Authors: Robert W. Walker
"So we have her delivering a package, and you suspect her of multiple murder. But which of the two can you prove?"
"I believe if she's caught, she'll confess to all her crimes," began Meredyth, stepping to the window and looking out on the late afternoon traffic below. "In fact, I think that's precisely what she wants from us in the end."
"Whoa, I don't follow you, Doctor. She wants what in the end?"
"Wants us to give her a forum, a courtroom in which she can vocalize her pent-up rage and anger at all of us, Captain, at you, me, Lucas, the system."
"It's why she's playing the game, peppering the yellow brick road with clues for us to follow," said Lucas. "The Our Lady and Morte de Arthur's return addresses, the contempt shown for her father's grave site, the tackiness of how she buried her mother, the clues she left at the scene of her mother's murder, her selection of a victim named Lourdes purposely for us to make the connection, leading Meredyth to her own past association with Lauralie. And now these recent atrocities at the funeral home and the annex."
Meredyth turned from the window and added, "These aren't coincidences, but cries for help, pity, understanding— at least from Lauralie's perspective, she thinks she deserves our understanding, and perhaps, to some degree the monster was created by us."
"Lauralie Blodgett just graduated. Where do graduates go?" asked Lincoln.
"Most go on a field trip to D.C. or Disneyland," replied Lucas, "but I think Lauralie went to Greenhaven Cemetery to deface her father's gravestone instead."
"Many grads go on to college. Have you checked area colleges for a Lauralie Blodgett or Croombs registering for classes?"
"If not college, then an apprenticeship. Wait a moment." Meredyth got on the phone and called Mother Elizabeth Portsmith. When she got her on the phone, Meredyth asked, "What did Lauralie want to become when she grew up? What profession did she wish to pursue?"
"She loved animals. Always kept a small pet. They'd always die on her. She wanted to be a vet."
"A vet. Did she have a school picked out?"
"She was looking at several in the area, but I don't know that she ever actually enrolled. Still, there's a chance she did."
"Thank you, Mother Superior."
"Will you please call me when and if you locate my girl?" she asked.
"Yes, surely."
"Dreadful seeing her picture on the TV screen alongside that killer. You must stop such nasty rumors."
"We'll see what we can do, Mother, and thanks again.
"Veterinary schools in the area. We need to check all of them," she told the men.
"Then let's find her, and when we do, we drag her and her boyfriend in here, and we put them in the pressure cooker and grill their asses until we get a confession from one or the other or both." Lincoln called Kent on the intercom to come in with a city directory.
Lucas now stood at the window with Meredyth, a protective hand on her shoulder. He said to Lincoln, "That lunatic was at the courthouse, shadowing Meredyth for a reason. She's plotting to harm her physically now, now that she's already torn away at her emotionally. It's the reason she's been shadowing us, first at the convent, leaving the finger in the fount, and then at the courthouse."
"All right," said Lincoln, "it's going to be a long night. Everyone on the team needs to be brought in on this. Let's pray she has a school transcript, and we work from the information there outward. We'll send cruisers to every damned veterinary school in the city and the suburbs if necessary, and we'll corner this young hellion."
"Someone in this city has to have some idea where these two are holed up and who they are," Lucas reassured Meredyth. "No one is invisible."
Kent entered with the Houston directory. Lincoln told him to go out and return with directories for the suburbs as well. "And order us in some food."
"What do you feel like, sir? Pizza, burgers, Chinese?"
"Anything, Kent, so long as it's hot. And close the door."
Lucas had quickly found the listings for veterinary schools in the city. "We'll start calling the task force together, Captain, bring them up to date, if you want to get out of here, attend that party for your girl."
Meredyth added, "We can get the word out on the vet schools just as well as you, Gordon. Go on. You can still make your daughter's day."
"Thanks, Doctor, Lucas. Are you two sure you can handle things without me?"
"Sure we can," replied Meredyth.
"All right then. Use my office as long as you need it. Food is on me." He passed Officer Kent, whose arms were full with directories, on the way out, giving one last instruction to his aide. "Get these two everything and anything they need, Kent, and call your wife, tell her you'll be pulling a double shift."
