Once inside Leon's house with Emmons, who was still alive. Archer took further hideous delight over her. Here he disemboweled her, tearing her intestines from her stomach cavity, curling them in a heap beside her, as was the Claw's custom. Rychman, Coran and the others would find her eviscerated, gutted open like a fish on a slab. And Leon was the perfect suspect. Archer had seen to that.
Archer's clothing was bloodstained, but he had a change of clothing in his trunk. He had been careful once more to wear a hair net and surgical gloves, even under the glove of the claw so as to leave no prints inside the claw itself. Coran would think to investigate the interior of it, he was sure. Now, ready to feed on the dead Emmons, he covered even his teeth with an acrylic coverlet that duplicated the impressions made by Leon Helfer. His plan was one of genius, thanks to the ruminations of his alter ego, Casadessus, whom he kept secret from even Leon.
The teeth impressions were compliments of Leon's dentist, a Dr. Parke, who had been most pliable when presented with the sight of $25,000. The good dentist had a number of outstanding gambling debts he was anxious to be shed of. The transaction had gone smoothly, and when Casadessus had vis-ited Dr. Parke again, the dentist had no fear or suspicion of him. He just wanted to know if there was anything else he could do for him, for payment. “There is one thing,” Casadessus told him just before pushing him down an open elevator shaft. “You can die for me.”
Archer had agreed that Parke, like Jim Drake, had to be eliminated. It just tidied things up and he was cautious to a fault. He fed over Emmons' organs now, feeling the warm blood and tissue traveling down his throat. Her soul would add power to his, become one with him as the prey and predator met in the ultimate union. She would go a long way to empower him with the strength needed for what lay ahead. But he hadn't much time before Leon might return and before Emmons' partner or other police might show up.
Sergeant Emmons had been a pleasant surprise, coming on his heels as she had. Archer had entered Leon's stinking place with a key he'd fashioned long before. Expecting Leon to be there, he became incensed to learn that Leon had not only disobeyed him by leaving but had removed all the organ jars.
He had gone to the window and peered out, recalling how he had once watched from this same window to see Leon with Mrs. Phillips in the park, feeding pigeons. He had known then that Casadessus, his other self-known to all others as the Claw-would kill Mrs. Phillips in order to impli-cate Leon further in the Claw killings. After Leon was taken into custody, Simon would prove beyond any doubt that Helfer was the one and only Claw. It was the type of attention-grabbing case that would catapult him into the kind of prominence demanded of his profession. If he were ever to be given the serious consideration granted people like Luther Darius, he must carry through with Casadessus' diabolical plan. Once accomplished, Simon Archer would be whole, Casadessus had promised.
He'd then seen Emmons out the rear window going through Leon's trash. He went down the street, fearful at first, and when he saw her unmarked police car, and no one near, he got in and called dispatch, who asked, “Unit 234, what is your position?”
When he did not answer, the dispatcher said, “Turner? Are you there? Emmons? Louise, are you there?” Louise Emmons was the lady cop at the trash, but there was no sign of her partner. She must be moonlighting on her own. She had undoubtedly seen his BMW and possibly the smashed fender. He decided he could use her in his scheme to implicate Leon and extricate himself from any possible suspicion. He'd fortunately carried his black valise into Leon's with him, intending to plant the murder weapon in Leon's bedroom closet. Now he'd leave Emmons' body as well as the damning murder weapon to ensure Leon's absolute guilt. It could not have worked out better. Not even his sinister other self had planned such a climactic end to the Claw.
Now, his lips red with her blood, he swallowed another piece of Emmons, knowing the protein was good for him.
Having fed to his liking, he reached with his bloodied and gloved right hand into his mouth and snatched off the hard, acrylic tooth coverlets that Leon's dentist had fashioned for him at a dear price. These he carefully wrapped in cellophane and placed in his pocket.
He stood over the body where it lay in the kitchen. Emmons had been a lovely woman in life, and she had sustained him in death. His strong, inner self, Casadessus, grew in strength and energy each time he fed, and Simon Archer, too, was strengthened. With each kill, Simon became more and more adept at getting what he wanted.
Now he had only to let things fall as they may. He stepped away from the last feeding he would have in some time. The masquerade must be finished, the Claw captured and his reign of terror ended, all for Simon.
