Ripper

  In the three years they were married and living together under Blake Jackson’s roof, Bob had controlled her like a maniac, and after the divorce it took him some time to accept that he needed to keep his distance and respect her privacy. He had matured a little, but he still had the dominant, aggressive character of the jock he had always been, which had served him well in his career in the police department. When he was younger he used to suffer fits of rage, destroying anything he laid his hands on. At moments like that Indiana would hold her daughter close and flee to a neighbor’s house until her father came, having been called urgently at the pharmacy. Bob would calm down the moment his father-in-law came in, proof that he hadn’t in fact lost his mind. The two men developed a strong bond that survived Bob and Indiana’s divorce. Blake continued to be a kindly father to Bob, who acted like a good, obedient son in return. They went out to football games and action movies, and sometimes had a few beers at the Camelot, their favorite bar.

  Until she met Ryan Miller, her ex-husband had been the only person aside from her father that Indiana turned to in times of need. She could be sure that Bob would solve the problem, even if he lectured and criticized her as he did so. She admired his good qualities and loved him very much, but it wasn’t beyond Bob to play a joke on her: he could have stolen her underwear just to prove how easy it was to rob her. For a while now he had been nagging her to change her locks and get an intruder alarm.

  “You know you promised to get me a cat, right?” Amanda asked, interrupting her mother’s ruminations.

  “You’re going to college at the end of August, sweetie. Who’s going to look after a cat after you leave?”

  “Grandpa. We already talked about it—he’s cool with it.”

  “It’ll be good for Mr. Jackson to have a pet.” Elsa sighed. “He’s gonna be real lonely without his granddaughter.”

  Sunday, 22

  Bob Martín’s apartment was on the fifteenth floor of one of the blocks that in recent years had sprouted like mushrooms south of Market Street. A few years earlier, the area had been a squalid harbor district full of sheds and warehouses. Now it stretched the length of the Embarcadero and was one of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city, with restaurants, art galleries, nightclubs, luxury hotels, and apartment buildings, all within a few blocks of the financial district and Union Square. The deputy chief had bought his apartment early, before prices skyrocketed, with a mortgage that would keep him in debt for the rest of his days. The imposing tower was a bad investment, Celeste Roko had pointed out, since it was going to collapse in the next earthquake. The planets, however, couldn’t tell her exactly when that might be. From the living room, Bob could look right out across the bay, speckled with sailboats, all the way to the Bay Bridge.

  Amanda, feathers threaded through her hair, had on yellow-striped socks, and the cardigan of her grandfather’s she always wore, which had holes at the elbows. She and her father were sitting on high stools at his black granite kitchen table, eating. One of Bob’s ex-girlfriends, a landscape gardener, had decorated his apartment for him with uncomfortable ultramodern furniture and a small forest of houseplants that had died of melancholy the moment she left. Without the plants, the place was about as welcoming as a hospital, except for Amanda’s room, which was stuffed full of junk and had walls plastered with posters of bands, as well as her personal heroes: Tchaikovsky, Stephen Hawking, and Brian Greene.

  “Is the Pole coming today?” the girl asked her father. She was used to his flings, which were brief, and—aside from the occasional collection of dead potted plants—left no trace.

  “She’s got a name, and you know it perfectly well: Karla. She’s not coming today, she’s just had her wisdom teeth out.”

  “Well, that’s good, and I’m not talking about the wisdom teeth. What’s that woman want from you, Dad? A green card?”

  Bob slammed a fist on the granite and launched into a tirade about filial respect, rubbing his bruised hand as he spoke. Amanda, unfazed, went right on eating.

  “You’re always declaring war on my girlfriends!”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Dad. I mostly put up with them, but this one gives me the creeps—she’s got a laugh like a hyena and a heart of stone. But I don’t want to fight about it. How long you been with her? Month and a half, I make it. Give it a couple weeks and she’ll be gone, then I’ll stop harping on it. I just don’t want this woman taking advantage of you.”

  Bob couldn’t help smiling. He loved his daughter more than anything in the world—more than life itself. He ruffled her Indian feathers and got up to serve dessert. He admired Amanda’s judgment when it came to his love affairs: it had proved a lot more reliable than his own. Though he was not about to tell her, his relationship with Karla was already on its last legs. He fetched coconut ice cream from the refrigerator and served it in the black sundae glasses that the landscape gardener had picked out, while his daughter rinsed the pizza plates.

  “I’m waiting, Dad.”

  “What for?”

  “Come on, don’t play dumb,” she demanded, drowning her ice cream in chocolate syrup. “I need the details of the psychiatrist’s death.”

  “Richard Ashton? He died on Tuesday, the tenth.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure, Amanda. I’ve got the records on my desk.”

  “But you can never determine the precise time of death—there’s always a margin of a few hours. I read about it in a book about corpses—it’s called Stiff or something.”

  “Jesus, girl, what kind of books are you reading?”

  “Worse ones than you can even imagine, Dad. The psychiatrist has got to be important—you always keep the best cases for yourself. You wouldn’t waste your time on some garden variety murder.”

  The deputy chief sighed dramatically. “If you’re this cynical when you’re seventeen, I dread to think what you’ll be like when you’re thirty.”

