Текст книги "Riptide"

Автор книги: Michael Prescott

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

1896

Chicago was a fine place. Near the stockyards the reek of slaughtered hogs rose like a miasma in the congested air. It was a city of butchers, where Hare felt very much at home.

This evening he dined alone, as was his custom, in his room at the Lexington Hotel. He had taken up semipermanent residence at the Lexington shortly after it opened in ’92. He rented his room by the month, and found it most satisfactory. From his window he could gaze down on the ceaseless flow of traffic on the wide thoroughfare. Everyone was on the move, pursuing wealth with the fanatical ardor that medieval saints had brought to the pursuit of grace. It was all so very American.

He had become something of an American himself. The constant throbbing beat of the city had quickened something in him, made him a new man, a practical man on the rise in the great world of business. His drab and studious ways seemed far behind him now, as distant as the swing of the bat on the cricket field. He had nearly forgotten his former life.

But he did not mean to be forgotten by those he had left behind.

Hare dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, savored another bite of the excellent roast pheasant, and wondered what the police in London thought of his latest letter.

He had sent only a handful of previous communications under his nom de plume. In his first missive, mailed in the heady days of 1888, he merely wished to introduce himself to his public. He posted the letter to the Central News Agency, because he was afraid the police would hush it up if it went to them directly. It was a bit of a lark. He played loose with grammar and punctuation, preferring to pass as a less educated man. It would hardly do to have the authorities hunting a schoolmaster.

Dear Boss,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet... I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name

Jack the Ripper—a fine sobriquet, he had always thought. Jack was a name long associated with the criminal class, most famously with the legendary Springheeled Jack, the terror of Britain in the 1830s. And the Ripper—because he ripped up his victims, of course, but ripper was also street argot for a well-dressed gentlemen, a man about town. The name blended violence and mystery, and was spiced with humor. He really was most fond of it.

When his letter did not appear in print directly, he followed up with a postcard that further established his bona fides.

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping back last letter till I got to work again—Jack the Ripper

He’d been pleased with that one. The nickname “saucy Jacky” had come to him from Shakespeare’s sonnets—sonnet 128, if he was not mistaken: Since saucy jacks so happy are in this... A marvelous touch, but unappreciated. To his knowledge no one had picked up the reference.

That message, at least, did the trick. The two communiqués became famous throughout England—even throughout the world.

Except for his regrettable decision, taken while inebriated, to post the better part of Eddowes’s kidney to Mr. Lusk, he had not felt the impulse to write again until a year later, when the whore Alice McKenzie fell to his knife. By that time the police were saying old Jack was no longer at his game, and Alice was the work of some other “fiend.” This was most unfair. A man wanted credit for his work.

DEAR BOSS,

I am very sorry I have given you all the trouble I have, but my thirst for blood must be satisfied, when I have slaughtered 6 more I shall give myself up to your dogs, before this month is gone you will hear of me again, this time it shall be Kings Cross where a few of the whores want thinning. Boss your dogs are too hot for me at Whitechapel or I should have done the rest there...

He had intended never to write again. The business had become altogether too risky. Innovations were in the wind. People spoke of detecting a man’s finger marks on items he’d touched and matching them to the man himself; it was claimed no two men’s digits bore the same pattern of loops and whorls. And to think he had intentionally stamped his bloody thumb print on the postcard sent in 1888... The card must still be on file in the police office, and if he were ever apprehended, some enterprising detective might think of making a comparison.

In spite of his misgivings, he did send another message. Honor required it. In September of ’89 a woman’s torso turned up on Pinchin Street, and some fool suggested that Jack the Ripper did the deed. Of course it was not his work at all. Most likely the bitch fell prey to the criminal gangs that sought to control the prostitution trade. Determined to escape blame for such an inartistic piece of work, he scribbled a quick note in pencil on a postcard and dropped it in the nearest pillar-box, addressed to the Evening News and Post.

Dear Boss

The Ripper scare this morning is an infernal scandal on me you know. I never do my ripping in that fashion but give them a chance to catch me ha ha I’d show you again soon won’t be long...

