Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  She was an older woman, plump, somewhere over fifty. He saw her hesitate, though she quickly gathered her wits and said, “Costumes are always tearing, and I’m always mending something. He went for patches, thread, that kind of thing.”

  “And, of course, a receipt was turned in. I’ll get a copy of that receipt,” Jude told her. “Even if you don’t have it, believe me, I’ll track down your purchase.”

  She sat very still, and then her lower lip began to tremble. “One of the cloaks disappeared—they’re actually caped coats, you know—regular coats with sleeves, and then a short cape over the shoulders. I didn’t dare tell the director. He would have said it was my fault. And I could swear that every extra on the set returned his or her costume. I could swear it! Avery would have fired me for not having control. I can’t get jobs as easily as I used to—you’ve got to believe me, Detective, the movies are run by the young.”

  Jude stared at her. He wanted to tell her that her lie might have cost lives, but it wouldn’t have been true—they had suspected that the killer’s period costume had come from the movie set.

  “When did the cloak disappear?” he asked her. “At the shoot at the construction site?”

  “Oh, no—two weeks before that,” she told him. “We’d been working on Staten Island. That’s when the cloak disappeared. I didn’t try to replace it until we had the same number of extras working again. That’s why…that’s why I didn’t believe that its disappearance could be related to the killing that night. And the papers said that there were Jack the Ripper victims, but they didn’t say that anyone had actually seen Jack the Ripper walking around. Please, please, you can’t tell Mr. Avery. Of course, Mr. Avery has a court date now, but…oh, he couldn’t have anything to do with this! Detective, I know that you have this information, but, please, please, please, don’t report me to the powers that be at the movie company. I used my own money to buy the fabric to replace the cloak. Please.”

  He couldn’t help but feel sorry for Allie Lipton. “I need the information for our investigation, Mrs. Lipton. I’m not the movie police.”

  He let her go; she could return to work. Apparently, the assistant director was filming action shots that day with the film’s stunt performers.

  Sherry Blanco came back in, her lawyer in tow this time. Jude was surprised, but he had nothing against the lawyer sitting in.

  “Miss Blanco, we’re not accusing you of anything, but I’m afraid that you were working with a murderer at some point during this film,” he said.

  She looked at her lawyer, and then at Jude. “I told you, and I don’t know why you don’t understand this. I don’t know the extras. Sometimes I don’t even see the extras.” She sat back, shaking her head, and then she leaned forward again. “Look, I’m not trying to pull any kind of…rank here, but I’m the star. Stars don’t have to know the extras, or even the bit players. I don’t eat with the others, I don’t get warm and chummy with the others. And, hey, I’m not a nasty person. I do make friends, but you have to realize, people want to use me, too. I have to keep my distance.”

  He smiled. She wasn’t going to give him anything. He was going to give her something to think about. “Well, I suppose that’s good. Because the killer could still be working on your set.”

  “You’ve arrested Angus Avery, remember?”

  “Two women were killed last night, remember?” Jude countered.

  “Then maybe you should let Angus go,” she said, smirking.

  “Maybe. And maybe he has been working with someone. Killers who work together have certainly caused a great deal of death and agony over the years. But you are the star. I guess you don’t have to worry, walking out of your trailer or getting into a limo.”

  She turned white.

  “Detective!” her lawyer snapped.

  “Yes? Can you point out what’s untrue about my words?” he asked.

  Her attorney wasn’t a fool. He stood, drawing her up by the elbow. “My client isn’t under arrest. She has answered all your questions, and we’re leaving.”

  Jude stood and smiled. “Thank you so much. Enjoy your day, Miss Blanco.”

  When they left, he discovered that Deputy Chief Green wanted to see him in the lab. He knew that Whitney and Jake had been at the computers all day with Hannah, searching for any trigger in the background of any possible suspect or major player in the case. But he and Jackson weren’t heading to the computers; they were off to see Judith Garner in the lab.

