Текст книги "Riptide"

Автор книги: Michael Prescott

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

thirty-nine

“Sandra?” she called, entering.

From the rear of the building, a soft metallic creak.

She moved in the direction of the noise, navigating a narrow hall.

“It’s Jennifer. Are you okay?”

“Go away.” Sandra’s voice, weak and low, coming from the open door at the end of the corridor.

“Is everything all right?” Jennifer asked.

“Just...go away. Please.” Her voice cracked on the last word.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jennifer said, and she stepped through the doorway and found Sandra Price seated at a small metal desk, her hands resting on a careworn blotter, a knife held against her throat.

“She told you to go away,” Richard said. “But you never would listen to anybody.”

He stood behind Sandra, his eyes staring with unfocused hostility. Eyes that hated the whole world.

Jennifer stopped inside the doorway. She spent a long moment studying those eyes. “What’s going on?”

“You tell her, Sandra. You tell my big sister what’s going on.”

Sandra shifted in her seat, and the swivel chair creaked. That was the noise Jennifer had heard. “He came in a half hour ago. Found me back here. Since then, we’ve been getting to know each other.”

“Has he...hurt you?”

“No. We’ve been having a little chat, is all. He’s quite the raconteur.” She tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.

“What are you doing here, Richard?”

His lip curled in a sneer. “You know. If anyone knows, you do.”

She took a step closer. “Tell me.”

“You sent them after me. This bitch—and the other one.”

“What other one?”

“The one who was spying on me. Following me. He was in the library today. So were you. That’s when I knew for sure that you were in it together.”

“I had nothing to do with that man. Neither did Sandra.”

He barked a sharp laugh. “You’re so full of shit.” The knife trembled in his grasp, its blade gleaming in the glow of the desk lamp. “She put up those posters with my face on them. And you talked to her. And now you’re here.”

“I’m here because I thought Sandra was in trouble.”

“You were right. I’m going to cut her. Cut you, too.”

“Sandra and I weren’t following you. The man who did that is in police custody now. He won’t bother you again.”

“You’re lying. You always lie. You’re in league with this bitch and that other one. All three of you, in your little conspiracy. You think you had me fooled. But I know.”

His hand jerked, and Sandra winced as a thread of blood appeared on her throat.

“You’re all working against me. Just admit it, and I’ll let her go.”

She would not admit to anything. It would only reinforce his paranoia.

“You’re imagining things,” she said.

Sandra spoke in a dry whisper. “Honey, that is not what the man wants to hear.”

“No more bullshit.” His red-rimmed eyes glared at her. “You want to destroy me. You want me dead. Just say it!”

“That’s what you want to hear me say?” Jennifer asked. “That I’m your enemy?”

“Yes, God damn it!”

“I would never hurt you, Richard.”

Sandra inhaled sharply, scared by this answer.

His face was wild. “You want me to cut her throat? Is that what you want?”

Jennifer didn’t reply. She was rolling up the sleeve on her left arm. She stepped closer, letting him see the scar. “Remember this? Remember how you saved me?”

He stared at her arm, transfixed by the scar. His voice was quieter when he said, “That was a long time ago.”

“But I haven’t forgotten. Have you?”

“No.”

“I’ll always remember hearing your voice. You were calling for me, and I thought it was a dream, so I didn’t answer. You found me anyway. I never asked you how you knew I was in the utility room.”

“It was the blood.” His eyes were far away. “Spots of blood on the floor.”

She took another step, and now she was three feet from the desk.

“You picked me up and carried me to a car. I didn’t even know whose car it was. You didn’t have a license. You were only fourteen.”

“It was Jim Hobarth’s car. I borrowed it.”

“And drove three hundred fifty miles to San Francisco. You’d talked the operator into tracing the call to the pay phone in the shopping center.”

“She didn’t want to do it. I said it was life-and-death. She got her supervisor to approve....”

“You made it to the shopping center and got inside somehow.”

“Through a back window.”

“And you found me and drove me to the hospital, and later when I’d had a transfusion, I woke up and found you in the room with me. You know what you said? Remember the words?”

He shook his head.

“You said, ‘I knew you were in bad shape. You needed me.’ That’s all.”

She closed the gap with the desk, and now he was within her reach.

“I was—everything was different then.” His face hardened. “You were different. You weren’t after my money. You weren’t trying to put me away.”

“There’s hardly any money left, Richard. You’ve spent almost all of it.”

“You’re hiding it from me. You want it for yourself.”

“It’s nearly gone. And our house—it’s gone, too.”

His lower lip quivered. “You’re a lying whore.”

