Ripper

  “What the hell is she going to care!”

  “I imagine it must kind of tickle with the mustache when . . . Well, you know what I’m saying.”

  “No, Petra, I have no idea what you’re saying. My relationship with Mrs. Ashton is limited to her husband’s murder investigation.”

  “Well, if that’s true, I’m proud of you, boss. It wasn’t a good idea for you to be involved with a suspect.”

  “You know very well she’s no longer a suspect. Richard Ashton’s death is linked to the other cases—the similarities with the other crimes are undeniable. Ayani is no serial killer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Jesus, Petra!”

  “All right, all right, don’t get annoyed. But can I ask why you broke up with her?”

  “No, you can’t, but I’m going to answer anyway. We were never together in the way you’re suggesting. And that’s the end of this absurd interrogation. You got it?”

  “Sure, boss. Just one more question. Out of curiosity. How come it didn’t work out with Ayani?”

  “She’s physically and emotionally traumatized, and she has issues when it comes to . . . to love. The day Elsa Domínguez came to tell you about the dogfights, and you called me, I was with Ayani. We’d eaten dinner at her place, but after the food, instead of having a romantic moment like I’d hoped, she put on a long documentary about genital mutilation and told me all the things she’s had to suffer because of it, including two operations. She never had sexual relations with Richard Ashton—that was laid out in the marriage contract. Ayani married him for financial security, and he married her to make people envious, so he could wear her like a fancy watch.”

  “But I can’t believe Ashton would have stuck to the terms of the contract when they lived together,” said Petra. “And that’ll be why they fought so much.”

  “That’s what I think, although she didn’t tell me that. I understand Galang’s role now—he’s the only man Ayani truly allowed to get close to her.”

  “Like I told you, boss. Hey, you want a coffee? I can tell you spent the night here again. You got raccoon eyes. Go home and get some rest, and if there’s any news I’ll tell you right away.”

  “I don’t want any coffee, thanks. I’m starting to think whoever killed Keller in Napa isn’t behind the five murders in San Francisco. It’s just a hunch, but it could be that Ryan Miller killed Alan Keller out of jealousy and copied the Wolf’s methods to throw us off the scent. Amanda could have told him any details that weren’t in the press. My daughter’s up to her eyes in this, and she’s got a soft spot for Miller. God knows why, must be that dog of his.”

  “If Amanda had been speaking to Miller, we’d already know about it.”

  “You sure? That girl could make fools out of all of us.”

  “I doubt that Miller would have gotten rid of Keller in such an unmilitary way, or left a trail of evidence behind him. He’s a smart man: trained to be stealthy and secretive, and to carry out the toughest missions with a cool head. I just don’t think he’d incriminate himself in such a stupid way.”

  “That’s what Amanda thinks,” the deputy chief admitted.

  “So if it wasn’t the Wolf or Miller, who could have killed Keller?”

  “I don’t know, Petra. And I don’t know who’s responsible for Indiana’s disappearance, either. Miller is still the logical suspect. I’ve put Samuel Hamilton on to checking an idea of Amanda’s: Staton, the Constantes, Ashton, and Rosen all worked with children. It’s a clue that could lead us to the Wolf.”

  “Why did you ask for Hamilton’s help?”

  “Because he can investigate without using the resources of the department, which are at capacity. And because he’s experienced. I got a good feeling about the guy.”

  In their various cities around the globe, the Ripper players, including Jezebel, had dropped everything to devote all their energy to studying the cases at hand, each using his or her particular skills. They stayed in constant contact with their cell phones and got together on Skype whenever they came across some new clue, often in the middle of the night. As the job was so urgent, Abatha started to eat so that she would have enough energy, and Sir Edmond Paddington got up the courage to leave his room—which he had been closeted in for years on end—to go and talk in person with an old retired Irish policeman from New Jersey who was an expert in serial killers. Meanwhile Esmeralda and Sherlock Holmes, in Auckland, New Zealand, and Reno, Nevada, respectively, scoured all the available information again, from the bottom up. It was Abatha, in the end, who found the key that would open Pandora’s box.

