taken off her prey. Archer could turn and strike at any moment.
She kept going, cornering from one cubicle to the next in the labyrinth, wondering from moment to moment when he would strike again, and how.
She tried to calm her own breathing, thinking it so loud that he could monitor her movements by her breaths. When she made it to the next cubicle, she came face-to-face with another pair of eyes in the dark, and books and files suddenly were raining down over her. She lifted the gun, prepared to fire, when she realized the screaming person staring wide-eyed at her was Audrey Robel, a lab assistant she had thought had gone with the others. “Audrey!”
“ Dr. Coran, it's you!”
“ Thank God, you're here. Did you see anyone pass this way?”
“ Heard, but I didn't see. I kept myself out of sight. What's happening, Dr. Coran? Who-who-who's trying to kill us?”
“ You mean, you've been here the whole time and you haven't phoned for help?”
“ I was frozen stiff. When I heard the struggle, saw what was happening.”
She grabbed the younger woman roughly by the arm and pushed her out into the hallway, forcing her to look down at Dr. Robertson. “He may die, Audrey. Get to a phone. Now! Call 911. Get medical help and backup.”
She started away. “Where are you going, Doctor?”
She said nothing, disappearing down the blackened corridor, pursuing Archer. She stopped before the stairwell door where she believed he had gone, taking a deep breath, maintaining her composure as best she could. The hefty weapon in her hand had gone a long way to restore her courage.
She no longer felt helpless. In fact, with her training and expertise, she knew that it was correct for Archer to be afraid now. Somehow she knew that he was aware of just how dangerous she had become. Then she heard the clatter of metal steps inside the stairwell. He was desperate to put as much distance between them as possible.
Still, she must control her hands, stop the trembling. But her every nerve had been struck as if by flint, her entire nervous system hot-wired.
She straightened and arched her backbone, took a deep breath and drew on her FBI training.
She pushed the door wide, sending it thundering against the wall, echoing up and down the stairwell. Archer, wherever he was, went silent. She searched the upward spiral of the stairs and then the down, her cane tapping a metallic warning to him. She could see no sign of him.
“ I hope, you bastard… I hope you went in the direction I wanted you to go,” she shouted, taking the stairs up.
From below, Archer dared stick his head over the rail to look upward; seeing her shadow along one wall, he was mildly struck by the fact that she had regained her cane and seemed perfectly capable of quick forward movement. Acting on adrenaline, he thought. He hesitated in making a decision to follow the shadow or go ahead as planned. He knew time was running from him like a river now, and that he must save himself, survive to catch her another day when her defenses were lowered.
Quietly, quickly, he continued with his original plan.
Alan Rychman shouted at the Quantico authorities in the front of the six-passenger helicopter. “Can't you radio ahead? Can't you get us there any faster?”
“ No one's responding at security in the building where she works, and she's not responding to calls at her home,” replied Agent Stan Corvella, who had picked Rychman up at the airport.
A second agent then turned and said, “Don't want to alarm you any more than you already are, Captain Rychman, but there's been an emergency 911 call out of the same location as Dr. Coran's laboratory.”
“ Jesus, oh, God,” he moaned. “We're too late.”
“ Hold on,” said the pilot through their headphones. “I'm bringing this bird in.”
Below, on the runway at the military base at Quantico, strobe lights were flashing in a myriad of colors, indicating state, local and federal authorities had been alerted to the danger. Thanks to Alan Rychman's repeated attempts to get help, everyone was aware by now that Dr. Jessica Coran's life was in danger.
He hadn't time to call from New York, as he had raced out to the airport in an attempt to catch Archer before he got off the ground, but he learned at La Guardia that there were no flight lists with Archer's name on it; however, he did come across a Dr. Casadessus on a flight far earlier in the day go-ing to D.C. Rychman then got on the first available flight, which was held for his boarding. Flashing his badge and credentials, he was allowed to retain his. 38 for the flight.
It was en route and from the plane that he telephoned the FBI in Quantico. With a bad connection, he finally got someone to understand that Jessica was in imminent danger. He gave a full description of Simon Archer and was assured that Dr. Coran would be safe. He then sat down and waited for what seemed an endless flight-actually only fifty minutes-at the end of which he located the FBI chopper waiting for him on the tarmac.
They had bad news, one agent said, as he shook hands with the two men. The phrase almost knocked Rychman down until the second agent qualified it. “Dr. Coran was not at her place, and at the moment no one's quite certain where she is, but we assume she may be in her lab and that's where we're going.”
“ Why haven't you sent someone to the lab?”
“ We've sent word ahead for security to be beefed up and we asked the guard if Dr. Coran was in the building. At that time, we were told that she was not on the premises.”
“ Other areas are being checked,” said the second agent.
“ We've got to find her,” muttered Rychman, drained and fearful.
Rychman had spent the previous several days going over every shred of legitimate information about Simon Archer, with Lou Pierce's help the entire time. He had done what he could to reconstruct Simon Archer's past, but large gaps remained, especially those related to his childhood, young manhood and schooling years. So Rychman had put his best detectives on it, sending a pair to visit Mrs. Felona Hankersen, the woman who'd been fired from St. Stephen's when Archer-allegedly-made a mistake.
Meanwhile, IAD detectives had apprised Rychman of a shopping list of grievances, all relatively minor when viewed alone: incidental procedural errors, some a first-year med student might make. The accumulation of errors, however, pointed toward an unusual picture, just as Jessica had tried to tell him. There were wide gaps in the chain of custody of evidence-a breach of ethics and conduct-not only with the Claw victims but with the evidence that had indicted and condemned Leon Helfer to his cell. Had Leon had a better defense attorney, he might have gotten off on chain of custody violations large enough to drive a truck through.
Altogether, the shadow of wrongdoing in the laboratory had only grown larger during the short time since Jessica had left. Archer's motives must be questioned. Was it blind ambition, an attempt to best Dr. Darius' record? Was there, buried below Archer's machinations, evidence of far more sinister motives and crimes? Jessica had suspected Archer of intentionally poisoning an eleven-year-old boy who may or may not have witnessed a ghastly perversion, and if he was capable of that, was he also capable of helping Dr. Darius out that hospital window?
His careful plan to outwit Dr. Darius had unraveled when Jessica came on the scene and Dr. Darius returned. From that point on, there was never a right time to expose the “truth” about the Claw as Dr. Archer had created it.
Things began to really smell bad as Rychman examined closely how Archer had mishandled the Claw case. Archer had been M.E. of record on the second, third, fifth and ninth killings. Perkins had been on the scene for the sixth case, but Archer had done the autopsy. The first, fourth, seventh and eighth autopsies had fallen to Darius. The seventh, eighth and ninth victims had also seen input from Jessica Coran. In all cases where Archer had not participated, the integrity of the chain of custody of evidence was maintained assiduously. Even Perkins concerned himself with this. But with Archer there were serious time lapses between crime scene and lab, between tagged information and missing tags and lost evidence. He had placed clothing into plastic rather than paper bags, knowing that plastic hampered the natural air-drying process, which greatly enhanced microscopic opportunities for blood and seminal stains. He also had failed to chalk-mark notable stains on occasion. Through various “misunderstandings” evidence had been accidentally destroyed or lost or had gotten out of his hands. A trail of responsibility for such indiscretions led to lab assistants and sometimes Perkins, but in all cases, it ought to have been Archer's responsibility.
He added to the equation the deaths of Leon Helfer's boss and dentist, and the fact that both men's bank accounts had swelled with thousands of dollars only weeks before. Leon Helfer couldn't have laid out the kind of
