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 Stamm 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, listening 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 cop
e 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.”
Sleep he did.
A fitful sleep.
But sleep nonetheless.
Until Adrian Quirk knocked on the bedroom door.
Still in his uniform, now dusty, rumpled, and creased, Zinc stepped into the hall and quietly shut the door behind him. “Problem, Adrian?” The hall was deserted.
“Claustrophobia,” Quirk said. “The walls are closing in. If I don’t get some fresh air, I’m going to scream. You and Wynn are the only two I’d trust for company. And he’s too weak to push the chair.”
Chandler read something else in his face, then Quirk mouthed the sentence We have to speak. Whatever it was, he didn’t want the hollow walls of Castle Crag to overhear. Zinc weighed leaving the house unpoliced against his own craving for a little fresh air. The urgency in Quirk’s look convinced him. “Weather?” he asked.
“Snowing,” Quirk said.
“I’ll get my parka. Be with you in a sec.”
Alex stirred on her bed as he fetched his overcoat. For the first time since Carol was killed, love had pierced his heart. If they survived this Hell, Heaven would be waking each dawn to share the day with Hunt.
“Rewedge the door,” Zinc said. “I’ll join you for break fast in the Banquet Room. Remember, just the halls. No detours.”
“Why the parka?”
“Something I’ve got to check.”
He paused outside the room until he heard the chair wedge the door shut, then turned to wheel Quirk toward the Receiving Hall stairs. “Other way,” Quirk said. “I found a hidden route.”
Zinc’s room was in the South Wing near the top of the dogleg stairs, while Quirk’s room, across the hall, abutted the ceiling vault of the Ballroom below. Wheeling toward the end of the wing, they passed Luna and Katt’s room next to Quirk’s, then Lou Bolt’s room next to theirs, approaching Hunt’s abandoned room straight ahead. A narrow corridor angled left to the front of the house, with bathroom facilities off it to the right. The wall across from the toilet looked like solid wood, but Quirk pushed up and it lifted like the door of a garage.
“The castle isn’t wheelchair friendly,” he said. “I bumped the wall last night trying to take a leak, and abracadabra, look what I found.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s not a trap. I used it already.”
“When?”
“Middle of the night. I rode down to the Banquet Room for food.”
“That was foolish.”
“Hey, my life is charmed. I should be dead. It’s all borrowed time.”
“Don’t push the envelope. They might call in the loan.”
Five feet high, a dumbwaiter was hidden behind the wall. Zinc had to crouch to cram inside and pull the wheelchair in. They spent a minute in the dark while the box descended, Quirk cranking them down then raising the false wall across from the Scullery. They passed the Kitchen, turned right, wheeled to the Receiving Hall and turned right again, then left the mansion by the front door.
Raised on the prairies, Zinc knew snow, but this snowfall was unlike any he had ever seen. No fluffy flakes tumbled in unison. No gritty crystals bit into his face. Here funnels of snow, dozens of them, swirled and twirled like whirling dervishes in a Turkish bazaar, dancing in ensemble so they blocked his view, then separating for solos so he could see between them. It brought to mind a dust storm he had witnessed in Beijing.
“The bluff behind the Ballroom. Let’s go up,” said Quirk.
The path circled wide around the castle’s South Wing, past the Billiards Room with its Turkish bath, winding west by the Scullery, Kitchen, and Banquet Room, before ascending to the cliff high above the Pacific. From the bluff to Skeleton Cove, the island tilted down like a playground slide.
The snow on the ground was unmarked.
The crest of the bluff was twenty feet back from the cliff, the ground tenting before it dropped off the precipice. Zinc pushed the wheelchair up the inland slant, stopping this side of the crest so they didn’t slip down the oceanside slope and plummet to the beach. The crashing waves of the Pacific pounded the shore below, building sand formations only to have them broken down by the foaming surf. Glancing over his shoulder at the hulk of Castle Crag, Zinc glimpsed the idol of Satan behind the Ballroom windows and between two dervishes.
“It’s like being in prison, not being able to walk, except my cage moves on wheels,” Quirk said. “I used to hike before the accident.”
“What happened?” Zinc asked, standing behind the wheelchair facing the cliff.
“I’m an unwalking example of why you should always buckle up. Two friends and I were in the front seat driving home from a pub. I was in the middle, arms stretched along the back behind their shoulders. The car jumped the road and clipped a tree. I was thrown forward. They wore seat belts. Last thing I heard was my spine crack—and here I am.”
“When?”
“Christmas Eighty-six. Just after Expo.”
“You said we have to talk? What about?”
“I know who hanged Leuthard in the stairwell.”
“Who?”
“Glen Devlin.”
“Why suspect him?”
“I found the dumbwaiter at three A.M. when I went to piss. With all the commotion last night, I couldn’t eat. That’s why I rode the lift down to the lower floor.”
“To the Banquet Room?”
“Yeah, for a hunk of beef. The meat was still on the spit where it was left when Cohen got shot. Slices off it. Someone else.”
“Another foolish move. It could be poisoned.”
“I left the Banquet Ro
om to take the dumbwaiter up, and that’s when I saw candlelight in the Receiving Hall. I thought it was you, investigating. Luckily my wheelchair doesn’t squeak.”
“You wheeled to the Hall?”
“Quiet as I could. Any sound was masked by the wind.”
“What’d you see?”
“Devlin. Kneeling on the stairs. Pulling nails out of the banister.”
“Nails?”
“From the trapdoor. The underside. He leaned into the stairwell and used his fingers to wiggle them free. They must have been loose.”
“What use would anyone have for nails taken from a gallows?”
“Souvenir of the killing? Some sort of ritual thing?”
“Where were you?”
“Foot of the stairs. Edge of the South Wing. Under the upper half of the staircase. I took the dumbwaiter back to my room.”
“Devlin see you?”
“Doubt it. In case he did, I’m telling you.”
“Why didn’t you knock on my door at three—”
The scream that rode the wind could be from either sex, but Zinc’s first thought was Alex had followed them, prompting the killer to follow her. Forty feet to either side, the path from the house to the cliff was clear of trees, creating a sunset sightline from the castle to the drop. Right and left of the swath were granite outcrops and thickets of stunted trees, trunks bent inland by the lash of the wind like the backs of galley slaves.
Another scream.
From the right?
Then a third.
Cut off abruptly as if by death.
“Stay here,” Zinc said. “And wave at the castle to summon help.” He ran to the right along the crest of the bluff, making sure his sprint straddled the upside down V of the great divide, knowing a slip on the west tent slope might slide him over the cliff. As if in conspiracy with the killer of Deadman’s Island, the snow dervishes closed ranks the moment he entered the woods.
Zinc ceased running.
He strained to hear signs of life.
What was that?
A muffled cry?
From back at the bluff?
Ripper Page 31