Maybe that's why she felt compelled to work harder on the case than all the others combined, she told herself now. Maybe that's why she was getting so good at sniffing these low-life sons of bitches out, like Shaw and now Leon Helfer. Regardless of what anyone else said, Shaw, even if he wasn't the Claw, shouldn't be on the streets. Leon was cut of the same cloth; she just knew it.
Continuing to sift through his garbage, she imagined a scenario in which Leon, learning of Shaw's arrest, had deliberately gone out and committed the horrid double murder in order to make Shaw appear innocent and thus gain his freedom back, because maybe Leon felt like only half a man without Shaw. But nothing she could uncover showed any connection between Shaw and Leon. Although the idea was in keeping, the shoe didn't quite fit.
A curious man going by the alley entranceway glanced toward her, no doubt thinking her mad. Another man came around a corner, shocking her, and she fully expected it to be Helfer coming for her, but it was a tall man in a black overcoat and he asked, “You're Emmons, aren't you?”
“ Yes, that's me. Who're you?”
“ Perkins, M.E.'s office,” the stranger flashed his M.E.'s badge. “Got a call to be here from… from, ahh… HQ, that there was going to be a search and seizure?”
“ Paperwork's rolling on it, yeah.”
“ Oh, good… then I'm not too late. How long you think it'll be? I got kids at home and one of 'em's in recital tonight.”
She smiled at this and relaxed, taking her hands out of the garbage, grabbing up some of the newspapers and wiping with them when she noticed the gruesome stains on the paper and again that odd, disturbing odor. Suddenly she realized that it was the kind of preservative they used on cadavers at the morgue. Then she remembered the medical plate on the car in Helfer's garage. But it was too late.
The man lifted his black valise in one surgically gloved hand and for a moment dangled it before her eyes, when a sudden swipe of icy steel and wind tore across her eyes, shredding them. He was laughing as if it were all a magic trick. She blindly stumbled away, trying to pull her gun while he said, “Meet the real Claw.”
As she reached for the gun in her shoulder holster, the claw crashed into her with light reflecting from somewhere, and the flash of light lobbed off her right hand, the severed limb thudding against her shoe, making her shriek and pull away, backing deeper into the garage, blood spurting from her wrist, pumping like a geyser and making her light-headed. Blood streamed down her face from her wounded eyes. She reached wildly at her gun with her one good hand, fumbling and finally getting the weapon into her grasp when she felt the powerful claw clap around her neck, severing arteries and cutting off her choked, gurgling scream, pinning her against the car. Unable to turn, she clung tightly to the gun held now at her midriff, waiting for him to turn her over and drive the damnable claw into her breasts and drag it jaggedly to her navel, as she had seen in countless horrible photographs.
She was the ninth victim.
She tried to feel the gun in her hand but everything had gone numb. She could feel consciousness evaporating, knowing that if she could not remain conscious, she was certainly dead, and yet, to remain conscious meant excruciating pain if he got at her again with the claw. Already she had lost a limb, already her neck was showered in her own blood.
He turned her around and saw the gun clenched in her fist and he fully expected to be shot to death on seeing it gripped so, but then he realized that she was too weak to lift it, too weak to pull the trigger, and this brought a smile to his lips as he raised the claw over his head and brought it down in one powerful dig, feeling it take root in her where the ice pick ends jaggedly made their way through her, making her twist and squeal again.
He had gotten lucky seeing Emmons from the house going through Leon's trash. She must also have seen his car. He tore from her the little notepad she carried. He'd destroy it later.
He had never expected to enjoy the killing as an explosive orgiastic experience, but that's precisely what it had become, and in the sheer pleasure of brutally taking life, he had found that brute part of himself he called Casadessus who had been locked away just below the surface his entire life; that part of him that had hated all the constraints, all the nagging, needling commandments, all the pressure to conform, all the voices telling him his entire life what to do; that part of him that secretly murdered his father and mother once a night every night during his years under their roof; that part of him that had been restrained from hanging his sister; that part of him that had hung her dog instead; that part of him that fought his entire life to be unleashed and unfettered. Now he had given over to that side, and yet he was well adjusted enough to do so in careful increments, and to do so with a master plan in mind.
