"
"Amazing noses those dogs, how they just lean out over the side of the boat and strike on the odor of a decaying body some fourteen, fifteen feet below the surface of running water. Some noses on those babies."
"If memory serves, wasn't one of the victims so badly decomposed you had to call in a forensic anthropologist to reconstruct the facial features over the skull to get a likeness for the papers and TV?"
"Another case, Lucas."
"Shit, after a while, after so many, they begin to blend together. Sad commentary on American life."
"State's talking about renting property from private farms and ranches to build more potter's fields to bury all the Jane and John Does," she said.
"Nahhh...heard they're thinking now of buying up lands around the penitentiary at Huntsville for new fields and putting the inmates to work as grave diggers."
"That'll never happen. Violation of their civil liberties. Can't turn the prison force into a state work force."
"Legislature's sitting now, and they could change that. This is Texas, after all." Lucas swiped the hair from his eyes. "Yeah, I recall the case now," said Lucas of her original question as they turned onto North Belmont Avenue. "Guy doing the killing out at the Brazos park, wasn't he the—"
"Ran the rowboat concession at the lake."
"Right...right sick too."
"Fucker was fat like Gacey, and he gave out free rides to the girls."
"Pelhan, yeah...now sitting on death row, appealing his conviction, right. Tapping into his civil liberties."