The Name of the Star

by Maureen Johnson

  I had a free period, so I went over to the library, just to get out of the building. I thought I went quickly, but by the time I got there, all the carrels were taken, as were all the chairs around the room and all the spots on the floor next to the electrical outlets.

  I decided to go upstairs, and I made my way back to the literature section. I peered down each one until I found Alistair. He was there—same magnificent hair, same big trench coat and Doc Martens boots. He had only changed positions. Now he was sitting in the windowsill, still mostly in the dark.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked. “There’s nowhere downstairs.”

  “Do what you like,” he said, not looking up.

  I hit the switch at the end of the aisle and took my place on the floor. The floor was cold, but at least it was somewhere to sit, and somewhere not totally on my own. After ten minutes, the light automatically clicked off. I looked over to see if Alistair was going to get up and turn it back on, but he just kept on reading. I peeled myself from the floor and flicked the switch.

  “It’s bad for your eyes,” I said. “Reading in the dark.”

  Alistair smirked a little. I didn’t know why. There was nothing funny about eyestrain. I hadn’t been there very long when Jerome appeared at the end of the aisle, his computer under his arm.

  “Jazza said you were over here,” he said. “Can I talk to you? I need to show you something.”

  Jerome was so preoccupied that he didn’t even acknowledge Alistair’s presence.

  Jerome led me to one of the tiny study rooms that lined the first floor. All the rooms were occupied, but he found one containing three year twelves who were all playing video games.

  “Out,” he said, opening the door. “We need this room.”

  There were cries of protest, but Jerome pushed the door open wider.

  “Study use only,” he said. “Out.”

  “Using your prefect powers for evil?” I asked as they shuffled past us. One of them was considerably taller than Jerome and looked down at him with palpable disdain, but Jerome didn’t care. He was already setting up his computer.

  “Shut the door,” he said. “Sit down.”

  There were three chairs and a tiny table in the room. The room wasn’t wide enough for a fourth chair. It wasn’t really wide enough for the little table. I slipped in next to Jerome, who was logging on and pulling up a site.

  “I have to warn you,” he said. “This is disturbing. But you should see it. Everyone’s going to see it soon enough.”

  He was on a site called Ripperfiles. In the middle of the front page was a video screen. He hit the Play symbol.

  The footage was in night vision, which meant that it had a greenish-gray cast, with bright white highlights. The first frames were of a garden and a patio with a few empty tables. I realized immediately that this had to be the Flowers and Archers.

  After thirty seconds or so of this, a gate opened. Someone walked into the garden, very straight-backed and stiff. It was a woman. She was wearing a skirt and a coat. She crossed from the left of the frame to the right, until she was positioned almost perfectly in the eye of the camera, then she turned slowly.

  Her eyes said it all. They were huge points of white light. She stood there, utterly unmoving except for a light heaving of constrained cries. Her attention seemed focused on something in front of her, just out of view. Then she jerked to the side, toppling against the fence and bouncing to the ground. She began to fight, arms flailing. It was only then that I realized that she wasn’t looking at someone outside of the camera’s range. There was simply no murderer there. The victim was well in the center of the yard, so her assailant should have been fully visible. But there was no one. She flailed at the air. Then there was a flash, a little glint of something streaking across the screen, and she went still. Her legs suddenly jerked up, so that the knees were bent and the heels placed on the ground. Then the knees were knocked open. Then a glint again.

  Jerome reached over and hit Pause.

  “You don’t want to see the rest,” he said. “I’m sorry I saw it.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “What was that?”

  “That was the footage from the pub. It wasn’t destroyed.”

  “But it can’t be.”

  “It is. A member of this site got it straight from the backup server. This is it.”

  “It’s obviously just someone acting out the crime.”

  “Honestly,” he said, “it’s real. This site . . . These people are serious. Obviously, something’s been done to the footage to remove the assailant, but no one can figure out what. This has been passed around to all kinds of technical experts, and no one can figure out what’s been done to it. This video? It’s going to be all over the place. Every conspiracy nut in the world is going to go crazy for this.”

  The image was still frozen there—the woman on her back, the strange glint hanging in the air. Jerome closed the computer partway.

  “The other night,” I said. “When we were sneaking back in. I saw someone.”

  “You’re a witness?” he asked.

  “I was,” I said. “They made me do something called an E-fit.”

  “You did an E-fit?”

  I explained to Jerome about the man—how he had appeared from around the corner, how he had seen me climbing back into the window. Jerome was completely staggered by this. His jaw dropped open slightly. He was fairly loose-jawed to begin with—hence his power to declare Total War on his food, his easy smiles, his ability to talk for ages. We had probably been this close before, shoved together on the benches of the refectory, but I became acutely aware that we were alone in this little study room. Study closet, really. And we were closer now than I remembered. We must have been moving together while I was watching the video.

  “It’s been weird,” I said. “Jazza didn’t see him. She was inside. I was still out on the sidewalk, so . . . they’re only talking to me. But I think they think I’m crazy. Or lying. They haven’t been in touch.”

