Riptide (15 page)

“Don’t worry, I’m not planning to diagnose you.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. There are some depths best left unplumbed. I much prefer to remain an enigma, to others and myself.”

He escorted her into his den, its curtains shut against the light. It was even hotter, and there were two more cats. The walls were crowded with framed book covers—his own, naturally—and photos from L.A.’s past.

She settled on a sofa. He offered her a drink. She declined.

“Now what can I do for you?” he asked as he lowered himself into an overstuffed armchair like a king taking his throne. A cocktail glass rested on the adjacent table, ice cubes melting in what was probably scotch.

“To begin with, you can tell me how you knew I have an interest in Jack the Ripper.”

“I could perhaps convince you that I possess psychic powers, but the truth is more mundane. I’m a regular patron of the Purloined Letter Bookshop. I was in there earlier today. As is my wont, I inquired of the proprietor if anyone had purchased one of my books. He told me he’d made a sale to a charming young lady, who also bought a slew of books on Jack the Ripper. Rather indiscreetly, he mentioned that the lady’s companion had promised to broker a meeting with me. And so I put the pieces together, much like Sherlock Holmes, whose methods were equally unremarkable once explained.”

He picked up his drink and swallowed a third of it in a noisy slurp.

“Maura tells me,” he added, “that you’re a consultant to law enforcement agencies. A sort of document examiner cum handwriting analyst cum behavioral profiler.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

“Still, a most interesting career path. You dissect the criminal mind. Shine a searchlight into the dark crevasses.”

She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her. “It’s a living.”

“I would imagine it’s your family background that got you interested in such matters.”

“My family?”

“Your father, I mean.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Perhaps I’m mistaken. I’d assumed your father was Aldrich Silence. Your surname is not a very common one—”

“Aldrich Silence
was
my father.” She leaned forward. “What are you driving at?”

“Oh. It’s nothing. Never mind me.”

“What about my father, Mr. Sirk?”

“Well, I had assumed you knew... Surely you’ve been informed... But then I suppose you might not have been. He was never named as a suspect.”

Her throat was dry. “A suspect in what?”

“This is very awkward.”

“Tell me.”

He took another drink. “There was a series of murders in Venice and the surrounding area in the late 1970s. Women and girls, found mutilated, eviscerated with almost surgical skill. Four in all, as I remember. Back in the day, it was the fashion to append a nickname to a serial killer. This one was the Devil’s Henchman.”

“I’ve heard that name,” she whispered.

“It was taken from a rather undistinguished 1949 B-picture that happened to be playing at the Fox Venice Theatre, the old revival house, when the first murder occurred. The killer was believed to roam the neighborhood on foot. At least, no vehicles were ever witnessed in the vicinity of his crimes. And no one ever got a look at him. He was a faceless figure, a boogeyman haunting the night.”

Like Jack the Ripper, she thought.

“The case attracted considerable notoriety at the time. The police believed the culprit was a white male in his late twenties to mid thirties, mentally ill, with some medical training, who resided in Venice or nearby. A number of suspects were considered.”

“And my father was one of them?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.” He waved a doughy hand. “It was all very preliminary. His involvement never made the news. I know about it only because I researched the subject for a book I considered writing. But I gave it up.”

“Why?”

“Because there was no ending. The Devil’s Henchman was never apprehended, never identified. The case remains unsolved.”

“After my father died...did the killings stop?”

“Actually they had stopped some months before.”

“And there were no more, after his death?”

“No. But that could, of course, be merely a coincidence. There are a great many coincidences in life.” He peered at her over his glass. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

“It’s all right.”

“Given your line of work, I thought you would be aware... It was rather stupid of me, though. The case is decades old, and you would have no reason to know anything about it.”

“I know about it now.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself. There was never any evidence linking Aldrich Silence to the crimes. It was purely a matter of his fitting the profile. And he was far from the only one to do so. In Venice there is never any shortage of...well...”

“Lunatics?”

He flushed. “Perhaps I had better say nothing further. I fear I’ve gotten our meeting off to a most uncomfortable commencement.”

She was thinking of her mother. Had she known? She must have. If the police had come asking about Aldrich, she would have been interviewed. She was the only one who could establish an alibi. If there was an alibi. And if there wasn’t...

Her mother never said anything. Never even hinted at it, not once in all the years after Aldrich’s death.

His death. A suicide. Had the pressure of being a suspect in a murder investigation driven him into the tool shed with a gun in his hand?

Or was it guilt?

“Now tell me, Jennifer—why would a research project involving Venice’s history inspire you to study up on a man who victimized Whitechapel whores twenty years before Venice even existed?”

“I live in a very old house in Venice,” she said slowly, “one that dates back about a hundred years. I’ve found some things hidden in the house that suggest the original owner may have committed crimes. Murders. I know it sounds stupid, but the crimes might be similar to Jack the Ripper’s. And so I thought...”

“That old Jack might have resided at your address, back in the day?”

“I told you it sounds stupid.”

“On the contrary, it’s most intriguing. But what
things
have you found in the house to set you on the Ripper’s trail?”

She hesitated. “Human remains.”

“Ah. The plot thickens. Females?”

“Apparently.”

“A century old?”

“They may be.”

“Brought to light by Poseidon’s fury, I presume?”

“What?”

“The earthquake, my dear. Poseidon was the god of seismic events.”

“Oh. Yes, it was the quake.”

