Fatal Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  At the same instant a squad car careened into the yard, kicking up rock and gravel and a fog of sand. The watch sergeant for the area leapt out, tore into the men and pulled them off Helfer. “Get an ambulance for this bastard! This ain't a goddamn kick-fest, and this ain't L.A.”

  “He tried running.”

  “We had to stop him.”

  “Picked up a lead pipe.”

  “Came at Connors.”

  Helfer was beaten near to death.

  “Confiscate all this crap of his,” ordered the sergeant.

  “He was dumping jars like this down that hole over there, Sergeant,” said the cop named Connors, holding the single confiscated jar up.

  “Looks like we got the fuckin' Claw, all right.”

  Alan Rychman was not blind to the fact that the two M.E.s weren't working well together when he reentered the scene of the mutilation murder. But his men were circling him with the bagged items they'd discovered during their room-to-room search.

  “This freak's collected women's underwear, some still with bloodstains on them. Captain,” said one man.

  “We got lipstick tubes, hair nets, brushes with hair in them.”

  “And a shit load of women's bags, Captain, but none of the missing organs or parts.”

  Rychman held up a hand to his excited men and said clearly, “Turn it all over to Lou, and it'll be logged in along with Dr. Archer's and Dr. Coran's findings.”

  Rychman neared Emmons' body for the second time, the eyeless face, the blood, and the shredded carcass profoundly disturbing him. It was different when you knew the deceased, when the corpse was more than just a stranger. Emmons' familiar face wasn't so familiar anymore, but her body proportions and her clothing were.

  “I want absolutely nothing left to chance, Doctors,” he told them.

  Jessica looked over her shoulder at Rychman, hearing the pain in his voice. He must have known Detective Emmons for several years.

  “Can you verify it as the same work as that of the Claw?” asked Rychman.

  “If you're interested in unsubstantiated guesswork—” she began, but was cut off by Archer's reply.

  “There's no doubt in my mind. It's the work of the same maniac.”

  “That's good,” replied Rychman, “because I've just learned that Helfer's been picked up.”

  “Alive?” asked Jessica.

  “A bit roughed-up, but yeah, very much alive.”

  “Alive and talking, I hope,” she said. “We need him alive. We can learn from him, fill in the information blanks.”

  Archer was nodding and saying, “Yes, good. Once he has been questioned, the details can be sorted out.”

  Someone was shouting from an upstairs bedroom. It sounded like a major discovery. Rychman raced upstairs, followed by the others. On the second floor, in a back bedroom, lying in a shoe box in the closet, was the claw itself.

  A young detective was almost hyperventilating over it. “Captain, it's... it's the damned murder weapon. Has to be! Has to be!”

  “Don't touch it!” shouted Jessica over the men crowding in to see the murderer's weapon of choice.

  “I've got it, Jess,” said Rychman.

  “This is going to nail the bastard six ways to Sunday,” said the young detective who had made the discovery.

  “Can't hurt your career, either, Marty,” said Sergeant Pierce.

  Rychman carefully lifted the box out and then placed it on a bureau top. Jessica looked over his shoulder at the awful tool of terror, a thick, three-pronged metal rake with ice-pick ends and razored serrated edges set into a glove that had a thick thong of Velcro.

  Rychman used the barrel end of his .38 Police Special to lift the awful claw from its resting place in the shoe box. The metal, kept meticulously clean by the killer, sparkled and shined in the light, yet microscopic analysis would reveal Emmons' blood and minute particles of flesh clinging like electrified particles to the surface.

  Rychman said, “The thing has heft. It's a hand-attachment weapon and it looks extremely close to the computer depiction you created, Jessica.”

  Standing just beside and behind Rychman, looking at the chilling thing, she involuntarily shivered. It looked like something a gardener would use for tearing into the soil.

  “How extremely awful,” said Archer.

  “Yeah,” said one of the cops in the room, “ 'magine that going through your gut.”

