Sacred Evil
Sacred Evil
Heather Graham
A TERROR BORN OF JACK THE RIPPERThe details of the crime scene are no coincidence. The body—a promising starlet—has been battered, bloodied and then discarded between two of Manhattan’s oldest graveyards. One look and Detective Jude Crosby recognizes the tableau: a re-creation of Jack the Ripper’s gruesome work. But he also sees something beyond the actions of a mere copycat. Something more dangerous…and unexplainable.As the city seethes with suspicion, Jude calls on Whitney Tremont, a member of the country’s preeminent paranormal investigating team, to put the speculation to rest. Yet when Whitney and Jude delve deeper, what they discover is more shocking than either could have predicted, and twice as sinister. …
Praise for the novels of Heather Graham
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Graham wields a deftly sexy and convincing pen.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A fast-paced and suspenseful read that will give readers chills while keeping them guessing until the end.”
—RT Book Reviews on Ghost Moon
“If you like mixing a bit of the creepy with a dash of sinister and spine-chilling reading with your romance, be sure to read Heather Graham’s latest … Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”
—Miami Herald on Unhallowed Ground
“Eerie and atmospheric, this is not late-night reading for the squeamish or sensitive.”
—RT Book Reviews on Unhallowed Ground
“The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing, and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”
—Booklist on Ghost Walk
“Graham’s rich, balanced thriller sizzles with equal parts suspense, romance and the paranormal—all of it nail-biting.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Vision
“Heather Graham will keep you in suspense until the very end.”
—Literary Times
“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”
—Kirkus on The Death Dealer
Sacred Evil
Heather Graham
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For NYC—an amazing place, and for a few of the people who have also made it more amazing by being there.
For Aaron Priest, and all those at the agency: Lucy Childs, Lisa Vance, Nicole James, Arleen Priest, and John Richmond.
And, of course, for my MIRA Books editors in the Big Apple: Adam Wilson, Leslie Wainger,
Margaret Marbury, and Krista Stroever, who went above and beyond and walked the streets of the old Five Points region with me. Thank You!
Yes, ready for my cemetery tour now …!
Prologue
Someone was following her.
Stalking her.
She’d heard the footsteps. Among the deserted streets and the canyons of tall buildings; the sound seemed to echo from everywhere.
The night was extremely dark, and, Ginger Rockford thought, you would have believed that the streets were lit by centuries-old gas lamps, as they’d supposedly been during the filming that day.
A hot afternoon had turned into a chilly, misty night, and a fog was rolling in from the river.
The area seemed ridiculously quiet—except for that sound she heard now and then, a click-click, like a footfall, and then a shuffling noise, as if her stalker dragged a foot.
Great. Chased through the streets by a gimp.
It was New York City, for God’s sake. Millions lived on this tiny island.
So where the hell were they all now?
Ginger turned around to look back in the direction from which she had come. She could still see the row of trailers on Whitehall Street; she had just left one. Sammy Vintner, fat-old-ex-cop studio guard, was still on duty, but she saw that he was on the phone.
He was the only living soul she saw.
There were markers where the tape had been that had held the crowd back during the day, separating the filmmakers from the plebs hoping to catch a glimpse of megastar Bobby Walden.
She cursed Bobby Walden. While she’d waited, believing that he was really going to call her, Bobby had surely been picked up by a big black limousine.
Bobby was a somebody. She was a nobody.
But at least Bobby had spoken to her. The female lead, Sherry Blanco, had almost knocked her over, and she hadn’t even apologized. Well, maybe Sherry would learn. Ginger had done a lot of studying up on actors and their careers. She estimated that Sherry Blanco had about three years left—she was nearly thirty-five, and it was starting to show. Sherry was pretty, but she couldn’t really act. Nor had she been known for any kindness to the young hopefuls with whom she had worked. Ginger hoped with her whole heart that she might be a rising star when Sherry was a burned-out has-been.
At least Angus Avery, the up-and-coming director, had noticed her. Okay, so his words weren’t every girl’s dream. “Perfect! I mean, damn, do you look the role of the immigrant prostitute, her dreams already vanquished!” That was how she had gotten to be the one on Bobby’s arm, and how she had managed to flirt with him.
And then he had said that they needed to hook up, and taken her phone number.
So she had sat in the trailer well past time to leave; Missy Everett and Jane Deaver—who had played the other two young prostitutes in the scene—had begged her to leave with them. Their day of extra-stardom was over. They should celebrate, and wonder if they’d wind up on the cutting-room floor.
She, like a fool, had refused to leave; she’d been waiting for Bobby. And she should have left. The set was a construction site. The ugly old building that had been there had been razed to the foundations and a few structural walls. There were rumors about the site; bad things had happened there. She didn’t really know what—she wasn’t into history. Maybe it had been an old burial ground. But it had been perfect for the set designers when they had installed their prefabricated backdrops and facades, and it had been right next to Blair House, a truly creepy old place. She hadn’t been spooked during the day. The day had been chaotic with actors and crew, one shot being set up while another was being shot, sometimes over and over again if Avery didn’t like the lighting or the camera angle.
How had she managed to be the very last one on set? Oh, yes, waiting and praying that Bobby would really call her.
Sammy had emerged from his guard post. “Hey!” she called back, hoping that he would pay attention, see her and wait for her to come running back. She’d even take a ride with disgusting fat Sammy at this point.
He wasn’t looking her direction. He was going off duty, heading away from her. She should have accepted a ride from him when he’d offered, but she’d been convinced she’d find a taxi right away.
Who the hell knew that the area dried up like a prune once it got late at night?
The guard disappeared behind one of the trailers; he’d been anxious for her to go, of course, once she’d refused to ride with him. She’d been the last one near the trailers, the only one left who had been working on the on-location day-plus shoot for O’Leary’s, a tale about crime and prostitution in the eighteen hundreds in New York City. One of the pubs in the area had had the right interior, and the buildings—except for the gap where the old Darby Building had so recently stood—were perfect. The gutted area and the work tents set up on the old site were shielded by a blue screen for the moviemaking; New York was not a city to make do without the income a permit for such work would secure for the city. Nor, with the preservationist-supporting liberals to be found in the area, could a recently discovered historic site be disturbed.
Even so, the area around the demolished building was surrounded by cheap wire fencing that any schoolboy could scale, and closed by a gate with a two-bit combination lock. It looked like a war zone in a third world country.
She was beyond it, though, and she hurried; the gaping hole in the landscape seemed alive, mocking her for her fear of darkness and shadows.
Now she cursed Bobby Walden. Megastar—jerk!
So, maybe, she had been too easy, too wide-eyed and too hopeful. But he’d really been into her during the shoot; he’d whispered such cool stuff to her between takes that day. She was ready; she knew how to get her name in the paper, and how to move ahead. In film, in the real world, perception was everything. She wasn’t a fool; she didn’t expect a happy-ever-after with Bobby Walden. Just a date—or a night in his hotel room, a place she could pretend to slip out of while being sure that she was spotted by the media. That was all she needed. Her picture on Page Six, maybe. People would start talking about her, and it would make it worthwhile that she’d slept with the pimple-faced assistant at the casting agency to get the job as an extra—a down-and-out historical hooker—for the movie. And, she should still be glad, because she’d wound up with a few lines, enough to quality for her SAG card.
B movie. That was okay. Many a star had gotten his or her start as an extra-suddenly-given-lines. It took something like being singled out by Bobby Walden to get noticed.
“Hey! Hey, Sammy!” she called, walking back toward the site and Sammy. But Sammy didn’t appear from behind the trailer that was just about two blocks away now. He had to have heard her, but even if she ran, she’d never catch him. “Sammy! You fat ass!” she muttered.
Sammy was gone. Probably down in the useless-to-her Whitehall subway station already.
She thought she saw a man; a different man standing by the trailers. He must have been an actor; he seemed to be wearing a stovepipe hat and a long black all-encompassing coat. Whoever it was would be in big trouble with the costume department.
The moon shifted; there was no man standing there. She was making herself bizarrely nervous; it was simply because she’d never imagined that anywhere in New York could become so devoid of people.
She turned and retraced her steps. If she reached Broadway and started running …
She was almost at the corner when she heard the noise again. Click-click-drag.
Was it coming from behind her? Or before her?
She turned the corner and screamed; there was a man standing there. He looked dazed. He was in dirty jeans, a dirtier denim jacket. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his hair was tangled and greasy.
“Hey, lady, you got a dollar? Just a dollar—or some change? Anything—a quarter?” He took a step toward her with his hand outstretched, and she suddenly knew the direction from which the click-click-drag had come. She could smell him; he was absolutely repulsive.
“No!” she cried. “Get away!”
“Lady, I’m just a vet—”
“You’re just an alcoholic or a junkie—and you’re disgusting! Take a bath!” she said. She didn’t even want to touch him to shove him in the chest, but she did so. She was desperate to get past him.
He fell against the wall of the building she was passing. She didn’t look to see what type of office it was; she hurried on for a block, turned around. The ratty old homeless man was gone.
She leaned against a railing where she had stopped, panting, to stare back hard. She wanted to make sure that he was gone—really gone. She needed to get a hold of her fear. As soon as she got a little bit farther up Broadway, she’d start to see people. Ha! Stalked by a derelict who would fall down in a breeze. Well, the louse-ridden bastard was gone now. She kept looking down the street, making sure.
It was amazing; she could hear the traffic on West Street, albeit in the distance. Battery City was no more than a few blocks away. Wall Street was mobbed with cutthroat brokers during the day, and tourists thronged Trinity and St. Paul’s. But now the streets were dead, as dead as those rotting in the old graves and tombs of the city’s churches.
Yes, the derelict was gone, too. She turned to hurry on up Broadway. She hadn’t heard a thing; she hadn’t suspected anyone might be in front of her—she had been looking behind, back to the dark abyss of the site.
Her turn brought her directly into his arms. Before she could open her mouth, his hand clamped over it, and he twisted her viciously around until she was flat against his body.
She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by the gloved hand. She strained to see, to kick to fight …
She barely even felt the knife across her throat; the blade was that sharp and the slice he made was swift and hard and sure. She was aware that, as the blood began to flow, he dragged her. She saw the lights of the street.
Seeming as pale as old gas lamps. As she died, the world growing dark and cold, she was dimly aware once again that it was all a matter of perception. Blood was rushing from her throat, and she was dying. She was even aware of the irony—that she might become really famous at last.
Somewhere, not far, car horns blared, neon illuminated the city and millions of souls worked, played and slept.
But to Virginia Rockford, the world beyond was no longer of any consequence.
Her last vision was that of a shadow-man. A man in a long black cape wearing a stovepipe hat. A shadow-man, coming at her again with the long wicked blade of his knife.
But she felt no more. Death became a gentle blessing.
1
One great thing about New York City—tourists.
And residents who behaved like tourists, every time he came to the scene of a murder.
Jude Crosby flashed his badge to the officers on duty and ducked beneath the yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across lower Broadway.
The murder site had acquired more onlookers than a movie premiere. Traffic downtown had grown to a snarl that was just about impassable even with the extra traffic cops manning the detour, and the sound of cursing drivers threatened to drown out the sound of their horns.
Fortunately, it was only just dawn; most finance workers weren’t even on their way in yet.
He made his way to the circle of men around the body. He was glad to see that the medical examiner who had been on call was Wally Fullbright, a man in his late fifties with ruffled white hair and big-rimmed glasses; he looked like an aged Beaker, from the Muppets. He was, in Jude’s mind, the finest in his profession. Yet, he never considered his own expertise as the zenith of knowledge, and was known to probe to the depths of any anatomical mystery.
“Crosby!” Fullbright said, acknowledging Jude without looking up. He knew he had a distinctive height, and in his off-hours he practiced at the ring. Pounding away at punching bags helped him release the tension that often bubbled up after dealing with some of the more bizarre crimes that plagued the city.
Even then, he had to make his way through more men; officers had formed a curtain of bodies, hiding the corpse from the view of the crowd that looked on.
He quickly saw why.
“Lord,” he said quietly, hunkering down across the body from Fullbright.
He’d seen a lot as a homicide detective in New York City. Dead drunks, prostitutes, drug addicts, mob hits and victims of domestic abuse. He’d seen the derelicts who had died in Dumpsters, in alleys, atop mountains of trash and he’d seen the floaters who had popped up in the East River and the Hudson.
He’d never seen anything like this.
“Do we know who she is?” he asked.
“Sir!” one of the uniformed men—Smith, according to his badge—said. “She had her ID on her, in her bag. Found next to the body. Her name is Virginia Rockford, twenty-six years old. We believe that she was an actress working on location last night, but that fact still has to be verified. We formed ranks around her as fast as we could when we reached the scene. We called it in to Major Crimes because of … because of the way you see the body.”
“You found her like this?” Jude asked.
The officer blushed and shook his head. “There were people coming around, staring. I threw the coat over her.”
“And I carefully threw it off, again, in favor of the screen of blue,” Fullbright said.
Jude nodded. He understood. The black trench coat now at the victim’s side had apparently belonged to Officer Smith.
He doubted Officer Smith would ever wear the coat again.
Smith shouldn’t have changed the crime scene in any way, but, under the circumstances, Jude knew why he had felt compelled to do so—even if the officer had known better.
He looked at Fullbright. “Tell me, please, that she wasn’t—gutted—alive?”
Fullbright shook his head, indicating the thick pool of blood at the victim’s throat, and the way it had poured down the front of her dress. “It’s my belief that she was seized, her mouth muffled, though God knows who might have heard her scream down here at night, and that her throat was slit ear to ear immediately. I think, and it’s my theory, but, logical, if you will forgive me, that she was nabbed on the corner, and quickly dragged into the street as she died. There are two slashes, but I believe the first would have caused her to bleed out. The mutilation of the body occurred after death.”
“I’ve seen some bad ones in my day, but this seems exceptionally sick, don’t you think, Detective Crosby?” one of the other uniformed men asked.
“They come in very, very, very sick sometimes,” Jude said quietly.
He looked at the victim again, feeling his own stomach curdling. There was bruising on her face, which might have come from a blow, or from the force the killer used to hold her while slashing her throat. Her legs were bent at the knees slightly, and falling outward in a sexually implicit line. Her stomach appeared to have been sliced deeply several times, but there was now such a mass of congealed blood and ragged flesh, there was little he could tell about any precise injury that had been done to her.
“How long has she been here?” he asked Fullbright.
“I’m estimating time of death to be around eleven,” the medical examiner told him. “Give or take an hour.”
Smith offered, “I was on duty down here, Detective Crosby. I had just come on duty. I came running when I heard a woman screaming.” He pulled out a pad and read from his notes, nodding toward a woman who was on the sidewalk, surrounded by officers. “She’s Miss Dorothy Hannigan, and she runs the bakery on the corner. She came walking from the subway exit—” he pointed down the street “—and started screaming when she saw the body. I called in dispatch for help and they called you.” He swallowed hard. “It was barely light … I thought she was a mannequin, a movie prop, at first.”
Jude Crosby studied the body a moment longer; he wasn’t sure it was necessary. The details seemed to be etched into his mind.
He was sure that Fullbright was right—she had been nabbed while walking on the sidewalk, and dragged out to the road to die. He wondered how long, even with the light traffic at night, it had taken the bakery worker to discover the body. Time of death wasn’t exact, and a number of cars had to have driven by at sometime.
He started to rise.
“The Ripper,” Fullbright said.
“Pardon?” Jude looked over at the man he sincerely respected.
Fullbright looked at him and spoke dryly. “Jack the Ripper. London murderer of the late eighteen hundreds. Come on, Jude, you were sent to study criminal history and crime-fighting methods across the pond. The Ripper. Jack the Ripper. His first victim—well, the first victim agreed upon by most criminal experts and Ripperologists—was Polly Nichols. Found on August 31, 1888. She was found … just as we’ve found this girl.”
Officer Smith made a sound at the back of his throat. “That was well over a hundred years ago, Doctor. I doubt the same man could have killed this girl. And, hell, that was London, not New York.”
“One theory regarding the cessation of the murders after the Mary Kelly grand finale was that the bastard came to the United States,” Fullbright said, looking at Jude.
Jude asked Fullbright, “You think we might have a whacked-out murderer who is also a Ripperologist—one dedicated to the point of re-creating the crimes himself?”
“I hope not,” Fullbright said. “They just got worse,” he added softly. “The murders just became more and more vicious. Until Mary Kelly, and then …”
And then …
Of course, no one knew what would happen next. Jude was far from a Ripperologist, but he’d attended a lecture at a British forum on “Historical Crimes, Modern-day Solutions: Crimes That Would Have Been Solved in the Twenty-first Century.” He knew that theories abounded. One was indeed the idea that the Ripper had come to the United States. But, of course, wherever he had gone—to America, Africa, South America—or hell itself—that had been over a hundred years ago. And Jude didn’t believe that he was a Freddy Krueger-type monster who had returned to roam the streets.
And still, he felt a deep unease sweeping over him. Last week, they’d found the remains of a girl in the Hudson; she was still a Jane Doe, but her throat had been slashed. A pleasure boater had reported the remains; police divers had brought her in. Two weeks before, there had been a victim who had died en route to the hospital without ever being able to speak or point a finger even vaguely in the direction of her attacker; she’d been cut—slashed and stabbed.
But not like this.
Not like this poor girl.
Probably a once pretty girl, who had been alive just last night. Filled with hopes and dreams. She might have been nice; she might have been a scrapper, one of the thousands of hopefuls who came to the big city each year to strike it rich in the Big Apple. The open chart of her life was closed, and it didn’t matter if she’d helped old ladies cross the street or snubbed the geeks who had stared at her when she had walked by, oblivious. No one deserved this kind of end.
He noted the position of her body, and that she had certainly been positioned and displayed; he was sure the killer had worn gloves, and been careful not to let his victim catch any skin cells in her fingernails. Still, there was always hope.
Jude stood up and started going through the initial motions. He ordered that his victim’s hands be bagged in hopes she’d gotten her nails into the bastard that had killed her somehow or somewhere, but he knew he didn’t even have to say the words. Fullbright was on the case.
Photographs were taken of the body. He watched that procedure, making certain that the techs took every angle he might need.
He spoke to the uniformed officers on the street. Buildings were to be canvassed in hopes that someone had been somewhere doing something. The crime scene unit was called in to search the area for any possible minuscule clues.
Fullbright stood, giving additional orders to the officers and his assistant. He looked at Jude while the gurney and body bag were brought over, everyone there moving quickly and efficiently.
“You’re working alone on this?” Fullbright asked him.
“I don’t have a new partner yet. I haven’t had anyone assigned to me since … since Monty took a bullet,” Jude told him.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s having another surgery on Friday. They’re hoping he’ll walk again,” Jude said.
He tried to keep his voice even, and free from the resentment he couldn’t help but feel. Niles Monty had been doing the right thing—he had been the perfect officer, trying to talk down the drugged-out vet who had just shot and killed his wife. His partner had been doing all the right things, and the soldier, in tears, was ready to hand his weapon over to Monty. Instead, a frightened vigilante neighbor who’d snuck up the fire escape had taken a shot and missed; the frightened vet had fired at Monty, before turning the gun on himself.
Jude had been waiting quietly next to Monty who had been doing a damn good job talking the man down. He felt the bullet whistle by, but too late to stop the lethal action that had all taken place in less than ten seconds. He’d managed to stanch the flow of blood emitting from his partner while praying for the medics to hurry.
The vigilante was walking the streets, his case having been dismissed, portraying himself to the press as a hero. How he was managing that, since his actions had caused the crippling of a veteran cop with twenty years’ experience and a slew of medals, Jude didn’t know.
God, he hated the press.
And the press was going to have a field day with this.
He looked through the crowd of television vans and camera crews setting up near the scene. He noticed Melissa Banks, who tended to be a responsible newspaper journalist in a world where sensationalism had become everything.
He strode straight for her. “Ms. Banks,” he said, acknowledging her. “We have found the body of a woman on Broadway, and look, I suppose that’s evident, but it’s all I can give you at the moment. Headquarters will make a statement later. Pending notification of next of kin, I can’t release her name.”
“They’re saying that her throat was slashed and that she was—ripped to shreds. Do we have our own Jack the Ripper in the city now, Detective Crosby? A Jack the Slasher, as it were?” Melissa asked him. He winced. His killer had a name now.
“We don’t know if this was an isolated incident or not, Ms. Banks. As soon as we have information, we will certainly bring it to you in the best interest of the public. Now, if you’ll excuse me …?”
The officers who had been first on the scene had done their best to keep the details hidden, but it was New York. People had seen. They’d seen beyond the crime scene tape and the wall of bodies, and they had seen the amount of blood around the victim. People were going to talk; speculation would run high, and if his killer was a sensationalist trying to prove a point, he would be savoring the attention he was getting this very minute. He would be somewhere, watching, and gloating over his victory.
“Should women in this vicinity be worried to walk about at night?” Melissa Banks asked him.
He stared at her; she tended to be an intelligent woman. “Women should always be careful walking about at night. However, since the financial district is relatively quiet at night, yes, I would definitely take extra care.”
One of the other reporters had heard his words and moved in. “Did you just say that it’s not safe to walk the streets at night?”
Jude stepped toward her. “What I just said was that any single woman should take care at any time—anywhere. Sadly, there is evil in this world, and there are those who will hurt others. I’m suggesting women not be alone late at night on quiet streets. Period. I’m also suggesting that journalists be responsible and not create panic where panic will avail no one. I’m promoting common sense, and if you’ll really excuse me now, I have work to do.”
Jude walked back to the body, and looked at the corner. He paused, and motioned to a crime scene tech, who hurried over. “Blood, I’m pretty sure,” Jude told him, and the fellow nodded gravely and went to work. On the sidewalk, he found more drops of blood, and motioned as well.
A photographer followed the techs, taking pictures as they took samples of the substances on the ground.
He was certain that Fullbright had been right; his victim had been walking uptown, as if she was trying to find a busier spot on Broadway, perhaps to hail a cab. The assailant had waited for her on the corner behind the building. Jude didn’t like his audience, though the uniforms were doing the best they could to control the scene. He was still downtown on a busy Monday morning, and blocking off an entire street in the vicinity of the stock market, city hall, Trinity, St. Paul’s and the Woolworth Building was not easy. Still, he called one of the young officers over, took a position behind the first building and had the officer walk toward him.
He couldn’t be seen until the last minute. When he stepped out, it was easy to accost the man, spin him around and ascertain that a strong man could have certainly caught a woman so; he would have had to have dragged her as she bled, and thus the trail to the street.
Why leave her in the street?
So she would be found, and found as she was.
He scanned the crowd, wondering if any of the men hovering about in their business suits, construction vests, chef’s outfits, messenger tees or other attire might be a killer. He wouldn’t be bloody anymore; he’d be fitting in with the crowd.
Jude walked down the sidewalk to where the bakery manager still stood, trembling with two officers. She was shaking badly.
Dorothy Hannigan was a woman with a thin face and thinner body; she obviously did not indulge frequently in her bakery’s items. She looked at him with wide brown eyes and an expression that still denoted the horror of her discovery.
“Ms. Hannigan, I’m Detective Jude Crosby. I know you’ve already given the officers your statement, so I really just want to thank you for so quickly summoning help, and for all that you’ve done to assist us in the investigation.” She hadn’t really done anything—she’d screamed instinctively. But he had discovered that the right tone of questioning always produced more than dismissal or rudeness.
She nodded, seeming to get a bit of a grip. “Shall we have some coffee?” he asked her.
She looked nervously at the corner bakery. “I open. I gave the keys to one of the boys … but I guess no one is really going to be hungry around here for a while.”
He smiled. “They’ll be hungry,” he said. Don’t kid yourself, he thought. People will be converging to talk. When the crime scene tape is gone, they’ll be fighting each other to get in the street and photograph the position where the body lay.
“But come in … the police will clear this with your boss.” He nodded to Smith, who hurried on in ahead of him. He ushered Dorothy Hannigan to a booth at the rear of the bakery. Apparently, the boy she had given the keys to had gotten things going; customers were already in the shop, but other than Dorothy Hannigan’s white face, little gave away the fact that Jude was anything other than an ordinary customer. His suit was a good one, not that a homicide detective in New York made the big bucks, but he had a great apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to his father’s savvy with real estate, and it seemed, lately, that he lived to work. That meant decent suits—and suits that blended in well with the business attire in the moneyed district where he worked.
“So, Dorothy, please, tell me exactly how you came upon the body this morning,” he said quietly. He lifted a hand so that she would wait. Officer Smith had apparently seen to it that the owner, now in, was aware that his manager was helping the police; a waiter brought them two cups of coffee and quickly disappeared. She shook her head. “I saw … the body. It was barely light, you know. And there was no traffic—no, wait, there was one car, but it was in the other lane, and it just drove on by. You can only go the one way, you know.”
He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.
She shivered suddenly. “I come off that subway every morning. I’m the only person who gets off half the time. That could have been me.”
He set a hand on hers. “She was killed late last night, Miss Hannigan. I don’t think this killer was looking to stalk victims in the morning—someone would have come. You saw how quickly the streets got busy.”
She swallowed audibly.
