Ripper
“But as soon as he hears she was with me, he shows up with a ring and proposes—another of his little tactics to buy himself time. Well, if he marries her, it’ll be over my dead body! I’m going to protect my woman whatever it takes.”
“You know, I kinda think the Navy SEAL approach isn’t going to work out in this case,” said Pedro.
“You got a better idea?”
“Yeah, spend your time convincing Indiana instead of threatening Keller. I’m going to make myself another maté and head off to the university. You want some coffee?”
“No, I’ve already had breakfast. I’m going to do my Qigong and take Attila out for a run.”
An hour later Pedro was headed into Palo Alto, driving at a leisurely pace down I-280, listening to the sultry voice of Cesária Évora and enjoying the landscape of rolling green hills, as he had done every day for some years now, and always with the same soothing effect on his soul. He had no classes that Friday, but he needed to go in to meet two researchers he was working on a project with, a couple of whiz kids who, with fearlessness and imagination, would often rapidly arrive at the same conclusions that he only reached with considerable effort and research. As a discipline, AI belonged to the younger generation, who had technology wired into their DNA, Pedro thought with a sigh—not to some guy like him, who should be thinking about his retirement. He had spent a rough night on Ryan’s sofa and had only had a couple of matés to keep him going. He’d get some breakfast as soon as he reached Stanford, he decided, where he could eat like a king in any of the cafeterias. His cell phone blared out the Uruguayan national anthem, and he answered using the car’s hands-free system.
“Indiana? I was just about to call to fill you in on Ryan. It’s all cool—”
“Pedro! Alan’s dead!” Indiana interrupted, sobbing so hard that she couldn’t continue.
Deputy Chief Martín came on the line and told Pedro that they were phoning from his car, explaining that twenty minutes earlier Indiana had had a call from the Napa Police Department, informing her that Alan Keller had been found dead at his vineyard. They refused to give any details other than that they were treating it as a suspicious death. They’d asked her to come and identify the body—although this had already been done by the servants—and offered to send a car to pick her up, but Bob had decided to drive her there himself; he didn’t want Indiana to have to deal with this alone. His tone was clipped and precise, and he hung up before Pedro could find out any more.
That morning, Indiana had only just stepped out of the shower and was still naked, her hair wet, when the call came from the Napa Police Department. She stood paralyzed for thirty seconds, then, wrapping a towel around herself, raced down to her father’s house, screaming his name. Blake Jackson had grabbed the phone and called the one person he could think of in his state: his former son-in-law. In the time it took Indiana and her father to dress and make coffee, Bob Martín had already shown up, along with another officer in a patrol car. He and Indiana took off at top speed, sirens wailing, heading straight up Route 101.
As he drove, Bob called one of his colleagues at Napa Police, Lieutenant McLaughlin, who had no doubt that they were dealing with a murder; the cause of death ruled out both accident and suicide. He explained that they had received the 911 call at 7:17 a.m. from one María Pescadero, who described herself as a maid working in the house. He had been the first officer to arrive and had made a cursory examination of the scene before sealing it off and interviewing the two Mexican workers—María and Luis Pescadero, legal immigrants who had worked at the vineyard for eleven years, initially for the previous owner and more recently for the victim. They spoke little English, but McLaughlin explained that a Spanish-speaking officer was on his way and would help out with the interview. Bob offered to act as interpreter and asked that the whole property, not just the house, be cordoned off, then asked who would be taking away the body. The lieutenant replied that it was a pretty peaceful county, which rarely had to deal with cases like this, and they did not have a pathologist or a medical examiner, so usually a local doctor would sign the death certificate. If there were any doubts as to cause of death, and an autopsy was required, they called on someone in Sacramento.
“We’ll do everything we can to help,” Bob told the lieutenant. “The San Francisco Personal Crimes Division is at your disposal. We have all the necessary resources. Alan Keller belonged to an important family in San Francisco and was temporarily residing at the vineyard. If you like, I can give orders to have my forensics team come and collect the body and gather evidence. Has the Keller family been notified of the death?”
