Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

“ It just might be more concern of yours than you think, Mr. Drake. I happen to know that you obtained your information from Simon Archer, and that it was off the record.”

“ There was nothing off the-” He had stopped himself, his guilty eyes giving the rest away. She'd then turned and rushed away, leaving the reporter to stare after the cane-wielding FBI agent.

She learned tonight that Drake was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run while out on what was described as a dangerous assignment having to do with street gangs and drugs. An assistant of Simon Archer's had done the crime scene, collecting paint chips and drug paraphernalia found near the scene. Archer was curiously unavailable.

An awful lot of people were dying around Simon Archer. First there was Darius and now Drake. Coincidence? She had seen coincidence at work on her side in the case involving Matisak, but this coincidence bordered on the impossible.

Could she possibly not harbor doubts about Dr. Archer? She had already besmirched his reputation, telling the mayor, the C.P. and Rychman that she believed he had leaked the information about Ovid to Drake. Suppose that was his worst crime? Suppose the rest was all due to her history around such criminal minds as Sims and Matisak, that she found it near impossible to believe anyone was without some hidden motive or secret or ambitious drive?

Just then Archer entered the scene, the look of shock and horror on his face convincing her how much the work of the Claw turned his stomach, and that he wanted to get this bastard as much as anyone. The killer, particularly vicious with Emmons, was their goal. All else must be shunted aside now.

“ One of her kidneys was thrown down the stairs and is in the basement,” she told Archer.

Archer's face worked the grimace away, turning to the granite surface required of the M.E., and she understood clearly the need to throw up a protective barrier of hard professionalism.

“ Dr. Coran, you look as if you could stand some air,” he said. “If you'd like to step out for a breath, I'll be here.”

It made her recall how solicitous he had been at the scene of Darius' death.

“ No, I'm quite all right. Over the initial blow, you might say.”

He shook his head and pursed his lips. “It's hideous… just awful what this madman has done.” What I can't understand is why he did it here. In his own place. When before he was so careful.”

He shrugged. “She obviously surprised him, and perhaps… Well, panic doesn't take time for calculation.”

“ But he's been so careful in the past, so organized and calculated.”

“ As I said, Doctor, it must've been the shock of her coming in on him.”

“ I don't understand that, either. Why she came in alone, against all regulation, without backup, no warrant, nothing.”

“ I understand that you once did the same thing, Doctor.”

She could find no words of reply.

Archer kept talking. “Has the man been apprehended?”

“ No… not to my knowledge.”

He nodded. “With a citywide APB, it's just a matter of time.”

“ More likely he'll be shot dead after this, if I know cops.”

“ Yes, well… either way, it's… it's at an end; just too bad for Emmons that her last official act, while it pointed straight to him, cost her her life.”

His tone was sincere, and she believed he must feel some guilt, if he had indeed slowed an investigation that cost more lives as a result, merely to feed his ambition. Part of her pitied him. Part of her hated him.

He seemed to see either the pity part or the hatred, and so he quickly drew back his eyes, going for the body to begin his own scrapings and specimen-gatherings. She, too, returned to Emmons' body to finish her own findings.

“ Looks like a lot of duplication of effort here, Dr. Coran,” he said after a time. “I hope you will be willing to share? Save a lot of time and effort, and frankly, the less time with this… Afraid my heart and stomach aren't as strong as they should be. Not at all like Dr. Darius in that regard. Now, there was a man who could look at any deformity or disfigurement… So clinical… so…”

“ So like me?”

He was taken by surprise, obviously not thinking this at all. “I… I didn't mean to imply…”

“ The samples I've taken are not going to be shared, Dr. Archer,” she said flatly.

“ What? But why not if-?”

“ I understand your department will soon be under investigation for chain of custody lapses; I'm afraid the FBI cannot align itself any closer to your department than absolutely necessary for the duration of this case, and I've been ordered,” she lied, “to… well, create my own chain, as it were.”

He stared coldly at her now, all his former solicitousness having vanished. “No secret, is it? Well, they'll find nothing. They'll look, sure. And they may find clerical errors, missteps, but nothing your own laboratory is not guilty of at times. They'll see we have worked for years under extreme handicaps and… and… Well, why am I boring you with this? I guess I understand your situation, and if you're under orders… FBI'11 change its tune when I break this case.”

“ Sorry, but that's how it must be, Doctor,” she said.

He nodded and went back to his work. He had put on a surgical mask, surgical gloves and a hair net. As she went back to her own work, her own surgical precautions seemed limited by comparison. She merely wore gloves. However, she had taken every precaution with the samples she'd now fixed to slides, packeted, bottled and bagged, down to the precise time that she placed each label onto the gathered evidence. She had also brought along a separate officer, Sergeant Pierce, Rychman's aide, to take custody of the materials. In his safekeeping, the materials would go to the medical lockup, where each was catalogued, and only then could she regain them for laboratory examination. In some in-stances, Archer had been remiss with such materials for fifteen, twenty and sometimes forty minutes, easily enough time to subvert or tamper with the material for reasons only he fully understood.

“ One way or another,” she told him across Emmons' body, “I'm going to prove there is a second killer.”

“ You're still clinging to that impossible notion? Doctor, one would think you obsessive.”

Meanwhile, the entire apartment building was still being scoured, turned inside out for any sign of a murder weapon or anything else that might further incriminate Leon Helfer, the owner and resident of the premises.

As she worked she felt eyes on her. Archer was watching askance from where he worked. Some of the men in the room were watching them both. It was difficult working a corpse whose face was familiar, the woman having been a walking, talking, laughing associate not a few hours before. For Jessica, it brought back lurid memories of the terror of being rendered helpless by a maniac bent on slowly taking her life from her, bleeding her like a stock animal. At least Emmons' suffering appeared to have been short-lived, far shorter than the suffering Jessica had tolerated at the hands of Mad Matisak. But she was alive.

She reached up to her throat where all the scar tissue had been surgically repaired.

Leon Helfer had cut his lights as he pulled off the overpass and down into the dirty little construction road that led into the depths of Holland Construction Company. The place had been recently shut down over debts owed to creditors, one of them the place Leon had worked for, Oleander Pipes. Leon had been out to the site on more than one occasion to inspect the use of the pipes in the field, because Holland had been claiming there were a number of costly problems attributable to faulty pipe.