Jude fell to his knees and carefully began to lightly chisel with the tip of his pick at the mortar between the homemade bricks. One began to loosen, and Whitney fell to her knees across from him, gingerly prying it away as Jude released it at last. He was able to grab a second brick before it fell, and she reached past him for another.
“Lord!” Jude stared at Whitney across the hole they had created.
“What? Did you find Annie’s bones?”
Jude looked over at Jackson. “Yeah, maybe,” he said.
“Maybe?”
“There must be at least a dozen skeletons in this hole!”
Despite the very early hour at which they had found the skeletons, the sun was up by the time the right people had arrived to start working the site. Because the poor souls in the hole had long been buried, they were down to skeletal remains and bits of clothing. Forensic anthropologists and archaeologists joined the crime scene unit arriving on the scene.
Jude worked with the techs in the area of the pentagram, where, he believed, if a modern-day Jack the Ripper had twisted history, he might have brought his earlier victims as he felt his way into the murders.
Sean Meyer, head of the unit, tried to ascertain just what Jude was trying to find; Jude pointed out what he assumed were the lines of the pentagram in the ground, and explained that he believed, due to the killer’s determination to emulate Jack the Ripper, that he had certainly looked into the history of the House of Spiritualism, and though police had never proven foul play had taken place at the time, the killer believed that it had. He might have practiced the art of murder at the site.
Meyer’s people went over the floor for trace evidence, which might mean nothing; construction crews had been at the site, movie people had been at the site, members of the New York Film Commission had been at the site and safety officers had been there as well, since a movie crew was setting up at a dangerous location. Those working on set construction had been given strict boundaries, but the city was in the midst of budget cuts, which meant that protecting the integrity of the rules might have been nearly impossible. Not to mention that the one guard might not have seen teenagers who scaled the poor chain-link fencing—which did have signs in many areas warning of injury and death, to keep the curious out—or idiots who thought of themselves as a cult and also read the history regarding the place.
“Meyer, I understand all that,” Jude told him quietly. “What I want to find out is if we have any evidence of recent violence having taken place here—murder. If it happened, I believe it happened on the pentagram.”
Meyer nodded. “I’ll let my people work on trace first, and then we’ll bring in the Luminol and the cameras. You know, I’m sure, that Luminol can destroy other evidence, so we’ll go there last. And you know, too, that it will also pick up feces, animal blood…and if someone has bleached out the place, that will give us problems as well. What we pick up is the iron in blood, so there aren’t any real guarantees, and, as I was saying, we may pick up other sources of iron.”
“Humor me,” Jude told him.
“Of course,” Meyer agreed.
Police photographers now waited for the go-ahead with their long-exposure camera equipment to capture the blue chemiluminescent appearance of any blood spray near the pentragram.
Hannah arrived at the scene, assuring him that Deputy Chief Green had seen to it that the time for their task force meeting had been changed, and the time was now TBA. She bore the gift of a cardboard tray with cups of coffee. Jude accepted his gratefully, and walked around the supporting wall to observe the forensic anthropologists at work. He mused wryly that where they had taken pickaxes to the ground with a vengeance, the work was now being done with tiny picks and very small, soft-haired brooms. Angela had joined her team; he assumed Will and Jenna were watching the proceedings on the screens back at Blair House, since he had asked that their cameras and recorders not be disturbed.
Hannah hovered near him, but, eventually, she struck up a quiet conversation with Jake, growing more animated as she talked to him. Eventually, she walked over to Jude and said, “I’d like to go over with Jake to Blair House and see his trail of investigation.”
Jude nodded. “Sure. Two heads are better than one, so they say.” He glanced at Jake with a shrug. “Especially two brilliant heads.”
As they left, Jude heard Hannah say to Jake with awe, “Your fiancée owns a plantation? A real plantation?”
They left; the digging went on.