Archer sat in the middle of Leon Helfer's living room, his knees pulled up to his chest, rocking and biding his time, determined to keep calm and to cover his own tracks as carefully as he had throughout the year of the Claw. He'd soon take his final step as the Claw, and all would end with Leon's capture or-preferably-his death.
It was odd, he thought, how he had become a murderer, and why. He hadn't planned it, not really… at least not the first time, yet it had grown out of who he was and what he did. He'd begun in the lab where he stripped the bodies of the women; knowing he could not mutilate them, knowing that if he did, it would surely end in his dismissal, if not his arrest, he took what delights he could. He knew he must refrain from any cutting other than the coroner's Y-cut, unless there was some overriding and urgent need to cut elsewhere. But he had such urges; sometimes he wanted to tear the corpse from head to toe. It had just started creeping over his mind like a growth, a snaking vine. He could mutilate the in-sides, that which did not show. And so he began… He ripped apart the organs in the privacy of his lab, and finding this not satisfying enough, he had begun to cannibalize the internal flesh.
He did not know exactly why.
He was not sure he wanted to know why.
Why had his appetite for flesh suddenly blossomed? Was it hereditary? An ancient lust, genetically coded? Or had it a cerebral origin coming out of a nasty childhood in which his mother often bit him repeatedly as punishment for wrongdoing? Either way, why did he now feel the need for a fresh kill when before, the quiet, silent feeding over corpses entering the morgue had been enough?
Ambition, he guessed. He might have gone on feeding his prurient, unusual tastes just as he had for years in the depths of the city morgue but for his other self, that self who was ambitious enough to want Dr. Darius' position.
Archer kept his secrets well from everyone; however, he kept no secrets well from himself. He knew that there were two Simon Archers, and the Mr. Hyde was aware of Dr. Archer, and vice versa.
He must get up, make the call and get out.
He gathered up his black valise and other things, leaving only the poorly hidden tell-tale claw and the gutted, motionless body of Detective Emmons, her eyes gone from their sockets, delicacies that Archer had taken for himself.
He dialed 911 and clicked on the spliced-together tape recording he had forced from Leon several months before, knowing the day would come when he'd have to use it. Leon's taped voice said, “Someone's been killed… send help… quickly.” Leon then gave his address and Archer hung up over the protests of the operator.
Archer then quickly disappeared from the premises.
When Dave Turner pulled within sight of Leon Helfer's squat little apartment complex, his heart felt as if it were in ice, his nerves completely dulled, and his vision blurring like that of a drunk's. It was true… It was true, what they were saying on the radio: another victim of the Claw had been discovered, and it was a cop. He knew it was Emmons.
“ Dammit, Louise, damn you! Why didn't you wait?” He was holding the search warrant in his hand, waving it at the unfeeling night sky.
Capt. Alan Rychman stood on the very steps where Turner and Emmons had questioned Leon Helfer. He seemed to be directing an orchestra of cops. Sergeant Pierce was beside Rychman and now he pointed out Turner, who was fighting his way through the crowd toward them. Rychman looked as if he'd swallowed hemlock, and he started straight for Turner, grabbing him and holding on, saying, “Where the hell were you, Turner?”
“ I… I… went for a search warrant, Captain. She… she wasn't supposed to go in until I got back.”
Rychman snatched the warrant from him and looked at it.
Turner's face was stricken with grief. “Did she… did she die badly?”
Pierce said simply, “You don't want to go in there, Turner.”
Turner tried to push past him, but Rychman held on, ordering him to stand down.
“ Bastard! Bastard! Little weasel, Captain. The guy's a weasel. Why didn't she wait? Why'd she go in alone? Doesn't make sense. She promised; she knew the danger; knew I was on my way. So, why? Why?”
Turner leaned across the top of a vehicle, his body shaking with pent-up rage and tears.
Pierce just stared at the back of Turner's head, saying, “She'll be taken care of, Turner. She's in no pain now.”
Rychman frowned and nervously nodded, adding, “She cornered the Claw, Turner… Now we know who the creep is. With an APB out on Helfer, he's as good as dead.”
