about Luther. He was a hell of a doctor and a fine man.”
“ I only knew him for a short time.” She sniffled and dabbed her eye with a handkerchief. “Foolish, I guess, standing out here crying over him. Fearful for his memory.”
“ Nothing foolish in it at all,” he countered. “Might do us all some good. As to fearful… well, no one can hurt him now. Hell, no one would want to, Jess.”
“ Yeah, I guess Archer and the rest of the people in the lab have to be feeling pretty low over it. I should get back, do what I can to… to straighten out a few things.”
He was confused and curious at once. “Straighten out what?”
“ I think maybe Dr. Darius had more reason than alcoholism or depression to take that jump. He… he had to, and perhaps…”
“ You're getting me confused, Jess. Perhaps what?”
“ You had a high opinion of Dr. Darius.”
“ Of course.”
“ Everyone did, right?”
“ Right. So?” Rychman held her to a dead stop.
“ He was above reproach, above question. His reputation alone-”
“ What's this all about, Jess?”
“ The first coroner worked for the king as a watchdog, overseeing suspicious deaths in the kingdom, Alan. Mostly the king wanted someone to represent his interests, so that he got his due on the death of a subject-taxes, lands, whatever. Nowadays things have changed, sure, but just like the king, you and others in government have to rely on the coroner to tell you the truth. In other words, the king may have a man watching out for his own interests, but who's going to question the king's man?”
Rychman didn't understand what she was driving at. He looked deep and questioningly into her eyes. “Jess, I don't do riddles. What're you saying?” You up for some coffee? Let's get some.”
Over coffee she confided her dark suspicions of Dr. Luther Darius. Rychman listened with quiet reserve the entire time, flinching only once, at the idea that Darius would sabotage his own investigation.
“ To heighten the payoff,” she suggested. “At the end he would pull the rabbit out of the hat. He'd thought he could do that when he discovered some small clue that the Claw was two men instead of one.”
“ So he withheld information on the bite marks?”
“ I think so.”
“ And he diverted some of the tissue samples you sent to Quantico?”
“ I know it sounds crazy, but-”
“ It sounds crazy, all right.”
“- but, Alan, it also makes crazy sense. He was the first besides me to suggest that the Claw was two men.”
“ It's so unbelievable. Darius?”
She was quickly angered by his coolness to the idea. “I know I'm right.”
“ Now you sound like Luther.”
She relented. “You knew him a lot better than I did. But all the time you knew him, Alan, he was in good health and mentally capable. Perhaps, with his failing health-”
“ He was a fighter, Jess.”
“ So, dammit, what made him go through that window?”
“ You tell me. I'm going to make a phone call.” Alan was upset with what he saw as her wild suspicions.
Alan returned and sat down heavily, his brow creased.
“ What is it?” she asked.
“ I've just talked with Archer… Blood tests show no drags, nothing foreign in Luther's system, and nothing to indicate anything other than a jump from the window.”
She breathed in a deep gulp of air, filling her lungs and releasing it in exasperation.
“ I think our next step is to talk with Archer, find out if he thinks Dr. Darius was acting strangely, and if he thinks anything strange was going on with respect to the forensics evidence in the case.”
“ A careful accounting will show you're wrong, Jess,” he said. “You've got to be.”
She nodded. “I've been wrong before, and this time I also hope I am…”
Eighteen
Alan escorted her back to the NYPD forensics laboratories, where they parted company. Jessica feared making any further commitment in their runaway relationship. She feared anything more with a man like Rychman. Like Otto, he lived too close to danger. As far as she was concerned, their love-making was an offshoot of the war they were engaged in, two people thrown together due to circumstances, their attraction the only thing bonding them. And yet, she cared deeply for Alan.
In the laboratory she returned to a project she'd begun the day before. Using computer graphics, she matched the ugliest wounds inflicted on the victims, trying to determine the exact nature of the weapon used against these women. She had programmed-in the depth of the wounds and the abrasive nature of the instrument used to turn flesh into jagged scars. She fed every detail to the computer. The computer's job was to find a weapon to fit the wound as closely as possible.
It was determined quickly that in the case of each victim all three rents to the torso had been done simultaneously, and not-as earlier suspected-one at a time. This explained the exacting parallelism of the wounds. The image that was slowly surfacing on the computer screen was that of a three-pronged garden hoe, the prongs sharply bent, the ends like ice picks with razorlike serrated edges.
The Claw lived up to his name.
She stayed with it into the evening, soon realizing that the computer's insistence on the perfection of the three simultaneous jagged lines signaled something else significant. For each of the long tears to be so similar, the pressure had to be extremely even. With a hand-held tool this seemed unlikely. But if not hand-held, what else was there?
Dr. Archer, fascinated with her tack, had become increasingly interested, asking questions. “You don't think the guy's got talons, do you?”
“ That's what the computer's saying; that it's the work of a bird of prey with talons created for ripping flesh.”
“ But that's impossible.” Archer suddenly realized that he had lost track of the time and said he must rush off.
Word was circulating in the building that Archer was up for Darius' vacant position, and she guessed that he had an important meeting regarding this possibility. “Good luck,” Archer said as he was leaving.
“ Good luck to you,” she countered, making him stop for a moment and stare.
She qualified her statement, “I mean… well, I've heard that you may be stepping in to… to fill… into the coroner's seat. Good luck.”
He bit his lip and dropped his gaze. “I… I… wouldn't take it if they offered… not under the circumstances. I'm not in Dr. Darius' league, anyway…”
Archer was so self-effacing, perhaps too much so. This was very likely the character trait that had kept him here for so long, working in Darius' shadow.
“ Actually, I think you'd do a fine job,” she told him.
He laughed boyishly at this. “Coming from you, Dr. Coran, that… that's quite a compliment.”
“ Go for it, Simon. God knows you've worked hard enough over the years.”
“ That's true enough, but it takes more than years of work and dedication… I mean, running this place? Me?”
“ Who they gonna call?” she quipped.
“ Hell, any number of good M.E. s across the country. Perhaps they'll even offer the job to you, Doctor.”
“ No,” she said with a laugh, “it's definitely not for me.”