He noted that Angela and Whitney hovered together, speaking softly now and then. Jackson, arms folded over his chest, watched the proceedings.
Eventually, the crime scene unit finished all the initial photography and trace, and sheeting was rigged over the pentagram to create darkness.
Jude walked over to the section, taking a position where Meyer said he could observe and be out of the way. The photographers were ready; the Luminol had been prepared. Jude knew it was important that it be sprayed expertly and evenly.
And it was. And in the thirty seconds that followed, he saw the floor light up.
The cameras caught the glow and the patterns.
The room lit up like blue lightning.
The rigging was moved.
Meyer looked at him grimly.
“You were right. There was a bloodbath down here.”
There were three members in the team who had come to remove the bones, one with the New York Police Department, and two from the museum. A no-nonsense woman named Dr. Mary Drew was calling the shots; Whitney quickly learned that she was one of the most admired experts in her field. She supervised the removal of the bones. Years had gone by in which they’d lain undisturbed, but the conditions had been right for some preservation, she informed them. Simple biology, soft tissue decayed, and the decay created the browning they saw on the remnants of fabric that really didn’t seem to go to any of the skeletons. It had also seeped into the earth, so they’d be taking dirt samples along with the bricks that had housed the skeletons in the hole within the hole.
While Dr. Drew was talking to them, Dr. Wally Fullbright arrived at the scene. He quickly assured them that they would have all the facilities they needed at the morgue to work with the bones. Mary Drew frowned, certain that her facilities at the museum were better when they were working with remains that were certainly well over a hundred years old. They bickered politely, but Fullbright held the trump card; the deputy chief of police wanted the remains studied at the New York City Morgue because they might be part of a current investigation.
Fullbright didn’t interrupt the proceedings; he didn’t even put on gloves, but he hunkered down by the bones that had already been painstakingly removed and looked at Dr. Drew. “They were beheaded?” he asked.
“Hard to say until we’ve had a chance to study them,” she said. “By now, the disarticulation is almost complete.”
“All women?” Fullbright asked.
“So it appears, so far.”
“How many?”
“We’ve discovered thirteen skulls, so I’m going to assume that thirteen were buried here,” Dr. Drew told him.
“Fullbright, did you read anything that would indicate what happened here?” Jude asked.
“What?” Fullbright asked, frowning.
Jude smiled. “You spend a lot of time studying old documents at the Pierpont Library. Did you glean anything that might help here?”
“You checked up on me?” Fullbright asked him, clearly puzzled.
“Your name was on a list,” Jude explained.
Fullbright chuckled. “You know that I’m fascinated by all this. No, actually, I didn’t find anything more than we already know. Most of the references are vague—the outside world speculated, but they didn’t really know what was going on here. All I can say is that someone was heavily into the concept that human sacrifice was necessary.”
“Yes, so I’d say,” Jude agreed.
He walked over to Whitney, and nodded. He was excited to th
ink that she knew about the history of the Ripper in America, and he seemed thrilled to find that the House of Spiritualism had hosted incredible horrors.
“But there was nothing that ever suggested Jack the Ripper was a Satanist,” she reminded him.
“No, of course not, he was just a butcher, and the police were so inept back then. In London, the Metropolitan police were pitted against the City of London police, and the investigation was hampered entirely by politics—I mean, who erases evidence because it might cause someone to be offended?”
“‘The Juwes are not the men to be blamed for nothing,’” Whitney quoted. In London, they had discovered the words written over a doorway after the night of the “double event” when two victims had been killed.
The words may or may not have been written; they were never even photographed. They had been ordered removed; the words, it was feared, would cause racial rioting among those of different beliefs crowded into the East End at the time.
“Personally,” Jude said, joining them, “I’m afraid that our killer will reenact the double event—the Mary Kelly killing and then the Carrie Brown murder. They happened the same night those words were written. And no matter how ridiculous the theories out there may be, he’ll kill as many people as armchair detectives and historians have credited to the original man.”