“Is there someone you can ride in with for the next week or so?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “You’re going to catch this freak in a week or so?” she asked. “Half the cases go unsolved, from what I’ve heard.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration, really. Half the murder cases we go out on are—well, sadly—domestic. And they’re solved,” he said.
“But—how? There are twenty million people on the island of Manhattan on a workday—that’s the statistic I’ve heard.”
“Give or take a million,” he agreed. “Please, that’s why I’m asking you—describe exactly what you saw.”
“I was walking down the street. I saw the car go by—oh, yes, of course. I saw the body in the middle of the street because of the headlights. The car just kept going. I was afraid it might have been an old derelict, passed out in the street. I have a little laser light I carry, and a whistle—I’m not stupid, you know—and so I shone the light and hurried out, hoping that nothing was coming barreling up Broadway. And then I saw her—and then I started screaming.”
“Did you see anyone else—anyone at all? A bum, a shadow … anyone?” he asked.
She shook her head. Then she sat straighter. “Wait—there’s old Captain Tyler.”
“Old Captain Tyler?”
She nodded. “A sad case. Everyone keeps urging him to go to a shelter, but he shows up back on the streets, begging. I mean, of course, God help us, we get a lot of homeless guys down here. But Captain Tyler is kind of sweet. He’s an older fellow, Vietnam vet.”
“Did you see him this morning?” Jude asked.
“I might have.”
“You might have?”
“There was a pile of rags and a sleeping bag at the entrance to the subway. I remember thinking that it might have been poor old Captain Tyler. But I didn’t disturb the pile.”
He nodded. “But nothing else? No one watching you?”
She shook her head. “No, not that I noticed.” She fell silent again. “I’m going to get killed on my way in to work one of these days despite my whistle, aren’t I?”
“Come in with coworkers, Ms. Hannigan, if there’s any way. I’ll talk to your boss. It’s prudent to be extremely careful until we know what we’re up against,” he said. “I’ve got to get my men looking for Captain Tyler. Can you give me a description?”
Tyler, according to Ms. Hannigan, was tall and thin, wore a shabby army-surplus jacket and dirty denim jeans, and had long white hair and a scraggly white-and-gray beard.
“He told me once he suffered from shell shock,” Dorothy Hannigan told him. “Sad, huh? Can’t hold a job, and his benefits don’t really keep a roof over his head.” She gasped. “He couldn’t have done this, could he have?”
“If you see him, call me. I don’t think, however, that shell shock, even after years, would suddenly turn a man into a vicious murderer. But when we find him, we’ll find out what we can. We have some truly wonderful psychiatrists with the department. They’ll be able to deal with him,” Jude assured her. As he spoke, his phone rang.
It was Norton, from headquarters.
“Assistant chief wants to see you, pronto,” Norton told him.
“I’m at the scene,” Jude told him.
“I know. I told him that you’d been dispatched by orders of the lieutenant. But he says that you’ve had time to do what you can do there, and that he wants to see you about a task force.”
“No other murders today, huh?” Jude asked dryly.
“Not like this. Film is already rolling. The news is shooting through all five boroughs, the country and the world like the spew from a geyser. Jack’s back. That’s what they’re saying. Anyway, he wants you in here, now.”
The twenty-first-century media was amazing, Jude thought. He barely knew anything about the crime, but rumor was running rampant, and he understood that One Police Plaza wanted this solved as quickly as humanly possible.
Two other murder investigations were open on his slate; this seemed to be the one that mattered. Naturally. The other two had also been stabbed, but one had died on the way to the hospital and one had been dragged out of the river. This had been public and sensationalist. The victim was a spectacle on Broadway. They were both his cases because he worked specifically for the chief of police; he and Monty had been “detective specialists” for years, which meant they could cover all of New York City as needed.
He wished that they hadn’t been his cases; he’d gotten nowhere with them. The other two women had died quietly, apparently without friends to miss them. They hadn’t been discovered in such a bold and gruesome state, with all the world watching.
Except that he wondered if the deputy chief was thinking along the same lines that were now plaguing him. He wasn’t a Ripperologist, as Fullbright considered himself, but he did know about the case a fair amount since he’d spent the month of August in Britain last year for an experimental exchange police procedural program. The program had included a study of the Ripper files, with one of Britain’s top historians discussing police work now and then. Jude had looked at the archives available. Five victims were accepted as the Ripper’s, but the London case files had started with the deaths of two women who had been killed before what was now deemed by experts to be Ripper murders.
They had the girl from the river, and the girl who had survived her attack long enough to make it to the hospital. Neither had carried ID; neither had been reported missing. All efforts to identify the two had been to no avail. Both had come from New York or to New York … and met sad ends.
And now …
Virginia Rockford.
“I’m still at the scene, working it,” Jude said.
“Crime scene folks are there. And they’re good at what they do. That’s what the assistant chief said. Get in here.”
Jude clicked his phone closed. Great. He’d find himself besieged by the reporters stationed at “the shack” on the second floor of headquarters before he could reach the deputy chief’s office.
He wished he hadn’t been called. He wished any other cop in the city had come on for this case.
But they hadn’t; he had been on duty, and he had been specifically ordered down here.
He thanked Dorothy Hannigan and left her his card, and started out, wishing that he could look for Captain Tyler himself. But he told Smith to get more men on finding the homeless man; and he gave the officer the task of connecting with the producer for the movie being shot down the street and getting him a list of anyone involved in the production. He wanted the beat cops to keep a presence on the street and their eyes open.
There had probably been a number of young women involved in the shoot the day before; the cops could start with them. He stressed the importance of their notes, and Smith looked at him, hesitant. “Crosby, you know I’m a beat cop, right? Not the boss down here.”
“Smith, I think you’ll be fine,” he said.
He headed down Broadway. It was far easier to walk around Lower Manhattan right now than to get his car.
He managed to reach the deputy chief’s office without being waylaid. The offices were huge, and he was just lucky that the elevator he was in didn’t stop on the second floor where he might have been detained by an avid reporter.
He stood in front of the desk, but Nathaniel Green, “D-Chiefy,” as the men called him affectionately behind his back, wasn’t a browbeater. He wasn’t a political appointee, either. He’d earned his place, moving up the ranks.
Green indicated the chair in front of his desk and Jude sat.
“Are you taking me off this new case?” Jude asked him.
Green smiled grimly. “Sorry, no. But I’m giving you a team, a task force. Who do you want?”
Jude was quiet for a minute. He wanted to work with Monty, his partner of the last five years. But Monty was still in the hospital, and the last thing he needed, still clinging to life and praying to walk again, was a sensationalist murder case on his mind.
“Ellis Sayer and his group.”
“You’ve got them. You have priority access to whoever you want in the Technical Assistance Response Unit. And I’m bringing in the feds.”
“The feds? As far as I know, the killer didn’t kidnap the women and cross state lines.” Jude was truly puzzled; he wanted to believe that when it was important, law enforcement agencies did know how to cooperate. But they could also be possessive and territorial. The NYPD usually wanted to solve their own cases. They didn’t mind help from other agencies, but they wanted control.
Green grimaced dryly. “You just said women. I believe we’re thinking along the same lines.”
“That we have a killer trying to emulate one from the late 1880s? That’s a stretch.”
“We have a killer who left a woman slashed to shreds on Broadway. The other women in those two earlier cases—both seemed to have come from nowhere. They were murdered, and they’re still trying to hold on down at the morgue to see if the bodies will be claimed.” He hesitated. “Look, Jude, this is my call. The second that body was found, the media went crazy, and, before the public puts the puzzle pieces together, I want to be on it—a step ahead. Think about the way our Jane Does were ripped up.”
“Obviously, sir, since I arrived at the scene of last night’s crime, I’ve given it some thought. But I’ve also been trying to give the first two victims my full attention. No one seems to miss them—as you said. They appear to be lost creatures. Maybe prostitutes,” Jude said. “And maybe the three murders are all connected—at this point, we just don’t know. If you say we should bring in the feds, fine. I’m not sure I see where federal jurisdiction is warranted yet.”
“What we’re bringing in is a special federal unit. We’re not handing over jurisdiction. They’ll work with you—you work with them,” Green said.
“Sure. Though again, I’m still not seeing a federal connection. And we have FBI offices in the city. Why is a special unit coming in?”
Green looked at him with a certain degree of exasperation. “Jude, this is coming straight from the top brass. The mayor’s office. We can’t have tourists terrified of coming to New York City. We’ve done a good job in the past few years. Giuliani cleaned up a lot of the theater district and visitors can actually catch cabs that take them where they want to go. We don’t need a return to the seventies—or back to the days of Five Points, when a walk near where our own building stands meant tripping over the bodies of the starved, diseased—or murdered. We have to work hard and fast. The media is already having a field day with this one. If a special unit can help, I’m all for it.”
Jude winced inwardly. Special unit? He wasn’t sure what that meant. But it was fine. He was pretty damn sure that they weren’t going to find anything to point them straight to the killer. New York City cops were good; they had learned to deal with just about everything the world could throw them. But they were also faced with a population that was staggering. Finding leads was going to be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
“Well, hell, yes, I’m glad for anything that can help,” Jude said.
“You want not just this murder solved, but the other two as well. I know you, Crosby. You’ve been beating the pavement and harassing Tech Support every day for help on the two victims you pulled in the last couple of weeks.”
“We don’t know that these killings are connected in any way.”
“Stabbings with sharp knives or utensils, same place on the bodies, each attack growing more violent.” Jude looked down, not wanting Green to see that he was irritated about being called off the street at the prime moment to make discoveries.
“We do have good cops. Our forensics people are cops, too, Jude. They won’t let you down. You know you aren’t going to find clues on the street … you know this is a serious situation being created by an extremely organized killer. This is going to take time, manpower and all the behavioral profiling help we can get.”
“I can be a team player, and you know it.”
“That’s why you’re in charge, Jude. Have you seen the news already?” Green asked.
“Oh, yeah.” He looked at Green across the desk. “Yes, the media is giving the bastard just what he wants. Notoriety.”
“That’s true. Now, as to the team … This unit was established by a man we worked with down here years ago. Adam Harrison. Similar crimes. Attacks on historical properties, and a perp who was in love with Edgar Allan Poe and started killing people like the victims in Poe stories. Anyway, it’s a different thing to go after a man like this, and the head of this team is an agent who worked the behavioral sciences aspect of crimes for years. One of the team is already in transit—the others will be here tomorrow. I’m setting them up with an apartment in Blair House. You’ll actually meet …” He paused for a minute, looking at a memo on his desk. “You’ll meet Miss Whitney Tremont at Blair House at two, get her settled in and then head for the autopsy.”
“I’m taking her to autopsy?”
“Yes.”
“I thought Blair House was closed for renovations.” Green nodded. “It is—the preservationists won’t let the place be torn down, and it’s not due for construction crews to begin work for another few weeks. I want the team in the area. I’ll set up a meeting for you tomorrow with the team and the team head, Special Agent Jackson Crow.”
Jude stood. It was decided, and he knew it. So much for his social life. Wait—he didn’t really have a social life. Since he and Jill had parted last spring, he’d enjoyed three one-night stands and a two-week dating whirl. Actually, he’d had three one-night stands—enjoyed two.
“All right. I want Hannah Mills in Tech.”
“She’s yours.”
Jude nodded again. “And I have priority at autopsy—now, and if this does go further?”
“I just called Fullbright. He’ll be your man, and he will be ready to meet with you at three this afternoon—the autopsy is already scheduled.”
Jude nodded again. “I’m going back to the scene until then. I’ll meet your Miss Tremont at two, and we’ll be at autopsy together at three. And don’t give me that resigned look. I’ll call Ellis and get his team moving, too.”
“You’re the best I’ve got, Jude. And I’m giving you priority all the way,” Green told him.
Jude wasn’t sure he was the best that the deputy chief had. Hell, he’d just watched his partner get shot in a situation that should have never ended as it had.
But this was what he did; he’d known all his life that, like his father and grandfather—and great-grandfather before that—he’d wanted to be a cop. He’d been lucky; he’d gone to college and gotten degrees in criminology and psychology, something his father and grandfather hadn’t been able to acquire. But they’d both been good cops. The kind who put the bad guys away.
This was one bad guy they were going after and they all knew it.
“I’ll do my absolute best, sir,” Jude said.
“I know you will.”
He had been dismissed. He headed straight to Tech Support, where he discovered that Green had put through a call to Hannah Mills. Hannah was excited; she’d never actually spoken directly to Green before.
She was a whiz with computers, and if a piece of information was available anywhere, Hannah could find it. At one time in history, she would have been called a spinster. She was a slender woman with bottle-thick wire glasses, brown hair worn in a bun each day and a mind that could work as quickly as a computer.
“I’m making printouts for you, they’ll be popping out as we speak,” she told Jude.
“She was with the movie crew?” Jude asked.
“She was portraying prostitute Mary Green. She was an extra, I believe, but she had a fair amount of screen time. Maybe even a line or two. Anyway, I have a list for you. The producer, the director, the name of the off-duty officer patrolling … a liaison with the movie and television unit. I think it’s all here. And when you want more, you call me, day or night!” She stood up in her little cubicle and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Jude! Thank you for asking for me.”
“Thank you for being a good tech. I do have something for you. I want you to find out all you can about a Captain Tyler, a Vietnam vet.”
“Oh, that Tyler. I thought you meant one of the thousand others on the island of Manhattan.”
“Very funny. This one would have been in and out of local veterans’ hospitals.”
“On it,” she assured him.
“And one more—I want everything you can find about a government group put together by a man named Adam Harrison. Team head is Jackson Crow.”
“The name is familiar. I’ll get right on it.”
Jude returned to lower Broadway, opting to walk back to the scene. On a television screen, through an appliance-shop window, he could see that Deputy Chief Green himself was speaking to the media. He urged citizens to calm down and be vigilant.
He put a in call to Ellis and let him know that he and his group were to join Jude and the feds. Before he had reached the scene of the crime again, he had everyone in motion; they would start with initial interviews of everyone on the movie set. He looked at the list Hannah had given him; he could get one of the feds to make sure that this list and the list that Smith was able to garner matched. Like it or not, he was working with the feds. Might as well make use of them.
With careful steps, he walked from the set to where the body had been found, reimagining the victim’s probable search for a cab, and how the killer had come upon her. All the while he searched for Captain Tyler as well. But though he made new acquaintances with several of the homeless people on the streets, he didn’t find Tyler.
He felt a growing sense of anger.
Someone out there was either amusing himself at the expense of the police, or sincerely thought himself the reincarnation of a legendary killer.
The victim probably hadn’t had time to scream. New York had been teeming with life just blocks away—the population was huge.
Just as it had been in the crowded tenements of Whitechapel and the East End of London.
The killer had probably surprised her; choked her to unconsciousness before slitting her throat.
His phone rang. It was Hannah.
“What’s up? What have you got?”
“Info, but not on the victim—on your team,” Hannah told him.
There was a strange excitement in her voice.
“They’re a special team, all right. They’ve barely been around a year, but they’ve already solved a number of really bizarre cases. Jude—they’re a paranormal team. They don’t just investigate, they appear to talk to ghosts. They’re highly respected for what they’ve done, but they’re also a bit on the outside, even of the FBI itself. Only the head guy, that Jackson Crow, has been a special agent for a long time. But he’s supposed to be one of the best behavioral guys out there. They sound good, really good. But weird, too. You must have heard something about this group. They solved a creepy murder in New Orleans that had to do with all kinds of political corruption.”
“I might have heard something,” he said. He winced. Leave it him to wind up with the “special” team. Which reminded him …
“Thanks, Hannah. I have to meet one of the agents now, and it’s good to be forewarned.”
He hung up. On to meet his spiritualist or medium or whatever. He’d been told he had to work with the team; he would. He’d be polite. He’d spend the days and nights reminding himself that all help was needed at the moment.
The days and nights ahead suddenly seemed extremely long.
Be polite. Collect the “special” agent. And then on to autopsy.
2
Blair House.
It stood behind a wall and next to an area where a massive construction project seemed to be under way—except that the construction crews didn’t appear to be out. The house was barely a block away from Wall Street, and another block from Broadway, within easy distance of St. Paul’s, Trinity and the World Trade Center site.
Blair House itself was as out of sync with the current pulse of the city as the churches with their early American graveyards.
As far as the financial concerns of humanity went, it only made sense to tear down the old to make way for the new.
But, Whitney Tremont had been glad to hear, Blair House was not going to be torn down. It was slated for a great deal of renovation; federal money was coming in to tend to a federal project—it was said that among the many places George Washington slept, Blair House was one of his favorites.
A low brick wall obscured much of the facade, while wrought-iron detail, tangled with ivy, rose from the wall. She could see the house from the sidewalk only because the driver who had picked her up from the airport had provided her with keys, and she had opened the gate while awaiting her NYPD liaison, Detective Jude Crosby.
The brick path to the house was overgrown, as was the house’s yard area. To the left, there was a charming pagoda overrun with ivy and flowering plants and to the right, a fountain that no longer trickled water was in a similar state.
The house itself was Greek Revival—several steps led up to a porch with fine Ionic columns. The front door was double-wide with etched-glass porticoes.
The off-white paint was peeling. The columns obviously needed help as well.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
She turned, startled. She had been giving the house so much attention that she hadn’t noticed the tall man who had walked up to her on the sidewalk.
He was actually hard not to notice; he was a good six foot three and built like a linebacker.
“I wasn’t thinking that it was bad,” she told him. “I was just thinking that it’s beautiful, and I’m glad they’re not tearing it down.” She offered him a hand. “Special Agent Whitney Tremont, Detective Crosby. Thank you for being here.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sure. The situation is bad. Whatever it takes. Need a hand with your bag?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. We can just head on in.”
He hadn’t exactly been warm and cuddly, but he wasn’t being rude, and he seemed to be sincere. Other agencies sometimes resented FBI involvement in a case—they weren’t always fond of the fact that someone over them had invited the feds in.
She’d never exactly intended to work for the federal government, but she didn’t mind. As long as they were left to work alone, it just didn’t matter. And since the head of their unit, Jackson Crow, had established himself as an agent with an exemplary record before he’d been given his current team, she was more than willing to accept the occasional snickers that came their way. Jackson could stare down any man and silence him within a matter of seconds.
“I believe they had a cleaning crew come in already—a good thing, since I don’t imagine that you and your team would want a lot of people around.” Jude Crosby told her. “Also, if I know my superiors, they had staples brought in, so you should have essentials.”
“Thanks.”
He studied her for a minute; his face gave nothing away. “Well, I guess we should get you settled.” He actually grinned. “You know it’s a haunted house, right?”
“What self-respecting house this old isn’t haunted?” she asked.
He was still sizing her up, of course, given the team’s reputation. She smiled, not saying anything. They were all welcome to wonder. Detective Crosby would meet Jackson Crow soon enough. Jackson had a tenet he lived by, and the team followed its simple sentiment—use logic, and then feelings.
“The rest of your team isn’t arriving until tomorrow?” he asked her.
“That’s right.”
“So you’re staying here alone tonight?”
“Yes, and I’ll be fine. Let me take a quick look around, drop my bag and we can go to the autopsy.”
He pointed to the area next door. “That’s where they were filming the movie and that’s where the victim came from when she was leaving. I’m surprised that they sent you in alone.”
“You shouldn’t be. I went through a lot of sessions at the shooting range. I passed,” Whitney told him.
“Can you shoot a ghost?” he asked. The question seemed pleasant enough, but she realized she was being mocked. She wondered if he was more concerned that she was a ghost-hunting special agent, or that she was a small woman.
“I’m quite competent, thank you,” she assured him.
“All right, your call … Just remember, please, it’s an NYC case with NYC police heading the investigation. I’m impressed that a unit was asked in immediately. Somebody thinks that your ghost hunting—that your team—is top-notch. Thing is, there’s nothing really around you at night, unless you want to count the dead in Trinity’s and St. Paul’s graveyards. Last night, that crew working this area so late was unusual. But that’s film for you.”
He didn’t wait for her reply; he started up the walk.
Whitney stepped into the main hallway, which was long and extremely broad. A slim curving staircase against the western wall led to the floor above, and she could see down the hallway to the door that opened to the back. She wanted to stop, to try to sense the place, but she didn’t; not with Jude Crosby watching.
“They say the foundations of this old place date back to the last decades of the eighteenth century. There were lots of fires back then, though, and not a lot of control. I think the current structure is from 1810. I have to say, I’m glad they’re preserving it, too. Wonder what it was like back in the day. I mean, New York moves like a bullet. I love the city.”
“It’s a great city,” Whitney murmured. Whitney noted that the hallway had probably been the grand meeting room of the house; parties had probably been held right there with indentured servants or slaves walking the room at times with silver trays. A grand piano sat against the wall at the rear; she wondered just how old it might be. But she’d have to explore later. Whatever happened with the New York City police, she wanted to make sure that she was there from the get-go, and that her prep work had been done. They were there to assist the police, not to take over an investigation, no matter how much pull they might have with different power structures. She’d spent the trip reading email on the current murder—preliminary notes only—and, since the cry was out that the murder seemed to be mimicking that of a long-ago Ripper victim, she had spent most of the time during her flight on her iPad, downloading the best books she could find on the elusive killer from the past.
“I’ve only been in this house a few times,” Jude told her. “When I was a kid on school tours, before it was closed down for renovations. I’m going to suggest you snag the first room up the stairs on your left. The last owners—who gave it to the government about twenty years ago—had a nice bathroom installed up there.”
“Thanks,” she told him.
“Go on, take a peek. I’ll carry your bag on up, and then I’ll get you down to the morgue.”
“Thanks,” she told him again.
He was an imposing presence. His features were as rugged as his muscled form—handsome, masculine, strong, with the right amount of rough around the edges.
Not a good thought, she told herself. She had to be blunt and strong herself; in fact, she was going to have to make sure that she remained smoothly professional in every way. They needed his respect. In her case, at five-three, she was fighting physical odds right from the start.
“I can really carry my own bag—”
“Simple courtesy, Agent Tremont. We’re not without it,” he said.
The bedroom was nice. She glanced in the doorway as Jude Crosby set her travel bag on the footrest at the end of the bed. She took a minute to dig into her overnight bag for her better camera to be added to the shoulder bag.
“You’re a photographer?”
“Film is the best record of what we see, isn’t it?” she asked.
The room smelled sweetly and lightly of lavender cleaning solution. It was a beautiful room, and she was convinced that it did have a feel for the past, just as venerated old churches and other historic buildings often seemed to have.
Would it be more than just the sacred feel of history? she wondered.
“Great,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Jude arched a brow. “That’s it? You don’t want to look around longer? Settle in?”
“Nope.” She was grateful that she’d been able to come so quickly; they’d received the call almost immediately after they saw on the news that a gruesome murder had taken place in New York. While Jackson had calmly spoken about travel arrangements and equipment, explaining the circumstances in which they’d be working, she’d been online and discovered that if she left within the next ten minutes, she could be on a plane to LaGuardia that was scheduled for departure at ten, and would have her on the ground in New York by one. She’d jumped at the chance, although not without a few minutes of stern warnings from her associates. They mostly consisted of: Be careful. We’ll be right behind you. You know not to take chances. Remember that we work best when we can earn the cooperation of the local police.
“Okay,” Jude said. “You need anything else?”
She tapped her shoulder bag, a big soft leather sling she hadn’t released since she’d gone through the security lines at the airport.
“I’m good. I have everything I need for the moment.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “You travel light for a woman.”
She felt her own smile tighten just a bit. Was he mocking her? She was fairly small and slim, she knew. Her appearance and gender often worked in her favor. She wasn’t threatening in size and, sometimes, that was good.
Get along with the locals, she reminded herself. “Don’t think of me as a woman, Detective. Think of me as an agent,” she said. “And I won’t think of you as a boy or a man—I’ll think of you as a top-notch NYPD detective.”
He laughed. Apparently, he did have a sense of humor. And he could laugh at himself.
As they left Blair House, Whitney found herself pausing to look at the large construction site next door.
“I’m assuming whatever was there wasn’t protected by any historical society,” she said.
“No, there had been an ugly building there from the 1920s, or something like that,” Jude said. “Before that, it had been some kind of society building—not like high society. I mean … I don’t know. Some people claimed that it was a spiritualist house, or a place for Satanists, or something like that. Odd, though. Construction there has had to halt several times. A few workers were injured. I think one was killed. And then, of course, last night happened. The film company had acquired permits to use the area. They bought mega-insurance for the shoot, but I don’t think it helps, because the murder was off-site.”
“And the woman who was murdered had been working there,” Whitney said.
“Yep, playing a gaslight prostitute, I believe. Honestly, it’s really no wonder that folks are crying ‘Jack’s back.’ Poor girl. There’s been some insinuation in early news reports that our victim didn’t always get along with the other actresses. But maybe that’s not a fair assessment—we haven’t even really begun the investigation. From what I’ve learned, the old Jack the Ripper found victims who were used up, missing teeth, old and ugly, but I guess none of his victims had a reputation for not being nice. Now, that’s an interesting question. Does being nice or not nice have much to do with being a victim?”
Whitney glanced at him. He was thoughtful, really thoughtful. She decided that he might have made a decent behaviorial scientist himself.