While at the same time that he could watch women squirm beneath the impaling claw before he completely gutted them, he could also be comforted in the thought that he could never be caught-ever. He had Leon to assure this, and he had Dr. Simon Archer to assure it as well. Leon, his Ovid, was the perfect dupe, a perfect victim in his own right. Dr. Simon Archer had learned all about poor Leon from his dying mother at the hospital where Archer did his pro bono work. Archer knew precisely the state of mind her death would leave the weak-minded Leon in, and that he would be helpful to Casadessus, the real Claw. Leon was so impressionable, like a child, so easily molded.
But apparently Leon had some ideas of his own. The poem had come as a shock, but a bigger shock was when Dr. Darius told him of its discovery inside the body. Darius had gotten a copy from Lathrope and had shared its content with Archer. Little bastard had disobeyed him, and now Archer's cleverly laid plans were unraveling at the seams, unless he could quickly put everything right.
The first step to putting things right was to rip the flesh of Detective Emmons from top to bottom with the tool that had come from the mind of Casadessus, an idea polished and improved on by Archer. He covered himself in a smock taken from his valise, lifted her sagging form and carried her dying body into Helfer's house.
Twenty-Two
Once inside Leon's house with Emmons, who was still alive. Archer took further hideous delight over her. Here he disemboweled her, tearing her intestines from her stomach cavity, curling them in a heap beside her, as was the Claw's custom. Rychman, Coran and the others would find her eviscerated, gutted open like a fish on a slab. And Leon was the perfect suspect. Archer had seen to that.
Archer's clothing was bloodstained, but he had a change of clothing in his trunk. He had been careful once more to wear a hair net and surgical gloves, even under the glove of the claw so as to leave no prints inside the claw itself. Coran would think to investigate the interior of it, he was sure. Now, ready to feed on the dead Emmons, he covered even his teeth with an acrylic coverlet that duplicated the impressions made by Leon Helfer. His plan was one of genius, thanks to the ruminations of his alter ego, Casadessus, whom he kept secret from even Leon.
The teeth impressions were compliments of Leon's dentist, a Dr. Parke, who had been most pliable when presented with the sight of $25,000. The good dentist had a number of outstanding gambling debts he was anxious to be shed of. The transaction had gone smoothly, and when Casadessus had vis-ited Dr. Parke again, the dentist had no fear or suspicion of him. He just wanted to know if there was anything else he could do for him, for payment. “There is one thing,” Casadessus told him just before pushing him down an open elevator shaft. “You can die for me.”
Archer had agreed that Parke, like Jim Drake, had to be eliminated. It just tidied things up and he was cautious to a fault. He fed over Emmons' organs now, feeling the warm blood and tissue traveling down his throat. Her soul would add power to his, become one with him as the prey and predator met in the ultimate union. She would go a long way to empower him with the strength needed for what lay ahead. But he hadn't much time before Leon might return and before Emmons' partner or other police might show up.
Sergeant Emmons had been a pleasant surprise, coming on his heels as
she had. Archer had entered Leon's stinking place with a key he'd fashioned long before. Expecting Leon to be there, he became incensed to learn that Leon had not only disobeyed him by leaving but had removed all the organ jars.
He had gone to the window and peered out, recalling how he had once watched from this same window to see Leon with Mrs. Phillips in the park, feeding pigeons. He had known then that Casadessus, his other self-known to all others as the Claw-would kill Mrs. Phillips in order to impli-cate Leon further in the Claw killings. After Leon was taken into custody, Simon would prove beyond any doubt that Helfer was the one and only Claw. It was the type of attention-grabbing case that would catapult him into the kind of prominence demanded of his profession. If he were ever to be given the serious consideration granted people like Luther Darius, he must carry through with Casadessus' diabolical plan. Once accomplished, Simon Archer would be whole, Casadessus had promised.