  As they walked to the lab, Jude again felt a sinking feeling.

  “A letter—we’ve received a letter,” he said, seeing Green. In London, back in the day of Jack the Ripper, the police had received hundreds of letters from those wanting to solve the case, and those convinced they were, or knew, Jack the Ripper.

  Green nodded grimly. “In the mail, postmarked Lower Manhattan,” Green told him.

  “And it’s an exact copy of the letter sent to George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilante Committee—the ‘From Hell’ letter. It’s one of the few letters they considered not to be fake, am I correct?”

  “You are,” the deputy chief told him. “It’s not a photocopy, or out of a copier. The killer forged the handwriting. And,” he added painfully, “it came from a tissue we believe to belong to the second victim last night.”

  In the lab, Judith Garner had the letter under glass as she prepared it for the many tests she would do. She greeted Jude with tight grim lips. “What do you make of it?” she asked.

  He read the letter; he’d seen the copy at Scotland Yard, but he hadn’t memorized it. Odd to think that once, he’d thought of the Jack the Ripper case as little more than a social commentary, when he was learning about law enforcement, and a lesson in the improvement of law enforcement and new techniques in investigative tools over the years.

  But he could remember the letter, and the words were the same, just as the stains on the paper seemed to be the same.

  From hell

  Mr. Lusk

  Sor

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you the tother piece I fried and at it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.

  Signed

  Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

  “He’s dancing around us, Jude. He’s making a mockery of one of the finest police departments in the county,” Green said.

  Jude opted not to remind him that he hadn’t been entirely convinced that they had finished with the arrest of Angus Avery. They still had a killer out there.

  He looked at Judith. “And the tissue that came with it?” he asked.

  “Human kidney,” she said. “I don’t know yet if it will prove to have belonged to our second victim from last night.”

  “Do you have anything else?” he asked her hopefully.

  “Hey,” she protested, “I found the trace on the coat. My team found the blood in the limo. And I’m still working on that hundred-dollar-bill you gave me. So far, I’ve found a lot of cocaine, and fingerprints on top of fingerprints. We’re still sorting them all out, but even then, we’re going to have to go through hundreds and hundreds. We’ve worked around the clock in here, too, you know,” she said.

  “I know, Judith. Thank you.” He looked at Deputy Chief Green. “I want to get Bobby Walden back in for questioning, too. I’m sure he’ll come in with an attorney this time. And the team has been out at the garage where the limos are serviced and parked, but I want to see the place myself.”

  “That’s all going to have to wait. Fullbright is expecting you in autopsy,” Green told him.

  * * *

  “I’ve been through every extra hired by the movie company,” Hannah said, leaning her head on the computer. “I studied the records of two hundred people. I found two medical students, but both were indisputably on duty at the hospital last night and the night that Virginia Rockford was killed. I searched out every record on Harold Patterson, the high-class pi
mp, and he’s never even had surgery. I’ve gone through records and alibis until I can’t see anymore,” she moaned.

  “Maybe we’re actually looking in the wrong direction,” Whitney said.

  Both Hannah and Jake looked at her, frowning.

  She grimaced. “The killer seems to know something about anatomy. He’d have to—right? Not like a doctor, but at least like a butcher. But we think he also knows something about law enforcement and crime scene investigation. All things easily obtainable online these days—but, as we all know, online information isn’t always reliable, and crime shows and books are works of fiction. This guy has been really good. The first two murders—not the accepted five Ripper murders, but the ones we have in the files—might have been practice for him. Especially with Sarah Larson— Jane Doe wet. Maybe he messed up, and maybe he was afraid that he had left some kind of evidence on her, and that’s why she went in the water. She was there at least a week, and her body was sorely compromised. With the woman who is still Jane Doe, he was careful and lucky—no one did miss her, but the way that she was stabbed, it was doubtful that, had she lived, she would have ever been able to speak. They weren’t just victims he used to follow the Jack the Ripper path—they were experiments for him. And, I could be way off base, but who would understand forensic science and crime detection better than a cop or some kind of a crime scene official?”

