At his pretrial hearing a week later, Leon Helfer presented a pitiful sight, a man that had sunk so low as to become a cannibal, a true human monster whom the press painted in as lurid a color as possible and then some. He argued at the beginning that he had not killed alone, that there was an accomplice, and that the other was the real Claw; he argued that he had just been the Claw's dupe, his procurer, his Igor.
The few inclined to believe Helfer's side of things, anyone with doubts about the Claw's being in custody, quickly lost that position when Leon began calling himself Ovid in open court. Then Ovid was questioned on the stand by Dr. Richard Ames, who had been appointed by the court to determine if Leon Helfer was criminally insane.
Ames found himself in a quandary. He believed Helfer was not criminally insane by the strict letter of the law, but that he was clinically insane. Ames drew out the second personality even further. Ovid did not do as expected on the stand; rather than accuse Leon of the murder spree, he accused a third party, someone Ovid knew only as the Claw, someone Leon had met in some mystical interlude at a darkened funeral home where his mother's body lay in waiting.
“ The Claw,” said Ovid in a near whisper as his eyes moved about the room as if searching for this other, “the Claw is powerful and strong. He has eyes that glow red in the dark… like a mad dog… like Satan. He keeps coming back to me, in my cell at night.”
“ In your dreams, Mr. Helfer?” asked the prosecutor.
“ No, not in my dreams. He's just there, standing right there.”
“ In your cell?”
“ No, just outside, just staring in.”
“ What did he say to you?”
“ Nothing. He won't talk to me anymore. He won't help me. He's… he's abandoned me.”
Leon slumped in the witness stand. “He comes and goes right through the concrete walls.”
It was generally agreed in that moment by almost everyone in the courtroom that Leon Helfer was quite mad, and that he was the maniac with the unquenchable hunger for flesh and blood; that the ugly instrument entered as people's exhibit A was fashioned by Leon after hours at the pipe factory where he worked, coworkers testifying to seeing him fashioning what they had thought to be a garden tool. “In fact,” said one woman who had worked in the same department as Leon, “I think he made more than one of them things.”
Alongside the jars and several organs that were near unrecognizable as such, hammers, axes, and tire irons, all with flecks of blood from a variety of victims, were entered into evidence. Dr. Elliot Andersen, a thin, handsome serologist under Archer's guidance, laid out the various damning evidence, convincing everyone that Leon Helfer was none other than the Claw.
Ames capped off the thinking when he told the court that when Leon became Ovid, Ovid was in fact the Claw. There was very little to add after that.
All the ends were neatly joined together, the package tightly bound.
Throughout the swift trial, which had been held quickly to appease public demand, Jessica had labored over the findings she had brought back from the last of the Claw's victims. She had put in late hours, upsetting Alan Rychman among others, Alan now as certain of Helfer's guilt as the rest, as nothing he or his men could do could turn up a mysterious doctor at the Street Hospital who had disappeared, a man named Casadessus. According to the hospital, the papers the doctor had filed were accepted without question, and they had felt glad to have him. From their description, the man sported a mustache, was well-proportioned and tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. He disappeared a few days before Emmons' death and was not seen again.
Jessica had stopped going to the courtroom to watch the pitiful Helfer and the mounting case against him, utilizing whatever time remained to scrutinize the slides and scrapings she had taken from Emmons, knowing that O'Rourke had pulled the plug and ordered her back to Quantico. To offset this, she had already taken preliminary steps to see that Emmons' body and all the materials she had taken at the scene would travel back with her to Quantico for further investigation. Thus far, she had told no one about her plans, but everyone would know soon enough, and she expected a fight.
She knew that Emmons' family was already upset that the body had been kept this long. But she expected an even greater fight from Archer.
And maybe another from Alan, not to mention her chief, Theresa O'Rourke.