“We’re doing that now. We found Indiana Jackson’s name and phone number stuck to the fridge with a magnet. The Pescaderos had instructions to call her in case of an emergency.”
“I’m just turning onto Route Twenty-Nine, Lieutenant—I’ll be there soon.”
“I’ll be here, Deputy Chief.”
Indiana explained that Alan was always worried about his health, took his blood pressure every day, and was convinced that at his age he could have a heart attack at any moment; he’d also had a recent health scare because of some lab error, which was why he had her phone number in his wallet and on his fridge.
“Fat lot of good it would have been, given that your cell phone is always lost or the battery is dead,” Bob remarked, but realized he ought to go easier on Indiana, who’d been crying since they set off. His ex-wife clearly loved Keller more than the guy deserved, he concluded.
At the vineyard they were met by Lieutenant McLaughlin, a man of about fifty who looked Irish, with gray hair, the red nose of a dedicated drinker, and a paunch that hung over his belt. He moved like a seal out of water, but he had a quick mind and twenty-six years’ experience on the force. With much patience and little glory, he had risen through the ranks to the position he now held in Napa, where he could lazily work out the rest of his time until retirement. The presence of the deputy chief of San Francisco’s Personal Crimes Division did not intimidate him. For his part, Bob, eager to avoid problems, treated him with some deference.
McLaughlin had already cordoned off the house and stationed police cars around the perimeter of the vineyard to stop anyone coming in. He had left Luis Pescadero in the dining room and his wife in the kitchen, so they had no opportunity to agree on their stories before they were interviewed. He allowed only Bob to come with him to the room in which the body had been found, preferring to “spare the little lady from having to see such things,” as he put it, forgetting that this was the same woman he had asked to identify the body. They would have to wait for the forensics team sent by Petra Horr, which was already on its way.
Alan Keller was slouched in a comfortable, tobacco-colored armchair, head lolling against the chair back like someone caught taking a nap. Only his face—the split lip, the traces of blood—and the arrow buried in his chest betrayed that he had died a violent death. Bob studied the body and the rest of the scene, dictating his initial observations into a pocket recorder while McLaughlin watched from the doorway, his arms folded over his belly. The arrow had penetrated deeply, pinning the corpse to the back of the armchair, indicating that the shooter was either an expert archer or had fired from close range. The bloodstains on the shirt cuff had come from Keller’s nose, Bob thought; he was surprised at how little the arrow wound had bled, but he could not inspect the body until the forensics team arrived.
In the kitchen María had made coffee for everyone, and sat alternately stroking a white Labrador and Indiana’s hand. For her part, Indiana could barely open her eyes, they were so swollen from crying. She was convinced she’d been the last person—aside from his killer—to see Alan Keller alive. After an early dinner in San Francisco, he’d dropped her off at home, and they’d made plans to meet up on Sunday after Amanda went back to school. Keller had headed back to the vineyard, a trip he was happy to make, since there was little traffic at night and he listened to audiobooks as he drove.
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sp; Bob Martín and Lieutenant McLaughlin interviewed María Pescadero in the library, where Keller’s collections of artifacts and jade were kept locked in plate-glass display cabinets set into the walls. María had turned off the alarm in the library so that McLaughlin could make his initial inspection of the scene, but warned the officer not to touch the display cases or the collection, which were protected by a separate alarm system. Keller constantly got his security codes mixed up, and often an alarm would go off because he couldn’t work out how to switch it off. This was why he had nothing to do with the house alarm, only the one in the library, where he also had motion sensors and CCTV cameras installed. McLaughlin had already viewed the tapes for the previous night, which showed nothing unusual; no one had come into this room before María opened it for the police.