“So you have forensic evidence of a homicidal maniac at work in Abbot Kinney’s Venice. How Grand Guignol. But as you surely realize, a proclivity for acts of violence against the fairer sex is not unique to our man Jack. Your killer might have been anybody.”

“Well, there are...other possible connections.”

“Pray tell.”

“I’d rather not. At least not right now.”

His fixed smile had taken on the quality of a grimace. She took a certain malicious pleasure in withholding morsels of information from this man’s snapping jaws. She couldn’t entirely escape the suspicion that he’d known very well that the news about her father would throw her off balance.

Sirk produced a dissatisfied sigh that segued into a wheeze. “Very well. I shall contain my curiosity—for the time being. Patience, however, is not among my very short list of virtues.”

She believed him. He was only an obese silver-haired raconteur, but when she looked at him, she saw a shark scenting blood.

“What I’m mainly interested in,” she said, “is any information you might have on murders in the Venice area around 1908 or 1910—that general time frame.”

“That’s easily answered. I have no information at all. As far as I know, there was never any suspicion of a serial killer at work in Venice, or anywhere in the Los Angeles area, at that time.”

“Would you know about it, if there had been?”

“Naturally. It’s my life’s work. I know all the dark corners of this city’s past.”

“Well, then I guess I’ve taken up your time for nothing. Sorry about that—”

“No need for apologies. And no need to rush off, either. My company isn’t so appalling as all that, now, is it?”

“Certainly not,” she lied.

“I may not be able to fill you in on evil doings in turn-of-the-century Venice, but I can answer any questions about old Jack.”

“I have a stack of books that will give me those details.”

“Have you read them?”

“Not yet. I’ve looked at some photos and a timeline, that’s all.”

“Then let me give you a proper introduction to the Ripper. It’s the least I can do, after you’ve come all this way.” He leaned back in his chair, hands folded on his lap. “When you think of Jack the Ripper, what’s the image that comes to your mind?”

“I suppose...a man in black, wearing a top hat, maybe a cape, creeping along some alley in the fog.”

“Very good. A most evocative visualization. And entirely inaccurate. Jack the Ripper wore neither a top hat nor a cape. Such accoutrements would have stood out altogether too obviously in London’s East End, a neighborhood not known for its well-dressed habitués. Most likely he wore a deerstalker hat or perhaps a bowler—what Americans call a derby.”

Sirk himself was American, Jennifer thought, but apparently he didn’t think of himself as one.

“The murders took place in street corners and courtyards, not in alleys. And fog? Not a single one of the Ripper’s canonical murders occurred on a foggy night.”

“Canonical?”

“The ones that are indisputably his. No one can agree on when the Ripper started killing. The conventional wisdom is that he killed five, his last victim being Mary Kelly in November of 1888. But some people aver that Jack’s career continued until as late as 1891. There are even a few fanciful souls—now this will interest you—who claim he relocated to the United States in that year. They credit him with the murder and mutilation of a certain Carrie Brown, an aged and rather down-at-her-heels prostitute in New York City.”

“You don’t buy the idea?”

“It’s a bit of a stretch, I would say. Although if Carrie Brown had been murdered in London in the right time frame, there would be little doubt she was one of the Ripper’s girls. Photos were taken of the scene. Here, I’ll show you.”

He rose, grunting with effort, and searched a crowded bookcase until he found a large hardbound volume. He flipped it open to the photo section and thrust the book at her.

There were two grainy photographs, both taken in a cheap hotel room. One glance at the pictures showed why some people pegged the New York murder as the Ripper’s work. It was the same butchery seen in Mary Kelly’s bedroom. Carrie Brown lay in a tangle of her own clothes pulled up over her hips, her limbs in disarray. She had been opened up and hollowed out.

She stared at the photos while Sirk resumed his seat. “The Devil’s Henchman mutilated his victims too,” she said finally.

Sirk lifted a silvery brow. “Why, yes.”

“Like this?”

“There are only so many ways to disembowel a woman, I’m afraid. Just as there are only so many ways to make love to her.” His face blossomed in a sickly leer. “What else do you know about old Saucy Jacky?”

“He wrote letters to the police. Taunted them.”

“Not necessarily. Yes, the police received numerous letters purportedly from the killer, but the great majority of them—quite possibly
all
of them—were hoaxes. The authorities had made the mistake of printing up some of the earlier letters as broadsheets and distributing them around the city. This inspired people to try their hand at the communications. It became a fad.”

“He sent Catharine Eddowes’ kidney to somebody.”

“Half a kidney was posted to the chairman of an ad hoc vigilance committee. It may have been Kate Eddowes’ kidney, or only another hoax, perhaps perpetrated by a fun-loving medical student. People had a robust sense of humor in those days.”

If the diary could be trusted, the kidney was no hoax. “But he
did
take some of his victims’ organs.”

“Yes, on occasion.”

“So he must have used the alleys to escape, at least. He could hardly stroll down a major thoroughfare covered in blood.”

“Jack would not have been covered in blood. He would asphyxiate the woman before he began to cut. When the heart stops beating, blood stops pumping. Spatter would have been minimal. And the organs he took were easily concealed in a watertight tobacco pouch, a common appurtenance of the period.”

“If he’d been stopped and searched—”

“Most likely he would not have been stopped, because he was not the sort of man the constabulary was on the lookout for. He may have been too respectable, too genteel. It was widely assumed that the killer was an obvious degenerate, a drooling maniac. And the upper classes maintained that men of a certain station did not patronize whores.”