As she was giving thought to the hurdles she faced and while she worked over several fibers and hairs she had tweezered off the dead Emmons and placed in a plastic bag and labeled, she realized with almost a photographic sense of deja vu that what was staring back at her from the bottom of the microscope, she had seen somewhere before. The hair with its unmistakable patterns was that of Dr. Simon Archer, once again. His hair, like Luther Darius', Perkins', and her own, had had to be ruled out from the outset of the investigation, as the various hairs of the investigators, working in such close quarters with the corpses, usually showed up somewhere under a microscope. But there was a significant difference about this particular specimen.
Her hand began to shake. She had circumstantial evidence in her possession that Dr. Simon Archer had been in the vicinity of the deceased before she had died, before Jessica had shown up at the death scene. She looked again at the tiny packet, labeled in her handwriting, the time clearly marked. It was tagged seven minutes before Archer's arrival. How had his hair adhered to the body? How did it get there before him?
She shivered over the discovery, wondering who would believe it. If she raced to Alan with it, he'd dismiss it. A single hair, a labeled packet. She could have been wrong about the time, he would say. The D.A. would say the same thing. So would O'Rourke; so would anyone.
Perhaps she had made a mistake; she could hardly believe it herself. It could easily be refuted and no one suspected Archer of murder, of being the Claw… no one now but her.
And she was scheduled on a flight to D.C. tomorrow. Since there had been no Claw attacks since Leon Helfer's incarceration, everyone connected with the case was at blissful peace with the notion of case closed, and that was nowhere more true than in the mayor's mansion and in C. P. Eldritch's office. Rychman, too, was basking in new celebrity as the head of the task force that had brought down the Claw.
She still must tell Alan her new and terrible suspicion brought on by the errant hair strand. At the same time, she feared letting it out of her hands, unsure if she could trust that it would be in the medical lockup when she again looked for it. She decided to take a high-intensity photograph of the strand of hair and she pulled the one on file with Archer's name on it. If nothing else, she could show this to Alan, perhaps convince him that she wasn't completely crazy.
She next logged her Findings and put these under lock and key in her office and, following chain of custody procedure, returned the tiny packet and the hair to its place, signing the register for it and everything else she had removed from the lockup, realizing how simple it would have been for her, the attending M.E., to substitute another strand of hair for Archer's.
Was that how he had altered the evidence to make the Claw one man instead of two? To hide his own ugly tracks?
She was seeing Alan tonight to bid him farewell. In fact, time was running late and she must go to her hotel, freshen up and prepare for their parting. She was halfway out the door when Laurie Marks shouted that there was an important phone call for her.
“ From Quantico?”
“ Some guy in Philadelphia. Says he's a shrink.”
Arnold at the loony bin. She hesitated, wanting to run from the call, but thought better of it and said she'd take it in her office.
“ This better be important, Arnold,” she said impatiently.
“ Matisak wants to speak to you.”
“ Come on, Arnold! Case closed, or don't you have any newspapers in Philly?”
“ Matisak's read every paper, every account… following this case as if his life depended upon it, and… and he says he's got something more to report to you.”
“ Who's in control there, Arnold? Dammit, you or your fucked inmates?”
“ Why… I… Dr. Coran, I am just doing my part! At the request, I might add, of your superiors!”
“ O'Rourke,” she said. The woman could do nothing right. No way could she step in for Otto Boutine. She wasn't even in his league. “All right, put the creep on,” she finally told Arnold.
Matisak was insanely polite. She endured him for as long as she could before she said, “To the point, Matisak.”
“ This Leon Helfer is not the Claw.”
“ And just how do you know that?”
“ You don't believe it yourself, Dr. Coran. Do you? Well, do you?”
There had been remarks made in the papers. Matisak was picking up cues from the news items. He must have put it together, must have decided that her staying on this long on a case that was supposedly closed signaled that there was more. Ironically he had more confidence in her intuition than her superiors did. How fitting, she thought, that the only one who had any faith in her at the moment was a madman and serial killer.
“ You're right, you know,” he said. “I was wrong before. Helfer is crazy, and he has been a bad boy, but he doesn't really turn into the Claw any more than he's this Ovid character. He's just a weak kitchen mop, a dishrag, used by the Claw, set up by him. That's what you believe and that's what I've come to believe.”
