Ripper (37 page)

Lou Bolt

Zinc Chandler

Sol Cohen

Luna Darke         Katt Darke

Glen Devlin

Elvira Franklen

Stanley Holyoak

Alexis Hunt

Al Leech

Pete Leuthard

Barney Melburn

Adrian Quirk

Colby Smith

Wynn Yates

The person who rigged this madhouse was cunning indeed, killing four people quickly without exposing him or herself. Anyone milling about the castle before dinner could have armed the crossbow and ice-locked its trigger. The killer sat innocently at the banquet table while heat from both hearths committed the murder. Any one of the sleuths.—except Quirk and Yates—could have tripped the short circuit on the stairs, having previously closed the fireplace doors so the hall would be dark, before shoving broken-armed Leuthard who couldn't grab the noose to break his fall into the stairwell gallows. The floorboard in the Drawing Room was kept from pivoting when they arrived by a small wedge he'd found thrown behind the bar. Once the generator was going, an electric magnet held the board in place, then the power failed and the trap was set. The
Fffichunkk! Fwwwappp!
heard as the scythe blades burst through the wall told the Mountie how that trap worked. Hinged at the bottom and pulled back at an angle, the scythes were propelled like slingshot rocks by springs or elastics attached to the other side of the wall, and released by pressing the boards on this side or by the person whose eye Devlin said was at the peephole.

A nook and a peephole.

The walls had ears and eyes.

And if they tried to follow, more deadly booby traps?

Diabolical,
Zinc thought, as someone knocked at the door.

"Who is it?"

"Alex."

"Is something wrong?"

"Not yet. But there's a door between Bolt's room and mine. He's been drinking steadily since you spoke to him, and I don't want to wake up to one of his hands over my mouth and the other between my legs. May I spend the night with you?"

Zinc leaned forward to release the door, eyes sweeping across the bedside table as he reached for the chair, and that's when he noticed his bottle of Dilantin was gone.

And never—I repeat
never—
miss taking your drugs . . .

2:02
A.M.

Wind whipping the black lagoon into whitecaps blew the torches around them like candles on Satan's birthday cake, curling greasy smoke through the Whalers' Washing House, enveloping Skull and Crossbones in the Devil's breath. The stalactites and stalagmites yawned like demon's teeth around Hell's mouth, as
errr . . . urrr . . . errr .. . urrr
. . . the wooden idols groaned, and the mounted skulls and dust-eyed mummies glared sightlessly. The cage that held the sacrifice in the German Expressionist's film had long since rusted shut from the clammy dampness. The pentagram trough that gathered her blood sixty-seven years ago was clogged with sand, so Skull scraped it with a chisel to ready it again, then set the Ripper's trunk down on the three triangles so the rings screwed into the tips of the four lower points flanked it. Opening the lid exposed the knife, bloodstained ties, suicide's skin, candles of human wax, nails from a murderer's gallows, and jar of grume mushed from Lyric's gutted organs.

"You did nothing!" Crossbones shouted.

"Like your mom said.
You
set yourself up."

"What about the Guillotine!"

"What about it?"

"You promised to protect me!"

"And you're supposed to help."

"We have an agreement!"

"Which you broke. Leaving me to do all the work."

"All! I built the traps! Without me, you couldn't pull it off! Can I help it if—"

"You're psychosomatic. She knew it. I know it. And so do you. Some
Superman."

"That's not fair. It's just I . . . Sometimes I . . . I don't know who I am. She cored me. That cunt. That's why I need you."

"And now that the Power is mine, I
don't
need you. Open the door. Bring down the bodies. Cut the woman. And I'm into the Plane."

"I want the Power, too."

"You're not worthy, nowhere man. You're here to suck my cock. You're here to wipe my ass. You're here to
serve
me, and nothing else. How powerless are you? Watch," Skull sneered, snatching the Mother Mask from Cross-bones's hands. He reached into the open trunk for the Ripper's knife.

"That's mine! You promised! Give it back!"

"Make me," Skull taunted. "Come and get it."

"NOOOOOO!" Crossbones cried as the knife ripped through the mask, cutting Brigid Marsh's skinned face in two.

"The Ripper wants Skull, not Crossbones," Skull said. "It's my castle, my cave, my Miller's Court. A skull's a skull with nothing else, but crossbones mean nothing without a skull. I'm Skull. You're Crossbones. Without me, you're nothing, slave."