Inside Leon Helfer's apartment house, Jessica Coran first took a cursory look at the condition and situation of the body, finding the fact that Emmons' eyes were missing far more disturbing for some reason than the fact that every organ in her body had been turned out, some resting near the body while others, like most of the brain, had been heaved across the room. Some of the organs had large chunks missing, presumably eaten by the cannibal.
Just to get away from the body and to draw her breath, Jessica toured each room, examining for any clues that might tell her where Emmons was when she was first attacked. It appeared from the trajectory of blood against the walls in the kitchen that the killing had occurred there, as if she had been surprised and attacked on entry at the back door. A trail of her blood led Jessica deeper into the kitchen, where the body had been splayed open, her organs squandered about the room in what appeared to be a more violent rage than the Claw had heretofore exhibited.
Emmons was hardly recognizable.
The sight gave Jessica pause, which the police photographer and the evidence team seemed to take as a sign of weakness. She brought herself up quickly when she heard someone say that Dr. Archer had been located and was on his way.
She wanted to get as much accomplished as possible before Archer arrived. She gave orders for the E.T. people to concentrate elsewhere, and in particular to search for tools and deadly instruments. One of the men went straight for the open door of the basement, stepping directly into a smear of fluid. Jessica's shout-that he watch his step-came too late.
She placed her black valise within reach and knelt over Louise Emmons' disfigured corpse, trying to control her nerves, which threatened to erupt at any moment. Her immediate reaction was that the body had been here less than an hour. Even so, the flies had found it.
As she cut away patches of stained clothing, bagging these in paper, as was necessary in properly drying and preserving bloodstains, she thought once again about the letter of the law with regard to the chain of custody of medicolegal evidence of this nature.
She knew that the practicalities of proof did not require the State of New York to exclude every possibility of substitution or tampering; that it need only establish a reasonable assumption that there was no substitution, alteration or tampering of the sacrosanct evidence. All that was required was to establish a “chain of custody,” a reasonable assurance that the exhibits of trial were the same as those taken from the scene, and that they remained in the same condition.
A lot of assumptions and assurances were made and taken for granted along the way between scene of event and the medical examiner's office. She had learned from Dr. Aaron Holecraft that it was not sufficient merely to show the authenticity of the item on which analysis was based, but also to prove that the custody of the materials analyzed was absolutely reliable.
There was always danger of adulteration, even confusion, of materials in a busy lab, but worse, there was always the possibility, however remote, of tampering. She could recall word for word what Holecraft had said on the subject.
“ It is unnecessary that all possibility of tampering be negated, but where the forensic substance is passed through several hands, the evidence must not leave it to conjecture as to who had it and what was done with it!”
The bottom line, even for a bad M.E. who was faking it, was merely to establish a chain that afforded reasonable assurance. Archer knew this. Every M.E. knew this.
Could he have used it to his advantage, to further his career? It would be a simple matter for the acting head of the medical examiner's office, like a Mafia accountant doctoring and falsifying books.
As her mind played over the importance of the chain of custody in the Claw case, she took nail scrapings from below Emmons' already paper-white, stiff fingers.
She tried desperately to tell herself that perhaps she was being too critical of Archer's performance; that given the circumstances of his situation-a shortage of people, the sudden loss of strong leadership in the department, her own threatening presence-that maybe she herself had simply become overly suspicious of everyone's motives. She wasn't happy with the idea, for she was beginning to suspect even her friends of plotting against her, like J.T. He had put off her request for other, pressing work at Quantico, and there had been something in his voice the last time he had spoken with her, a kind of backscatter that was saying between the lines how sorry he was for something unspoken. As for the background check on Archer, he'd given her only a long series of generalizations, nothing concrete.
Maybe her growing paranoia was getting out of hand, affecting how she viewed people. Maybe…
“ Oh, God… God damn!” shouted the policeman in the basement.
She went to the door and peered down to where the flash lit up a lump of flesh. “What is it?”
“ Looks like her spleen or a kidney… I don't know,” he replied.
“ Leave it exactly as you've found it. Don't touch anything. Any tools down there?”
“ Nothing other than brooms and rakes. It's weird.”
“ What's weird?”
“ Got a workbench but no tool chest, no tools.”