“That is an interesting question,” Whitney said, still looking at the cheap mesh fencing and the occasional ugly green plastic sheets that surrounded the construction site. It appeared that the majority of the old structure had been demolished; there were planks over what looked like foundations that were still in the process of being dug out and cleared. There were also piles of new timber lying about—remnants, she presumed—of the sets that had been hastily constructed for the on-location shooting that had been done the day before.
She thought the site was empty and then she realized that there was a gate around the other side, and by the gate there was a small section with a tented roof. Sitting beneath it, watching the entrance and reading a magazine, was a guard.
“One guard watching the area,” Whitney murmured.
Jude pointed to a row of trailers on the other side of the street. “Yesterday, throughout the day, there was tons of security. That’s the tail end of the movie crew. There was no shooting today, and the producer announced, after the report of Miss Rockford’s murder, that they were done with the location.” He glanced her way. “I spent most of the day down here off and on, trying to get a real feel for what was going on, and what the situation was last night.”
“What is your feeling about it now?”
He glanced her way and actually smiled. “I have a feeling—ye olde cop gut feeling—that it does have something to do with the movie and the movie crew.”
Whitney mulled over his words as he drove her down to the morgue. She listened to the constant honking that was as natural as conversation in this city. She watched the rush of pedestrians along the busy streets. People flocking through the intersections, the occasional dog walker pausing along the sidewalk with a Baggie.
She’d been a film student herself in the city, and she knew the area. But now, she felt as if she was seeing it all through different eyes. She thought about the age and the history of the city; the city buildings forming a concrete tomb over the iniquity and depredation of what had been the Five Points region. Wall Street—once where the old wall built to protect the tip of the island had been. Few places rivaled New York City as a place where the sheer velocity of life trampled the pivotal spaces of history.
It all seemed new to her now: the slash of Broadway, the one-way streets, the parks, the people, the old and the new.
Well, her eyes were different now; she was different. And all because, once upon a time, she had determined to hold her own ground.
Life was different.
As was death.
As they headed for the morgue, Jude tried to forget the woman at his side.
Whitney Tremont. Special agent. Very special agent.
But, she did know how to be quiet. She was distracting, but that wasn’t her fault. His. He set his mind back to the situation, and tried not to think that she was definitely an interesting and arresting individual.
Captain Tyler. Now, there was a dash of cold water. He wanted to find him—and he would. Rush hour—that time when citizens took their lives in their hands just to step into the subway—would most probably bring Captain Tyler back to his home haunts; the subway station where those who knew him would be kind enough to drop spare change or a dollar his way. The autopsy would be finished by that point.
He had spoken with many people who talked about how strange downtown could be at night. By day, the world itself hummed because of all the activity that occurred at the New York Stock Exchange. By night, restaurants closed. The gates to the churches were locked. Office workers were gone, and the major hotels were by Battery Park and the South Street Seaport. Nearby Tribeca and Soho entertained nightlife and housed hundreds of thousands of people. But here, at this end with the financial district and the government buildings, the night brought on a haunting quiet, as if the little area needed time to recoup from the madness of the light.
His only hope was in finding Captain Tyler, he thought. Or someone else who was like a ghost, left to eke out an existence from those who passed hurriedly by day, and forget them once darkness fell.
Jude parked his car, still lost in the case as he did so, and hoping against hope that it might be one that was solved quickly. Though he had his task force questioning the hundreds of people who had been involved in the film shoot, and he knew that they’d be eliminating those with airtight alibis, they’d also be making lists of those he needed to interview himself, or who needed to be investigated further. He almost forgot Whitney Tremont; in fact, he might have if she didn’t give off a soft, underlying perfume, and if he didn’t just feel the warmth of the body beside his own.
She was out of the car door, though, before he could walk around to open it for her. She was pure motion and energy.
“Keep your thoughts going and don’t worry about me, Detective,” she said. “I’m right behind you.” He grinned. So she was.
Jude Crosby was known at the morgue; he had no difficulty navigating the structure of the building, Whitney Tremont following closely behind him.
“OCME,” or the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, was housed on First Avenue. New York City held many firsts in the investigation of death; the Office of the Medical Examiner was established in 1918, the first of its kind in the country. OCME established the first toxicology laboratory and the first serology laboratory as well, at Bellevue Hospital, rather than the six-story headquarters where the executive offices, mortuary, autopsy, X-ray, photography and many labs were housed now.
Attending a victim’s autopsy was always paramount to him; no matter how great a medical examiner might be at a report, there was always something to be gained by attending. Many medical examiners did consider the autopsy to be the victim’s last chance to speak, and Jude believed them. You never knew just what a victim might “say.”
He knew that time had made him jaded; he’d seen the dead so often. He noticed the odor of decaying flesh, and the stronger odors of the chemicals that were used to mask the smell. He noticed them, but he barely thought about them. He thought of the place as sterile. He wondered if his religious teachings as a child kicked in when he saw the dead; the spirit didn’t reside in the flesh. The dead were far from feeling pain. They had gone to a better place.
He wasn’t sure if he completely believed that. He did believe that they suffered no more in the fragile shell of the flesh.
There was a saying on the wall outside the autopsy room, there for all to see, a Latin motto: Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights in helping the living.
He hoped that Virginia Rockford could help point them toward her killer.
There were eight steel tables in the room, and three of them had occupants. Thousands passed through the doors of the morgue yearly, but not all were murder victims. Suicides came here, along with those who died in accidents, and those who died while in apparent good health. There were those who had died “by violence,” and those who had died unattended. There were many reasons to come to the morgue. It was a big city; people died in strange ways.
Two assistants were working with Fullbright when they suited up to join the procedure. The body had been stripped and cleaned by the assistants, and somehow, that made the injuries done to Ginger Rockford all the more macabre. He could clearly see the gashes in her throat, and the hideous slashes that had been made in the lower abdomen.
He was aware of everyone around him, and especially, Whitney.
Whitney worked with her camera; he wanted to stop her. He had to remind himself that she was an agent, and not a gawker. Whatever photos and digital film she took would be for the purposes of the investigation.
Clothed in scrubs, Whitney might have blended in with the workforce, except that he could see that she was also wearing a pair of neat little fashionable heels that weren’t usually worn by techs in the morgue. When he had introduced her to Fullbright, she’d stood a slight distance back as well, as if trying to make herself unobtrusive.
When he looked at her, curious as to whether or not she could really watch the autopsy and learn from it, he discovered that he was almost transfixed by her eyes. They were nearly gold. The color had to be hazel, but the green and brown blended so remarkably that the color was almost like the sun. And her skin was the most amazing shade of golden copper he could imagine. It seemed as if every race into which humanity had divided had recombined in her, and that mixture was arresting; she was a beautiful young woman, but much more as well. She stood still, and yet seemed to be brimming with energy. Character, curiosity, passion and a certain appearance of honor seemed to be imprinted in the very structure of her face.
And she was young; too young to be jaded. He had the feeling she still believed in “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”
“Jude, look well,” Fullbright said, and he clenched hard on his jaw, returning his full attention to the sad matter at hand. “The two great lacerations to the throat severed both the major blood vessels in the throat—just as in the case of Polly Nichols, the woman most detectives—past and present—believed to have been the Ripper’s first victim. And if you’ll note the mutilations on the abdomen, you see how jagged this first cut is, and you’ll see how violent and savage the rest are. Jude, these are nearly the exact wounds as perpetrated by a killer over a hundred years ago.”
He stared at the woman, holding back a groan. He didn’t discount the idea that they might be looking at a mimic who had an agenda that would send the city into a real panic, attempting to re-create the slayings of a long-gone killer.
But he didn’t discount the idea yet that they were looking at an isolated incident, and that Virginia Rockford had managed to really anger someone intent on killing her specifically. And solely.
Whitney spoke up. “I spent the hours on the plane here reading up on the crimes, since the press seems to believe there’s a copycat out there.” She walked to the side table where she had left her shoulder bag and dug in it briefly to produce a piece of paper with a picture on it. “Polly Nichols—a morgue photo. Care to compare the medical examiner’s report with our corpse?”
Jude looked from her unique eyes to the photo, and despite his determination to keep an entirely open mind, he had to give the comparison credence.
The Ripper’s victim had been older; life had not been kind. The image was not that of a pretty young woman.
Whatever else Virginia Rockford might have been, she hadn’t been old. She had been attractive; killed when it seemed that the world was waiting for her.
But, despite the difference in the living appearances and situations of the women, the wounds on the bodies were the same.
Exactly the same.
The autopsy had just begun. He thought they had already learned what they needed to know.
3
She was losing credibility, Whitney thought, and doing so by proving a point.
But learning how to work with Jude Crosby wasn’t going to be easy.
He was a hard-boiled cop. And the perfect vision of one. So tall, so leanly, ruggedly muscled. He had dark hair, with no signs of gray yet, neatly clipped. She estimated that he was in his mid-thirties; a man with gray eyes that had seen too much; he was weary, and yet he still seemed to have the look of a man who wanted to change the world.
Whitney thought that he must have grown up reading every old detective novel that had ever been printed. He didn’t have to speak a word; she could tell by his body language that he wasn’t happy about her being on the case.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so pleased that she’d been the first of her team to arrive on-site, or that she should be the one to dive headfirst into the macabre killing. Perhaps it would have been better if they would have started out with Jude Crosby meeting one of the guys; Jackson Crow, Jake Mallory or Will Chan might have made a better impression. She doubted that Jude Crosby had ever worked with a female partner. He kept looking at her as if she were a little mosquito that had gotten in his way. She wasn’t out to prove anything; she and the others were a team, and each member was always glad to make use of his or her gender, color or any perceived edge when it meant getting done what needed to get done.
“Let’s move through this autopsy before leaping to any conclusions, shall we?” Jude Crosby suggested. His voice was even; his tone was cool.
Doesn’t play well with others! she thought.
Too bad. Fullbright seemed fine; he accepted her simply as an FBI agent, and he was interested in the photo of Jack the Ripper’s first canonical victim. Full-bright was intrigued by the puzzle before him, and it seemed evident that he was an armchair detective himself, fascinated by the mystery of old. The medical examiner was convinced that the killer had, at the least, studied the modus operandi of the mysterious nineteenth-century killer.
Crosby wasn’t happy. Maybe he was always that way. Maybe he felt that the federal government was encroaching upon his right as state law enforcement.
Well, that was all right. They had worked with cops who were grateful to have them around—and cops who didn’t want them at all. They were learning as they went, and so far, their odd mix of a team had done very well.
She could step back.
“Definitely,” she replied, and did step back, clearly defining her role as observer.
Whitney had seen many horrible things, but nothing like what had been done to the young woman on the gurney. She didn’t want to blink or blanch as the doctor reported his findings in a dispassionate voice; she couldn’t appear too weak to stomach it. The only thing she could do was force herself to take a huge mental step back as well. In truth, that wasn’t so hard. It couldn’t be real flesh on the table; that was too terrible to accept.
But she had known what the findings would be. Not exact, perhaps. But close. There were two grievously deep slashes across the throat, cutting the windpipe and vital veins and arteries; the woman had nearly been decapitated. There was bruising on the throat. There was a ragged gash right beneath the ribs, and followed down on the right-hand side of the body to the pelvis, displaying the kidneys. There were two cuts to the genitals, deep, and violent.
It was all so frighteningly exact.
Down to the wounds, the direction of the wounds, everything.
She felt Jude Crosby’s eyes on her, over the body of the dead woman, and she met his gaze. Steady, but not challenging, she warned herself. They’d been asked in, through Adam Harrison’s nudging, but it was still best to keep things as copacetic as possible.
“Doc, you scraped beneath her nails?”
“Of course—but we’re not going to get anything. She didn’t have a chance to fight him. She doesn’t have a single defensive wound on her.”
“Fibers? Threads? Hairs?”
“She went fast—the lab has her clothing.”
Jude nodded. “All right. We’ll leave you to close her up. Call me if anything—”
“Yes, of course, Jude. If anything, whatsoever. I’m not expecting anything on the toxicology reports, but, I promise, I’ll let you know immediately.” He hesitated, looking at Jude. “I still have your Jane Does in here,” he said. “Are we getting anywhere with them?”
“We’ve sent out the picture of the girl who died on the way to the hospital—we’ve sent it everywhere in hell, and nothing,” Jude said. “The second girl … the one from the water. Well, you saw her face. Not even a mother’s love could help her recognize that child. I just asked my lieutenant yesterday about getting a graphic artist over. I’m not great on computers, but I know that a good graphic artist can do an amazing job with a likeness.”
“Well, I’ll get with you as soon as I have … anything,” Wally Fullbright assured him grimly. “Miss Tremont—a pleasure, even if we’re meeting under sad circumstances.”
“You, too, Dr. Fullbright,” Whitney said. “Thank you. Except … would it be possible for me to see the two girls who died last week?”
She thought that Jake would step in and proprietarily inform her that they had nothing to do with this case, and that he had it covered.
Fullbright did look to Jake.
Jake nodded.
“My assistant will escort you,” Fullbright said.
“Thank you,” she told him.
They followed a fellow in scrubs out and down the hall. In another room, there were rows and rows of steel drawers. Apparently, despite the number of deaths that came through the morgue, the murders of the two unknown girls were remembered. The assistant knew right where he was going. He glanced at Jake apologetically. “We’re calling them Jane Doe wet and Jane Doe dry. The more recent body was pulled from the river,” he explained to Whitney, something she already knew. Jackson Crow was thorough when he briefed his team.
He pulled out the drawer and pulled back the shroudlike sheet covering the corpse. Whitney locked her jaw.
The flesh on the girl’s face had met with the elements and any number of hungry river carnivores. The skull peeked through in many places. The skin that remained was a mottled gray-blue color, where it wasn’t pulpy-red.
She glanced at Jake. “I’d like to take some photos. One of my teammates is a true whiz on a computer. He can work any graphics program invented, and I think he can get us a likeness of this girl’s face by tonight. He’s flying in tomorrow, but if he can get something right away, you can have the image by morning.”
He was still wearing a mask over his mouth; maybe that made his eyes seem all the more intense.
He nodded.
She looked at the M.E.’s assistant. “I need a tape measure or a ruler,” she told him.
“We have excellent photos at the station,” Crosby told her.
“I can email these straight from my phone,” she told him.
He obliged her with a nod, and she drew out her little high-megapixel phone/camera, and began shooting from every conceivable angle. Both men waited for her, and she worked quickly. On the one hand, she felt as if, in this steel and sterile environment, nothing was real. On the other hand, the girl in the drawer was far too real. Eventually, the police would find out who she was, because although Whitney hadn’t known Jude long at all, she was certain that he would never give up. She had to keep snapping pictures; the police could find out who she was. Her work was to find out who had done this to her and why.
And hopefully before more died.
When Whitney was done, she nodded grimly. The assistant gently covered the dead girl’s face again, and closed the drawer while Whitney prayed that she had a signal, so she could email the photos to Jake Mallory efficiently—and quickly.
Jude thanked the attendant and started walking on. Still hitting the send key, Whitney followed in his wake.
All the drawers were numbered. That seemed incredibly sad to Whitney. They were people in the drawers, not numbers.
In contrast, the second victim looked serene, as if she were sleeping. She might have been, if it weren’t for the deep gashes on her body, visible when the sheet was pulled back.
“We’ve had her picture out everywhere,” Jude said quietly. “And no one has claimed her body yet. She’ll stay here a few more days, and then they’ll house her in the morgue in the basement—and then she’ll go to a potter’s grave at City Cemetery,” he told her.
Whitney took just one picture. The assistant covered the body and shut the drawer.
As it closed, Whitney felt as if she was surrounded by steel, the scent of formaldehyde and other chemicals, and realized just how cold she was.
“Well, I have a witness to find, Miss Tremont,” Jude told her.
“Of course. I’m here to follow in your footsteps,” she said.
He paused. She knew he really just wanted to tell her to go away. He didn’t. He shrugged. She’d been assigned to him; he’d been told to accept the team’s help.
“All right, fine.”
He turned and walked quickly. She hurried to keep up with him. He was tall. She was—not.
Outside, horns were blaring, pedestrians moved about the street and it seemed that everything in the world was small and slow next to the size and speed of the city. Jude Crosby, however, knew his city well. He maneuvered the sidewalk in a long stride; he’d parked his car on the street. That in itself was quite a feat—she was a good driver, but she’d never figure out how he parked his car in the tiny space where it was wedged. He started to walk around to the driver’s side, but then remembered her. He turned and opened the passenger side door.
She slid in quickly. She had the feeling that if she didn’t move fast enough, she was going to be left behind.
“Who are we looking for?” she asked him.
“Captain Tyler,” he said briefly.
“A cop—a sea captain?”
“Old veteran. Vietnam,” he said. “He wanders that area at night. The woman who found the body thought that he was sleeping nearby when she came out of the subway. He might have seen something.”
“Have you spoken with the last people to see Virginia Rockford yet?” Whitney asked.
“We’ll be going through the cast and crew from the movie next, and those who were working at the on-site location,” he said. He glanced at her. “Obviously, a sensationalist murder like this, I’m not the only cop on the case.”
“But the two earlier victims—you were assigned to them?”
“My partner and I were assigned as the lead detectives on both cases. We’ve had a decent record, even when we’ve come up against unknowns. How anyone can live in this day and age and not be missed by someone, I don’t know.”
“Well, they must be missed by people who can’t imagine they’d be in New York,” Whitney said.
He stared straight ahead; she didn’t blame him. In school, she hadn’t kept a car in the city. She wondered if she’d actually be capable of driving when everyone seemed to think that they belonged in every lane, when the streets stopped up and people were everywhere.
“I suppose someone, somewhere, misses them. But you’d be amazed by the amount of people who really don’t seem to belong anywhere,” he said.
“I understand your partner is in the hospital,” Whitney said softly, realizing she was probably treading on dangerous ground.
“He was shot. Mainly because people who don’t know what they’re doing need to stay out of police business.”
“But he’s going to make it,” Whitney said.
He gazed at her then. His eyes could be as cold as jagged gray ice. “Yeah, he’s going to live. Whether he’ll ever walk again or not, I don’t know.”
“Medicine has come far. I’m sure he has the best doctors in the world.”
He didn’t reply. They drove in silence, except when he cursed beneath his breath at the other drivers on the road.
He glanced over at her as they moved south. “Have you been to New York before?” he asked, as if remembering that he had another person in his car.
“Film school,” she said.
That drew a frown. “You are here now, with me, but you went to film school?”
“Yes.”
“But now you’re an agent.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you usually work with film, then? Surveillance systems, that kind of work?”
“Sometimes. In many ways, I still work with film. We’re a specialized unit, working with bizarre situations. But you know that. You’ve had someone look up information about the team.”
He ignored that. “This is homicide. And, sadly, homicide is horrible, but not—ghostly.”
“And you don’t think it was a bizarre homicide?”
She had him there, and he knew it. He didn’t reply. She knew he wasn’t happy that his partner was in the hospital, and he was working with a girl who looked as if she might have only just gotten her degree—in film. He wasn’t pleased.
Crosby seemed to have a talent for parking in New York City—of course, he drove an unmarked car and didn’t have to worry much about parking tickets. Still, he seemed to be able to find the only street parking on Broadway, and they were quickly walking down the major street, weaving their way through the mass of humanity.
Crime tape was gone; a woman had been murdered, and speculation was on everyone’s lips—but Broadway could only be stopped so long.
Jude knew where he was going; they walked to the subway.
His pace decelerated as they reached the entrance. “Captain Tyler!” he said politely.
Whitney looked around Jude’s imposing form and saw that there was a man sitting by the entrance. He was wearing a worn peacoat, denim jeans and a cap. He had nice gray eyes—that appeared as if they had known much better days.
“Yes?” the man said. He heaved a sigh and stood up. It seemed that he did so because he had been addressed by name, and standing was the proper thing to do. “Do I know you?” he asked Jude. “Can I help you in some way?”
“Sir, you can help me, yes. I’d like very much to bother you for some of your time. I’m a detective with the police, and—”
“The murder,” Captain Tyler said. He nodded. It appeared that his thinking was clear; he didn’t seem to have been drinking, nor did he have bloodshot or dilated eyes that would indicate he was taking drugs.
“Yes,” Jude said.
“I saw her,” Captain Tyler said, staring at Jude, then noting Whitney and looking at her, his smile becoming a gentle one. “Ma’am,” he said, touching his cap. “Yes, I saw the young woman last night. She was not very nice.”
Whitney frowned; she desperately didn’t want this man to be the murderer. She didn’t know him, of course. He smelled like the street, but that didn’t matter. But there was something about his gray eyes and grizzled face that seemed to speak of dignity beyond misfortune.
“Captain Tyler? You’re certain you saw the woman who was killed?” Jude asked.
“Oh, yes, her picture has been all over the news.” Captain Tyler smiled, seeing Jude Crosby’s frown. “Pete’s Appliances, up on Reade Street. He keeps the news on all the time in his shop-front window,” Tyler explained. “They’ve been blasting that girl’s face over the airwaves all day.”
“Can you tell us, please, about when you saw her last night?” Jude asked.
Captain Tyler nodded gravely. “She was walking up Broadway. I asked her for change, or for a dollar. She was rude. I think she said that I was an old junkie. I have never sold drugs. I took some drugs. I was in the jungle. It was the only way to stay in the jungle.” He shook his head. “They say she was ripped up bad. I’ve seen men living and breathing and running into battle, and then their young bodies literally blown to bits, their limbs here and there. But they are saying that the girl was gutted. She wasn’t nice, but I hope she went quickly.”
“Captain Tyler, would you come with me to the station?” Jude asked him. “I’d like to get your statement down on paper.”
“Statement?” Captain Tyler said, confused.
“Yes, everything you have to say can help us,” Jude told him.
Whitney looked at Jude, frowning. He couldn’t believe that this dignified old man, down and out as he was, had hurt anyone.
“But—”
He glared at her fiercely. So much for cooperation; this was his case.
Captain Tyler nodded, looking at Whitney with a smile. “Free hot coffee, even if it’s bad,” he said.
“I’ll get you good coffee,” she promised him. “And, are you hungry?”
Captain Tyler was hungry. Jude seemed impatient, but when she started into the nearest coffee shop, he muttered and eased past her, buying Captain Tyler a large coffee and an Italian sub, and paying for it himself.
At the station, Jude moved through the offices, pausing only briefly to rattle off a few names in introductions she couldn’t possibly remember. He directed her to one door while he directed Captain Tyler in through another door. She found herself in a small room behind one-way glass. She saw Jude sit Tyler down, and he asked the man his first name. It was Michael. As Jude politely laid out the lunch and waited for Michael Tyler to eat, an older man joined her in the room, offering his hand. “I’m Deputy Chief Green. I know that they call me D-Chiefy behind my back, and I answer quickly to Green,” he told her, his tone pleasant and easy as he studied her. “And you’re the first of the feds?” he asked.
She smiled, offered her hand in return and told him, “Yes, I’m the first of the feds. I’m Whitney Tremont.”
“Well, glad to have you. I spoke briefly to Agent Crow. He said not to be fooled by your size, that you’re as strong as a diamond. Is that true?”
She arched a brow. “Well, I’m not sure about that. I’m fascinated enough by what I do to walk boldly into the fray.”
He nodded with a small smile. “Jude met you at Blair House?”
“Indeed.”
“You and your team will be all right there?”
“It’s beautiful. We’re grateful for the lodging,” she said.
“Well, we’re glad to have any and all help on this one. We have to nip this thing right in the bud,” he said, turning to watch through the glass. She thought that he might be one man who had been raised to the right position; he had an easy manner about him, but he watched the proceedings with sharp eyes, and she didn’t think that he missed much. He’d done an assessment of her, she was sure, and he’d probably come to his own conclusions, with or without comment from Jackson Crow. But then Jackson and Angela Hawkins did have an edge over the rest of the team. Jackson had been an agent for years before becoming head of their team; Angela had been a cop in Virginia. She, on the other hand, had been sought out because she’d refused to doctor film that she’d taken of an actual ghost—because it hadn’t been doctored to begin with! And Adam Harrison, who had put them all together, had been fascinated with her abilities with film and video, and her background, perhaps. However, after they had proved themselves with the Holloway case, they’d all received training, and she was confident in the training she’d received.
However, a man like Jude Crosby would consider her too inexperienced and too young and maybe even, eventually, too emotional; maybe she was, in a way. A way that she hoped stood her well. Emotions came along with instinct and intuition, and she and the team relied heavily on intuition. When she watched Captain Tyler, she was still somehow convinced of his innocence. The man’s hands shook, perhaps due to Parkinson’s or something, but she was certain that he wasn’t on drugs. She wasn’t sure what she expected; she had never conducted an in-office police interview. The only interviews like this that she’d ever seen had been on television. But Jude was never rude to the man. There were none of the softly spoken questions followed by yelled accusations or hands beating on the table that she had seen on television shows. He just asked Captain Michael Tyler to remember everything about the night and his meeting with Virginia Rockford.
He grew very serious, though, leaning forward as he asked, “Captain Tyler, after Miss Rockford passed by you, what did you do? What did you see? She must have been murdered right after she passed you. If you saw or heard anything else, we need to know.”
Whitney was surprised when Tyler paused like a man who did have something to contribute. He shivered—or trembled—and then shook his head.