The woman turned out to be one of those perfect witnesses who simply answers questions and does not speculate: excellent memory, no imagination. She told Bob that she and her husband lived in a little cottage on the grounds, ten minutes’ walk from the main house. She managed the kitchen and the other household chores while her husband took care of repairs and acted as caretaker, gardener, and chauffeur. They got on well with Keller: he was a generous boss who paid no attention to detail. The dog belonged to her and her husband and had lived here all its life; it had never been much of a guard dog, however, and now, at the age of ten, was finding it difficult to walk. The dog spent most of its time sleeping—on the porch in summer, in its kennel in winter—so there was no way of knowing when the killer had entered the house. At around seven the previous evening, María’s husband had brought in the logs and stacked them next to the fireplaces in the living room and in Keller’s bedroom; then they had locked up the house without setting the alarm and left, taking the dog with them.
“And did you notice anything unusual last night?”
“From our cottage, you can’t see this house or the entrance to the vineyard. But yesterday afternoon, just before Luis brought in the logs, some man showed up, wanting to talk to Señor Keller. I told him the master was not here. He didn’t give his name—he left.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“I’ve never seen him before.”
María explained that this morning, she had arrived at the big house at 6:45, as usual, to make a breakfast of coffee and toast for her boss. She stayed in the kitchen, but opened the door to the hall because Keller liked to be woken up by the dog, who clambered arthritically onto the bed and slumped down on top of him. A moment later, María had heard the Labrador howling.
“I went to see what was going on, and I found the master in the armchair in the living room. I felt sorry for him, sleeping there like that with no blanket and the fire out, he must have been freezing. . . . Then when I came closer I saw . . . I saw . . . and I went back to the kitchen, called Luis on his cell, and then I dialed nine-one-one.”
Sunday, 11
While Alan Keller’s body was lying in the morgue waiting to be examined by Ingrid Dunn, the dead man’s siblings, Mark and Lucille, were doing everything in their power to hush up this shocking incident that smacked of gangsters, underworld connections, and God knows what else the “artist” of the family was mixed up in. Indiana, calmer now after her dose of aromatherapy, cinnamon tea, and meditation, had started planning a memorial service for this man who had played such an important role in her life—since there would be no funeral in the immediate future. After being misdiagnosed with prostate cancer, Keller had written an advance directive making it clear that he did not wish to be kept alive by artificial means, that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered over the Pacific. He had made no provision, however, for the humiliating process of an autopsy, or lying frozen in a morgue for months on end until the circumstances of his death had been definitively established.
The forensics team that Deputy Chief Martín had put at Lieutenant McLaughlin’s disposal arrived in Napa en masse, and collected an uncommon amount of evidence from the crime scene and the surrounding areas. On the soft, damp earth of the patio and the garden they found tire tracks and footprints, and there were animal hairs in the doorway that did not match the Pescaderos’ Labrador; on the doorbell, the door, and in the living room, they discovered fingerprints that, once those living on the property had been eliminated, might be used to identify any intruders. The tiled floor showed tracks from muddy shoes—based on the prints, they seemed to be well-worn combat boots of the kind that could be bought in any army surplus store and that were popular with young people. There were no signs of forced entry, so Bob assumed that Keller had known his killer, invited him in. The stains on his shirt indicated that most of the blood had come from his nose, as the deputy chief had thought, and had got there by simple force of gravity while the victim was still alive.
In her preliminary report, Ingrid Dunn pointed out that Keller must have been dead for some time when he was shot with the arrow, since there was no blood spatter. The arrow had been fired straight on, from a distance of about five feet, using a small crossbow of the kind used in sports and hunting—small by comparison with other models but, given the shape, difficult to conceal. Had the victim been alive when the shot was fired, he would have bled profusely.
María Pescadero’s description of the person who had come asking for Keller on the afternoon of the shooting was as recognizable as if she had shown Bob a photo of Ryan Miller, a man for whom he had little respect, but one who clearly loved Indiana. María’s account mentioned a black high-suspension van with oversize tires, a weird dog covered with scars and bald patches, a tall, heavyset man with a military buzz cut and a limp. It all fitted.
