No forced entry-nothing to indicate she had any reason to fear her attacker any more than the Olin woman seemed to have had-gave Rychman a glimmer of hope. If both women knew their attacker, then some thread of commonality existed between these two victims which had gone unnoticed among the previous victims. Somewhere in each woman's past she had crossed the path of the Claw before last night, and when he came to call, each in turn had allowed him inside. Perhaps he was a neighbor, someone to be trusted, someone clever and cunning who had targeted these women in anything other than a random way after all.
“ This… this is dreadful,” whispered the building superintendent who'd crept in behind the detectives. Rychman thought the super was understandably upset by a tenant's death until he heard the man telling Lou that it was going to be hell to get the bloodstains up if they were allowed to remain much longer, and this would make renting out the place even more difficult in these recessionary times. He also complained of a missing rug.
“ What kind of a rug?” asked Rychman sharply.
“ An expensive one, Oriental.”
“ Hers or yours?”
“ Mine… at least, it was.”
“ Whataya mean, was? Either it belonged to you or it didn't.”
“ I didn't get it in writing. It was the only thing she had of worth, and she purchased her last month's rent with it. I figured it lent the place a touch of class, and if she moved out and it stayed, I figured… well, I figured…”
“ I get the picture, Mr. ahhh…”
“ Gwinn, Donald W.,” he told Lou, who was jotting information down on a notepad.
“ And the rug was here the last time you saw her here?” Rychman asked.
“ It was.”
“ And when was that, sir?”
“ Yesterday afternoon. Then I knocked on the door about nine, but I got no answer. I was supposed to look at some pipes; been puttin' it off. So I think it's odd she don't answer, on account she's always in after dark, you know, and so I tried again at ten, because the next day's my day off, and I didn't want her calling down and disturbing me. So when she didn't answer again, I used my passkey, and this is what I find.”
“ But you didn't call the police until ten-twenty?”
“ I did some looking around. Thought she might've been trying to ditch out on me. Another month's rent was coming due, and the rug was gone. I figured the blood was just her way of, you know, throwing me off. She was smart, that old bag. She'd been a teacher at some college once down South, and she was putting me on all the time. Used to be we had a nice relationship when her checks came in on time.”
“ Welfare checks?” That and sometimes she got money from her daughter, or so she claimed. That's her on the bureau.” He pointed to a picture of a rather plain young face. Beside this was a picture of the same young woman with a man, their arms entwined.
“ That's the daughter. Never comes around.”
Rychman stared at the black-and-white photos, realizing they were somewhat old. He slipped one from its holder and scanned the back for any notations. There were none, only the marks of the processor and the date, 1952.
“ This isn't her daughter,” Rychman concluded.
“ What?”
“ This is her, when she was young.”
“ Damn, then the old girl did have me fooled,” said Gwinn. “According to her, that was her daughter and son-in-law, some big-shot lawyer in Florida where the kids lived with her newborn grandchild.”
“ A boy or a girl, Mr. Gwinn?” asked Rychman, shaking his head.
Rychman considered the fact the killer hadn't bothered to clean up after himself, but the amount of blood on the floor was not enough to account for the condition of Mrs. Phillips' remains. “She was obviously carried out of here rolled in your rug, Mr. Gwinn, which has not been located.” He turned to Pierce. “Lou, I want our people to fan out and crisscross this neighborhood and speak to everyone within sight of this place about seeing a man carrying a rug out of here. You got that?”
“ I'm on it, Captain.”
Rychman recalled what Darius had said about finding several unusual fibers matted in the old woman's blood. It was like two puzzle pieces had just gone neatly into place, and it gave Alan Rychman a minor feeling of hope.
“ And where the hell's Dr. Archer?” he bellowed as Lou started out.
Archer showed up in the doorway at the same moment. “Sorry, but that driver I got was timid about getting here.”
Rychman nodded, knowing full-well that anytime a coroner was called out, he had to be escorted by an officer who also escorted the M.E. and his findings back to the morgue. No one was above suspicion when it came to evidence in a murder case, so there were formal rules of conduct for everyone on the crime scene, thanks mainly to Dr. Darius.
“ You can get out of here for now,” Rychman told the superintendent. “It's all yours, Dr. Archer.”
“ Sorry I couldn't locate Darius for you, but I think the all-nighter took a lot out of him. Heard he was recuperating with orders not to be disturbed. He'll likely be back at the lab later. Leastways, that's what I was told.”
Archer's voice held a subtle edge. He probably felt he should have handled the scene at Scarsdale. Alan knew Archer was in line for Darius' job if and when Darius finally called it quits.
“ Well, we're glad to have you here, Doc.” Alan tried to reassure him. “Anybody but Perkins, I always say.”
“ High praise,” joked Archer. He got down to business, opening his black bag and taking blood scrapings, searching for fibers, fingerprints, hairs, anything he could bag up for microscopic analysis back at his lab.
Rychman took this opportunity to investigate the room further, careful to steer clear of where Archer painstakingly worked. Rychman stared at Mrs. Phillips' card table and single chair, wondering what had happened between her and her long-ago husband; what had driven them apart and left her alone. Fights, money, drugs, lust, dishonesty, divorce or death? Life was brutal. He parted a curtain that acted as a divider and saw an alcove being used as a bedroom. A single bed with neatly tucked corners stared back at him, apparently untouched by the murderer.
Rychman searched the coverlet for any tell-tale signs, and when he saw what might be a stain, he got excited.
He called Archer in to look at the stain. Archer was skeptical, but he took a pair of scissors and cut around the stain, giving it wide berth, then placed the tiny patch of cloth into a specimen envelope to examine closely later. “Nothing's getting by me,” muttered Archer, “but don't hold your breath on this one, Captain.”
“ Understood.”
“ Still, you've got a good eye for this kind of work.”
“ I've had enough experience, God help me.”
Rychman continued his tour of the little apartment. Yellowed plaster on the walls was crisscrossed by occasional cracks, apparently painted over at some time only to return to haunt the occupant. The small icebox sat like a silent sentinel over the horror that had occurred here, atop it another photo of the woman's so-called daughter, herself at a young age. Wedged between the comer and the wall was a bag of bird feed, half-empty. Rychman saw a roach peeking from around the bag, and its antennae twitching nervously and avoiding any contact with the blood of the victim, as it made its determined way into the shadows.
Rychman knew from experience that a body-whether fit or frail-was heavy and cumbersome. The super's missing rug likely meant that Mrs. Phillips had been concealed within and carried down the back steps and into the darkness; in fact, a blood trail indicated as much. Did the killer have help in transporting the body? He speculated on the probables here. It seemed more tantalizing than ever to adopt Jessica Coran's idea that the ungodly work of the Claw could well be the work of a pair of killers, especially since the madman's handiwork had taken on this added dimension of two victims in a single night. The creeping notion of an innocent-looking decoy entered Rychman's thinking, a dupe who might do the Claw's bidding, someone he could control, and someone who presented no threat to others, someone Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Olin might, without fear, open their doors to.