“I’m not always … right. You know, I mean … in the head. I hear explosions when they’re not happening. I see … I see enemy faces in a crowd. I’m not always—right.”
“That’s okay. I understand. But anything you saw or heard or thought that you saw or heard will help me. Anything.”
“A man,” Captain Tyler said.
“What did this man look like? Did you see him with Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
Tyler shook his head and closed his eyes. He seemed to be in pain. “I’m not sure he was real. He seemed tall in the night, but it might have been his hat. He wore a tall hat. And—and a cloak. And he was carrying something. A bag. Like …”
“Like a backpack?” Jude pressed.
“No. Like an old doctor’s bag,” Tyler said.
Jude sat back a moment, and then asked, “Did you see the man with Ginger Rockford?”
Tyler said, “No. I saw him under the street lamp. I saw him from a distance—he was down Broadway when the young woman was telling me I was a junkie. I’ve never been a junkie. I didn’t see his face, but I did see that he looked strange—as if he didn’t belong there. As if he had … stepped out of the mist from some other time.” He winced again, and gripped his trembling hands together. “I told you—I go to the hospital now and then, but … when I’m on the street, I see things.”
Jude nodded. “Thank you. Captain Tyler, can you still write?”
“Yes.”
Jude passed him a legal pad. “Please, write down everything that you thought you saw. We deeply appreciate your help.”
Tyler looked at the pad and held the pencil awkwardly for a moment, and then started writing. Jude waited patiently with him, and then excused himself while Tyler set about finishing his task.
Jude entered the small chamber where Whitney stood with Green.
“He’s not our killer,” Jude said.
“No,” Green agreed. “From my experience, this man wouldn’t be capable.”
“You’ve introduced yourselves, I presume?” Jude asked. “Deputy Chief Nathaniel Green, Whitney Tremont.”
“We’ve met, thank you,” the deputy chief said. “What do you think about the man he saw? Sounds like the image of the Ripper. Do you think that the media is going to cause everyone out there to start seeing men in stovepipe hats and cloaks, carrying medical bags, around the city?”
“Probably,” Jude said wearily. “But I still wanted to talk to Captain Tyler myself. We believed that he was in the area, and so it was important to know what he had to say. He’s not the killer. From what he’s said, it’s looking more possible that we do have a psycho out there who wants to be the new Jack the Ripper.”
“Ellis Sayer called in right before I joined Miss Tremont. He’s talked to Angus Avery, the director on the film Miss Rockford was working on at the site. He’s arranged to meet you at the old diner up in Soho … He should be here in the next half hour.”
The deputy chief nodded. “Sayer also told me that you’ve set up a meeting with the task force in the morning—let’s hope it’s a quiet night.”
“Let’s hope. We have anything from Forensics?”
“We will soon.”
Jude started out of the room, and then paused. “Sir, do you think we could get someone to—”
“I’ll get an officer to see if we can get Captain Tyler into a shelter for the night. He may refuse our help, but I’ll offer what we can,” Green said.
Jude nodded. He sighed, as if he’d forgotten to pick up a brick he had to carry around his neck.
“Agent Tremont?”
“Sir,” Whitney said to Green. It was nice to meet you or it was a pleasure just seemed wrong under the circumstances.
“Good to have you here, Agent Tremont,” Green told her, and she thanked him.
Once again, she had to hurry to catch up with Jude. He was already moving through the building.
She realized quickly that he didn’t intend to ditch her—brick around his neck or no, he’d been given his orders regarding her federal involvement along with the rest of the team, and as long as she didn’t get in his way, she’d be fine. He simply assumed that she’d follow at his speed.
And so she kept up. She was at the passenger’s side of his car again before he could open the driver’s side.
She buckled in silently. As they pulled out into traffic again, she realized that he glanced at her.
“You heard him, of course.”
“Captain Tyler?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. I hear very well, Detective. Young ears, you know.”
She thought that he almost grinned. “I’m not sure exactly what insights the specialty of your team might provide, but I don’t believe that the ghost of Jack the Ripper has come to murder people in New York City.”
“I don’t believe that, either,” she assured him.
“But you do believe in ghosts,” he said. Lord! She’d heard that tone often enough.
“I believe that, frequently, by looking at the past, we can understand what’s happening in the present,” she said evenly.
He made some kind of snorting sound that was almost beneath his breath.
Whitney held her silence.
“Ghosts,” he muttered after a minute.
She turned to stare at him. “Do you have any religious beliefs, Detective? Are you an atheist?”
She thought his jaw hardened, but it was difficult to tell with him. He hid his emotion well—unless he meant for it to show.
“Do I believe in God? Yes, I suppose I believe in a higher power.”
“Hmm.” She allowed herself a small sniff.
“And what does that mean?”
“Crosby—Irish. I’ll bet you grew up Catholic,” she said.
“Tremont—French? Hmm. New Orleans. Catholic—Baptist, voodooist, vampire Buddhist … Wiccan?”
She shook her head, offering him a smile with just a slight edge. He wasn’t happy that he was saddled with a small woman. She was also a woman of mixed heritage who came from a city known for its alternative beliefs—voodoo, mumbo jumbo, as some thought. “Obviously, my background is mixed,” she told him. “But, you see, my point here is that anyone who grew up Catholic, or in many of the Christian religions, already acknowledges a ‘holy’ ghost in the Nicene Creed. Most of us worship a higher, unseen power. Most people worldwide have some kind of faith in an afterlife, and if we can believe this without seeing what lies beyond, why does it seem so ridiculous that the energy that was life can stay behind?”
His eyes were on the road ahead of him. She saw the muscles in his face twitch. He didn’t believe that energy stayed behind.
“Hell,” he said, glancing her way, “if you can solve this case with ghosts, just go right on and be my guest.”
Whitney smiled, not responding. There was something she liked about him, despite his curt manner with her. He had a good strong jawline and steady eyes. She thought he probably hit a gym now and then and she wondered if he spent time with a punching bag—he had callused knuckles.
“Angus Avery … I know the name. He’s not as big as a Spielberg, but he’s not an unknown,” Whitney said.
“That’s right—your expertise is film.”
“Yeah, I’m good with it—you wait and see,” she told him. “I worked with some excellent people—filmmakers from several of the major educational channels. I’d intended to make documentaries. Eventually, I would have found my own projects.”
“But you woke up one morning and decided you wanted to be an FBI agent?” he asked.
She looked over at him. He glanced her way, but his attention was for driving.
“I like where my life has gone,” she said. “And even you will like Jackson Crow and some of the others.”
He laughed. “Even me?”
“You’re not pleased to have me hanging around.”
To her surprise, he was quiet for a minute. “Sorry. It’s just that Monty—my partner—was like another half of me. We had a situation under control, and some idiot vigilante walked in and one man wound up dead and my partner may never walk again. You’re fine. In fact,” he said, and he grinned broadly, glancing her way again, “I think I’m happier to have you than whoever they might have assigned me. You’re a guest of the city police. You won’t be trying to second-guess me.”
“I may be.”
“Still, you’ll have to bow to my decisions—I’m lead.”
“I’m sure the task force will all bow to you,” Whitney said.
He swerved slightly, avoiding a taxi that didn’t seem to realize that there were lanes on Broadway. A few minutes later, in Soho, he pulled into a spot that had looked too small for the car.
“Diner is up there, on the corner,” he said. He took her elbow, directing her toward the end of the street. Keeping up with him meant long strides, and she took them.
They entered the touristy diner, which was decorated in red plastic and chrome with old movie posters on the walls. Looking around, Jude pointed down a row of glitter-red plastic booths.
“Is that him?” he asked Whitney.
She looked. A lone man was sitting in one of the middle booths. He was on his phone, and he’d doodled all over the napkin at his place setting. He had dark hair that was swept over his forehead in a strange way—hair transplant, gotta keep young, Whitney thought—and gold-rimmed glasses and he seemed to be thirty-five or so.
“I think so,” she said. “Directors don’t have their pictures out there all that often, and I don’t think he’s been nominated for an Academy Award yet.”
Jude edged her ahead of him and she walked toward the booth. “Mr. Avery?” she asked.
He looked up and waved a finger at her, pointing at his phone. She held still politely.
Jude did not.
He flipped out his badge, and reached for Angus Avery’s phone, snapping it shut and returning it.
“Sorry, Mr. Avery. I know that time is money in your line of work, but time could mean someone’s life in mine. I’m Detective Crosby, and this is Agent Tremont.”
Avery took the closure of his phone with little more than a frown, but he seemed perplexed by Whitney’s appearance. “Agent?”
“Agent Tremont is with a special unit of the FBI, Mr. Angus,” Jude explained, urging Whitney into the booth and taking the seat beside her. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” he said.
Angus Avery nodded, and then shook his head sadly. “Hey. This is horrible. But, I have to tell you, I think it’s almost my fault.”
“You killed Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
“No! No, of course not!” Avery protested. “No, no—I should have stayed away from that location. I should have shot anywhere else in Manhattan—or Brooklyn, the Bronx, New Jersey or Hollywood, for that matter. It’s that damn location. It’s haunted—and it’s cursed. And God knows—the creature haunting the place might just be Jack the Ripper—the real Jack the Ripper!”
He leaned forward. “Don’t you understand? Jack the Ripper left London and came to the United States. And when he did, that’s where he lived!”
4
Film people.
Great. He couldn’t help it, he glanced at Whitney.
She smiled. “Surely, Mr. Angus, you don’t believe that Jack the Ripper has lived all these years and that he’s just starting out to murder women again? At age one hundred plus.”
“I knew all about the history of the location. I just doubted all that mumbo-jumbo ghost stuff, just the way you do.”
“I heard something about the location this morning, but I don’t really know much about it,” Whitney said. She smiled at him. “I went to the film school at NYU, Mr. Angus. I loved living and working up here, but somehow, I never learned about the location you were using for the film shoot yesterday.”
“Well, let me tell you about it,” Avery said, leaning toward Whitney.
Maybe the young woman would turn out to be an odd asset, Jude decided. Angus Avery seemed to like her. She was encouraging him to talk. He did believe—gut feeling—that the movie had something to do with it all. Maybe her background was going to be a good thing.
“The building they just tore down had no history. The Darby Building. It was an ugly old thing—built in the 1920s. No character, no class whatsoever. It should have been torn down. But what was on the site before—that’s where all the trouble comes from.”
“And what was there before?” Whitney asked. “A friend of mine told me that it had been some kind of spiritualist church.”
“An offshoot group of some whacked-out folks—now, I suppose it would be some kind of nondenominational thing—started out building a church. Plain church. Simple pews, no statues, no stained-glass windows. They began in the 1840s, but it was too close to St. Paul’s and Trinity to make the powers that be happy. Anyway, it became a ‘home.’ But it was a home for believers. I think it spent about twenty years becoming an old-fashioned halfway house for the homeless, immigrants, addicts, you name it. But by the end of the last decades of the nineteenth century, spiritualism was coming heavily to the fore, and along with spiritualism, you had devil worshippers, pagan cults and all that rot. So, imagine, you’ve got the House of Spiritualism here, and the Five Points area just blocks away. Slums and a cesspool. So. They start to clean up the Five Points area, and where do you think the real crackpots are going to come? Why, right over to the House of Spiritualism.”
Angus Avery sat back, looking pleased with himself, as if he’d solved everything.
“And the so-called American victim of Jack the Ripper was killed in the Bowery, and again, we’re talking about a matter of blocks,” Whitney said.
Jude spoke up. “Carrie Brown was killed in an old hotel.”
They both looked at him, as if surprised that he was in on their conversation.
“Yes, she was killed in a hotel room. But Jack the Ripper killed Mary Kelly in her apartment. He was better—in his own mind, I’m sure—at his task of ‘ripping’ when he had time and privacy on his side. Well, here’s the thing—and, Detective Crosby, I believe you’ll find this in old police records or in memoirs of the officers of the time—they believed that the Jack the Ripper mimic or Jack the Ripper himself found lodging at the House of Spiritualism.”
“So you believe that by renting the location for your film shoot you awakened the ghost of Jack the Ripper—or Jack the Ripper himself,” Jude said, trying very hard to keep his tone low and even.
Angus Avery shook his head unhappily. “We were finished with the site after that day’s shoot—we’d broken down. We were already planning on moving. But I called off all shooting for today—everywhere in the city. Can you even begin to imagine what that will do to my budget?”
“What made you choose the location?” Jude asked.
“Ah, well, the real shots we could get. And the fact that the financial district is actually shaped more like the Five Points that once was than the area that was Five Points! The movie takes place in the late eighteen hundreds. Shooting there, we could use the streets with some editing and CGI. And I had a great, almost barren landscape for the set designers to create facades. You’d be surprised at what you have when you black out modern additions to downtown.”
“There’s a giant pit at the location—dangerous,” Jude said.
Avery waved a hand in the air. “We had it barricaded during the filming, and all kinds of people keeping watch. Production assistants and city engineers. We had a permit that included working a large section of Broadway,” Avery said. “I knew about the location, but, as I said, I thought it was all a bunch of hogwash.”
“And right next door, you had Blair House. It’s pristine—you could have done some great shooting there,”
Whitney said. “I—”
Jude squeezed her hand beneath the table; he didn’t want her announcing that the team was staying at Blair House. Especially since the team wasn’t all here yet. As the day went by, he found himself more concerned that they had Whitney Tremont housed at Blair House—alone—for tonight.
“Blair House is under federal jurisdiction at the moment. I don’t know exactly which historical association is in charge, but it’s on the national list of historic places. I don’t believe that a permit would have been given out for the use of it right now, no matter what was promised to the city,” he said.
“Precisely,” Avery said with a sigh. He brightened. “But, we did get some great footage of the facade. In fact, the Blair House facade—cleaned up, CGI—will be the house of ill repute where our movie prostitutes were settled.”
“Just what was the movie you were making?” Jude asked.
“Am making. O’Leary’s. I’m afraid the loss of an extra doesn’t stop the giant wheels of a movie turning forever. And don’t think badly of me, please. Movies have been completed when the featured stars have died. Everyone can’t take the hit. Lord knows, in this country, we have to keep people employed and the money moving these days.”
“You’re a humanitarian,” Jude said.
Whitney kicked his ankle.
“And the movie is?” Jude asked.
“A love story,” Avery said. “A love story set amidst the squalor of the final days of the Five Points region of New York City. I mean, seriously, it’s hard to imagine what it was like. Tenements were so crowded that the living often walked over the dead. Gangs were kings … politics were crooked. Sewage was a real killer—disease ran rampant. My movie, O’Leary’s, is about two young people who rise above the horror and corruption to make it to the top.”
“Ah. They moved to Gramercy Park!” Jude said.
Finally, he’d managed something that the filmmaker could seize upon. “Precisely!” Avery said with pleasure.
“Mr. Avery, what time did you leave the set yesterday?” Jude asked him.
Avery was thoughtful. Many people immediately shrank suspiciously from the question, aware that it was not harmless. But the man seemed to be remembering his day. “I left by five. One of my assistant directors worked on a few last shots with the prostitutes. I headed to midtown. I gave a speech to a class from the fashion institute at their dinner at six.”
Jude didn’t ask Avery if there were witnesses; he’d check on it himself.
“Mr. Avery, we have a witness who saw a man in costume on the street—a nineteenth-century cloak and tall hat, like a stovepipe hat,” Jude said.
“Was your witness a wino living on the streets? Or was your witness the killer?” Avery asked.
“You have nineteenth-century costuming on your cast, Mr. Avery,” Whitney said. “Perhaps the killer is stealing from your wardrobe department?”
Avery shook his head. “You may speak to my costume designer and the wardrobe mistress. I insist on all costumes being returned at the end of the day. If a costume wasn’t returned, I’d have known it. I might be making a movie, but any half-baked costume shop in town might have a cloak and a stovepipe hat! Look, please, check my alibi—and check my work record. It couldn’t have been me, and I guarantee you, my wardrobe mistress would have been fired if there had been anything missing.”
Avery’s alibi didn’t actually clear him. He might have given a speech—and returned, Jude thought. New York traffic—always a major “if” factor in the city. And, still, by the time Virginia Rockford had been killed, there had been very little traffic downtown. Avery could have well done everything exactly as he had said—and still arrived back on Broadway in time to commit murder.
“How well did you know Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
“Know her? I didn’t know her at all,” Avery said. “But she was working on your film,” Jude said. “Directors seldom hire the extras,” Whitney said quietly.
“Oh, right, well, of course not,” Jude said.
“Her death, however, devastates me,” Avery said.
A waitress stopped by their table; Jude ordered coffee and Whitney did the same. Avery already had a cup before him.
When she was gone, Avery became businesslike. “I’ve asked my office to make sure that your fellow officer—Detective Sayer—has a list of everyone associated with the film, and what their position is. Except for poor Miss Rockford, of course.”
“Of course,” Whitney murmured.
“Do you have an idea of anyone else who might have stayed behind last night?”
“We have a guard who stays on until the last actor, costumer, production assistant—even caterer—has left the set for the day. Last night that would have been a fellow named Samuel Vintner. My offices have given Detective Sayer everything he could possibly need—phone numbers, addresses, even social security numbers. We desperately want to see this murder solved.”
“Thank you for your help,” Jude told him.
Angus Avery wagged a finger in the air again, directed at them both. “You mark my words. It’s evil land. I think that they were burying people in the walls and foundations. I think that you’ll find that Jack the Ripper—the real Ripper—is buried somewhere on that location. You have to find the corpse and burn it and say lots of prayers. Maybe that will stop this.”
“We’re hoping to catch a flesh-and-blood killer before anyone else dies,” Jude said.
“Mr. Avery, there might have been someone—someone working on your movie—who had a grudge against Virginia Rockford,” Jude said.
“There might have been. I told you, I didn’t know the girl,” Avery said, sounding impatient at last. “You have the names and office address of the casting directors. Madison and May Casting—they’re actually on Madison. They can tell you all about the extras.” He stood. “If there’s nothing else, I have a date with a bottle of blended scotch whiskey and a friend. This is becoming a nightmare, what with my actors in a stew and the press all over everything in the world … forgive me. Order dinner on my tab, if you like. I need to go now.”
“You noticed nothing unusual on the set at all?” Whitney asked.
“I told you—the location is cursed. We had a fellow die of a heart attack when he was moving set pieces. That was unusual. Natural causes, though, that’s what they said. And we had a few injuries, too. It’s the location. Go dig up the Ripper, burn his bones and the world will be back to normal. Down to a few domestic, drug and gang murders a week!” Avery had grown really impatient. “I’m easy to find, Detective Crosby. But, please, I’m a busy man. Call me only if you believe I can really help you.”
“Sir, police business does take precedence. Rest assured, I don’t like to waste my time. But if I feel that I need you, I will find you, no problem. Wherever you are,” Jude assured him.
Avery’s lips tightened as he rose and walked out, a clipboard in his hands. Jude watched as he headed out to the street—and a waiting stretch limo.
“Are we having dinner on him?” Whitney asked him.
“Nope, and I’m not seeing his movie, either,” Jude said, rising. He looked at the three cups of coffee and laid a bill on the table, and then lifted a hand, hailing their waitress. When she arrived at the table, he said, “Miss, I need that cup, please.”
“What?”
“I’m a police officer. If you need to get the manager, do so. That cup is evidence in a case I’m working.”
“You need a Baggie?” she asked. “The cup is all yours!”
“Thanks. I carry my own,” he told her.
In a few minutes, he’d secured the cup that Avery had been drinking from. “Let’s go.” He flipped his phone out and put through a call. “Ellis? Hey, yes, I’ve met with Angus Avery. I want the limos that worked that film site yesterday impounded. You’ll need warrants, but you won’t have a problem getting them now. I want Forensics going through them.”
He listened for a minute. “I know everyone is working around the clock. Get the limos in anyway. They’ll get to them.” He listened again. “Yep, thanks, Ellis.” He hung up and looked at Whitney.
“Where to now?” she asked.
Jude hesitated, and then offered her a twisted grin. “I’m going to drop off the cup at the lab, and then I’m bringing you home to meet Dad, Whitney. Seems like the thing to do after this conversation.”
Andrew Crosby lived in Hell’s Kitchen, also known as Clinton, which, for some reason, had become a more politically correct term for the area. His home was in a building that appeared to have been built in the late eighteen hundreds. Flowers grew in little patches of earth that might be called a yard, and when they entered the hallway and climbed the stairs to the two second-floor apartments, one of the doors was open.
Jude actually lived in the same building; his was the apartment next door. Years ago, when the place had gone co-op, his father had purchased the apartments. His dad’s foresight was something for which he was eternally grateful. Living in New York was expensive.
At first, too, after his mother’s death, he’d been glad that he was so close. And now, with the life he led, it was still good to be next door. Andrew had never been the type to intrude; he was there when needed.
“Jude, been expecting you all day!” his father said in a booming voice, greeting them at the entry.
“Whitney, meet my dad, Andrew Crosby. Dad, this is Whitney Tremont. She’s with the feds who have been sent down on this case.”
“A fed! Nice,” Andrew said, greeting Whitney warmly. Naturally, Whitney still seemed lost, since he had told his dad that she was there, but hadn’t told her anything about his father other than that he was good at puzzles, knew the city like the back of his hand and would be expecting him. “I have pasta ready for the pot, and I’ve been brewing up a sauce all day. It’s meat sauce. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you, Agent Tremont. I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”
“I’m not, but I do have a team member who is, if you ever need to host us all for some reason,” Whitney told him. She was smiling. Well, his father was likable.
As they chatted, Jude saw that Whitney learned that Andrew Crosby had worked his way up the ranks without benefit of higher education, and he had reached the rank of lieutenant. He’d worked the worst streets, the most unusual crimes and, been commended for bravery several times. He’d retired just a decade ago, when Jude’s mother had first been diagnosed with cancer. He’d spent every day at her side until she had slipped away.
“Since you’re having me to dinner, I hope I’m able to return the favor,” Whitney told him.
“Well, I must say, seems that I’d like that, if the rest of your team members are anything like you. But, of course, we’ve got a situation going,” Andrew said. “You two haven’t been watching television, I take it?”
“What now?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” Andrew said.
He led them past the entrance. The apartment was just as it had been a decade ago. Jude had finally convinced his dad—when his mom had been gone two years—that she would have been angry with him if he hadn’t given her clothing and shoes to Goodwill. But the throw she had knitted remained on the couch; her doilies still covered the occasional tables. The only concession his father had made to modern living was the entertainment center; he had a good flat-screen television, a sound stereo system and even Rock Band and a Wii Playstation.
As they followed him into the living room, Andrew picked up the remote control and hit a play button on the television.
Jude frowned, not certain what he was watching at first. Then he realized that the two beautiful young people on the screen were giving a press conference.
“Bobby Walden and Sherry Blanco,” Whitney said.
“Yep,” Andrew said.
“The leads in Angus Avery’s movie?” Jude murmured.
“I knew her only briefly, only in passing,” Bobby said. “But Ginger Rockford was a beautiful person, and we’re all horrified at her death.”
“This movie is dedicated to her memory!” Sherry Blanco put in, dabbing at a tear.
“But aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you afraid to continue filming?” one of the reporters asked. Jude squinted. It appeared as if they’d done the press conference in front of the Plaza. They were standing on red-carpeted steps, and the press was kept at a distance by velvet ropes. It was almost like a premiere night.
“We can’t be afraid,” Bobby said. “We owe it to Ginger to finish the film.”
“And, of course—” a man in a suit—one of their agents?—stepped in front of the microphone “—of course, we’re increasing security on the set. We’re cutting all night hours and doubling up on our security personnel. And we’ve negotiated new locations for the rest of the shoot, though! Rest assured. We will remain in this great city!”
Those words were greeted by a roar of applause.
“There’s a murderer on the streets—a heinous killer—and what really matters is that America’s sweethearts are going to finish a movie,” Jude said thoughtfully.
“Nothing you can do about pop culture, son. I just thought you should see this,” Andrew told him. “She didn’t do it,” Whitney said. “Too small. I don’t think she could have managed the kind of strength needed,” Andrew agreed.
Jude looked at the two of them. They had taken up positions on the sofa, watching as Andrew ran the recorded version of the press conference.
“That’s great. You two have eliminated a suspect. Now we just have to eliminate about another eight million people or so,” Jude said.
“You’ll get it narrowed down,” Andrew said with confidence.
Jude lowered his head, hiding a smile. His father always had confidence. He’d never given up on one of his own cases, though it was true that far too many went unsolved, despite the best work of dedicated people and excellent forensics labs.
The press conference ended with a public service announcement: Sherry Blanco begged the women of New York City to be careful, and to be safe. When two anchors came back on, talking about the celebrity of those involved, Andrew shut the television off.
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Heather Graham
A TERROR BORN OF JACK THE RIPPERThe details of the crime scene are no coincidence. The body—a promising starlet—has been battered, bloodied and then discarded between two of Manhattan’s oldest graveyards. One look and Detective Jude Crosby recognizes the tableau: a re-creation of Jack the Ripper’s gruesome work. But he also sees something beyond the actions of a mere copycat. Something more dangerous…and unexplainable.As the city seethes with suspicion, Jude calls on Whitney Tremont, a member of the country’s preeminent paranormal investigating team, to put the speculation to rest. Yet when Whitney and Jude delve deeper, what they discover is more shocking than either could have predicted, and twice as sinister. …
Praise for the novels of Heather Graham
“An incredible storyteller.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Graham wields a deftly sexy and convincing pen.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A fast-paced and suspenseful read that will give readers chills while keeping them guessing until the end.”
