Fatal Instinct Read online

  “Oh, there was no question of it, ma'am.”

  “No?”

  “I cheated, ma'am. Had to pull this duty. You know, a lot of us guys see a pretty woman, and we just can't help ourselves.”

  “You're very flattering, Lou... Thanks.” Something had told her there'd been no drawing.

  “Some of us think a lot of what you did in Chicago, ma'am... really. That took some guts.”

  She dropped her head, her eyes pinned on her sore ankles, her mind returning to that awful room where Matisak had begun to drain her of her blood, where Otto Boutine had come crashing through a window to her rescue, getting himself killed for her. “I lost my partner in Chicago,” she said.

  “Yes, ma'am... I know, ma'am.”

  The rain started, slowly at first, like fairies appearing from nowhere on the windshield and the windows, and then suddenly the fairies were deluged by a thick, heavy, angry downpour as if the powers of heaven meant to destroy their own. Sometimes nature was as much at war with itself, she felt, as was the human psyche, filled with rage, chaos, violence, deposited there by some unseen and unknowable force. The human propensity for murder seemed to her quite closely akin to the universe's propensity to create black holes and violent, explosive stars. The dark New York landscape, sheathed in a slick downpour, made her cold inside, despite how warm and dry it was in the radio car. There was a steady, unending stream of human outbursts, turmoil and entanglements being reported over the police band. Not even nature's storm could quell the human fury of the large metropolis.

  “Have you home in a second, Dr. Coran.”

  She missed her apartment home in Quantico, a refuge.

  “Honestly, Doctor,” Lou continued as he weaved expertly through traffic. “There wasn't any drawing to see who gets to drive you home, but that's only because I didn't give the others a chance.”

  She smiled again. “I like honesty, Lou.”

  “Then you'll like New York and New Yorkers. They're . . . painfully honest, ma'am.”

  She wanted to ask him twenty questions about Alan Rychman after his assurance of honesty. She wondered if she dared.

  “You and Captain Rychman seem close—for subordinate and superior, I mean.”

  “Hell, ma'am, I owe the captain my life.”

  “How's that?”

  “He saved my life, Doctor.”

  “Really?”

  “All in the line of duty, he'd say, but he put himself between me and danger, and I can never forget a thing like that, Doctor.”

  “Nor should you.” Her thoughts returned to the night Otto Boutine had done as much for her, except that Otto had not lived to reap the benefit of her undying gratitude.

  “Hell, I didn't even hardly know Rychman at the time, ma'am. He'd just taken over the 31st and was cleaning house good, and even me—a clean cop—was worried about 'the Boot.' That's what we called him back then—'bout nine, maybe ten years now. Been with him as his aide for seven. Anyway, back then, I was a real gung-ho fool and I charged into this crack house ahead of the others. The captain, he could've just parked it outside, but not Rychman. He wanted in on the action from the start, same as I did that night.

  “Anyway, if he hadn't come storming through the back when he did, I'd be in a box in Green lawn instead of telling you all this.”

  They were at the hotel and she hurried from the car, wind rippling and beating at her clothes. Inside the lobby, Lou caught up with her and asked if she needed anything else.

  “You didn't have to leave your unit, Sergeant,” she told him.

  “Rychman told me to see you safely inside, ma'am.”

  “Well, you've done that.”

  “You've got carte blanche in this town, Dr. Coran, just remember, no cabs for you. You just call the squad room.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Oh, it isn't my doing, Doctor.” On that note he rushed back out into the stormy night.

  Ovid was worried.

  He had become progressively more brutal with each murder, as if he were working up to some sort of bizarre final brutality.

  So had the Claw.

  The Claw taught him everything.

  But he didn't know that much, really. He didn't know where the Claw lived, for instance. Once, he started to follow him, and the Claw turned as if he felt him near. He had stared so long at the place where Ovid hid in the brush in Central Park that Ovid had almost begun to believe the Claw had cat's eyes, and could see him there. It so unnerved Ovid that he never dared to follow the Claw again.

  He always feared that one day the Claw would turn on him, make a meal of him.

  He knew he walked a thin, dangerous line. But it was the most thrilling thing that had happened in an otherwise dull and empty existence.

  He even had a new name to proclaim his rebirth: Ovid. He'd wondered why “Ovid,” wondered if it held some special significance to the Claw, and so he had gone to the library and found a book on names. Opening it to the O's and trailing his finger along the column, he found Ovid there. It was strange and obscure and filled with ancient meaning, his new name. “Ovid” was Latin for “divine protector.” And in a sense, he did help and protect the Claw, who came to him in the night, needing him, needing his assistance. It was the first time anyone had ever needed him.