  Jake and Hannah stared at her. “Do you know how many people you’re talking about?” Hannah asked woefully.

  Jake shook his head. “No. She’s on to something. He hesitated. “What about that detective—Ellis Sayer? He seems to follow a little too closely in Jude’s wake. Perhaps he’s someone who wants to be a bigger part of the case than he is.”

  “Ellis Sayer?” Hannah said incredulously.

  “Just give a look,” Jake said.

  “It can’t be Ellis!” Whitney said.

  “That’s exactly why we should investigate,” Jake said.

  They did. And they could find nothing on him other than the fact that he had been with the police force over twenty years, climbing the ranks through hard work and commendations.

  “But we don’t know where he was at the time of the murders,” Jake pointed out.

  “He was always available after,” Whitney said. “Jake, look through all that and see if he ever did any work in film.”

  “Ellis?” Hannah asked. “You must be joking!”

  They looked.

  They found no film connection, and no medical training—and no work at a grocery store, butcher shop or any place that might have taught him a thing about anatomy.

  “Hey, hey—go back a page!” Jake told Hannah.

  She frowned and clicked a button. “We’re on Facebook, Jake—what do you see?”

  “On the side there—‘friends’ pictures.”

  “He was in a play!” Hannah said.

  “It looks like a college production of Hamlet,” Whitney said.

  “We can’t hang him on a college theatrical,” Jake said.

  “No, but I guess he bears watching,” Whitney murmured.

  “Maybe,” Jake agreed. “You know who else takes anatomy classes?” he asked.

  “Who?” Whitney and Hannah said.

  “Art students,” Jake said.

  Hannah groaned and threw herself at the computer.

  “Hey, hey,” Jake said, rubbing her back. “It’s okay, kid.”

  “I think it’s time to really look into the NYPD,” Whitney said softly.

  “You want me to sit here, on an NYPD computer, and keep looking up a bunch of detectives and officers who could get really pissed and get me fired?” Hannah demanded in a whisper.

  “We’ll do it from Blair House,” Jake said.

  “There are cops all around Blair House,” Hannah said.

  “Then we’ll be safe,” Jake said with a grin.

  Whitney frowned. “Jude is attending at the morgue. Autopsy is scheduled for the double-event victims today,” she reminded them.

  They both looked at her.

  “Excuse me just one moment,” she said. She stepped aside and called Jude’s cell.

  “Hey,” she said when he answered.

  “Hey,” he returned. He sounded weary and dejected.

  “Are you going to autopsy?” she asked him.

  “I’m on my way now,” he said.

  “I attended the others,” she reminded him.

  He was silent.

  “There you go,” she said lightly. “Sleep with a cop, and all of a sudden he doesn’t want to call you for an autopsy.”

  She hoped that she had brought at least a flicker of a grin to his lips. “Whitney, I don’t think that I even need to be there—I know what Fullbright will find. No trace, no evidence. The first victim will have strangulation marks, and her throat will have been slashed nearly ear to ear—like Elizabeth Stride. The second victim is going to have the same mutilations as Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes. I’m going to go and spend several hours and watch the horrible cruelty that an intelligent, narcissistic psychopath can inflict on another human being. I’m not sure I should be wasting my time. We’re missing something. We’re missing something that we should see clearly, and I just need to go over and over all the records and notes that we have.” He was silent a moment. “Do me a favor, huh?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “I’m afraid that this killer sees us. He knows all of us who are cops, and he sure as hell knew that an FBI team was staying at Blair House. Be careful. Be really careful.”

  “Patrol cars are prowling all around Blair House, Jude. It’s probably the safest place in the world right now. And you do know that I carry a gun, right? But, actually, you just gave me an idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  She lowered her voice. “We were going to head to Blair House to check out the NYPD, but I think I’ve just had a better idea.”