—RT Book Reviews on Ghost Moon
“If you like mixing a bit of the creepy with a dash of sinister and spine-chilling reading with your romance, be sure to read Heather Graham’s latest … Graham does a great job of blending just a bit of paranormal with real, human evil.”
—Miami Herald on Unhallowed Ground
“Eerie and atmospheric, this is not late-night reading for the squeamish or sensitive.”
—RT Book Reviews on Unhallowed Ground
“The paranormal elements are integral to the unrelentingly suspenseful plot, the characters are likable, the romance convincing, and, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Graham’s atmospheric depiction of a lost city is especially poignant.”
—Booklist on Ghost Walk
“Graham’s rich, balanced thriller sizzles with equal parts suspense, romance and the paranormal—all of it nail-biting.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Vision
“Heather Graham will keep you in suspense until the very end.”
—Literary Times
“Mystery, sex, paranormal events. What’s not to love?”
—Kirkus on The Death Dealer
Sacred Evil
Heather Graham
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For NYC—an amazing place, and for a few of the people who have also made it more amazing by being there.
For Aaron Priest, and all those at the agency: Lucy Childs, Lisa Vance, Nicole James, Arleen Priest, and John Richmond.
And, of course, for my MIRA Books editors in the Big Apple: Adam Wilson, Leslie Wainger,
Margaret Marbury, and Krista Stroever, who went above and beyond and walked the streets of the old Five Points region with me. Thank You!
Yes, ready for my cemetery tour now …!
Prologue
Someone was following her.
Stalking her.
She’d heard the footsteps. Among the deserted streets and the canyons of tall buildings; the sound seemed to echo from everywhere.
The night was extremely dark, and, Ginger Rockford thought, you would have believed that the streets were lit by centuries-old gas lamps, as they’d supposedly been during the filming that day.
A hot afternoon had turned into a chilly, misty night, and a fog was rolling in from the river.
The area seemed ridiculously quiet—except for that sound she heard now and then, a click-click, like a footfall, and then a shuffling noise, as if her stalker dragged a foot.
Great. Chased through the streets by a gimp.
It was New York City, for God’s sake. Millions lived on this tiny island.
So where the hell were they all now?
Ginger turned around to look back in the direction from which she had come. She could still see the row of trailers on Whitehall Street; she had just left one. Sammy Vintner, fat-old-ex-cop studio guard, was still on duty, but she saw that he was on the phone.
He was the only living soul she saw.
There were markers where the tape had been that had held the crowd back during the day, separating the filmmakers from the plebs hoping to catch a glimpse of megastar Bobby Walden.
She cursed Bobby Walden. While she’d waited, believing that he was really going to call her, Bobby had surely been picked up by a big black limousine.
Bobby was a somebody. She was a nobody.
But at least Bobby had spoken to her. The female lead, Sherry Blanco, had almost knocked her over, and she hadn’t even apologized. Well, maybe Sherry would learn. Ginger had done a lot of studying up on actors and their careers. She estimated that Sherry Blanco had about three years left—she was nearly thirty-five, and it was starting to show. Sherry was pretty, but she couldn’t really act. Nor had she been known for any kindness to the young hopefuls with whom she had worked. Ginger hoped with her whole heart that she might be a rising star when Sherry was a burned-out has-been.
At least Angus Avery, the up-and-coming director, had noticed her. Okay, so his words weren’t every girl’s dream. “Perfect! I mean, damn, do you look the role of the immigrant prostitute, her dreams already vanquished!” That was how she had gotten to be the one on Bobby’s arm, and how she had managed to flirt with him.
And then he had said that they needed to hook up, and taken her phone number.
So she had sat in the trailer well past time to leave; Missy Everett and Jane Deaver—who had played the other two young prostitutes in the scene—had begged her to leave with them. Their day of extra-stardom was over. They should celebrate, and wonder if they’d wind up on the cutting-room floor.
She, like a fool, had refused to leave; she’d been waiting for Bobby. And she should have left. The set was a construction site. The ugly old building that had been there had been razed to the foundations and a few structural walls. There were rumors about the site; bad things had happened there. She didn’t really know what—she wasn’t into history. Maybe it had been an old burial ground. But it had been perfect for the set designers when they had installed their prefabricated backdrops and facades, and it had been right next to Blair House, a truly creepy old place. She hadn’t been spooked during the day. The day had been chaotic with actors and crew, one shot being set up while another was being shot, sometimes over and over again if Avery didn’t like the lighting or the camera angle.
How had she managed to be the very last one on set? Oh, yes, waiting and praying that Bobby would really call her.
Sammy had emerged from his guard post. “Hey!” she called back, hoping that he would pay attention, see her and wait for her to come running back. She’d even take a ride with disgusting fat Sammy at this point.
He wasn’t looking her direction. He was going off duty, heading away from her. She should have accepted a ride from him when he’d offered, but she’d been convinced she’d find a taxi right away.
Who the hell knew that the area dried up like a prune once it got late at night?
The guard disappeared behind one of the trailers; he’d been anxious for her to go, of course, once she’d refused to ride with him. She’d been the last one near the trailers, the only one left who had been working on the on-location day-plus shoot for O’Leary’s, a tale about crime and prostitution in the eighteen hundreds in New York City. One of the pubs in the area had had the right interior, and the buildings—except for the gap where the old Darby Building had so recently stood—were perfect. The gutted area and the work tents set up on the old site were shielded by a blue screen for the moviemaking; New York was not a city to make do without the income a permit for such work would secure for the city. Nor, with the preservationist-supporting liberals to be found in the area, could a recently discovered historic site be disturbed.
Even so, the area around the demolished building was surrounded by cheap wire fencing that any schoolboy could scale, and closed by a gate with a two-bit combination lock. It looked like a war zone in a third world country.
She was beyond it, though, and she hurried; the gaping hole in the landscape seemed alive, mocking her for her fear of darkness and shadows.
Now she cursed Bobby Walden. Megastar—jerk!
So, maybe, she had been too easy, too wide-eyed and too hopeful. But he’d really been into her during the shoot; he’d whispered such cool stuff to her between takes that day. She was ready; she knew how to get her name in the paper, and how to move ahead. In film, in the real world, perception was everything. She wasn’t a fool; she didn’t expect a happy-ever-after with Bobby Walden. Just a date—or a night in his hotel room, a place she could pretend to slip out of while being sure that she was spotted by the media. That was all she needed. Her picture on Page Six, maybe. People would start talking about her, and it would make it worthwhile that she’d slept with the pimple-faced assistant at the casting agency to get the job as an extra—a down-and-out historical hooker—for the movie. And, she should still be glad, because she’d wound up with a few lines, enough to quality for her SAG card.
B movie. That was okay. Many a star had gotten his or her start as an extra-suddenly-given-lines. It took something like being singled out by Bobby Walden to get noticed.
“Hey! Hey, Sammy!” she called, walking back toward the site and Sammy. But Sammy didn’t appear from behind the trailer that was just about two blocks away now. He had to have heard her, but even if she ran, she’d never catch him. “Sammy! You fat ass!” she muttered.
Sammy was gone. Probably down in the useless-to-her Whitehall subway station already.
She thought she saw a man; a different man standing by the trailers. He must have been an actor; he seemed to be wearing a stovepipe hat and a long black all-encompassing coat. Whoever it was would be in big trouble with the costume department.
The moon shifted; there was no man standing there. She was making herself bizarrely nervous; it was simply because she’d never imagined that anywhere in New York could become so devoid of people.
She turned and retraced her steps. If she reached Broadway and started running …
She was almost at the corner when she heard the noise again. Click-click-drag.
Was it coming from behind her? Or before her?
She turned the corner and screamed; there was a man standing there. He looked dazed. He was in dirty jeans, a dirtier denim jacket. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his hair was tangled and greasy.
“Hey, lady, you got a dollar? Just a dollar—or some change? Anything—a quarter?” He took a step toward her with his hand outstretched, and she suddenly knew the direction from which the click-click-drag had come. She could smell him; he was absolutely repulsive.
“No!” she cried. “Get away!”
“Lady, I’m just a vet—”
“You’re just an alcoholic or a junkie—and you’re disgusting! Take a bath!” she said. She didn’t even want to touch him to shove him in the chest, but she did so. She was desperate to get past him.
He fell against the wall of the building she was passing. She didn’t look to see what type of office it was; she hurried on for a block, turned around. The ratty old homeless man was gone.
She leaned against a railing where she had stopped, panting, to stare back hard. She wanted to make sure that he was gone—really gone. She needed to get a hold of her fear. As soon as she got a little bit farther up Broadway, she’d start to see people. Ha! Stalked by a derelict who would fall down in a breeze. Well, the louse-ridden bastard was gone now. She kept looking down the street, making sure.
It was amazing; she could hear the traffic on West Street, albeit in the distance. Battery City was no more than a few blocks away. Wall Street was mobbed with cutthroat brokers during the day, and tourists thronged Trinity and St. Paul’s. But now the streets were dead, as dead as those rotting in the old graves and tombs of the city’s churches.
Yes, the derelict was gone, too. She turned to hurry on up Broadway. She hadn’t heard a thing; she hadn’t suspected anyone might be in front of her—she had been looking behind, back to the dark abyss of the site.
Her turn brought her directly into his arms. Before she could open her mouth, his hand clamped over it, and he twisted her viciously around until she was flat against his body.
She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled by the gloved hand. She strained to see, to kick to fight …
She barely even felt the knife across her throat; the blade was that sharp and the slice he made was swift and hard and sure. She was aware that, as the blood began to flow, he dragged her. She saw the lights of the street.
Seeming as pale as old gas lamps. As she died, the world growing dark and cold, she was dimly aware once again that it was all a matter of perception. Blood was rushing from her throat, and she was dying. She was even aware of the irony—that she might become really famous at last.
Somewhere, not far, car horns blared, neon illuminated the city and millions of souls worked, played and slept.
But to Virginia Rockford, the world beyond was no longer of any consequence.
Her last vision was that of a shadow-man. A man in a long black cape wearing a stovepipe hat. A shadow-man, coming at her again with the long wicked blade of his knife.
But she felt no more. Death became a gentle blessing.
1
One great thing about New York City—tourists.
And residents who behaved like tourists, every time he came to the scene of a murder.
Jude Crosby flashed his badge to the officers on duty and ducked beneath the yellow crime scene tape that was stretched across lower Broadway.
The murder site had acquired more onlookers than a movie premiere. Traffic downtown had grown to a snarl that was just about impassable even with the extra traffic cops manning the detour, and the sound of cursing drivers threatened to drown out the sound of their horns.
Fortunately, it was only just dawn; most finance workers weren’t even on their way in yet.
He made his way to the circle of men around the body. He was glad to see that the medical examiner who had been on call was Wally Fullbright, a man in his late fifties with ruffled white hair and big-rimmed glasses; he looked like an aged Beaker, from the Muppets. He was, in Jude’s mind, the finest in his profession. Yet, he never considered his own expertise as the zenith of knowledge, and was known to probe to the depths of any anatomical mystery.
“Crosby!” Fullbright said, acknowledging Jude without looking up. He knew he had a distinctive height, and in his off-hours he practiced at the ring. Pounding away at punching bags helped him release the tension that often bubbled up after dealing with some of the more bizarre crimes that plagued the city.
Even then, he had to make his way through more men; officers had formed a curtain of bodies, hiding the corpse from the view of the crowd that looked on.
He quickly saw why.
“Lord,” he said quietly, hunkering down across the body from Fullbright.
He’d seen a lot as a homicide detective in New York City. Dead drunks, prostitutes, drug addicts, mob hits and victims of domestic abuse. He’d seen the derelicts who had died in Dumpsters, in alleys, atop mountains of trash and he’d seen the floaters who had popped up in the East River and the Hudson.
He’d never seen anything like this.
“Do we know who she is?” he asked.
“Sir!” one of the uniformed men—Smith, according to his badge—said. “She had her ID on her, in her bag. Found next to the body. Her name is Virginia Rockford, twenty-six years old. We believe that she was an actress working on location last night, but that fact still has to be verified. We formed ranks around her as fast as we could when we reached the scene. We called it in to Major Crimes because of … because of the way you see the body.”
“You found her like this?” Jude asked.
The officer blushed and shook his head. “There were people coming around, staring. I threw the coat over her.”
“And I carefully threw it off, again, in favor of the screen of blue,” Fullbright said.
Jude nodded. He understood. The black trench coat now at the victim’s side had apparently belonged to Officer Smith.
He doubted Officer Smith would ever wear the coat again.
Smith shouldn’t have changed the crime scene in any way, but, under the circumstances, Jude knew why he had felt compelled to do so—even if the officer had known better.
He looked at Fullbright. “Tell me, please, that she wasn’t—gutted—alive?”
Fullbright shook his head, indicating the thick pool of blood at the victim’s throat, and the way it had poured down the front of her dress. “It’s my belief that she was seized, her mouth muffled, though God knows who might have heard her scream down here at night, and that her throat was slit ear to ear immediately. I think, and it’s my theory, but, logical, if you will forgive me, that she was nabbed on the corner, and quickly dragged into the street as she died. There are two slashes, but I believe the first would have caused her to bleed out. The mutilation of the body occurred after death.”
“I’ve seen some bad ones in my day, but this seems exceptionally sick, don’t you think, Detective Crosby?” one of the other uniformed men asked.
“They come in very, very, very sick sometimes,” Jude said quietly.
He looked at the victim again, feeling his own stomach curdling. There was bruising on her face, which might have come from a blow, or from the force the killer used to hold her while slashing her throat. Her legs were bent at the knees slightly, and falling outward in a sexually implicit line. Her stomach appeared to have been sliced deeply several times, but there was now such a mass of congealed blood and ragged flesh, there was little he could tell about any precise injury that had been done to her.
“How long has she been here?” he asked Fullbright.
“I’m estimating time of death to be around eleven,” the medical examiner told him. “Give or take an hour.”
Smith offered, “I was on duty down here, Detective Crosby. I had just come on duty. I came running when I heard a woman screaming.” He pulled out a pad and read from his notes, nodding toward a woman who was on the sidewalk, surrounded by officers. “She’s Miss Dorothy Hannigan, and she runs the bakery on the corner. She came walking from the subway exit—” he pointed down the street “—and started screaming when she saw the body. I called in dispatch for help and they called you.” He swallowed hard. “It was barely light … I thought she was a mannequin, a movie prop, at first.”
Jude Crosby studied the body a moment longer; he wasn’t sure it was necessary. The details seemed to be etched into his mind.
He was sure that Fullbright was right—she had been nabbed while walking on the sidewalk, and dragged out to the road to die. He wondered how long, even with the light traffic at night, it had taken the bakery worker to discover the body. Time of death wasn’t exact, and a number of cars had to have driven by at sometime.
He started to rise.
“The Ripper,” Fullbright said.
“Pardon?” Jude looked over at the man he sincerely respected.
Fullbright looked at him and spoke dryly. “Jack the Ripper. London murderer of the late eighteen hundreds. Come on, Jude, you were sent to study criminal history and crime-fighting methods across the pond. The Ripper. Jack the Ripper. His first victim—well, the first victim agreed upon by most criminal experts and Ripperologists—was Polly Nichols. Found on August 31, 1888. She was found … just as we’ve found this girl.”
Officer Smith made a sound at the back of his throat. “That was well over a hundred years ago, Doctor. I doubt the same man could have killed this girl. And, hell, that was London, not New York.”
“One theory regarding the cessation of the murders after the Mary Kelly grand finale was that the bastard came to the United States,” Fullbright said, looking at Jude.
Jude asked Fullbright, “You think we might have a whacked-out murderer who is also a Ripperologist—one dedicated to the point of re-creating the crimes himself?”
“I hope not,” Fullbright said. “They just got worse,” he added softly. “The murders just became more and more vicious. Until Mary Kelly, and then …”
And then …
Of course, no one knew what would happen next. Jude was far from a Ripperologist, but he’d attended a lecture at a British forum on “Historical Crimes, Modern-day Solutions: Crimes That Would Have Been Solved in the Twenty-first Century.” He knew that theories abounded. One was indeed the idea that the Ripper had come to the United States. But, of course, wherever he had gone—to America, Africa, South America—or hell itself—that had been over a hundred years ago. And Jude didn’t believe that he was a Freddy Krueger-type monster who had returned to roam the streets.
And still, he felt a deep unease sweeping over him. Last week, they’d found the remains of a girl in the Hudson; she was still a Jane Doe, but her throat had been slashed. A pleasure boater had reported the remains; police divers had brought her in. Two weeks before, there had been a victim who had died en route to the hospital without ever being able to speak or point a finger even vaguely in the direction of her attacker; she’d been cut—slashed and stabbed.
But not like this.
Not like this poor girl.
Probably a once pretty girl, who had been alive just last night. Filled with hopes and dreams. She might have been nice; she might have been a scrapper, one of the thousands of hopefuls who came to the big city each year to strike it rich in the Big Apple. The open chart of her life was closed, and it didn’t matter if she’d helped old ladies cross the street or snubbed the geeks who had stared at her when she had walked by, oblivious. No one deserved this kind of end.
He noted the position of her body, and that she had certainly been positioned and displayed; he was sure the killer had worn gloves, and been careful not to let his victim catch any skin cells in her fingernails. Still, there was always hope.
Jude stood up and started going through the initial motions. He ordered that his victim’s hands be bagged in hopes she’d gotten her nails into the bastard that had killed her somehow or somewhere, but he knew he didn’t even have to say the words. Fullbright was on the case.
Photographs were taken of the body. He watched that procedure, making certain that the techs took every angle he might need.
He spoke to the uniformed officers on the street. Buildings were to be canvassed in hopes that someone had been somewhere doing something. The crime scene unit was called in to search the area for any possible minuscule clues.
Fullbright stood, giving additional orders to the officers and his assistant. He looked at Jude while the gurney and body bag were brought over, everyone there moving quickly and efficiently.
“You’re working alone on this?” Fullbright asked him.
“I don’t have a new partner yet. I haven’t had anyone assigned to me since … since Monty took a bullet,” Jude told him.
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s having another surgery on Friday. They’re hoping he’ll walk again,” Jude said.
He tried to keep his voice even, and free from the resentment he couldn’t help but feel. Niles Monty had been doing the right thing—he had been the perfect officer, trying to talk down the drugged-out vet who had just shot and killed his wife. His partner had been doing all the right things, and the soldier, in tears, was ready to hand his weapon over to Monty. Instead, a frightened vigilante neighbor who’d snuck up the fire escape had taken a shot and missed; the frightened vet had fired at Monty, before turning the gun on himself.
Jude had been waiting quietly next to Monty who had been doing a damn good job talking the man down. He felt the bullet whistle by, but too late to stop the lethal action that had all taken place in less than ten seconds. He’d managed to stanch the flow of blood emitting from his partner while praying for the medics to hurry.
The vigilante was walking the streets, his case having been dismissed, portraying himself to the press as a hero. How he was managing that, since his actions had caused the crippling of a veteran cop with twenty years’ experience and a slew of medals, Jude didn’t know.
God, he hated the press.
And the press was going to have a field day with this.
He looked through the crowd of television vans and camera crews setting up near the scene. He noticed Melissa Banks, who tended to be a responsible newspaper journalist in a world where sensationalism had become everything.
He strode straight for her. “Ms. Banks,” he said, acknowledging her. “We have found the body of a woman on Broadway, and look, I suppose that’s evident, but it’s all I can give you at the moment. Headquarters will make a statement later. Pending notification of next of kin, I can’t release her name.”
“They’re saying that her throat was slashed and that she was—ripped to shreds. Do we have our own Jack the Ripper in the city now, Detective Crosby? A Jack the Slasher, as it were?” Melissa asked him. He winced. His killer had a name now.
“We don’t know if this was an isolated incident or not, Ms. Banks. As soon as we have information, we will certainly bring it to you in the best interest of the public. Now, if you’ll excuse me …?”
The officers who had been first on the scene had done their best to keep the details hidden, but it was New York. People had seen. They’d seen beyond the crime scene tape and the wall of bodies, and they had seen the amount of blood around the victim. People were going to talk; speculation would run high, and if his killer was a sensationalist trying to prove a point, he would be savoring the attention he was getting this very minute. He would be somewhere, watching, and gloating over his victory.
“Should women in this vicinity be worried to walk about at night?” Melissa Banks asked him.
He stared at her; she tended to be an intelligent woman. “Women should always be careful walking about at night. However, since the financial district is relatively quiet at night, yes, I would definitely take extra care.”
One of the other reporters had heard his words and moved in. “Did you just say that it’s not safe to walk the streets at night?”
Jude stepped toward her. “What I just said was that any single woman should take care at any time—anywhere. Sadly, there is evil in this world, and there are those who will hurt others. I’m suggesting women not be alone late at night on quiet streets. Period. I’m also suggesting that journalists be responsible and not create panic where panic will avail no one. I’m promoting common sense, and if you’ll really excuse me now, I have work to do.”
Jude walked back to the body, and looked at the corner. He paused, and motioned to a crime scene tech, who hurried over. “Blood, I’m pretty sure,” Jude told him, and the fellow nodded gravely and went to work. On the sidewalk, he found more drops of blood, and motioned as well.
A photographer followed the techs, taking pictures as they took samples of the substances on the ground.
He was certain that Fullbright had been right; his victim had been walking uptown, as if she was trying to find a busier spot on Broadway, perhaps to hail a cab. The assailant had waited for her on the corner behind the building. Jude didn’t like his audience, though the uniforms were doing the best they could to control the scene. He was still downtown on a busy Monday morning, and blocking off an entire street in the vicinity of the stock market, city hall, Trinity, St. Paul’s and the Woolworth Building was not easy. Still, he called one of the young officers over, took a position behind the first building and had the officer walk toward him.
He couldn’t be seen until the last minute. When he stepped out, it was easy to accost the man, spin him around and ascertain that a strong man could have certainly caught a woman so; he would have had to have dragged her as she bled, and thus the trail to the street.
Why leave her in the street?
So she would be found, and found as she was.
He scanned the crowd, wondering if any of the men hovering about in their business suits, construction vests, chef’s outfits, messenger tees or other attire might be a killer. He wouldn’t be bloody anymore; he’d be fitting in with the crowd.
Jude walked down the sidewalk to where the bakery manager still stood, trembling with two officers. She was shaking badly.
Dorothy Hannigan was a woman with a thin face and thinner body; she obviously did not indulge frequently in her bakery’s items. She looked at him with wide brown eyes and an expression that still denoted the horror of her discovery.
“Ms. Hannigan, I’m Detective Jude Crosby. I know you’ve already given the officers your statement, so I really just want to thank you for so quickly summoning help, and for all that you’ve done to assist us in the investigation.” She hadn’t really done anything—she’d screamed instinctively. But he had discovered that the right tone of questioning always produced more than dismissal or rudeness.
She nodded, seeming to get a bit of a grip. “Shall we have some coffee?” he asked her.
She looked nervously at the corner bakery. “I open. I gave the keys to one of the boys … but I guess no one is really going to be hungry around here for a while.”
He smiled. “They’ll be hungry,” he said. Don’t kid yourself, he thought. People will be converging to talk. When the crime scene tape is gone, they’ll be fighting each other to get in the street and photograph the position where the body lay.
“But come in … the police will clear this with your boss.” He nodded to Smith, who hurried on in ahead of him. He ushered Dorothy Hannigan to a booth at the rear of the bakery. Apparently, the boy she had given the keys to had gotten things going; customers were already in the shop, but other than Dorothy Hannigan’s white face, little gave away the fact that Jude was anything other than an ordinary customer. His suit was a good one, not that a homicide detective in New York made the big bucks, but he had a great apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, thanks to his father’s savvy with real estate, and it seemed, lately, that he lived to work. That meant decent suits—and suits that blended in well with the business attire in the moneyed district where he worked.
“So, Dorothy, please, tell me exactly how you came upon the body this morning,” he said quietly. He lifted a hand so that she would wait. Officer Smith had apparently seen to it that the owner, now in, was aware that his manager was helping the police; a waiter brought them two cups of coffee and quickly disappeared. She shook her head. “I saw … the body. It was barely light, you know. And there was no traffic—no, wait, there was one car, but it was in the other lane, and it just drove on by. You can only go the one way, you know.”
He nodded, taking a sip of his coffee.
She shivered suddenly. “I come off that subway every morning. I’m the only person who gets off half the time. That could have been me.”
He set a hand on hers. “She was killed late last night, Miss Hannigan. I don’t think this killer was looking to stalk victims in the morning—someone would have come. You saw how quickly the streets got busy.”
She swallowed audibly.
“Is there someone you can ride in with for the next week or so?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “You’re going to catch this freak in a week or so?” she asked. “Half the cases go unsolved, from what I’ve heard.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration, really. Half the murder cases we go out on are—well, sadly—domestic. And they’re solved,” he said.
“But—how? There are twenty million people on the island of Manhattan on a workday—that’s the statistic I’ve heard.”
