Riptide (23 page)

“California?”

He might as well have said the moons of Mars. “That is where we are headed, she and I. We have already discussed it. She is most eager to go. She has never seen the ocean. And”—he could not resist a twist of the knife—“she is weary of these parts. The provincial life chafes her.”

Evelyn’s face was taut. “You mean she regards us as rubes.”

“I would never use such a word.”

“You filled her head with these thoughts. You turned her against us. Against her family.”

Hare smiled. It was a smile of genuine pleasure. “I am her family now..”

“Where in California are you taking her?” she asked bleakly. “San Francisco?”

“Los Angeles. Now there’s a town that’s growing fast. They’ve two hundred thousand people there at last count.”

“It’s so far away.”

“Now, now, Evelyn. I’m sure you’ll visit us someday. And think of the lovely postcards you’ll receive.”

He withdrew, returning to his seat. When he looked her way again, he saw that she was weeping.

No one else noticed. It was natural for a mother to weep on her daughter’s wedding day.

*** 

When plates were empty and bellies were full, the tables were carried out of the room to make space for dancing. Hare and his wife shared the first waltz. Some among the guests chuckled at his missteps, but for once he didn’t mind being laughed at.

He remembered his first night on American soil, alone in a flophouse, his head in his hands as he mourned the life he’d lost. Never could he have imagined the triumphs that awaited him. His success had taken him by surprise even as it unfolded. He had seen no reason for it.

But latterly, he had understood. He knew why he had risen in business. He possessed the very traits of character required of the successful competitor. He was ruthless, unscrupulous, and when necessary, savage. The men who came up against him might fancy themselves sharp operators, but none of them had ever sunk a steel blade into a whore’s belly.

He disarmed them with his charm, his becoming modesty. He recited poetry. He attended church. He allowed himself to be rated a fop and a naïf. Only after he had outmaneuvered his rivals and driven their enterprises into bankruptcy did they understand with whom—with
what
—they had been dealing. By then it was too late.

His financial success was gratifying. But it was the blood sport that fascinated him. He savored the game. In Iowa he harried a man to suicide after taking his business and his home. No one thought less of him for it. On the contrary, he was respected all the more. He embodied the prevailing ethic, the domination of the weak by the strong. A society that coddled weakness would encourage its own degeneracy. This, at least, was the substance of countless editorials and stump speeches and even the occasional sermon.

It was the one moral lesson in which Hare needed no instruction. He was, by nature, a man who knew how to get ahead in life. Americans honored such men. They were an uncouth people, easily impressed by an English accent and a smattering of erudition, and still more impressed by riches and the will to increase them. Hare could have been their king, their god. Had he not been of foreign origin, he might have been their president.

Jack the Ripper in the White House. The thought made him smile.

“Darling, where
are
you?”

It was Maddie, gazing at him as she swayed in his arms. “Right here, my love.”

“I don’t think so. You seem so distant. And your expression—I don’t know whether it was a grin or a grimace.”

“A smile, I assure you. There will be only smiles for you.”

“You wouldn’t keep secrets from me?”

“Never.”

“Promise?”

“From you, Maddie, there will be no secrets, ever. No secrets and no lies.”

The answer satisfied her. She believed him implicitly. She was such a fool.

*** 

By ten o’clock, though the party continued, Hare knew it was time to bed his bride.

His bride. Of all women before Madeleine, only Kitty had come close to earning that appellation. It had been a near thing with Kitty, but he had escaped her thrall. Wiser now, he had selected a companion whose chastity could not be doubted.

Even so, he did not want to leave the festivities. Far better to while away the night in revelry, dancing quadrilles and singing sentimental songs. But he knew what was expected of him.

He found Maddie at the center of a gaggle of female friends and drew her away while the geese tittered and clucked.

“Shall we?” he asked simply.

He expected shyness from her and was bemused—and a trifle alarmed—by her upraised face and frank expression. “Of course, darling.”

Boarding a hired motorcar, they left in a hail of salutations. They said little as they rode through the streets. The moon was big and nearly full, and the snowy peaks of the Rockies gleamed like chalk. He was very far from London, from the congested slum courts, the vagrants huddled under railway arches, the bobbies with their bull’s-eye lanterns, the clop of hooves on cobblestones.

Their driver chauffeured them to the Brown Palace Hotel, the city’s finest. The bridal suite was more than satisfactory. Hare tipped the bellman, and then he was alone with his wife.

“Well,” he said, “here we are.”

“It’s lovely. So romantic.”

“Yes, well,” he said, then stopped, at a lack for words.

She smiled at him. “I shall make myself ready.” She disappeared into the bedchamber.

He sat in his armchair. A long time passed. Hare drummed his knee.

He thought of Whitechapel.

Whores.

Kitty, so pristine in the garden of her cottage, concealing her sinful past. A pious masquerade, a whitewashed sepulcher.

He really should have killed her. Forbearance had been a weakness on his part.

“Darling.” A seductive whisper from the next room. “I’m ready now.”

He stood. His balance was unsteady. There was a peculiar heaving in his gut. He thought perhaps he had overindulged in food and drink.

It didn’t matter. He need only do his duty.