His last victim in London was nearly his undoing. By sheer bad luck a constable came plodding by while the blood was fresh. Then there was the business with Vole and the police, and he made his desperate flight to New York City.

He had expected never to see London again. But his prospering business enterprises had widened his circle of friends and opened up many new opportunities. It was in the pursuit of one such venture that he had made a brief return to England within the past two months.

Naturally he used his “American” name, as he thought of it. And just as naturally, he meant to combine business with pleasure. He meant to see Kitty again.

And he brought his knife.

Tracking her down was more difficult than he anticipated. She was long gone from her lodgings, and now married. But he sniffed out her hiding place, a cottage in a respectable neighborhood, with a fenced-in garden blooming with roses.

Through the decorative loopholes in the garden gate he spied on her. She wore a bonnet and a pale blue dress, and she was singing songs to a child, a girl of two or three who giggled riotously on any pretext.

None of this was what he had expected. He felt the passion die in him. She was not the girl he remembered. She meant nothing to him now, either for good or ill.

He did not enter the garden, nor did he return at night.

But before leaving for the States, he did post two quick notes. The first was addressed to Kitty's husband.

Sir,

This is to inform you that your loving life is a dirty whore. Make enquiries of her past and you shall see.

Yours respectfully,

A Friend

The second was posted directly to the police. Good old Abberline had retired years ago, sad to say, and Sir Charles Warren, the hapless commissioner, was long gone, but Swanson perhaps remained in the game, and a few others.

Dear Boss,

You will be surprised to find that this comes from yours of old Jack-the-Ripper. Ha. Ha. If my old friend Mr Warren is dead you can read it. You might remember me if you try and think a little Ha Ha. The last job was a bad one and no mistake nearly buckled, and meant it to be the best of the lot curse it, Ha Ha. Im alive yet and you’ll soon find it out. I mean to go on again when I get the chance. Wont it be nice dear old Boss to have the good old times once again. You never caught me and you never will. Ha Ha

You police are a smart lot, the lot of you couldnt catch one man Where have I been Dear Boss youd like to know. Abroad, if you would like to know, and just come back…

And so on in similar fashion. It was signed with a flourish:

Yours truly

Jack-the-Ripper

That was three weeks ago. By now the letter would have been received and read and studied and worried over. It would have made the rounds, he thought, passing from hand to hand, circulating among all the inspectors still on the force who remembered the autumn of ’88.

Finishing his meal, Hare reclined in his chair with a glass of cognac. A guileless smile rode his lips. He believed, quite sincerely, that the police had been glad to get his note.

It was always pleasant to hear from an old friend.

Gazing out the window as the street lights winked on, he wondered how much longer he would remain in Chicago. In recent months he had felt something stir in him, a restlessness. The West called out, with its deserts and mountains and, at the end of it all, the serene Pacific. Soon, he thought, he would move on.

Though he would leave Chicago, he would not forget his debt to the city that gave him a fresh start. And Chicago had been good for him in another way. It opened his eyes to a new and better approach to his secret trade. He had Herman Mudgett to thank for that.

Mudgett, more widely known as H. H. Holmes, came to Chicago in the ’80s, procuring a chemist’s shop by the expedient method of murdering its owner. In 1892 he completed construction of the World’s Fair Hotel, a building later known as the Murder Castle. To all appearances an ordinary hostelry, it was in fact a “chamber of horrors” and a “charnel house,” as the excited press would observe. The hotel contained soundproofed rooms in which Holmes’s victims could be gassed to death, and torture racks, and greased chutes for the conveyance of bodies, and a copious cellar with furnaces and lime pits for their disposal.

The facility was open for business during the Great Exposition of ’93. Two dozen tourists, mostly females, perished in Mr. Holmes’s hotel.

Owing to plain bad luck, Holmes was arrested on other charges in ’94, while traveling on the East Coast. Investigation into his background widened the scope of his crimes. Convicted after a five-day trial in Philadelphia, he was hanged last May.

The publicity afforded Holmes rankled Hare just a bit. He was particularly vexed by the prosecutor’s long-winded closing argument, in which he dubbed Holmes “the most dangerous man in the world.” Hare resented that title. It was one he meant to reserve for himself.