  “The NYPD,” he said thoughtfully once she’d explained. “Someone on the inside. That’s a terrifying thought.”

  “We’re grasping at straws, maybe. But we knew from the beginning that it was a mammoth haystack.”

  “What’s the idea I gave you?”

  “We’re going to stop in on your father.”

  * * *

  Dr. Fullbright wasn’t horrified; he was fascinated. “It’s uncanny,” he told Jude. “It’s absolutely uncanny, the way this killer has replicated the past.”

  Jude stood silently. The body on the table was hardly recognizable as a woman. The killer had slashed her earlobes and her face. He had carried out the mutilations in very little time. He had planned it all carefully. He had staked out his victims, and he had somehow coerced them to meet him, or he had stumbled upon them.

  No, he had selected his victims. He had gone to the strip club and selected Sarah Larson, a woman who had longed to be a Broadway dancer. He had selected Melody Tatum, paying cash to make sure that he’d have a woman where he wanted her.

  He was attending burlesque shows, seeking those who might tend to be for sale.

  He had money—he had paid cash for Melody.

  “Is there anything you can tell me that can help me find the man killing these women? I don’t need a lecture—I’ve seen the Ripper files,” Jude said.

  Fullbright looked at him, confused. “Jude, her clothing is over at the lab. I haven’t anything on the body. We’re in serious trouble when he decides to take his next victim. He’ll emulate the murder of Mary Kelly, and you’ll recall, he killed her at her apartment. He took his time, and he wallowed in a complete bloodbath.”

  Jude turned on his heel and left. He kept thinking about Whitney’s suggestion that they might be dealing with someone in law enforcement. Someone who knew what the task force workers were doing—and how to avoid them.

  It was a thought he didn’t want to consider.

  He looked at his watch; he wanted to get out to the garage, and he wanted an interview with Bobby Walden. He decided to deal with
Bobby first, but when he checked with Ellis Sayer, Ellis told him that he’d been trying to pin down Bobby Walden all day.

  “He was supposed to be filming some kind of a gang scene today, and he said that he wanted nothing more than to cooperate with the police, but he wouldn’t be finished until five. Want me to get up to the set? I’m at the garage now. And you’re going to want to see this. It’s the most piss-poor security I’ve ever seen—there’s a gate where the cars come in and out and register. And then there’s a back fence with a gaping hole in it a mile wide. Anyone who knew where the keys were kept in the office could have walked through the fence and taken one of the cars out. Management has apparently planned on fixing it for months, but they just haven’t gotten to it—never had any kind of trouble before, so they say.”

  “Make sure someone goes through all the cameras from the Brooklyn Bridge because I believe they might have caught something. The car had to have come back over.”

  “Yeah, we’ve done that,” Ellis said. “I’m pretty sure we found the car on the film, but we’ve enhanced and enhanced, and you can’t see a face.”

  “The tags—”

  “Muddied, front and back. We couldn’t even go into court and verify it was the same car,” Ellis said. “This is the most organized killer I’ve ever come across,” he said. “I know my job, Jude.”

  “I’ll go up to the set,” Jude told Ellis. “I’m going to bring Jackson Crow with me. Maybe he can tell me if there’s something strange I don’t sense in any of the actors up there. Keep working the garage—look for anything that can help us.”

  He hung up, realizing that he didn’t want Ellis questioning Bobby Walden. Ellis? He couldn’t let himself become paranoid. Logic, timing.

  Good old Ellis wasn’t a killer. Unless he could teleport.

  He still wished that Monty wasn’t in the hospital.

  And he realized that, since he’d spoken to Whitney, he suddenly mistrusted everyone. That was no way to run a task force, and yet, maybe it was the way that he had to be.

  * * *

  Andrew Crosby said it was fine for the little trio to come over when Whitney called him. He didn’t question their motives.