Leon stared at him, weighing his options, it appeared. “You… you got a warrant? If not, you ask your questions right here and now, and let me get on with my life. I'm sorry about Mrs. Phillips, but I don't know anything and there's nothing I can tell you that will change the fact she's dead.”
She and Leon stared back at one another. Leon finally said, “Go ahead. Ask your questions. I don't have all day.” Emmons asked the questions while Turner reached for a cigarette and asked Leon if he wanted one.
“ How well did you know Mrs. Phillips?”
“ Cigarette?” repeated Turner, holding the packet up to him.
“ No, no thanks… Not well. Just seen her around.”
“ Like at the park?”
“ Sure.”
“ And the supermarket?”
“ Yeah, places like that.”
Emmons noted something in her little book that made Leon nervous. Turner was puffing heatedly on his Marlboro.
Emmons looked Leon directly in the eye for a second time and said, “Your neighbors said you once or twice visited her in her home.”
“ What?” he asked. “Me? That's… that's a lie.”
“ Said when your mother died, she had you over for dinner once.”
“ No, no… not me. I mean, yeah, my mother died… left me… but no, I never had a meal at Mrs. Phillips' place. Talked with her in the park. We… she'd feed the pigeons, and I'd feed the pigeons and-”
Turner piped in. “What'd you talk about?”
“ Weather, the Mets, stuff like that… nothing big.”
“ You know anyone that would want to hurt Mrs. Phillips, Mr. Helfer?”
“ No, no one.”
Emmons asked him his whereabouts the night of her death.
“ I was out… to a movie… with a cousin. Spent the night.”
She asked him where he worked.
He hesitated. “What's where I work got to do with it?”
“ Please, Mr. Helfer,” she said, “it's just for the record.” She pointed to her notebook.
“ Oleander Pipes.”
“ Pipes?” asked Turner. “Smokin' pipes? You think maybe I could get a sample of one of them?”
“ No, it's not smoking pipes, it's industrial pipe.”
“ All right,” said Emmons. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Helfer.”
“ Yeah, thanks, Leon,” added Turner.
Helfer closed the door quickly on them. Emmons recognized the signs of a man who had something to hide, and she continued to wonder about the odor she sniffed at the door. As they walked away from the premises, they could feel Leon's eyes on them.
“ Let's make him sweat,” said Turner.
“ You're on.”
They stood outside for some time, staring up at the building, talking in guarded remarks, using frequent hand gestures, Emmons jotting down items in her notebook. Leon couldn't hear them.
“ Whataya call that kind of brick? Stucco?”
“ Stucco Royale, I think,” she replied. “Think that's bad; look at the weedy yard and that shack out back.”
“ What a junk pile.”
“ Breeding ground for a killer?”
“ This guy can't be the Claw. He's a wuss. I figure the Claw's got to be something more than Leon.”
“ You heard the captain and that lady FBI agent,” she challenged him.
“ What, that there's two Claws?”
“ Or that there's one guy with two heads like Ames says.”
He nodded, considering this. “Still, Leon would be a pretty sorry catch when the TV cameras hit him, but then so was Richard Speck and Jeffrey Dahmer.”
“ Damn sure would like to get inside.”
“ No legal way. And breaking his window was dumb, Louise.”
“ We got probable cause. He refused us entrance. The broken glass was purely accidental.”
“ There's no probable cause for a warrant. No way.”
“ What if we examine him a little closer; catch him in a lie or two?”
“ Like whether he ate with the old girl or not?”
“ Let's talk to some more of his neighbors and maybe his boss at this pipe place.”
“ You're on,” agreed Turner, tossing away a butt, “only first we find some coffee and a can. I gotta go.”
Twenty
Unable for the time being to locate Rychman, Jessica slowed long enough to retrieve a copy of the tape made while Darius and Archer were reopening the bodies of Olin and Hamner. She located a tape player and some privacy, listening to the report for any sign of friction between the two M.E. s. To her consternation, she could make out no such difficulties whatever, and this made her doubt her own earlier misgivings about Simon Archer. A straight arrow, Rychman had called him, and suppose he was? And suppose she raised questions about him only to learn that she had sullied his reputation for nothing? Suppose her imagination had run amok? It could cause enough of a stink that her superiors in Quantico might smell it. Yeah, just what O'Rourke would like most of all to come out of her investigation of the Claw. Hadn't O'Rourke gone behind her back to put Matisak in her way?
Her convictions regarding Archer hadn't yet solidified and she was already second-guessing herself: What would Rychman do? How would others react? Would everyone think her mad?
She was unsure what to do with her suspicion, but she knew that she wanted to pay a great deal more attention to Archer than she had. At the moment, she assumed he was meeting with the C. R and the mayor, his interim status as manager of the coroner's office being made permanent, naming him as the new M.E. in charge. Was it a dream he would sabotage for… possibly kill for? Men killed for far, far less.
She went searching for Alan, expecting to find a very upset man who'd no doubt respond badly to the irresponsible publication of Ovid's poem. Rychman, she learned, was in conference with Mayor Halle and C.P. Eldritch. No doubt he was being informed of Archer's new appointment and all of them were hashing out a public relations ploy to combat remarks in Drake's Times story, which alleged that the police had knowingly arrested the wrong man in the Claw case, and that he was not the author of the horrid poem. Telephones were shrilly crying out the message that the newspaper account had had a great ripple effect throughout the city, and that Jim Drake's career with the paper was solidified.
“ I'm afraid he can't be disturbed now,” Rychman's matronly secretary said to her, pursuing Jessica as she pushed by, anyway.
The men in the room fell silent the moment she pressed through the door, except for Rychman, who told his secretary that it was all right.
“ You may as well know, Dr. Coran, that the C. P here wants someone else to head the Claw task force, that I'm being held responsible for the leaks getting out to the press, and that maybe I'm the Deep Throat here… for Christ's sake.”
“ That's crazy,” she said, going toward the mayor. “Alan's done everything in his power to contain such information leaks-everything.” She realized now that Dr. Archer wasn't in the room.
“ We've traced this thing. Ames didn't do it,” said Eldritch, his thin frame almost quaking with his anger. “His secretary was grilled for hours, and nothing there.”
“ But Lathrope's people knew,” she countered.
“ All screened and let go.”
“ The secretary… she made copies that day,” replied Jessica.
“ She's the most likely, but she swears otherwise,” Alan replied. “I'm not a hundred percent convinced of her innocence but-”
“ Darius was the only other person to have any knowledge of it, and he's dead,” said the mayor.
“ No,” she countered. “There was also Simon Archer.”
They all stared at her. Rychman asked, “Archer? What could Simon possibly have to gain?”
“ You're considering him for Darius' position, aren't you?”
“ Yes, but it's not an appointment. He must go through various boards, committees, and compete with other applicants,” said the mayor. “Of course, he… he has solicited my backing and I… I gave it, of course. But why do you suspect… What possible reason would he have to… to sabotage Rychman's investigation in such a way?”