Nevertheless, he was grateful to Mr. Mudgett, a.k.a. Dr. Holmes, for having stimulated a most rewarding train of thought.

It was the cellar, of course. The cellar, which Holmes had equipped with a dissecting table and surgical instruments. The bothersome human remains had been eliminated with masterful efficiency. Had Holmes left his victims on the street, the city would have been in an uproar. As it was, he operated unsuspected.

In Chicago and surrounding towns, Hare indulged his habits occasionally, though with less feverish compulsion than before. Always he chose his victims circumspectly—human trash whose disappearance would never make the papers. He concealed the bodies in deep woods, plentiful in this land, or in lakes or caves. He did not wish to leave a trail to follow.

Such outings were rare. He had entered a quiet phase. Discretion was best. And as long as he remained at the Lexington, he could hardly use his home as a killing ground.

Someday, however, he would have a house of his own. A house with a cellar.

He would be sure of that.

seventeen

When she got back home, the bones were still there, and so was the diary, and so was yesterday’s threatening note.

Everything Sirk told her dovetailed with the diarist’s account. She checked one of her Ripper books and found the murder of Carrie Brown covered in detail. It happened on April 23, 1891, in the East River Hotel. The murder of Frances Coles in London took place only two months before.

Hare wrote that he would take a steamship to the United States. The hotel was near the docks. He might have killed Carrie Brown on his first night in his new country.

The American connection meant Edward Hare quite possibly was Jack the Ripper. She couldn’t prove it, but she had no grounds to dispute it. For now, at least, she would have to accept it as true.

Sometime after his arrival, Hare headed west, somehow ending up in California. He could have gone on killing for years, under his new identity. Was it Graham Silence? All the evidence said yes.

If Hare was her ancestor, he must have passed down his insanity. To her father. To her brother.

And if her father had been the Devil’s Henchman—if, if, if—then Hare’s homicidal impulses had been passed down, as well.

To Richard also?

Where did he go at night?

There were unsolved crimes in Venice, of course. But as far as she knew, there was no pattern to suggest a serial killer. Unless the pattern was disguised. She remembered Draper saying that a crafty killer could vary his M.O., alter the victim profile, confuse the authorities. He was talking about 1908, but the same could be true today. Maybe there was a pattern, but no one was looking for it.

She went online and searched for “Venice, California” plus “homicide.” Too many hits.

One of the first items listed was a press release put out by Sandra Price. Jennifer had heard of her. She was a community activist who was always staging rallies and town meetings to demand more police resources. The local cops thought she was a pain in the ass. Maura disliked her for putting a negative spin on Venice and making it harder to move real estate. That’s the old Venice, Maura liked to say. Gangbangers and druggies—1990s stuff, off-message for today.

But Sandra Price didn’t care who she pissed off or what the official message was supposed to be. She only wanted results. If anyone would have the details on unsolved crimes in this locale, she would.

The press release was linked to the homepage of C.A.S.T., Citizens Against Street Crime. Founder and director: Sandra Price. A phone number was provided. Jennifer called it. A receptionist answered.

“Sandra Price, please,” Jennifer said.

“That’s me.”

Maybe community action groups didn’t have receptionists.

She hadn’t expected to get right through. Now she had to improvise.

“Sandra, my name is Jennifer Silence. I’m a psychologist in Venice who works as a consultant to the LAPD. I’m doing some background work”—that ought to be vague enough—“on local crimes that haven’t been cleared yet. I know that’s an area of interest to you.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” Sandra produced a throaty chuckle.

“I was wondering if we could get together and review the outstanding cases.”

“Review, huh? You’re a police consultant, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you review the cases with your cop buddies?”

“This is something I’m handling on my own.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re playing Nancy Drew, huh?”

“I’m just trying to collect some facts...”

“You’re shining me on, is what you’re doing. Look, I got enough on my plate without fielding crank calls.”

“This isn’t—”

Dial tone. Sandra had hung up.

Well, that could have gone better. She frowned at the phone for a moment, then hit redial. After two rings she heard Sandra’s raspy hello.

“Me again.”