“It burned tonight. It’s all gone, and the family papers are gone, and soon the money will be gone. And you know what? I’m glad.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I don’t want anything holding on to us anymore. I want a fresh start. Remember how we used to play miniature golf, and you’d give me a do-over if I hit a bad shot? That’s what I want. A do-over.”

“We don’t get do-overs.”

“Sometimes we do. We just have to ask. How about you? Would you like a new start?”

He reared back, and Sandra shut her eyes. “I’m going to cut this bitch’s throat, and then I’m going to cut yours.”

Jennifer held his gaze from a yard away. “No, you’re not.”

“Who says?”

“You’re not a killer, Richard. I thought you were, but I was wrong. You’re not going to hurt Sandra or me.” She extended her hand, her left hand, so he could follow the seam of the scar down her arm. “Are you?”

Her fingertips brushed his chest. He stared at them, at the pale vulnerability of her offered hand.

“Everyone’s against me,” he said, the words so soft they almost went unheard.

“I’m not.”

Doubt flickered on his face. “Then why’d you come after me? Why’d you hunt me down? Why wouldn’t you leave me alone?”

“I knew you were in bad shape,” she said. “You needed me.”

He heard the words, and their echo from years ago.

Slowly he handed over the knife, dropping it into her upraised palm.

Sandra exhaled.

Jennifer withdrew her hand. “Thank you, Richard.”

“You’d better not be fucking with me,” he muttered.

“I think both of us have been fucked with quite enough.”

1911

Hare was dying.

He had known it for some time. The pain in his belly had become progressively worse, stealing his breath and his heart’s blood. Over the past several months he had been stricken intermittently with spells of weakness. The movements of his bowels were bloody and agonizing. He had trouble keeping food down. Of late he had subsisted on corn mush and warm beer.

He was fifty-one years old. His great work was at an end. Never again would he prowl the streets, purging them of the female element. The whores...and they were all whores, every last one. Toward the end he no longer singled out streetwalkers. Any woman would do, if she was young and had life in her.

His thinking in this regard had changed after the consummation of his marriage on the kitchen floor. He brooded long over the significance of the act. He had never meant to defile himself. It was her blood that overmastered him, robbed him of sense and self-control. It was her blood that made her a harlot.

And all women bled.

Even knowing this, he could not resist her wiles. He continued to take her from time to time, and not always when she was bleeding. He hated himself for it but could not stop. Thankfully, his illness had accomplished what his willpower could not—cleansed him of carnal desire.

He carried on with his work as late as possible. Only last month he claimed the sixth of his victims to be interred in his cellar. The sixth and last. He would not hunt again.

But his work would continue. He would see to that.

“Are you ready, Papa?” a small voice called from the top of the stairs.

Hare smiled. The lad was eager for his promised birthday present. It would be a grand surprise, his father had assured him.

No one was ever permitted in the cellar. In the three and a half years since his family took up residence in the house he’d commissioned in Venice, both his wife and his son had been absolutely barred from entry. The cellar’s trapdoor was ordinarily secured with a padlock to which Hare alone possessed the key, and when he was in the cellar, he secured the door from below with a dead bolt.

But today, on the occasion of his boy’s seventh birthday, Hare had left the trapdoor unbolted. He had lit the room with a kerosene lamp. And he was indeed ready.

“You may come,” he summoned.

The boy raced down the stairs so precipitously Hare feared he might break his neck. He reached the bottom, flushed with joy.

Hare knelt by him, fighting the pulse of agony that throbbed continually in his midsection. As yet he had not let the boy see what was under the stairs. It was necessary to prepare him for the sight.

“You’re a man now,” he said, laying a hand on the child’s shoulder. “You deserve to see my secret room, and to learn its mysteries.”

The boy was awed. “Yes, Papa.”

Hare picked up a metal box and held it in outstretched hands. “This is for you.”

His son fumbled open the clasp and peered inside, registering disappointment when he saw the contents. “A book?”

“Not just any book,” Hare said. “It is my diary from my years in London when I was a younger man. A record of the things I did there. Secret things. Famous things.”

“How can they be secret and famous?” the boy asked, sensibly enough.

“The deeds were famous, but my role in them has never been known. You are the first and only one to learn of my past.”

The boy ran his fingers over the diary’s black calfskin cover. “Were you...a pirate?”

“Not a pirate, lad. Something much better. I was old Red Jack.”

“Your name’s not Jack.”

“No, that was only a nickname I bestowed upon myself. Have you heard of Jack the Ripper, boy?”