  “I’m sure they’ll get in touch when they catch him,” he said. “Then they’ll probably bring you in to identify him.”

  That made sense. There was no point in contacting me until they had something to ask me.

  We were so close now that I couldn’t look directly at him, not at his eyes, anyway. This is when it finally dawned on me that he hadn’t brought me in here for the sole purpose of watching a video of someone being murdered (though that was probably part of the reason).

  Also, it was very warm in the little study closet.

  To be honest, I’m not sure which one of us did it first, but it was a done deal as soon as I managed to pull my gaze back from his chin to his eyes.

  BBC TELEVISION CENTRE, SHEPHERD’S BUSH, WEST LONDON OCTOBER 2 1:45 P.M.

  THE BBC IS USED TO DEALING WITH FREAKS, CRANKS, and psychos. Bomb threats are not uncommon. Nor were threats to James Goode, host of Goode Evening, the nightly news roundup and opinion show. A major newspaper’s readers’ poll had recently voted James the fifteenth-most famous person in Britain, thirdmost annoying, and number-one “celebrity you would least like to date.” It was estimated that 42 percent of his audience tuned in just to hate him, a behavior he actively encouraged.

  So when the associate producer of Goode Evening returned from lunch to find the brown-paperwrapped parcel on his desk, he was puzzled. No one in the office claimed any knowledge of having accepted its delivery. The mailroom had no record of it. Someone had been in the office at all times, and yet no one had seen a person walk in and deliver a box. It simply appeared, with the words “Mr James Goode, BBC Centre” written on it in a harsh black scrawl. It had no stamps, no delivery stickers, no bar codes or tracking numbers. It was utterly anonymous.

  Which meant that this was a serious breach of security. The producer was already reaching for the phone when James himself came strutting into the office.

  “We have a problem,” th
e producer said. “Breach of security. I think we have to get everyone out.”

  “What?” James Goode said the word in the same way normal people usually said things like “you burned my house down?” But the producer was used to this.

  “This box,” he said. “No one saw it come in. No postage, no delivery markings, didn’t come through the mailroom. We have to—”

  “Don’t be stupid,” James said, taking the box.

  “James—”

  “Be quiet.”

  “James, really—”

  But James was already attacking the packaging tape with a pair of scissors. The producer set down the phone softly, closed his eyes, and quietly prayed that he wouldn’t explode in the next few seconds.

  “I don’t want people calling health and safety for every little thing,” James went on. “That’s precisely the kind of behavior I . . .”

  He silenced himself, which was not normal James Goode behavior. The producer opened his eyes to find James reading a piece of yellow paper.

  “James?”

  James hissed him silent as he reached into the box gingerly to move aside some wrapping. He started visibly and pushed down the flaps of the box, hiding the contents.

  “Listen to me,” James said intently. “Get news on the phone. Tell them to get a camera up here now and that I’m going to need to be on the air in fifteen minutes.”

  “What? What are you doing?”

  “I have the next piece of the Ripper story. And tell them to be quiet about it. Lock the door. No one else comes into this office.”

  Fifteen minutes later, after a protracted argument with the news department, there was a camera in the Goode Evening office and a news producer with a headset talking rapidly to the newsroom. James was sitting at his desk. His awards had been hastily shoved together on the windowsill just behind him, crushed together to fit in the frame. In front of him was the box.

  “Are you ready yet?” he snapped. “How bloody difficult is it to stop them jabbering on for two minutes? I’m trying to hand them a story. Tell them to stop doing the bloody weather and—”

  “We’re live in ten,” the person from news said. “And nine, eight, seven . . .”

  James composed himself for the countdown and was ready at one.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “just after two in the afternoon, I received this package here in my office at BBC Centre.”

  He indicated the box, then held up the piece of yellow paper.

  “Inside I found this note, which, as you will hear, I have been instructed to read. I am following the instructions in an attempt to save lives . . .”

  He began to read.

  From hell.Mr Goode, I send you half the Kidne I took from one man prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.The camera panned over to show the contents of the box. Nestled in a wad of bubble wrap was a brownish-red object sealed in a plastic zipper-top bag. The object was about the size of a human fist, and there was no mistaking that it was some kind of an organ.

  The camera jerked back to James, who continued reading.

  I hav already chose my next acquatence and I am eager for the 9th of november as I am hungry and hav the itch. Please show my lovly Kidne on your show Mr Goode and read my note or I may hav to come quick and take more. . . .The screen abruptly switched back to the newsroom. Someone, somewhere at the BBC, had pulled the plug. The anchor apologized for the graphic footage.

  Inside his office, James Goode went on. The last sentence of the letter was the money sentence, the one he had practiced reading with the most care, the one he had memorized and could say looking right into the camera. This was, he knew, the sentence no one would ever forget. This was his moment.

  He read it, unaware that it was being heard only by himself and the two other people in the room.

