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  Rychman's aide, a large, round uniformed sergeant named Lou Pierce, tried to run interference for his boss, but he may as well have been trying to hold back jackals from a carcass.

  “What about the C.P.'s office? What about the mayor's office?” shouted Drake as Rychman pushed his way forward.

  “Everybody's moving, Jim, Andy, Martha.” His attempt to reassure the press fell flat. His polite police PR. tone wasn't enough to cut it anymore with these guys and he knew it. “Speculation has it that the Claw is a medical man of some sort. Any foundation in that, Captain Rychman?” pursued Drake.

  “No foundation in fact, but it hasn't been ruled out.”

  “Has there been a sixth and a seventh victim, Captain?”

  Rychman had heard about the so-called seventh victim, a housewife who'd been mutilated early that morning by her husband, who was in custody. The husband thought he could get away with the killing if he made it look like the work of the Claw, but his work couldn't stand the close scrutiny of the chief assistant M.E., Luther Darius' right-hand man, Dr. Simon Archer, who had called Rychman, telling him what they had over on the Lower East Side.

  “We have a sixth victim,” replied Rychman. “The seventh was a copycat killing. You'll have full details in the press kit being put together at this moment. Now, please.”

  “What about the homeless couple?” pressed a female reporter.

  “There was nothing to connect those deaths with the Claw, so far as can be determined.”

  “Busy night last night, huh. Captain?” asked another reporter.

  “Typical Saturday night in the Apple.”

  Drake returned to his earlier question. “Is it true, Captain Rychman, that you want to be our next police commissioner?”

  “I said no further comment.” Rychman's glare held Drake hostage for a moment before he disappeared through the door held open by Lou Pierce, who now stepped in for his boss and fielded questions of the disappointed reporters.

  Rychman knew that Drake, along with a lot of other people, was fishing for a commitment, one that he couldn't at this time make. He had given the idea of becoming C.P. a lot of thought, but should he lose such a race, he'd have to forfeit a great deal, and besides, he wasn't sure he wanted the headaches that went with the office. Still, he had a lot of support in the rank and file, although that could simply be because everyone hated Commissioner Carl Eldritch, a man whose tenure was synonymous with bland and uneventful.

  Until now. Thanks to the Claw. The NYPD was being parboiled and burned raw daily in the press, not only in the city but across the nation, being made to look ridiculous and incompetent. Allegations of gross ineptitude were nothing new, but now the cry of reform was in the air, reform at all levels, and since Rychman was a man decorated several times for bravery in his career, and since he had come up through the ranks . . . But even he hadn't escaped the sometimes cruel barbs of the cartoonists and columnists, the so-called wrath of the public via publishers who weren't above manu-facturing almost as much news as they might legitimately find. All that's fit to print had long before become Print all that fits.

  “And if it doesn't fit,” he muttered to himself, “make it fit.”

  Rychman had to work hard to hold his anger at the press in check. Good relations could make or break a campaign, and he did indeed have aspirations to become the new C.P. He had ideas, plans for reform that would shake up the entire system, his top priority to effect the exchange of information across all boundaries and boroughs.

  He had personal reasons to dislike and suspect the press as well, since his recent divorce had been given the National Enquirer treatment, the sensationalism verging on slander and libel. They took words uttered in passion and anger, twisted them just so, words out of Nancy's mouth as well as his own. Any chance of a reconciliation was demolished by the beating each of them had taken in the arena of the press. He'd lost his calm exterior over that one and lost friends among the fifth estate. Soon any utterance from either of Nancy's lawyers was confirmed as truth by the power of the printed word. He'd read where she had suffered emotional torment, mental torment, sexual torment and sixteen other forms of torment in their marriage, and to keep from going down to Lowenstein and Rutledge to find the vipers and crack their heads together, he'd have to rush down to the firing range to pull off as many rounds as it took to relieve the venom and the sense of injury and the confusion of not knowing what had hap-pened to bring Nancy and him to such a place in their relationship.