The knife sliced off the nose.

"YOU . . . YOU . .. YOU . . . !" Crossbones shook with rage.

"Stop me, Superman. You can do it, puss."

Slice, and the eyes were gone.

Slice, and the mouth.

Shreds of the Mother Mask hung like paper dolls.

Crossbones tried to stop him.

But the restraints held.

. . . Etched around Wonderland were quotes from Lewis Carroll, one of which, unknown to DeClercq, was a prophesy:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

     Agreed to have a battle;

For Tweedledum said Tweedledee 

    Had spoiled his nice new rattle.

Part III
Witches and Demons

While I live, the Owls! 

When I die, the GHOULS!!!

                 —
Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 

Written beside an epigram on fate

HUMPTY-DUMPTY . . .

Vancouver 

2:05
A.M.

Humpty-Dumpty was the name Special X gave the man with the fractured skull. While he lay in a coma in Lions Gate Hospital where surgeons worked frantically to patch his broken head, across town at HQ the Queen's Horsemen spent the night trying to piece together who Humpty was. Humpty carried no ID—all they found were three Tarot cards in his pocket and the Tautriadelta-carved ax—but he was dressed in U.S. Army combat fatigues. Since every U.S. soldier is fingerprinted and palmprinted for security, Hump-ty's hands were inked and printed at the hospital. The prints were sent to Ottawa, then to Washington, D.C., where U.S. Army Intelligence promised to reply ASAP. On that front, all the Mounties could do was wait.

The West Van cops located a stolen van parked near Robert's home with a bloody moth-eaten rug in back. The Forensic Lab up the street at 5201 Heather was now doing tests.

At two
A.M.
, Chan suggested DeClercq take a break. Jet lag, time change, the stress of the ambush, and worry sagged his face. "Go see how your dog is and keep in touch.
I
'll man the fort till the Yanks get back to us."

Napoleon was still in surgery when he finally got to the vet's, the storm doing everything it could to cut him off at the pass. There were complications, he was told, so Robert slumped in a chair to wait and must have nodded off, for the dream that came to him was one that had plagued him for years.

In the Shakespeare Garden of Stanley Park stand two trees. "Comedy" was planted by actress Eva Marsh; "Tragedy" by Sir John Martin Harvey. Since the 1920s each has grown into its name, "Comedy" lush as you like it and "Tragedy" as stunted as Richard III.

Between their trunks, arms outstretched, Janie runs toward him, her frightened voice crying "Daddy! " plaintively.

No matter how hard she runs, she draws no closer to him.

And in tonight's dream, Napoleon runs beside her.

"Chief Superintendent?"

He's dead,
Robert thought before he opened his eyes.

"Napoleon's out of surgery. He's going to be fine. I'd say you owe the obstetrician a bottle of the best."

Robert exhaled a half-forlorn sigh. If only he could awake from the dream and hear the same about Jane. Twilight between sleep and life was when it hurt the worst. "Thank you," he said.

It was near dawn when he returned to Special X, climbing the stairs to the second-floor hall with his office at the end, in which he found Chan, Craven, and Macbeth waiting. Outside, the gale was blowing pedestrians off their feet. Unless the rain slackened, it was time to build an Ark.

"Humpty's name is Garret "Corkscrew" Corke," said Chan. "Discharged from the Air Cavalry for going psycho in Vietnam. The Bureau opened a file on him when he ran this ad in
Foreign Legion
magazine."

DeClercq scanned the fax:

Mercenary. Vietnam vet. Action in Africa.

Available for missions, no questions asked.

Half up front, half on completion.

Tortured in Angola, secrecy guaranteed.

Write "Corkscrew," Box 106,

Rattlesnake, Nevada

"Yesterday afternoon, Corke checked into a motel on Capilano Road. The clerk ID'd Polaroids of him and the stolen van. Tossing his room, GIS turned up a duffel bag tagged in Reno and false identification in the name of Grant Ward. Yesterday noon, Ward passed through secondary inspection and was logged in the airport computer. Last week, he passed through a similar inspection in—"

"Barbados," said DeClercq.