  “Archer, take this into custody, and I don't want anything—anything—happening to this piece of evidence. It's vital to our nailing this bastard.”

  “Understand, Captain,” replied Archer, who allowed the brawny detective holding the ugly instrument of death to drop it into a large polyethelene bag, which Archer produced like a magician.

  “It looks as though we've finally caught the sicko bastard, men,” said Rychman to the group. “And we're going to see him carefully every step of the way to a lifetime behind bars.”

  Someone screamed, a hair-curling, ear-splitting screech from the kitchen. Rychman got to Turner first, ushering him away from the sight of Emmons' body.

  Helfer was under twenty-four-hour watch, no chances being taken with his safety; nor was any stone being left unturned in providing every shred of evidence against the man. No missteps or mishaps must be made. The D.A. was personally overseeing the conviction of the Claw, and so he asked Dr. Simon Archer to draw up an airtight medicolegal presentation that would bury Helfer and at the same time be easily understood by a jury. The entire, enormous machinery of City Hall was put into motion against the frail, little man named Leon who had become the city's most notorious serial killer.

  Meanwhile, Jessica received a fax at the crime lab from her headquarters ordering her return. She faxed O'Rourke back that she needed to stay longer, to help build the case against Helfer. When this was granted her, and Archer learned of it, he seemed nervous, ostensibly concerned for her, that she'd been away from her own duties at Quantico far longer than she ought to have been, and that he could manage. Alan Rychman, by comparison, was delighted that she had postponed her leaving.

  Jessica took the first opportunity granted her to speak with Helfer; she didn't approach it as an interrogation, knowing that Helfer had been interrogated by everyone else. She wished to put him at ease and had asked beforehand if she could tape their conversation. He had consented.

  When Leon entered the interrogation room, he was so manacled she thought the chains must weigh more than the man. He had the bloodshot eyes and emaciated look of a prisoner of war, and his nervous movements, jerking head and distrustful eyes reminded her of a disturbed, caged animal. The small man's eyes were brown, beady, rat like. Every nerve ending appeared delicate, frayed and ready to sputter like a loose wire. Looking at him was like seeing a ghost. It was Gerald Ray Sims all over again, she thought.

  He searched the corners and the shadows of the interrogation room before his eyes fell on her. A nervous tick plucked intermittently at his left temple and eye; his lower jaw quivered, indicating the onset of tears was not far off.

  Rather than the horror story antagonist, some creature out of a Geoffrey Caine novel, this man was a mewing, simpering mole. She tried to imagine him overpowering his victims, some of whom were heavier and taller than he.

  She offered him a cigarette, which he accepted with the caution of a stray cat, his hand reaching out only to be snatched away, afraid that she meant to trick him. She then tossed the pack of cigarettes across to him and loudly introduced herself, trying to break through the altered state of in-sensitivity he had built up around himself.

  “You do remember agreeing to speak with me?”

  “Yeeeah,” he muttered just above a whisper.

  “Leon, do you hear or see things that no one else hears or sees?”

  He looked confused. He took a long time to curry her favor with a meaningful reply. “Whataya talking about?”

  “Oh, I don't know. Your mother's voice, for instance, in your head.”

  On
ce more he took his time in replying, weighing the sound and sense of his words. “Sure... sure, I hear... sometimes... something she said all the time, sure, but it's just my memory is all.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Do right. Do the right thing. Listen and obey, that kind of thing.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nah, she just kept me in line. I never killed nobody when my mother was alive. It started when the Claw came, with him lying to me, saying it was her talking through him. He got me all twisted around and confused.”

  “What about the Claw? His voice like your mom's, in your head? Like maybe a ghost?”

  She didn't want to put words in his mouth, but at the rate it was going, she had to coax him along. The tape was running, and he seemed keenly aware of it.

  He failed to answer, biting his lip instead.

  “Do you, on occasion, hear voices, Leon?” she persisted.

  “Voices?”

  “Telling you what to do... telling you to murder people?”