“ What have you based your belief on, Matisak?”
“ You, Dr. Coran. I'm basing it on you.”
“ A vote of confidence from you isn't going to do me much good.”
“ But it has.”
“ What're you talking about?”
“ Why do you suppose O'Rourke allowed you to stay on?”
“ Son of a bitch,” she muttered into the phone.
“ That may be, but all the same-”
“ Why are you even interested, Matisak?”
“ You know the answer to that. Besides which this guy is as cunning and dangerous as I am, and I wouldn't want to read of your death, Jessica. I still fervently believe you're mine, and one day when you least expect it, Doctor, you and I will return to that interrupted dance. I still taste the blood I drew from your throat as fresh and as wonderful as if it were only-”
“ Shut up!” she shouted.
“ Look for a nurse who knew this guy Archer when he was a punk intern.”
She hung up on the madman in Philadelphia. She was shaken by both his threat and the revelation that O'Rourke was more willing to accept the recommendation of a convicted serial killer than her own. But she was even more shaken by his suggestion to investigate Archer's past. Her reports were being funneled to Matisak. She resolved to have it out with Chief O'Rourke on her return.
Matisak was playing his own game of averages. Since he knew that Simon Archer had interned somewhere, the doctor would have had to work with many other doctors and nurses during his residency. Doctors kept secrets while nurses didn't. Matisak also knew that the grueling “boot camp” of a residency could make or break a would-be doctor. With all his time to think about the case from his safe and objective distance, Matisak was telling her what she already knew.
Jessica had embarked on her own search into Archer's background, and it had quickly led to rumors of the sort that cling to anyone in the profession-her included-that the doctor who sliced and diced the dead perhaps enjoyed himself just a little too much for the comfort of others. So came the usual stigma. Archer was called names behind his back. Just as Jessica was called “the Scavenger,” Dr. Archer'd come to be known as both “Arrowhead” and “Dr. Ghoul” for his penchant of getting his “head” deep into his work, and for the undeniably long hours he spent in the company of the female bodies in particular. Morgue humor was something that followed every M.E. she had ever known, but usually such remarks were made by cops and lab assistants in gallows jest with some redeeming quality of black humor about them. In Archer's case, for some unaccountable reason, the remarks seemed devoid of humor, black, white, yellow or otherwise.
She continued to dig into his past, and the trail led to a retired nurse named Felona Hankersen. Lou Pierce had been persuaded to drive Jessica into the ghetto where Mrs. Hankersen lived. The thin, once pretty Mrs. Hankersen didn't want to talk to her, had nothing to say and pleaded with her to leave, but Jessica kept hammering at her with a barrage of questions about Dr. Simon Archer. As soon as Felona Hankersen heard the name, she blanched, weakened and crumpled, retreating to the safety that the interior of her apartment afforded.
Inside, several grandchildren scampered and played with toy pistols.
“ I took early retirement. Left that part of me behind. Don't know nothing about Dr. Archer anymore.”
“ I just want to ask you a few questions,” Jessica insisted, baring her teeth.
“ I've been out of that so long. I can't help you.”
“ From your record, from what I saw, you were an excellent nurse, and then something happened. A lawsuit settled out of court-a wrongful-death claim-and suddenly you were taking early retirement. Is that right?”
Her eyes had filled with thick tears.
“ I'm sorry, Mrs. Hankersen, but it's very important.”
“ I… I took the fall,” she muttered.
“ You were blamed for the boy's death, Mrs. Hankersen? Is that right?”
“ That was a lie!” Her tears left milky gray streaks along her black face.
“ Who lied, Mrs. Hankersen?”
“ What difference it make now? I just don't want no more of it. Said my piece at the time and there wasn't one of them wanted to hear the truth, not one!”
“ I do, Mrs. Hankersen… I do.”
“ It's been too long.”
“ Please.”