  After twenty-odd years in the department, he ought to know how to kiss ass and when to shut up. But lately, his nerves sheared raw by this case and the infuriating way in which it had so far been botched, he knew he could lose it at any time, on or off camera. He'd lost it with Perkins the night before. The mechanism by which he maneuvered on tiptoe with both the press and his superiors was grinding gears, threatening to halt altogether, if he didn't get control first.

  He rode the elevator up and got off at his floor. He stared down the busy, teeming hallway that led to the hastily got-up evidence room where a meeting with the mayor's deputy for public safety, Commissioner Eldritch and others with a vested interest in the case of the Claw were supposedly waiting. People spilling in and out of the offices lining his way offered practiced and solicitous greetings, none genuine. Rychman's well-perfected cold stare greeted them each in turn. P. P. One was not yet his precinct, but his image was recognized throughout the city, thanks to the divorce. He strode quickly past cops who jokingly asked for favors in his new regime, his chiseled, granite features like those of a bronze statue. Bronze due to his recent trip to Bermuda, which had turned him more contemplative and brown. He'd gotten to like Bermuda's sun and rum, and he'd enjoyed a world without ties— ties of any kind. He seldom wore a tie himself, but today he'd made an exception. The tie lay across his broad chest, unable to reach to his waistline. People stared.

  He knew he could be intimidating, and that it wasn't an endearing quality—not for most. He knew he intimidated the younger cops, due to his record of service, which could be a positive kind of intimidation, he thought. Being persuasive without having to say a word was a useful tool in the right hands, at the right time, especially for a commander. It certainly hadn't hurt him any in the war.

  Most other cops understood him. He was fierce, ferocious if need be, unforgiving if circumstances warranted. Still, the fact that no one felt comfortable around him bothered him at times. A career cop, he'd come up the hard way. Not once had he been appointed to or promoted to any rank on the basis of anything other than ability. Even the press couldn't find fault here. But he hadn't carved out a political place for himself and remained without political ties; truth be known, he was not a political animal, not in the sense that Eldritch was. Rychman hadn't the guile or the stomach for what Eldritch termed “political astuteness.” The lack of this “quality” was his chief weakness should he move against Eldritch. Despite the fact he had turned precinct after precinct into well-organized, result-getting organizations, he still didn't dance effortlessly along the tightrope of the police superstructure, which was much harder than doing the minuet with the press corps. Maybe he wasn't a dancer, and maybe he wasn't C.R material.

  Before looking in on the evidence room, a room filled with the compiled information on the Claw killings, he remembered that Eldritch wanted to see him. The cop grapevine was quicker than a potato creeper. Word about Eldritch's having got up a special task force to oversee the investigation into the Claw killings was being spoken of in every sector. No one knew the particulars. Today everyone would know.

  He was told by Eldritch's secretary, “They're waiting for you, Captain Rychman. Go right in.”

  Eldritch had ordered him out of his office only two weeks before, and in a fit of rage told him there was no need of such a task force and finished by ordering him to take a week's vacation. It had been the first days he'd spent away from the job and the city in several years and he knew he was feeling burned out, so he rac
ed off to Bermuda, where, for a time, he put thoughts of the Claw out of his mind. In the meantime news of another victim and news of his lounging in Bermuda at the time—conveniently leaked to the press—made him look bad.

  Eldritch, ever the astute politician.

  Now inside Eldritch's office he found two other men. Ken Stallings, deputy mayor of the city, and Lt. Capt. Lowell Morris, a capable man whom Rychman both liked and respected. Eldritch introduced Stallings to Rychman, the men sizing one another up.

  “I called you here, Alan, because we need a man of your caliber to head the Claw task force and head up—”

  “Whoa, wait a minute.” Rychman was searching the room for answers, his head twisting and turning. “I don't get it, Carl.”

  “You're the best man for the job.”

  “Am I?”

  “We're all agreed. That is, the mayor and this office.”

