“ Internal Affairs is fine,” said Mayor Halle, “and should Dr. Coran's fears be borne out, then we go to the press.” The mayor didn't appear anxious to deal with differences between Rychman and Eldritch here and now.
Eldritch backed off and Alan struggled to hide his pleasure.
“ You will keep us posted every step of the way,” Eldritch told Rychman before barging out.
The mayor stopped at the door, turned and looked back at Coran and Rychman. “Keep up the good work, people. Little wonder we've had difficulty catching the Claw if what you say about Archer is true. Imagine it… If he's guilty of subverting information vital to the case, he's… well, he may be an accessory to murder.”
Twenty-One
Sgt. Louise Emmons and her partner, Dave Turner, had continued all day long in Leon's neighborhood, asking questions. More and more their questions led them back to the strange character named Helfer at the center of the block down from Mrs. Phillips. It seemed everyone thought Leon Helfer a little queer in the head, especially since his mother had died and he was on his own. They heard how he had gotten rid of all of the former tenants in the building when their leases were up, isolating himself inside. They heard about his late night drives and how he talked to himself all the time. But they heard nothing that could be in any way construed as evidence.
Emmons, tiring of the door-to-door, went back to her idea regarding the man's boss at the pipe factory. After arranging to see him late that afternoon, she and Turner went to the factory, where Leon's immediate supervisor promptly said, “He don't work here no more.”
“ Whoa, Mr. Malthuesen. He told us he was in your employ.”
“ Was, yes, but not no more.”
“ When was he fired?”
“ We like to say let go.”
“ All right, then. When was he-”
“ Yesterday, just yesterday. Why? Is the little weasel in some kind of trouble?”
“ We're only interested in what you know about him, sir.”
Malthuesen revealed things they had already heard about Helfer that he had changed dramatically after his mother's death, that it seemed to have had a profound effect on him. Malthuesen also explained why he had let Leon go.
Emmons sensed intuitively that there was something the man was either lying about or omitting. She dug at him, with Turner's help, but he wouldn't come out with it all. They threatened with legal jargon, and still the man would not tell them anything else.
When they left the plant, Emmons shared her feelings about Leon's boss with Turner, and Turner agreed that the man seemed to be sincere about his reasons for firing Leon, but that he was nervous and fidgety and closemouthed, all tell-tale signs that he was uneasy with the police.
“ But that could mean a million things unrelated to the case,” he cautioned her. “Who knows, maybe he's got outstanding tickets.”
“ Who doesn't in New York?”
“ Or that he's had a brush with the law in the past himself. Doesn't necessarily mean what he's hiding is relevant to our case, Louise.”
She scratched behind her ear and said, “Maybe.”
“ It's almost quitting time and I'm hungry,” said Turner.
“ You're always hungry, but you're going to have to postpone eating, pal.”
“ Whataya mean?”
“ Leon lied to us. That's a little more heavy-duty than denying us entry to his place.”
“ Probably not enough for a judge to issue a search warrant, and if I go down there now, I won't see my kids tonight.”
“ You bailing out on me? Hell, Turner, this creep could be the Claw. I'm dropping you off at the courthouse and I want you to get us some paper on this.”
“ That could take hours. Why don't we do it tomorrow?”
“ Because if he is the Claw, we've scared hell out of him and he could run, if he hasn't already.”
As they drove for the courthouse, he asked, “What're you going to be doing while I'm busting my chops with some judge?”
“ I'm going to get back to his place, keep him under surveillance. You'll have to get another car and join me.”
“ Whoa, I don't like the sound of that,” he argued. “You're not going anywhere near that creep without me.”
“ For Christ's sake, Turner, I'm just going to keep an eye on him. I won't go inside until you get back with the paper, got it?”
“ We can't add on another false arrest. We do and it's our butts, Louise. You know that, don't you?”
“ I got a feeling about this guy.”
“ Like your feeling about Conrad Shaw? Look, maybe we'd better not communicate this to the other task force guys just yet, you know?”
They were both smarting about the Conrad Shaw arrest, which had looked so good but had been so wrong. They had been working Shaw for two months. It seemed unlikely that they might have simply stumbled onto the real Claw so easily. It felt like winning the lottery on a found ticket.
“ Agreed,” Emmons said. “Let's first see what a search uncovers.”
“ Be careful out there,” Turner cautioned.
“ Don't worry,” she said. “I was born careful.”
Once again, it was growing late and still no further word from the Claw. Inside his apartment building, Leon was panic-stricken. The cops were on his doorstep, for God's sake, and where was the Claw? Had the Claw abandoned him? He had killed old Mrs. Phillips, he'd said, because she was a useless person, just taking up space on the planet, without value to anyone or anything beyond the pigeons she fed in the park. Decrepit, her body riddled with pain and injury and disease, the Claw said that he had done the old woman a service, ending her suffering. But now Leon wondered if the Claw hadn't had a more deceptive purpose in mind for Mrs. Phillips all along, an ulterior motive for killing someone so close to Leon.
It led the police into his neighborhood, up to his front step, to point a finger at him.
Had the Claw turned against him?
He had long feared it, yet he had thought that when it came, it would come in a murderous rage with the Claw skewering him as it had all the victims before now. He had not expected this kind of chicanery and deceit and yet it couldn't have been any other way.
He had lied to the police. They need only run a few checks, ask about him where he used to work. Then they would be back.
He realized as if coming from out of a deep cave and into the light that all around him was the smell of death and the evidence to convict him. It had been the Claw's plan all along… not to destroy others, but to destroy Leon “Ovid” Helfer.
And the plan had begun when Ovid telephoned the radio talk show; the plan had been solidified when he wrote his poem. Finally the Claw's plan for Ovid and Leon was acted on after Leon had planted his poem inside that corpse. The Claw knew. He knew, and his anger could not be quenched until Ovid and Leon were destroyed.
For a time, Leon had begun to believe that the Claw was one with him; that by virtue of what they shared, the flesh and the sins of their victims, they were in some cosmic way united, that in fact the Claw was Ovid and Ovid was Leon and, by extension, Leon was the Claw. But no more. He knew he could not knowingly destroy himself this way, that it was out of the question, that the Claw was a second person, a second entity, and not a second personality somehow projected by Leon's brain like some goddamned unholy hologram he interacted with.
He must do something about the evidence, the jars filled with human organs in formaldehyde which lined his kitchen cabinets. He must transport everything to someplace where it could never be traced back to him. He must air out the place, remove all signs of Ovid and the Claw. He must think clearly and not overlook a single item that might be a clue to his part in the mutilation and cannibalism of those women. And he must begin now.
He shook with the fear now pervading his mind. The Claw wanted him to be caught, wanted to see him suffer for the deaths of all those women, be shot down by police like a sniveling dog. Having digested so many sins of the victims, Leon would go to Hell, where the Claw could control him further. Was that it? Was that what this was all about?