“ The Claw,” said Ovid in a near whisper as his eyes moved about the room as if searching for this other, “the Claw is powerful and strong. He has eyes that glow red in the dark… like a mad dog… like Satan. He keeps coming back to me, in my cell at night.”
“ In your dreams, Mr. Helfer?” asked the prosecutor.
“ No, not in my dreams. He's just there, standing right there.”
“ In your cell?”
“ No, just outside, just staring in.”
“ What did he say to you?”
“ Nothing. He won't talk to me anymore. He won't help me. He's… he's abandoned me.”
Leon slumped in the witness stand. “He comes and goes right through the concrete walls.”
It was generally agreed in that moment by almost everyone in the courtroom that Leon Helfer was quite mad, and that he was the maniac with the unquenchable hunger for flesh and blood; that the ugly instrument entered as people's exhibit A was fashioned by Leon after hours at the pipe factory where he worked, coworkers testifying to seeing him fashioning what they had thought to be a garden tool. “In fact,” said one woman who had worked in the same department as Leon, “I think he made more than one of them things.”
Alongside the jars and several organs that were near unrecognizable as such, hammers, axes, and tire irons, all with flecks of blood from a variety of victims, were entered into evidence. Dr. Elliot Andersen, a thin, handsome serologist under Archer's guidance, laid out the various damning evidence, convincing everyone that Leon Helfer was none other than the Claw.
Ames capped off the thinking when he told the court that when Leon became Ovid, Ovid was in fact the Claw. There was very little to add after that.
All the ends were neatly joined together, the package tightly bound.
Throughout the swift trial, which had been held quickly to appease public demand, Jessica had labored over the findings she had brought back from the last of the Claw's victims. She had put in late hours, upsetting Alan Rychman among others, Alan now as certain of Helfer's guilt as the rest, as nothing he or his men could do could turn up a mysterious doctor at the Street Hospital who had disappeared, a man named Casadessus. According to the hospital, the papers the doctor had filed were accepted without question, and they had felt glad to have him. From their description, the man sported a mustache, was well-proportioned and tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. He disappeared a few days before Emmons' death and was not seen again.
Jessica had stopped going to the courtroom to watch the pitiful Helfer and the mounting case against him, utilizing whatever time remained to scrutinize the slides and scrapings she had taken from Emmons, knowing that O'Rourke had pulled the plug and ordered her back to Quantico. To offset this, she had already taken preliminary steps to see that Emmons' body and all the materials she had taken at the scene would travel back with her to Quantico for further investigation. Thus far, she had told no one about her plans, but everyone would know soon enough, and she expected a fight.
She knew that Emmons' family was already upset that the body had been kept this long. But she expected an even greater fight from Archer.
And maybe another from Alan, not to mention her chief, Theresa O'Rourke.
As she was giving thought to the hurdles she faced and while she worked over several fibers and hairs she had tweezered off the dead Emmons and placed in a plastic bag and labeled, she realized with almost a photographic sense of deja vu that what was staring back at her from the bottom of the microscope, she had seen somewhere before. The hair with its unmistakable patterns was that of Dr. Simon Archer, once again. His hair, like Luther Darius', Perkins', and her own, had had to be ruled out from the outset of the investigation, as the various hairs of the investigators, working in such close quarters with the corpses, usually showed up somewhere under a microscope. But there was a significant difference about this particular specimen.
Her hand began to shake. She had circumstantial evidence in her possession that Dr. Simon Archer had been in the vicinity of the deceased before she had died, before Jessica had shown up at the death scene. She looked again at the tiny packet, labeled in her handwriting, the time clearly marked. It was tagged seven minutes before Archer's arrival. How had his hair adhered to the body? How did it get there before him?
She shivered over the discovery, wondering who would believe it. If she raced to Alan with it, he'd dismiss it. A single hair, a labeled packet. She could have been wrong about the time, he would say. The D.A. would say the same thing. So would O'Rourke; so would anyone.
Perhaps she had made a mistake; she could hardly believe it herself. It could easily be refuted and no one suspected Archer of murder, of being the Claw… no one now but her.
And she was scheduled on a flight to D.C. tomorrow. Since there had been no Claw attacks since Leon Helfer's incarceration, everyone connected with the case was at blissful peace with the notion of case closed, and that was nowhere more true than in the mayor's mansion and in C. P. Eldritch's office. Rychman, too, was basking in new celebrity as the head of the task force that had brought down the Claw.
She still must tell Alan her new and terrible suspicion brought on by the errant hair strand. At the same time, she feared letting it out of her hands, unsure if she could trust that it would be in the medical lockup when she again looked for it. She decided to take a high-intensity photograph of the strand of hair and she pulled the one on file with Archer's name on it. If nothing else, she could show this to Alan, perhaps convince him that she wasn't completely crazy.
She next logged her Findings and put these under lock and key in her office and, following chain of custody procedure, returned the tiny packet and the hair to its place, signing the register for it and everything else she had removed from the lockup, realizing how simple it would have been for her, the attending M.E., to substitute another strand of hair for Archer's.
Was that how he had altered the evidence to make the Claw one man instead of two? To hide his own ugly tracks?
She was seeing Alan tonight to bid him farewell. In fact, time was running late and she must go to her hotel, freshen up and prepare for their parting. She was halfway out the door when Laurie Marks shouted that there was an important phone call for her.
“ From Quantico?”
“ Some guy in Philadelphia. Says he's a shrink.”
Arnold at the loony bin. She hesitated, wanting to run from the call, but thought better of it and said she'd take it in her office.
“ This better be important, Arnold,” she said impatiently.
“ Matisak wants to speak to you.”
“ Come on, Arnold! Case closed, or don't you have any newspapers in Philly?”
“ Matisak's read every paper, every account… following this case as if his life depended upon it, and… and he says he's got something more to report to you.”
“ Who's in control there, Arnold? Dammit, you or your fucked inmates?”
“ Why… I… Dr. Coran, I am just doing my part! At the request, I might add, of your superiors!”
“ O'Rourke,” she said. The woman could do nothing right. No way could she step in for Otto Boutine. She wasn't even in his league. “All right, put the creep on,” she finally told Arnold.
Matisak was insanely polite. She endured him for as long as she could before she said, “To the point, Matisak.”
“ This Leon Helfer is not the Claw.”
“ And just how do you know that?”
“ You don't believe it yourself, Dr. Coran. Do you? Well, do you?”