“ Makes no damned sense, Rychman. See for yourselves.”
Rychman and Jessica read from the sheet of paper, now safely under a blue light that illuminated bloodstains, separating the messy stains from the ink lettering and the plethora of fingerprints that lay beneath. The words were bizarre. She began to read them aloud, trying to pick up on the meter.
“ My teeth will have your eyes
And feed on your banal cries…
Your sins will be eaten away
That you might live another day…
The Claw is no name for him
Who gives you eternal life
By eating away your sin…
My rabid, hungry sin-feast
Will out in the end
To give you eternal peace.”
It was signed “Ovid, Divine Protector.”
“ Christ, what're we supposed to surmise from this?” asked Rychman. “That it's the work of one guy, or a collaborative effort?”
He could not hide his disappointment.
“ There's more here than meets the eye. We need to get a shrink's advice, but I'd be willing to bet there're some clues to this guy's head in all this,” Jessica said.
“ We got a guy named Ames, fresh from the Chicago Police Department,” said Rychman. “Supposed to be a helluva head man. Let's get a few copies of this made,” Rychman replied.
Lathrope called his secretary in and handed her the poem in its glass case, carefully holding it by its sides. “Careful with this, Marilyn. Make a few copies for Captain Rychman.”
“ This stays in-house, people,” Rychman told Lathrope and his assistant. “Who else knows about this?” he asked Jessica.
“ Only Dr. Darius and Archer. Archer saw me with it when I left the lab, and I assume Dr. Darius told him about it.”
“ Good, let's see it stays that way, everyone.”
“ You got it, Captain,” said Lathrope.
Marilyn returned with several copies and Rychman quickly confiscated them.
“ We'll get what we can from the original,” said Lathrope. “See if these prints can be matched.”
“ Thanks for dropping everything for me, Dr. Lathrope,” said Jessica, shaking his hand.
“ Not to give it a second thought. A most interesting challenge, actually.”
His assistant piped in from the other room where he had started back to work on another project, saying, “It's a wonder Darius fished it from the dead woman's insides at all, from what I saw down there in Scarsdale.”
“ Yes, it was quite a surprise for him; something of a shock,” Jessica answered.
She and Rychman said their goodbyes and were soon making their way to see Dr. Richard Ames, the police psychiatrist. Not knowing anything about Ames, she faxed a copy to Quantico for O'Rourke to turn over to a psychological profiling team there.
Rychman had no objections. “We need all the help we can get with this Claw or Claws.”
Dr. Richard Ames was a very tall, broad-shouldered, handsome black man with fine features and huge hands, which appeared both gentle and dexterous. Jessica judged him a basketball star in college, and a number of plaques and trophies behind his desk corroborated her guess. Ames got up from behind the desk and offered them comfortable, large leather chairs that fronted a window overlooking the Avenue of the Americas in lower Manhattan. He enjoyed a private practice here and charitably gave sixteen hours a week, at ninety dollars an hour, to the NYPD. His credentials were impressive and he had worked extensively with psychotics, sociopaths and serial killers.
Rychman had informed Jessica that Ames had been instrumental in the Handyman case some years before in Chicago. The maniacal killer in that case had only indirectly murdered his victims. They had died of shock after coming out of a hypnotic state induced by the charming murderer, who had left them intact, except for their hands. When the man was finally caught, he had a collection of human hands the likes of which could not be comprehended.
After introductions, Dr. Ames was anxious to get to work.
“ I understand you have a written statement from this madman the papers are calling the Claw. I am anxious to examine it. How did it arrive? Did he contact a reporter, a TV personality?”
“ None of the above,” said Rychman.
“ Oh?”
Jessica explained how they had come by the communique.
“ It's not your usual method, to say the least,” replied Ames, biting the inside of his cheek nervously, as if recalling something disturbing. “It's almost as if the sender were afraid of his own message. As if he largely wished it not to be found, and yet was compelled to… forward it.”
“ It's not your usual evil-killer communique, either,” she said. “A bit literary for a killer, in fact.”
“ Literary? In the Jack the Ripper school of letters, you mean?”
“ The Ripper was fond of rhyming.”
“ Rhymes? Really? I'm surprised you didn't send it to a cryptologist.”
“ Don't worry,” she assured him, “we have. They're working on it in Virginia as we speak.”
“ I see. How daunting, then, that you should bring it to me. Well, let's have a look.”
She handed a copy to him in a manila envelope. He took it to his desk and lay it out before him, scanning it quickly, almost instantly saying, “This fellow is very disturbed.”
“ We know that much, Doctor,” said Rychman.
“ Captain, I may need to keep this for a while.”
“ It can't go beyond this office. The papers don't have this, and we want to keep it that way, understood?”
“ Yes, of course. I haven't a problem with that, but I would like to be free to take it back and forth with me.”
“ Of course,” he said. “But time is important here. The fiend killed two women last night, and he's going to go right on killing until he's stopped.”
“ I heard,” said Ames. He paced a moment before going to his intercom and speaking with his secretary. They were engaged in an argument when he shouted, “Priscilla, you'll just have to arrange it. I've got to take the afternoon. It's police business that won't wait. Now, please, no more argument.” He clicked off a bit disdainfully and looked up at the two law enforcement officials. “I'll make it my only priority this afternoon,” he said.
“ My task force is meeting at six tomorrow morning,” said Rychman tentatively. “I don't suppose…”
“ Police Plaza One? I'll be there. Give you what I've got.”
“ That's very generous of you,” said Jessica.
“ With a madman like this, we all must do what we can.”?
Fifteen
When he was alone, Dr. Ames immediately started to analyze the poem. It was literate, which told him something about the killer. It was forced, however, and not what one might call good poetry by any standard, including that strange, bizarre and measured poetry he had seen written under the classification of horror. And yet, knowing of its discovery, hidden in the corpse of the victim as it was, and going on the assumption that the Claw himself had penned the work, gave it all of the horrific overtones required to make the thing chilling in its every aspect.
Still, he knew he must remain objective to look at the words in the context of psychiatry.
He knew it would take some time. He buzzed his secretary and asked that she send in some sandwiches, a cola and a large Snickers bar. He'd need sustenance, he told himself, and a little sugar kick to get finished by 6 A.M. tomorrow.
He then turned back to the words before him. One phrase seemed to leap out at him, as if it were underlined, and yet it wasn't. “Your sins will be eaten away.” He read it aloud, and then he scanned down to find its sister line: “By eating away your sin…”
Instantly Ames realized the author of the piece was the worst kind of sociopath, the sort that was truly deranged, following the urgings of a voice or voices in his head, not unlike the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz. Berkowitz had claimed that Satan had come to him using the name of Sam and had convinced Berkowitz that he was in fact his true father, having used his mother in some unholy fashion to conceive him. Satan's instructions were to go about the city with a. 44-caliber handgun and blow away couples parked in cars. It seemed obvious to Ames as he considered the latent meaning in the phrase “eating away your sin” that the Claw felt he had been selected or chosen by a higher power to do so.