“ Walter Lathrope,” the head of the department said, cursorily introducing himself. “And you must be Dr. Coran.”
After his initial, cursory inspection of the bloodied paper, Dr. Lathrope assured Jessica that his lab could free the message, but that it would take some time. And it did.
The paper was ordinary 8 Vi” by 11” copy paper, 20-pound weight, grain long, color white. It had been tightly folded, and the document experts were opening it slowly so they wouldn't tear the wet, spoiled paper, trying desperately to keep it all in one piece. It was placed in an air-drying compartment with bubble gloves at each end. The experts had their hands in the gloves and were manipulating the paper with the pincherlike fingers on the ends. The gloves made her wonder about the Claw's awful, flesh-rending weapon or tool. Under the force of the drying air in the compartment, the paper began slowly to regain its shape and bond, but it took another twenty minutes for it to be unfolded completely. There were words on one side, but blood and bile had been absorbed by the fiber, obstructing most of them.
“ It's some kind of message, all right,” said Lathrope.
Jessica had been pacing, drinking coffee, and she had telephoned for Rychman to join her here, just in case.
The handwriting was large, childish and done in green ink. She saw loops and swirls like a roller coaster, but much of the writing was covered by stains that ran the entire length of what looked like a child's poem. Her heart sank. Maybe it wasn't something from the killer, after all; maybe it was something picked up in Olin's house, a note from a niece of nephew, that the sadistic killer had simply crushed into her gaping body as some kind of final, sick prank.
“ Can you clean it up?” she asked, staring.
“ I believe we can,” said Lathrope, who disappeared with his assistant into a darkened room, Jessica following. He placed the piece of paper below a Tensor lamp, on a table encircled by enormous magnifying glasses on robotic swivel arms, and the two men continued their painstaking work.
They began the slow, careful removal of the dried blood and other matter clinging to the paper, concentrating on the areas where they could see green ink.
“ Green,” she said aloud. “Why green?”
“ The color of hope,” said Lathrope with a twinkle in his eye. Lathrope was a head taller than she, with large glasses and an elongated face. He looked the quintessence of the scientist. His partner, by comparison, was a short, balding man with round shoulders that looked perpetually hunched over.
“ Can you make out any of the words?” she asked just as Alan Rychman joined them.
“ Understand you have something important here?”
“ Maybe… maybe,” she cautioned.
Lathrope studied a line of the green-lettered verse, the first to be completely cleared of the obstructing grunge. “It is some sort of poem…”
“ Poem?” Rychman almost shouted.
Lathrope began reading aloud. “My… my teeth will have your eyes… And feed on your… banal cries.”
“ Doesn't sound like a child writing to his aunt,” she said.
“ What?” asked Rychman.
“ Never mind. Dr. Lathrope, how long before you can extricate the entire message?”
“ Give us another thirty minutes; we'll go to a dissolving solution.”
“ Good… good…” Jessica replied.
Rychman escorted her out, asking, “What's this all about?”
“ We found what appears to be a message from the killer lodged into the Phillips body, Alan.”
“ A poem? Now our creep is writing poetry to us? Left inside the victim? Christ, I want to fry this bastard.”
“ I think it's a new ripple. I think he wants to talk, to communicate.”
“ Talk, communicate… sounds familiar. What is it makes these lunatics want to buddy up and talk, like maybe it'd be nice to have a beer with the sonofa-”
Rychman stopped in midsentence, seeing Jim Drake at the other end of the hall on a telephone. “That creep gets ahold of this, it'll be in the evening paper, you know that?”
“ I haven't spoken to him.”
“ You don't have to speak to him. He's got rabbit ears.”
“ Come on. Let's get a bite at the machines downstairs.”
“ Where'd you and Darius disappear to this morning, if you don't mind my asking?”
“ Not at all.” She launched into a description of the best time she'd had in New York since her arrival.
“ Hmmmm,” replied Rychman as they entered the elevator, “better than the fun we had at the shooting range?”
“ Let's just say I didn't feel any tension with the good doctor, no expectations, no games.”
“ And you do with me?”
“ Some, yes, especially the last time I entered an elevator with you.”
“ Hey, I'm sorry 'bout that, really. I… It was the wine and… and you… being alone with you.”
“ I'll try to take that as a compliment.”
“ You should.”
Dr. Lathrope's secretary, Marilyn Khoen, whispered into the telephone receiver. “That's all I know. No, don't push me on this, not unless you can guarantee… No, no way. I'm not going to do that.”
At the other end of the line, James W. Drake III was making promises the reporter wasn't sure he could keep, but if he could show a break in the Claw case, he believed he could write his own ticket. Hell, he could practically guarantee Marilyn a job with the Times, maybe as his assistant… but it all depended on the nature of the contents of the piece of paper fished from the body of one of the victims. He needed details, facts only Marilyn could secure for him. He knew it was asking a lot, but it could also mean a great deal. Everything was riding on what the Claw did these days.
He realized that the deadly Claw had, in effect, the power to make or break any number of careers in the city, from lowly reporter to mayor to commissioner of police. He wondered how it would work out for Alan Rychman, whom he didn't particularly like, anyway.
“ Marilyn, sweetheart, it's for me, for Jimmy, huh?”
He waited for her reply. When it didn't come, he urged her on. “Whataya say? Come on, you can trust me.”
“ You're making me feel like… like a damned whore, Jimmy, and I deserve better from you!”
“ No, no, baby, I'd never do that. I love you, and I want to make things right between us, the way they used to be, remember? Remember when we took the boat out on the harbor? Remember how it was, doing it at sea? Remember the salt air and, and-”
“ What're you saying? That we can get back together if-”
“ I'm saying I'll be eternally grateful, babe, eternally.”
“ Is that like a marriage proposal?”
“ I'll get you a good job at the paper.”
“ I… I don't know.”
He was about to slam the phone down in frustration, but he held onto it and calmed himself instead. “You'd be doing the city a favor. When they hide all the facts about this maniac running around the city
… Marilyn, a killer that feeds on women like you, babe, slices and dices and actually eats their flesh… I'm telling you, honey, the public's got a right to know, to protect themselves, to be on the lookout, and you… you're in a unique position to help see that happens. You might even save a life.”
“ I… I don't know.”
But he could tell by the change in her tone that she did know. And he knew that he had her where he wanted her, hooked on the idea.
“ Just start keeping notes. Anything you overhear, anything relating to what Dr. Coran is working on, okay?”
“ I like Dr. Lathrope. It's just these all-nighters and you never know when you're on call.”
“ Baby, you think I don't know that? It's got to be grueling for you… grueling. With me, it'd be strictly nine to five.” What was one more lie? he told himself.
When Jessica and Alan Rychman returned to the documents division, they were hopeful that something useful might await them. Lathrope was staring at the supposed words of the killer, a scowl disfiguring his horse-sized face, his glasses perched at the end of his nose as he crinkled it in consternation.