By late afternoon, both teams were wrapping up. Jude realized that his back hurt, his muscles hurt, and that he was exhausted.
Ellis Sayer and a number of his team arrived. Ellis eyed him for a few minutes and then said, “You look like hell, Jude. You’ve got to have some faith in me and the others—get some rest. We’re a task force, remember? I’ll alert you to anything I learn.”
Jude nodded. “Thankfully, so far, we don’t have another victim.”
“Not yet,” Ellis said. He still had a dejected-basset-hound look to him. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a notepad. “We’ve interviewed everyone on the set by now, and we’ve made it through the security company and the limo drivers as well. I have the names of the six limousine drivers who were assigned to the director and the stars. They’ve all been interviewed and, according to the drivers, they picked up and dropped off the major film entities just as we were told. But you may find something I haven’t. One drove Sherry Blanco, one drove Bobby Walden, one was assigned to Angus Avery and three were on call to drive anyone back and forth as requested.”
“Thanks,” Jude told him. Whitney was walking over to him. She greeted Ellis courteously, looking at him as if waiting for something new. Ellis recognized the look and quickly informed her, “No, sorry. I haven’t anything else. Well, other than the fact that they should make a giant hotel out of this place—people seem to love ghoulish crap. They’ll pay the big bucks for such a haunted property. I imagine the movie will really make a fortune—the publicity it’s getting is going to make it spiral right off the charts.”
“True,” Whitney agreed. She looked at Jude. “We have food next door.”
Ellis sniffed. “He hasn’t noticed that he hasn’t eaten.”
“I’ll come over, thanks,” he said.
He started to walk with Whitney, leaving Ellis in charge, but then he hesitated. “Ellis, can you get a rush put on the forensics on the limos that carried people from that set? We had them taken in, but I haven’t heard anything back from the team that was inspecting them.”
“They’ve been on the crime scene evidence. I’ll push it on the limos,” Ellis told him wearily. “It’s damn hard when everything is a rush. They’re calling out the troops, and bitching about overtime all the same.” He shook his head and walked away, ever the good cop.
“Simple, quick—and we can feed tons of people, if need be,” Jenna Duffy said, tucking a stray strand of light auburn hair behind her ears. She flashed Jude a smile. “Shepherd’s pie, a rather good early dinner, if I do say so myself. Will is our expert sushi chef, but it’s hard to feed the masses that way. Help yourself, please. Beer and soda are over there…”
Whitney slid up behind Jude, taking a paper plate from the pile on the kitchen counter and handing him one. She was surprised that she’d gotten him to leave the site and come over; she felt that there was nothing more either of them could do there at the moment. “Hey, eat up. You have a large machine there to keep going,” she told him.
“Large machine, eh?” he replied. “Are you suggesting I need to diet?”
“Not at all, you seem to be doing well with the machine. I’m suggesting you dig in, and make way for those behind you!”
He grinned, offering her his place. The others, except for Jenna, had already filled their plates. Walking into the hallway, he saw that Angela and Jackson had their plates at the bank of screens, and were watching the continuing action at the site next door. Hannah was with Jake in the den, enjoying his computer and programs, and Will Chan was waiting politely with Jenna so that she would prepare a plate of food for herself. Jude tried to wait politely as well, but Jenna and Will shooed him and Whitney out of the kitchen. “TV is on in the front parlor, you might want to take a look at the news programs,” Will told them.
“We hooked up the cable while you were at the site today,” Jenna explained. “You can get over eight hundred channels from I don’t know how many companies.”
“Wonderful—I guess,” Whitney said. She dared to catch Jude’s arm and steer him in the right direction.
