“Does he?”
“A Venice native.”
Of course he was. He could never stray too far from his ancestral hunting ground.
“He’s armed,” she said. “He took Casey’s service pistol. Fired it three or four times. Right after I gouged his face.”
“Good for you.”
“Shouldn’t you call for backup?”
“Parkinson has a police radio. He’ll be monitoring the traffic. That must be how he knew we were at the Fortezza. If he hears the call go out, it’ll spook him. We don’t want him running. We need to end this now.”
Another coughing spell took hold of her, then subsided.
“Smoke inhalation is nothing to fool around with.” Draper sounded worried. “It can get a whole lot worse in a hurry.”
“I’m all right.”
She sank back in her seat. Her eyes burned. She wished she could douse her whole head in a basin of cool water.
“What was Casey doing there?” he asked.
“I thought I’d arranged a rendezvous with Richard. We were going to bring him in.”
“Why wasn’t I invited?”
She hesitated. “I didn’t want Richard hurt.”
“You mean, you were worried about that little squeeze play on the beach?”
“Not just that. Casey told me—well, he told me there have been civilian complaints.”
“No more than any cop gets.”
“And he said there was an incident of domestic abuse. You beat up your girlfriend.”
“Casey’s been talking out of school.”
“Look, you just saved my life. I’m not trying to cause trouble—”
“It’s okay. He’s right. I did hit her. I’d been with her for three years, and the whole time she swore up and down she was clean. Then one night I walk in on her and she’s got a fistful of coke up her nose. She’d been using, for months, behind my back. I lost it. Started yelling. She was high and crazy, and she came at me. So yeah, I hit her. Hard. Then she locked herself in a bedroom and called nine-one-one. By the time the unit arrived, she’d figured out she couldn’t press charges without copping to possession and assault. So she made up a story and the patrol guys went away. And I broke up with her.”
“I see.”
“There were better ways to handle it. I admit that. But she was violent and out of control. And she’d been lying to me. Playing me. I was pissed off. I don’t like being played.”
“Neither do I,” Jennifer said, thinking of Abberline.
thirty-eight
Ocean Front Walk was a mad whirl. The crowd was larger than before. The wide concrete strip was packed with performers, spectators, vendors, beggars, scam artists, crazies.
Jennifer trailed Draper as he elbowed his way into the crush of bodies. Music blared from T-shirt shops and record stores. A folk guitarist competed with the din, wailing about riding the blue train. A fire eater plunged flaming shish kebabs down his throat. Jennifer looked away, the image bringing back the memory of her burning house. It must be ashes now.
They kept going, moving north. They passed a team of jugglers tossing knives. A midget on rollerblades. A man on stilts, dressed like a tree, shouting about global warming. An African drumming ensemble. An old man and his equally old dog, both riding skateboards. A harlequin figure, his costume festooned with jangling bells.
They were nearing a searchlight that illuminated a stream of giant bubbles rising toward the sky when a homeless man lurched out of the crowd. “Open-heart surgery!” he was yelling. He lifted his shirt to expose a mass of bandages. Jennifer pulled away before he could ask for money, and he disappeared in the swirl of people.
Moving on. An immensely fat woman tap-danced to a beat banged out by a monkey on a snare drum. A man in an Uncle Sam suit handed out fliers. Teens played a pickup basketball game under the lights. An inebriate of indeterminate sex threw up into a garbage can, then reared back and let loose a coyote howl.
Lights and noise and craziness, an insane carnival.
The C.A.S.T. headquarters lay just ahead, its banner visible above a faded storefront. The lights in the front windows were on and the door was open, but there was no movement inside.
Jennifer’s view was blocked for a moment by a band of aging hippies in troubadour getups, and then they had streamed past, and at the door of the office she spotted a figure in a hooded sweatshirt.
He’d appeared out of nowhere. He might be entering or leaving—she couldn’t tell.
Draper broke into a sprint, drawing his gun.
Parkinson turned. Saw them.
Then he was running in the familiar awkward lope, his shoes pounding the concrete.
They gave chase. Parkinson weaved through the crowd, knocking down a man on a unicycle, sidestepping a crowd of sullen teenagers.
A big man in a Malcolm X shirt obstructed Draper’s progress. Draper pushed him aside, and the man pushed back, shouting, “What the fuck?” Draper showed him his gun. The guy backed off.