“ They believed the intern and I was quietly let go, and the parents were paid to keep shut. Officially the boy died of pneumonia with complications, but it all come about because of a mistake.”
“ Whose mistake?”
“ Mistaken dosage.”
“ Who ordered the dosage?”
“ Dr. Archer, but then you already know that. Whatchu need me for?”
“ You told the hospital authorities? There's no record of any such thing.”
Her eyes flared in anger. “You expect there to be? I saw and I told, and it got me gone. I questioned Dr. Archer's motives but nobody was listening. Now, I don't care to talk 'bout it no more. Now, if you will, please, just go.”
“ I can't do that,” Jessica fired back. “Please, what you say to me could save another's life.”
The elderly woman's eyes had been held by Jessica's gaze, but now they went to her trembling hands. Jessica reached across and covered her hands with her own. “I know it's difficult.”
“ He… the little boy…” she began tentatively, her lip quivering, “was gettin' better when he… he got into some mischief. Climbed out of bed night before… got to wanderin' the halls, you know. God… good God…” She sniffled and fought back more tears. “I… I wasn't believing a word the boy said. He looked like one of my own when they was little, sweet thing, and I just thought he was having a nightmare, you know, or maybe he was full of a devilish imagination… I don't know.”
“ What did the boy tell you?”
“ Told me”-she gasped for air-”told me he saw one of the doctors, and the man was cuttin' out a woman's heart and… and that he was eating the heart.”
Jessica drew in her own breath now, surprised by this, having expected something else. “Did he say where he had seen this?”
“ Somewhere in the basement. He was running when I caught him. Ran frightened into my arms.”
“ Basement in a hospital,” she muttered. It added up to the morgue in her mind.
“ Boy said, this doctor had blood all over his face, like a hungry dog. Said he saw the boy scramblin' outta there.”
“ And the boy was hysterical?”
“ Screamin' this mad tale? Yeah, he was hysterical.”
“ And you gave him sedatives? Valium?”
“ I didn't put nothing into that boy,” she said Firmly.
“ The reports say otherwise.”
“ The reports are full of lies.”
“ What steps did you take, then?”
She looked off as if to do so helped her think. “I called for help. Called the boy's doctor, who, over the phone, prescribed sedatives.”
“ Then you administered the sedative?”
“ I did, on doctor's orders.”
“ A Dr. Grisham?”
“ Yeah, Grisham… later threw me to the wolves to protect one of his own.”
“ Then what? Did Grisham come down?”
She shook her head in slow, thoughtful motion, saying, “No. Said to get the resident intern to look in on the boy.”
“ Archer?”
“ I protested but didn't do no good.”
“ Archer was the intern on duty that night?”
“ Yes'm.”
“ Where did you locate him?”
“ Rang the intern quarters. He was sleeping in there.”
“ And he came in and another drug was prescribed over and above the Valium?”
“ Pentobarbital over Valium in an eleven-year-old child, yes'm.” Her head was held high now, giving her a haughty and angry appearance. “It was wrong and I told Dr. Archer it was wrong and he told me to shut up.”
Jessica knew that pentobarbital was routinely used about hospitals everywhere for a litany of ailments. Primarily given before a patient's surgery to stave off nervous insomnia, it was also used to control seizures, and little Rodney Bishop was in the hospital for an epileptic seizure and resulting inju-ries.
“ Did you try to physically stop Dr. Archer?”
“ We argued and I telephoned Dr. Grisham, who ordered Dr. Archer to the phone, but by then the damned fool had killed Rodney.”
The use of the boy's name brought a new welt of tears to assail the woman.
“ And the boy never regained consciousness?”
“ Went into coma and there was no bringing him back after his heart seized up.”
“ Did you ever tell anyone about the boy's story of the doctor in the basement?”
“ I tried… I truly did. But it was dismissed 'long with me. What does an ol' woman like me know 'bout anything? That was the attitude of them doctors. Felt so awful for that boy's people. Terrible thing… just terrible…”
“ And then you were set up?”