"Where he got off the same cruise ship as that on which the
Publishers Weekly
critic had his skull crushed. Some went ashore, some stayed onboard, so the body wasn't discovered until the boat set sail for Trinidad. By then Ward was in Miami where he caught a flight to Reno."

"Could he have been here when Marsh, the twins, and Stumm were snatched?"

"Corke was trapped speeding in Nevada the night the twins were hung." "So he's a mercenary working for Skull & Crossbones," lid DeClercq. "First they contracted him to kill the critic who trashed their novel, then to hang Stamm's body and ax me. Just as Jack the Ripper squared off against Scotland Yard, taunting the London police with his letters and gutted kidney, so this pair is goading us—and particularly me."

He grabbed the copy of
Jolly Roger
on his desk, flipped to the last page and read it out loud:

" 'Take this, fucker.' I hit him again. This time the ax-blade caved in his face.

"The cop stopped dancing.

"Well, there you have it. So ends the beginning. One thing you can't accuse me of is not playing fair. Other cops will find the bitch and their nosy buddy, so that's why

"One.

"Two.

"Three.

"I'm laying out the cards.

"THIS IS AN EXIT.

"The book's a performative utterance announcing their intention, just as the Ripper's letters told the Yard what to expect. To taunt me, they hung one of the twins from the same totem pole the Headhunter used. These two are like Leopold & Loeb. They think they're Supermen immune to the law. It wouldn't surprise me if the owl pellet was
consciously
left as a clue. My mistake was thinking Stamm would be hung in a public place like the other three, so I drew the fourth limb of the Ripper's Cross to Lighthouse Park
beside
my residence. Didn't the pair warn me:
Other cops will find the bitch
and
their nosy buddy?"

"So they're still out there," Nick said, "planning something else?"

"Something major," Robert said. "Wholesale slaughter. That's why Corke was brought in to clean up here.
So ends the beginning . . . that's why . . . One. Two. Three
. . .
I'm laying out the cards. THIS IS AN EXIT."

"An exit where?"

"Here," said DeClercq, tapping the Judgement card. "Then there," he added, indicating the Devil on his throne.

"It's like a Catholic priest bestowing last rites, except these two want into Hell instead of Heaven. They're following the ritual Jack the Ripper used, hanging four women to sign an occult cross, which somehow aligns the stars in an astrological way. Killing the fifth in a "magic place" will launch their Doppelgangers into the Astral Plane where hocus-pocus will conjure Satan and all the demons of Hell on Earth under their control. Like Leopold & Loeb, these Supermen want to be gods."

"So how do we find this magic place?" Craven asked.

"If the Judgement card's read literally, we're looking for an island or boat surrounded by water with mountains in the background. God help us if Skull & Crossbones read it symbolically."

Chan crossed to the wall collage where Robert had earlier pinned up his London and Vancouver maps. "Miller's Court's located in the upper-right quadrant of Jack the Ripper's inverted cross. If the quadrant's important, the mountains are the North Shore peaks and the island is Bowen, Gambier, or Eagle west of Lighthouse Park."

"Check them out," DeClercq said, "but don't stop there. Maybe geography doesn't matter once the cross is signed. The occult works off symbols. That's what counts. Sign the symbol—cross or pentagram—where it has power and magic results. In which case, the magic place could be
anywhere."

The room fell silent except for the squeak of mental gears, each waiting for a spark from the occult mind, hoping someone's subconscious would bring the cavalry over the hill.

"Samson Coy's the only lead we've got," said DeClercq. "Assuming the dominant half of the team is occult fantasy-driven, the fantasy driving the submissive half is sexual anger at Mom. The dominant half uses that hate for power over him, feeding his henchman's need for revenge into his occult plans. Making each victim a substitute Mom is his control device."

"In the usual case," Chan said, "
all
the victims are stand-ins. Each will have red hair, be a stripper, or walk a Pekingese. Here they may have killed Coy's
actual
mom, using her lace to make a mask so he could relive the thrill of stabbing her with each subsequent victim."

'Then why skin the other faces?" asked Nick.

"Because the skull beneath is the
other
killer's calling card. These two are locked in a danse macabre. They feed off each other."

"That explains why only Marsh was scalped," said Macbeth. "And the marks on the back of Stamm's head."