Indiana was incredulous at the suggestion that Ryan had been to Keller’s house, but she had to accept the evidence; there was nothing she could do to stop her ex-husband getting a search warrant for the loft apartment and sending half his department out to look for the suspect, who had now disappeared. According to Pedro Alarcón and the various members of the Dolphin Club who had been interviewed, Ryan frequently traveled for his work—but they could not explain where he had left his dog and his van.
When she heard the news, Elsa Domínguez moved into the Jackson house to take care of the family, cook comfort food, and be there through the long litany of visits from people offering Indiana their condolences—everyone from her colleagues at the Holistic Clinic to Carol Underwater, who arrived with an apple pie and only stayed five minutes. Feeling that Indiana was in no fit state to go back to work the following day, Carol offered to telephone her patients and let them know. Everyone agreed, and Matheus Pereira said he’d put a note on the door of Treatment Room 8, explaining that it was closed as the result of a bereavement and would reopen the following week.
Blake Jackson had spent the past two days with his former son-in-law and had more than enough material to feed the morbid curiosity of the Ripper players; his granddaughter, meanwhile, was plagued by guilt. More than once she had imagined a long, slow death for her mother’s lover and called on the mystical powers of Saint Jude to eliminate him, never suspecting the saint would take her prayers literally. She was waiting for Keller’s ghost to come to her in the night, looking for revenge. She felt all the more guilty because of the excitement this new crime stirred in her: here was another challenge for Ripper. By now, grandfather and granddaughter both accepted that they had been bested by astrology: Celeste Roko’s predicted bloodbath had become an indisputable fact.
Saturday, 17
As soon as the house was quiet again and her mother—who had taken on the role of a grief-stricken widow, without having had the time to get married—had finally stopped crying, Amanda convened a session of Ripper. The least that they could do to appease the ghost of the unfortunate Keller—who was coming for her with an arrow planted in his chest—was to find out who had fired the shot. Alan Keller had been the love of her mother’s life, as Indiana had put it between sobs, and his tragic death was an affront to the whole family. Amanda told her buddies e
verything she knew about the Case of the Killer Crossbow, and asked them to help her find the real culprit as a personal favor to her, and to stop Ryan Miller having to pay for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Sherlock Holmes suggested they go through all the available information. After a detailed examination of the crime scene photos obtained by Kabel, which he had enlarged on his computer, he announced that he had discovered something important.
“The bottle of liquor in the fridge of the former alcoholic Michael Constante was labeled CHEr ByK, which means ‘Snow Wolf’ in Serbian,” explained Sherlock. “Wolves are mentioned in the book that Richard Ashton’s wife got in the mail two days before he was murdered. Criminal psychologists looked for clues in the novel, but I think the clue is the title itself: Steppenwolf. The logo on the baseball bat in the Ed Staton murder shows the Red Wolves of Arkansas State University.”
“Abatha said it had to be a message of some sort,” Amanda reminded them.
“It’s not a message or a clue—it’s the killer’s signature,” said Colonel Paddington. “The signature means something only to him.”
“But surely in that case he’d have left his signature at all the crime scenes,” Esmeralda interrupted. “Why not do it in the case of the Rosens or with Keller?”
“Hang on a second,” said Amanda. “Kabel, call my dad and ask him about the crystal figurine the judge received in the mail after the murder.”
While the kids carried on speculating, Blake Jackson phoned his ex-son-in-law, who would take a call from Blake any time except when he was in the bathroom or in bed with a woman. Bob told him that the Swarovski figurine was a dog. “Could it have been a wolf?” asked Jackson. Bob agreed it could have been: it had looked like a German shepherd with its head raised, as though howling at the moon. It was one of a series that had been discontinued in 1998, making it more valuable. Judge Rosen had probably bought it on the Internet, though the deputy chief could find no trace of the transaction.