“Give or take a million,” he agreed. “Please, that’s why I’m asking you—describe exactly what you saw.”
“I was walking down the street. I saw the car go by—oh, yes, of course. I saw the body in the middle of the street because of the headlights. The car just kept going. I was afraid it might have been an old derelict, passed out in the street. I have a little laser light I carry, and a whistle—I’m not stupid, you know—and so I shone the light and hurried out, hoping that nothing was coming barreling up Broadway. And then I saw her—and then I started screaming.”
“Did you see anyone else—anyone at all? A bum, a shadow … anyone?” he asked.
She shook her head. Then she sat straighter. “Wait—there’s old Captain Tyler.”
“Old Captain Tyler?”
She nodded. “A sad case. Everyone keeps urging him to go to a shelter, but he shows up back on the streets, begging. I mean, of course, God help us, we get a lot of homeless guys down here. But Captain Tyler is kind of sweet. He’s an older fellow, Vietnam vet.”
“Did you see him this morning?” Jude asked.
“I might have.”
“You might have?”
“There was a pile of rags and a sleeping bag at the entrance to the subway. I remember thinking that it might have been poor old Captain Tyler. But I didn’t disturb the pile.”
He nodded. “But nothing else? No one watching you?”
She shook her head. “No, not that I noticed.” She fell silent again. “I’m going to get killed on my way in to work one of these days despite my whistle, aren’t I?”
“Come in with coworkers, Ms. Hannigan, if there’s any way. I’ll talk to your boss. It’s prudent to be extremely careful until we know what we’re up against,” he said. “I’ve got to get my men looking for Captain Tyler. Can you give me a description?”
Tyler, according to Ms. Hannigan, was tall and thin, wore a shabby army-surplus jacket and dirty denim jeans, and had long white hair and a scraggly white-and-gray beard.
“He told me once he suffered from shell shock,” Dorothy Hannigan told him. “Sad, huh? Can’t hold a job, and his benefits don’t really keep a roof over his head.” She gasped. “He couldn’t have done this, could he have?”
“If you see him, call me. I don’t think, however, that shell shock, even after years, would suddenly turn a man into a vicious murderer. But when we find him, we’ll find out what we can. We have some truly wonderful psychiatrists with the department. They’ll be able to deal with him,” Jude assured her. As he spoke, his phone rang.
It was Norton, from headquarters.
“Assistant chief wants to see you, pronto,” Norton told him.
“I’m at the scene,” Jude told him.
“I know. I told him that you’d been dispatched by orders of the lieutenant. But he says that you’ve had time to do what you can do there, and that he wants to see you about a task force.”
“No other murders today, huh?” Jude asked dryly.
“Not like this. Film is already rolling. The news is shooting through all five boroughs, the country and the world like the spew from a geyser. Jack’s back. That’s what they’re saying. Anyway, he wants you in here, now.”
The twenty-first-century media was amazing, Jude thought. He barely knew anything about the crime, but rumor was running rampant, and he understood that One Police Plaza wanted this solved as quickly as humanly possible.
Two other murder investigations were open on his slate; this seemed to be the one that mattered. Naturally. The other two had also been stabbed, but one had died on the way to the hospital and one had been dragged out of the river. This had been public and sensationalist. The victim was a spectacle on Broadway. They were both his cases because he worked specifically for the chief of police; he and Monty had been “detective specialists” for years, which meant they could cover all of New York City as needed.
He wished that they hadn’t been his cases; he’d gotten nowhere with them. The other two women had died quietly, apparently without friends to miss them. They hadn’t been discovered in such a bold and gruesome state, with all the world watching.
Except that he wondered if the deputy chief was thinking along the same lines that were now plaguing him. He wasn’t a Ripperologist, as Fullbright considered himself, but he did know about the case a fair amount since he’d spent the month of August in Britain last year for an experimental exchange police procedural program. The program had included a study of the Ripper files, with one of Britain’s top historians discussing police work now and then. Jude had looked at the archives available. Five victims were accepted as the Ripper’s, but the London case files had started with the deaths of two women who had been killed before what was now deemed by experts to be Ripper murders.
They had the girl from the river, and the girl who had survived her attack long enough to make it to the hospital. Neither had carried ID; neither had been reported missing. All efforts to identify the two had been to no avail. Both had come from New York or to New York … and met sad ends.
And now …
Virginia Rockford.
“I’m still at the scene, working it,” Jude said.
“Crime scene folks are there. And they’re good at what they do. That’s what the assistant chief said. Get in here.”
Jude clicked his phone closed. Great. He’d find himself besieged by the reporters stationed at “the shack” on the second floor of headquarters before he could reach the deputy chief’s office.
He wished he hadn’t been called. He wished any other cop in the city had come on for this case.
But they hadn’t; he had been on duty, and he had been specifically ordered down here.
He thanked Dorothy Hannigan and left her his card, and started out, wishing that he could look for Captain Tyler himself. But he told Smith to get more men on finding the homeless man; and he gave the officer the task of connecting with the producer for the movie being shot down the street and getting him a list of anyone involved in the production. He wanted the beat cops to keep a presence on the street and their eyes open.
There had probably been a number of young women involved in the shoot the day before; the cops could start with them. He stressed the importance of their notes, and Smith looked at him, hesitant. “Crosby, you know I’m a beat cop, right? Not the boss down here.”
“Smith, I think you’ll be fine,” he said.
He headed down Broadway. It was far easier to walk around Lower Manhattan right now than to get his car.
He managed to reach the deputy chief’s office without being waylaid. The offices were huge, and he was just lucky that the elevator he was in didn’t stop on the second floor where he might have been detained by an avid reporter.
He stood in front of the desk, but Nathaniel Green, “D-Chiefy,” as the men called him affectionately behind his back, wasn’t a browbeater. He wasn’t a political appointee, either. He’d earned his place, moving up the ranks.
Green indicated the chair in front of his desk and Jude sat.
“Are you taking me off this new case?” Jude asked him.
Green smiled grimly. “Sorry, no. But I’m giving you a team, a task force. Who do you want?”
Jude was quiet for a minute. He wanted to work with Monty, his partner of the last five years. But Monty was still in the hospital, and the last thing he needed, still clinging to life and praying to walk again, was a sensationalist murder case on his mind.
“Ellis Sayer and his group.”
“You’ve got them. You have priority access to whoever you want in the Technical Assistance Response Unit. And I’m bringing in the feds.”
“The feds? As far as I know, the killer didn’t kidnap the women and cross state lines.” Jude was truly puzzled; he wanted to believe that when it was important, law enforcement agencies did know how to cooperate. But they could also be possessive and territorial. The NYPD usually wanted to solve their own cases. They didn’t mind help from other agencies, but they wanted control.
Green grimaced dryly. “You just said women. I believe we’re thinking along the same lines.”
“That we have a killer trying to emulate one from the late 1880s? That’s a stretch.”
“We have a killer who left a woman slashed to shreds on Broadway. The other women in those two earlier cases—both seemed to have come from nowhere. They were murdered, and they’re still trying to hold on down at the morgue to see if the bodies will be claimed.” He hesitated. “Look, Jude, this is my call. The second that body was found, the media went crazy, and, before the public puts the puzzle pieces together, I want to be on it—a step ahead. Think about the way our Jane Does were ripped up.”
“Obviously, sir, since I arrived at the scene of last night’s crime, I’ve given it some thought. But I’ve also been trying to give the first two victims my full attention. No one seems to miss them—as you said. They appear to be lost creatures. Maybe prostitutes,” Jude said. “And maybe the three murders are all connected—at this point, we just don’t know. If you say we should bring in the feds, fine. I’m not sure I see where federal jurisdiction is warranted yet.”
“What we’re bringing in is a special federal unit. We’re not handing over jurisdiction. They’ll work with you—you work with them,” Green said.
“Sure. Though again, I’m still not seeing a federal connection. And we have FBI offices in the city. Why is a special unit coming in?”
Green looked at him with a certain degree of exasperation. “Jude, this is coming straight from the top brass. The mayor’s office. We can’t have tourists terrified of coming to New York City. We’ve done a good job in the past few years. Giuliani cleaned up a lot of the theater district and visitors can actually catch cabs that take them where they want to go. We don’t need a return to the seventies—or back to the days of Five Points, when a walk near where our own building stands meant tripping over the bodies of the starved, diseased—or murdered. We have to work hard and fast. The media is already having a field day with this one. If a special unit can help, I’m all for it.”
Jude winced inwardly. Special unit? He wasn’t sure what that meant. But it was fine. He was pretty damn sure that they weren’t going to find anything to point them straight to the killer. New York City cops were good; they had learned to deal with just about everything the world could throw them. But they were also faced with a population that was staggering. Finding leads was going to be like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
“Well, hell, yes, I’m glad for anything that can help,” Jude said.
“You want not just this murder solved, but the other two as well. I know you, Crosby. You’ve been beating the pavement and harassing Tech Support every day for help on the two victims you pulled in the last couple of weeks.”
“We don’t know that these killings are connected in any way.”
“Stabbings with sharp knives or utensils, same place on the bodies, each attack growing more violent.” Jude looked down, not wanting Green to see that he was irritated about being called off the street at the prime moment to make discoveries.
“We do have good cops. Our forensics people are cops, too, Jude. They won’t let you down. You know you aren’t going to find clues on the street … you know this is a serious situation being created by an extremely organized killer. This is going to take time, manpower and all the behavioral profiling help we can get.”
“I can be a team player, and you know it.”
“That’s why you’re in charge, Jude. Have you seen the news already?” Green asked.
“Oh, yeah.” He looked at Green across the desk. “Yes, the media is giving the bastard just what he wants. Notoriety.”
“That’s true. Now, as to the team … This unit was established by a man we worked with down here years ago. Adam Harrison. Similar crimes. Attacks on historical properties, and a perp who was in love with Edgar Allan Poe and started killing people like the victims in Poe stories. Anyway, it’s a different thing to go after a man like this, and the head of this team is an agent who worked the behavioral sciences aspect of crimes for years. One of the team is already in transit—the others will be here tomorrow. I’m setting them up with an apartment in Blair House. You’ll actually meet …” He paused for a minute, looking at a memo on his desk. “You’ll meet Miss Whitney Tremont at Blair House at two, get her settled in and then head for the autopsy.”
“I’m taking her to autopsy?”
“Yes.”
“I thought Blair House was closed for renovations.” Green nodded. “It is—the preservationists won’t let the place be torn down, and it’s not due for construction crews to begin work for another few weeks. I want the team in the area. I’ll set up a meeting for you tomorrow with the team and the team head, Special Agent Jackson Crow.”
Jude stood. It was decided, and he knew it. So much for his social life. Wait—he didn’t really have a social life. Since he and Jill had parted last spring, he’d enjoyed three one-night stands and a two-week dating whirl. Actually, he’d had three one-night stands—enjoyed two.
“All right. I want Hannah Mills in Tech.”
“She’s yours.”
Jude nodded again. “And I have priority at autopsy—now, and if this does go further?”
“I just called Fullbright. He’ll be your man, and he will be ready to meet with you at three this afternoon—the autopsy is already scheduled.”
Jude nodded again. “I’m going back to the scene until then. I’ll meet your Miss Tremont at two, and we’ll be at autopsy together at three. And don’t give me that resigned look. I’ll call Ellis and get his team moving, too.”
“You’re the best I’ve got, Jude. And I’m giving you priority all the way,” Green told him.
Jude wasn’t sure he was the best that the deputy chief had. Hell, he’d just watched his partner get shot in a situation that should have never ended as it had.
But this was what he did; he’d known all his life that, like his father and grandfather—and great-grandfather before that—he’d wanted to be a cop. He’d been lucky; he’d gone to college and gotten degrees in criminology and psychology, something his father and grandfather hadn’t been able to acquire. But they’d both been good cops. The kind who put the bad guys away.
This was one bad guy they were going after and they all knew it.
“I’ll do my absolute best, sir,” Jude said.
“I know you will.”
He had been dismissed. He headed straight to Tech Support, where he discovered that Green had put through a call to Hannah Mills. Hannah was excited; she’d never actually spoken directly to Green before.
She was a whiz with computers, and if a piece of information was available anywhere, Hannah could find it. At one time in history, she would have been called a spinster. She was a slender woman with bottle-thick wire glasses, brown hair worn in a bun each day and a mind that could work as quickly as a computer.
“I’m making printouts for you, they’ll be popping out as we speak,” she told Jude.
“She was with the movie crew?” Jude asked.
“She was portraying prostitute Mary Green. She was an extra, I believe, but she had a fair amount of screen time. Maybe even a line or two. Anyway, I have a list for you. The producer, the director, the name of the off-duty officer patrolling … a liaison with the movie and television unit. I think it’s all here. And when you want more, you call me, day or night!” She stood up in her little cubicle and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you, Jude! Thank you for asking for me.”
“Thank you for being a good tech. I do have something for you. I want you to find out all you can about a Captain Tyler, a Vietnam vet.”
“Oh, that Tyler. I thought you meant one of the thousand others on the island of Manhattan.”
“Very funny. This one would have been in and out of local veterans’ hospitals.”
“On it,” she assured him.
“And one more—I want everything you can find about a government group put together by a man named Adam Harrison. Team head is Jackson Crow.”
“The name is familiar. I’ll get right on it.”
Jude returned to lower Broadway, opting to walk back to the scene. On a television screen, through an appliance-shop window, he could see that Deputy Chief Green himself was speaking to the media. He urged citizens to calm down and be vigilant.
He put a in call to Ellis and let him know that he and his group were to join Jude and the feds. Before he had reached the scene of the crime again, he had everyone in motion; they would start with initial interviews of everyone on the movie set. He looked at the list Hannah had given him; he could get one of the feds to make sure that this list and the list that Smith was able to garner matched. Like it or not, he was working with the feds. Might as well make use of them.
With careful steps, he walked from the set to where the body had been found, reimagining the victim’s probable search for a cab, and how the killer had come upon her. All the while he searched for Captain Tyler as well. But though he made new acquaintances with several of the homeless people on the streets, he didn’t find Tyler.
He felt a growing sense of anger.
Someone out there was either amusing himself at the expense of the police, or sincerely thought himself the reincarnation of a legendary killer.
The victim probably hadn’t had time to scream. New York had been teeming with life just blocks away—the population was huge.
Just as it had been in the crowded tenements of Whitechapel and the East End of London.
The killer had probably surprised her; choked her to unconsciousness before slitting her throat.
His phone rang. It was Hannah.
“What’s up? What have you got?”
“Info, but not on the victim—on your team,” Hannah told him.
There was a strange excitement in her voice.
“They’re a special team, all right. They’ve barely been around a year, but they’ve already solved a number of really bizarre cases. Jude—they’re a paranormal team. They don’t just investigate, they appear to talk to ghosts. They’re highly respected for what they’ve done, but they’re also a bit on the outside, even of the FBI itself. Only the head guy, that Jackson Crow, has been a special agent for a long time. But he’s supposed to be one of the best behavioral guys out there. They sound good, really good. But weird, too. You must have heard something about this group. They solved a creepy murder in New Orleans that had to do with all kinds of political corruption.”
“I might have heard something,” he said. He winced. Leave it him to wind up with the “special” team. Which reminded him …
“Thanks, Hannah. I have to meet one of the agents now, and it’s good to be forewarned.”
He hung up. On to meet his spiritualist or medium or whatever. He’d been told he had to work with the team; he would. He’d be polite. He’d spend the days and nights reminding himself that all help was needed at the moment.
The days and nights ahead suddenly seemed extremely long.
Be polite. Collect the “special” agent. And then on to autopsy.
2
Blair House.
It stood behind a wall and next to an area where a massive construction project seemed to be under way—except that the construction crews didn’t appear to be out. The house was barely a block away from Wall Street, and another block from Broadway, within easy distance of St. Paul’s, Trinity and the World Trade Center site.
Blair House itself was as out of sync with the current pulse of the city as the churches with their early American graveyards.
As far as the financial concerns of humanity went, it only made sense to tear down the old to make way for the new.
But, Whitney Tremont had been glad to hear, Blair House was not going to be torn down. It was slated for a great deal of renovation; federal money was coming in to tend to a federal project—it was said that among the many places George Washington slept, Blair House was one of his favorites.
A low brick wall obscured much of the facade, while wrought-iron detail, tangled with ivy, rose from the wall. She could see the house from the sidewalk only because the driver who had picked her up from the airport had provided her with keys, and she had opened the gate while awaiting her NYPD liaison, Detective Jude Crosby.
The brick path to the house was overgrown, as was the house’s yard area. To the left, there was a charming pagoda overrun with ivy and flowering plants and to the right, a fountain that no longer trickled water was in a similar state.
The house itself was Greek Revival—several steps led up to a porch with fine Ionic columns. The front door was double-wide with etched-glass porticoes.
The off-white paint was peeling. The columns obviously needed help as well.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
She turned, startled. She had been giving the house so much attention that she hadn’t noticed the tall man who had walked up to her on the sidewalk.
He was actually hard not to notice; he was a good six foot three and built like a linebacker.
“I wasn’t thinking that it was bad,” she told him. “I was just thinking that it’s beautiful, and I’m glad they’re not tearing it down.” She offered him a hand. “Special Agent Whitney Tremont, Detective Crosby. Thank you for being here.”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Sure. The situation is bad. Whatever it takes. Need a hand with your bag?”
She shook her head. “I’m fine. We can just head on in.”
He hadn’t exactly been warm and cuddly, but he wasn’t being rude, and he seemed to be sincere. Other agencies sometimes resented FBI involvement in a case—they weren’t always fond of the fact that someone over them had invited the feds in.
She’d never exactly intended to work for the federal government, but she didn’t mind. As long as they were left to work alone, it just didn’t matter. And since the head of their unit, Jackson Crow, had established himself as an agent with an exemplary record before he’d been given his current team, she was more than willing to accept the occasional snickers that came their way. Jackson could stare down any man and silence him within a matter of seconds.
“I believe they had a cleaning crew come in already—a good thing, since I don’t imagine that you and your team would want a lot of people around.” Jude Crosby told her. “Also, if I know my superiors, they had staples brought in, so you should have essentials.”
“Thanks.”
He studied her for a minute; his face gave nothing away. “Well, I guess we should get you settled.” He actually grinned. “You know it’s a haunted house, right?”
“What self-respecting house this old isn’t haunted?” she asked.
He was still sizing her up, of course, given the team’s reputation. She smiled, not saying anything. They were all welcome to wonder. Detective Crosby would meet Jackson Crow soon enough. Jackson had a tenet he lived by, and the team followed its simple sentiment—use logic, and then feelings.
“The rest of your team isn’t arriving until tomorrow?” he asked her.
“That’s right.”
“So you’re staying here alone tonight?”
“Yes, and I’ll be fine. Let me take a quick look around, drop my bag and we can go to the autopsy.”
He pointed to the area next door. “That’s where they were filming the movie and that’s where the victim came from when she was leaving. I’m surprised that they sent you in alone.”
“You shouldn’t be. I went through a lot of sessions at the shooting range. I passed,” Whitney told him.
“Can you shoot a ghost?” he asked. The question seemed pleasant enough, but she realized she was being mocked. She wondered if he was more concerned that she was a ghost-hunting special agent, or that she was a small woman.
“I’m quite competent, thank you,” she assured him.
“All right, your call … Just remember, please, it’s an NYC case with NYC police heading the investigation. I’m impressed that a unit was asked in immediately. Somebody thinks that your ghost hunting—that your team—is top-notch. Thing is, there’s nothing really around you at night, unless you want to count the dead in Trinity’s and St. Paul’s graveyards. Last night, that crew working this area so late was unusual. But that’s film for you.”
He didn’t wait for her reply; he started up the walk.
Whitney stepped into the main hallway, which was long and extremely broad. A slim curving staircase against the western wall led to the floor above, and she could see down the hallway to the door that opened to the back. She wanted to stop, to try to sense the place, but she didn’t; not with Jude Crosby watching.
“They say the foundations of this old place date back to the last decades of the eighteenth century. There were lots of fires back then, though, and not a lot of control. I think the current structure is from 1810. I have to say, I’m glad they’re preserving it, too. Wonder what it was like back in the day. I mean, New York moves like a bullet. I love the city.”
“It’s a great city,” Whitney murmured. Whitney noted that the hallway had probably been the grand meeting room of the house; parties had probably been held right there with indentured servants or slaves walking the room at times with silver trays. A grand piano sat against the wall at the rear; she wondered just how old it might be. But she’d have to explore later. Whatever happened with the New York City police, she wanted to make sure that she was there from the get-go, and that her prep work had been done. They were there to assist the police, not to take over an investigation, no matter how much pull they might have with different power structures. She’d spent the trip reading email on the current murder—preliminary notes only—and, since the cry was out that the murder seemed to be mimicking that of a long-ago Ripper victim, she had spent most of the time during her flight on her iPad, downloading the best books she could find on the elusive killer from the past.
“I’ve only been in this house a few times,” Jude told her. “When I was a kid on school tours, before it was closed down for renovations. I’m going to suggest you snag the first room up the stairs on your left. The last owners—who gave it to the government about twenty years ago—had a nice bathroom installed up there.”
“Thanks,” she told him.
“Go on, take a peek. I’ll carry your bag on up, and then I’ll get you down to the morgue.”
“Thanks,” she told him again.
He was an imposing presence. His features were as rugged as his muscled form—handsome, masculine, strong, with the right amount of rough around the edges.
Not a good thought, she told herself. She had to be blunt and strong herself; in fact, she was going to have to make sure that she remained smoothly professional in every way. They needed his respect. In her case, at five-three, she was fighting physical odds right from the start.
“I can really carry my own bag—”
“Simple courtesy, Agent Tremont. We’re not without it,” he said.
The bedroom was nice. She glanced in the doorway as Jude Crosby set her travel bag on the footrest at the end of the bed. She took a minute to dig into her overnight bag for her better camera to be added to the shoulder bag.
“You’re a photographer?”
“Film is the best record of what we see, isn’t it?” she asked.
The room smelled sweetly and lightly of lavender cleaning solution. It was a beautiful room, and she was convinced that it did have a feel for the past, just as venerated old churches and other historic buildings often seemed to have.
Would it be more than just the sacred feel of history? she wondered.
“Great,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Jude arched a brow. “That’s it? You don’t want to look around longer? Settle in?”
“Nope.” She was grateful that she’d been able to come so quickly; they’d received the call almost immediately after they saw on the news that a gruesome murder had taken place in New York. While Jackson had calmly spoken about travel arrangements and equipment, explaining the circumstances in which they’d be working, she’d been online and discovered that if she left within the next ten minutes, she could be on a plane to LaGuardia that was scheduled for departure at ten, and would have her on the ground in New York by one. She’d jumped at the chance, although not without a few minutes of stern warnings from her associates. They mostly consisted of: Be careful. We’ll be right behind you. You know not to take chances. Remember that we work best when we can earn the cooperation of the local police.
“Okay,” Jude said. “You need anything else?”
She tapped her shoulder bag, a big soft leather sling she hadn’t released since she’d gone through the security lines at the airport.
“I’m good. I have everything I need for the moment.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “You travel light for a woman.”
She felt her own smile tighten just a bit. Was he mocking her? She was fairly small and slim, she knew. Her appearance and gender often worked in her favor. She wasn’t threatening in size and, sometimes, that was good.
Get along with the locals, she reminded herself. “Don’t think of me as a woman, Detective. Think of me as an agent,” she said. “And I won’t think of you as a boy or a man—I’ll think of you as a top-notch NYPD detective.”
He laughed. Apparently, he did have a sense of humor. And he could laugh at himself.
As they left Blair House, Whitney found herself pausing to look at the large construction site next door.
“I’m assuming whatever was there wasn’t protected by any historical society,” she said.
“No, there had been an ugly building there from the 1920s, or something like that,” Jude said. “Before that, it had been some kind of society building—not like high society. I mean … I don’t know. Some people claimed that it was a spiritualist house, or a place for Satanists, or something like that. Odd, though. Construction there has had to halt several times. A few workers were injured. I think one was killed. And then, of course, last night happened. The film company had acquired permits to use the area. They bought mega-insurance for the shoot, but I don’t think it helps, because the murder was off-site.”
“And the woman who was murdered had been working there,” Whitney said.
“Yep, playing a gaslight prostitute, I believe. Honestly, it’s really no wonder that folks are crying ‘Jack’s back.’ Poor girl. There’s been some insinuation in early news reports that our victim didn’t always get along with the other actresses. But maybe that’s not a fair assessment—we haven’t even really begun the investigation. From what I’ve learned, the old Jack the Ripper found victims who were used up, missing teeth, old and ugly, but I guess none of his victims had a reputation for not being nice. Now, that’s an interesting question. Does being nice or not nice have much to do with being a victim?”
Whitney glanced at him. He was thoughtful, really thoughtful. She decided that he might have made a decent behaviorial scientist himself.
“That is an interesting question,” Whitney said, still looking at the cheap mesh fencing and the occasional ugly green plastic sheets that surrounded the construction site. It appeared that the majority of the old structure had been demolished; there were planks over what looked like foundations that were still in the process of being dug out and cleared. There were also piles of new timber lying about—remnants, she presumed—of the sets that had been hastily constructed for the on-location shooting that had been done the day before.