He'd then seen Emmons out the rear window going through Leon's trash. He went down the street, fearful at first, and when he saw her unmarked police car, and no one near, he got in and called dispatch, who asked, “Unit 234, what is your position?”
When he did not answer, the dispatcher said, “Turner? Are you there? Emmons? Louise, are you there?” Louise Emmons was the lady cop at the trash, but there was no sign of her partner. She must be moonlighting on her own. She had undoubtedly seen his BMW and possibly the smashed fender. He decided he could use her in his scheme to implicate Leon and extricate himself from any possible suspicion. He'd fortunately carried his black valise into Leon's with him, intending to plant the murder weapon in Leon's bedroom closet. Now he'd leave Emmons' body as well as the damning murder weapon to ensure Leon's absolute guilt. It could not have worked out better. Not even his sinister other self had planned such a climactic end to the Claw.
Now, his lips red with her blood, he swallowed another piece of Emmons, knowing the protein was good for him.
Having fed to his liking, he reached with his bloodied and gloved right hand into his mouth and snatched off the hard, acrylic tooth coverlets that Leon's dentist had fashioned for him at a dear price. These he carefully wrapped in cellophane and placed in his pocket.
He stood over the body where it lay in the kitchen. Emmons had been a lovely woman in life, and she had sustained him in death. His strong, inner self, Casadessus, grew in strength and energy each time he fed, and Simon Archer, too, was strengthened. With each kill, Simon became more and more adept at getting what he wanted.
Now he had only to let things fall as they may. He stepped away from the last feeding he would have in some time. The masquerade must be finished, the Claw captured and his reign of terror ended, all for Simon.
Archer sat in the middle of Leon Helfer's living room, his knees pulled up to his chest, rocking and biding his time, determined to keep calm and to cover his own tracks as carefully as he had throughout the year of the Claw. He'd soon take his final step as the Claw, and all would end with Leon's capture or-preferably-his death.
It was odd, he thought, how he had become a murderer, and why. He hadn't planned it, not really… at least not the first time, yet it had grown out of who he was and what he did. He'd begun in the lab where he stripped the bodies of the women; knowing he could not mutilate them, knowing that if he did, it would surely end in his dismissal, if not his arrest, he took what delights he could. He knew he must refrain from any cutting other than the coroner's Y-cut, unless there was some overriding and urgent need to cut elsewhere. But he had such urges; sometimes he wanted to tear the corpse from head to toe. It had just started creeping over his mind like a growth, a snaking vine. He could mutilate the in-sides, that which did not show. And so he began… He ripped apart the organs in the privacy of his lab, and finding this not satisfying enough, he had begun to cannibalize the internal flesh.
He did not know exactly why.
He was not sure he wanted to know why.
Why had his appetite for flesh suddenly blossomed? Was it hereditary? An ancient lust, genetically coded? Or had it a cerebral origin coming out of a nasty childhood in which his mother often bit him repeatedly as punishment for wrongdoing? Either way, why did he now feel the need for a fresh kill when before, the quiet, silent feeding over corpses entering the morgue had been enough?
Ambition, he guessed. He might have gone on feeding his prurient, unusual tastes just as he had for years in the depths of the city morgue but for his other self, that self who was ambitious enough to want Dr. Darius' position.
Archer kept his secrets well from everyone; however, he kept no secrets well from himself. He knew that there were two Simon Archers, and the Mr. Hyde was aware of Dr. Archer, and vice versa.
He must get up, make the call and get out.
He gathered up his black valise and other things, leaving only the poorly hidden tell-tale claw and the gutted, motionless body of Detective Emmons, her eyes gone from their sockets, delicacies that Archer had taken for himself.
He dialed 911 and clicked on the spliced-together tape recording he had forced from Leon several months before, knowing the day would come when he'd have to use it. Leon's taped voice said, “Someone's been killed… send help… quickly.” Leon then gave his address and Archer hung up over the protests of the operator.
