Coran had left the building, of this he was quite certain. So had Emmons' body. Both were bound for Quantico, and perhaps now everything in New York might return to a semblance of normalcy. With Leon's coffin being nailed shut by Archer's own forensics team, with precious little added by the FBI woman, it would be Dr. Simon Archer who would be credited with putting an end to the Claw, and he would realize the goal that at first he had felt was far beyond his reach and ability. With Dr. Darius gone, at long last, it was his department, and now his reputation would flourish.
As for the Claw, he must forever remain dead along with Leon. To satisfy his taste for flesh, Archer told himself that he could go back to his old methods, forget about the mutilation deaths he had engineered, forget about the fresh smell of a kill, the mouth-watering urges that welled up at the smell of blood. He could do it, he told himself, and if he could not, he'd have to fashion a new weapon, something that could not be linked to the Claw or to him. Finding everything calm in the lab, he excused himself, saying he would be at the interrogation center with Rychman. Within ten minutes, he was sitting behind a one-way mirror listening to Rychman grill Leon. Helfer had apparently agreed to fully cooperate in return for leniency and mercy. He was desperately trying to answer any and all questions put to him. He continued to declare that the Claw was a physical second person and not a second personality manifestation. Dr. Ames, sitting in a corner of the interrogation room, slipped in questions between Rychman's. Ames had his own tape recorder going and he jotted down notes as well, his eyes seldom leaving Helfer, reading the man's body language. Several times Ames looked puzzled. Archer thought.
Helfer was pleading now. “I told you… I told you, I… I don't know where he lives or who he was.”
“ You say you let this guy lead you around by the nose and you never once learned his name?”
“ That's right, that's right…” Leon was blubbering.
“ So he always initiated the contact?”
“ Yes.”
“ And he always told you where to drive to? What street corner to stand on?”
“ Yes, yes… I've told you that.”
“ And as if by magic, here comes the exact victim he wanted?”
“ That's how it happened. I hit them over the head and dragged 'em down where he told me earlier to bring them, but he cut them open, and he… he ate from their insides. I… I just faked that part. It made me sick.” A lie as the fo-rensics evidence had shown.
“ How did he contact you? By phone?”
“ No. He'd just show up.”
“ And you sat around waiting for him?” asked Dr. Ames.
“ But you told Dr. Coran that he telephoned you.”
“ No, no! Only the once, the time he set me up… just before he killed the policewoman.”
Rychman pounded his hand on the table, causing a gunshot sound that made Ames jump along with Leon. “How do you expect anyone to believe such shit, Leon? Leon, nobody just shows up out of nowhere, out of the curtains at your mother's funeral home, out of the dark in your house, out of the fuckin' thin air!”
Lou Pierce stepped into the room. He'd been behind the mirror with Dr. Archer. And now he asked a few questions, spelling Captain Rychman. “You know, Leon, we've got the ball peen hammer you used on the women, the axe, the other tools, all with blood on them.”
“ We've got DNA counts on your blood and all the victims' blood, Leon,” added Rychman, turning and facing the little man again, towering over him. We've got your hair, your coat fibers, your rug fibers, your fingerprints and your teeth marks, and not a single piece of microscopic evidence otherwise to point to a second killer, Leon. No, Leon, you did all these killings all on your own, and you're going to tell us the truth, Leon, here and now! The goddamned truth!”
“ No, I told the truth! Dr. Coran believed me! Talk to her. Talk to Dr. Coran!”
Archer could feel the muscles in his face tighten and twitch and his brain replayed Leon's words in refrain: “Dr. Coran believes me! Talk to Dr. Coran!”
“ We found all that stuff you stole from the women, too, Leon, from their purses,” Lou continued. “Mascara, rouge, lipstick, earrings, hairpins, brushes with the dead women's hair and odor still on 'em. We know you acted alone, Leon.”
“ You saved a lot of their underthings, Leon,” said Rychman, “and Mrs. Phillips' Oriental rug splattered with her blood was in the trunk of your car, Leon.”
Archer had heard enough. He was convinced of two things. Rychman and the others believed what he wanted them to believe all along, that Leon had worked out his lurid fantasies alone, and secondly, Dr. Coran believed otherwise. She remained his only threat.
When Rychman stepped out of the interrogation room, all he saw of Archer was his back as the M.E. disappeared along a corridor. He cursed his luck. Had he known Archer was outside, he would have found a way for Helfer to meet Dr. Archer face-to-face.?
Twenty-Six
Simon Archer lay restless in his large four-poster mahogany bed, unable to sleep, his peace disturbed by a woman who was over two hundred miles away. He knew that Coran was no typical medical examiner, that she was known among her close associates as thorough. Very little to nothing got past her. Her intimations of impropriety on his part had led to an investigation of his newly acquired department. He wasn't worried that the investigation would turn up anything as incriminating as murder and cannibalism, but he was worried about Jessica Coran. Even Darius had called her brilliant, an adjective he had never used to describe Archer. And now she had Emmons' body under her full scrutiny.
Perhaps he was foolish to worry: the stronger voice within him tried to soothe his fears, calling them irrational.
“ After all,” he told himself, “you took every precaution with Emmons, every possible precaution: gloves, hair net, the specially designed tooth sheath that simulated Leon Helfer's bite, now a somewhat useless item.”
Giving it further thought, he told himself, “I really should destroy and discard the sheath.” He held up the two rows of hard, acrylic tooth coverings with Helfer's signature on every edge and molar. They were self-incriminating, after all.
He cupped them in his hand and placed them beside his bed and felt the old urges welling up. His need for living flesh had come full circle.
He tried to close his eyes, get some rest. But each time he did a mad cinema of images flashed before him: first the writhing body, the half-conscious victim simpering, and he bending over, a shadow-man looking on in stark horror and curiosity. Closer and closer he brought his face down to the victim's throat, his animal's claw poised for the final tear, but his mouth wanting to tear first into the still-flexing arteries of the throat, when suddenly he saw her face. It was Coran's face and her eyes opened, staring straight through him, daring him to continue to kill her.
His dream self lashed madly and monstrously at her with the claw again and again, but her flesh withstood each blow. She began to laugh, and he was unable to make her stop, and the claw was breaking apart under his repeated attempt to rend her iron flesh from her.
His eyes came open with a start. She knew. He did not know how she knew, but she knew.
“ Forget about her,” he told himself in a chastising voice. “Even if she knows, she can't prove a thing.”
“ Not yet, she can't,” he answered himself. “But one day she might.”
Responding to a nervous Malthuesen who had telephoned in a panic, he had gone after hours to Leon's place of work. Malthuesen had immediately contacted him after two police detectives, one named Emmons, had grilled him about Leon. Malthuesen was surprised when Archer had shown up after the place had cleared out. Malthuesen didn't know he was about to die of a tragic accident, the trap already set before Dr. Archer led him to the snare. Malthuesen didn't understand Archer's interest in Leon and had thought it all to do with a gay liaison between them, and Archer hadn't dissuaded the notion until the end. But as a result of the police snooping, Malthuesen had become greatly curious, and he was asking too many questions.