Fatal Instinct

Twelve

Rychman was a frustrated man. The C.P. had him exactly where he wanted him, on the firing line. The Claw case made anyone connected with it look the fool; it could not have been better for Eldritch if he had planned it himself for this election year. By maneuvering Rychman into the catbird seat, he had both the perfect fall guy and a way to make his competition look bad. Maybe Eldritch was the better man for the job, after all; he was certainly the better politician. Where was he now? Miles from Scarsdale, that was for sure.

The half-baked notion of making an arrest was another fine stroke of genius on Eldritch's part. Arresting Conrad Shaw would make Rychman look as if he were leading a witch-hunt. He had to find some new. something, some sort of lead, anything, if he planned to survive. But for now, feeling tired and weary, he slumped against his car and waited for the rest of his task force people to report back to him what they had, or more likely had not, learned from the surrounding neighborhood. He himself had learned that the Olin woman was quiet and retiring, a model neighbor, hardly spoke a word above a whisper. Those who knew her best didn't really seem to know her at all, but there was some hint of money problems, and her health seemed an issue. As for the old woman, still no word.

His mind raced back over every victim of the Claw, trying to take a new tack, to think about two killers. It was like sailing against the wind to pursue an idea that opposed what seemed concrete fact. It was always the hardest part of police work to keep options open, to keep the sea of information from solidifying too quickly into one idea. For so long now, everyone had assumed the brutal killer was a single individual… but what if Jessica and Darius were right? And why couldn't they provide him with something unequivocal and binding, some proof he could believe in completely? Something other than hunches and suppositions, however informed?

Maybe these murders weren't even the work of the Claw, Rychman thought in disgust. The fact it was Scarsdale and the fact the killer or killers had deviated by brutalizing two victims in one night made Rychman suspicious that they were copy cat killings. Someone reading the nonstop news coverage on the Claw could have planned and executed the double murder to make it appear the work of the Claw, thereby throwing suspicion away from himself.

It had not helped matters that the newspaper reporters across the city had been able to piece together almost all of the various clues that pointed to the work of the Claw. Throughout the investigation, they lifted one detail from one precinct, another from a second and so on, while the mayor and the C. R were gabbing about gag orders.

Meanwhile advantage the Claw.

So much wasted effort and time. Translating into eight wasted lives, he thought. When he was a kid he had seen the movie Psycho, and it had left an indelible mark on him. It changed the way movies dealt with bad guys and heroines when Bates murdered Janet Leigh in the shower scene. There was no boyfriend running in at the last moment to save her, no cops or cavalry to the rescue, and somehow, even as a child Rychman understood the simple truth that real life seldom meant justice or fairness, or saved-in-the-nick-of-time happy endings. Still, he had wanted to be a cop; he'd wanted to be one of the good guys, and do whatever he could wherever he could to at least make reality bearable. And what had it gotten him? A divorce, the estrangement of his kids and a nasty fight ahead for Eldritch's job, if he had the stamina to go through with it. There were a lot of people who were behind him, but most of these had their own agendas. “Hell,” he moaned as he opened the car door and sprawled out on the back seat, hoping to catch a few winks.

His detectives were still rattling doors, asking questions. They were all coming up empty-handed. The woman lived alone, never had relatives or visitors over, was as quiet and unimposing as a church mouse. Neighbors used to see her waiting for the bus on the corner.

Then who in hell was the old woman? What was the connection? Was there a connection, or was the Claw having them all on once more? Some sense of humor, he thought. But there must be something that attracted this demonic killer to his victims in the first place; something the two of them had in com-mon, some shred of a connection. But what could it be?

He played over the similarities and the differences again in his head. All the victims were women who were alone when they were attacked. In no instance had the killer dared attack a woman in the company of a man. The attacks appeared random, but he knew that random violence was unlikely, that what at first appeared random very often was far from it. No, the Claw had a plan, however bizarre the plan might be. There was nothing random about the killer's obvious decision to murder women only. The bastard either feared men or had no interest in feeding on male organs. Why? The bastard was a coward at heart, afraid to attack even two women together, it would appear, since the new victims had been attacked at separate locations.

“ Captain, Captain!” Lou Pierce interrupted his thoughts. “We've got word on the old woman.”

Rychman had no idea how long he had been lying in the car, but a glance at his clock told him it was almost 6 A.M. “A positive ID, Lou?”

“ Amelia Phillips. The super in her building reported her missing. Her place was searched a few hours ago by some guys in the 23rd. The place was a mess and there was blood, but no body. Missing Persons put two and two together, had someone go down to the morgue to ID her, and voila.”

