Following the instructions of Satan or some other such evil father figure, he was doing his victims a favor, sending them on to a new and better life without the excess baggage of their inherent sins. If the poetry could be believed, these sins were being taken on by the killer, ingested with each swallowed bite of the victim. By extension, the more sins ingested by the Claw, the more evil and powerful he became.
One sick son of a bitch, Ames moaned inwardly. He had kept up with the Claw in the news and had even read many of the police reports on the victims. He had asked for and gotten placement on the task force as a special consultant. He knew it was an important case, but more important to him than the political clout breaking such a case would give him within the community, he honestly wished to put an end to the madman's reign of terror. No one looking at the photos of the victims could want anything else.
It was now almost 3 A.M.; he had only a few hours to dictate his notes and prepare some graphics that might assist him in explaining to Rychman precisely what he had. Priscilla, asleep on the couch beside him, would have to be awakened shortly.
He rushed on through the poem again, reading it once more in its entirety.
He realized there was something that didn't ring true with the rest of the poem. It was the fifth line, ending with him instead of me. The entire poem was cast in the first person, as though the author was speaking of himself and his own inhuman accomplishments. But suddenly, in the middle, he called himself him.
He read it aloud. “The Claw is no name for him.”
He considered it the other way with the personal pronoun. “The Claw is no name for me.”
He thought and stared at the line for some time. “Is it him or is it meT he asked the empty room. “He just needed the him to sorta rhyme with sin?” he asked himself.
He stared longer. It was my teeth, my rabid, hungry sin-feast, and all so as to give you eternal peace without your sins following you to the grave, if / hadn't come along and saved you from yourself. At the bottom the “I” was proclaimed in the signature as Ovid, Divine Protector. In the reference to di-vine protector, it was all too evident that this guy had honed a helpful rationalization for his cannibalism, that he felt it was a benevolent cannibalism. The third person encroached almost like a Freudian slip. The Claw is no name for him… who gives you eternal life… by eating away your sin.
Who was him? Ames wondered. What psychosis-fed creature came to this poor devil, Ovid, to send uncontrollable urges of murder and cannibalism coursing through his mind? Was it the same brain monster that spoke to John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Jeffrey Dahmer and Morgan Sayer, Chicago's infamous Handyman? Was it the same demon of the mind that spoke to the Son of Sam killer, the Boston Strangler, the Hillside Strangler and a host of other sociopaths who were unable to empathize in the slightest with the suffering they caused in their victims? Was the Claw totally at the mercy of the demonic urges that moved him to commit the most heinous of crimes? He was obviously capable of rationalizing away his own part in the proceedings, as if he weren't really responsible. That's where Ames parted with the soft approach of other psychiatrists, for he firmly believed that such men as this, men who were dominated by an inner “spirit” that drove them ever onward to commit vicious acts against humanity, were by definition insane.
Those other sociopaths who were driven purely by lust and libido were fodder for the electric chair, but men like Morgan Sayer, driven by the demons of their childhoods, controlled by the demons of past horrors and abuses unimaginable, were legally and medically insane. To destroy them in an electric chair or gas chamber was tantamount to destroying a wolf by the same means. An animal instinct for “survival,” not one of evil, seemed at work here. Such men were to be restricted for life, certainly, but such men were also valuable to scientific laboratories. Given the current state of brain research and neurosurgery, it was evident to Ames that one day such men could be medically cured of their insane behaviors… one day…
Richard Ames had read, heard or seen every kind of human rationalization associated with cannibals, but this “divine protector” thing was something new in the annals of cannibalistic behavior. Ames was now convinced that the killer was working in tandem with an inner demon.
He wasn't sure how Rychman and Coran would react to his educated guesses, but given the time frame, it was the best he could do.
His secretary rolled to her side, the blanket covering her falling away to reveal her nudity. He went to her and tenderly began to caress her inviting skin. She'd uprooted from home and family in Chicago to remain with him. He momentarily wondered why she put up with him, and when he would commit himself wholly to her.
“ That'll do just fine, Priscilla… just fine,” he said in an escape of breath when her hand went instinctively to his inner thigh.
Others might see New York City as an earth mother in repose, or even a lovely, sensual goddess, but Jessica had no such illusions toward this cruel city. Like Chicago, its character was molded from the butcher's block of commerce and profit, and those without were damned to poverty, homeless-ness, infirmity-to become easy prey to wolves like the Claw who flourished in shadow and darkness.
Jessica wondered where her personal joy in life had gone; another more youthful and innocent Jessica might have felt that joy encircling her, even here in New York, as a kind of life-force or energy shield. The re'd once been a time when the teeming life of a New York would've easily excited her imagination and sense of play, no matter how dire her reasons for being there, but now she saw all life through a darker lens.
Staring through the rain beading up on Alan's car window and paying no heed to the constant buzz on his police-band radio, she mentally toyed with life as it was lived in the towering buildings that made up the city's famous skyline. Alan had tried to improve her mood by giving her a quick tour, pointing out landmarks, museums, art galleries, the Met. He obviously loved his city, despite, or perhaps because of, its many flaws. His professional life, like Jessica's, hinged on the sins of those he policed. The uneasy relationship between hunter and hunted made Rychman as much a part of the equation as the Claw.
“ Look, whataya think about my suppositions in light of the Claw's stepped-up agenda, and what we found at the Phillips apartment?” Rychman asked, breaking the silence between them.
“ I'm glad you've opened your mind to the possibility of a second perpetrator, but still we need more to go on.”
“ It's not something we can ignore.”
“ I dunno, maybe I just don't want to face another Gerald Ray Sims,” she replied, “I dunno…”
Her voice gave her away. She was tired and didn't want to pursue it, but this gave Rychman the opening he'd been waiting for. “Look, I've got two show tickets and-”
“ The theater?”
“ You needn't sound so surprised. I've even been known to stay awake, especially for a Neil Simon.”
“ I don't know, Alan. There's just so much to-”
“ You've got to get in some R amp;R sometime, Jess, or else you'll fall apart on me, and then you'll be of no use to anyone, including yourself.”
She seethed a moment before she got hold of herself, realizing he hadn't meant it the way it sounded. He couldn't possibly know of her therapy with Dr. Lemonte, or her very real fear at times that she would come unglued. She calmly replied, “I'm that transparent, am I?”