The solemn eyes widened with startlement and something like fear. “The one who killed ladies and...cut them into bits?”

“You know of him, then. You know his legend.”

“Yes.”

“I am he.”

The boy stood speechless. “But he was wicked,” he said finally.

“That’s only what some people say. The truth of the matter is altogether different. It was a public good, ridding the world of fallen women. Of all women. They are harlots and temptresses, all of them.”

“Not Mother.”

“Yes, even she.”

He shook his head. “No.”

Hare felt a stab of frustration. But he reminded himself that the boy was young, the teaching difficult. “Even your mother,” he said slowly. “She cannot help it. Vice is inborn in her.”

“I don’t believe you.” Sudden tears stood in the boy’s eyes. “You’re telling tales to frighten me.”

The sight of tears maddened Hare. To cry was unmanly. The boy had been coddled excessively.

“These are no tales.” He snatched the child’s hand. “I’ll show you.”

He pulled his son under the staircase, where the crypt in the cellar wall lay exposed in the lamp’s flickering glow.

His six beauties were piled inside, their limbs severed from their trunks. Those on the bottom had rotted, their delicate skin shrinking into mummified folds. Those near the top were more fresh. The latest one showed almost no signs of decay. She might have been a wax figure, disassembled for storage. The pink was still in her cheeks.

“See?” Hare said, the word echoing in the cellar’s confines, a shout of triumph.

The boy screamed and would have run, had Hare not clutched his hand in a firm grip.

It was the scream that dismayed Hare most of all. Tears could be dried, doubts could be answered, but such spontaneous revulsion and terror might prove impervious to persuasion.

“They can’t hurt you,” Hare snapped. “They’re dead and gone.”

Another scream, this one trailing into infantile sobs.

“You’re a damn coward.” Hare pronounced the words like a verdict. “You’re a weakling. You’re no better than a woman.” It was the final insult.

“Let me go.” The boy tugged at his father’s hand. “Let me go!”

“This is your legacy. Your destiny. You cannot escape it. You must embrace it.”

“Let me go, Papa, please!”

“I offer you greatness. I offer you a chance to change the world.”

The boy hung his head and wept.

Hare spoke to him for a long time. He told him of his London adventures and of his travels. He told him that he had once been Edward Hare, though now he bore another name, a made-up name of his own choosing. He told him that someday he would understand the awful responsibility he had inherited, the opportunities it afforded, and the price it would exact.

The boy listened, but he did not understand. Terror remained stamped on his face, the threat of more tears looming in his eyes.

“I have been an agent of purification,” Hare concluded. “And when you are old enough, you will recommence my work.”

The boy looked away in stubborn denial. “I’ll never be mad like you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Blood will tell. You are more like me than you know.”

“Never,” the boy repeated.

Finally Hare extracted a promise from him to tell no one, not even Mother. And he let him go. The boy scampered up the stairs, leaving the diary behind.

Hare sighed. He had done his best. But the boy was too young. Had the illness not come on so fast...had he been granted another five years...

Perhaps on his twelfth birthday the boy would have understood. Or perhaps the case was forever hopeless. There might be too much of his mother in him. Too much of her thin and tainted blood.

He passed some little time thumbing through his diary, remembering the first days of his calling, days he commemorated in his last six kills. Although his role in these most recent murders must remain hidden, someday the clues might be deciphered and proper credit given. A hundred years from now, or more. He would not be forgotten. And possibly his son would come around. He himself had been twenty-eight before he felt the stirrings of his missionary impulses. Given time, the lad might follow in his footsteps, and his son after him.

At last he shut the tin, securing the clasp, and planted it in the loose earth of the crypt. It would be here for his son to find, should the desire seize him. If not, it might yet come to light by another’s efforts.

Someday.

He closed up the wall, stacking the bricks and troweling the mortar. He worked for a long time, sealing away the bodies and the book.

Finished, he mounted the stairs. He was weary. He needed rest. Rest from all his labors. Rest forevermore.

In the backyard the lad was playing with his little red wagon. Hare stood at the window, watching, until the child felt his stare and looked at him.

Fear flickered in the young face, but only for a moment. Tentatively, tremulously, the boy smiled.

Then Hare knew that it would be all right, and that his work would go on.

forty

The House of Silence burned to the ground.

Jennifer spent much of the next day sifting the ashes in search of salvageable remains. She found little. Her Prius had been ruined, her family heirlooms and mementos erased from existence. Her collection of sea glass was gone, too. None of that mattered. The house had held on to her for too long. Now she was free.

In its death throes the house had collapsed into the cellar, destroying the crypt, cremating Edward Hare’s victims. Only a few blackened teeth survived.

