Riptide

thirty-six

At quarter to ten Jennifer pulled into her garage. By now Casey must be in the house, though the curtains over the front windows were closed and she could see only a faint light from within.

Richard might be here as well. She was acutely aware of the possibility of an ambush. She didn’t relax until the garage door had lowered behind her.

She got out of the car. Before she could knock on the door to the kitchen, it swung open and Casey confronted her, red-faced.

“Was there some ambiguity in my instructions?”

“No, you made yourself very clear.”

“God damn it, I ought to abort this operation right now.”

“But you won’t.”

“No. I won’t. Come on in.”

She followed him into the kitchen. “I noticed you closed the curtains.”

“Your brother may scope out the house. I don’t want him seeing any cops inside-or any cop cars on this street. I parked two blocks away.”

“Good idea.”

“We may only get one chance at this. When it goes down, you have to swear to me-I mean seriously swear to me-that you will stay out of the way. No matter what happens.”

“I’m not going to interfere.”

“You’re interfering already, just by showing up.”

She tilted her head. “Are you still mad at me for the other day?”

He paused, considering the question. “No, I guess I’m just pissed off in general. I don’t like seeing a person butchered like that. It rubs me the wrong way.”

She thought of the mortuary photos from the nineteenth century. “At least now we know how people felt in 1888.”

“Is that when Jack the Ripper was on the prowl?”

“A hundred twenty years ago. Five murders that year, and two more in the following years. Then he came to America. It’s all in the diary.”

“Yeah, the diary. I need to take that.”

“I hid it in the pantry.”

She opened the cabinet and moved the cleaning supplies out of the way, revealing the tin. Carefully she lifted it off the shelf. Casey pulled a large plastic evidence bag from his pocket and put the metal box inside the bag. He sealed the bag and labeled it with a felt-tip marker from the kitchen.

“Plastic isn’t the ideal environment for an old document,” she said. “Especially when it’s sealed.”

“It won’t be in plastic very long. It’s going straight to the crime lab. We have people there who know all about document handling.”

“I hope they know about old documents. This one is fragile. It’s a miracle it’s held up as well as it has.”

“You’re not the only expert,” he said grouchily. “They know what they’re doing. You said something about a note you received?”

“What?”

“A note on your windshield, something about the diary?”

“Oh, yes.” It had been part of her statement. “It’s in my study, at the back of the house.”

“I’ll get it. You wait here. If there’s a knock on the door, you come get me.”

“The note’s in the drawer of my desk,” she told him as he headed down the hall with the tin under one arm.

She returned to the living room, where she noticed that a light on her message machine was blinking. Could someone from the media have found out about her involvement in the case so soon? She pressed Play, her hand poised over the Erase button.

But the voice over the speakers didn’t belong to a reporter. It was a voice she thought she would never hear again.

“Hey, kiddo. Tried your cell, but you didn’t pick up. I’m on my way back from downtown. Told you I’d make amends for getting you mixed up with Harrison. Spent the afternoon going through the city archives. Those women all disappeared between 1908 and 1911, and guess what? Your great-grandpappy didn’t take possession of the house till 1912. So you’re in the clear. The original owner was a Mr. Henry Parkinson. He designed the place and built it, and I guess he made sure there was a cellar…”

The message continued, but Jennifer didn’t hear it.

Mr. Henry Parkinson. The man who built this house. A man who shared his last name with the medical examiner who’d inspected the bones in situ. Who’d come in to do it, even though it was his day off. Who’d been interested in her family history…and in Richard.

Parkinson, with his legs weakened by MS. Yet he could walk, climb the cellar stairs, maybe even run-with the awkward loping gait of the figure in the sweatshirt.

“No,” she whispered. “Impossible.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

She looked up and he was there, at the entrance to the hallway, with a gun in one hand and the metal box in the other. Standing erect, no braces on his legs.

The expression on his face was like nothing she’d ever seen before, a mask of glee and hatred.

“You,” she said, feeling stupid and confused.

“Me,” he agreed, much too cheerfully.