“I told you—”

“Here’s the thing. I really am a consultant to the police, but I’ve come across something that’s kind of...sensitive. Something I don’t want to bring to their attention yet, because it involves a person who’s close to me, and who may be—in fact I hope he is—completely innocent. You with me so far?”

“I’m still on the phone, aren’t I?”

“Good. So I need more information before I can make any decisions on what to do. And I thought no one outside the police department knows more about unsolved local crimes than you.”

“Now you’re just flattering me.”

“Is it working?”

“A little. I don’t get flattered too often.”

“I’d like to sit down with you for a half hour and get the lowdown on unsolved crimes in this area. Specifically, violent crimes.”

“How violent?”

“Assault. Homicide.” She thought of the bodies in the cellar. “And disappearances.”

“Sounds like you’re working on quite a theory.”

“It could be nothing. Of course, if you’re too busy, I can track down the info another way. Online or in back issues of the newspaper—”

“Don’t waste your time. The news stories never go into detail, and half of what they do report is wrong. And if it’s assaults and disappearances you’re after, some of them didn’t even make the news.”

“Really?”

“This isn’t Westwood, honey. A purse snatching there gets live satellite coverage. Dead body in Dogtown gets a stringer from the L.A. Times, who may or may not get a one-paragraph item on page B14.”

The reference to Richard’s neighborhood made her nervous. “Is that where these crimes are concentrated? Dogtown?”

“Dogtown’s where everything is concentrated.” A sigh. “Look, I can help you out. But I’ve got a little thing I have to do first. We’re holding a neighborhood meeting tonight at the Venice High School gym. Should last from six to seven. After that, I’m free. What do you say you meet me at the gym after the meeting, and we’ll take it from there?”

“Will do.”

“Okey-doke. By the way, you been to one of our community meetings?”

“Not recently.”

“Be warned. It’s a free-for-all. I’m just hoping Lady Godiva doesn’t attend.”

“Who?”

But Sandra had already ended the call.

She returned to her computer and checked the Ripperwalk site. She found three responses on the message thread she’d started.

Somebody with the screen name downinthedumps had posted, Just what we need, another suspect. Why does every newbie feel the urge to waste our time with a pet theory?

She wondered how he knew she was a newbie, until she noticed that her online identity, Jeneratrix, was credited with a grand total of one post.

The second respondent, ominously named AxMan, tried for humor. Edward Hare? He changed his name to Edward Scissorhands. A real cut-up. Could be our guy.

“Dork,” Jennifer muttered.

The third was a pedant named MSturbridgeMD. Are you by any chance thinking of William (not Edward) Hare, who partnered with William Burke? Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers, but they predated the Ripper case by 60 years.

At least the condescending MSturbridgeMD had taken her seriously. There were no other replies.

It appeared her Web inquiry was going nowhere. Maybe no one had ever heard of Edward Hare. Which meant no one had ever suspected him of being the Ripper. No one in more than a hundred years.

Until now.

eighteen

Jennifer was running late. She’d spent too much time online hunting down details on the Devil’s Henchman. The Web archives of the L.A. Times didn’t go back that far, and there was little information elsewhere. One site had a brief review of the crimes, specifying the number of victims—four, all female—and the condition of the bodies. Reading the summary, she thought of Mary Kelly and Carrie Brown.

On her way to the high school, she stopped at Richard’s apartment. He wasn’t there. On the stairs she ran into the manager, who informed her that her brother hadn’t been seen all day. “Good fuckin’ riddance. And he still hasn’t paid his rent, okay?”

She was starting to fear he had disappeared. He might have been scared off by her visit yesterday, when she told him there was damage to the cellar. Of course she’d said nothing about the bodies, and she hadn’t even known about the diary at the time.

But he might have known. If the family papers mentioned the crypt and the diary, Richard might have guessed that the earthquake would open up the weakest part of the cellar wall, the rebuilt section, exposing the bones and the book. He’d even mentioned a body in the cellar, though she had chalked it up to coincidence.

She wasn’t sure it was a coincidence anymore.

At six-thirty she arrived at the Venice High School gym. The meeting had been in progress for a half hour. She took a seat near the door.