“And the diary?” Jennifer asked Draper as they dined in a Santa Monica restaurant that night, safely away from the TV reporters.

Draper shrugged. “It wasn’t in Parkinson’s car or on his person. He may have left it in the house to burn. It would only have incriminated him by implicating his ancestor.”

“Without the diary...”

“There’s no way to prove he was a blood relation of Jack the Ripper, or that Jack was ever in Venice—or even in America, for that matter. Of course, Parkinson's personal effects provide plenty of evidence that he was obsessed with the Ripper case. We found more than two hundred books on the Ripper in his house, and he’d been visiting the Ripperwalk site, and others like it, for years. But that in itself proves nothing.”

“So before he started killing, Parkinson could have been just an ordinary guy with an interest in Jack the Ripper?”

“Not quite. We know his father was the Devil’s Henchman. And Parkinson knew it too. In the house there were...souvenirs from the case, hand-me-downs.” He saw her questioning gaze and waved his hand. “It’s not something to discuss while we’re eating. Believe me.”

“Okay.” She thought of Catharine Eddowes’ kidney. Suddenly her liver pâté seemed less appetizing. “I guess we’ll never know why he did it. Or how he framed Richard so perfectly.”

“We can make a pretty fair guess about Richard, at least. Let’s say Parkinson knows, from family lore, that his ancestor Edward Hare left a cache of bodies and a diary somewhere in Venice. What he doesn't know is the exact location. Then he hears about the discovery in your cellar. He makes sure he’s the one who processes the remains. He looks for the diary. Remember how he noticed some of the dirt had been disturbed?”

“Yes. I pretended I didn’t know anything about it.”

“But he suspected you were lying—and that, as a document analyst, you couldn’t resist the temptation to study the book. He must have watched your house early that morning and followed you to the cemetery. He left the note on your car to test your reaction. He couldn't have been a hundred percent sure until he saw your message on the Ripperwalk site. The reference to Edward Hare confirmed his suspicions. He knew you were the only one who could know that name—and only if you had the book."

"And he also knew about my brother, because the subject came up when we were in the cellar. So he tracked down Richard...”

“And spied on him. Richard was paranoid to begin with, and when he realized he was being watched, it spooked him. He left his apartment and went on the run, convinced he was being stalked."

Jennifer nodded. It wouldn't have taken much to set Richard off. Once he was out of his apartment, Parkinson must have picked the lock and burned the files. In the cellar she'd mentioned that Richard had kept the family papers, and that they might include a record of when Graham Silence purchased the house. Parkinson would have wanted to destroy that evidence, if it existed.

In going though the files, he must have found a record of Richard's library card number and the associated PIN. That was how he’d logged on to the system using Richard's ID.

“I guess,” she said, “it was just a coincidence that Richard and Parkinson were at the library at the same time.”

"No, I don't think so. Remember, there were library books in Richard's apartment, which Parkinson would have seen. He knew Richard liked to hang out there. Parkinson needed an untraceable public computer to download the file you said you’d put online, and he probably chose the Santa Monica Library because there was a good chance Richard would be there. And because he could use Richard's log-on info to cement the frame-up."

She thought of her brother, already panicking in the certainty—correct for once—that someone was out to get him. Then he spotted his pursuer in the library. He fled into the stacks, and when Jennifer came after him, he was convinced she was part of the plot.

She wondered if Parkinson had already chosen Maura as his next victim. He could have found some reference to Maura in Richard's files. Getting into her building would have been no problem. He needed only to identify himself as a police consultant, and Maura would have buzzed him in.

"You're very quiet," Draper said.

She realized she'd been picking at her food, lost in thought. Without looking up, she asked, “Did he have any children?”

“No. Never married. No offspring.”

“Brothers, sisters?”

“He was an only child. The last of the line, Jen. Edward Hare died with him.”

“He must have known about the Ripper connection since he was a boy. But he didn’t act on it until eighteen months ago. Any idea why?”

“We’ve looked at his medical records. He was diagnosed with MS six years ago, but only began to develop seriously debilitating symptoms within the last two years. It looks like his illness was the trigger. He realized it was now or never. Whenever the disease was in remission, he would strike.”

“His illness alone, and even his family background, wouldn't account for his hostility to women.”

“From what we've learned, he had only one serious relationship with a woman, years ago. They were planning to get married. Then he broke it off. He seems to have found out she was unfaithful, or at least he thought she was.”

Like Hare, she thought, and poor blameless Kitty.

