Case of the Claw

by Keith DeCandido

  Spectacular Man wrapped one arm around Donewitz's head and constricted it. Donewitz started turning read and sputtering before he finally went limp.

  "You kill him?" Fiorello asked, then started coughing again.

  Waiting for the coughing to stop, Spectacular Man eventually replied, "Of course not. But he does need medical attention."

  Fiorello's smartass response about how Donewitz's need for a hospital was of very little interest to him was prevented by another coughing fit.

  While he hacked up a lung, Spectacular Man gathered Donewitz up and flew him out of the window. I don't believe it! That bastard just took off with the bad guy, and left me duct-taped to a goddamned radiator!

  Behind him, Fiorello heard the distinctive sound of a battering ram slamming into a metal door, followed immediately by the metal door's impact against a plaster wall as it was thrown open.

  That was followed by booted feet running into the abandoned apartment.

  "Thank Christ," Fiorello said as the EATers came running in. They were all dressed in full gear with helmets cover their entire heads, black body armor covering the rest of them.

  Four of them moved throughout the apartment, each bellowing, "Clear!" except for the one who came into the room Fiorello was in. The nametag stenciled into his body armor right over his heart read bryant. "We got a man down!"

  "I ain't down, Harry," Fiorello said in a scratchy voice, "but I'm duct-taped to a fucking radiator. Get me outta here so I can take a piss, already, willya?"

  It wasn't until the seventh person offered Garcia a cup of coffee that he finally accepted. After spilling an entire cup on his nether regions, he swore off coffee for the rest of his life. Generally when he did that—as he'd done for chocolate, cigars, porno DVDs, and, yes, coffee in the past—the resolution only lasted a day.

  It hadn't even been an hour in this case, but enough was enough. The adrenaline high from the spill and the situation had faded, and he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. So he took the coffee from Officer Fontaine.

  A second and a half later, he regretted it. Looking over at Fontaine, he asked, "Christ, Mara, couldn't you get something that was made with today's dishwater?"

  Fontaine shrugged. "Sorry, Cap. It's the only cup of coffee around here that costs under a buck."

  "Sometimes you get what you pay for," Garcia muttered.

  Suddenly, he really wanted a cigar.

  Garcia looked at his watch, then looked at Singh. "He's been in there for two minutes. Maybe we should—"

  Spectacular Man flew out of the window, cradling Donewitz in his arms. He landed right at the back of the ambulance.

  Setting down his cup of caffeinated sewage on one of the blue-and-whites, he dashed over to the ambo. Spectacular Man was talking to one of the paramedics as he set Donewitz down on one of the ambulance's gurneys. "He needs to have power-dampening restraints, and then he needs to go to the ER."

  "Yeah, but not until Officer Fiorello is down here," Garcia added.

  The paramedic, whose nameplate read guthrie, nodded and then looked over Donewitz.

  Garcia glared at Spectacular Man. "You couldn't bring the injured uni down here?"

  "It was imperative that Bolt have the restraints put on him before he regains consciousness. And I knew that your Emergency Action Team would rescue Officer Fiorello."

  "Did you, now?"

  "I did. Especially since Bolt here confessed to murder."

  Nearby, Fontaine and Baptiste had retrieved the damps from their cruiser. The restraints were two metal tubes linked by a small bar, making them look like a large letter H. They rolled Donewitz's prone form over and slid his arms into the tubes under the watchful eye of Guthrie.

  Garcia's eyes widened at the costume's revelation. "He did what?"

  "Confessed to the murder of a woman—probably his next-door neighbor."

  "That's great!" Garcia's smile was as false as Regina Dent's first smile. "And of course you'll come down to police HQ with us and fill out a witness statement, yes?"

  Spectacular Man hesitated, then looked down at Garcia. The captain was amused to realize that the mask he wore over the top half of his face did a great deal to spoil his expressions. "You know I cannot do that, Captain."

  "Actually, yeah, you could." Garcia held up both hands before the costume could respond. "But you choose not to, and I respect that."

  That took Spectacular Man aback. "You do?"

  "No, honestly, I don't, but it's not like I can stop you."

  "He also confessed in front of Officer Fiorello," Spectacular Man said, "who can make a statement."