More than a hundred people were seated in the bleachers. On a low, wheeled dais parked in the middle of the basketball court, a stout black woman who was Sandra Price paced and gesticulated. Her voice was loud enough to fill the hall without amplification.

“We are talking three homicides in the last eighteen months, people. Three cases still outstanding. No suspects, no persons of interest. Now I’m asking you, if there were three murders in Bel Air or Pacific Palisades, and they were still unsolved after all this time, don’t you think you’d be hearing about it?”

The audience erupted in whoops and yells. A chorus of churchgoers released a volley of amens.

Many attendees were teens, wearing gangsta garb, their faces sullen and hostile. The older people looked like aging hippies, with long gray hair, granny glasses and Che Guevara T-shirts. The sickly sweet aroma of pot wafted down from the higher tiers. At the far end of the bleachers, one solitary figure in a hooded sweatshirt sat silently, rocking back and forth.

“You know we would.” Sandra’s gaze swept the stands. “It would be on the local news, on talk radio, in the paper—everywhere. And the police would be doing something about it. But when it’s Dogtown or Skate Town or Ghost Town, no one cares. Everyone looks the other way. It’s someone else’s problem. The police don’t allocate the resources. They don’t prioritize us. They don’t give us what we need.”

Heads bobbed in agreement. Applause popped like firecrackers. Above the dais big flying bugs whirled among the lights.

“We had an earthquake and it was on the news night and day, every channel. You know how many people died? Zero. Not one single person. But when people are getting murdered around here, it doesn’t make the news...”

Behind her, Jennifer heard a husky baritone say quietly, “Check her out.”

“Tight little ass. But I can’t see her face. Could be a skank.”

“So? Do her doggy style. If she be fugly, you ain’t gotta look.”

With a start she realized they were talking about her. She flashed on a memory of San Francisco—the rainswept streets, the dark underpass, the faceless stranger throwing her down—

Slowly she crossed her legs.

“See that, bro? She’s covering up. She don’t want you poking around in her snatch.”

The two of them laughed.

“So that’s where we are, people.” Sandra was winding up a long harangue. “Too poor to get protection, too middle-class to attract any media attention.”

On cue, a bored photographer clicked off a few flash photos. He seemed to be the only member of the press in attendance.

“We’re not as sexy as Rampart or South-Central, and away from the canal district we’re sure as hell not as affluent as Westwood and Los Feliz.”

One of the creeps behind her started touching Jennifer’s hair. She jerked her head away.

“We get lost in the shuffle. And that’s why we need to get together as a community and take action, put pressure on the authorities, make our voices heard.”

She stopped, giving the audience a chance to be heard right now. More amens blew through the room. A tall man in gray dreadlocks raised a fist and yelled, “Right on!” The sweatshirted figure rocked faster.

Someone was touching Jennifer’s hair again. She whirled to face him. “Quit it, asshole,” she hissed.

The guy and his friend couldn’t be older than seventeen. They laughed at her—stupid, giggly laughter—but at least the hand was withdrawn.

“All right, then. Now I know we want to be fair and balanced, as a certain right-wing news operation says”—boos from the crowd—“so I’ve invited representatives of the LAPD’s Pacific Area station to address these issues. Two officers have kindly consented to join us. Sergeant Casey Wilkes and Detective Roy Draper, please come on down and face the music.”

She said it with a humorous flourish that drew a few halfhearted chuckles, sounding like dry coughs. The rest of the crowd was unnervingly quiet.

Jennifer’s own relief surprised her. It felt good to have allies in the room.

Casey and Draper stood up from the front row of bleachers and made their way to the stage. From her vantage point she hadn’t seen them, but it made sense that they would be here. Casey, as watch commander, often pulled public-relations duty. And Draper was a homicide cop.

She wished the crowd hadn’t fallen so silent, though.

Casey, in uniform, was first to speak. He observed that police resources were stretched thin all over, which was why residents of affluent communities like Bel Air typically hired private security patrols.

“We ain’t rich enough for rent-a-cops, so we’re outta luck?” The shout came from one of the two guys directly behind her.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Casey answered.

“It’s what you’re thinkin’, man.”