He took a step toward the bedroom. The narrow doorway became the gate to a fenced backyard, stinking with trash, the yard where he killed Annie Chapman. He remembered pulling her backward against the fence as he throttled her from behind—the thump of their bodies against the rotten wood. Later the papers reported that a man on the other side of that fence heard the noise but lacked the curiosity to investigate. He had run a grave risk, killing her in such a public place, and yet he’d felt no fear.

But now...

Now he was afraid.

“Dearest?” Maddie’s voice.

He straightened his shoulders. Fear would not unman him. He had carved up whores; surely he could bed one. No, that was all wrong—not a whore—
she
wasn’t a whore. She was his wife, and a virgin. Or so he had assumed. But the way she had looked at him tonight, so boldly...

Perhaps
not
a virgin.

How would he know? They said if the woman bled on her wedding night, then she was chaste.

If she bled...

But they
always
bled. Chapman and Kelly and Brown, and the others. Always there was blood and more blood; it was all women were made of, it seemed; they bled with the cycles of the moon; they bled in childbirth; they bled when he gutted them with his fine, sharp blade...

He reached the doorway of the bedchamber. The room was dark. In the shadows Maddie was a dim, pale shape amid the bedclothes.

The image flickered, and it was Mary Kelly he saw, her face stripped away. Shapes shifted, and now it was Carrie Brown, Old Shakespeare, legs spread wide, dress hitched up over her hips.

“Darling? Are you all right?”

He didn’t answer. He stared into the darkness, seeing other women on other nights. Different names, different faces. Yet all the same. Peel away their disguises, and they were all whores, every one.

“You disgust me,” he whispered.

She sat up. “What?”

His voice was low and firm, and he felt no more fear, only a deliriously righteous certainty. “You are an abomination. I would not sully myself with your touch.”

“You—you can’t mean that...”

“I mean every word.”

He left her. As he returned to the parlor, he heard her quiet sobs. She was the second woman he’d reduced to tears tonight.

Without undressing, he stretched out on the divan. He would sleep here until they departed for California. In their new home they would have separate bedrooms. He need never share a pillow with her. She might protest, but it would make no difference .

twenty-three

Jennifer woke in darkness, gulping air.

Her hand groped for the bedside lamp and switched it on. Already the memory of the dream was fading. She recalled only fragments. It was like the dream she’d had last night. Running from a man with a knife.

But this time it wasn’t Richard.

It was Jack.

Not dead, even after all these years. Never dead, not while his legend lived.

She was up against an alley wall, nowhere to run, Jack closing in. He had grown old and withered, his skin stretched taut against his bones, leathery like the cover of his diary, mottled with mold like the edges of its pages.

Cornered, she faced the sickly rictus of his smile, the red blade in his hand.
I’ll kill you
, she said.
Somehow I will.

His eyes glittered with insane merriment. His voice was a whisper.
I’ll return the favor.

And she was awake and scared, his last words still floating in the shadows.

The same words Abberline had used when bargaining to see the diary.

She couldn’t imagine why those words had forced their way into her nightmare. But there had to be a reason. The unconscious mind, she knew, did nothing by chance.

Downstairs, she booted up her laptop and reread the log file of the instant message dialogue. She found the statement she remembered, shimmering on the LCD screen.

I’ll return the favor.

An Englishman would spell it
favour
.

She reviewed the conversation and found other Americanisms.
Center
should have been spelled
centre
, and
William
should have been abbreviated
Wm,
with no period at the end. Abberline made the same mistake in his comment on the message board, referring to “
Mr.
Edward Hare.” British usage eschewed a period in both instances.

Abberline wasn’t British. Which meant he probably wasn’t located in London. Probably wasn’t a harmless retiree combing through archives. He could be anyone, anywhere.

He could be Richard.

Richard, using a public computer or a cell phone. Playing games.

When he spoke to her on the phone, she’d known he was calling from outdoors. Maybe he had been using a cell, not a pay phone. The same cell he used to send the text messages.

It was possible. She hadn’t thought he owned a cell, but she was starting to realize how little she knew about him.

She read the dialogue more carefully, evaluating it the way she would evaluate any threatening correspondence. She saw hostility toward women disguised as sexual innuendo, finally coming out into the open with the word
whore
. He talked about Jack the Ripper as Inspector Abberline’s doppelganger. Was this an unconscious admission that he himself was a killer?

If Richard knew about Edward Hare from the papers he inherited, he could have developed a secret interest in Jack the Ripper. Could have participated in online discussions for years, at Ripperwalk and other sites.

His phone call had come only minutes after she ended her online talk with Abberline. had he phoned to keep the dialogue going?

That was all speculation. Richard might have nothing to do with it. Abberline could be anybody. All she knew about him was that he was on to Hare and was desperate for information.

Desperate...like Harrison Sirk. He’d pressed her for details just as Abberline had. He’d spoken of what “Americans” would say, as if he weren’t one of them; he might feel comfortable impersonating a Brit. He was a crime historian. Perhaps he’d come across Hare’s name in his research.

Or Abberline might be someone else entirely. He could be thousands of miles away—or right down the street. He was one of millions of electronic ciphers who could assume any identity with no fear of being caught.

Yet there was a way to catch them. She’d done it before, when analyzing threats received by e-mail or instant messaging.

She spent a few minutes laying the trap. Once it was set, all she could do was hope he took the bait.

There was no possibility of going back to sleep. The sun was just breaking the horizon. She went for a walk on the beach.