“ Like Alice in Wonderland in the Queen's court. Hospital was fearful of a major lawsuit. I was coerced, threatened, cajoled, pleaded with and begged, and finally they just plain scared hell out of me. They were going to take my pension, everything I worked for all my life. They left me no choice but to resign. I put it from my mind so long ago, and now here you are.”
“ I'm investigating some irregularities regarding Dr. Archer.”
“ Irregularities?”
“ Of a more recent vintage.”
Mrs. Hankersen took a deep breath, eyes blinking and said, “Think of it, the FBI, coming to me for information on that man. Saw a picture of him in the papers just the other day. Wanted to burn the thing and stomp on it, but I just put it out with the rest of the trash.”
“ Do you think that what occurred back in 1965 at St. Stephen's Hospital was an accident, Mrs. Hankersen?”
“ I got two ways to go with that.”
“ Oh?”
“ If the boy's story of a ghoul in the morgue was true, and I have never seen a more frightened child in my life, then it was no accident. If the boy was just fibbing or night maring, then the overdose was likely an accident in judgment.”
“ You've given it a lot of thought over the years, haven't you?”
“ When I rang the interns' quarters where they're on call twenty-four hours, I got no answer for four, maybe five rings. That place was like a closet with a few bunk beds and nobody could sleep through a ringing phone, and when Dr. Archer did come on, he was breathing real heavy, like he'd been running. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but yeah, I've had lots of time to think about it since.”
She left Mrs. Hankersen soon after, but not before asking her to be prepared to one day repeat her story in a court of law. Mrs. Hankersen said she would not dare do so.
Then she wanted to know what Archer had done that had the FBI after him. Jessica had to decline giving her any information on a “pending” case, but she assured her that one day Dr. Archer would pay for his sins.
“ That much I already know,” Mrs. Hankersen had finished in the doorway.
Outside and all the way back downtown she remained silent, Lou Pierce obviously curious, staring over from time to time and asking if she was okay.
She assured him with little cliches of custom.
She was fighting a war within her the whole time, however, and Lou was not fooled. How could she bring to light any of the Hankersen story? It was hardly the kind of compelling evidence that men were indicted on. All she had were a handful of questionable hospital statements and the word of a lone nurse to contradict the records. No D.A.'s office in the land would touch such circumstantial evidence in an attempt to topple a man of Archer's growing reputation and position.
As for going to Alan Rychman with this, she feared that he was coming to imagine her a suspicious bitch by nature, and spiteful where Archer was concerned. But suppose Archer was in the morgue taking a bizarre necrophiliac's desire out over the body of a woman he'd helped autopsy that day? Suppose the now dead Rodney Bishop had seen his vile performance? Suppose Archer had murdered the boy in retaliation, out of fear and panic?
What did that make Archer? Besides a cannibalistic ghoul, like the Claw, a murderer of the innocent. And if he was capable of killing a helpless Rodney Bishop, why not an equally helpless Luther Darius? And if he was capable of necrophilia and cannibalism and of killing such innocents, why not, by extension and with the help of an accomplice, infirm, aged and weak women he found on the street?
Had Alan's words of the night before been meant simply to appease her? She had told him in no uncertain terms that she distrusted Archer, but to now go to him with these allegations? He'd likely think her mad.
Still, she had to present what she instinctively felt about Archer. At any rate, he was guilty of conspiracy to subvert the medicolegal evidence being compiled against the killer known as the Claw. Alan must at the very least accept this, and he must know that Archer's reasons for doing so may've gone far deeper than earlier thought. Like an onion, one layer peeled away only revealed a denser layer beneath.
Lou's radio crackled with the dispatcher's signals, 10-1 Is and 10-12s mostly, vandalism, minor disturbing the public, domestic violence. Lou's unit signal was 10–55 and he immediately picked up his transmitter and called into it, saying, “10–55 here. Go ahead.”
It was late, almost 7 P.M. Alan Rychman's voice came over, asking Lou if he knew of Dr. Coran's whereabouts. Lou looked to his right where she sat alongside him in the patrol car, and when she nodded, he said, “She's right here with me, Captain.”
