cleanup and the E.T. work, sir.”
“ I'm on my way, Lou.”
“ He was a good man, Captain.”
“ Right… right you are, Lou.”
Jessica hung on Alan's every word, trying to piece things together, tears welling up. Rychman got the name of the hospital, which he knew well, and after he hung up he tried to put the pathetic scenario into focus for her as best he could, finishing with, “That old man was working cases when I was a rookie. Got to know him very well. He was a friend, Jess, a close friend, I thought. But I guess you never really know what's going on inside another person's head. Guess the difficulties he'd been having, and now this latest bout, put him over the top…”
“ He didn't strike me as suicidal,” she countered. “I didn't know him long, but I got the impression that giving up wasn't in his nature. He loved his work and life.”
“ I've got to get down there.”
“ So do I.”
“ It's not necessary you go down, Jess. Archer's got it, Lou tells me.”
“ I'm going with you,” she said, turning from his touch and starting to dress.
“ Fine, you're coming.” He began to dress quickly as well, and when they'd finished and were halfway out the door, the phone rang again. They looked at each other.
“ Probably someone else calling with the dire news,” she said, going back for the phone. But when she answered, she heard J.T.'s voice from Quantico, apologizing about the hour.
“ You okay, Jess? You sound a little down,” said J.T., who surely expected a happier note since they hadn't spoken in a while.
“ Got some bad news this morning, J.T.”
“ Oh, sorry to hear that. Anything I can do?”
She briefly explained about Darius.
“ God, sad loss to everyone there and the profession,” he said.
“ So, J.T., what is it?”
“ What is it? I've finally got results for you, that's what. I tried reaching you all evening but obviously you were indisposed? Anyway, I left messages with the desk. Didn't you check your messages, Jess?”
“ 'Fraid I failed to.”
“ Christ, Jess, O'Rourke's been trying to get you, too. Wants to know what's cooking with the case; wants an update. You'd better call her as soon as it's a decent hour.”
“ Thanks for the tip, J.T. Now, what'd you learn about our Claw?”
“ Well, it's not what you think, Jess. Sorry, but I've looked at the samples you sent six ways to Sunday and it all adds up to the same guy in every case, same bite impressions.”
She let out a soft groan of disappointment but composed herself the moment she realized that Alan was staring. “No doubt in your mind?”
“ None whatever, Jess. If it is two guys, one of them's not a meat-eater.”
She thanked J.T. for his troubles, disappointed by this news, but it was the weight of Darius' death that she felt most strongly as she said goodbye and hung up.
“ Jess,” said Alan, “you really don't have to go down to the scene.”
“ I'm going,” she insisted, grabbing her cane and pushing past him for the door. He stopped her, taking her in his arms and feeling her fight for her freedom until finally she gave in to her sobs.?
Seventeen
Suicides were treated as homicides until murder was completely ruled out, and that was how the NYPD was working the death of Dr. Luther Darius. The story of one of the foremost authorities in forensic science who, facing cancer and despair, took his own life would be splashed across newspa-pers all over America.
And yet it didn't fit him, didn't stand to reason. The man Jessica had breakfasted with the previous morning hadn't appeared in the least suicidal. But appearances were often a masquerade.
Stories about Dr. Darius began to circulate, about his problem with drink, about his growing morbidity. People who worked in close association with him had known for some time now of his despair over his inability to perform at peak performance.
Dr. Simon Archer was on hand at the hospital to tell Rychman word for word the dire and prophetic last conversation he had had with Dr. Darius only hours before in the autopsy room.
“ Then you have it on tape?” asked Jessica.
“ Matter of fact,” Archer replied thoughtfully, “I do believe the tape was still on at that time. I'll… I'll fetch it for your investigation, Captain.”
“ Good, good… If it's as bleak as you say, then I guess we can assume the worst here.”
Darius' body had been scooped from the pavement, eleven stories down. Blood still pooled about the spot where the police chalk outlined the man's small form.
“ I'd like to know if there was anything in his system to indicate-” began Rychman. “I'd like to assist in the autopsy. Dr. Archer,” Jessica interrupted.
“ You sure that's wise, Jess… ah, Dr. Coran?” asked Rychman.
“ Dr. Archer?”
Archer nodded like a grieving pallbearer. “Certainly, certainly.”
Rychman took her aside. “Don't you think you'd be better served by concentrating on the case you were sent here to work on?”
“ Dr. Darius was a friend of my father's, Alan. I owe him this much.”
“ To what end? And at what emotional cost to yourself? Do you think Darius or your father-”
“ I've got a room upstairs to investigate,” she said, storming away from him.
He shook his head and watched her as she went, the cane lightly tapping out her anthem.
Archer said to him, “She's quite a strong-willed woman.”
“ You could say so.”
“ An exceptional woman, I think.”
Rychman stared at Archer. “So I've noticed.” Archer, too, was watching her disappear into the hospital as the siren blared its warning, the ambulance pulling off with Darius' body, taking him to what had been his morgue for the last forty-two years.
“ What sent him here, to the hospital?” Jessica asked Archer, who had followed her to the room Darius had leapt from.
“ He apparently had some sort of fall. He was working himself extremely hard… going back over the Hamner cadaver and all our earlier findings… all for you, Dr. Coran.” Archer supplied her with what few details he knew, ending with, “And he suffered a concussion where his head had struck the locker.”
“ All that about his drinking and his despair… all true?”
Archer frowned. “Life gets the best of the best of us. I'm sorry.” She went to the IV bottle, the loose tubing dangling, the contents spilled across the floor. Other tubing, connected to a heart regulator, lay on the soiled bedclothes. The window had been smashed, presumably with the chair that had lain alongside the body downstairs.
“ It must've happened all in a matter of seconds after he pulled the plug on his heart regulator,” she said. “The nurse told me that the buzz was loud enough to wake the dead when he snatched the electrodes off his chest.”
“ That's how I pictured it,” agreed Archer.
“ Then you've already examined the room?”
“ I have, yes.”
“ Everything points to suicide, but I just didn't figure Darius for the kind of man who-”
“ The kind of man… There is no suicide type, Dr. Coran. Suicide comes when there is a breakdown in brain stimulants and proper judgment is impaired when connections and cause and effect cannot be put together by the