"What marks?" DeClercq asked. He hadn't read her report. While HQ spent the night piecing Humpty together, she was in the morgue doing an autopsy for clues. That's why Gill was here. To hand in her findings.

"Marsh's face was skinned with the hair around it scalped. Faces skinned, the others lost not a tuft of hair. Horizontal lines marked the back of Stamm's head, as if made by strings or elastics securing a mask over her face. Most likely the bruising resulted from banging her scalp against a surface while struggling against bonds."

"Womb stabbed?" DeClercq asked.

Macbeth nodded. "The abdominal flesh was missing, but I found knife-point nicks inside her pelvis and on her lumbar spine."

"Coy," said DeClercq. "He's the submissive killer. Which means from Sunday to Thursday at least, he was in Vancouver. Marsh created a Frankenstein Monster in Amazonia, and like the novel, the Monster came stalking his creator. Coy's the key to finding the dominant killer's magic place. We turn this city upside down until we find Marsh's son."

They were saved the trouble.

At 7:45
A.M.
the Headmaster of Havelock Ellis School For Boys called.

. . . Had a Great Fall

Deadman's Island 

7:46
A.M.

Zinc Chandler awoke to a soft knock on the bedroom door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"I have to speak to you."

Recognizing the voice, he reached for the chair wedged under the handle of the door, glancing over his shoulder at Alex, still sleeping, as he pulled it away. "I'll be out in moment," he whispered.

Zinc was grateful he had slept at all, even if it was only for a few fitful hours. From one in the morning until he dozed off, he and Alex lay on separate beds in the dark, lis tening to the cyclonic storm tearing at the roof, telling each other incidents from their lives.

She told him how her father was the top criminal lawyer in Portland and an even better judge on the Oregon Supreme Court. "I nursed him through brain cancer and lost him last week. I'm here to escape from death. Ironic, huh?"

He told her about his father and the Plowmen Poets, how they'd drink in the farmhouse kitchen until they couldn't stand, betting each other who could identify the most obscure poem. A thick anthology arbitrated their game. "My dad bullied my mom when he was in the sauce, and used to make me run the 'gauntlet of the bards.' Every mistake resulted in a cuff to my ear, and I still seethe with anger at the memory. The galling thing is the experience armed me to cope with life, for every time I need inspiration, I've got this bottomless well:

Question not, but live and labour

        Till yon goal be won,

Helping every feeble neighbour,

       Seeking help from none;

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

       Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another's trouble,

       Courage in your own.

Name the bard, son.' 'Gordon, Pop.' "

She told him about the book she wrote on H.H. Holmes, and the one her publisher squelched on Dr. Petiot. "The dark side of my father's work—abnormal psychology—lured me like a moth to flame. My books scratch the itch to know where such demons come from. Elvira called me on Thursday when I declined her invitation. 'You're sure you won't change your mind?' she asked. 'Our secret benefactor wrote to say your book on H.H. Holmes inspired his own work. He's promised the hospital five thousand dollars more if you come.' 'Inspired his work how?' I asked. She didn't know. 'But there's one way to find out.' So I came."

He told her about the ordeal of the Ghoul and Cutthroat cases: Deborah, his mother, his son, and Carol Tate; and about the aftermath of being shot in the head. Hunt had lived it with her father, but listened anyway.

"I was mending a fence on the farm when the seizure hit. First I tasted licorice, which I hadn't had in years, then the barbed wire moved like a spider's dance. I don't recall passing out, just the ground going topsy-turvy. Tom, my brother, found me jerking by the fence. I've had only one fit," he said. "Since then, four caps of Dilantin a day have suppressed my epilepsy."

"My dad could stall his fits by self-distraction," Alex said. "He'd wiggle his fingers in front of his eyes. The drugs work, so maybe you'll never have another fit."

"I will. Here on the island. It's only a matter of time. Tonight someone stole my Dilantin. When stress overpowers the diluting level of anticonvulsants in my blood, epilepsy will ambush me. In the flip of a coin, I'll be transformed into a convulsing weirdo. The only uncertainty is when."

The springs of the bed next to his creaked, then he sensed her moving silently through the dark, until she hovered over

him like an invisible angel. Her scent was so intoxicating shivers ran down his spine, her breath as soft as a feather's breeze. She kissed his forehead, kissed his wound, kissed his lips, then said, "Sleep."