  Garcia let out a breath through his teeth. "Yeah, because there's nothing defense lawyers like better than witnesses who were hostages testifying against the guy who took 'em hostage. His statement'll be less than worthless."

  "Captain—" Spectacular Man started.

  "Don't worry about it," Garcia said, "we're kinda used to it with you people by now. Even if Fiorello will suck as a witness, his statement'll give us enough for a proper investigation. We'll probably be able to nail him. And if not, we've still got him on two counts of assaulting an officer, kidnapping, and a bunch of others."

  "That's not the same as murder." Spectacular Man had an odd tone to his voice.

  Figuring he had nothing to lose by asking, Garcia said, "Wanna make it up to me?"

  Spectacular Man frowned. "I'm sorry?"

  "We've been requesting your files on the Claw for two days now, and you've been stonewalling us. We've got to find this guy before he kills anyone else, and the more information we have, the better chance we have of doing that."

  Specatcular Man rubbed his cleft chin, but said nothing.

  Before Garcia could prompt a verbal response, Singh's people came calmly out of the building. Bryant and Johanssen were both supporting Fiorello on either side of him. Garcia wasn't surprised that, after being duct-taped to a radiator for eight hours, Fiorello would have trouble walking on his own.

  Fiorello's hair was also, for the first time in Garcia's memory, mussed.

  As they approached the ambulance, Garcia asked, "How you doing, Paul?"

  "I'll live, sir."

  Turning back around, Garcia saw that Spectacular Man was rising into the air. "Captain—I'll think it over."

  And then he flew off.

  "Hey, Captain!"

  Turning, Garcia saw Fontaine jogging toward him while putting her cell phone away.

  "No more coffee, please, Mara?"

  Fontaine smiled. "No, sir. Actually, I just got off the phone with Detective Milewski. She said no luck on the files, but the murder weapon from the Bajramis' place did come from the Brute Squad."

  At that, Garcia just sighed and looked back up into the sky, watching the blue-and-red streak disappear over the buildings on Jaffee.

  3.45pm

  Therese Zimmerman approached the desks assigned to Milewski and MacAvoy. Their desks were abutted in the detectives' bullpen, as were many partners' desks, against the north wall. Both of them were seated, and had been since their return from the Superior Six blimp that morning.

  MacAvoy's desk was piled high with red folders—case files, probably the previous Claw murders. He was flipping through one of them, a pencil covered in teeth marks in his mouth, eraser-end first. Therese thought that must have tasted awful, though the pencil end would've been worse. His hair looked like he'd slept on it funny, his glasses were almost at a forty-five degree angle to the rest of his face, and he hadn't shaved since the previous morning.

  Milewski's desk was neater, but she had a laptop open and was looking at a web site. Her blue eyes looked bloodshot, her hair escaping its ponytail. Her red pantsuit still looked good, though.

  Both desks had mostly empty Chinese food boxes all around. MacAvoy had a slip of white paper on top of the buttons of his desk's phone, but Milewski hadn't yet eaten her fortune cookie, sitting as it was to the left of her laptop.

  "How goes it?" she ask
ed.

  Looking up, MacAvoy flicked the pencil upward suddenly, causing the pencil to snap in twain, sending the pencil end flying across into the wall.

  "Sonofabitch," he muttered, spitting out the eraser end. "Worst day in the history of the universe was when the City Council passed that ordinance about smoking indoors."

  "Or as I like to call it," Milewski muttered, "the day I stopped needing to bring my inhaler into the office."

  As Mac gave Milewski a dirty look, Therese asked, "How's it going?"

  "Lousy, whaddaya think?" Mac said while slamming the folder of the case file he was reading shut.

  Milewski closed her laptop, prompting Therese to ask, "What were you looking at?"

  Grabbing the fortune cookie and breaking it in half, Milewski said, "The last of fifteen pro-life web sites, all on the list that the Severin Free Clinic provided of organizations that have harassed them. Nobody's claimed responsibility for killing Ashlyn, though most of them were okay with her not providing abortions anymore. Interestingly, four of them actually decried the murder."

  "Wonders will never cease."

  "Yeah." Milewski pulled the white rectangular slip out of the cookie and popped half of it in her mouth while reading aloud. "'You will find friendship in unexpected places.'"