And Parkinson was gone.
“Where’d he go?” Draper yelled.
Jennifer, panting at his side, shook her head.
Draper started running again, Jennifer behind him, trying to keep pace. The crowd thinned. Shops and vendors’ stalls gave way to decrepit apartment buildings lining the landward side of the promenade.
Draper stopped at a break in the row of buildings, peering down an alley.
Parkinson must have gone in there. It was the only exit.
“This time,” Draper hissed, “you stay back.”
He stepped into the alley and took out a pocket flashlight. The beam explored the passageway, long and narrow, bracketed by windowless brick walls. Along one wall stood clumps of oleander and trash bins overflowing with debris. The opposite wall was lined with rusted bicycle parts and corrugated boxes. At the far end a chicken-wire fence screened off a parking lot.
Parkinson could have scaled the fence, if he had the strength. Or he might be concealed inside a trash bin or among the cardboard boxes.
Jennifer watched Draper creep down the middle of the alley, his flash ticking from side to side, and for a surreal moment he wasn’t an LAPD officer anymore. He was a bobby in Jack the Ripper’s London, exploring one of Whitechapel’s back lanes with his bull’s-eye lantern. He was the constable who’d come across Frances Coles in February of 1891, arriving so soon after the killer had done his work that he could hear Jack’s retreating footsteps. He was Inspector Abberline hunting Edward Hare in the sooty labyrinth of East End, where life was cheaper than gin.
So little had changed. Even the victims’ names were nearly the same.
Draper was halfway down the alley. There was no movement but his steady forward progress, no sound but his footfalls on asphalt.
His flashlight swept the ground along the rear fence, where some sort of tarpaulin lay discarded. The tarp was not flat against the ground. It bulged in irregular places.
Parkinson could be underneath.
Draper paused, the flashlight beam picking out the tarp only for a moment before traveling on. If his quarry was there, Draper didn’t want him to know he’d been discovered.
Jennifer stood on the threshold of the alley, watching Draper’s slow advance, thinking of constables in the East End, and Hare on the prowl, and prostitutes unsexed and gutted, their throats cut as they were grabbed from behind....
From behind.
Her gaze shifted to the nearest trash bin, and she saw a rustle of oleander.
“Behind you!” she screamed.
Draper spun in a crouch as Parkinson emerged from the shrubbery.
A single gunshot slapped the alley walls in a volley of percussive echoes. She didn’t know which man had fired until Parkinson fell.
Draper approached him and kicked his gun away, then rolled Parkinson onto his back, exposing a red gash in his throat. His breath came in bubbling wheezes.
Jennifer stepped into the alley. She stared at Parkinson, his face sti
ll bloody where she had gouged him, his neck a broken stalk. She smelled the copper-penny scent of blood. Draper applied pressure to the wound, an empty gesture. Parkinson lay unmoving except for the heave of his chest and a faint fluttering motion of his right hand. He was reaching for his shoe—no, his pants leg.
Three paces, and she knelt beside him, grasping his wrist. She rolled up the trouser leg and found a knife strapped to his shin. Carefully she extracted it. The blade was dark with crusted blood. Maura’s blood.
She stood. Parkinson looked up at her. His mouth twisted in a grimace of pure malice, then relaxed. Even the effort of hating her was too much for him now.
“Evidence,” she said to Draper, handing him the knife.
“Thanks.” He set down the knife out of Parkinson’s reach, then got on the radio, requesting medical attention. When he was through, he replaced his hand on Parkinson’s neck, maintaining pressure.
“How long till an ambulance gets here?” Jennifer asked.
“Four or five minutes.”
“Will he make it that long?”
“That long? Yes.” The unspoken addendum was, But not much longer.
“I’m going to check on Sandra.”
“You may not like what you find.”
“I know.’
She retraced her steps, wending through the crowd. She still didn’t know if Parkinson had been about to enter the C.A.S.T. office or had just left. The difference was slight enough, but it was the difference between life and death for Sandra Price.
She arrived at the door, still open. She reassured herself that he hadn’t had time to do to Sandra what he’d done in Maura’s condo.
Whatever lay inside, it wouldn’t be as bad as that.
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 go
ing 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.
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