“ And where's right here?”
“ Let me talk to him, Lou,” she said, taking the transmitter into her left hand.
“ Captain Rychman, if you'll meet me at the Marriott, I have some things to discuss with you before I leave for Quantico.”
“ Fine, but where've you been?”
“ We'll discuss it over that dinner you promised me, remember?”
“ Very well. See you then.”
Lou returned the transmitter to its cradle and sped through the tunnel for Manhattan. “You and the captain seem to have hit it off, Dr. Coran.”
“ We have a great deal of respect for one another, Lou, a good basis for a relationship, wouldn't you say?”
“ I would indeed, ma'am. He's a good man and you, well, you've put a spring in his step, I can tell you.”
She smiled across at Lou, who had earlier confirmed the nature of the rumors that went around about Archer, but Lou, like most, shrugged it off as “normal morgue bull” as he colorfully put it. She wondered what Rychman would call it; wondered how far she dare go in revealing her ugly suspicions of Simon Archer.
Perhaps it was too farfetched to say that Archer not only covered up evidence of the Claw but was the Claw. Perhaps Alan would choke on the notion. She knew she must temper what she said, so that Alan would take her seriously.
She leaned back into the cushioned seat, the weight of the day coming down on her, fatigue threatening to overtake her. She closed her eyes and recalled the tearful features of Mrs. Felona Hankersen, and she once again imagined a wide-eyed little black boy named Rodney who may have been the first person to have had an idea of the true nature of one Dr. Simon Archer.
Rychman met her in the lobby and they walked to a restaurant nearby, a place called the Social Contract. The ambience was surprisingly one of flora and fauna and jungle sounds, everything bringing up the image of Africa, and some of the dishes were most exotic. After a drink and after laughing over some of the items on the menu, she ordered chicken and he opted for the “rhino steak” after learning that “rhino” referred to the size of the thing.
After a moment's silence, a toast; Alan promised that he would soon break away and visit, for the first time in his life, the nation's Capital, “Now that I've got my own personal guide,” he'd finished.
“ If you make a promise to me, mister, I expect it to be fulfilled. I hope you know that.”
“ Count on it.”
“ I'll count the days.”
“ Soon as we put this Claw thing to rest for good.”
She looked off into the distance, chewed a bit on her “tiger-striped” grilled chicken and then dropped her head.
Rychman, reading her body language, asked, “What's troubling you, Jess?”
“ Nothing.”
“ Nothing or everything?”
“ All right, Alan, I still think Leon's only half the equation, and I think… I think…”
“ And you think everybody else is rushing this thing over the falls? Is that it?”
“ Damn straight that's it.”
“ Everybody's got their teeth into this, Jess.”
“ And that means the bite's on you? I know how important being commissioner is to you, Alan, but this isn't the way to do it.”
He stared coldly at her, his anger rising. “I haven't cut any deals on that score with anybody, kid, and you can take that to the bank.”
“ Have I said that?” She backed off a bit, sorry for getting into this the night before she planned to leave.
“ No, but it's what you're thinking. You give me something other than a lot of suppositions and questionable circumstantial evidence, and I'll move on it, Jess. You know that as well as I do.”
Frustrated, Jessica sipped at her wine, shaking her head, saying, “I know that, Alan… I know.”
“ You're some kind of holdout, Jess. You're the only one who still thinks that Leon had an accomplice.”
“ I'm not the only one who thinks so.”
His eyebrows rose. “Who else thinks so?”
“ Forget it.”
“ Who?” he demanded.
“ A nurse,” she said. “A nurse who knew Archer when he was interning at St. Stephen's Hospital in '65.”
“ All right, tell me the whole story.”
She took Alan carefully through the paper trail that led to Felona Hankersen. She told him how impressed she'd been with the woman's sincerity and how unimpressed she was with the hospital's paperwork, citing odd discrepancies. Finally she told him about Rodney's story, of his fear of a doctor he'd seen in the morgue, feeding on a human heart wrenched from a cadaver.
