Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

Still, Ovid hesitated sending his words without talking it over with the Claw first. Perhaps if he read it to the Claw, he'd have to see the importance of it, that it was preordained, and that Ovid was important to the cause, too. Maybe he'd see it that way…

The Claw had contacted him in the usual eerie manner last night, leaving a note under his pillow like a goddamned visiting ghost, a night creature, a bloody, dark tooth fairy. How he came and went, how he got in, leaving everything intact, Ovid hadn't a clue. He seemed capable of walking through walls, walking on air… and maybe water. Maybe he was the Antichrist, a god in his own right, a dark angel.

You don't cross a dark angel, he kept telling himself all through breakfast and the writing of the poem, and the rest of the day as he studied and refined and rewrote the poem. It was his day off, so he didn't have to work at the factory, and so he had too much time on his hands to think. The poem, while about the Claw, ironically kept his mind off things he didn't want to think about; kept him busy so time wouldn't weigh heavy, and so he wouldn't be so nervous when the Claw next stepped from a shadow to speak to him and direct him.

It was good to have someone to tell him what to do, when and where and how. He'd missed that since his mother's death. Before he had the Claw in his life, he had Mother. And while Mother wasn't a cannibal, she shared a lot of other characteristics with the Claw.

They would've liked one another, he thought.

Once when Ovid had telephoned a radio talk show, careful to use a pay phone, the Claw was so upset with him that he'd struck him hard across the face several times, and he'd slashed Ovid with his claw for good measure, just to show him that Ovid could easily be another victim, liie Claw had torn his arm badly, but Ovid knew it was all his own fault. He shouldn't've done anything to anger the Claw.

He reviewed the poem once more, made a few more refinements, trying desperately to make it succinct and rhythmic at the same time. He thought it was good, and he toyed with the idea of sending it straight out and telling the Claw about it afterward, but no, he knew better.

He thought of the first time he had met the Claw, and how strange it had been. It was when his mother died. Everyone had gone and he was left alone with his mother's corpse at the funeral home, tearful and resentful that she had left him. He had been afraid to go home alone. He was talking to her as she lay in her coffin, asking her what he was going to do without her.

And then he appeared from nowhere, and it was as if he knew the depth of Ovid's pain and grief. He placed a gentle hand on him. He promised to befriend Ovid and said he'd go home with him for the night, if he was afraid to go into the empty house alone.

Up until that moment, Leon was the name Ovid went by in the neighborhood and at the factory. Leon Helfer. The firm hand of the stranger he later came to know only as the Claw had materialized out of the weave of a heavy, burgundy-red curtain; the spirit had literally pulled its way from the haunted cloth. In a soft whisper he said, “You are Ovid. I know you from the ages. You are not alone; your mother sent me. You're not a factory worker, you're a speaker of divine truth.”

At the time, Ovid had not understood the allusion to his being a speaker of divine truth, but he did understand the remarks about his mother, and the fact that the Claw had been sent by her, that he was there to guide and direct him.

That was enough for Leon Helfer. He liked being Ovid, once he got over his horror and disdain for the blood and the evisceration, and the feeding on flesh.

According to the Claw, in the distant past his family had always eaten flesh, and in time his genetic makeup and inborn need for human flesh would make itself felt. And it did… it did. The Claw, for all his ill temper and tantrums, had never told Ovid a lie. He had that in common with his mother, too.

“ Together, we can work miracles. Will you follow me? Will you do my bidding? Will you accept me as your master?” He could hear the Claw's voice in his head as if it were lodged there, as if it had been implanted that first moment he had been asked these same questions.

He looked down at his poetry and read aloud what he had written:

Eyes no longer see

The power vested in me…

I am the Claw who makes the law…

Those who come to me

Are redeemed in a sea of blood and cleansed of their unholy sins…

It read too much like a catechism, far too Catholic for his needs. He set about the business of rethinking and rewriting.

After a few hours and innumerable drafts, his poem was complete. It read:

My teeth will have your eyes

And feed on your banal cries…

Your sins will be eaten away

That you might live another day…

The Claw is no name for him

Who gives you eternal life

By eating away your sin…

My rabid, hungry sin-feast

Will out in the end

To give you eternal peace.

“ Not bad,” he told himself. Not half-bad for someone who didn't understand the first thing about iambic pentameter, or whatever they called these things, someone who had never written poetry before. The Claw was right. It was in his genes, this desire to destroy and to create, all wrapped up together like two hands clasped.

Still, he dared not send the poem for publication.

He wondered again if the Claw would come to visit tonight.

The following day Jessica was in the lab early. She had pinpointed the crux of the forensics problem with regard to the Claw. What Rychman needed to know was the type of weapon used, and so she had gone to work on this in earnest. Secondly, she wanted to review the information on the bite marks thoroughly, to be certain there was only one set of marks and not two. This determination, and the exact nature of the weapon, might be the most important information she could provide for Rychman at this time.

From her reading of the files, the way the victims were attacked, first by a blow to the back of the head and then the mutilations, the idea of a team at work rather than a single individual appealed to her instincts. It wouldn't be the first time that the so-called killer turned out to be two men, or a man and woman, lust-killing in tandem. But to prove this, she'd have to prove the NYPD crime lab wrong, as all the evidence thus far pointed to a single perpetrator.

It would take all of her resources and those of the Quantico labs and a lot of help from J.T. there to rule out the possibility of a team of killers.

She had already faxed notes of her thoughts on the matter to J.T. Even with so many miles separating them, she was using John Thorpe as her sounding board. Her list in part read: All victims were taken by surprise. Victims had been struck in one location and dragged to another, where the attack took place. Further, the bodies, in all but the Hamner case, were removed and placed elsewhere, suggesting either a very strong man or two men. Possibly one man acted as decoy, distracting victim, while second slipped from shadows to overpower her. Only possibilities, she'd finished.

She had also air-expressed J.T. the one good set of teeth impressions lifted from the Hamner woman along with all those lifted from previous victims. If J.T. determined that the teeth marks all came from the same man, then she'd be satisfied, but as it was, with rumors abounding about the slipshod condition of the NY lab during Darius' bout with illness, she hadn't slept easily knowing a mistake of great proportion might have gone unnoticed. Worse things happened in a laboratory.

Jessica tried to consider all the possibilities, so she'd be open to clues when they arose. She was working in the lab when a technician called via the intercom and said that there was a Dr. Gabriel Arnold on the line for her.