“You cops don’t give a shit about us,” his friend chimed in. “You don’t even live in the neighborhood.”

Someone from the top row called out, “They live in Simi Valley with all the other fascists!”

“How ’bout it, Porky,” yelled the first guy, the one who’d touched her hair, “you live in these parts?”

His friend echoed the question. “Yeah, Porky, what say you? Huh? What say you?”

The word “Porky” excited the other malcontents scattered throughout the audience. They started to chant the word. Casey shifted his weight, his face reddening.

“Porky... Porky... Porky...”

The hippies were getting into it, too. For them it would always be 1968.

Sandra waved her arms as if semaphoring. “Let the officer speak.” Her plea quieted the crowd for the moment.

Casey cited the department’s COMPSTAT figures to explain that violent crime rates had actually declined in Pacific Area. A woman with a reedy voice shrieked that the cops were cooking the books. She’d seen an article about it in the L.A. Reader.

“No one is fudging any numbers,” Casey said. “Our area commanders are just as concerned about safety as you are. They’ve seen a significant, ongoing downtrend in crimes across the board, especially violent crimes—”

The pair behind Jennifer started stamping on the bleachers.

“No way, man, my nephew was shot just last week!”

“Cops want us shot! More of us get killed, easier it is for white folks to move in and take over!”

“What d’ya say ’bout that, Porky?”

“Porky... Porky... Porky...”

Casey gave up and yielded the floor to Draper, who didn’t look happy about it.

Draper was smart enough not to compete with the crowd. He stood facing them in cold silence until the commotion died away. In the unflattering overhead light his face looked more sallow than usual, his eyes lost in dark hollows. He seemed to unman the noisier elements of the audience.

“Sandra Price is right,” he began, speaking softly enough that people were obliged to stay quiet if they wanted to hear. “There are three unsolved homicides in this division. The most recent was on Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista. That one happened on Monday night.”

He was talking about the Diaz killing. Jennifer thought of the bloated tongue, the bloodshot eyes.

“The other two occurred seven months and eighteen months ago, respectively. We believe they were so-called stranger homicides, meaning the victims didn’t know their assailants. Those are the most difficult cases to clear. In the same time period we’ve had three other homicides in Pacific Area, and solved them all. We—”

“You didn’t solve nothing!” screamed someone in the top row. “You rigged them scenes. You put cases on them people!”

“You framed those brothers!” another man shouted.

Instantly the kids behind Jennifer were on their feet, shouting, “Frame, frame, frame!” They stamped on the bench where she was seated, their heavy sneakers slamming down on both sides of her. “Frame, frame, frame!”

Chaos rippled through the stands. Other chants broke out, a babble of slogans competing with each other. The man in gray dreadlocks repeated his war cry: “Right on!” The sweatshirted figure swayed frantically, clutching his knees.

Jennifer eyed the exit, estimating her distance to the door. She wasn’t sure she dared leave. The men behind her might follow. She could be safer in here...unless a riot broke out...

Above the hubbub rose a long earsplitting shriek: “An-ar-chy!!!”

The shrieker was a young woman strategically positioned in the middle row, directly opposite the dais, who rose to her feet and unzipped her nylon jacket. She wore nothing underneath. Her bare breasts, several sizes too large for her, sprang into view. She shrugged off the jacket, let it fall, and stood topless, arms raised. “An-ar-chy! An-ar-chy!!!”

The crowd burst into whistles and hoots. The photographer, no longer bored, snapped off a rapid series of shots.

Lady Godiva had made the scene.

Draper and Casey exchanged a glance, shrugged, and walked off the dais and out of the room with as much dignity as possible. As Casey passed Jennifer’s seat, he nodded to her almost imperceptibly. Draper didn’t look her way at all. Then they were out the door, pursued by the topless anarchist’s screams.

Jennifer knew why they hadn’t openly acknowledged her. In this crowd it wasn’t safe to be pegged as a friend of the police.

With the enemy no longer in the building, the protesters lost their enthusiasm. Sandra Price had given up trying to speak. She looked sad and disgusted.

Jennifer felt likewise. And for the first time in a long while, she didn’t feel good about living in Venice.