The rookie cop that Tyler Davis was training told him they'd gotten a call over the radio while Davis was inside getting coffee. “What kind of call?”
“ Routine 10–22, Sergeant Davis.”
Tyler had been a training sergeant for eleven years, and rookies never ceased to amaze him. “Nothing routine about a 10–22. You go answering a 10–22 thinking the way you're thinking, Officer Chase, just go right ahead and get your friggin' brains blown out for ringing on a doorbell. Seen it happen.”
“ Well, I figure it's maybe a prowler,” said Bryan Chase to his training sergeant, shrugging it off.
“ Call like that's the trickiest kind. Let's roll, you got the address?”
Chase hit the siren and peeled out the moment Davis' hefty behind was on the seat, spilling the man's coffee in the bargain, further aggravating him. After the cursing stopped, Tyler Davis cleaned himself off with a handkerchief. He then slowly spoke to Chase in calm, even tones. “You get a 10–30, you know what's going down. You get a 10–11, you pretty much know what's waiting at the end of the ride. This shit… could be a burglary in progress, sure. Could be a break-in for any number of reasons. Jealous boyfriend or husband hitting on his wife. Could be a man with a gun.”
The radio car stopped in front of an old brownstone where three people-a crowd for this time of night in this area-had gathered. The strobe beacon on the radio car drew more on lookers and curious kids. The superintendent of the building told them that he called when one of his tenants had run to his door with a report of something awful going on in the basement laundry room. The super led the way.
The rear basement door stood open, the black interior staring back like a gaping dungeon. Davis had brought along his flashlight, and now he cut the darkness with a thin line of light, shouting, “Come on out of there, all of you! This is the police. Step out with your hands up in front of you!”
There was no response.
“ There a light switch inside there?” he asked the super.
“ Sure, center of the room on a chain.”
The flash reflected back off the dull finish of an ill-matched washer and dryer. “Calcutta in there,” muttered Davis. “And something smells wrong.”
“ I don't smell anything,” replied Bryan Chase.
Davis had been a medic in Vietnam. “Smells like blood, man. Anybody in there? Anybody hurt? I don't think nobody's here.”
“ I'll get the light switch,” said Bryan, going for the center of the room, his gun pulled and poised. Suddenly the rookie tripped, his firearm discharging, Davis cursing, asking what happened.
“ Fell over something… something big.”
Tyler Davis was trying to help Chase to his feet when his beam picked up the unmistakable form of a corpse-the something Bryan had tripped over. A decapitated head was still skittering around like a spinning bottle where the kid had kicked it with his boot. Davis' light watched it until it slowed, revealing the destroyed features of the dead woman.
Chase scrambled to his feet, his clothes wet and clinging. Cursing, he slipped a second time on the pool of blood and juices he found himself in, saying, “Jesus Christ! God, oh, my God, Sergeant!”
“ Get on your feet and back out to the radio, kid,” shouted Davis. “Call it in! Get everybody down here-everybody!”
A yapping dog on the scent raced into the dungeon, going for the body, rooting around in the spilled fluids. People had pushed forward and were staring like so many ghouls. Davis kicked out at the dog to get it from the body. The crime scene had already been contaminated enough by him and Chase. “Christ, get this mutt out of here or I swear I'm gonna blow him away!”
His boot now caught the dog in the ribs, sending it flying toward the door. It yelped and ran out, but the motion required on Davis' part had sent him onto his butt, his elbow landing in the grisly open torso.
Just outside he heard some woman moaning about the mistreatment of her dog. The moment Bryan Chase returned, Tyler Davis ordered him to clear people from the area and get it cordoned off. Davis had seen mutilated bodies by the truck-load in Cambodia and Vietnam, yet he wasn't hardened to the corpse at his feet tonight. Still he knew from training how to conduct himself calmly and what must be done. This had to be the work of the creep the papers had been calling the Claw. It wouldn't be long before every brass ass on the force was down on him. He had to do everything by the book.
He returned to the door, seeing that young Chase wasn't getting the job done outside. He knew how to clear out a crime scene fast.
“ People! Folks, now listen.” Once he'd gotten their attention, he continued. “Now, folks, in a matter of minutes every cop in New York's gonna be here, and the first things they'll want to know is how much you saw, or heard, or thought you heard and where you were standing when you saw or heard it. Now, it's true, there's a dead lady inside there. What the police detectives is going to want to know is this: where were you when the woman was getting herself murdered?”
This had the immediate and desired effect Davis was going for. The gawkers began to disappear.
Chase, some vomit residue on his lips, looked at his duty sergeant with newfound respect. “You sure are cool about all this, Sergeant.”
Tyler Davis nodded and stood silent sentinel at the door, awaiting superiors who'd have to turn that light on inside; people who would have to flash an intense light on the ugliness Chase and he had merely to glance over. “You don't tell anyone you were all over the corpse, Bryan,” he said, and when the kid hesitated, “You got that?”
“ Yes, sir, if you say so, sir.”
“ I say so.”
He knew the routine.
“ What a goddamned mess. Why'n hell can't we get those lights up? This going to take all bloody night? Like I don't have anything better to do?” Dr. Kevin Perkins was young, disgruntled, loud, rude and obnoxious. He disliked the profession he found himself in, and he had an abiding dislike for cops, which was never more apparent than tonight.
Capt. Alan Rychman watched the younger, educated man verbally assault those around him. A field generator was droning on, but the juice was intermittent, the equipment faulty. The guy who had brought it was taking a lot of flak from Dr. Perkins, whose white lab coat was smeared with an obscene array of dark, viscous fluids.
Alan Rychman had driven at top speed to get here, having been routed from a party where the mayor and the commissioner of police had just told everyone that the Claw was a matter of history, that he was now believed to be locked up in an asylum somewhere.
It appeared such talk was over.
“ You're right, Perkins,” he said to the younger man, “the light in here really sucks.”
“ Damned inconvenient. Been waiting for your photographers to get in and finish, waiting for your guy with the generator over there! It's crazy, like a Mack Sennett film. You got any idea what this is like on my homelife? Maybe you don't have a homelife, but I do.”
Rychman nodded at the young doctor, who had obviously been roused from his bed and now had a gut-wrenching, tedious task ahead of him. “Still,” Rychman said, “you're pulling down good money on the rotation.” As an associate M.E. with the city, he was on call, making many times over Rychman's salary.
“ Good money, hell. In private practice, I could make six, seven times as much.”
“ Then maybe you'd better go into private practice, Doctor-after tonight, that is.”
Perkins' eyes fixed Rychman's but they did not lock for long. Rychman valued forensic information, but he didn't care to work with the disenchanted Perkins and he'd told Darius that, but Darius had become ill, and so it had fallen to Perkins to investigate an important killing, to gather evidence and arrange for an autopsy, to do the necessary paperwork declaring the victim dead and to give “reason” of death.
“ Cause of death is fairly obvious, wouldn't you say, Doctor?” Rychman said, his eyes staring in sad disbelief at what one human being was capable of doing to another.