“ Have you home in a second, Dr. Coran.”
She missed her apartment home in Quantico, a refuge.
“ Honestly, Doctor,” Lou continued as he weaved expertly through traffic. “There wasn't any drawing to see who gets to drive you home, but that's only because I didn't give the others a chance.”
She smiled again. “I like honesty, Lou.”
“ Then you'll like New York and New Yorkers. They're… painfully honest, ma'am.”
She wanted to ask him twenty questions about Alan Rychman after his assurance of honesty. She wondered if she dared.
“ You and Captain Rychman seem close-for subordinate and superior, I mean.”
“ Hell, ma'am, I owe the captain my life.”
“ How's that?”
“ He saved my life, Doctor.”
“ Really?”
“ All in the line of duty, he'd say, but he put himself between me and danger, and I can never forget a thing like that, Doctor.”
“ Nor should you.” Her thoughts returned to the night Otto Boutine had done as much for her, except that Otto had not lived to reap the benefit of her undying gratitude.
“ Hell, I didn't even hardly know Rychman at the time, ma'am. He'd just taken over the 31st and was cleaning house good, and even me-a clean cop-was worried about 'the Boot.' That's what we called him back then-'bout nine, maybe ten years now. Been with him as his aide for seven. Anyway, back then, I was a real gung-ho fool and I charged into this crack house ahead of the others. The captain, he could've just parked it outside, but not Rychman. He wanted in on the action from the start, same as I did that night.
“ Anyway, if he hadn't come storming through the back when he did, I'd be in a box in Green lawn instead of telling you all this.”
They were at the hotel and she hurried from the car, wind rippling and beating at her clothes. Inside the lobby, Lou caught up with her and asked if she needed anything else.
“ You didn't have to leave your unit, Sergeant,” she told him.
“ Rychman told me to see you safely inside, ma'am.”
“ Well, you've done that.”
“ You've got carte blanche in this town, Dr. Coran, just remember, no cabs for you. You just call the squad room.”
“ Thank you, Sergeant.”
“ Oh, it isn't my doing, Doctor.” On that note he rushed back out into the stormy night.
Ovid was worried.
He had become progressively more brutal with each murder, as if he were working up to some sort of bizarre final brutality.
So had the Claw.
The Claw taught him everything.
But he didn't know that much, really. He didn't know where the Claw lived, for instance. Once, he started to follow him, and the Claw turned as if he felt him near. He had stared so long at the place where Ovid hid in the brush in Central Park that Ovid had almost begun to believe the Claw had cat's eyes, and could see him there. It so unnerved Ovid that he never dared to follow the Claw again.
He always feared that one day the Claw would turn on him, make a meal of him.
He knew he walked a thin, dangerous line. But it was the most thrilling thing that had happened in an otherwise dull and empty existence.
He even had a new name to proclaim his rebirth: Ovid. He'd wondered why “Ovid,” wondered if it held some special significance to the Claw, and so he had gone to the library and found a book on names. Opening it to the O's and trailing his finger along the column, he found Ovid there. It was strange and obscure and filled with ancient meaning, his new name. “Ovid” was Latin for “divine protector.” And in a sense, he did help and protect the Claw, who came to him in the night, needing him, needing his assistance. It was the first time anyone had ever needed him.
He located the history of the ancient poet Ovid, and began to feel some connection with him. He took out translations of Ovid's work along with the Latin subtext, and slowly he began to teach himself some Latin words and phrases.
The Claw had opened up a whole new world to him, and he began to wonder if he could, like his namesake, write poetry.
That was what he was doing now, writing a poem, a poem he intended to send to the New York Times, knowing somehow that they'd print it, if it was good enough and graphic enough.
But he worried about sending his poem to the newspaper. What would the Claw do to him? How would he react? Still, the poem proclaimed the inevitable power of the Claw over everyone in this life; it also spoke of disease and aging and death. It told the world that the Claw was good, not evil; that he ended suffering. He didn't create it. He ended it.
Still, Ovid hesitated sending his words without talking it over with the Claw first. Perhaps if he read it to the Claw, he'd have to see the importance of it, that it was preordained, and that Ovid was important to the cause, too. Maybe he'd see it that way…
The Claw had contacted him in the usual eerie manner last night, leaving a note under his pillow like a goddamned visiting ghost, a night creature, a bloody, dark tooth fairy. How he came and went, how he got in, leaving everything intact, Ovid hadn't a clue. He seemed capable of walking through walls, walking on air… and maybe water. Maybe he was the Antichrist, a god in his own right, a dark angel.
You don't cross a dark angel, he kept telling himself all through breakfast and the writing of the poem, and the rest of the day as he studied and refined and rewrote the poem. It was his day off, so he didn't have to work at the factory, and so he had too much time on his hands to think. The poem, while about the Claw, ironically kept his mind off things he didn't want to think about; kept him busy so time wouldn't weigh heavy, and so he wouldn't be so nervous when the Claw next stepped from a shadow to speak to him and direct him.
It was good to have someone to tell him what to do, when and where and how. He'd missed that since his mother's death. Before he had the Claw in his life, he had Mother. And while Mother wasn't a cannibal, she shared a lot of other characteristics with the Claw.
They would've liked one another, he thought.
Once when Ovid had telephoned a radio talk show, careful to use a pay phone, the Claw was so upset with him that he'd struck him hard across the face several times, and he'd slashed Ovid with his claw for good measure, just to show him that Ovid could easily be another victim, liie Claw had torn his arm badly, but Ovid knew it was all his own fault. He shouldn't've done anything to anger the Claw.
He reviewed the poem once more, made a few more refinements, trying desperately to make it succinct and rhythmic at the same time. He thought it was good, and he toyed with the idea of sending it straight out and telling the Claw about it afterward, but no, he knew better.
He thought of the first time he had met the Claw, and how strange it had been. It was when his mother died. Everyone had gone and he was left alone with his mother's corpse at the funeral home, tearful and resentful that she had left him. He had been afraid to go home alone. He was talking to her as she lay in her coffin, asking her what he was going to do without her.
And then he appeared from nowhere, and it was as if he knew the depth of Ovid's pain and grief. He placed a gentle hand on him. He promised to befriend Ovid and said he'd go home with him for the night, if he was afraid to go into the empty house alone.
Up until that moment, Leon was the name Ovid went by in the neighborhood and at the factory. Leon Helfer. The firm hand of the stranger he later came to know only as the Claw had materialized out of the weave of a heavy, burgundy-red curtain; the spirit had literally pulled its way from the haunted cloth. In a soft whisper he said, “You are Ovid. I know you from the ages. You are not alone; your mother sent me. You're not a factory worker, you're a speaker of divine truth.”