  “As Sherlock Holmes explained to us in a previous game,” said Jezebel, standing in for Ryan and Pedro, “all the bodies except for Rachel Rosen’s—which was found three days after her death—presented rigor mortis, allowing time of death to be calculated. We know for sure that five of the victims died around midnight, and we can assume the same is true of Rosen.”

  “What use is that to us?” asked Esmeralda.

  “It means the killer only strikes at night.”

  “Perhaps he works by day,” said Sherlock Holmes.

  “It’s because of the moon,” Abatha cut in.

  “How do you mean, because of the moon?” asked Esmeralda.

  “The moon is mysterious; it signals the movement of the soul from one incarnation to the next,” the psychic explained. “It represents femininity, fertility, imagination, and the murky waters of the unconscious. The moon affects the menses and the tides.”

  “Make it quick, Abatha—let’s get to the point,” Sir Edmond Paddington interrupted.

  “The Wolf attacks under the full moon,” she concluded.

  “You’re rambling, Abatha. Explain yourself.”

  “Permission to speak?” asked Kabel.

  “Hench, I order that from now on you speak whenever you have something to say,” said the games master impatiently. “Don’t wait to ask permission.”

  “Thank you, mistress. Have you noticed there’s only one murder each month? Maybe Abatha’s right.”

  “All the crimes took place on the night of a full moon,” said Abatha, more assertively than usual, as she’d had half a doughnut.

  “You sure?” asked Esmeralda.

  “Let’s see,” said Jezebel. “I’ve got almanacs from 2011 and 2012 here.

  “The Wolf struck on October 11 and November 10 of last year, then January 9, February 7, and March 8 this year.

  “Full moon!” Jezebel cheered. “There was a full moon on every one of those nights!”

  “Do you think we could be dealing with some kind of creature that’s half human, half beast, and metamorphoses when there’s a full moon?” Esmeralda was excited at this new possibility.

  “Me and Pops studied lycanthropy when we got bored of vampires,” Amanda said. “D’you remember, Kabel?”

  “The wolf-man is both more aggressive and more intelligent than any other lycanthrope,” recited Kabel. “He has three forms he can inhabit: human, hybrid, and wolf. He’s antisocial, lives alone, and prowls by night. In hybrid or wolf form he’s carnivorous and wild; but in his human form he can’t be told apart from other people.”

  “That’s a fantasy,” said Colonel Paddington. “We’re not playing anymore: this is real.”

  “In the hospital I was admitted to last year there was a guy who used to turn into Spiderman,” Abatha offered. “They had to keep him tied down so he wouldn’t jump out the window. Our killer thinks he’s a wolf-man.”

  “You mean he’s crazy,” said Amanda.

  “Crazy?” said Abatha. “I don’t know—they say I’m crazy too.”

  There was a long silence while the players digested that piece of information. It was interrupted by Esmeralda, asking one of her typical questions.

  “What happened on the full moon in December?”

  Bob Martín panicked for a moment when his daughter called him at five in the morning with a story about the wolf-man and full moons.
The girl was even stranger than they thought; the moment had come to call a clinical psychiatrist. But a few moments later, when he compared the dates of the crimes with the phases of the moon, according to the explanation she reeled off at him, he said he would look through police files for December 10 of the year before—a full moon—and the rest of that week. The whole thing was starting to get so fantastical that he hardly dared delegate it to one of his detectives—besides, they were busy with the pending investigations and the couple of FBI agents, who had somewhat complicated the smooth running of the Personal Crimes Division. So he asked Petra Horr. Thirty-five minutes later, his assistant put what he had asked for on his desk.

