Ripper

  “If it is a wolf,” said Amanda, “we’ve identified the killer’s signature in each of the murders except Alan Keller’s.”

  “Though at first glance they look very different, all of the crimes have a similar MO,” said Esmeralda. “Again, with the exception of Keller—why?”

  “There’s no wolf at the Keller crime scene, and the murder took place some distance outside San Francisco—the area mentioned in Celeste Roko’s prediction, which the killer has stayed within until now,” said Amanda. “There’s something else, too: Keller’s the only victim who was beaten before being killed, although, like the others, he didn’t defend himself.”

  “I’ve got a hunch that the killer may be the same,” said Abatha. “But the motive may be different.”

  “But we don’t have a motive for any of the murders,” interrupted Colonel Paddington.

  “Even so, we should listen to Abatha,” Amanda interjected. “Her instincts are almost always right.”

  “It’s because I receive messages from the Beyond,” murmured Abatha. “I communicate with angels and spirits. The living and the dead are with us constantly, we are as one substance—”

  “Well, if I lived on nothing but fresh air, I’d probably see visions and hear voices too,” Esmeralda interrupted, worried that Abatha would lead them down some esoteric path and derail the investigation.

  “So why don’t you?” asked the psychic, who was convinced that the human race would evolve to a higher state if everyone stopped eating.

  “That’s enough,” the games master said, calling them to order. “May I remind you that sarcastic comments are forbidden in the rules of Ripper.”

  “Intuitions aren’t facts,” grumbled Colonel Paddington.

  “Our killer vented his rage on his victims, like Jack the Ripper and other famous murderers we’ve studied,” said Sherlock, “but he did so after he’d killed them. There’s a message there. He left not only a signature but a message.”

  “You think so?”

  “Elementary, my dear Esmeralda. The ways in which the victims were executed is also a message; the killer isn’t choosing a means of death at random. What we’re dealing with is a highly organized, ritualistic killer.”

  “He plans every step of the crime, including his getaway,” the colonel mused admiringly. “I suspect he will have had military training. He’s a formidable strategist, and would make a first-class general.”

  “But he’s not,” said Amanda. “He’s a cold-blooded murderer.”

  “It might not be a man,” interrupted Abatha. “I dreamed we were dealing with a woman.”

  Kabel requested permission to speak, and once it was granted, he brought the players up-to-date on the Alan Keller investigation. From the angle of the blow to the face, forensics determined Keller had been struck by a closed fist, punched by a powerful, left-handed attacker somewhere between five-eleven and six-two, which corresponded to the size of the boot prints found on the tiled floor; this ruled out the possibility of the killer being a woman. The autopsy revealed that death occurred at least half an hour before the arrow was fired into the body. From the bright pink tinge of Keller’s skin, cause of death was initially assumed to be cyanide, something later confirmed by the toxicology screening.

  “Could you explain that, Kabel?” Amanda asked.

  “It’s a little complicated, but I’ll simplify. Cyanide is an efficient, fast-acting metabolic poison that stops cells from absorbing oxygen. It’s as though all the air was suddenly sucked out of the body. The victim can’t breathe, experiences dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and loss of consciousness, and may suffer seizures before dying.”

  “But why does the skin become pink?”

  “It’s a chemical reaction produced when cyanide binds to hemoglobin—to red blood cells. The blood in the veins turns a vivid red, like paint.”

  “So the blood on Keller’s shirt cuff was bright red?” asked Esmeralda.

  “Not exactly. The nosebleed clearly occurred before Keller ingested the poison. There is evidence of some bleeding after the cyanide poisoning, but very little. There was no bleeding from the arrow wound, because by then he was dead.”

  “Do we know how the poison was administered?” asked Sherlock.

  “Traces of cyanide were found in a water glass next to the victim and also in a glass on the nightstand in his bedroom. The killer put a pinch of white powder, barely visible to the naked eye, at the bottom of the glasses to be sure that if Alan Keller didn’t ingest the poison with his usual nightcap of whiskey, he would do so during the night.”