Kent frowned and dropped the additional directories on his boss's desk.
. LATER THAT EVENING, the entire Post-it Ripper task force was brought together and brought up to date. Meredyth and Lucas again told their startling story of how Meredyth's friend Byron had died, and how she and anyone close to her had become targets of Lauralie Blodgett's obsession, and the twisted reasoning behind the postings of Mira Lourdes's body parts.
The late edition of the Chronicle carried both photos of Lauralie now alongside that of the mole-faced charcoal likeness of her accomplice. Along with this, the photo carried a cryptic history of how she was a recent graduate from Our Lady of Miracles School. Anyone with any information on Lauralie's whereabouts, or those of the mysterious Mr. X, was asked to call authorities immediately. Both suspects were considered armed and dangerous in this updated version forwarded to the press. On page three, the story of an unnamed body found in a closet in the court-room annex appeared with sketchy details. The story of the bizarre shutdown of a funeral parlor across the city in which police found severed arms inside the casket during an ongoing wake said the severed arms lay across the chest and were discovered by loved ones at the casket just as police arrived. The story went on to detail the name of the parlor and the deceased woman, hinting at some connection to the Post-it Ripper case. It quoted Dr. Frank Patterson as having said, "Mrs. Zoradia Ortiz's family members were questioned, but none of them are believed to have played any part in this unfortunate event. Crime-scene analysis both here and at the courthouse annex today points to the Post-it Ripper, who appears to have found another way to send his message, in a larger box, so to speak. A cryptic note left in the casket and tissue analysis is expected to confirm this."
A bank of phones had been secured along with men and women to man them, and calls were being made to every veterinary school in and around Houston in an attempt to locate one registered student by name. Meanwhile, the rest of the task force was introduced to the idea that an orphaned girl had been both the motivating and driving force behind the abduction and murder of Mira Lourdes. It required Meredyth's having to go through the details once again, and as the inexplicable tale began to unfold, all the others sat in rapt attention, curious over the next twist and the final turn.
"A story worthy of an Agatha Christie novel," said Leonard Chang, who had by now read both Nielsen's and Patterson's field reports. Chang, Nielsen, the others in the CSI unit. Detective North and her partners who had interrogated Dwayne Stokes, the young sketch artist, Anna Tewes, Sergeant Kelton, Dr. Catrina Purvis, and Dr. Tom Davies all now had a better understanding of why the killers, Lauralie Blodgett and her unnamed associate, had committed two hideous murder mutilations. They were also apprised of the suspicious deaths of Sara Orleans, Katherine Croombs, and the brutal details in the stabbing death of Byron Priestly.
Questions flew. Everyone wanted answers. Mistakes and oversights became apparent, especially in the handling of the presumed overdose death of Katherine Croombs. Frank Patterson had slipped in as they revisited the Croombs case. Frank quietly found a chair in a comer as there was no room left around the conference table. He sat silent in shadow, not contributing or objecting.
"All this is very intriguing and compelling," said Jana North, "and you two obviously believe in this pure and twisted revenge theory, but we're no closer to finding this woman, and we still have no idea who the accomplice is. No one seems to know the extent of his involvement, that is, what his motives or rewards are. Why has he done her bidding? Who is he to her? Are they related? What sort of a relationship do they share? What binds him to her? Is he merely following her orders, or is he an encourager, a cheerleader, possibly the leader, dominating her and pushing her over the edge? Or is it the other way around? Is she the driving force in their twisted relationship as Lucas and Meredyth have come to believe?"
"All questions impossible to answer with any certainty until the killing couple is captured and interrogated, and the truth wrenched from them," replied Lucas.
Meredyth said unequivocally, "He's her lapdog, pure and simple. She's in charge."
Jana North wasn't so sure. "Female murderers are rare. Only eight women have ever made the FBI's Most Wanted List."
"But don't you see, that's what drives her!" shouted Meredyth. "She wants to be our most wanted, maybe the ninth female on the FBI's Most Wanted. She wants to be on John Walsh's America's Most Wanted, on CNN. NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, 20/20, and 48 Hours."
'Take a breath, Mere," warned Lucas.