  MacAvoy shook his head. "Don't talk with your mouthful, rook."

  Therese turned her gaze upon him. "What about you, Mac?"

  "Goin' back over the old case files, trying to see if there's some kinda pattern that we got now with fifteen bodies that we didn't have when it was only eleven, but I ain't found shit."

  "It was worth a shot," Therese said with a shrug.

  "Also," Milewski said, rooting through a wireframe in-box, "we got an updated profile on the Claw from the FBI." She finally liberated a sheet of paper that was adorned with FBI letterhead in fuzzy black type that indicated a fax.

  "Anything useful?" Therese asked.

  That prompted a snort from Mac. "You're kidding, right?"

  Reading off the fax, Milewski said, "They say he's a white male, late thirties, raised by a single parent, with a psychosis that's probably triggered by a biennial occurrence."

  "Something that happens twice a year is setting him off?" Mac gave Milewski a very confused expression.

  Gently, Therese said, "'Biennial' means every two years. And that's how often we see him, so it fits."

  Mac frowned. "I thought 'biennial' was every six months."

  Milewski shook her head. "That's 'biannual.'"

  "You sure?"

  "Well, Mac, I majored in English in college and you majored in Intoxication, so yeah, I'm sure."

  Pointing a finger at his partner, Mac said, "Hey, you were still sucking your mother's tits when I was getting drunk in the dorms."

  Therese put her hands on her hips. "Do I have to put you two in separate corners?"

  "The point is," Mac said, still staring daggers at his partner, "that, as I predicted, the fibbie profile's useless."

  Milewski tossed the FBI fax aside and leaned back in her chair. "Honestly, Lieutenant, I'm not sure what else we can do. We've got all the evidence, we've got absolutely no clue where he lives, where he came from, nothing. Until we find him, there's not much police work we can do at this point."

  Mac grabbed one of the other red folders. "There was one thing, but it didn't go anywhere."

  "Oh?" Therese regarded Mac expectantly.

  "During his second appearance four years back, the detective who caught the case was Blue-Blue."

  "Who?" Therese had never understood the tendency of cops to come up with bizarre nicknames for each other. Some made sense, like "Mac" and her own "Zim," and even "King" Fischer. But then there were people like "Bunny" Gamble in the Western District, or "Bank" Masterson.

  Regarding her with surprise, MacAvoy said, "Geez, thought everyone knew Blue-Blue."

  "Four years ago," Therese said, "I was the sergeant in charge of the check-and-fraud squad. Didn't really talk to too many Homicide cops back then."

  "Fair point." MacAvoy pushed his glasses up his nose. "His real name was Jacob Elwood. He wanted us to call him Jake, which just made the nickname inevitable."

  "Fine." Therese didn't even like that movie. "What about him?"

  "Well, the Claw was his last case before he joined the FBI, believe it or not. Fucking traitor. Anyhow, after the second set of murders, he noticed that the victims were all right near where the Stupid Six had their blimp at the time of the killings. He thought that maybe the Claw was trying to call the Six out by killing people in their backyard."

  Therese rubbed her chin. "Interesting theory."

  "It doesn't hold up, though," Milewski said, shaking her head. "When he showed up two years ago, the two kills and the one attempt that the Bengal broke up weren't anywhere near the blimp. And we checked—only one of the four newest were anywhere near the blimp, and that was Barker."

  "Too bad." Therese put her hands on her hips. "Maybe he gave up trying to call them out. Anyhow, I'm off at four—Marc and I are having drinks." To her abject shock, Marc expressed a desire to see her tonight. It wasn't the makeup dinner date they'd originally planned when Monday at Emmanuelli's was busted (the one he cancelled over the phone yesterday), it was just a twenty-minute drinks date, but Therese would take it at this point. She didn't regret what she'd said to Marc over the phone yesterday, but she felt the need to apologize to him anyhow. It wasn't like he had any control over what the Six chose to do with themselves. Sure, as their financier he held influence, but that wasn't the same thing.

  She continued: "You two should go home and get some sleep. Kristin's right, there's nothing new to learn at this point, and you both look like hammered shit. We'll get back on this in the morning."

  Mac stood up. "I like this plan. For starters, I can get a smoke."