  “Cyanide is particularly toxic,” Sherlock Holmes explained. “The slightest trace can cause death within a matter of minutes. It can be absorbed through the skin, even by inhalation—so the killer would have had to be very careful.”

  “I’ve seen movies where spies have cyanide capsules so they can commit suicide if they’re about to be tortured,” said Esmeralda. “How would someone get their hands on it?”

  “It’s easy. It’s used in metalworking, in mining silver and gold, and in the electroplating process for silver, gold, copper, or platinum. The killer could have bought it online or from any chemical supplies store.”

  “Poison is a woman’s weapon. It’s the coward’s method. Men don’t use poison. When we kill, we do it face-to-face.” This observation by Colonel Paddington was greeted with a roar of laughter, but the colonel insisted. “A strapping, six-foot-two woman in army boots? She must be built like an Olympic weightlifter. A woman like that wouldn’t need to use poison, she could have smashed the victim’s head in with another punch.”

  “What if the person who punched Keller isn’t the same person who killed him?” suggested Abatha.

  “Too far-fetched, too many coincidences,” said the colonel. “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s possible,” Sherlock interrupted, “but we’d need to reexamine the evidence, bearing in mind what Abatha has just said.”

  Eight days earlier, the two young whiz kids at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Lab had waited in vain for Professor Alarcón to show up for their scheduled meeting. As soon as he got the call from Indiana letting him know Alan Keller was dead, Pedro did a U-turn and drove straight back to San Francisco. On the way, he made several attempts to reach Ryan. He arrived at the loft just as Ryan stepped out of the shower and was getting dressed, having earlier taken Attila out for a run and had a conference call with a general at the Pentagon. As soon as the metal grille on the elevator opened, before Ryan could ask why he’d come back, Pedro blurted out the news.

  “What d’you mean, Keller’s dead? How? When?”

  “Indiana called an hour ago, but she couldn’t talk long. Her ex-husband, the cop, came on the line, so I didn’t find out any more. All I know is that they’re treating the death as suspicious. I’m sure she phoned me so I’d tell you. What the hell’s wrong with your cell phone?”

  “It got wet—I need a new one.”

  “If this is murder, Ryan, then you’re in it up to your neck. You were with Keller last night—you went down to Napa with a gun and, if I may quote you, ‘shook him up a little.’ This puts you in the enviable role of prime suspect. So where were you all night?”

  “You accusing me of something?” Ryan growled.

  “I’m here to help, man. I wanted to get here before the police.”

  Ryan tried to control the rage welling inside him. The death of his rival came at the perfect time, and he certainly wasn’t sorry Keller was dead, but Pedro was right: he was in deep shit. He had motive and opportunity. He explained to his friend that he’d arrived at the vineyard in Napa around sunset the previous day—probably some time around six thirty, though he hadn’t checked his watch. He had driven through the front gate, which was open, then about three hundred yards down a driveway until he came to a house with a circular fountain outside. He parked outside the door and got out, taking Attila on a leash because the dog needed to pee. He’d knocked on the door about t
hree times before finally a Latina woman opened it and, wiping her hands on her apron, told him Alan Keller was not home. The conversation ground to a halt then because a white Labrador showed up, wagging its tail, and the moment it saw Attila, started barking. Attila anxiously began tugging on the leash, and the woman closed the door in Ryan’s face. He went and put Attila in the van, then came back and rang the doorbell, which was answered almost immediately, and through the narrow crack the woman said in broken English that Señor Keller would not be back until the evening and asked if he wanted to leave his name. Ryan simply said he would phone later. Meanwhile, both dogs were still yowling, one inside the house, the other in the truck. He’d decided to wait for Keller, but clearly he could not do so here; the woman was not about to invite him in, and he thought it would look strange if he simply waited in the van, so he drove back out onto the street.