Archer then quickly disappeared from the premises.
When Dave Turner pulled within sight of Leon Helfer's squat little apartment complex, his heart felt as if it were in ice, his nerves completely dulled, and his vision blurring like that of a drunk's. It was true… It was true, what they were saying on the radio: another victim of the Claw had been discovered, and it was a cop. He knew it was Emmons.
“ Dammit, Louise, damn you! Why didn't you wait?” He was holding the search warrant in his hand, waving it at the unfeeling night sky.
Capt. Alan Rychman stood on the very steps where Turner and Emmons had questioned Leon Helfer. He seemed to be directing an orchestra of cops. Sergeant Pierce was beside Rychman and now he pointed out Turner, who was fighting his way through the crowd toward them. Rychman looked as if he'd swallowed hemlock, and he started straight for Turner, grabbing him and holding on, saying, “Where the hell were you, Turner?”
“ I… I… went for a search warrant, Captain. She… she wasn't supposed to go in until I got back.”
Rychman snatched the warrant from him and looked at it.
Turner's face was stricken with grief. “Did she… did she die badly?”
Pierce said simply, “You don't want to go in there, Turner.”
Turner tried to push past him, but Rychman held on, ordering him to stand down.
“ Bastard! Bastard! Little weasel, Captain. The guy's a weasel. Why didn't she wait? Why'd she go in alone? Doesn't make sense. She promised; she knew the danger; knew I was on my way. So, why? Why?”
Turner leaned across the top of a vehicle, his body shaking with pent-up rage and tears.
Pierce just stared at the back of Turner's head, saying, “She'll be taken care of, Turner. She's in no pain now.”
Rychman frowned and nervously nodded, adding, “She cornered the Claw, Turner… Now we know who the creep is. With an APB out on Helfer, he's as good as dead.”
Inside Leon Helfer's apartment house, Jessica Coran first took a cursory look at the condition and situation of the body, finding the fact that Emmons' eyes were missing far more disturbing for some reason than the fact that every organ in her body had been turned out, some resting near the body while others, like most of the brain, had been heaved across the room. Some of the organs had large chunks missing, presumably eaten by the cannibal.
Just to get away from the body and to draw her breath, Jessica toured each room, examining for any clues that might tell her where Emmons was when she was first attacked. It appeared from the trajectory of blood against the walls in the kitchen that the killing had occurred there, as if she had been surprised and attacked on entry at the back door. A trail of her blood led Jessica deeper into
the kitchen, where the body had been splayed open, her organs squandered about the room in what appeared to be a more violent rage than the Claw had heretofore exhibited.
Emmons was hardly recognizable.
The sight gave Jessica pause, which the police photographer and the evidence team seemed to take as a sign of weakness. She brought herself up quickly when she heard someone say that Dr. Archer had been located and was on his way.
She wanted to get as much accomplished as possible before Archer arrived. She gave orders for the E.T. people to concentrate elsewhere, and in particular to search for tools and deadly instruments. One of the men went straight for the open door of the basement, stepping directly into a smear of fluid. Jessica's shout-that he watch his step-came too late.
She placed her black valise within reach and knelt over Louise Emmons' disfigured corpse, trying to control her nerves, which threatened to erupt at any moment. Her immediate reaction was that the body had been here less than an hour. Even so, the flies had found it.
As she cut away patches of stained clothing, bagging these in paper, as was necessary in properly drying and preserving bloodstains, she thought once again about the letter of the law with regard to the chain of custody of medicolegal evidence of this nature.
She knew that the practicalities of proof did not require the State of New York to exclude every possibility of substitution or tampering; that it need only establish a reasonable assumption that there was no substitution, alteration or tampering of the sacrosanct evidence. All that was required was to establish a “chain of custody,” a reasonable assurance that the exhibits of trial were the same as those taken from the scene, and that they remained in the same condition.
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