  On the night in question, there had been various deaths from unnatural causes in San Francisco: fights, accidents, suicide, an overdose. In other words, the usual tragedies. But one case caught the attention of the deputy chief and his assistant—an accident that had happened at the only campsite in the city, described in the typically curt language of a police report. On the morning of December 11, the few campers staying at the Rob Hill Campground complained to the attendant that there was a smell of gas around one of the trailers. As no one answered when they knocked on the door, the attendant broke in—and there he found the bodies of two tourists, Sharon and Joe Farkas from Santa Barbara, California, who had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. No autopsies were carried out, since cause of death seemed clear: an accident that happened because the couple was drunk and didn’t notice a butane gas leak from the kitchenette. There was a half-emptied bottle of gin in the trailer. The police managed to track down a brother of Joe Farkas’s, from Eureka, who arrived two days later to identify the bodies. The man wanted to take the trailer, but it was confiscated by police until the case file could be closed.

  Bob charged one of his detectives with making a background check on the victims, finding Joe Farkas’s brother and talking to the Santa Barbara police; then he ordered his team of forensic investigators to comb the trailer for anything that might help them. He immediately called his daughter to thank her for the lead about the couple who died under the December full moon.

  “It’s another execution, Dad, just like the others. The trailer was a gas chamber for the Farkases.”

  “Alan Keller was poisoned.”

  “That’s a form of execution too. Socrates, for example.”

  “Who?”

  “A Greek guy who died way back. They made him drink hemlock. And the Nazis used cyanide to kill a bunch of generals who fell out of favor. But none of that’s going to help us find Mom.”

  “Kidnapping is a federal offense. There are police looking for her all over the country, Amanda. Turn on the TV, and you’ll see her picture on all the channels.”

  “I’ve seen it already, Dad. Some people have already called to say they’re thinking of us, and Elsa’s come to stay with us until they find Mom. Did you question her patients?”

  “Of course—that’s all routine procedure—but nobody can tell us anything. None of them are suspect. Answer me honestly, sweetheart. Do you think Indiana’s gone off with Ryan Miller? Both of them have disappeared.”

  “Why don’t you get it, Dad! The Wolf’s got her!”

  “Right now that’s just a theory—but I’m giving it due consideration.”

  “It’s three days till the next full moon, Dad,” said the girl. “The Wolf’s going to strike again.” A sob choked her as she spoke.

  Bob promised to keep her up-to-date on every step of the investigation. When she answered that she would look for her mother by herself, he assumed she was referring to Ripper, and felt a vague sense of relief, as though the heavens had come to his aid. He was starting to take those kids seriously.

  Wednesday, 4

  The deputy chief kept his promise and called his daughter at 7:00 a.m. to let her in on the new details uncovered by Samuel Hamilton. Ed Staton, the security guard who’d had a number of accusations lodged against him for physical abuse of children under his charge at Boys’ Camp, and who was fired in connection with a boy’s death in 2010, had got work shortly after that in a school in San Francisco, thanks to a letter of recommendation from the judge Rachel Rosen.

  The woman—known as the Butcher, for the draconian sentences she handed down to the minors who appeared in her court—was frequently invited to speak at reform schools, some of which had received hundreds of complaints about mistreatment of their pupils. California, straining under the weight of a burgeoning prison population, subcontracted its youth correctional services out to other states, and thanks to Rosen, Boys’ Camp and other similar private facilities enjoyed a continuous influx of clients. She couldn’t be accused of taking kickbacks or bribes; her remuneration appeared in the form of her public speaking fees or as gifts—theater tickets, cases of liquor, holidays in Hawaii, Mediterranean and Caribbean cruises.

  “There’s something else you’ll be interested to know, Amanda,” said the deputy chief. “Rachel Rosen and Richard Ashton knew each other professionally. The psychiatrist did psychological assessments on kids referred by the courts and Child Protective Services.”

  “And I suppose the Constantes took in kids that Rosen sent them.”

  “That wouldn’t be the judge’s responsibility,” her father explained, “but you could say there’s an indirect link between them. Get this, Amanda. In 1997 a complaint was made against Richard Ashton, and then quickly hushed up, for using electroshock therapy and experimental drugs when treating a minor. He had some dubious methods, to say the least.”