  “Cold and calculating, like your Polish friend. So tell me more.”

  Bob gave in and took her to his computer. He showed her photographs from the crime scene, along with some shots of the body, and let her read his notes, which included details about the victim’s clothes and the medical report she had photocopied on her last visit.

  “His wife found him in the morning. You should see her, Amanda, she’s incredible—the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in my life.”

  “You mean Ayani, the model. She’s been on TV more than the victim. Her photo’s everywhere. She goes around wearing a mourning veil like those old widows—it’s ridiculous!”

  “There’s nothing ridiculous about it. Maybe that’s the custom in her country.”

  “Well, if I was her, I’d be pretty glad to be the widow of such a horrible guy and end up rich. What did you think of Ayani? Her personality, I mean.”

  “Apart from being a wonderful woman, she’s got a lot of control over her emotions. She was very composed on the day I met her.”

  “Composed, or relieved? Where was she when her husband was murdered?” Amanda was thinking of the information the Ripper players would want to know.

  “Ingrid Dunn estimated he’d been dead about eight or ten hours, but we still haven’t gotten the results from the autopsy. His wife was asleep in the house.”

  “How convenient.”

  “The housekeeper, Galang, said she takes sleeping pills and tranquilizers. I guess that’s why she was so calm the next day—that and the shock, obviously.”

  “You can’t be sure Ayani took a sleeping pill that night.”

  “Galang took it to her with a cup of hot chocolate, as usual. But he didn’t see her swallow it, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “She’s the prime suspect.”

  “In a cop show, maybe, but in real life it’s my experience that guides me; and I got a sixth sense for these things, that’s why I’m a good policeman. There’s not a shred of evidence against Ayani, and my sixth sense tells me—”

  “
You shouldn’t let the prime suspect’s supermodel figure interfere with this sixth sense of yours, Dad. But you’re right, we need to be open to other possibilities. If Ayani was planning to murder her husband, she’d have made sure she had a better alibi than a sleeping pill.”

  Wednesday, 25

  When she got back to her father’s house that night, Indiana sifted through the mail. Among the bills and political pamphlets, she found a glossy magazine she sometimes saw in dentists’ waiting rooms, sent by subscription to the holders of some of the more distinguished credit cards. The house was silent: it was the night her father played squash and hung out at the Bierkeller. She took the magazine to the kitchen with the other letters, put the kettle on, and sat down to leaf through it distractedly. A page was marked with a paperclip, she noticed idly; she turned to it. It was then she saw the article that would turn her life upside down.

  The photo accompanying the article showed Alan Keller greeting guests at his vineyard. Hanging on his arm was a blond woman—Geneviève van Houte, according to the caption, a Belgian baroness and agent to a handful of European fashion designers. Indiana read with mild curiosity up to the third paragraph, where she discovered that though Geneviève currently lived in Paris, it was rumored that she would soon be moving to San Francisco—as Alan Keller’s wife. The article described the lavish party given at the vineyard in honor of the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, and quoted the opinions of various guests regarding the forthcoming marriage—which the couple didn’t deny—and the pedigree of the van Houtes, a family whose aristocratic title dated back to the seventeenth century. On the following page were four photographs of Alan and the same woman in different places: at a Los Angeles club, on a cruise in Alaska, at a gala party, and walking hand in hand down a street in Rome.

  Dumbfounded, with shaking hands and a drumming in her temples, Indiana nonetheless noticed that Geneviève’s hair was short in some of the pictures and long in others, and that in the Alaska shot, Alan was wearing the beige cashmere sweater Indiana loved so much that he had given it to her. Since that was just a few weeks after they’d met, the only possible conclusion was that her lover and this baroness of his shared a long history. She reread the article and scanned the photographs again, searching for some clue that would expose it all as a lie, but she couldn’t find one. Setting the magazine down on top of the envelope stuffed with travel brochures for India, she sat staring at the dishwasher as the kettle on the stove let out its soft whistle.

  It had been fifteen years since she’d felt the sting of betrayal. When married to Bob Martín, she had put up with his irresponsible, adolescent behavior: the beer cans on the carpet, him and his puerile friends sprawled in front of the TV, his violent outbursts; she only made up her mind to divorce him when she could no longer ignore his cheating. Three years after the divorce, Bob was still asking her for a second chance, but she couldn’t trust him. In the years since then, all her relationships had ended amicably; none of the men had deceived or left her. If the spark went out, she found a discreet way to distance herself. Alan Keller might not be the ideal partner—as her daughter, her ex-husband, and Ryan Miller all liked to remind her—but until now she had not once doubted his fidelity, which for her was the cornerstone of their relationship. That glossy magazine spread proved her wrong.

  In order to heal others, Indiana had learned to listen to her own body very closely, and she could tune in to herself just as intuitively as she could with her patients. Alan said she related to the world through her senses and her emotions; she lived in a magical universe that existed in an age before the telephone, trusting in people’s basic goodness. He agreed with Celeste Roko, who claimed that in a previous incarnation Indiana had been a dolphin, and would return to the sea in the next—she wasn’t made for dry land, lacking the gene that made other people mistrustful. She had also spent a number of years treading a spiritual path that led her to become detached from material things, and liberated in her mind and heart. But none of these defenses helped when she saw Alan Keller and Geneviève van Houte in the magazine.