“ Good to know somebody around here can still put two and two together. All right, hop in and let's have a look at her place.”

“ You want me to drive, Captain?”

“ Good idea, Lou. Dr. Coran get back okay?”

“ I dropped her and Dr. Darius off at the morgue.”

“ She'll wanta hear about this. See if you can get dispatch to put us through.” But dispatch was unable to reach her or Darius. The two had seemingly disappeared. Only Simon Archer was available to take the call. He took the address and said he would be right behind them, and that he was sorry but he didn't know where the other two M.E. s had gone.

On the way to the second crime scene, a Brooklyn apartment out of the 23rd Precinct's jurisdiction, but not out of the jurisdiction of the citywide task force, Rychman learned that Amelia Phillips was a live-alone with multiple health problems that'd turned her into a recluse. When she did venture out, she might visit the corner store, the free clinic or the neighborhood park where she fed popcorn and seeds to squirrels and pigeons.

Once at her apartment, Rychman could see at a glance just how close to the bone the woman lived. Her fridge was bare, and her cupboard was scantily stocked with a handful of tuna and soup cans, a box of Saltines and a bag of Fig Newtons gone stale according to O’Toole, whom Alan had found munching in the kitchen. The woman's furniture was early Salvation Army and had come with the apartment, but she kept the place neat and orderly, a place for everything and everything in its place. So the ugly red stain on the hardwood floor, indicating the likeliest place where Amelia Phillips had died, seemed that much more alien here in this place she called home.

No forced entry-nothing to indicate she had any reason to fear her attacker any more than the Olin woman seemed to have had-gave Rychman a glimmer of hope. If both women knew their attacker, then some thread of commonality existed between these two victims which had gone unnoticed among the previous victims. Somewhere in each woman's past she had crossed the path of the Claw before last night, and when he came to call, each in turn had allowed him inside. Perhaps he was a neighbor, someone to be trusted, someone clever and cunning who had targeted these women in anything other than a random way after all.

“ This… this is dreadful,” whispered the building superintendent who'd crept in behind the detectives. Rychman thought the super was understandably upset by a tenant's death until he heard the man telling Lou that it was going to be hell to get the bloodstains up if they were allowed to remain much longer, and this would make renting out the place even more difficult in these recessionary times. He also complained of a missing rug.

“ What kind of a rug?” asked Rychman sharply.

“ An expensive one, Oriental.”

“ Hers or yours?”

“ Mine… at least, it was.”

“ Whataya mean, was? Either it belonged to you or it didn't.”

“ I didn't get it in writing. It was the only thing she had of worth, and she purchased her last month's rent with it. I figured it lent the place a touch of class, and if she moved out and it stayed, I figured… well, I figured…”

“ I get the picture, Mr. ahhh…”

“ Gwinn, Donald W.,” he told Lou, who was jotting information down on a notepad.

“ And the rug was here the last time you saw her here?” Rychman asked.

“ It was.”

“ And when was that, sir?”

“ Yesterday afternoon. Then I knocked on the door about nine, but I got no answer. I was supposed to look at some pipes; been puttin' it off. So I think it's odd she don't answer, on account she's always in after dark, you know, and so I tried again at ten, because the next day's my day off, and I didn't want her calling down and disturbing me. So when she didn't answer again, I used my passkey, and this is what I find.”

“ But you didn't call the police until ten-twenty?”

“ I did some looking around. Thought she might've been trying to ditch out on me. Another month's rent was coming due, and the rug was gone. I figured the blood was just her way of, you know, throwing me off. She was smart, that old bag. She'd been a teacher at some college once down South, and she was putting me on all the time. Used to be we had a nice relationship when her checks came in on time.”

“ Welfare checks?” That and sometimes she got money from her daughter, or so she claimed. That's her on the bureau.” He pointed to a picture of a rather plain young face. Beside this was a picture of the same young woman with a man, their arms entwined.

“ That's the daughter. Never comes around.”

Rychman stared at the black-and-white photos, realizing they were somewhat old. He slipped one from its holder and scanned the back for any notations. There were none, only the marks of the processor and the date, 1952.

“ This isn't her daughter,” Rychman concluded.

“ What?”

“ This is her, when she was young.”

“ Damn, then the old girl did have me fooled,” said Gwinn. “According to her, that was her daughter and son-in-law, some big-shot lawyer in Florida where the kids lived with her newborn grandchild.”

“ A boy or a girl, Mr. Gwinn?” asked Rychman, shaking his head.