  “You mean like voices in my head?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, no voices in my head.”

  “I see.”

  He went on. “And I never saw ghosts, not like, you know, my mother's or anything; no, but I saw the Claw all the time, and nobody else has seen him.”

  “Leon, do you think there are people out there who are out to get you?”

  “Damned straight there are.”

  “I mean before you were arrested, Leon, before, were there people out to get you?”

  “My boss, yeah... and my dentist never liked me. Think he thought I was a carrier or something, like I had AIDS maybe, I don't know!”

  “Are you aware that your dentist is dead?”

  “What? No... when?”

  “Seems he fell down an elevator shaft that was being repaired there in his building.”

  “I didn't have nothing to do with that.”

  “And your boss, at the pipe factory, had an unfortunate accident recently.”

  Leon looked amazed.

  “Some large pipe fell on him, crushing him.”

  Leon shook his head. “I didn't know.”

  “Same day Detective Emmons was killed. Malthuesen's death looked like an accident, but that's rather coincidental, isn't it? I mean you on trial for murder and two people close to you die accidental deaths?”

  “It's the Claw's doing... got to be,” he replied, and fell silent.

  She sighed and took in a deep breath, about to go on when he volunteered, “I was nowhere near the pipe factory, and I ain't been back to the dentist in over six months.”

  She began asking him some general questions to determine his fund of knowledge. “How much is seven times eight, Leon?”

  “What? Oh, ahh... fifty-six.”

  “Who's the mayor of New York?”

  “Halle, the big guy.”

  She nodded. “Who's out in right field for the L.A. Dodgers?”

  “Daryl Strawberry . . . funny name.”

  “You follow sports?”

  “Not much no more,” he said. “Not lately, not since... since Momma died and the Claw came.” She had already heard the general outline of the story of how he had met the Claw for the first time and that it was at his mother's funeral.

  She asked him to repeat the story for her. She found it intriguing.

  “Your mother was ill, then, for some time?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of medication was she on?”

  “Pain killers mostly. She died of inoperable cancer—the brain. That's what they told me.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Her doctors.”

  “And where was she getting medical assistance, Leon?”

  He hesitated. “Why's that so important?”

  She shrugged. “It could be very important. Why're you reluctant to talk about it?”

  “Momma never liked to accept charity, but our money was running out, and we were down to the apartment building, and she didn't want to lose that, so she went to the free clinic in the end. Her Medicare wasn't enough. I drove her to the free clinic when she needed more painkillers, until she couldn't even get out of bed.”

  “What's the name of this clinic, Leon, and where's it located?”

  “You can give blood there for money. It's called the Street Hospital on Fourth and Union, near Byrne Park, South Bronx. Good way's from home, but cheap.”

  “I'm sorry, Leon, for your loss.”

  He looked blankly up at her.

  “Your mother, I mean.”

  “Oh... oh, yeah... It was bad.”

  “Now, I want you to be honest with me on the next question.”

  “All right.”

  “Leon, Leon, listen to me. Is there any other proof that you can present to us that will verify what you're saying, that you didn't act alone?”

  He grinned and said, “Well, ma'am, I didn't take no pictures, but when I wrote my poem and called the radio show— and nearly got myself killed for it—I was trying to tell you about him.”

  “Leon, we've got proof that you fashioned the weapon where you used to work. Isn't that true?”

  “He tol' me what he wanted; gave me the exact details. He knew I could make them. Knew all about me the moment he showed up at Momma's funeral. He knew.”

  “Evidence, Leon, evidence. Do you have any proof?”

  “The other claw.”

  “What other claw?”

  “He had me make two claws, two right-handed ones.”

  “Two? Why two?”

  “Only the Claw knows that, but sometimes he'd make me wear one, so I could be more like him. Wanted me to eat on the women, too. Always at me to eat up.”

  Jessica, fatigued and more confused than ever about what kind of basket case she sat across from, wanted to conclude the interview, but something in Leon's eye held her a moment longer. “What is it, Leon?”