  Stallings jumped in. “His Honor reviewed a lot of men and you came out on top, Captain Rychman. It's a high-profile case; certainly can't but help you if you ever aspire to any political office—not necessarily this office!”

  Eldritch and Stallings laughed but Morris remained silent.

  “What about Morris here?” Rychman asked, not sure he wanted to head such a task force. Task forces were grueling, the hours murder, and he didn't fully understand what was motivating Eldritch.

  “Morris'll be taking charge of your precinct duties while you're on the task force,” explained Carl Eldritch.

  “I see.”

  “I thought it natural that you take over, Alan. After all, you were the one who initially came to me with the idea, remember?”

  “I remember, all right.”

  “Look, it was you who contacted the FBI, and they're sending a man. You've had your hand in since the first of these murders. It seemed only natural that you should carry on,” Eldritch continued.

  Stallings jumped in again. “And you were the mayor's first choice, Alan.”

  Rychman looked at Lowell Morris, who just stared back, saying nothing.

  “I suppose accepting is the politically correct thing to do, then. And from the congestion in the hall, I take it you expect to hold a press conference.”

  “Does that mean you'll accept?” asked Stallings.

  Feeling trapped, a part of him wanting to run and a part of him wanting to take on the greatest challenge of his official life, Rychman quietly said, “I should have my head examined. Only one thing, Carl: I don't want anyone—anyone— second-guessing me or undermining me. Understood?”

  “Perfectly, and you won't regret it, Alan.”

  “Somehow,” Rychman said, “I'm not so sure.”

  Eldritch told him that the evidence room and offices for the special task force were being set up in the building. Rychman told him that he knew that much, down to the room number.

  “Can't keep a secret in a police precinct.”

  “I don't know. Naming me to this task force came as quite a shock.”

  Everyone shook hands and Ken Stallings said, “The mayor wants immediate action on this, Alan. You understand?”

  “Sure, he wants the Claw behind bars yesterday.”

  Stallings smiled, his grin like the lip of a large pitcher. The three cops watched the Brooks Brothers suit as it hurried off.

  “I thought he might stay for the pep talk to the task force,” said Rychman.

  “Thank God no,” replied Eldritch.

  Morris stood, poked a cigarette in his mouth, which he didn't light, and said, “I'll take care of your guys, Alan.”

  “I know you will, Lowell, and good luck.”

  Morris disappeared.

  “You'll have the best men available, Alan,” said Eldritch the moment they were alone. “Best from each sector, and most have been working on one or more of the cases. Hand-picked, all good men.”

  “When did all this come about? Last night there wasn't a word of this. Now—”

  “We'd recruited everyone earlier, while you were away. Then when the killings appeared to have stopped... well, then last night. Ahh, what the hell difference does it make now?”

  “I might've liked to choose my own team.”

  “Hey, Alan, we're all on the same team, remember? Besides, you know most of the men that will be working under you.”

  Rychman's eyes bore into Eldritch. “Most but not all isn't good enough, Carl.” Rychman knew that working within the team would be at least one and possibly two moles who'd be reporting back to the C.P.

  At least Eldritch was transparent, he thought.

  Rychman stepped into the homicide incident room, which would in all likelihood be his home for some time. Photographs of the victims shot from every angle immediately assailed the senses. Several blow-ups revealed the gargantuan injustices played out on the dead women. In this room, what few clues the police from various boroughs had gathered now belonged to the task force—the shredded clothing of the victims; their shoes; a pathetic display of purses, the contents of which had once surrounded their corpses; a few scraps of paper; a footprint set in concrete which had been lifted from a muddy alleyway; police reports; dossiers on the victims, their friends and relatives; detailed, tedious forensics reports on precisely how each woman had died—all lying across a line of cheap folding tables. Rychman thought that each item desperately cried out its meaning, but no one could hear. Lipstick tubes, keys and petite, childlike key rings, wallets with photos, scattered nail files and makeup kits. All the so-called evidence amounted to victim paraphernalia, nothing noteworthy and all pointing toward the victims, not the perpetrator. Frustration had crawled in before the task force was under way.

