Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

Perhaps he was foolish to worry: the stronger voice within him tried to soothe his fears, calling them irrational.

“ After all,” he told himself, “you took every precaution with Emmons, every possible precaution: gloves, hair net, the specially designed tooth sheath that simulated Leon Helfer's bite, now a somewhat useless item.”

Giving it further thought, he told himself, “I really should destroy and discard the sheath.” He held up the two rows of hard, acrylic tooth coverings with Helfer's signature on every edge and molar. They were self-incriminating, after all.

He cupped them in his hand and placed them beside his bed and felt the old urges welling up. His need for living flesh had come full circle.

He tried to close his eyes, get some rest. But each time he did a mad cinema of images flashed before him: first the writhing body, the half-conscious victim simpering, and he bending over, a shadow-man looking on in stark horror and curiosity. Closer and closer he brought his face down to the victim's throat, his animal's claw poised for the final tear, but his mouth wanting to tear first into the still-flexing arteries of the throat, when suddenly he saw her face. It was Coran's face and her eyes opened, staring straight through him, daring him to continue to kill her.

His dream self lashed madly and monstrously at her with the claw again and again, but her flesh withstood each blow. She began to laugh, and he was unable to make her stop, and the claw was breaking apart under his repeated attempt to rend her iron flesh from her.

His eyes came open with a start. She knew. He did not know how she knew, but she knew.

“ Forget about her,” he told himself in a chastising voice. “Even if she knows, she can't prove a thing.”

“ Not yet, she can't,” he answered himself. “But one day she might.”

Responding to a nervous Malthuesen who had telephoned in a panic, he had gone after hours to Leon's place of work. Malthuesen had immediately contacted him after two police detectives, one named Emmons, had grilled him about Leon. Malthuesen was surprised when Archer had shown up after the place had cleared out. Malthuesen didn't know he was about to die of a tragic accident, the trap already set before Dr. Archer led him to the snare. Malthuesen didn't understand Archer's interest in Leon and had thought it all to do with a gay liaison between them, and Archer hadn't dissuaded the notion until the end. But as a result of the police snooping, Malthuesen had become greatly curious, and he was asking too many questions.

“ Come with me,” Archer had told him. “I'll clear everything up for you.”

“ What if the cops come back? They seemed to want to get more out of me,” said Malthuesen.

“ I'd appreciate your not saying anything about my… association with Leon.”

“ But what if they ask?”

“ You do as I say, and there's more money in it for you, much more.”

Malthuesen was interested. “How much?”

“ Three times what I've given you already.”

Malthuesen whistled. “When do I get it?”

“ It's in my car. Come with me.”

He maneuvered Malthuesen into a long corridor where piping had been stored to the ceiling. He rushed ahead of the other man, getting to the safety of the other side of the room, and in the dark he threw a switch that released a row of the pipe at the bottom. This sent an avalanche of heavy metal over Malthuesen, whose cries were quickly drowned out.

Archer exited quietly the way he had come as a night watchman raced to the scene of the noise and clatter.

Now Archer smiled anew at the memory. He was an efficient man, smart to have had Leon actually design the claw. He had been efficient with Leon's dentist as well, the man who had designed for him a set of tooth coverlets. He lifted the set of acrylic teeth to his eyes once more and stared at them in the darkened bedroom.

Its contours were so beautiful, and holding it in his hand made him want to put the instrument to good use. But he couldn't… not for a long time, and when he did, he'd have to use a completely different approach, different cuts, and a new dupe. It would take some time to find another Leon, someone as pliable as he, someone with a helpful dentist.

Leon's dentist had put up a struggle. He had grabbed onto Archer's coat and shirt, worrying Archer that fibers below the man's nails would show signs of the struggle. When he pushed the thin, bespectacled Dr. Parke over the edge, the man had grabbed onto the cables, his briefcase and his glasses preceding him down the sixteen stories of black hole. For a few minutes, as the man's hands were rubbed raw against the thick metal cable, their eyes met, and in that moment the fool knew he was about to die, and then he slipped, grabbed again, gninted, cried out and was gone like a pebble down a well.

Archer had slipped from the area only to return in his official capacity to see to it that the dead man told no tales. The death was ruled accidental, as had Malthuesen's, but in Malthuesen's case, an associate M.E. handled the cleanup.

So far as he knew, no one other than that suspicious bitch.

Coran, had thought the death of Leon's dentist anything but a freak accident, the sort that happened all too often in high rises lately. Rychman didn't need the dentist to convict Helfer; all he needed were the dental records and the testimony of another qualified dental expert, in fact, one in forensics, Dr. Donald Altman, who worked under Archer now as his paleontologist and dental forensics man. Altman had done a superb job on the witness stand, so much so that Archer had turned over all the evidence to him and had sent him and serologist Elliot Andersen back to court to oversee the pre-sentation of the case against Leon Helfer. Both Altman and Andersen were pleased with the confidence Archer had placed in them, and Archer hadn't had to face Helfer, fearing the little weasel would recognize either his face or his voice and cry out in open court that he was the Claw.

Of course it would only make Leon look even more crazy than he already did, and it would be interpreted as ludicrous, but Archer had already taken enough chances and there was no point in tempting fate. Nor did he want to fuel Coran and Rychman's combined distrust of him any more than he already had.

“ They've got nothing on you… nothing,” he told himself. “Get your rest. Forget about that bitch. She can't prove a thing… not a single thing.”

But the rest of the night, his sleep remained disturbed by the image of the woman and the incessant tapping of her cane. Matisak had only maimed her. If he had one chance at her, he would do far more than maim her.

“ Let… it… go…”

But how sweet her flesh must taste, he thought. How lovely to roll her eyes around in his mouth…

Jessica's apartment never looked so good. She loved being surrounded with her familiar trappings, the photos on the walls, many blow-ups of her underwater shots taken when she had gone on various diving excursions in Jamaica, the Keys, Martinique and elsewhere. She also had photos of her parents, herself as a child and her best friends and closest working associates adorning another wall.

The beige to white furnishings with glass tops and glass cases throughout the apartment had also collected knick-knacks from her many travels and hunting and diving trips, from first-prize awards for the biggest or the most game in a season to miniature deer, bear and fowl, many of which were hand-carved by American and Canadian Indians.

Here, more than anywhere on earth, she felt secure and comforted, and she received a transfusion of sorts, a transfusion of identity and soul that was often much needed. She already missed Alan Rychman, however, and it would be some time, as she had told her girlfriend, Amanda Cairn, over the phone, before Alan could break away to take her on that diving trip they had planned before she had left New York City.