“The shrinks say his failed relationship could have turned him against women in general.” Draper shrugged. “That's their theory, anyway. Who knows?”

“You don’t trust shrinks?” she said, smiling.

“Some of them are okay.”

“Any in particular?”

“The pretty ones.”

“Well, aren’t you the smooth talker.”

“I’m very suave. Get used to it.”

“It may take a little time.”

“You’ll have all the time you need.”

She fiddled with her fork, watching the tines catch the light. “It still doesn’t explain why he did it. What motivated him.”

“Did Edward Hare’s diary explain his motives?”

“Not really. It was kind of a power trip combined with a moral mission. Unleashing his animal instincts while purging the world of vice. But I don’t know if any of that was the real reason.”

“What was it, then?”

She let the fork drop. “I think the son of a bitch just enjoyed it. I think he was having fun.”

“And that may be as good an explanation for Parkinson as any. He got to fool the whole department—people he worked with every day. We all felt sorry for him because of his illness, and secretly he was laughing at us. He was the one in the know, and the rest of us were in the dark.”

“How about now? Who’s in the know?”

Draper didn’t follow. “Everybody knows Parkinson was the killer—”

“But they don’t know he was Jack’s great-grandson. They don’t know about the diary or all the rest of it, do they?”

He got it now. “The only ones who know, or ever knew, are you, me, Casey, Parkinson, and Maura.”

“And now there’s no proof.”

“True. But you could tell your story anyway. Some people will believe you. Harrison Sirk probably would. He could get a book deal out of it, cut you in on the profits. Or...”

“Yes?”

“Not every case has to be solved. The world has done without a solution to the Ripper murders for better than a hundred years.”

She thought about this throughout the next few weeks, as March bled into April. She was living in a residential hotel in Marina del Rey and visiting Richard daily at St. John’s Hospital, where he was undergoing mandatory psychiatric treatment. Forced to take his meds, he had regained a measure of lucidity. He was eating regularly and gaining weight. He would never be the man he was, but she hadn’t lied when she said he could have a new start. And maybe someday he could be moved to a halfway house and resume something close to a normal life. Maybe.

Casey was back on the job. If it bothered him that she was seeing Draper, he kept it to himself.

Only once did he mention the fire. “I heard what you did for me,” he said in a serious tone. “Trying to get me out, rather than saving yourself. That was a standup thing to do.”

“The smoke clouded my brain. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“That’s it, Pocket-Size. Keep messing with me.”

“It’s what I do. And don’t call me Pocket-Size.”

Media interest in the case was intense for a few days, then predictably died down. Harrison Sirk tried to buttonhole her at Maura’s memorial service. Jennifer told him to fuck off.

Draper arrested his prime suspect in the murder of Marilyn Diaz. A search of the man’s house turned up a rough draft of the threat message. He confessed. His motive was just what Jennifer had predicted. He had made advances and had been rebuffed. It was such a little thing, but large enough to end a woman’s life.

A real estate agent from Maura’s office told Jennifer that her parcel of land was worth one and a half million dollars. Jennifer put it on the market. She just might buy the bungalow in the Valley that Maura had always talked about.

For now, she was still near the sea. She walked on the beach one April evening and thought one last time about Draper’s words. He was right. There was no need to tell the world about the diary, no need to reopen the case and refocus the media’s cameras on her family. No need to revisit the past. The past was dead. It was dust and ashes. To cling to it was to die inside. Life moved on.

When the sun was gone and the sky was deep purple fading to black, she walked out onto Venice pier. At the end of the pier, she reached into her tote bag and brought out a rusty tin box.

Parkinson had indeed left the diary in the house to burn, but the box had protected it. The pages, though scorched, were readable. She had found it in her salvage hunt and had told no one, not even Draper. Probably it wasn’t good to start off their relationship with a lie, even if only a lie of omission. But he was a cop, and he might insist that the diary be booked into evidence, and then the whole story would come out.

Alone on the pier, Jennifer leaned over the railing and dropped the tin straight down, well away from the pilings with their tangled fishing lines. It hit the water with a splash, bobbed on the waves, and drifted away into the dark. Perhaps it would be carried out to sea, or perhaps, like Marilyn Diaz, it would be caught in a riptide and returned shoreward. She would let time and chance decide.

She hoped, though, that it would be lost in the ocean’s distant depths. Not every case had to be solved, as Draper said. Let Jack the Ripper remain a mystery. Let him be remembered not as what he was, not as Edward Hare with his motherless childhood and his lurid dreams of blood, but as what the world wanted him to be—a tall man in a top hat and black cloak, striding down an alley, retreating forever into the fog.