The front parlor was filled with period furniture—except for the television and new cable system. They settled on the sofa in time to catch the weather, but then local news came back on. A pretty anchorwoman announced, “More shocking news today from downtown. Experts are now excavating the construction site off Broadway in the lower East End because skeletal remains have been found on the site. The Darby Building was slated for demolition last month and imploded, but the foundations had been deemed sound. However, before the Darby Building, a reputed destination for the city’s Satanists known as the House of Spiritualism occupied the land before the turn of the twentieth century. Speculation is running high. Murder victim Virginia Rockford, working on a movie at the site, was found killed Ripper style just days ago. A little over a mile away in the Bowery, the body of Melody Tatum was also discovered. Police spokespersons have little to offer the public at the moment. We’ll bring you Deputy Chief Green, taped this afternoon, right after our commercial break—and an exclusive interview with the beautiful actress Sherry Blanco regarding the upcoming epic O’Leary’s, with a clip from the movie.”
Jude let out a groan and winced.
“The movie just became an epic,” Whitney said.
“And who would cash in on that?” Jude asked rhetorically. “Angus Avery, Bobby Walden and the ever-caring Ms. Sherry Blanco. Women are dead, bones have been dug up—and the public is still going to want to see Sherry Blanco,” Jude said.
Whitney nudged his arm. “Eat.”
“Before I lose my appetite,” Jude agreed.
His gaze didn’t leave the television screen, but, mechanically, he took a bite of the shepherd’s pie. It was good—Whitney already knew, having had Jenna’s shepherd’s pie before. The aroma had been enough to make her realize she was starving.
Jude’s second bite was far more energetic, and while they went through commercials that sold floor cleaners, cars and a product to extend a man’s penis, he wolfed down the food on the plate.
The anchorwoman came back on; Deputy Chief Green announced that every policeman in the five boroughs was on high alert, that a task force was working all hours and that the FBI had a special unit on the case as well. The chief ended the interview by accepting a question about the House of Spiritualism, and saying that the police were exploring all possible angles. He tried to leave the podium, but one reporter demanded to know if the deputy chief believed that Carrie Brown had been a victim of the Ripper, and he paused, obviously irritated. “I have no personal beliefs on the matter. I’m concerned with what’s happening on our streets right now.�
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“Is he targeting prostitutes?” another reporter called out.
“All women should take great care with any new acquaintance. It’s a time for extreme vigilance.”
“But,” cried the same reporter, “it does seem true, doesn’t it? This killer isn’t after affluent women or mothers of kindergarten children!”
“We still can’t say who the killer will target. Excuse me, that is all I have right now!”
Deputy Chief Green managed to escape. The anchorwoman came back with a perfectly coiffed Sherry Blanco at her side. Sherry was visibly distressed. “Poor Ginger!” she said, and tears formed in her eyes; one slid down her cheek and she dabbed at it with a tissue. “We were all so heartbroken!” She shivered. “And it could have been any of us!”
“Will the movie come out as scheduled?” the anchorwoman asked.
“We filmed today in Brooklyn, so, despite what we all have to bear, we’re working hard to see that the fans and our producers are happy,” Sherry assured her.
Jude made a sound.
“Hey!” Whitney protested softly. She took his forgotten dinner plate from his hands and set it on the table. “Don’t blame an entire industry. I know a lot of actresses who are really nice, and would be making real announcements, begging people to be safe.”
“Luckily, it seems that everyone really kept mum at the site today,” Jude said. “It’s important that all the details don’t get out there.”
“Well, since it’s in off the street and teeming with cops, the reporters couldn’t get close,” Whitney reminded him.
“Yet,” Jude said dolefully.
The anchorwoman directed her audience to watch the clip; it wasn’t one in which Virginia Rockford was featured. Sherry Blanco, in period dress, was trying to head home from O’Leary’s, the fictional pub in the Five Points district, when she was accosted by thugs. Bobby Walden appeared, dominating the screen, sending them off. Sherry’s character looked at him with love and uncertainty in her eyes, and turned to run away while Bobby gazed after her in turn.
Sacred Evil (Krewe of Hunters) Page 19