  THE STAR THAT KILLS

  In our lifetime those who kill the newsworld hands them stardom and these are the ways on which I was raised.—Morrissey,

  “The Last of the Famous

  International Playboys”

  16

  THE POLICE PACKED UP BY WEDNESDAY MORNING, and the press left as soon as the white tent came down. Jerome’s prediction about the video came true. By that afternoon, every news station on the planet was showing it. It was on the front page of every website. Even though hoaxes were an everyday occurrence, this video was proving hard to dismiss. Video experts had all had a look at it. Facial recognition software confirmed that the woman in the footage was the victim, Fiona Chapman. No one could explain the fact that the killer couldn’t be seen. And it was physically impossible that he was just avoiding the camera. Somehow, he had accessed the footage on both the hard disk and the server and erased himself. Some people thought he had special military cloaking technology.

  Three students had been pulled from school. Teachers wanted to be able to leave the school grounds before it got dark at five. In the air, there was a deep sense of unease, everywhere.

  As for the mad make-out session with Jerome, I wasn’t sure what it meant. It could have been a part of the general insanity. It could have been stress that kicked our hormones into gear like that. But the fact is, when you live with someone—or on the same campus, I mean—and you have a mad make-out session, you have two choices. You can either indicate that you enjoy your mad make-out sessions and intend to indulge in them at every given opportunity (i.e., Gaenor and Paul, her year twelve boyfriend, known to make out while eating shepherd’s pie, which is not a euphemism), or you do not acknowledge the make-out session, or indeed any physical attraction. There is no middle ground, not at boarding school. I told Jazza, of course. But no one else. Jerome seemed to be doing the same thing. In fact, I was pretty sure he hadn’t told Andrew.

  On Wednesday night, Jazza and I sat on our respective beds doing homework while the news played on my computer. After the video came out, watching the news became a matter of habit. The topic, as ever, was the Ripper—in this case, the letter that had been received at the BBC the day before.

  “This letter,” the newscaster said, “of course, is based on the famous ‘From Hell’ letter that was received by Mr. George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee on October 16, 1888. It’s the only letter out of the hundreds that came in that most Ripper experts think was actually from the killer. We now also know that there was more to the letter, which we didn’t hear. To discuss this, we have Mr. James Goode.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Please. Not again. Not again with this guy.”

  This guy, James Goode, had seemed to be on about half of all the television shows I saw in England before this happened. Now his smug face was on TV all the time, on every station.

  “James, many people are saying that you should have turned the package over to the police immediately,” the interviewer said, “not shown the contents on the air.”

  “People have a right to know,” James replied, leaning back. “And we arranged it so that one very critical piece of information was left out. Only Scotland Yard and I know the full contents of the message.”

  “You’re saying you intended for your own broadcast to be cut off so abruptly?”

  “Of course I intended it.”

  “Who is this jackass?” I asked. “Why is he always on TV?”

  “James Goode? I don’t know. He was a journalist, and they gave him a show. Everyone hates him, but he’s really popular, which makes no sense, I suppose.”

  “He’s a jackass,” I repeated, and Jazza nodded sagely.

  “It’s always been a subject of debate whether or not the original ‘From Hell’ letter of 1888 was a hoax. That letter, like your letter, contained half a human kidney, which could have come from the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. Of course, now we possess the capability to determine these things for certain. It has been confirmed that the kidney sent to you was the left
kidney of the fourth victim, Catherine Lord. Why do you think you were chosen, James? Why you, and not the police?”

  “I suppose the killer wanted to send a message,” James said. “He wanted to make sure the kidney was seen by as many people as possible, and he knew I had the pull to make that happen.”

  “And of course the one thing this last murder has shown is that the killer probably has extensive medical knowledge. This was always a matter of debate in the case of the first Ripper, but this time, there is a consensus amongst the medical professionals involved that this murderer almost certainly has some medical training. The kidney was removed with great skill. We have an image of the kidney taken from that broadcast. Viewers are advised that the following image is quite graphic, and—”

  “I am getting so sick of looking at this kidney,” I said.

  “It’s a farce,” Jazza replied. “They act like they’re shocked and horrified, and then they show it off twenty times a day.”

  “Have you seen the singing kidney video?” I asked.

  “Ugh. No.”

  “It’s really funny. You should watch it.”

  “Can you switch it off?”

  The computer was at the end of my bed. I closed it with my socked foot and continued reading my selections from The Diary of Samuel Pepys (which is pronounced Peeps, not Peppies, something I found out the hard way in class)—specifically, a section in which he describes the Great Fire of London. There was a knock at our door. Charlotte opened the door when we called.

  “Benton, Deveaux, you’re wanted downstairs.”

  In Hawthorne-speak, downstairs meant Call Me Claudia’s apartment, and last names meant the business was in some way official.

  “What for?” Jazza asked.

  “Sorry. No idea.”

  She and her hair left us. Jazza shoved her German off her lap and spun toward me.