He froze where he stood because the deathly silence of his house was whispering to him in the voice of the Claw, asking, “Where're you going, Ovid? Whhhherrrrrr're yoooou goooo-ing? O-vid… O-vid?”
A strange wind was sweeping up from the open basement door that looked now like the throat of Hell, ready to swallow him whole.
The telephone rang shrilly and the whirr and whisper within the whirr was suddenly gone, the house raging with silence again, save for the intermittent, insistent ring of the phone.
He went to the phone hesitantly but once there he grabbed it up, saying, “Hel-hello?”
“ We're going, Ovid.” It was him, the Claw, on the line. He'd never telephoned him before.
“ Going?” He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry and cottony. In the background, he could hear the sounds of rushing traffic, suggesting a phone booth or perhaps a car phone. “Where?”
“ We'll disappear… go elsewhere… where they can't find us. Just wait for me there.”
He was momentarily confused. Could he trust the Claw? “For how long?”
“ For as long as it takes.”
“ I thought when you didn't come last night… and the cops came this morning…”
“ Cops?”
“ Police were here, asking questions.”
“ Yes, I see they've fixed on locating Leon. That's why we must disappear.”
“ Another country, another city, where?”
“ You will know in time.”
“ I don't have any time. They're bound to come back.” Leave them to me.”
“ All right… all right, I will.”
The Claw hung up. Ovid knew now that the Claw was not an imagined creature of the dark or some other facet of Leon's own personality. The phone call had been real. This, along with the fact that the Claw hadn't abandoned him, after all, went a long way to quell Leon's frazzled nerves. As much as he feared the Claw, he realized, he needed him; that, in a sense, the Claw was him.
Still, he must dispense with the incriminating evidence he had so foolishly allowed to accumulate all around him. He must give some thought to the boxes. While he sat there, staring at them, his eyes wandered into the living room, where an old carpet reminded him of the blood-soaked Oriental rug still in the trunk of his car. He remembered, too, that his tools had been used in every killing.
There was so much to think of, so much to do. He returned to the windows, going about the house, staring out. He saw no strange cars now. Every car on the block could be accounted for; he had stared down this length of asphalt for years, so he was sure. He saw a few people milling about, but he saw no one that looked out of place.
He went to the rear of his house and gazed for a long time before he decided that the alleyway was at peace with itself, and that there weren't a thousand cops hiding behind trash cans, garage doors, telephone poles and bushes. He had to traverse his backyard to the garage, where his little car was kept. He had a good notion of what he wanted to do with all the evidence, although he wasn't sure he could get away with it.
For now, relatively sure of his safety, he began to make trips to the car and back, carrying one crate at a time, carefully placing them into the trunk atop the soiled, bloodied rug that had been Mrs. Phillips' shroud only two nights before. Leon was cautious with each crate, but when he lifted one of the less sturdy boxes, the bottom gave way and he went to his knees in an attempt to keep the jars from hitting the kitchen floor. But one containing a victim's heart shattered, sending a slick of formaldehyde out from his knees. Through this the organ slid across the floor, slapped against the first rung of the basement steps and then flip-flopped down and down, leaving a thin liquid trail of gruel in its wake.
“ Damn, damn,” Leon cursed at the delay. It meant more cleanup, more wasted time. He went down into the basement, fetched the now soiled heart and brought it back up to the kitchen. He found tape, reinforced the box that had come loose and jammed the dirty heart down into the box between the other jars.
He then looked down at the broken jar and the mess created by the formaldehyde. He had always detested the odor, but it had never bothered the Claw. It was, however, sure to go rank if he did not clean it up quickly. He grabbed a kitchen towel, but knew this would not be enough. He needed newspapers, lots of them.
He found a stack in the corner in the living room and threw them about the kitchen floor, stomping over them in a wild dance. He saw the headlines about the Claw and knew he must destroy the papers, too.
“ That'll do it,” he promised himself.
In five minutes he had the problem soaked up, and with a damp mop and Cheer he cleaned the linoleum, much pleased with his progress. But he knew that the heat outside was not doing the other organs much good in the trunk of his car.
He now crushed all the newspapers into a Hefty bag and tied it off. This he took outside to the trash cans and shoved it all into a can belonging to him. This done, he retrieved the now well-taped box, returned to the garage and grabbed his toolbox. He put the last box and his tools on the backseat of the car and in a moment was cautiously making his way out of the area.
Jim Drake's star was rising at the Times and he owed it entirely to the Claw, not that he had ever dreamed that such evil could be a meal ticket. It just happened, he kept telling himself; it didn't mean he was a bad person. If he didn't write the stories, someone else would, and someone else would get the prestige, money and power coming to him nowadays. He also knew that he owed much of his success to Archer. If Dr. Archer weren't as concerned a citizen as he was, Drake's information trail might've shriveled away long before, but Archer was what he was, a real concerned citizen who for reasons of his own-ambitious ones-leaked useful information to Drake.
Now there was heat being put on the good doctor, or so Archer thought; maybe the man was just feeling paranoid, and little wonder with that FBI lady watching his every move, not to mention Rychman, who was enough to frighten a sumo wrestler.
A dampness made the dark air all around feel like a shroud, and once again Drake cursed Archer for picking such a deserted area to meet. An occasional car fired by the open alleyway, and earlier someone had parked a car in the dark recesses of the shadows here. Now that his eyes were accus-tomed to the dark, Drake thought the car in the alley might be Dr. Archer's BMW. He went nearer, scanning for any sign of anyone at the wheel or nearby, but he saw no one. The alley was a complicated one with a Y-fork, one branch dead-ending at the back of a factory.
A step closer and he thought he saw a shrouded form at the wheel, but it was so still, it didn't look human. Suddenly the engine kicked into life and the car came at Drake, tires smoking. Drake ran for the Y-fork, pretending at first to go toward the dead end, but at the last moment he dove the other way. The car shot by uncontrollably, and Drake got to his feet, racing for the exit and the street for his own car, his mind trying to fathom the reason for the attack, but for now he must think of one thing and one thing alone: survival.
He was out in the open, running toward his car, which was parked halfway down the street, when the BMW tore into view behind him. It was coming down on him at sixty, seventy, eighty. Drake prepared to swerve at the last moment, but the killing machine anticipated him, driving his body into a parked car, driving the blood from within him to all the orifices. He was literally squashed between the metal of the two vehicles.
As he drove off, Archer glanced into his rearview mirror. Drake wouldn't be talking to Coran or Rychman. One less worry in Archer's life.
Detective Emmons pulled her unmarked car into view of the building where Helfer resided alone. There were several lights on, but she saw no movement or shadow. She feared he had already fled. She would like nothing better than to get inside the little prick's place for a look. She cautiously slipped out and walked through a gangway to the rear alley that would lead her to Helfer's backyard.
She could still smell the strange odor that earlier emanated from the house; it was a stench she would not soon forget. As she rounded the garage at the back she found it standing open, the black interior a gaping maw, and to her surprise the little weasel had a silvery BMW nosed squarely at the front of the open garage. The fool was asking for it to be ripped off or stolen. She wondered how he could possibly afford it, but she gave more thought to how pleased she was to find him in. A cursory search of the car with her flashlight turned up the fact it had recently been in an accident that had damaged the front grillework and fender. She started for the license when a sudden noise startled her, making her whip around and draw down on a black cat that spit at her and showed two venomous shining eyes. She breathed deeper and took down the license plate, noting that it could not be Helfer's,
