Ripper

  Indiana was waiting for him with freshly made coffee, which they drank standing up in the kitchen. She had little desire to go out, with a storm threatening to break, but she didn’t want to disappoint Ryan, who had been looking forward to this trip all week—or Attila, who was crouching by the door with an expectant look. She rinsed the cups, left her father a note saying she would be back that evening and wanted to see Amanda before he drove her back to school, then pulled on her jacket and helped Ryan load her bike into the truck. She climbed into the seat between him and Attila, who never gave up his window seat for anyone.

  The wind whistled in the cables of the bridge and buffeted the few cars that were out at such an hour. There were none of the usual Sunday sailboats, no tourists crossing the Golden Gate Bridge on foot. Their hope that the skies might have cleared a little on the far side of the bay, as often happened, quickly dissipated, but still Ryan ignored Indiana’s suggestion that they postpone the day trip. He carried right on up Route 101 up to Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and from there toward the Samuel P. Taylor State Park, where they had met.

  Over the next forty minutes the storm raged. Great black clouds crackled with electricity, and trees, bent double by the wind, looked like ghosts in the white flashes of lightning. Twice they had to stop because the downpour made it impossible to see farther than the windscreen, but no sooner had the storm abated than Ryan would drive on, skidding round bends and slaloming past branches ripped from trees, at the risk of crashing or being charred to death by lightning. Finally admitting defeat, Ryan pulled over and switched off the engine. Burying his face in his arms, he slumped over the wheel and cursed like a soldier, while Attila surveyed the calamity from his pink cushion with a look of such disappointment that Indiana laughed. The sound was so infectious that Ryan quickly joined in, and soon the two of them were laughing uncontrollably at the preposterous situation, tears streaming down their faces, much to the bewilderment of the dog, who saw nothing funny about being trapped in a van when he could be running around in the forest.

  Later, when each was alone with the memory of having just made love, neither could say quite how it had started—whether it had been the howl of the storm that seemed to shake the whole world, the relief of the laughter they had shared, or the cramped conditions of the truck’s cabin: or whether it had been inevitable because they were both ready. They moved as one, staring at each other, revealing themselves as they had never done before, and in Ryan’s eyes Indiana saw a love so true, it awoke in her desires that she had repressed and sublimated for years.

  Indiana knew this man better than anyone else: she knew every inch of his body from his head to his only foot; she knew the reddened, shiny scar tissue of his stump, his powerful thighs, slashed with scars, his stiff waist; she knew every vertebra in the curve of his spine, the strong muscles in his back, chest, and arms; she knew every finger of his elegant hands, that neck that was solid as wood, the nape always tense, and the sensitive ears she never touched when she massaged him to spare him the embarrassment of an erection. Blindfolded, she could recognize his scent—a mixture of soap and sweat—the texture of his close-cropped hair, the timbre of his voice. She loved the way he moved, the way he drove one-handed, played with Attila like a little boy; the way he held his cutlery, took off his shirt, or strapped on his prosthetic leg. She knew that he cried at sentimental movies and that his favorite ice cream was pistachio; that when he was with her, he never looked at other women, and that he missed his life as a soldier; that he was a wounded soul, and that he never, ever complained. In their countless healing sessions, she had worked every inch of this man’s body, which looked much younger than his forty years, admiring the robust masculinity, the coiled strength. At times she could not help but compare him to Alan Keller, her slim, handsome lover, who was sophisticated, sensitive, ironic—the polar opposite of Ryan Miller. But at that moment, in the cabin of the pickup truck, Alan did not exist, had never existed; the only thing that was real was the overwhelming desire she felt for this man who was suddenly a stranger.

  In that lingering look, they said everything they needed to say. Ryan slipped his arm around her and pulled her toward him. She lifted her face, and they kissed as though this were not the first time, kissed with a passion that had burned inside him for three years, and one that she had thought she would never feel again, having settled for the placid love of Alan Keller. Indiana had taken real pleasure in the leisurely erotic games she and Alan played, but it was nothing compared to the wild desire with which she clung to Ryan now, holding him down with both hands and kissing him until he gasped for breath—surprised at the softness of his lips, the taste of his saliva, the intimacy of his tongue, frantically trying to take off her jacket, sweater, and blouse without breaking the kiss, to squeeze past the steering wheel and straddle him in that cramped cabin. She might have managed it had Attila not interrupted them with his long, horrified howl. They had completely forgotten about him. Thanks to the moment of clarity the dog had afforded them, they were able to break off for a short while and decide what to do about this reluctant witness. Since they couldn’t throw him out into the storm, they decided on the most obvious solution: looking for a hotel.

  Ryan drove blindly, recklessly, through the rain while Indiana stroked and kissed him wherever she could, drawing offended looks from Attila. The first lights they spotted were those of the pretentious boutique hotel where she and Alan sometimes came on Sundays to breakfast on the best French toast with crème fraîche in the area. Given the weather, the staff were not expecting guests, but they offered Indiana and Ryan the best room in the place: a riot of floral wallpaper, claw-foot furniture, and tasseled curtains, with a wide, sturdy bed capable of withstanding their strenuous lovemaking. Attila was forced to wait in the truck for several hours, until Ryan remembered he existed.