She thought the site was empty and then she realized that there was a gate around the other side, and by the gate there was a small section with a tented roof. Sitting beneath it, watching the entrance and reading a magazine, was a guard.
“One guard watching the area,” Whitney murmured.
Jude pointed to a row of trailers on the other side of the street. “Yesterday, throughout the day, there was tons of security. That’s the tail end of the movie crew. There was no shooting today, and the producer announced, after the report of Miss Rockford’s murder, that they were done with the location.” He glanced her way. “I spent most of the day down here off and on, trying to get a real feel for what was going on, and what the situation was last night.”
“What is your feeling about it now?”
He glanced her way and actually smiled. “I have a feeling—ye olde cop gut feeling—that it does have something to do with the movie and the movie crew.”
Whitney mulled over his words as he drove her down to the morgue. She listened to the constant honking that was as natural as conversation in this city. She watched the rush of pedestrians along the busy streets. People flocking through the intersections, the occasional dog walker pausing along the sidewalk with a Baggie.
She’d been a film student herself in the city, and she knew the area. But now, she felt as if she was seeing it all through different eyes. She thought about the age and the history of the city; the city buildings forming a concrete tomb over the iniquity and depredation of what had been the Five Points region. Wall Street—once where the old wall built to protect the tip of the island had been. Few places rivaled New York City as a place where the sheer velocity of life trampled the pivotal spaces of history.
It all seemed new to her now: the slash of Broadway, the one-way streets, the parks, the people, the old and the new.
Well, her eyes were different now; she was different. And all because, once upon a time, she had determined to hold her own ground.
Life was different.
As was death.
As they headed for the morgue, Jude tried to forget the woman at his side.
Whitney Tremont. Special agent. Very special agent.
But, she did know how to be quiet. She was distracting, but that wasn’t her fault. His. He set his mind back to the situation, and tried not to think that she was definitely an interesting and arresting individual.
Captain Tyler. Now, there was a dash of cold water. He wanted to find him—and he would. Rush hour—that time when citizens took their lives in their hands just to step into the subway—would most probably bring Captain Tyler back to his home haunts; the subway station where those who knew him would be kind enough to drop spare change or a dollar his way. The autopsy would be finished by that point.
He had spoken with many people who talked about how strange downtown could be at night. By day, the world itself hummed because of all the activity that occurred at the New York Stock Exchange. By night, restaurants closed. The gates to the churches were locked. Office workers were gone, and the major hotels were by Battery Park and the South Street Seaport. Nearby Tribeca and Soho entertained nightlife and housed hundreds of thousands of people. But here, at this end with the financial district and the government buildings, the night brought on a haunting quiet, as if the little area needed time to recoup from the madness of the light.
His only hope was in finding Captain Tyler, he thought. Or someone else who was like a ghost, left to eke out an existence from those who passed hurriedly by day, and forget them once darkness fell.
Jude parked his car, still lost in the case as he did so, and hoping against hope that it might be one that was solved quickly. Though he had his task force questioning the hundreds of people who had been involved in the film shoot, and he knew that they’d be eliminating those with airtight alibis, they’d also be making lists of those he needed to interview himself, or who needed to be investigated further. He almost forgot Whitney Tremont; in fact, he might have if she didn’t give off a soft, underlying perfume, and if he didn’t just feel the warmth of the body beside his own.
She was out of the car door, though, before he could walk around to open it for her. She was pure motion and energy.
“Keep your thoughts going and don’t worry about me, Detective,” she said. “I’m right behind you.” He grinned. So she was.
Jude Crosby was known at the morgue; he had no difficulty navigating the structure of the building, Whitney Tremont following closely behind him.
“OCME,” or the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, was housed on First Avenue. New York City held many firsts in the investigation of death; the Office of the Medical Examiner was established in 1918, the first of its kind in the country. OCME established the first toxicology laboratory and the first serology laboratory as well, at Bellevue Hospital, rather than the six-story headquarters where the executive offices, mortuary, autopsy, X-ray, photography and many labs were housed now.
Attending a victim’s autopsy was always paramount to him; no matter how great a medical examiner might be at a report, there was always something to be gained by attending. Many medical examiners did consider the autopsy to be the victim’s last chance to speak, and Jude believed them. You never knew just what a victim might “say.”
He knew that time had made him jaded; he’d seen the dead so often. He noticed the odor of decaying flesh, and the stronger odors of the chemicals that were used to mask the smell. He noticed them, but he barely thought about them. He thought of the place as sterile. He wondered if his religious teachings as a child kicked in when he saw the dead; the spirit didn’t reside in the flesh. The dead were far from feeling pain. They had gone to a better place.
He wasn’t sure if he completely believed that. He did believe that they suffered no more in the fragile shell of the flesh.
There was a saying on the wall outside the autopsy room, there for all to see, a Latin motto: Let conversation cease, let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights in helping the living.
He hoped that Virginia Rockford could help point them toward her killer.
There were eight steel tables in the room, and three of them had occupants. Thousands passed through the doors of the morgue yearly, but not all were murder victims. Suicides came here, along with those who died in accidents, and those who died while in apparent good health. There were those who had died “by violence,” and those who had died unattended. There were many reasons to come to the morgue. It was a big city; people died in strange ways.
Two assistants were working with Fullbright when they suited up to join the procedure. The body had been stripped and cleaned by the assistants, and somehow, that made the injuries done to Ginger Rockford all the more macabre. He could clearly see the gashes in her throat, and the hideous slashes that had been made in the lower abdomen.
He was aware of everyone around him, and especially, Whitney.
Whitney worked with her camera; he wanted to stop her. He had to remind himself that she was an agent, and not a gawker. Whatever photos and digital film she took would be for the purposes of the investigation.
Clothed in scrubs, Whitney might have blended in with the workforce, except that he could see that she was also wearing a pair of neat little fashionable heels that weren’t usually worn by techs in the morgue. When he had introduced her to Fullbright, she’d stood a slight distance back as well, as if trying to make herself unobtrusive.
When he looked at her, curious as to whether or not she could really watch the autopsy and learn from it, he discovered that he was almost transfixed by her eyes. They were nearly gold. The color had to be hazel, but the green and brown blended so remarkably that the color was almost like the sun. And her skin was the most amazing shade of golden copper he could imagine. It seemed as if every race into which humanity had divided had recombined in her, and that mixture was arresting; she was a beautiful young woman, but much more as well. She stood still, and yet seemed to be brimming with energy. Character, curiosity, passion and a certain appearance of honor seemed to be imprinted in the very structure of her face.
And she was young; too young to be jaded. He had the feeling she still believed in “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”
“Jude, look well,” Fullbright said, and he clenched hard on his jaw, returning his full attention to the sad matter at hand. “The two great lacerations to the throat severed both the major blood vessels in the throat—just as in the case of Polly Nichols, the woman most detectives—past and present—believed to have been the Ripper’s first victim. And if you’ll note the mutilations on the abdomen, you see how jagged this first cut is, and you’ll see how violent and savage the rest are. Jude, these are nearly the exact wounds as perpetrated by a killer over a hundred years ago.”
He stared at the woman, holding back a groan. He didn’t discount the idea that they might be looking at a mimic who had an agenda that would send the city into a real panic, attempting to re-create the slayings of a long-gone killer.
But he didn’t discount the idea yet that they were looking at an isolated incident, and that Virginia Rockford had managed to really anger someone intent on killing her specifically. And solely.
Whitney spoke up. “I spent the hours on the plane here reading up on the crimes, since the press seems to believe there’s a copycat out there.” She walked to the side table where she had left her shoulder bag and dug in it briefly to produce a piece of paper with a picture on it. “Polly Nichols—a morgue photo. Care to compare the medical examiner’s report with our corpse?”
Jude looked from her unique eyes to the photo, and despite his determination to keep an entirely open mind, he had to give the comparison credence.
The Ripper’s victim had been older; life had not been kind. The image was not that of a pretty young woman.
Whatever else Virginia Rockford might have been, she hadn’t been old. She had been attractive; killed when it seemed that the world was waiting for her.
But, despite the difference in the living appearances and situations of the women, the wounds on the bodies were the same.
Exactly the same.
The autopsy had just begun. He thought they had already learned what they needed to know.
3
She was losing credibility, Whitney thought, and doing so by proving a point.
But learning how to work with Jude Crosby wasn’t going to be easy.
He was a hard-boiled cop. And the perfect vision of one. So tall, so leanly, ruggedly muscled. He had dark hair, with no signs of gray yet, neatly clipped. She estimated that he was in his mid-thirties; a man with gray eyes that had seen too much; he was weary, and yet he still seemed to have the look of a man who wanted to change the world.
Whitney thought that he must have grown up reading every old detective novel that had ever been printed. He didn’t have to speak a word; she could tell by his body language that he wasn’t happy about her being on the case.
Maybe she shouldn’t have been so pleased that she’d been the first of her team to arrive on-site, or that she should be the one to dive headfirst into the macabre killing. Perhaps it would have been better if they would have started out with Jude Crosby meeting one of the guys; Jackson Crow, Jake Mallory or Will Chan might have made a better impression. She doubted that Jude Crosby had ever worked with a female partner. He kept looking at her as if she were a little mosquito that had gotten in his way. She wasn’t out to prove anything; she and the others were a team, and each member was always glad to make use of his or her gender, color or any perceived edge when it meant getting done what needed to get done.
“Let’s move through this autopsy before leaping to any conclusions, shall we?” Jude Crosby suggested. His voice was even; his tone was cool.
Doesn’t play well with others! she thought.
Too bad. Fullbright seemed fine; he accepted her simply as an FBI agent, and he was interested in the photo of Jack the Ripper’s first canonical victim. Full-bright was intrigued by the puzzle before him, and it seemed evident that he was an armchair detective himself, fascinated by the mystery of old. The medical examiner was convinced that the killer had, at the least, studied the modus operandi of the mysterious nineteenth-century killer.
Crosby wasn’t happy. Maybe he was always that way. Maybe he felt that the federal government was encroaching upon his right as state law enforcement.
Well, that was all right. They had worked with cops who were grateful to have them around—and cops who didn’t want them at all. They were learning as they went, and so far, their odd mix of a team had done very well.
She could step back.
“Definitely,” she replied, and did step back, clearly defining her role as observer.
Whitney had seen many horrible things, but nothing like what had been done to the young woman on the gurney. She didn’t want to blink or blanch as the doctor reported his findings in a dispassionate voice; she couldn’t appear too weak to stomach it. The only thing she could do was force herself to take a huge mental step back as well. In truth, that wasn’t so hard. It couldn’t be real flesh on the table; that was too terrible to accept.
But she had known what the findings would be. Not exact, perhaps. But close. There were two grievously deep slashes across the throat, cutting the windpipe and vital veins and arteries; the woman had nearly been decapitated. There was bruising on the throat. There was a ragged gash right beneath the ribs, and followed down on the right-hand side of the body to the pelvis, displaying the kidneys. There were two cuts to the genitals, deep, and violent.
It was all so frighteningly exact.
Down to the wounds, the direction of the wounds, everything.
She felt Jude Crosby’s eyes on her, over the body of the dead woman, and she met his gaze. Steady, but not challenging, she warned herself. They’d been asked in, through Adam Harrison’s nudging, but it was still best to keep things as copacetic as possible.
“Doc, you scraped beneath her nails?”
“Of course—but we’re not going to get anything. She didn’t have a chance to fight him. She doesn’t have a single defensive wound on her.”
“Fibers? Threads? Hairs?”
“She went fast—the lab has her clothing.”
Jude nodded. “All right. We’ll leave you to close her up. Call me if anything—”
“Yes, of course, Jude. If anything, whatsoever. I’m not expecting anything on the toxicology reports, but, I promise, I’ll let you know immediately.” He hesitated, looking at Jude. “I still have your Jane Does in here,” he said. “Are we getting anywhere with them?”
“We’ve sent out the picture of the girl who died on the way to the hospital—we’ve sent it everywhere in hell, and nothing,” Jude said. “The second girl … the one from the water. Well, you saw her face. Not even a mother’s love could help her recognize that child. I just asked my lieutenant yesterday about getting a graphic artist over. I’m not great on computers, but I know that a good graphic artist can do an amazing job with a likeness.”
“Well, I’ll get with you as soon as I have … anything,” Wally Fullbright assured him grimly. “Miss Tremont—a pleasure, even if we’re meeting under sad circumstances.”
“You, too, Dr. Fullbright,” Whitney said. “Thank you. Except … would it be possible for me to see the two girls who died last week?”
She thought that Jake would step in and proprietarily inform her that they had nothing to do with this case, and that he had it covered.
Fullbright did look to Jake.
Jake nodded.
“My assistant will escort you,” Fullbright said.
“Thank you,” she told him.
They followed a fellow in scrubs out and down the hall. In another room, there were rows and rows of steel drawers. Apparently, despite the number of deaths that came through the morgue, the murders of the two unknown girls were remembered. The assistant knew right where he was going. He glanced at Jake apologetically. “We’re calling them Jane Doe wet and Jane Doe dry. The more recent body was pulled from the river,” he explained to Whitney, something she already knew. Jackson Crow was thorough when he briefed his team.
He pulled out the drawer and pulled back the shroudlike sheet covering the corpse. Whitney locked her jaw.
The flesh on the girl’s face had met with the elements and any number of hungry river carnivores. The skull peeked through in many places. The skin that remained was a mottled gray-blue color, where it wasn’t pulpy-red.
She glanced at Jake. “I’d like to take some photos. One of my teammates is a true whiz on a computer. He can work any graphics program invented, and I think he can get us a likeness of this girl’s face by tonight. He’s flying in tomorrow, but if he can get something right away, you can have the image by morning.”
He was still wearing a mask over his mouth; maybe that made his eyes seem all the more intense.
He nodded.
She looked at the M.E.’s assistant. “I need a tape measure or a ruler,” she told him.
“We have excellent photos at the station,” Crosby told her.
“I can email these straight from my phone,” she told him.
He obliged her with a nod, and she drew out her little high-megapixel phone/camera, and began shooting from every conceivable angle. Both men waited for her, and she worked quickly. On the one hand, she felt as if, in this steel and sterile environment, nothing was real. On the other hand, the girl in the drawer was far too real. Eventually, the police would find out who she was, because although Whitney hadn’t known Jude long at all, she was certain that he would never give up. She had to keep snapping pictures; the police could find out who she was. Her work was to find out who had done this to her and why.
And hopefully before more died.
When Whitney was done, she nodded grimly. The assistant gently covered the dead girl’s face again, and closed the drawer while Whitney prayed that she had a signal, so she could email the photos to Jake Mallory efficiently—and quickly.
Jude thanked the attendant and started walking on. Still hitting the send key, Whitney followed in his wake.
All the drawers were numbered. That seemed incredibly sad to Whitney. They were people in the drawers, not numbers.
In contrast, the second victim looked serene, as if she were sleeping. She might have been, if it weren’t for the deep gashes on her body, visible when the sheet was pulled back.
“We’ve had her picture out everywhere,” Jude said quietly. “And no one has claimed her body yet. She’ll stay here a few more days, and then they’ll house her in the morgue in the basement—and then she’ll go to a potter’s grave at City Cemetery,” he told her.
Whitney took just one picture. The assistant covered the body and shut the drawer.
As it closed, Whitney felt as if she was surrounded by steel, the scent of formaldehyde and other chemicals, and realized just how cold she was.
“Well, I have a witness to find, Miss Tremont,” Jude told her.
“Of course. I’m here to follow in your footsteps,” she said.
He paused. She knew he really just wanted to tell her to go away. He didn’t. He shrugged. She’d been assigned to him; he’d been told to accept the team’s help.
“All right, fine.”
He turned and walked quickly. She hurried to keep up with him. He was tall. She was—not.
Outside, horns were blaring, pedestrians moved about the street and it seemed that everything in the world was small and slow next to the size and speed of the city. Jude Crosby, however, knew his city well. He maneuvered the sidewalk in a long stride; he’d parked his car on the street. That in itself was quite a feat—she was a good driver, but she’d never figure out how he parked his car in the tiny space where it was wedged. He started to walk around to the driver’s side, but then remembered her. He turned and opened the passenger side door.
She slid in quickly. She had the feeling that if she didn’t move fast enough, she was going to be left behind.
“Who are we looking for?” she asked him.
“Captain Tyler,” he said briefly.
“A cop—a sea captain?”
“Old veteran. Vietnam,” he said. “He wanders that area at night. The woman who found the body thought that he was sleeping nearby when she came out of the subway. He might have seen something.”
“Have you spoken with the last people to see Virginia Rockford yet?” Whitney asked.
“We’ll be going through the cast and crew from the movie next, and those who were working at the on-site location,” he said. He glanced at her. “Obviously, a sensationalist murder like this, I’m not the only cop on the case.”
“But the two earlier victims—you were assigned to them?”
“My partner and I were assigned as the lead detectives on both cases. We’ve had a decent record, even when we’ve come up against unknowns. How anyone can live in this day and age and not be missed by someone, I don’t know.”
“Well, they must be missed by people who can’t imagine they’d be in New York,” Whitney said.
He stared straight ahead; she didn’t blame him. In school, she hadn’t kept a car in the city. She wondered if she’d actually be capable of driving when everyone seemed to think that they belonged in every lane, when the streets stopped up and people were everywhere.
“I suppose someone, somewhere, misses them. But you’d be amazed by the amount of people who really don’t seem to belong anywhere,” he said.
“I understand your partner is in the hospital,” Whitney said softly, realizing she was probably treading on dangerous ground.
“He was shot. Mainly because people who don’t know what they’re doing need to stay out of police business.”
“But he’s going to make it,” Whitney said.
He gazed at her then. His eyes could be as cold as jagged gray ice. “Yeah, he’s going to live. Whether he’ll ever walk again or not, I don’t know.”
“Medicine has come far. I’m sure he has the best doctors in the world.”
He didn’t reply. They drove in silence, except when he cursed beneath his breath at the other drivers on the road.
He glanced over at her as they moved south. “Have you been to New York before?” he asked, as if remembering that he had another person in his car.
“Film school,” she said.
That drew a frown. “You are here now, with me, but you went to film school?”
“Yes.”
“But now you’re an agent.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you usually work with film, then? Surveillance systems, that kind of work?”
“Sometimes. In many ways, I still work with film. We’re a specialized unit, working with bizarre situations. But you know that. You’ve had someone look up information about the team.”
He ignored that. “This is homicide. And, sadly, homicide is horrible, but not—ghostly.”
“And you don’t think it was a bizarre homicide?”
She had him there, and he knew it. He didn’t reply. She knew he wasn’t happy that his partner was in the hospital, and he was working with a girl who looked as if she might have only just gotten her degree—in film. He wasn’t pleased.
Crosby seemed to have a talent for parking in New York City—of course, he drove an unmarked car and didn’t have to worry much about parking tickets. Still, he seemed to be able to find the only street parking on Broadway, and they were quickly walking down the major street, weaving their way through the mass of humanity.
Crime tape was gone; a woman had been murdered, and speculation was on everyone’s lips—but Broadway could only be stopped so long.
Jude knew where he was going; they walked to the subway.
His pace decelerated as they reached the entrance. “Captain Tyler!” he said politely.
Whitney looked around Jude’s imposing form and saw that there was a man sitting by the entrance. He was wearing a worn peacoat, denim jeans and a cap. He had nice gray eyes—that appeared as if they had known much better days.
“Yes?” the man said. He heaved a sigh and stood up. It seemed that he did so because he had been addressed by name, and standing was the proper thing to do. “Do I know you?” he asked Jude. “Can I help you in some way?”
“Sir, you can help me, yes. I’d like very much to bother you for some of your time. I’m a detective with the police, and—”
“The murder,” Captain Tyler said. He nodded. It appeared that his thinking was clear; he didn’t seem to have been drinking, nor did he have bloodshot or dilated eyes that would indicate he was taking drugs.
“Yes,” Jude said.
“I saw her,” Captain Tyler said, staring at Jude, then noting Whitney and looking at her, his smile becoming a gentle one. “Ma’am,” he said, touching his cap. “Yes, I saw the young woman last night. She was not very nice.”
Whitney frowned; she desperately didn’t want this man to be the murderer. She didn’t know him, of course. He smelled like the street, but that didn’t matter. But there was something about his gray eyes and grizzled face that seemed to speak of dignity beyond misfortune.
“Captain Tyler? You’re certain you saw the woman who was killed?” Jude asked.
“Oh, yes, her picture has been all over the news.” Captain Tyler smiled, seeing Jude Crosby’s frown. “Pete’s Appliances, up on Reade Street. He keeps the news on all the time in his shop-front window,” Tyler explained. “They’ve been blasting that girl’s face over the airwaves all day.”
“Can you tell us, please, about when you saw her last night?” Jude asked.
Captain Tyler nodded gravely. “She was walking up Broadway. I asked her for change, or for a dollar. She was rude. I think she said that I was an old junkie. I have never sold drugs. I took some drugs. I was in the jungle. It was the only way to stay in the jungle.” He shook his head. “They say she was ripped up bad. I’ve seen men living and breathing and running into battle, and then their young bodies literally blown to bits, their limbs here and there. But they are saying that the girl was gutted. She wasn’t nice, but I hope she went quickly.”
“Captain Tyler, would you come with me to the station?” Jude asked him. “I’d like to get your statement down on paper.”
“Statement?” Captain Tyler said, confused.
“Yes, everything you have to say can help us,” Jude told him.
Whitney looked at Jude, frowning. He couldn’t believe that this dignified old man, down and out as he was, had hurt anyone.
“But—”
He glared at her fiercely. So much for cooperation; this was his case.
Captain Tyler nodded, looking at Whitney with a smile. “Free hot coffee, even if it’s bad,” he said.
“I’ll get you good coffee,” she promised him. “And, are you hungry?”
Captain Tyler was hungry. Jude seemed impatient, but when she started into the nearest coffee shop, he muttered and eased past her, buying Captain Tyler a large coffee and an Italian sub, and paying for it himself.
At the station, Jude moved through the offices, pausing only briefly to rattle off a few names in introductions she couldn’t possibly remember. He directed her to one door while he directed Captain Tyler in through another door. She found herself in a small room behind one-way glass. She saw Jude sit Tyler down, and he asked the man his first name. It was Michael. As Jude politely laid out the lunch and waited for Michael Tyler to eat, an older man joined her in the room, offering his hand. “I’m Deputy Chief Green. I know that they call me D-Chiefy behind my back, and I answer quickly to Green,” he told her, his tone pleasant and easy as he studied her. “And you’re the first of the feds?” he asked.
She smiled, offered her hand in return and told him, “Yes, I’m the first of the feds. I’m Whitney Tremont.”
“Well, glad to have you. I spoke briefly to Agent Crow. He said not to be fooled by your size, that you’re as strong as a diamond. Is that true?”
She arched a brow. “Well, I’m not sure about that. I’m fascinated enough by what I do to walk boldly into the fray.”
He nodded with a small smile. “Jude met you at Blair House?”
“Indeed.”
“You and your team will be all right there?”
“It’s beautiful. We’re grateful for the lodging,” she said.
“Well, we’re glad to have any and all help on this one. We have to nip this thing right in the bud,” he said, turning to watch through the glass. She thought that he might be one man who had been raised to the right position; he had an easy manner about him, but he watched the proceedings with sharp eyes, and she didn’t think that he missed much. He’d done an assessment of her, she was sure, and he’d probably come to his own conclusions, with or without comment from Jackson Crow. But then Jackson and Angela Hawkins did have an edge over the rest of the team. Jackson had been an agent for years before becoming head of their team; Angela had been a cop in Virginia. She, on the other hand, had been sought out because she’d refused to doctor film that she’d taken of an actual ghost—because it hadn’t been doctored to begin with! And Adam Harrison, who had put them all together, had been fascinated with her abilities with film and video, and her background, perhaps. However, after they had proved themselves with the Holloway case, they’d all received training, and she was confident in the training she’d received.
However, a man like Jude Crosby would consider her too inexperienced and too young and maybe even, eventually, too emotional; maybe she was, in a way. A way that she hoped stood her well. Emotions came along with instinct and intuition, and she and the team relied heavily on intuition. When she watched Captain Tyler, she was still somehow convinced of his innocence. The man’s hands shook, perhaps due to Parkinson’s or something, but she was certain that he wasn’t on drugs. She wasn’t sure what she expected; she had never conducted an in-office police interview. The only interviews like this that she’d ever seen had been on television. But Jude was never rude to the man. There were none of the softly spoken questions followed by yelled accusations or hands beating on the table that she had seen on television shows. He just asked Captain Michael Tyler to remember everything about the night and his meeting with Virginia Rockford.
He grew very serious, though, leaning forward as he asked, “Captain Tyler, after Miss Rockford passed by you, what did you do? What did you see? She must have been murdered right after she passed you. If you saw or heard anything else, we need to know.”
Whitney was surprised when Tyler paused like a man who did have something to contribute. He shivered—or trembled—and then shook his head.
“I’m not always … right. You know, I mean … in the head. I hear explosions when they’re not happening. I see … I see enemy faces in a crowd. I’m not always—right.”
“That’s okay. I understand. But anything you saw or heard or thought that you saw or heard will help me. Anything.”
