“ Just since seven this evening.” Frakley saw Robertson beside her on the floor. He rushed to have a look. “I heard the shot, came straight up.”
“ Get to a phone, Frakley; get help.”
“ Where're you going?”
“ Back to my lab.”
“ But where's this guy Archer?”
“ I don't know, but he's wounded.”
“ I can't leave you like this.”
“ If Robertson doesn't get medical attention now, he'll die. You see to that and I'll secure the floor.”
Frakley reluctantly went in search of a telephone.
In the movies, Rychman would have come racing to her side, instead of sending a Frakley, she thought, moving cautiously through the glass maze of the laboratories here, in search of any sign of the madman. Archer had perhaps found the stairwell and was holed up there somewhere. She only thought that she had seen him duck in here. She relaxed a bit; the place was empty. She had to get the building sealed off, and where the hell was security? She went into her office and dialed. As she did so, she stared out at the lab table where J.T. had been studying a replica that had been made of the claw, something to be used, he said, as a teaching tool for next semester's newcomers. It was in the vise when she had gone out, but now it was gone.
Out of the shadows, as if materializing from air, the claw came crashing down at her, swiping out at her throat and latching onto the telephone receiver instead as she leapt away. Her gun flew off the desk where she had laid it down. The phone went through a glass partition, making enough noise to wake the dead, and certainly to cause Frakley to race in from wherever he was, she thought. But he did not come and she was knocked down and now, standing over her was the Claw, Archer's eyes like those of a raging, mad stallion as he raised the deadly instrument above his head and was about to strike.
“ God damn you, Archer, you've screwed up everything,” said Frakley as he entered, his weapon holstered.
Archer's voice had taken on the croaking sounds of a man in pain. “The bitch shot me. My blood is all over the place.”
“ We can't do her here.”
Archer moved closer to Frakley, the claw dangling at his side like that of a giant crab, his form hideous in the darkened room where the lamp had been overturned. Somewhere on the floor lay her gun. If she could only find it. Her mind raced to piece things together. Somehow Archer had found another weak, easily dominated dupe for him. Somehow the man had hypnotic power over others of a certain personality type.
“ After all, Frakley, you killed her here, not me. I tried to stop you and was wounded in the ensuing struggle,” Archer was saying as he turned Frakley's gun on him and twisted and fired. Frakley fell in a heap on the floor, dead.
Jessica took the opportunity to grab up her cane and she brought it around just at the precise moment that Archer's jaw turned into it, knocking him, claw and all, across her desk, sending what remained there onto the floor with his weight. She scrambled about for a few moments for the gun she had lost. On hand and knee, she wildly pursued the missing gun but could not find it before Archer began clawing his way back up, holding onto the desk, stunned but far from incapacitated.
Jessica tore from the office through a door that led deeper into the labyrinth of the labs. She made her way to another door that opened onto an autopsy room, where she left a spinning stainless-steel table in her wake. She went from room B to C and to D before she remembered the service elevator on the other side of the hall. She struggled on without using her cane, acutely aware that Archer and his deadly claw were right behind her.
When she stepped into the hallway, she saw him at the other end, his dark form like an alien from another planet, the deadly claw clacking as if in anticipation of her blood. He'd kill her and set up the bodies, hers and Frakley's, to make it look as if they'd killed one another, to both prove her right about the dual nature of the Claw and to end any further speculation about him.
There was little telling what the maniac had in mind other than her death. After she was splayed open like a tarpon, he'd feed on her, stuff portions of her into Frakley's mouth for good measure.
She streaked for the service elevator, praying the car was on this floor. It was used for bringing bodies to and from the morgue in the basement. She had a fifty-fifty chance that it would be there. She fairly fell against the big red button that opened the sluggish doors, and the moment they opened, she hurled herself against the far wall. Turning, she saw that Archer was racing at top speed toward her, the claw extended at eye level, and as he came crashing into the closing doors, the claw dove through, as if it had a life of its own, snatching at her.
She was too afraid to scream and instead seized the moment to tear out at the coverlet about the claw, trying desperately to rip it from his hand. He fought back, jabbing her, causing a bloody tear in her cheek, another to her forehead. Her hands were bloodied, but she continued to fight for control of the weapon when he finally snatched it back, allowing the elevator doors to close. She jammed at the controls to take it down as quickly as possible, but there was no hurrying the machinery.
She tried desperately to catch her breath. She had to get to a phone. There was one in the morgue. But he knew she'd be there, and he'd be taking the stairs two and three at a time; he'd be there waiting for her when the doors opened.
She jammed the emergency stop button and found herself between two floors. From the floor level below, the awful claw was scratching to get at her, tearing at her ankles, causing her to feel weak and terrified with the memory of how Matisak had immobilized her by cutting both her Achilles tendons. She jumped for the upper floor, pulling herself up. Archer climbed halfway into the cab after her. She quickly pulled herself to the floor above, reached up and slammed home the control button, sending the car down, but the mechanism was too slow for any chance of cutting Archer in two. However, the action did send him to the floor below.
She raced for the stairwell but she heard him coming toward her. Glancing around, she saw a storage closet, and praying it was not locked, raced for this hiding place. She pulled the door wide and gasped at what it revealed. There in the dark, amid the clutter of broken glass from a smashed light, mops, brooms and fallen debris, lay the body of a security guard, a large black man she knew as Amos Croombs. The dead man's uniform matched the one Archer was wearing. Behind her she heard Archer's approach. She hadn't any choice. She pulled the door closed behind her and sought refuge here with the dead man.
She could hear Archer nearing; she could feel him on the other side of the door. She'd been a fool to come into this dead end, she now told herself. He'd whip the door open any moment and kill her here. She didn't stand a chance.
If she could see, she might arm herself with something, a bottle of bleach to throw into his eyes-anything-the moment he opened the door.
But it was too late to dare make a sound. He was turning the doorknob.
When Archer looked into the dark interior of the closet where he had dragged Croombs' body, he saw only what he had left there before, the dead security guard. He scanned the deep shadows for any sign of Jessica Coran, but found none. In a moment, he quietly closed the door and moved on in pursuit of his prey.
Below the deadweight of the security guard, Jessica could hardly breathe and she felt the steady drip of blood as it oozed from the corpse's mouth, soiling her. She must wait patiently until Archer was out of earshot before she dared free herself of the position she was in. Once she was sure, she toppled the body, making more noise than she had wished to, and in the bargain feeling something heavy and metallic, like a hefty tool, cold and icy against her thigh. She reached down and found Amos Croombs' firearm. It was like a godsend. Archer had no doubt killed both security men on duty, but he'd foolishly left Croombs'. 38 behind.