“But it can’t be…”

“Why not? Because I’m a cripple? You’d be surprised what a crip can do. Anyway, MS comes and goes. It’s in remission now. For the past few weeks I haven’t even needed the leg braces. I wore them for effect. To avoid any possible suspicion. Now I want you to reach into your pocket and take out your cell phone.”

“My phone?” She still couldn’t quite grasp it, couldn’t understand.

“Come on, Doctor. Take it out.”

The gun was trained on her. She couldn’t refuse. Fumbling in her pocket, she found the phone.

“Now toss it away. You won’t be needing it. There’ll be no more text messages from Abberline.”

“You’re Abberline,” she said, her mind working with molasses slowness as she tried to put it together.

“Of course I’m Abberline. I’ve been fascinated by the Ripper case my whole life. I participate in many online forums, and when I saw the new thread about Edward Hare, I knew you had posted it. Now throw the goddamned phone away.”

He was still smiling, always smiling, his face a frozen mask.

She pitched the phone into a corner, heard its distant clatter.

“Where’s Casey?” she asked.

“Unconscious. I brained him with that UV lamp of yours.”

Absurdly she thought she’d just replaced the lighting element and now it was probably broken again.

“I hid in the study,” he went on, “after I gained entrance to your house via the window. You really ought to fix that latch.”

“Yes. Yes, I should.” She was staring at the gun in his hand. Casey’s gun, she realized.

“Okay, now we’re going down into the cellar.”

“Why?”

“Because I like it down there. I think of it as a shrine to Henry Parkinson, formerly known as Edward Hare.”

She thought about running, but she could never get out of the room in time. He might not be a great shot, but at this range he wouldn’t miss.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked as she approached the pantry and the trapdoor.

“I told you, I like the cellar. It’s a sacred place to me.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, why Maura? And the others? Just…why?”

“Open the trapdoor.”

“You won’t tell me?”

“Some things are too precious to be shared.”

She knelt and lifted the door, exposing the flight of stairs that descended into the dark.

“The light bulb’s dead,” she said, then wished she had used some other word.

“I have a flashlight. Go down. I’ll be right behind you.”

Yes, she would go down. But he wouldn’t be behind her. If she let him follow her into the dark, she would never come up again. She would be left with the skeletons, just another cadaver under the stairs.

She lowered herself onto the staircase and took a step. Parkinson moved closer, still standing in the pantry. She descended two more steps and heard him shift his stance to follow.

Before his foot could find the top step, she pivoted and shoved out at him with both arms.

She caught him by surprise and knocked him backwards. His disease might be in remission, but his legs weren’t strong. They folded under him and he hit the floor with a yell. The gun came up, and she ducked, flinging the trapdoor shut.

She heard him throw himself across the floor, his fingers scrabbling at the trapdoor’s handle, but before he could open it, she slammed the dead bolt into place.

She hugged herself, enveloped in the cellar’s absolute black. On the other side, Parkinson shook the handle.

“This won’t stop me,” he said conversationally.

“They’ll know it was you,” she shouted up at him. “They’ll know you did it.”

“Not at all. They’ll assume it was your demented brother. I hardly think I’ve been wasting my time on this meticulous frame-up. I’ve got everybody thinking it’s him. Even you.”

Something large and heavy smacked against the trapdoor. It shuddered. The door itself was solid oak like the rest of the flooring, but the lock and hinges were old.

“There’s a phone down here,” she bluffed. “I’m calling nine-one-one.”

“No, you’re not. There’s no fucking phone.” He struck the door again. “I’ve been in the cellar, remember?”

Another impact rocked the door. A gritty rain of dirt and splinters showered her. The dead bolt jingled ominously, the screws coming loose.

She retreated down the stairs, working her way by feel. In the darkness she had no sense of distance. It was a small shock when her shoes touched the concrete floor.

One last crash, and he yanked the trapdoor open. He thumped onto the stairs, his figure in silhouette against the light from the pantry.

“Now the fun begins. The kind of fun I had with Maura. She died so well. I butchered her like a steer.”

“You sick motherfucker!” she screamed.

“She was good…but you’ll be better.”

