“ No. He'd just show up.”
“ And you sat around waiting for him?” asked Dr. Ames.
“ But you told Dr. Coran that he telephoned you.”
“ No, no! Only the once, the time he set me up… just before he killed the policewoman.”
Rychman pounded his hand on the table, causing a gunshot sound that made Ames jump along with Leon. “How do you expect anyone to believe such shit, Leon? Leon, nobody just shows up out of nowhere, out of the curtains at your mother's funeral home, out of the dark in your house, out of the fuckin' thin air!”
Lou Pierce stepped into the room. He'd been behind the mirror with Dr. Archer. And now he asked a few questions, spelling Captain Rychman. “You know, Leon, we've got the ball peen hammer you used on the women, the axe, the other tools, all with blood on them.”
“ We've got DNA counts on your blood and all the victims' blood, Leon,” added Rychman, turning and facing the little man again, towering over him. We've got your hair, your coat fibers, your rug fibers, your fingerprints and your teeth marks, and not a single piece of microscopic evidence otherwise to point to a second killer, Leon. No, Leon, you did all these killings all on your own, and you're going to tell us the truth, Leon, here and now! The goddamned truth!”
“ No, I told the truth! Dr. Coran believed me! Talk to her. Talk to Dr. Coran!”
Archer could feel the muscles in his face tighten and twitch and his brain replayed Leon's words in refrain: “Dr. Coran believes me! Talk to Dr. Coran!”
“ We found all that stuff you stole from the women, too, Leon, from their purses,” Lou continued. “Mascara, rouge, lipstick, earrings, hairpins, brushes with the dead women's hair and odor still on 'em. We know you acted alone, Leon.”
“ You saved a lot of their underthings, Leon,” said Rychman, “and Mrs. Phillips' Oriental rug splattered with her blood was in the trunk of your car, Leon.”
Archer had heard enough. He was convinced of two things. Rychman and the others believed what he wanted them to believe all along, that Leon had worked out his lurid fantasies alone, and secondly, Dr. Coran believed otherwise. She remained his only threat.
When Rychman stepped out of the interrogation room, all he saw of Archer was his back as the M.E. disappeared along a corridor. He cursed his luck. Had he known Archer was outside, he would have found a way for Helfer to meet Dr. Archer face-to-face.?
Twenty-Six
Simon Archer lay restless in his large four-poster mahogany bed, unable to sleep, his peace disturbed by a woman who was over two hundred miles away. He knew that Coran was no typical medical examiner, that she was known among her close associates as thorough. Very little to nothing got past her. Her intimations of impropriety on his part had led to an investigation of his newly acquired department. He wasn't worried that the investigation would turn up anything as incriminating as murder and cannibalism, but he was worried about Jessica Coran. Even Darius had called her brilliant, an adjective he had never used to describe Archer. And now she had Emmons' body under her full scrutiny.
Perhaps he was foolish to worry: the stronger voice within him tried to soothe his fears, calling them irrational.
“ After all,” he told himself, “you took every precaution with Emmons, every possible precaution: gloves, hair net, the specially designed tooth sheath that simulated Leon Helfer's bite, now a somewhat useless item.”
Giving it further thought, he told himself, “I really should destroy and discard the sheath.” He held up the two rows of hard, acrylic tooth coverings with Helfer's signature on every edge and molar. They were self-incriminating, after all.
He cupped them in his hand and placed them beside his bed and felt the old urges welling up. His need for living flesh had come full circle.
He tried to close his eyes, get some rest. But each time he did a mad cinema of images flashed before him: first the writhing body, the half-conscious victim simpering, and he bending over, a shadow-man looking on in stark horror and curiosity. Closer and closer he brought his face down to the victim's throat, his animal's claw poised for the final tear, but his mouth wanting to tear first into the still-flexing arteries of the throat, when suddenly he saw her face. It was Coran's face and her eyes opened, staring straight through him, daring him to continue to kill her.
His dream self lashed madly and monstrously at her with the claw again and again, but her flesh withstood each blow. She began to laugh, and he was unable to make her stop, and the claw was breaking apart under his repeated attempt to rend her iron flesh from her.
His eyes came open with a start. She knew. He did not know how she knew, but she knew.
“ Forget about her,” he told himself in a chastising voice. “Even if she knows, she can't prove a thing.”
“ Not yet, she can't,” he answered himself. “But one day she might.”
Responding to a nervous Malthuesen who had telephoned in a panic, he had gone after hours to Leon's place of work. Malthuesen had immediately contacted him after two police detectives, one named Emmons, had grilled him about Leon. Malthuesen was surprised when Archer had shown up after the place had cleared out. Malthuesen didn't know he was about to die of a tragic accident, the trap already set before Dr. Archer led him to the snare. Malthuesen didn't understand Archer's interest in Leon and had thought it all to do with a gay liaison between them, and Archer hadn't dissuaded the notion until the end. But as a result of the police snooping, Malthuesen had become greatly curious, and he was asking too many questions.
“ Come with me,” Archer had told him. “I'll clear everything up for you.”
“ What if the cops come back? They seemed to want to get more out of me,” said Malthuesen.
“ I'd appreciate your not saying anything about my… association with Leon.”
“ But what if they ask?”
“ You do as I say, and there's more money in it for you, much more.”
Malthuesen was interested. “How much?”
“ Three times what I've given you already.”
Malthuesen whistled. “When do I get it?”
“ It's in my car. Come with me.”
He maneuvered Malthuesen into a long corridor where piping had been stored to the ceiling. He rushed ahead of the other man, getting to the safety of the other side of the room, and in the dark he threw a switch that released a row of the pipe at the bottom. This sent an avalanche of heavy metal over Malthuesen, whose cries were quickly drowned out.
Archer exited quietly the way he had come as a night watchman raced to the scene of the noise and clatter.
Now Archer smiled anew at the memory. He was an efficient man, smart to have had Leon actually design the claw. He had been efficient with Leon's dentist as well, the man who had designed for him a set of tooth coverlets. He lifted the set of acrylic teeth to his eyes once more and stared at them in the darkened bedroom.
Its contours were so beautiful, and holding it in his hand made him want to put the instrument to good use. But he couldn't… not for a long time, and when he did, he'd have to use a completely different approach, different cuts, and a new dupe. It would take some time to find another Leon, someone as pliable as he, someone with a helpful dentist.
Leon's dentist had put up a struggle. He had grabbed onto Archer's coat and shirt, worrying Archer that fibers below the man's nails would show signs of the struggle. When he pushed the thin, bespectacled Dr. Parke over the edge, the man had grabbed onto the cables, his briefcase and his glasses preceding him down the sixteen stories of black hole. For a few minutes, as the man's hands were rubbed raw against the thick metal cable, their eyes met, and in that moment the fool knew he was about to die, and then he slipped, grabbed again, gninted, cried out and was gone like a pebble down a well.
Archer had slipped from the area only to return in his official capacity to see to it that the dead man told no tales. The death was ruled accidental, as had Malthuesen's, but in Malthuesen's case, an associate M.E. handled