“A man,” Captain Tyler said.
“What did this man look like? Did you see him with Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
Tyler shook his head and closed his eyes. He seemed to be in pain. “I’m not sure he was real. He seemed tall in the night, but it might have been his hat. He wore a tall hat. And—and a cloak. And he was carrying something. A bag. Like …”
“Like a backpack?” Jude pressed.
“No. Like an old doctor’s bag,” Tyler said.
Jude sat back a moment, and then asked, “Did you see the man with Ginger Rockford?”
Tyler said, “No. I saw him under the street lamp. I saw him from a distance—he was down Broadway when the young woman was telling me I was a junkie. I’ve never been a junkie. I didn’t see his face, but I did see that he looked strange—as if he didn’t belong there. As if he had … stepped out of the mist from some other time.” He winced again, and gripped his trembling hands together. “I told you—I go to the hospital now and then, but … when I’m on the street, I see things.”
Jude nodded. “Thank you. Captain Tyler, can you still write?”
“Yes.”
Jude passed him a legal pad. “Please, write down everything that you thought you saw. We deeply appreciate your help.”
Tyler looked at the pad and held the pencil awkwardly for a moment, and then started writing. Jude waited patiently with him, and then excused himself while Tyler set about finishing his task.
Jude entered the small chamber where Whitney stood with Green.
“He’s not our killer,” Jude said.
“No,” Green agreed. “From my experience, this man wouldn’t be capable.”
“You’ve introduced yourselves, I presume?” Jude asked. “Deputy Chief Nathaniel Green, Whitney Tremont.”
“We’ve met, thank you,” the deputy chief said. “What do you think about the man he saw? Sounds like the image of the Ripper. Do you think that the media is going to cause everyone out there to start seeing men in stovepipe hats and cloaks, carrying medical bags, around the city?”
“Probably,” Jude said wearily. “But I still wanted to talk to Captain Tyler myself. We believed that he was in the area, and so it was important to know what he had to say. He’s not the killer. From what he’s said, it’s looking more possible that we do have a psycho out there who wants to be the new Jack the Ripper.”
“Ellis Sayer called in right before I joined Miss Tremont. He’s talked to Angus Avery, the director on the film Miss Rockford was working on at the site. He’s arranged to meet you at the old diner up in Soho … He should be here in the next half hour.”
The deputy chief nodded. “Sayer also told me that you’ve set up a meeting with the task force in the morning—let’s hope it’s a quiet night.”
“Let’s hope. We have anything from Forensics?”
“We will soon.”
Jude started out of the room, and then paused. “Sir, do you think we could get someone to—”
“I’ll get an officer to see if we can get Captain Tyler into a shelter for the night. He may refuse our help, but I’ll offer what we can,” Green said.
Jude nodded. He sighed, as if he’d forgotten to pick up a brick he had to carry around his neck.
“Agent Tremont?”
“Sir,” Whitney said to Green. It was nice to meet you or it was a pleasure just seemed wrong under the circumstances.
“Good to have you here, Agent Tremont,” Green told her, and she thanked him.
Once again, she had to hurry to catch up with Jude. He was already moving through the building.
She realized quickly that he didn’t intend to ditch her—brick around his neck or no, he’d been given his orders regarding her federal involvement along with the rest of the team, and as long as she didn’t get in his way, she’d be fine. He simply assumed that she’d follow at his speed.
And so she kept up. She was at the passenger’s side of his car again before he could open the driver’s side.
She buckled in silently. As they pulled out into traffic again, she realized that he glanced at her.
“You heard him, of course.”
“Captain Tyler?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. I hear very well, Detective. Young ears, you know.”
She thought that he almost grinned. “I’m not sure exactly what insights the specialty of your team might provide, but I don’t believe that the ghost of Jack the Ripper has come to murder people in New York City.”
“I don’t believe that, either,” she assured him.
“But you do believe in ghosts,” he said. Lord! She’d heard that tone often enough.
“I believe that, frequently, by looking at the past, we can understand what’s happening in the present,” she said evenly.
He made some kind of snorting sound that was almost beneath his breath.
Whitney held her silence.
“Ghosts,” he muttered after a minute.
She turned to stare at him. “Do you have any religious beliefs, Detective? Are you an atheist?”
She thought his jaw hardened, but it was difficult to tell with him. He hid his emotion well—unless he meant for it to show.
“Do I believe in God? Yes, I suppose I believe in a higher power.”
“Hmm.” She allowed herself a small sniff.
“And what does that mean?”
“Crosby—Irish. I’ll bet you grew up Catholic,” she said.
“Tremont—French? Hmm. New Orleans. Catholic—Baptist, voodooist, vampire Buddhist … Wiccan?”
She shook her head, offering him a smile with just a slight edge. He wasn’t happy that he was saddled with a small woman. She was also a woman of mixed heritage who came from a city known for its alternative beliefs—voodoo, mumbo jumbo, as some thought. “Obviously, my background is mixed,” she told him. “But, you see, my point here is that anyone who grew up Catholic, or in many of the Christian religions, already acknowledges a ‘holy’ ghost in the Nicene Creed. Most of us worship a higher, unseen power. Most people worldwide have some kind of faith in an afterlife, and if we can believe this without seeing what lies beyond, why does it seem so ridiculous that the energy that was life can stay behind?”
His eyes were on the road ahead of him. She saw the muscles in his face twitch. He didn’t believe that energy stayed behind.
“Hell,” he said, glancing her way, “if you can solve this case with ghosts, just go right on and be my guest.”
Whitney smiled, not responding. There was something she liked about him, despite his curt manner with her. He had a good strong jawline and steady eyes. She thought he probably hit a gym now and then and she wondered if he spent time with a punching bag—he had callused knuckles.
“Angus Avery … I know the name. He’s not as big as a Spielberg, but he’s not an unknown,” Whitney said.
“That’s right—your expertise is film.”
“Yeah, I’m good with it—you wait and see,” she told him. “I worked with some excellent people—filmmakers from several of the major educational channels. I’d intended to make documentaries. Eventually, I would have found my own projects.”
“But you woke up one morning and decided you wanted to be an FBI agent?” he asked.
She looked over at him. He glanced her way, but his attention was for driving.
“I like where my life has gone,” she said. “And even you will like Jackson Crow and some of the others.”
He laughed. “Even me?”
“You’re not pleased to have me hanging around.”
To her surprise, he was quiet for a minute. “Sorry. It’s just that Monty—my partner—was like another half of me. We had a situation under control, and some idiot vigilante walked in and one man wound up dead and my partner may never walk again. You’re fine. In fact,” he said, and he grinned broadly, glancing her way again, “I think I’m happier to have you than whoever they might have assigned me. You’re a guest of the city police. You won’t be trying to second-guess me.”
“I may be.”
“Still, you’ll have to bow to my decisions—I’m lead.”
“I’m sure the task force will all bow to you,” Whitney said.
He swerved slightly, avoiding a taxi that didn’t seem to realize that there were lanes on Broadway. A few minutes later, in Soho, he pulled into a spot that had looked too small for the car.
“Diner is up there, on the corner,” he said. He took her elbow, directing her toward the end of the street. Keeping up with him meant long strides, and she took them.
They entered the touristy diner, which was decorated in red plastic and chrome with old movie posters on the walls. Looking around, Jude pointed down a row of glitter-red plastic booths.
“Is that him?” he asked Whitney.
She looked. A lone man was sitting in one of the middle booths. He was on his phone, and he’d doodled all over the napkin at his place setting. He had dark hair that was swept over his forehead in a strange way—hair transplant, gotta keep young, Whitney thought—and gold-rimmed glasses and he seemed to be thirty-five or so.
“I think so,” she said. “Directors don’t have their pictures out there all that often, and I don’t think he’s been nominated for an Academy Award yet.”
Jude edged her ahead of him and she walked toward the booth. “Mr. Avery?” she asked.
He looked up and waved a finger at her, pointing at his phone. She held still politely.
Jude did not.
He flipped out his badge, and reached for Angus Avery’s phone, snapping it shut and returning it.
“Sorry, Mr. Avery. I know that time is money in your line of work, but time could mean someone’s life in mine. I’m Detective Crosby, and this is Agent Tremont.”
Avery took the closure of his phone with little more than a frown, but he seemed perplexed by Whitney’s appearance. “Agent?”
“Agent Tremont is with a special unit of the FBI, Mr. Angus,” Jude explained, urging Whitney into the booth and taking the seat beside her. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” he said.
Angus Avery nodded, and then shook his head sadly. “Hey. This is horrible. But, I have to tell you, I think it’s almost my fault.”
“You killed Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
“No! No, of course not!” Avery protested. “No, no—I should have stayed away from that location. I should have shot anywhere else in Manhattan—or Brooklyn, the Bronx, New Jersey or Hollywood, for that matter. It’s that damn location. It’s haunted—and it’s cursed. And God knows—the creature haunting the place might just be Jack the Ripper—the real Jack the Ripper!”
He leaned forward. “Don’t you understand? Jack the Ripper left London and came to the United States. And when he did, that’s where he lived!”
4
Film people.
Great. He couldn’t help it, he glanced at Whitney.
She smiled. “Surely, Mr. Angus, you don’t believe that Jack the Ripper has lived all these years and that he’s just starting out to murder women again? At age one hundred plus.”
“I knew all about the history of the location. I just doubted all that mumbo-jumbo ghost stuff, just the way you do.”
“I heard something about the location this morning, but I don’t really know much about it,” Whitney said. She smiled at him. “I went to the film school at NYU, Mr. Angus. I loved living and working up here, but somehow, I never learned about the location you were using for the film shoot yesterday.”
“Well, let me tell you about it,” Avery said, leaning toward Whitney.
Maybe the young woman would turn out to be an odd asset, Jude decided. Angus Avery seemed to like her. She was encouraging him to talk. He did believe—gut feeling—that the movie had something to do with it all. Maybe her background was going to be a good thing.
“The building they just tore down had no history. The Darby Building. It was an ugly old thing—built in the 1920s. No character, no class whatsoever. It should have been torn down. But what was on the site before—that’s where all the trouble comes from.”
“And what was there before?” Whitney asked. “A friend of mine told me that it had been some kind of spiritualist church.”
“An offshoot group of some whacked-out folks—now, I suppose it would be some kind of nondenominational thing—started out building a church. Plain church. Simple pews, no statues, no stained-glass windows. They began in the 1840s, but it was too close to St. Paul’s and Trinity to make the powers that be happy. Anyway, it became a ‘home.’ But it was a home for believers. I think it spent about twenty years becoming an old-fashioned halfway house for the homeless, immigrants, addicts, you name it. But by the end of the last decades of the nineteenth century, spiritualism was coming heavily to the fore, and along with spiritualism, you had devil worshippers, pagan cults and all that rot. So, imagine, you’ve got the House of Spiritualism here, and the Five Points area just blocks away. Slums and a cesspool. So. They start to clean up the Five Points area, and where do you think the real crackpots are going to come? Why, right over to the House of Spiritualism.”
Angus Avery sat back, looking pleased with himself, as if he’d solved everything.
“And the so-called American victim of Jack the Ripper was killed in the Bowery, and again, we’re talking about a matter of blocks,” Whitney said.
Jude spoke up. “Carrie Brown was killed in an old hotel.”
They both looked at him, as if surprised that he was in on their conversation.
“Yes, she was killed in a hotel room. But Jack the Ripper killed Mary Kelly in her apartment. He was better—in his own mind, I’m sure—at his task of ‘ripping’ when he had time and privacy on his side. Well, here’s the thing—and, Detective Crosby, I believe you’ll find this in old police records or in memoirs of the officers of the time—they believed that the Jack the Ripper mimic or Jack the Ripper himself found lodging at the House of Spiritualism.”
“So you believe that by renting the location for your film shoot you awakened the ghost of Jack the Ripper—or Jack the Ripper himself,” Jude said, trying very hard to keep his tone low and even.
Angus Avery shook his head unhappily. “We were finished with the site after that day’s shoot—we’d broken down. We were already planning on moving. But I called off all shooting for today—everywhere in the city. Can you even begin to imagine what that will do to my budget?”
“What made you choose the location?” Jude asked.
“Ah, well, the real shots we could get. And the fact that the financial district is actually shaped more like the Five Points that once was than the area that was Five Points! The movie takes place in the late eighteen hundreds. Shooting there, we could use the streets with some editing and CGI. And I had a great, almost barren landscape for the set designers to create facades. You’d be surprised at what you have when you black out modern additions to downtown.”
“There’s a giant pit at the location—dangerous,” Jude said.
Avery waved a hand in the air. “We had it barricaded during the filming, and all kinds of people keeping watch. Production assistants and city engineers. We had a permit that included working a large section of Broadway,” Avery said. “I knew about the location, but, as I said, I thought it was all a bunch of hogwash.”
“And right next door, you had Blair House. It’s pristine—you could have done some great shooting there,”
Whitney said. “I—”
Jude squeezed her hand beneath the table; he didn’t want her announcing that the team was staying at Blair House. Especially since the team wasn’t all here yet. As the day went by, he found himself more concerned that they had Whitney Tremont housed at Blair House—alone—for tonight.
“Blair House is under federal jurisdiction at the moment. I don’t know exactly which historical association is in charge, but it’s on the national list of historic places. I don’t believe that a permit would have been given out for the use of it right now, no matter what was promised to the city,” he said.
“Precisely,” Avery said with a sigh. He brightened. “But, we did get some great footage of the facade. In fact, the Blair House facade—cleaned up, CGI—will be the house of ill repute where our movie prostitutes were settled.”
“Just what was the movie you were making?” Jude asked.
“Am making. O’Leary’s. I’m afraid the loss of an extra doesn’t stop the giant wheels of a movie turning forever. And don’t think badly of me, please. Movies have been completed when the featured stars have died. Everyone can’t take the hit. Lord knows, in this country, we have to keep people employed and the money moving these days.”
“You’re a humanitarian,” Jude said.
Whitney kicked his ankle.
“And the movie is?” Jude asked.
“A love story,” Avery said. “A love story set amidst the squalor of the final days of the Five Points region of New York City. I mean, seriously, it’s hard to imagine what it was like. Tenements were so crowded that the living often walked over the dead. Gangs were kings … politics were crooked. Sewage was a real killer—disease ran rampant. My movie, O’Leary’s, is about two young people who rise above the horror and corruption to make it to the top.”
“Ah. They moved to Gramercy Park!” Jude said.
Finally, he’d managed something that the filmmaker could seize upon. “Precisely!” Avery said with pleasure.
“Mr. Avery, what time did you leave the set yesterday?” Jude asked him.
Avery was thoughtful. Many people immediately shrank suspiciously from the question, aware that it was not harmless. But the man seemed to be remembering his day. “I left by five. One of my assistant directors worked on a few last shots with the prostitutes. I headed to midtown. I gave a speech to a class from the fashion institute at their dinner at six.”
Jude didn’t ask Avery if there were witnesses; he’d check on it himself.
“Mr. Avery, we have a witness who saw a man in costume on the street—a nineteenth-century cloak and tall hat, like a stovepipe hat,” Jude said.
“Was your witness a wino living on the streets? Or was your witness the killer?” Avery asked.
“You have nineteenth-century costuming on your cast, Mr. Avery,” Whitney said. “Perhaps the killer is stealing from your wardrobe department?”
Avery shook his head. “You may speak to my costume designer and the wardrobe mistress. I insist on all costumes being returned at the end of the day. If a costume wasn’t returned, I’d have known it. I might be making a movie, but any half-baked costume shop in town might have a cloak and a stovepipe hat! Look, please, check my alibi—and check my work record. It couldn’t have been me, and I guarantee you, my wardrobe mistress would have been fired if there had been anything missing.”
Avery’s alibi didn’t actually clear him. He might have given a speech—and returned, Jude thought. New York traffic—always a major “if” factor in the city. And, still, by the time Virginia Rockford had been killed, there had been very little traffic downtown. Avery could have well done everything exactly as he had said—and still arrived back on Broadway in time to commit murder.
“How well did you know Miss Rockford?” Jude asked.
“Know her? I didn’t know her at all,” Avery said. “But she was working on your film,” Jude said. “Directors seldom hire the extras,” Whitney said quietly.
“Oh, right, well, of course not,” Jude said.
“Her death, however, devastates me,” Avery said.
A waitress stopped by their table; Jude ordered coffee and Whitney did the same. Avery already had a cup before him.
When she was gone, Avery became businesslike. “I’ve asked my office to make sure that your fellow officer—Detective Sayer—has a list of everyone associated with the film, and what their position is. Except for poor Miss Rockford, of course.”
“Of course,” Whitney murmured.
“Do you have an idea of anyone else who might have stayed behind last night?”
“We have a guard who stays on until the last actor, costumer, production assistant—even caterer—has left the set for the day. Last night that would have been a fellow named Samuel Vintner. My offices have given Detective Sayer everything he could possibly need—phone numbers, addresses, even social security numbers. We desperately want to see this murder solved.”
“Thank you for your help,” Jude told him.
Angus Avery wagged a finger in the air again, directed at them both. “You mark my words. It’s evil land. I think that they were burying people in the walls and foundations. I think that you’ll find that Jack the Ripper—the real Ripper—is buried somewhere on that location. You have to find the corpse and burn it and say lots of prayers. Maybe that will stop this.”
“We’re hoping to catch a flesh-and-blood killer before anyone else dies,” Jude said.
“Mr. Avery, there might have been someone—someone working on your movie—who had a grudge against Virginia Rockford,” Jude said.
“There might have been. I told you, I didn’t know the girl,” Avery said, sounding impatient at last. “You have the names and office address of the casting directors. Madison and May Casting—they’re actually on Madison. They can tell you all about the extras.” He stood. “If there’s nothing else, I have a date with a bottle of blended scotch whiskey and a friend. This is becoming a nightmare, what with my actors in a stew and the press all over everything in the world … forgive me. Order dinner on my tab, if you like. I need to go now.”
“You noticed nothing unusual on the set at all?” Whitney asked.
“I told you—the location is cursed. We had a fellow die of a heart attack when he was moving set pieces. That was unusual. Natural causes, though, that’s what they said. And we had a few injuries, too. It’s the location. Go dig up the Ripper, burn his bones and the world will be back to normal. Down to a few domestic, drug and gang murders a week!” Avery had grown really impatient. “I’m easy to find, Detective Crosby. But, please, I’m a busy man. Call me only if you believe I can really help you.”
“Sir, police business does take precedence. Rest assured, I don’t like to waste my time. But if I feel that I need you, I will find you, no problem. Wherever you are,” Jude assured him.
Avery’s lips tightened as he rose and walked out, a clipboard in his hands. Jude watched as he headed out to the street—and a waiting stretch limo.
“Are we having dinner on him?” Whitney asked him.
“Nope, and I’m not seeing his movie, either,” Jude said, rising. He looked at the three cups of coffee and laid a bill on the table, and then lifted a hand, hailing their waitress. When she arrived at the table, he said, “Miss, I need that cup, please.”
“What?”
“I’m a police officer. If you need to get the manager, do so. That cup is evidence in a case I’m working.”
“You need a Baggie?” she asked. “The cup is all yours!”
“Thanks. I carry my own,” he told her.
In a few minutes, he’d secured the cup that Avery had been drinking from. “Let’s go.” He flipped his phone out and put through a call. “Ellis? Hey, yes, I’ve met with Angus Avery. I want the limos that worked that film site yesterday impounded. You’ll need warrants, but you won’t have a problem getting them now. I want Forensics going through them.”
He listened for a minute. “I know everyone is working around the clock. Get the limos in anyway. They’ll get to them.” He listened again. “Yep, thanks, Ellis.” He hung up and looked at Whitney.
“Where to now?” she asked.
Jude hesitated, and then offered her a twisted grin. “I’m going to drop off the cup at the lab, and then I’m bringing you home to meet Dad, Whitney. Seems like the thing to do after this conversation.”
Andrew Crosby lived in Hell’s Kitchen, also known as Clinton, which, for some reason, had become a more politically correct term for the area. His home was in a building that appeared to have been built in the late eighteen hundreds. Flowers grew in little patches of earth that might be called a yard, and when they entered the hallway and climbed the stairs to the two second-floor apartments, one of the doors was open.
Jude actually lived in the same building; his was the apartment next door. Years ago, when the place had gone co-op, his father had purchased the apartments. His dad’s foresight was something for which he was eternally grateful. Living in New York was expensive.
At first, too, after his mother’s death, he’d been glad that he was so close. And now, with the life he led, it was still good to be next door. Andrew had never been the type to intrude; he was there when needed.
“Jude, been expecting you all day!” his father said in a booming voice, greeting them at the entry.
“Whitney, meet my dad, Andrew Crosby. Dad, this is Whitney Tremont. She’s with the feds who have been sent down on this case.”
“A fed! Nice,” Andrew said, greeting Whitney warmly. Naturally, Whitney still seemed lost, since he had told his dad that she was there, but hadn’t told her anything about his father other than that he was good at puzzles, knew the city like the back of his hand and would be expecting him. “I have pasta ready for the pot, and I’ve been brewing up a sauce all day. It’s meat sauce. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you, Agent Tremont. I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”
“I’m not, but I do have a team member who is, if you ever need to host us all for some reason,” Whitney told him. She was smiling. Well, his father was likable.
As they chatted, Jude saw that Whitney learned that Andrew Crosby had worked his way up the ranks without benefit of higher education, and he had reached the rank of lieutenant. He’d worked the worst streets, the most unusual crimes and, been commended for bravery several times. He’d retired just a decade ago, when Jude’s mother had first been diagnosed with cancer. He’d spent every day at her side until she had slipped away.
“Since you’re having me to dinner, I hope I’m able to return the favor,” Whitney told him.
“Well, I must say, seems that I’d like that, if the rest of your team members are anything like you. But, of course, we’ve got a situation going,” Andrew said. “You two haven’t been watching television, I take it?”
“What now?”
“Here, I’ll show you,” Andrew said.
He led them past the entrance. The apartment was just as it had been a decade ago. Jude had finally convinced his dad—when his mom had been gone two years—that she would have been angry with him if he hadn’t given her clothing and shoes to Goodwill. But the throw she had knitted remained on the couch; her doilies still covered the occasional tables. The only concession his father had made to modern living was the entertainment center; he had a good flat-screen television, a sound stereo system and even Rock Band and a Wii Playstation.
As they followed him into the living room, Andrew picked up the remote control and hit a play button on the television.
Jude frowned, not certain what he was watching at first. Then he realized that the two beautiful young people on the screen were giving a press conference.
“Bobby Walden and Sherry Blanco,” Whitney said.
“Yep,” Andrew said.
“The leads in Angus Avery’s movie?” Jude murmured.
“I knew her only briefly, only in passing,” Bobby said. “But Ginger Rockford was a beautiful person, and we’re all horrified at her death.”
“This movie is dedicated to her memory!” Sherry Blanco put in, dabbing at a tear.
“But aren’t you afraid? Aren’t you afraid to continue filming?” one of the reporters asked. Jude squinted. It appeared as if they’d done the press conference in front of the Plaza. They were standing on red-carpeted steps, and the press was kept at a distance by velvet ropes. It was almost like a premiere night.
“We can’t be afraid,” Bobby said. “We owe it to Ginger to finish the film.”
“And, of course—” a man in a suit—one of their agents?—stepped in front of the microphone “—of course, we’re increasing security on the set. We’re cutting all night hours and doubling up on our security personnel. And we’ve negotiated new locations for the rest of the shoot, though! Rest assured. We will remain in this great city!”
Those words were greeted by a roar of applause.
“There’s a murderer on the streets—a heinous killer—and what really matters is that America’s sweethearts are going to finish a movie,” Jude said thoughtfully.
“Nothing you can do about pop culture, son. I just thought you should see this,” Andrew told him. “She didn’t do it,” Whitney said. “Too small. I don’t think she could have managed the kind of strength needed,” Andrew agreed.
Jude looked at the two of them. They had taken up positions on the sofa, watching as Andrew ran the recorded version of the press conference.
“That’s great. You two have eliminated a suspect. Now we just have to eliminate about another eight million people or so,” Jude said.
“You’ll get it narrowed down,” Andrew said with confidence.
Jude lowered his head, hiding a smile. His father always had confidence. He’d never given up on one of his own cases, though it was true that far too many went unsolved, despite the best work of dedicated people and excellent forensics labs.
The press conference ended with a public service announcement: Sherry Blanco begged the women of New York City to be careful, and to be safe. When two anchors came back on, talking about the celebrity of those involved, Andrew shut the television off.
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Heather Graham
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Ужасы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A TERROR BORN OF JACK THE RIPPERThe details of the crime scene are no coincidence. The body—a promising starlet—has been battered, bloodied and then discarded between two of Manhattan’s oldest graveyards. One look and Detective Jude Crosby recognizes the tableau: a re-creation of Jack the Ripper’s gruesome work. But he also sees something beyond the actions of a mere copycat. Something more dangerous…and unexplainable.As the city seethes with suspicion, Jude calls on Whitney Tremont, a member of the country’s preeminent paranormal investigating team, to put the speculation to rest. Yet when Whitney and Jude delve deeper, what they discover is more shocking than either could have predicted, and twice as sinister. …