  Tuesday, 7

  At 8:15 p.m., Judge Rachel Rosen parked her Volvo in the garage of the building where she lived. From the trunk she took the heavy briefcase stuffed with the files she intended to read that evening and a grocery bag containing tonight’s dinner and tomorrow’s lunch: a salmon fillet, broccoli, a couple of tomatoes, and an avocado. She had grown up in a frugal home and considered any unnecessary expenditure an insult to the memory of her parents—survivors of a concentration camp in Poland who had come to America with nothing and worked hard to build a comfortable life. Judge Rosen bought exactly what she needed each day, and wasted nothing: leftovers from dinner she would have for lunch the following day, taking them in a Tupperware box to juvenile court so she could eat alone in her chambers. She lived well, but allowed herself few luxuries and hoarded like a magpie in the hope that she could retire at sixty-five and live off her savings. She had inherited the family furniture and her mother’s modest jewelry, which was only of sentimental value; her sole possessions were her penthouse apartment, a portfolio of shares in Johnson & Johnson, Apple, and Chevron, and a savings account. She planned to spend every last cent before she died—she did not want her son and daughter-in-law enjoying the fruits of her work. They did not deserve it.

  She hurried out of that dank parking garage, the most perilous place in the building; she had heard stories about such places, stories about assaults on solitary women, on elderly women—on women like her. For a while now she had been feeling vulnerable and threatened; she was no longer the tough, decisive woman she had been, the woman who could make vicious gangsters quake in their boots, who was respected by the police and by her colleagues. Now those same people whispered behind her back. They had a nickname for her—the Butcher, or something like that—though obviously they did not say it to her face. She was tired, or rather tired of living; she could no longer run, could barely stroll around the park. It was time to retire: there were only a few months left before she could enjoy a well-earned rest.

  She took the elevator straight up to her apartment without going into the lobby to pick up her mail, since the doorman finished at seven and locked up behind h
im. It took a minute or two to open the double lock on her apartment door, and as she stepped inside, she realized she had forgotten to activate the alarm when she left that morning. It was an unforgivably careless mistake, one she had never made before. She would have liked to attribute it to the fact that in recent weeks she had been overworked, to being distracted and in a hurry; but a small voice in her head, one that had become more insistent, more needling, told her she was losing her memory. Suddenly, she felt sure that someone had been in her apartment. She had heard that no alarm was really safe, that electronic gadgets could be used to disable them.

  Rachel Rosen did not much like her home. It had been her husband’s idea to buy this bleak, dated, high-ceilinged apartment. They had never got round to refurbishing it as they had once dreamed they would, and it was exactly as it had been thirty years ago, permeated with the chill breath of a mausoleum. As soon as she retired, she planned to sell, to move somewhere sunnier, like Florida, where no one needed central heating. Exhausted from a long day arguing with lawyers and juvenile delinquents, she turned on the hall light, set the briefcase on the dining table, and groped along the dark corridor to the kitchen, where she dropped the bag of groceries on the counter, then went to her room to take off her work clothes and change into something more comfortable. Fifteen minutes later she was in the kitchen, making dinner, wearing pajamas, a flannel dressing gown, and sheepskin-lined slippers. She never did empty the grocery bag.

  She sensed something behind her, a shadowy presence like a bad memory; she stood motionless, engulfed by the same fear she had felt in the garage. She tried to control her imagination—she did not want to end up like her mother, who had spent her last years locked in her apartment, never going out, convinced the Gestapo was waiting on the other side of the door. Old people get scared, she thought, but I’m not like my mother. She thought she heard a rustling of paper or plastic and turned toward the kitchen door. She could make out a shadow in the doorway, a blurred, bloated, faceless figure, moving slowly and awkwardly like an astronaut on the moon. A hoarse, terrible howl came from the pit of her stomach, surging up through her chest like a blazing fire. She saw the fearsome creature advance toward her. A second scream stuck in her throat, and she ran out of air.

  Rachel Rosen stepped backward, bumped into the table, and fell sideways, shielding her head with her arms. She lay on the floor, begging in a whisper for him not to hurt her, offering money and anything else of value in the house. Trembling, she crawled under the table and curled up, pleading and weeping, for the three never-ending minutes she was still conscious. She did not even feel the pinprick in her thigh.

  Friday, 10

  It was unusual for Bob Martín to still be in bed at seven thirty on a Friday morning, as he usually got up at dawn. He was lying on his back, his arms behind his head—the most comfortable position for him—watching the wan daylight streaming through the white window blind and fighting the urge for a cigarette. He had quit seven months ago, and now wore nicotine patches and went around with an acupuncture needle in his earlobe, given him by Yumiko Sato. But still he felt a craving for tobacco. During one of the meetings that had gone from being interrogations to friendly conversations, Ayani had suggested he try hypnotism—one of the psychological techniques that had made her husband famous—but Bob didn’t like the idea. He thought hypnotism was open to abuse, like in that movie where a magician hypnotizes Woody Allen and forces him to steal jewels.