  She went upstairs to her apartment, turned the heat on, and stretched out on her bed to commune with her feelings in the darkness, breathe mindfully and summon her chi—the cosmic energy she channeled into her patients—as well as prana, the life force and one of the many powers of Shakti, her guardian goddess. She felt a painful wrench in her chest. She cried for a long while, until at last, sometime after midnight, tiredness overcame her, and she fell into a few hours’ troubled sleep.

  Thursday, 26

  Indiana woke up early, after turbulent dreams she couldn’t remember. She rubbed a few drops of neroli—orange flower essence—onto her wrists to calm herself, and went down to her father’s kitchen to make herself some chamomile tea with honey and put ice cubes on her puffy eyelids. Her whole body ached, but after the herb tea and twenty minutes of meditation her mind had cleared a little, and she was able to view the situation with some detachment. Knowing this Zen-like state would be short-lived, she decided to act before her emotions overtook her again. She called Alan to suggest they meet at one o’clock that afternoon at their usual spot, a favorite bench in Presidio Park. After an uneventful morning absorbed in her work, she closed the treatment room, stopped by Danny D’Angelo’s for a cappuccino, then cycled to the park. She arrived ten minutes early and sat waiting, the magazine in her lap. The calming effects of the neroli and the chamomile tea were long gone.

  Alan arrived right on time, all smiles at the fact that she had called him, just like in the early days of their affair, when the heat of passion had swept aside her shyness. Convinced that his trick of surprising her with the trip to India had worked, he sat down beside her and playfully tried to hug her, but she pulled away and thrust the magazine into his hands. Keller didn’t need to open it—he knew what was in there. Until now it hadn’t worried him; the possibility of it falling into Indiana’s hands had seemed so slight.

  “Surely you don’t believe gossip like that, Indi,” he said breezily. “I thought you were an intelligent woman—don’t disappoint me.”

  It was the worst tactic he could have chosen.

  He spent the next half hour trying to convince her that Geneviève van Houte was simply a friend, that they’d met while he was doing his doctorate in Brussels, and that he’d stayed in touch because it was mutually convenient: he introduced her to elite social circles, while she encouraged and advised him on his investments. They had never thought of getting married—the very idea was absurd, nothing but scurrilous rumors. Then he went on to detail his recent financial problems. Indiana listened in stony silence: while her life could be calculated dollar by dollar, Alan lived his by the hundred thousand.

  The year before, walking hand in hand through Istanbul, the topic of money and how to spend it had come up. During their stay, Indiana had not felt the slightest bit tempted by the junk on offer at the bazaar, and later, in the spice market, though she smelled everything on offer, in the end she bought just a quarter ounce of turmeric. Keller, on the other hand, spent the week haggling over antique rugs and Ottoman vases, only to complain later about the cost. That day Indiana finally asked him how much was enough. When would he be satisfied? Why did he feel the need to accumulate things? And where did he get all his money, if he never did any work? “Darling, no one gets rich working,” he’d replied, amused, and proceeded to give her a lecture on the distribution of wealth, and how governments and religions joined forces to protect the goods and privileges of the rich. That was too bad for the poor—the system, he admitted, was extremely unfair—but luckily, he was one of the chosen few.

  Indiana thought back to that speech as they sat on the park bench, and Keller explained to her how much he owed in taxes, credit card bills, and other debts; how his latest investments had failed; how he could not keep his creditors at bay much longer with promises and his prestigious family name.

  Keller sighed at length. “You don’t know how horrible i
t is being rich and not having any money.”

  “A hell of a lot worse than being dirt-poor, I’ll bet. But we’re not here to talk about that—we’re here to talk about us. I can see you’ve never loved me like I love you, Alan.”

  She picked up the magazine, gave him back the brochures about the trip to India, strapped on her helmet, and cycled off, leaving Alan sitting there shocked and angry. What he had told Indiana was a half-truth, he admitted quietly to himself. While it was true he had no intention of marrying Geneviève, he had neglected to mention that they had had an amitié amoureuse for the past sixteen years.

  Alan and the Belgian baroness did not see each other often, because she was always traveling between Europe and the United States, but they met up whenever they were in the same city. Geneviève was educated and witty—they could spend all night playing sophisticated intellectual games laced with irony and malice—and if she so desired, he could satisfy her in bed and not get tired, with the help of a few battery-operated devices she always packed when she traveled abroad. They understood one other, belonging as they did to that stateless social class whose members recognize each other wherever they are in the world, and are at ease in luxurious settings, their natural habitat. They were both devoted music lovers; Geneviève had given him half of all the music he owned, and they would sometimes hook up in Milan, New York, or London for the concert season. There was a stark contrast between this woman, whom Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming personally invited to their concerts, and Indiana Jackson, who had never seen an opera until Alan took her to Tosca. Indiana had not been much impressed with the music, but by the end the tragedy had her sobbing on his shoulder.