He started down the stairs, his flashlight snapping on. She backed away. There was no place to hide in the windowless room. No way out except the staircase that he blocked. Nothing to use as a weapon. Only blank walls and a concrete floor and the cache of skeletons.

She stumbled toward the crypt, dropping on hands and knees, climbing inside in the impossible hope that somehow he wouldn’t see her. The old bones fractured under her, raising wisps of chalky dust.

The flashlight reached the bottom of the stairs. It swung slowly, panning the room, and came to rest on her pitiful hiding place.

“There you are, with the other dead girls,” Parkinson said.

He moved forward.

She groped in the bone pile for something she could use in self-defense. Her hands came up only with loose dirt and scattered bones and teeth.

When she looked up, he was closer. He held the flashlight in his left hand. The right hand was empty. He wasn’t holding the gun. Must have snagged it in his waistband behind his back.

He didn't want to shoot her. That wasn't the Ripper’s way.

She dug deeper in the dirt.

He came nearer, smiling, always smiling.

“You’re only making things harder on yourself, Doctor.”

The cyclops eye of the flashlight expanded, wiping out her world, total blackness replaced by an undifferentiated field of white.

Out of the light came Parkinson’s hand. He seized her by the blouse and pulled her halfway to her feet, his face materializing in the glare.

He grinned. “Shall we dance?”

“Let’s,” she said, and her fist flew out from behind her back. In her hand was a broken piece of long bone-a leg or an arm, jagged at one end where it had been cut apart.

She plunged the severed end into his face.

He released her and staggered back with a wail of pain. The bone in her hand came away bloodied.

“You bitch, you almost took my eye out!”

She jabbed at him again, aiming for the flashlight this time, shattering the lens.

Darkness.

The last thing she saw before the light went out was Parkinson pulling out the gun.

She threw herself into a corner of the crypt, curling up in a protective ball, and the gun fired-again-again-again-the shots wild, blowing puffs of dirt out of the walls, scattering pebbles and bone. The noise was impossibly loud, the muzzle flashes tinting the darkness purple.

She thought he might go on firing until the gun was empty or until she went insane.

But he stopped. He was as blind as she was, and deafened by the reports. He didn’t know-couldn’t know-if he had hit her or not, and he couldn’t risk probing the dark to find out.

Instead he retreated, groping his way back to the stairs. She could see him faintly limned by the fall of light down the staircase. She heard the slow march of feet as he climbed to ground level.

“Looks like I can’t do you the way I’d prefer,” he said, his voice reaching her over the chiming in her ears. “But that’s all right. I have a backup plan.”

He paused, no doubt hoping she would ask a question and establish that she was alive. She said nothing.

“Staying mum, are you? I’ll tell you anyway. I saw how chummy you were with Sandra Price. I watched you break bread with her. Since I can’t have my way with you, I’ll have to take it out on her.”

Another pause. She was tempted to argue, to tell him she hardly knew Sandra, that Maura had been her friend and he’d already taken her. But she knew if she said anything, she would only be playing into his hands.

He resumed his march up the stairs. “If you can hear me, if you’re still alive, then think about what’s going to happen to Sandra. It’s on your head, Dr. Silence.”

The trapdoor slammed down again, all light was gone, and she was alone in the blackness.

She felt herself all over, probing for a wound. Sometimes a person could be shot and not even know it. The tissue damage had a numbing effect, at least at first. But she discovered no damage other than small nicks and scrapes. The shots had missed.

Had she won then? Was he giving up on her? She didn’t believe it. Edward Hare would not have given up, and neither would this man.

She crawled out of the crypt. Over the diminishing clamor in her ears, she heard something big and ponderous being dragged across the floor above her. The sofa in the living room, probably. He was blocking the trapdoor, shutting her in.

His footsteps retreated to the rear of the house, then returned. She listened to him circling the living room, his tread slow and deliberate.

Then he went down the rear hall again, and she heard the slam of the back door.

No more sounds after that. He was gone.

She climbed the stairs in the dark and tried to push the trapdoor open. As she’d expected, it was blocked from above. She had no leverage, and the sofa was too heavy for her to lift unaided.

Then she smelled smoke.