“ Okay, Jess, is that it?” he said in a tone that spoke of fatigue and disappointment. “The secondhand story of a dead boy from a sad old woman fired from her job? You know what you can do with that kind of evidence. And what're you saying here? How've you gone from Archer's being a petty and jealous assistant to Darius, trying to make himself look good, to a… to a cannibal… to Leon Helfer's accomplice… to being the Claw? It's just too outrageous, Jess. No one would believe it.”
“ Least of all you,” she said coldly.
“ Look, if you had anything corroborative, any hard evidence-”
“ Felona Hankersen isn't the only one who thinks he's a ghoul. You've heard the hallway gossip about Archer.”
He shook his head, saying, “Don't you think I've heard the same about you, especially since word's out we're seeing each other?”
This took her aback and she shook her head repeatedly. “Word's out how?” she wanted to know.
“ Damned if I know, but it is, and so every jerk in the department wants to know what it's like, seeing… someone like you… after hours. Point is I've heard the same nasty crap about you as I've heard about Archer: about how you like cutting thin slices of organ meat for a quick sandwich over the autopsy table. All crap, Jess, and you know it.”
“ Just the same, Felona Hankersen's not the only one who thinks Simon Archer is a fiend.”
“ And just who else is there, Jess? The night janitor at the lab?”
“ Never mind. Guess I've said too much already,” she whispered in her whiskey voice, leaning back into the cushion of the booth.
“ Who else?” he insisted.
“ Never you fucking mind. It's no one you'd approve of, anyway.”
He stared in dismay and she muttered, “Not sure I do myself, it's just… Well, the more I learn about Archer, the more twists and turns I-”
His eyes lit with an unexpected fire she could not at first fathom. He looked about to explode, about to smash the table with his fists.
“ Christ, it's Matisak again, isn't it? I thought you wrote that bastard off? What can a madman in a cell hundreds of miles away possibly know that we don't, Jess?”
She took in a great breath of air and shivered as if a draft passed over her. “I don't know how he does it, Alan, but Matisak has shadowed my every move, my every hunch on this case.”
“ He's just got you spooked.”
“ He's creepy, all right, uncanny.”
“ Bastard's just got you confused, Jess. You must see that.”
“ Confused? Hysterical is what you mean, isn't it?” She looked sternly up at him, her eyes fiery. “That's so convenient for you, Alan: chalk my suspicions up to those of a hysterical woman. Damn you.”
“ I'm just saying that this creep's gotten into your head, maybe.”
“ That's bullshit, Alan, pure-”
“ All right, all right,” he said, trying to calm her. “So you harbor doubts. Tell me about them. Talk to me, Jess.”
She calmed, dabbed with her napkin at a spot of wine she'd spilled and said evenly, “I still think there's something to this Dr. Casadessus at the Street Hospital you got a line on. Where has that led you?”
He scratched his head and said apologetically, “Nowhere, I'm afraid. The guy disappeared like smoke, without a trace.”
“ So you've given up?”
“ I still have men working on it.”
“ Have you ever considered the not so remote possibility that this Dr. Casadessus might be someone close to the case?”
“ You're back to Simon Archer.”
“ I am. Alan, you realize it was rather a convenient coincidence for Archer that Jim Drake was killed by a hit-and-run?”
“ Drake's death is still under investigation.”
“ Have you checked Archer's car for recent repairs?”
“ We have, and it led nowhere.”
“ Then maybe he's got two cars?”
“ You're reaching, Jess.”
“ And what about Dr. Darius?”
“ What about him?”
“ His so-called suicide. Also overseen by Simon Archer.”
“ Jess, you sound like… like-”
“ Don't say it, Alan.”
“- like you've got some sort of vendetta against Archer.”
“ My vendetta is against the Claw, Alan, and in my book a Leon Helfer isn't capable on his own of the damage done by the Claw. He's told us that he fashioned the murder weapon while under the spell of this other man, and that it was designed by the other. He was very specific. He told us that the killer had two claws made but used only one, normally, reserving the kill for himself.”
