again looked for it. She decided to take a high-intensity photograph of the strand of hair and she pulled the one on file with Archer's name on it. If nothing else, she could show this to Alan, perhaps convince him that she wasn't completely crazy.
She next logged her Findings and put these under lock and key in her office and, following chain of custody procedure, returned the tiny packet and the hair to its place, signing the register for it and everything else she had removed from the lockup, realizing how simple it would have been for her, the attending M.E., to substitute another strand of hair for Archer's.
Was that how he had altered the evidence to make the Claw one man instead of two? To hide his own ugly tracks?
She was seeing Alan tonight to bid him farewell. In fact, time was running late and she must go to her hotel, freshen up and prepare for their parting. She was halfway out the door when Laurie Marks shouted that there was an important phone call for her.
“ From Quantico?”
“ Some guy in Philadelphia. Says he's a shrink.”
Arnold at the loony bin. She hesitated, wanting to run from the call, but thought better of it and said she'd take it in her office.
“ This better be important, Arnold,” she said impatiently.
“ Matisak wants to speak to you.”
“ Come on, Arnold! Case closed, or don't you have any newspapers in Philly?”
“ Matisak's read every paper, every account… following this case as if his life depended upon it, and… and he says he's got something more to report to you.”
“ Who's in control there, Arnold? Dammit, you or your fucked inmates?”
“ Why… I… Dr. Coran, I am just doing my part! At the request, I might add, of your superiors!”
“ O'Rourke,” she said. The woman could do nothing right. No way could she step in for Otto Boutine. She wasn't even in his league. “All right, put the creep on,” she finally told Arnold.
Matisak was insanely polite. She endured him for as long as she could before she said, “To the point, Matisak.”
“ This Leon Helfer is not the Claw.”
“ And just how do you know that?”
“ You don't believe it yourself, Dr. Coran. Do you? Well, do you?”
There had been remarks made in the papers. Matisak was picking up cues from the news items. He must have put it together, must have decided that her staying on this long on a case that was supposedly closed signaled that there was more. Ironically he had more confidence in her intuition than her superiors did. How fitting, she thought, that the only one who had any faith in her at the moment was a madman and serial killer.
“ You're right, you know,” he said. “I was wrong before. Helfer is crazy, and he has been a bad boy, but he doesn't really turn into the Claw any more than he's this Ovid character. He's just a weak kitchen mop, a dishrag, used by the Claw, set up by him. That's what you believe and that's what I've come to believe.”
“ What have you based your belief on, Matisak?”
“ You, Dr. Coran. I'm basing it on you.”
“ A vote of confidence from you isn't going to do me much good.”
“ But it has.”
“ What're you talking about?”
“ Why do you suppose O'Rourke allowed you to stay on?”
“ Son of a bitch,” she muttered into the phone.
“ That may be, but all the same-”
“ Why are you even interested, Matisak?”
“ You know the answer to that. Besides which this guy is as cunning and dangerous as I am, and I wouldn't want to read of your death, Jessica. I still fervently believe you're mine, and one day when you least expect it, Doctor, you and I will return to that interrupted dance. I still taste the blood I drew from your throat as fresh and as wonderful as if it were only-”
“ Shut up!” she shouted.
“ Look for a nurse who knew this guy Archer when he was a punk intern.”
She hung up on the madman in Philadelphia. She was shaken by both his threat and the revelation that O'Rourke was more willing to accept the recommendation of a convicted serial killer than her own. But she was even more shaken by his suggestion to investigate Archer's past. Her reports were being funneled to Matisak. She resolved to have it out with Chief O'Rourke on her return.
Matisak was playing his own game of averages. Since he knew that Simon Archer had interned somewhere, the doctor would have had to work with many other doctors and nurses during his residency. Doctors kept secrets while nurses didn't. Matisak also knew that the grueling “boot camp” of a residency could make or break a would-be doctor. With all his time to think about the case from his safe and objective distance, Matisak was telling her what she already knew.
Jessica had embarked on her own search into Archer's background, and it had quickly led to rumors of the sort that cling to anyone in the profession-her included-that the doctor who sliced and diced the dead perhaps enjoyed himself just a little too much for the comfort of others. So came the usual stigma. Archer was called names behind his back. Just as Jessica was called “the Scavenger,” Dr. Archer'd come to be known as both “Arrowhead” and “Dr. Ghoul” for his penchant of getting his “head” deep into his work, and for the undeniably long hours he spent in the company of the female bodies in particular. Morgue humor was something that followed every M.E. she had ever known, but usually such remarks were made by cops and lab assistants in gallows jest with some redeeming quality of black humor about them. In Archer's case, for some unaccountable reason, the remarks seemed devoid of humor, black, white, yellow or otherwise.
She continued to dig into his past, and the trail led to a retired nurse named Felona Hankersen. Lou Pierce had been persuaded to drive Jessica into the ghetto where Mrs. Hankersen lived. The thin, once pretty Mrs. Hankersen didn't want to talk to her, had nothing to say and pleaded with her to leave, but Jessica kept hammering at her with a barrage of questions about Dr. Simon Archer. As soon as Felona Hankersen heard the name, she blanched, weakened and crumpled, retreating to the safety that the interior of her apartment afforded.
Inside, several grandchildren scampered and played with toy pistols.
“ I took early retirement. Left that part of me behind. Don't know nothing about Dr. Archer anymore.”
“ I just want to ask you a few questions,” Jessica insisted, baring her teeth.
“ I've been out of that so long. I can't help you.”
“ From your record, from what I saw, you were an excellent nurse, and then something happened. A lawsuit settled out of court-a wrongful-death claim-and suddenly you were taking early retirement. Is that right?”
Her eyes had filled with thick tears.
“ I'm sorry, Mrs. Hankersen, but it's very important.”
“ I… I took the fall,” she muttered.
“ You were blamed for the boy's death, Mrs. Hankersen? Is that right?”
“ That was a lie!” Her tears left milky gray streaks along her black face.
“ Who lied, Mrs. Hankersen?”
“ What difference it make now? I just don't want no more of it. Said my piece at the time and there wasn't one of them wanted to hear the truth, not one!”
“ I do, Mrs. Hankersen… I do.”
“ It's been too long.”
“ Please.”
“ They believed the intern and I was quietly let go, and the parents were paid to keep shut. Officially the boy died of pneumonia with complications, but it all come about because of a mistake.”
“ Whose mistake?”
“ Mistaken dosage.”
“ Who ordered the dosage?”
“ Dr. Archer, but then you already know that. Whatchu need me for?”
“ You told the hospital authorities? There's no record of any such thing.”
