Using a video camera, Perelli filmed every conceivable angle of Belkvin's body and the severed heart-lying in the crook of his folded arms. Then Lynn Nielsen pointed Perelli to the jar Chang had replaced on a nearby shelf, and she said, "Get a couple of shots of this, Steve."
"Should've filmed the dogs before you had them carted off, Dr. Chang," commented Lucas. "Juries respond nastily to dog killers."
Chang and Nielsen were again speculating on where they might find Arthur's genitals. "I bet you a day's wages, we'll find them in his mouth," Nielsen wagered, and using a tongue depressor, she began searching the throat. "Hmmm… damn, not here."
"I'll take the hole in the chest. They're stuffed in to replace his heart," guessed the evidence technician Ted Hoskins, who now carefully cradled the hefty little rotary saw in his gloved palms, cautious not to touch either the blade or the grip. "I'll take this out to the van… dust it for prints."
"My bet…the dogs," said Chang thoughtfully, removing his protective helmet, seeing it was useless to keep the crime scene from contamination with so many curious onlookers tramping through. He was a slightly built, slender man, and his protective suit, far too large for him, made him look the part of an escaped balloon from a Macy's parade.
"The dogs' what?" asked Nielsen.
"Whataya bet we find the genitalia in the dogs' stomach contents when we autopsy them?"
"Is that your final answer, Doc?" asked Hoskins. "She fed his penis and balls to the dogs."
"Won't know for a sure thing until we autopsy the greyhounds, but with this woman, I would not put it past her to have done so-after liberally packing the flesh with rat poison." Chang held up an empty yellow and brown container of D-Con.
"One wicked bitch," Hoskins said with a moan.
Lucas said, "I'm going to have a look at the back rooms." He eased down the cave like corridor to the back bedrooms to the sound of circling aircraft beating overhead. The police chopper had come in low again, assisting the men in the woods in their search. Lucas's gloved hands found the dust in two smaller rooms undisturbed, but the master bedroom had been used by the deadly couple. A duffel filled with men's clothing and a few toiletries lay at the foot of an unmade bed, and the bathroom showed signs of use-a bar of soap in the dish, a jar of Mennen Skin Bracer, a Bic razor, hairpins, a nail file, an eyeliner brush, wrappers in the trash can. Windows had been opened to air out this single bedroom alone, the sashes doing battle with the cobwebs. Someone had wiped clean the surfaces of the furniture, a faint whiff of lemon and Clorox in the air.
When he returned to the others, Lucas suggested Nielsen dust the right rear room for fibers and hairs in the bedding. "Maybe some DNA from the stains. Looks like another love nest for our happy couple. Other rooms are untouched." He held up his hands to display the dirt and grime clinging to his plastic fingertips. "No need wasting your time there."
"Thanks, Detective, that cuts out a lot of wasted effort," Nielsen replied.
Lucas watched only for a moment as Chang and Nielsen, using high-intensity flashlights, searched the enormous cavity in Arthur's chest and abdomen. "Thank God for small favors," Chang said. "She only removed the heart."
"She seems to have left in a hurry. Had to know someone would eventually recognize Arthur from the sketch, his students, people at the clinic, his neighborhood."
Lucas, hearing Jana North and Meredyth conversing in the kitchen, where they'd migrated, joined them. When he entered, Jana was in mid-sentence. "…doing that to a man she presumably had some use for!"
"In psychiatric terms, emasculating a man says as much about the woman as it does the man," replied Meredyth. "I'm sure it had great symbolic and cathartic meaning for her."
"Imagine what she'd do to a man she had no use for."
"It would appear his usefulness came to an abrupt end, unless his missing parts show up on my doorstep tomorrow."
"She's got balls, as they say…literally," Lucas said, following up on Meredyth's remark.
Jana laughed at the black humor and erupted with a cop joke of her own. "Like a bad blues song. We'll call it, 'What I Lost for Love.'"
Meredyth silenced the laughter, saying, "For God's sake, the man lost a lot more than his dick. He lost, Jesus, everything he had in this world, not just his life. He lost his reputation…his career…friends, family, colleagues, and finally, after all the emotional and psychological emasculation, she performs a physical emasculation on him. Poor deluded devil probably thought she loved him."
Chang, overhearing from the other room, called out, "Mercifully, he was dead when she emasculated him. Can't say the same for the blade going through his chest."
"That's gotta be some consolation to Arthur," Lucas dryly called back. Lucas had learned to take Leonard Chang at his word. He knew no one who made better forensic judgments with the naked eye. Chang had showed him on earlier occasions how he could determine which wound of several was first, second, and third in order of coloration and blood loss.
Lucas focused now on the large floor-model freezer unit, seeing that it not only dominated the kitchen area, but that it had been examined already-presumably searched immediately for any sign of Mira Lourdes's remaining parts. An overhead bare bulb lit the old kitchen. Looking down into the cavernous, ice-walled unit, they saw that the frosty bottom was littered with bits and pieces of what appeared to be flesh, blood, and fluid stains. One section looked like the spoilage of an upturned rainbow snow cone, save the colors were muted reds and browns.
The sound of Perelli's camera filled the kitchen now as he too had discovered the freezer unit. Steve did a pirouette about the freezer, creating his video record of the exterior and interior of the thing. "Chang damn sure has his work cut out for him," he said to Lucas.
"You got that right." Lucas then asked Meredyth, "Seen enough?"
"Where the hell is Lauralie, Lucas?"
"Not in Mexico."
"Agreed. Yeah… she's not finished in Texas yet, is she?"
The question made Jana North stare at Meredyth and then at Lucas.
Outside, the discordant barking and howling of search dogs fashioned a counterpoint to the whirring of the police chopper.
Jana asked, "Are you saying. Dr. Sanger, that she's taken what's left of Mira Lourdes with her? That she intends more surprises and packages?"
"Through Christmas if she can. That'd be my guess, Detective."
Lucas sensed some tension between the two women.
"We should hold judgment, give the dogs time to determine that," cautioned Jana.
"They won't find her, Jana," Lucas said.
Meredyth added, "Lauralie still has her…what's left of her, that is."
"We don't know that for sure, Meredyth." Jana had gone to her and placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing, but Meredyth pulled away, stepping to the far side of the room.
Meredyth looked across the top of the now-closed freezer unit and into Jana's eyes. "Arthur Belkvin's posed body, his exposed heart, and his private parts notwithstanding, Lauralie is still on a mission."
"A mission?" asked Jana.
"A quest as obsessive as any crusade, as mad as any religious fixation," replied Meredyth, her voice calm. "The fixed, tightly packed, impenetrable idea to end what she has begun. And that adds up to my life-or the destruction of my peace for the rest of my life. And she meant for us to find two hearts here instead of one. It was no mistake, her leaving Mira's heart on a shelf, his on his sleeve. It's how the bitch views us, Lucas, me and you-my heart on a shelf and yours in your hand. Her cunning little assessment of our relationship."
"You really give her too much credit, Meredyth," Jana replied to this. 'Tell her, Lucas. Go on, tell her."