“ Nobody, Jess, believes what Helfer has had to say.” He put his hand over hers and added, “I know how hard you took Darius' death, but to think that Archer actually helped him out that hospital window, Jess… Well, there's not one speck of evidence to support that contention. I know you got close to Darius. Maybe it's clouded your judgment-”
“ Clouded, confused woman, huh? So we're back to that.”
“ You do admit to being human, to being emotionally involved?” She did not answer this, stubbornly persisting in her own questions instead. “So what're you saying? Helfer killed his boss and his dentist as well?”
“ It seems much more likely that Helfer did these men than Simon Archer, Jess. Look, I'm… we are continuing investigations into both Parke's and Malthuesen's deaths. We have good reason to believe both were murdered, but that leaves Leon as prime suspect in these deaths, and this morning, Leon confessed to both murders.”
No one had bothered to tell her, and she was caught off guard. “Leon'11 confess to anything anyone puts to him now, so long as you promise to keep him safe from the Claw; but tell me this, Alan.”
“ Yes?”
“ Has he confessed to being the Claw?” Before he could answer, she added, “Look at this,” and took from her purse a manila envelope, spreading its contents before him: two electronic photos of Archer's hair which she had taken from the lab.
“ What is it I'm looking at, Jess?”
“ This was taken a few hours ago, and this was on file. It's a strand of Archer's hair.”
“ Does this mean something?”
She explained how she had gotten the first strand, her belief that it was lifted from the body a good seven minutes before Archer arrived on scene.
He looked over the two photos for some time, his features not giving anything away, but his eyes showing a dubious and steady blink, the big hands folding about the photos. “You sure that you labeled it correctly?”
“ Yes! Dammit, I knew you'd say that.”
“ Even if I believe you, Jess, it's slim evidence at best. Do you have anything else on the man?”
She couldn't hide the look of disappointment on her face.
“ D.A. wouldn't touch this. It'd be your word against Archer's, and Archer could make a case for your having a longstanding poisoned relationship that-”
“ Forget it,” she said abruptly.
“ Wait a minute, Jess.”
“ Just forget it, Alan.”
The waiter arrived to clear their dishes, and they fell silent.
After he left, Alan began, “Jess, it's not that I don't believe that you believe-”
“ I won't bore you with any more of my doubts, Alan.”
“ Come on, Jess. That's not fair.”
“ I wouldn't want to bring you down from that high you've been riding since Helfer was cuffed.”
He tossed down his napkin and leaned in across the table. “That's bull, Jessica. I'm not railroading this creep. He's as guilty as guilty gets and-”
“ And so is someone else, someone who drove him, controlled Helfer, gave him a new name, a new identity, and gave him orders.”
“ There's not a shred of forensics evidence to support you, nothing other than Leon Helfer's word, which is less than nothing, Jess.”
“ All true, thanks in large part to Archer, who, by the way, still has not been so much as reprimanded for his part in slowing this investigation.”
“ Internal Affairs is looking into your allegations.”
“ Allegations?”
“ Yes.”
“ And what does Internal Affairs know about hiding evidence in a test tube or beneath a microscope?”
“ Christ, it's not as if Archer conspired with the killer. If he let some things go, if he became a little careless, it was for mundane, perhaps petty reasons.”
“ Well, I'm not so sure.”
She got up to leave, but he stood also and grabbed her by the wrist. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“ I'm still unconvinced he had nothing to do with Dr. Darius' fall prior to his going into the hospital, if not his so-called suicide.”
“ Christ, you really dislike this guy, don't you?”
“ Don't you see? Archer did all he could to slow the progress of the investigation until he was firmly in place as Darius' logical successor. And I don't understand why you and the others choose to look the other way.”
She hurled away, and he threw money on the table and rushed after her. Neither of them had noticed the darkly clad, heavily made-up man at the booth beside them who now stood and quietly left in their wake.?