Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Fair enough. Well, I've got to go… got a plane to catch.”

“ And you won't reconsider the foolishness about taking Emmons with you?”

She shook her head. “No, it's a must-do.”

“ You know that if Archer were guilty of any… entanglement with Helfer… if he were a schizoid killer, your taking that body out of here… well, it's got to be viewed as a direct threat to him. Everybody knows your reputation in the lab is-”

“ Why, Alan, I almost believe you have some suspicions regarding the unimpeachable Dr. Archer!”

“ I guess I may.”

“ To be so worried about a hypothetical danger?”

“ I worry for you, that's all.”

“ Don't. I'm a big girl, and I'll be safe in Quantico.”

She punched him in his meaty arm. “Now, walk me to the elevator and say goodbye for now.”

He did so and kissed her at the elevator as personnel in the building moved by them, some staring. “I will be seeing you sooner than you think. I am going to visit, and-”

The doors had opened and she had stepped through but she held it open for him to finish.

“ Yes?”

“ I think I love you, Jess.”

She smiled in reply, her eyes misting up. “I'll miss you.” She wasn't prepared to tell him that she loved him. She wasn't sure she could love anyone again. Certainly it would take more time, a change of setting, more privacy with Rychman, if it were ever to happen.

“ Bye, Rychman.”

As the doors closed between them he shouted, “Going to miss you around here, FBI lady.”

“ Me, too, Alan,” she said back, unsure if he had heard.

Dr. Simon Archer wondered if his having gone to Captain Alan Rychman ostensibly for advice, but actually to “read” the man's reactions to him after whatever revelations Coran had made the night before, had been wise. He was satisfied that Rychman, while interested in the woman sexually, was not about to make a fool of himself otherwise.

Archer had no intention of seeing Leon Helfer in the presence of others. He had visited Leon's cell when he was in lockup the first night to throw a scare into the little creep. Still, Rychman's suggestion that he come down to interrogation and see how it was going was a provocative one. While it could be a trap that Rychman and Coran had set for him, somehow manipulating Leon and him into the same room to see what the reaction would be, he didn't think so.

Coran had left the building, of this he was quite certain. So had Emmons' body. Both were bound for Quantico, and perhaps now everything in New York might return to a semblance of normalcy. With Leon's coffin being nailed shut by Archer's own forensics team, with precious little added by the FBI woman, it would be Dr. Simon Archer who would be credited with putting an end to the Claw, and he would realize the goal that at first he had felt was far beyond his reach and ability. With Dr. Darius gone, at long last, it was his department, and now his reputation would flourish.

As for the Claw, he must forever remain dead along with Leon. To satisfy his taste for flesh, Archer told himself that he could go back to his old methods, forget about the mutilation deaths he had engineered, forget about the fresh smell of a kill, the mouth-watering urges that welled up at the smell of blood. He could do it, he told himself, and if he could not, he'd have to fashion a new weapon, something that could not be linked to the Claw or to him. Finding everything calm in the lab, he excused himself, saying he would be at the interrogation center with Rychman. Within ten minutes, he was sitting behind a one-way mirror listening to Rychman grill Leon. Helfer had apparently agreed to fully cooperate in return for leniency and mercy. He was desperately trying to answer any and all questions put to him. He continued to declare that the Claw was a physical second person and not a second personality manifestation. Dr. Ames, sitting in a corner of the interrogation room, slipped in questions between Rychman's. Ames had his own tape recorder going and he jotted down notes as well, his eyes seldom leaving Helfer, reading the man's body language. Several times Ames looked puzzled. Archer thought.

Helfer was pleading now. “I told you… I told you, I… I don't know where he lives or who he was.”

“ You say you let this guy lead you around by the nose and you never once learned his name?”

“ That's right, that's right…” Leon was blubbering.

“ So he always initiated the contact?”

“ Yes.”

“ And he always told you where to drive to? What street corner to stand on?”

“ Yes, yes… I've told you that.”

“ And as if by magic, here comes the exact victim he wanted?”

“ That's how it happened. I hit them over the head and dragged 'em down where he told me earlier to bring them, but he cut them open, and he… he ate from their insides. I… I just faked that part. It made me sick.” A lie as the fo-rensics evidence had shown.

“ How did he contact you? By phone?”

“ No. He'd just show up.”

“ And you sat around waiting for him?” asked Dr. Ames.

“ But you told Dr. Coran that he telephoned you.”

“ No, no! Only the once, the time he set me up… just before he killed the policewoman.”

Rychman pounded his hand on the table, causing a gunshot sound that made Ames jump along with Leon. “How do you expect anyone to believe such shit, Leon? Leon, nobody just shows up out of nowhere, out of the curtains at your mother's funeral home, out of the dark in your house, out of the fuckin' thin air!”

Lou Pierce stepped into the room. He'd been behind the mirror with Dr. Archer. And now he asked a few questions, spelling Captain Rychman. “You know, Leon, we've got the ball peen hammer you used on the women, the axe, the other tools, all with blood on them.”

“ We've got DNA counts on your blood and all the victims' blood, Leon,” added Rychman, turning and facing the little man again, towering over him. We've got your hair, your coat fibers, your rug fibers, your fingerprints and your teeth marks, and not a single piece of microscopic evidence otherwise to point to a second killer, Leon. No, Leon, you did all these killings all on your own, and you're going to tell us the truth, Leon, here and now! The goddamned truth!”

“ No, I told the truth! Dr. Coran believed me! Talk to her. Talk to Dr. Coran!”

Archer could feel the muscles in his face tighten and twitch and his brain replayed Leon's words in refrain: “Dr. Coran believes me! Talk to Dr. Coran!”

“ We found all that stuff you stole from the women, too, Leon, from their purses,” Lou continued. “Mascara, rouge, lipstick, earrings, hairpins, brushes with the dead women's hair and odor still on 'em. We know you acted alone, Leon.”

“ You saved a lot of their underthings, Leon,” said Rychman, “and Mrs. Phillips' Oriental rug splattered with her blood was in the trunk of your car, Leon.”

Archer had heard enough. He was convinced of two things. Rychman and the others believed what he wanted them to believe all along, that Leon had worked out his lurid fantasies alone, and secondly, Dr. Coran believed otherwise. She remained his only threat.

When Rychman stepped out of the interrogation room, all he saw of Archer was his back as the M.E. disappeared along a corridor. He cursed his luck. Had he known Archer was outside, he would have found a way for Helfer to meet Dr. Archer face-to-face.?

Simon Archer lay restless in his large four-poster mahogany bed, unable to sleep, his peace disturbed by a woman who was over two hundred miles away. He knew that Coran was no typical medical examiner, that she was known among her close associates as thorough. Very little to nothing got past her. Her intimations of impropriety on his part had led to an investigation of his newly acquired department. He wasn't worried that the investigation would turn up anything as incriminating as murder and cannibalism, but he was worried about Jessica Coran. Even Darius had called her brilliant, an adjective he had never used to describe Archer. And now she had Emmons' body under her full scrutiny.