  “You got to promise to keep him away from me, please.”

  Gerald Ray Sims had made the same plea regarding Stainlype.

  “By all means, Mr. Helfer, we will do so, by all means,” she replied with clenched hands, knowing they'd been unable to do so in Sims' case.

  At the door, she turned and asked him, “Leon, why did you let this other man do this to you? Why did you allow him to bully you and turn you into a killer and a cannibal?”

  “I ain't no cannibal, not really. He is... He's crazy for the organs. I... me, I mostly just bit and chewed a little... not much. It was him that did the real damage.”

  “Where did you bite the women, what parts of the body, Leon?”

  “Just the... the behinds...”

  “Come on. Where else?”

  “Throat sometimes when the Claw told me, but mostly the sex parts. I only swallowed flesh maybe twice and that was just so the Claw wouldn't get angry with me.”

  “But why... why'd you let him lead you to this?”

  “I was so...” He began to shiver and rattle in his chains. “I still am afraid. He could get me even here. He even came to me last night, appeared right outside my cell. He... he terrifies me.”

  Unable to take any more of this little man, Jessica left with many, many questions still unresolved.

  She returned to the NYPD headquarters to continue the search for the elusive Claw, because she still refused to believe that Leon Helfer, by himself, was capable of carrying out the various atrocities inflicted on the Claw's victims. She made her position clear to Alan, whom she forced to sit to listen to her.

  “I've heard all this,” Alan complained, “and Ames has interpreted his remarks as just the opposite—”

  She pointed out Helfer's responses on the deaths of his dentist and his boss, and that Helfer's mother had been under medical care at a Bronx clinic known as Street Hospital.

  He slapped down several files before her.

  “What're these?”

  “Didn't take much digging, once we hit on this angle,
to learn that all the women were ill, some terminally so.”

  “That means you've discovered the first true link between the victims,” she said. “That's great.”

  “With the exception of Mrs. Phillips, they were all traveling far from their homes to that same clinic Helfer mentioned. Storefront operation, low overhead, cheap medicine, pro bono stuff, lots of starry-eyed interns doing their bit for the homeless and indigent.”

  “So who's on staff there regularly?”

  “No one who looks suspicious, but the average stay for a doctor is brief, and there's one, a Dr. Casadessus, who interests me.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “No, unable to locate. All information on him at the clinic was falsified.”

  “It's him. I know it. I can feel it. They must have some record of who's practicing—”

  “Hey, from the look of the place, they're just happy to have someone who can hold a scalpel right-end up.” She breathed deeply. “But you're not letting go?”

  “No, not at all. I don't like blatant coincidence in a murder investigation.”

  “Then it is a continuing investigation?”

  “Only so far as you and I know. The C.P. ordered it a closed case yesterday.”

  “Alan, it can't be mere coincidence alone that all these victims were getting their health care at the same place.”

  “Agreed,” he replied. “Now what about Simon Archer? How does he feel about your staying on, I mean?”

  “He isn't completely thrilled with the idea.”

  “Sounds good.” Alan's sarcasm made her frown.

  They then kissed and parted, telling one another to be careful, Alan taking Lou Pierce with him to make additional discreet inquiries at the free clinic.

  Jessica returned to the laboratories where she had worked alongside Darius. From time to time she saw Archer look up from his own work, his eyes penetrating the glass partitions between them, his reflection caught by a myriad of glass panes, making it appear as if he were on all sides of her. She continued to work through the forensic materials that had been placed at her disposal by the acknowledged new chief coroner of the city, Simon Archer.

  While she worked over the leather glove claw, Jessica was haunted by the image of another deadly weapon. All during the chase for Matthew Matisak they'd had so much difficulty determining the exact nature of the weapon used by the killer. It had finally come down to a bastardized form of the trache-otomy tube through which the vampiristic Matisak drained the blood of his victims into canning jars which he put up for his leisure-time activities.