“ They travel with this creep,” she said. “They're probably in his car. See if you can find a light switch down there, and I'll get that photographer back.”
It was a fundamental precept of jurisprudence that a jury, upon seeing the items presented in evidence relevant to a case, was powerfully affected. She knew from the Matisak case, in which she and J.T. has amassed a small mountain of forensic evidence, that such items as those from the basement of Leon Helfer's house would most certainly put him away for life. All she had to do was make sure that the genuineness of the article from here to trial was carefully authenticated by tracing its every movement and repository, and into whose hands it had passed from place to place. Only in this manner could a judge rule that the chain of custody was appropriate and thus the evidence permissible in a court of law.
A close reading of the records with respect to each of the Claw's victims had revealed-to her way of thinking-that Dr. Simon Archer had not always been careful about the integrity of the chain of custody. She thought surely that this must have been a very abrasive thorn in Luther Darius' side; no doubt they had arguments over it. On the surface, and especially to anyone who was not an M.E., it might look like simple relaxing of rules, carelessness, errors, but to Jessica Coran, a perfectionist, it looked far more like tampering, or at the very least negligence.
She'd earlier gone to the New York Times and had found Jim Drake at his desk, looking smug and pleased with himself. She asked him point-blank about who it was that had supplied him with the information about the poem written by the killer. He had refused to tell her.
“ You knew this would compromise our case, and yet you went ahead with the story without even giving us the benefit of knowing you had it or that you were publishing it, Drake. Don't you see that every time you do something like this, you erode any trust, confidence or cooperation built up between the press and the police?”
He rocked forward in his squeaky chair and stood up all in one fluid motion, speaking as he did so. “It was my editor's decision to run it, and I respect him for showing good sense and guts.”
“ That's a cop-out and you know it.”
“ Look, Dr. Coran,” he said, raising his voice, looking around at those who'd begun to stare, “I'm thirty-three years old, a veteran investigative reporter, and my first loyalty is to the story!”
“ The storyT she said snidely.
“ The story, the newspaper, the public-”
She snorted in disdain. “You don't give a rat's ass about the public's right to know. We both know that.”
“ All right, maybe I'm not so sure what the public wants or thinks, but-”
“ Public interest too big an abstraction for you?”
He stared a moment, realizing she was making him sound like a fool. “When I get any information that makes a good story, and it doesn't break the law, then I'm going to use it. If it upsets you or Rychman, the D.A. or the friggin' mayor, then that's no concern of mine.”
“ It just might be more concern of yours than you think, Mr. Drake. I happen to know that you obtained your information from Simon Archer, and that it was off the record.”
“ There was nothing off the-” He had stopped himself, his guilty eyes giving the rest away. She'd then turned and rushed away, leaving the reporter to stare after the cane-wielding FBI agent.
She learned tonight that Drake was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run while out on what was described as a dangerous assignment having to do with street gangs and drugs. An assistant of Simon Archer's had done the crime scene, collecting paint chips and drug paraphernalia found near the scene. Archer was curiously unavailable.
An awful lot of people were dying around Simon Archer. First there was Darius and now Drake. Coincidence? She had seen coincidence at work on her side in the case involving Matisak, but this coincidence bordered on the impossible.
Could she possibly not harbor doubts about Dr. Archer? She had already besmirched his reputation, telling the mayor, the C.P. and Rychman that she believed he had leaked the information about Ovid to Drake. Suppose that was his worst crime? Suppose the rest was all due to her history around such criminal minds as Sims and Matisak, that she found it near impossible to believe anyone was without some hidden motive or secret or ambitious drive?
Just then Archer entered the scene, the look of shock and horror on his face convincing her how much the work of the Claw turned his stomach, and that he wanted to get this bastard as much as anyone. The killer, particularly vicious with Emmons, was their goal. All else must be shunted aside now.
“ One of her kidneys was thrown down the stairs and is in the basement,” she told Archer.
Archer's face worked the grimace away, turning to the granite surface required of the M.E., and she understood clearly the need to throw up a protective barrier of hard professionalism.
“ Dr. Coran, you look as if you could stand some air,” he said. “If you'd like to step out for a breath, I'll be here.”
It made her recall how solicitous he had been at the scene of Darius' death.