  Ryan found a nearby parking spot where he could clearly see the gates to the vineyard, lit by two old-fashioned lanterns.

  “The gates were still wide open,” he told Pedro. “Keller was just asking to be burgled—I mean, he didn’t take any security precautions, even though apparently he has a bunch of art and other valuable stuff.”

  “Go on,” said Pedro.

  “I did a quick reconnoiter. There’s thirty feet of brick wall either side of the gates, more for decoration than security, and other than that the property’s only protected by rosebushes. I noticed they were already in bloom, even though it’s only the beginning of March.”

  “What time did Keller get back?”

  “I waited for two hours. His Lexus pulled up outside the gates, and Keller got out to collect mail from the mailbox, then got back in the car, drove in, and closed the gates behind him, using a remote. As you can imagine, I wasn’t about to give up when I ran into a bunch of rosebushes. I left Attila in the van because I didn’t want to scare Keller, and I walked right up the driveway to the house—I didn’t try to hide, to get the jump on him, nothing like that. I rang the doorbell, and Keller himself opened. And—you’re not going to believe this, Pedro—you know what he said? He said, ‘Good evening, Mr. Miller, I’ve been expecting you.’ ”

  “The maid obviously told him a punk matching your description had been asking after him. You’re hard to miss, Miller, especially when you’ve got Attila with you. Keller knew you. Anyway, maybe Indiana had warned him you’d threatened to take matters into your own hands.”

  “In that case, he wouldn’t have opened the door—he’d have called the police.”

  “You see? He wasn’t such a wimp after all.”

  Ryan briefly explained that he had followed the man into the living room, refused to sit down, declined the whiskey offered him, and told Keller what he thought of him, told him that he’d fucked up his chance with Indiana, that she was with him now, and that Keller had better back off or he would regret it. If Keller was scared, he hid it well, calmly replying that it was up to Indiana to choose. “May the best man win,” he said mockingly, gesturing to the door, and when Ryan didn’t move, Keller reached out to grab his arm. Bad idea.

  “It was reflex, Pedro. I didn’t even think, I just whacked him in the face.”

  “You punched him?”

  “Not hard. He staggered a bit and he got a nosebleed, but I didn’t knock him down. I felt terrible. What the hell’s happening to me, Pedro? The tiniest thing these days, and I completely lose it. I didn’t used to be like that.”

  “Had you been drinking?”

  “Not a fucking drop, man, I swear.”

  “What did you do afterward?”

  “I apologized—I helped him to an armchair and poured him a glass of water. There was a jug of water and a bottle of whiskey on the sideboard.”

  Keller wiped his bloody nose on his shirtsleeve, took the glass of water, and set it on a table by the chair, gestured again for Ryan to leave, and told him there was no reason to say anything to Indiana about the whole unseemly episode. According to Ryan, that was all there was to it. He went back to his van and headed for San Francisco. He was tired and, when it started to rain, blinded by the reflection of the streetlights on the road, since he wasn’t wearing his contact lenses. He thought it best to park and sleep in the van for a while.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Pedro. I used to be able to keep a cool head under machine-gun fire, and now a five-minute spat leaves me with a blinding headache.”

  He pulled off the road, he explained, stopped the van, climbed into the backseat, and fell asleep almost immediately. He woke up toward dawn, just as the overcast sky began to pale, with Attila pawing at him gently, desperate to get out. He opened the door of the van so the dog could get out and relieve himself, then drove to the nearest McDonald’s he could find open, bought a burger for Attila and ate breakfast and came back to the loft where Alarcón had been waiting for him.

  “I didn’t kill him, Pedro.”

  “If I thought you did, I wouldn’t be here. But you left a nice trail of evidence, including your fingerprints on the doorbell, the glass, the water bottle, and God knows where else.”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I have left prints? I had nothing to hide. Apart from a bloody nose, Keller was fine when I left.”

  “You’ll have a job convincing the cops.”