  Eldritch had left him amid the collection of officers assembled from each of the city's five boroughs. Carl had a press conference to attend where he would present the details of how Alan Rychman would be heading up the newly formed task force. As soon as Eldritch disappeared, Rychman went to the front of the room, picked up a gavel and called for order. Some of the faces looking back at him he knew from previous cases, some he did not know and others were still milling in.

  Among the late-comers were people Rychman didn't know, and he feared the press might infiltrate. He called for an ID check at the door, one of his detectives doing the honors. Then Rychman's attention, along with everyone else's, became glued on a tall, leggy and rather stunning woman in a gray suit. Her hazel eyes were clear, wide, intelligent and curious, Rychman thought. She carried a cane and walked with a limp. She could be press. He certainly didn't recognize her, but then he didn't know every detective or cop in the city. She might also be a police shrink, someone to help with the killer profile they'd have to work up. His man at the door, belatedly checking the woman's ID, nodded that all was well. The lovely stranger limped only a few feet when a detective rose and offered her a front-row seat.

  Rychman grunted at the noise level, and asked for people to settle in.

  “Gentlemen... ladies... detectives... people!” Over Rychman's head, to the rear, the large photographic images of the victims of the phantom killer stared down over the assemblage. The dead faces, many with missing eyes, looked to Jessica Coran as though they belonged in a dark gallery in a wax museum of horrors. The skulls were crushed like soft melons by a ball peen hammer, axe or hatchet, depending on the mood of the sadistic monster, she supposed. The torsos presented an even more horrible array of destroyed flesh where the Claw had used some unknown tool to tear open the area usually reserved for the autopsiest. The contents of the victims' chests and abdomens had been turned out to feed the flies and rats.

  The killer apparently relished the brutalization of female flesh.

  The savagery was not altogether new to Jessica or the other police officials in the room. Violent crimes against women were on the rise, so much so that three out of four American women, at some point or other, would be the victims of at least one violent crime. The Justice Department statistic was more than just a number to Jessica, who had become Matisak's f
inal target before he was captured and incarcerated. She knew that each year women were the victims of approximately 2.5 million violent crimes, from assault to rape. It was a low estimate, since the statistics didn't take into account the 3 million to 4 million women who were battered in episodes of domestic violence.

  But it wasn't just the statistics that frightened Jessica; it was the randomness of so much of this crime, the brutality for the sake of brutality alone. She remembered a time when it was rare to see physical injury to a woman who'd submitted to rape when threatened, but now, when a woman submitted, she was often hurt, anyway.

  Certainly the Claw hated women, and his crimes were hate crimes. Most crime could be traced back to the witch's brew of social ills: street gangs, the availability of guns and drugs, the overall breakdown of family and community values. But what did such explainable crime have to do with the inexplicable doctor of death known as the Claw, who, like a modern-day Jack the Ripper, targeted women for mutilation and cannibalism? Very little, she guessed. It was more likely that they were dealing with a criminal with a very high IQ, above-average education, a white male who had a great deal more going for him than the street gang member; a fellow who, if he did drugs, did only light drugs; a fellow who very likely had a hate relationship with his mother, a hate that had boiled over, sending him after surrogate mothers to kill again and again. Had this to do with the overall breakdown of “family values”? No, it had to do with a single, insidious and hideous perversion that had poisoned the mind of the killer against women.

  Neither she nor the other police officials could confuse the case of the Claw with the rise in street crime and violence against women, no matter how alluring the concept. No, it was apparent they had a dyed-in-the-wool misogynist, a creep who hated one thing to his core: women. Still, this meat-eater would be wise enough to hide his hatred by day, in the well-lit room, bringing his hatred out in the dark to look at it and massage it, to allow it full vent, like a vampire thirsting for blood; except that this bastard thirsted for flesh and quenched his hatred only when he battered and ripped women to death, and then desecrated the body. This was the true purpose of his mutilation and cannibalism, she believed: to denigrate the body and perhaps the sanctity of the human female form.