Meredyth didn't skip a beat. "This bitch wants the notoriety of the D.C. Sniper, and so she wins either way; whether we succeed in catching her or killing her. she wins. She gets to rise out of the obscurity of a life behind the gates of Our Lady's orphanage to world prominence as a serial killer with a new M.O., a new twist."
"She's not a proven serial killer. Dr. Sanger," said Nielsen. "Agreed, we suspect her in her mother's death, but that's a long way from proof, and we have even less evidence in the death of this nun, Orleans, and we can't be certain Lauralie actually swung the blade that killed Priestly, nor the ax that decapitated Mira Lourdes."
"She's intending to kill me next!" Meredyth exploded, her fist coming down on the table, silencing Nielsen and everyone else in the room.
For a long moment, no one said anything, all eyes on Meredyth, who finally broke the silence. "She's killed four times now, and she has intended from the beginning to make a statement. She is becoming a celebrity as we speak, a serial killer celeb to-to gain all the attention she can to-to shine a bright light on herself, her heart-rending personal story. She's obsessed with it."
Silence met Meredyth, all eyes staring at her, some of those eyes mutely asking if she were not obsessed with it and perhaps ought to be removed from the case as too emotionally involved. Breaking the awkward silence, Leonard Chang said, "Perhaps Dr. Sanger is correct in all she has said here tonight. After all, since Lauralie has intentionally left arrows in the sand for us to follow—to the convent, to the funeral parlor, to the mother's home, to the courthouse—all of it pointing to her being abandoned and pawned off as an infant in 1984, then she has masterminded the entire affair, so that despite whether Crazy Joe, as Lucas calls him, wielded the poison that killed her mother, the ax that killed Lourdes, and the knife that killed Priestly, she then emerges as the dominating force in the relationship."
Lucas picked up on this, adding, "We all know the history of killers who work in tandem. One is always submissive to the will of the other. While in most cases, the submissive one is younger, often female, we're looking at an older male submissive to a younger female."
Several people in the room spoke up.
"Information, how do we get more of it about Lauralie?"
"Her current whereabouts."
"Who she's associated with since leaving the school."
"Where she's been hanging, as they say," said Jana.
"We have people manning phones as we speak," Lucas assured them. 'Trying to locate Lauralie through a possible lead—veterinary school transcripts."
"Vet schools?" asked Nielsen. "They learn how to use anesthetics, scalpels, sutures, and other medical instruments in vet schools."
"Mother Elizabeth says Lauralie had expressed an interest in pursuing a career as a vet," Lucas added. "By the way, our hot line on the case is racking up hundreds of tips, and these are being weighed and analyzed by our best people, led by Stan the Man Kelton. New wrinkle, Dr. Sanger here has put up a substantial reward of twenty-five thou-sand dollars for info leading to an arrest and conviction.
"Which has been matched by the Texas Department of Law Enforcement," added Lucas. "They're also lending support in following up on tips in the field."
"Fifty thousand, okay. That ought to bring out the rats, both those with and those without any idea of who Lauralie is or where she is," complained Frank Patterson. "We'll be lucky to ferret out the real tips from the goofballs."
Kelton added, "We've already had sixteen separate confessions to the crime, all of which have failed the litmus tests."
"Which revolves around the wording of the notes?" asked Davies.
"And the details of the packing material and what was in each box. So far, no winners." Kelton secured his nervously twitching left hand with his right, and then tucked both beneath the table in his lap.
"So now we're all on the same page, people," said Lucas to the assembled task force. "As new information becomes available, from whatever direction, please share it with the group."
The meeting broke up, and people were filing out when an officer in uniform pushed through, in his hands a brightly colored green, blue, and white parcel clearly marked FedEx Ground. "It's addressed to Detective Stonecoat," he announced. "Return address is odd—Greenhaven Meadows Cemetery on Berwyn at Ridge Avenue. We thought it peculiar and suspicious."
Lucas shouted for everyone to sit back down. The task force reluctantly returned to their conference room seats, the memory of the last box opened in this room fresh in their minds. "Has it been X-rayed?" Kelton asked the officer who had brought it.