  He located the history of the ancient poet Ovid, and began to feel some connection with him. He took out translations of Ovid's work along with the Latin subtext, and slowly he began to teach himself some Latin words and phrases.

  The Claw had opened up a whole new world to him, and he began to wonder if he could, like his namesake, write poetry.

  That was what he was doing now, writing a poem, a poem he intended to send to the New York Times, knowing somehow that they'd print it, if it was good enough and graphic enough.

  But he worried about sending his poem to the newspaper. What would the Claw do to him? How would he react? Still, the poem proclaimed the inevitable power of the Claw over everyone in this life; it also spoke of disease and aging and death. It told the world that the Claw was good, not evil; that he ended suffering. He didn't create it. He ended it.

  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 f
ew 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.

  Eight

  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.

  “Just what I need,” she muttered under her breath. “A sadistic shrink calling from the asylum in Philadelphia.” The last time she'd been alone with Dr. Arnold, the slime had pulled out a bottle of brandy and tried to cajole her into having a drink with him. She sensed that he had somehow learned of her recent battle with drinking. Who among her colleagues would have told Arnold about her bout with alcoholism after Otto's death? Who but Chief O'Rourke, either intentionally or unintentionally?

  When she got to the phone in the office that had been turned over to her, she asked, “What can I do for you. Dr. Arnold?”

  “It's not what you can do for me. It's what I can do for you, Dr. Coran.”

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  “I've been working steadily with Matisak since you last saw him.”

  “That's commendable, Doctor.” She didn't intend to give him an inch.

  “Anyway, I think we've had a breakthrough. He's told us where the Torres woman's remains can be found, and the authorities in Ohio—she wasn't in Kentucky, after all—have unearthed a body fitting the general description—”

  “Dr. Arnold, I'm in the middle of an ongoing case here that needs my attention, so if you don't mind—”

  “But that's just it. This relates to the Claw. I've gotten Matisak to cooperate with us on this, and he wishes to speak to you. He says he has vital information bearing on your case there.”

  “Forget it, Dr. Arnold. He's using you for a fool.”

  “This was not my idea.”

  “What're you saying?”

  “I'm saying that a copy of the FBI files on the Claw was forwarded here for Matisak by your, superiors, and—”

  “O'Rourke, dammit!” She'd pleaded with O'Rourke to give her some time; that she didn't need or want any input from Mad Matisak; that the man was yanking everyone's chain.

  “Look, Matisak refuses to talk to anyone but you at this point.”

  “There is nothing Matisak could possibly say of interest about—”

  “He's sitting beside me and he tells me to tell you that the Claw is not one but two.”

  Thi
s made her pause. How did the bastard know that? Was he simply taking a wild stab? Was he trying to throw her off guard? Was he trying to predict what her thinking would be? He was doing an eerily good job of both.

  “Dr. Coran? Doctor? Are you there?”

  “Put the bastard on the phone, Arnold.”

  She heard the noise of a phone being passed through to Matisak in his cell.

  “You're so far away dear Doctor, my old acquaintance,” mewed Matisak, whose voice was like a knife sliding over her nerves. She felt her blood pressure rise with her anger.

  “What is it you want, Matisak?”

  “Please, I've asked you a hundred times. Call me Teach or Matthew.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “I have had time—lots of time, thanks to you—to review the records and documents your superiors forwarded, despite your apparent reluctance to, shall we say, have me on your team...”

  Jessica imagined how the small man's chest was expanding. He was so full of himself. She took in a great breath of air and bit her lip, trying to maintain her control, saying nothing.

  “It's Stainlype. Stainlype went out-of-body, out of Gerald Ray Sims, just long enough to find another Sims, there in New York, where you are now. Stainlype came back here to destroy Sims, and then she returned to New York. It's a real force, Jessica: demonic, evil, powerful beyond your wildest imaginings, and if you get too close to it again, well... I fear for your future, dear Dr. Jessica.”

  “Arnold, you fool. You interrupted me with this trash?”

  “Trash!” shouted Matisak. “Are you telling me you did not know it was two all along? That Stainlype escaped? That's why you're there, but if you get too close, then I fear for you, Doctor, I do... I really do. Stainlype is a monster and she will eat you alive.”

  She ridiculed him with her laughter and said, “I'm going to hang up now, Teach. I suggest you pray to the demons in your own mind.”

  “I had help, just like Sims did, when I took their blood, but you never knew that.”