  Milewski's phone chirped. Therese was about to tell her not to bother—she wasn't up in the rotation as long as she was on this case, and Therese wanted them both to get some needed rest—but before she could say anything, the detective grabbed the black plastic receiver and said, "Milewski, Homicide."

  Therese looked at Mac, who was shrugging into his denim jacket and giving her a what do you expect from a stupid rookie? expression.

  "Yes, that's me—it's spelled 'mill-EW-skee,' but it's pronounced 'mah-LOV-skee.' Yeah. Okay. Why are you telling me this? What? Oh, shit. Gimme the address again?" Milewski started jotting down an address on a Post-It. "Yeah, okay. We'll be right there."

  She hung up and looked right at Therese.

  The last time Kristin Milewski had so stricken a look on her face, it was Monday morning in Therese's office when Garcia dressed her down for going over the lieutenant's head.

  Therese had a sinking feeling that she wasn't going to enjoy the reason for that expression this time.

  "We've got another body," she said, "in the Cowan Houses in Heckton. Ripped to shreds, Post-It, the whole bit."

  Mac put his head in his hands. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

  "Look on the bright side," Therese said with a sigh, "you'll still get your cigarette." She shook her head. "Go. I'll let Javier know."

  As the two detectives headed for the exit, Therese considered cancelling her drinks date and heading to Heckton.

  After a moment, she rejected the notion. The last thing MacAvoy and Milewski needed was a boss standing over them at a crime scene. She had her phone in case anyone needed to reach her.

  And if the Claw had claimed yet another victim, she wasn't sure when she was going to get to see Marc again after this.

  6pm

  "Good evening! From SuperCity, I'm John Wang."

  "And I'm Victoria Solano, and you're watching the evening edition of News 6 at 6."

  "Tonight we'll find out why the Terrific Trio's been so quiet, why the Bruiser has been so talkative, and why mum's the word on why Angelina Jolie has come to town. Plus we'll have Daniel McCall with sports, Natasha Whitaker with wea
ther, and Frieda Beck with traffic."

  "But first, our top story. Tragedy has once again struck SuperCity, as the Claw claimed another victim this afternoon in Heckton. Matt Barnett has the story. Matt?"

  "Behind me is one of several city-owned buildings originally constructed as low-income housing in the years after World War II. The Cowan State Housing Project first opened its doors in 1957. Home primarily to Hungarian immigrants following the revolution the previous year, it was one of the few structures in this neighborhood that survived the 1968 attack on Heckton by KKKaos, and the community center in the project's ground floor served as a relief center after the Hip Cats and the Groovy Gang teamed up to stop KKKaos's rampage. Most of the residents of the Cowan these days are still immigrants, but from the Dominican Republic. That population was reduced by one today, as the mutated spree killer known as the Claw claimed another victim: Armando Ramirez. The fifty-five-year-old just last month retired from his job as a janitor at Drake High School, and was on his way home from a bodega on the corner of 125th and Nelson when he was attacked. His body was found by the bodega's owner, Bernabe Arango. I was able to talk to Mr. Arango before he went to police headquarters to make a statement."

  "It was very bad. He was just in my store, and he buy groceries for his family. He was a good man to his family, always good to them, providing for them, as a man should, yes? And then I hear screams, and at first I no do nothing. It not always good to do that, yes? But the screams, they no stop, and then they become a kind of weird noise like someone drowning, yes? I never hear no scream like that before. So I run outside, and I see the most horrible… Madre de Dios, nunca he visto cualquier cosa—sorry, sorry, my English is no good, but I have never in my life… I move here right before they rebuild the Layton Houses, so I was here when Dread Gang first show up. Even so, nothing like this. Nothing."

  "As with the previous fifteen victims of the Claw, Mr. Ramirez's body was found with a Post-It affixed to his forehead, on which was drawn the claw of an eagle in ballpoint pen. SCPD detectives and forensic investigators are still going over the scene and have yet to make a formal statement, but one officer spoke off the record saying that they don't expect to find anything different from the scenes of the other murders. In fact, it's seeming more and more unlikely that the SCPD will be able to solve this case without a significant lucky break. For News 6 at 6, I'm Matt Barnett."