  “I’m not planning to try. Bob Martín hates my guts, and the feeling is mutual. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to arrest me for Keller’s death—and maybe for all those other murders recently, if he can make it stick. He knows Indi and I are friends, and he’s got a suspicion we used to be together. Whenever we see each other, you could cut the atmosphere with a knife. Sometimes we run into each other at the shooting range, and he’ll get pissed because I’m a much better shot than he is, but what he really can’t handle is the fact that his daughter loves me. Amanda, who’s always hated her mother’s boyfriends, was happy when she found out we were together, and Bob Martín can’t forgive me for that.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll settle it my own way, like I always do. I’ll find out who killed Keller before Martín locks me up and closes the case. I need to disappear.”

  “Are you nuts? Running away will just make you look guilty. We’d be better off finding you a good attorney.”

  “I’m not planning to go far. I’ll need your help, though. We’ve got a couple of hours before they identify my prints and come looking for me. I need to copy everything on my computers to a flash drive and then wipe the hard drives, because that’s the first thing they’ll seize, and there’s a lot of confidential information there. It’s going to take a while.”

  In the meantime he asked Pedro to get him a boat with a single berth and a decent engine, but not from a dealer, who might be suspicious about him paying cash and call the police: it needed to be secondhand, but in good condition. He would also need enough fuel in jerry cans to last several days and two prepaid cell phones so they could keep in touch, since his cell wasn’t working and Pedro would need one just to talk to him.

  Ryan opened a hidden wall safe and took out several wads of bills, credit cards, and driver’s licenses. He gave Alarcón $15,000 in stacks of hundreds, fastened with elastic bands.

  “Jesus!” said Pedro with a whistle of admiration. “I always suspected you were a spy.”

  “They pay me well, and I don’t spend much.”

  “The CIA or the United Arab Emirates?”

  “Both.”

  “You rich?” Alarcón asked.

  “No. And I don’t want to be. What’s in this safe is pretty much every cent I have. I’ve never been interested in money, Pedro—that’s one thing Indiana and I have in common. The only thing I’ll worry about if we do get together is us not winding up as a pair of hoboes.”

  “So what are you interested in?”

  “Adventure. I want you to take everything that’s in the wall safe here before the police impound it. We’re likely to have a few expenses. If anything happens t
o me, give the rest to Indiana, okay?”

  “No dice. I plan on keeping the lot—and no one’s ever going to find out, because all this money has to be illegal or counterfeit, right?”

  “Thanks, Pedro, I knew I could rely on you.”

  “If anything does happen to you, Ryan, it’ll be because of that arrogance of yours. You’ve no sense of reality—you think you’re Superman. Aha! I see you’ve got five different passports here, all with your mug shot on them—”

  “You never know when they might come in useful. And yeah, I might be arrogant, but I’m very careful. It’s like guns, Pedro. I don’t like to use them, but I feel safer just having one.”

  “If you hadn’t been a soldier, you’d have been a gangster.”

  “Probably. I’ll be on the quay at Tiburon in three hours, and I’ll wait there until two p.m. You need to be careful not to leave a paper trail when you’re buying the boat. Oh, and I’m gonna need you to make my pickup truck disappear too. All this shit you’re doing for me makes you an accessory. You got a problem with that?”

  “Nope.”

  Monday, 19

  Two weeks later, when the fearful hand of Celeste Roko’s grisly prophecy finally gripped his family, Deputy Chief Martín would kick himself for not heeding his daughter’s repeated warnings earlier. Until now, as Amanda kept him informed of the discoveries she and the other Ripper players had made, her father had simply dismissed this as five kids and an old man playing online games, until finally—reluctantly—he had to agree that they were right. The bloody murders plaguing San Francisco were the work of a serial killer. Until the death of Alan Keller, the work of the homicide detail had consisted of analyzing evidence and trying to make a connection between the killings. This was different from their usual approach, which began with looking for a motive—but it had been impossible to guess what had provoked the murderer to choose such an array of victims.