  Bob had just made love to Karla for the third time in five hours—hardly an athletic feat, since it had taken him only twenty-three minutes in total. Now, while she was in the kitchen making coffee, he was thinking about Ayani, remembering the sweet scent of her skin (or rather imagining it, since he had never been close enough to her to catch it), her long neck, those honey-colored eyes with their sleepy eyelids, and the deep, lilting voice like a river’s roar or the motor of a tumble dryer. It had been a month since Ashton’s death now, and Bob was still finding excuses to visit the widow almost every day. This prompted sarcastic comments from Petra: she was losing respect for him, getting sassy. He needed to put her in her place.

  Rolling around in bed in the dark with Karla, he would imagine he was with Ayani. Both women were tall and slim, with a long face and high cheekbones; but the spell was broken every time Karla opened her mouth to utter a string of obscenities in the thick Polish accent that had once excited him but which he had quickly tired of. He felt sure that Ayani made love in silence—or perhaps purred like Save-the-Tuna, but there would be no outburst of Ethiopian obscenities. He did not want to imagine Ayani sleeping with Galang, as Petra suggested, still less about the mutilation she had suffered as a child. Bob had never seen a creature as extraordinary as Ayani. Just as the aroma of coffee reached his nostrils, the phone rang.

  “Bob, it’s Blake, can you come over to my place? It’s urgent.”

  “Has something happen to Amanda? To Indiana?” shouted the deputy chief, jumping out of bed.

  “No, but it’s serious.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  Blake Jackson was not easily agitated; so there had to be a good reason for his call. Two minutes later, having splashed cold water on his face and pulled on what clothes he could find, Bob raced to his car without saying good-bye, leaving Karla standing naked in the kitchen with a coffee cup in each hand.

  Arriving at Potrero Hill, Martín found the pink Atomic Cinderellas van parked outside. Blake Jackson was in the kitchen with Elsa Domínguez and her daughters, Noemí and Alicia. They were young, with pretty faces and strong, muscular bodies, but with none of their mother’s innocence and gentleness. The girls had started cleaning houses while still in high school, to help out with the family finances, and a few years later they were successful businesswomen. They found the clients, negotiated the contracts, and sent other women to do the cleaning; they did the end-of-month invoices, paid wages, and bought cleaning products. The women who worked for them ran no risk of being exploited by heartless bosses, and the clients did not need to worry about the legal status of their employees or translating their instructions into Spanish: they worked directly with Noemí and Alicia, who took responsibility for both the quality of the work and the integrity of their staff.

  Atomic Cinderellas had expanded in recent years, and now covered a wide area of the city; there was a waiting list for their services. A team of two or three cleaners generally visited a client’s house once a week, working so diligently that within hours the place was spotless. This was a service they had provided for Rachel Rosen at her home on Church Street. Until Friday morning, when they found her hanging from a ceiling fan.

  Alicia and Noemí told the deputy chief that Rachel Rosen had devised so many excuses not to pay on time that, tired of the monthly wrangling, they decided to withhold their services. They had gone that morning to collect outstanding checks for December and January and to tell her the Cinderellas would not be coming back. They had arrived at 7:00 a.m., before the doorman came on duty—his shift started at eight—but they knew the entry code and had a key to their client’s apartment. The heating was switched off, so the apartment was cold when they went in. They found it strange that the place was so quiet. Rosen was an early riser, and by this time she would usually be drinking tea, catching the morning news, dressed in a tracksuit and sneakers, ready for her morning walk in Dolores Park. Her route never changed: she crossed the footbridge at Church Street, power-walking for a half hour, stopping off at La Tartine on the corner of Guerrero and Eighteenth Street for a couple of rolls before heading home to take a shower and dress for court.

  Alicia and Noemí had wandered through the living room, the study, the dining room, and the kitchen, calling the judge’s name, then knocked on the door of her bedroom. When there was no reply, they plucked up the courage to go in.

  “She was hanging from the ceiling,” whispered Alicia, as though she was afraid of being heard.

  “Suicide?” the deputy chief asked.


  “That’s what we thought at first,” said Noemí nervously, “and we checked to see if she was still alive so we could cut her down, but it looked like she’d been murdered. I mean if you’re going to commit suicide, you don’t put duct tape over your mouth, right? So then we got scared. Alicia said we should get out. Then we remembered about fingerprints and stuff, so we wiped the door handles and everything else we’d touched.”

  “You contaminated a crime scene!”

  “Excuse me, but we didn’t contaminate nothing. We cleaned it all with damp tissues. You know, the disposable kind with disinfectant, we always have them with us.”