Rychman considered the fact the killer hadn't bothered to clean up after himself, but the amount of blood on the floor was not enough to account for the condition of Mrs. Phillips' remains. “She was obviously carried out of here rolled in your rug, Mr. Gwinn, which has not been located.” He turned to Pierce. “Lou, I want our people to fan out and crisscross this neighborhood and speak to everyone within sight of this place about seeing a man carrying a rug out of here. You got that?”

“ I'm on it, Captain.”

Rychman recalled what Darius had said about finding several unusual fibers matted in the old woman's blood. It was like two puzzle pieces had just gone neatly into place, and it gave Alan Rychman a minor feeling of hope.

“ And where the hell's Dr. Archer?” he bellowed as Lou started out.

Archer showed up in the doorway at the same moment. “Sorry, but that driver I got was timid about getting here.”

Rychman nodded, knowing full-well that anytime a coroner was called out, he had to be escorted by an officer who also escorted the M.E. and his findings back to the morgue. No one was above suspicion when it came to evidence in a murder case, so there were formal rules of conduct for everyone on the crime scene, thanks mainly to Dr. Darius.

“ You can get out of here for now,” Rychman told the superintendent. “It's all yours, Dr. Archer.”

“ Sorry I couldn't locate Darius for you, but I think the all-nighter took a lot out of him. Heard he was recuperating with orders not to be disturbed. He'll likely be back at the lab later. Leastways, that's what I was told.”

Archer's voice held a subtle edge. He probably felt he should have handled the scene at Scarsdale. Alan knew Archer was in line for Darius' job if and when Darius finally called it quits.

“ Well, we're glad to have you here, Doc.” Alan tried to reassure him. “Anybody but Perkins, I always say.”

“ High praise,” joked Archer. He got down to business, opening his black bag and taking blood scrapings, searching for fibers, fingerprints, hairs, anything he could bag up for microscopic analysis back at his lab.

Rychman took this opportunity to investigate the room further, careful to steer clear of where Archer painstakingly worked. Rychman stared at Mrs. Phillips' card table and single chair, wondering what had happened between her and her long-ago husband; what had driven them apart and left her alone. Fights, money, drugs, lust, dishonesty, divorce or death? Life was brutal. He parted a curtain that acted as a divider and saw an alcove being used as a bedroom. A single bed with neatly tucked corners stared back at him, apparently untouched by the murderer.

Rychman searched the coverlet for any tell-tale signs, and when he saw what might be a stain, he got excited.

He called Archer in to look at the stain. Archer was skeptical, but he took a pair of scissors and cut around the stain, giving it wide berth, then placed the tiny patch of cloth into a specimen envelope to examine closely later. “Nothing's getting by me,” muttered Archer, “but don't hold your breath on this one, Captain.”

“ Understood.”

“ Still, you've got a good eye for this kind of work.”

“ I've had enough experience, God help me.”

Rychman continued his tour of the little apartment. Yellowed plaster on the walls was crisscrossed by occasional cracks, apparently painted over at some time only to return to haunt the occupant. The small icebox sat like a silent sentinel over the horror that had occurred here, atop it another photo of the woman's so-called daughter, herself at a young age. Wedged between the comer and the wall was a bag of bird feed, half-empty. Rychman saw a roach peeking from around the bag, and its antennae twitching nervously and avoiding any contact with the blood of the victim, as it made its determined way into the shadows.

Rychman knew from experience that a body-whether fit or frail-was heavy and cumbersome. The super's missing rug likely meant that Mrs. Phillips had been concealed within and carried down the back steps and into the darkness; in fact, a blood trail indicated as much. Did the killer have help in transporting the body? He speculated on the probables here. It seemed more tantalizing than ever to adopt Jessica Coran's idea that the ungodly work of the Claw could well be the work of a pair of killers, especially since the madman's handiwork had taken on this added dimension of two victims in a single night. The creeping notion of an innocent-looking decoy entered Rychman's thinking, a dupe who might do the Claw's bidding, someone he could control, and someone who presented no threat to others, someone Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Olin might, without fear, open their doors to.

“ Christ,” he muttered to himself, “maybe Jessica's theory has merit.” The hypothesis was tempting for another reason: if his detectives accepted the supposition, they could narrow the field, focusing on criminals known to have worked in tandem before. He'd give it more thought, talk to Jessica again, and perhaps at the next task-force meeting, which had now been postponed until tomorrow morning at 6 A.M., he'd pursue it.

While teams of detectives scoured the neighborhood, he and Lou Pierce found a nearby diner and ordered up breakfasts. Just as the steaming second cup of coffee, their bacon and eggs with toast and jelly arrived, so did the TV and radio reporters. It was already a long day.?