“ No, I'm quite all right. Over the initial blow, you might say.”
He shook his head and pursed his lips. “It's hideous… just awful what this madman has done.” What I can't understand is why he did it here. In his own place. When before he was so careful.”
He shrugged. “She obviously surprised him, and perhaps… Well, panic doesn't take time for calculation.”
“ But he's been so careful in the past, so organized and calculated.”
“ As I said, Doctor, it must've been the shock of her coming in on him.”
“ I don't understand that, either. Why she came in alone, against all regulation, without backup, no warrant, nothing.”
“ I understand that you once did the same thing, Doctor.”
She could find no words of reply.
Archer kept talking. “Has the man been apprehended?”
“ No… not to my knowledge.”
He nodded. “With a citywide APB, it's just a matter of time.”
“ More likely he'll be shot dead after this, if I know cops.”
“ Yes, well… either way, it's… it's at an end; just too bad for Emmons that her last official act, while it pointed straight to him, cost her her life.”
His tone was sincere, and she believed he must feel some guilt, if he had indeed slowed an investigation that cost more lives as a result, merely to feed his ambition. Part of her pitied him. Part of her hated him.
He seemed to see either the pity part or the hatred, and so he quickly drew back his eyes, going for the body to begin his own scrapings and specimen-gatherings. She, too, returned to Emmons' body to finish her own findings.
“ Looks like a lot of duplication of effort here, Dr. Coran,” he said after a time. “I hope you will be willing to share? Save a lot of time and effort, and frankly, the less time with this… Afraid my heart and stomach aren't as strong as they should be. Not at all like Dr. Darius in that regard. Now, there was a man who could look at any deformity or disfigurement… So clinical… so…”
“ So like me?”
He was taken by surprise, obviously not thinking this at all. “I… I didn't mean to imply…”
“ The samples I've taken are not going to be shared, Dr. Archer,” she said flatly.
“ What? But why not if-?”
“ I understand your department will soon be under investigation for chain of custody lapses; I'm afraid the FBI cannot align itself any closer to your department than absolutely necessary for the duration of this case, and I've been ordered,” she lied, “to… well, create my own chain, as it were.”
He stared coldly at her now, all his former solicitousness having vanished. “No secret, is it? Well, they'll find nothing. They'll look, sure. And they may find clerical errors, missteps, but nothing your own laboratory is not guilty of at times. They'll see we have worked for years under extreme handicaps and… and… Well, why am I boring you with this? I guess I understand your situation, and if you're under orders… FBI'11 change its tune when I break this case.”
“ Sorry, but that's how it must be, Doctor,” she said.
He nodded and went back to his work. He had put on a surgical mask, surgical gloves and a hair net. As she went back to her own work, her own surgical precautions seemed limited by comparison. She merely wore gloves. However, she had taken every precaution with the samples she'd now fixed to slides, packeted, bottled and bagged, down to the precise time that she placed each label onto the gathered evidence. She had also brought along a separate officer, Sergeant Pierce, Rychman's aide, to take custody of the materials. In his safekeeping, the materials would go to the medical lockup, where each was catalogued, and only then could she regain them for laboratory examination. In some in-stances, Archer had been remiss with such materials for fifteen, twenty and sometimes forty minutes, easily enough time to subvert or tamper with the material for reasons only he fully understood.
“ One way or another,” she told him across Emmons' body, “I'm going to prove there is a second killer.”
“ You're still clinging to that impossible notion? Doctor, one would think you obsessive.”
Meanwhile, the entire apartment building was still being scoured, turned inside out for any sign of a murder weapon or anything else that might further incriminate Leon Helfer, the owner and resident of the premises.
As she worked she felt eyes on her. Archer was watching askance from where he worked. Some of the men in the room were watching them both. It was difficult working a corpse whose face was familiar, the woman having been a walking, talking, laughing associate not a few hours before. For Jessica, it brought back lurid memories of the terror of being rendered helpless by a maniac bent on slowly taking her life from her, bleeding her like a stock animal. At least Emmons' suffering appeared to have been short-lived, far shorter than the suffering Jessica had tolerated at the hands of Mad Matisak. But she was alive.
She reached up to her throat where all the scar tissue had been surgically repaired.