  “You need to investigate the Farkases, Dad.”

  “We’re on it, sweetie.”

  You should be more awake by now, Indi—you’re obviously very sensitive to the medication. And you could show me a little more gratitude, you know: I try to make you as comfortable as possible in the circumstances. It’s no Hotel Fairmont, I’ll admit, but you’ve got a decent bed and fresh food. The bed was already here, it’s the only one; the rest are stretchers for the wounded, just a piece of canvas between two poles. I brought you another box of pads and some antibiotics for that fever of yours. A fever that’s starting to interfere with my plans, by the way: you’re not really drugged out, and it’s high time you woke up. I’m only giving you a cocktail of painkillers, sedatives, and sleeping pills to keep you calm. The dosages are perfectly normal, nothing that should lay you out like this.

  Make a bit more effort to be present. How’s your memory? Do you remember Amanda? She’s a curious child. And curiosity is the root of all sin, but also of the sciences. I know a lot about your daughter, Indiana—for example, I know that right now she’s dedicating herself to finding you. And if she’s as clever as everybody thinks she is, she’ll find the clues I’ve left for her, but she’ll never find them in time. Poor little Amanda, I do feel sorry for her: she’s going to blame herself for this for the rest of her life.

  You should appreciate how clean you are, Indiana. I’ve taken the trouble to give you a sponge bath, and if you were a little more cooperative I could wash your hair too. My mother used to say that virtue begins with hygiene: clean body, clear mind. Even when we were living in cars or trucks, she always arranged things so we could take a shower every day: for her that was as important as having enough to eat. We’ve got a hundred barrels of water here that have been sealed since World War II. And you won’t believe it, but there’s also a large, beautifully carved wooden frame, with a beveled mirror, not a single scratch on it. And the blankets are from that period too. It’s amazing that they’re still clean and in a reasonable state—you can tell they’re not moth-eaten. Trust me, I’m protecting you from insects too, and I’m not going to let you get lice or catch some infection. There must be all kinds of horrible insects around here, especially cockroaches, even though I fumigated the room properly before bringing you here. I couldn’t fumigate the whole place, of course: the grounds are huge. There are no rats, because the owls and cats deal with them. There are hundreds of owls and cats that have li
ved here for generations. Did you know that outside, there are wild turkeys everywhere, too?

  After bathing you, I put your beautiful nightgown on you, the one Keller gave you and that you were keeping for a special occasion. And what occasion more special than this one? I had to throw your pants away, though—they were all bloodied, and I can’t spend my time washing clothes. Did you know I’ve got a key to your apartment? I have the underwear that disappeared from your closet—I wanted a memento of you, and took them, having no idea they’d be so useful to us now. Life is a funny thing! I can get into your apartment whenever I want—the alarm your ex-husband installed is a joke. In fact, I was there on Sunday, and I went down to your father’s place and took a look at Amanda, who was curled up asleep with her cat. I thought she looked pretty well, although I know she’s been worried and so she hasn’t been to school—with good reason, poor girl. I’ve got a key to your treatment room too, as well as the password to your computer—Remember I asked you for it to get movie tickets, and you gave it to me without batting an eyelid. You’re very careless, although I admit you didn’t have any reason to suspect me.

  I’m going to have to gag you again. Try and get some rest. I’ll come back tonight, because I can’t come and go at any old time. You won’t believe it, but it’s morning outside. The walls of this room are tarpaulins made from some strange material, rubber or black canvas or something. They’re heavy but flexible, and airtight—that’s why you think it’s aways night here. The roof is a little collapsed in some parts of the fortress, and a little light gets through in the day, although it doesn’t get as far as here. You’ll understand that I can’t give you a lamp—it would be dangerous. I know that the hours are dragging, and you wait for me anxiously. You’re probably afraid that I’ll forget you, or that something will happen to me and I won’t come back, and then you’d die of starvation, tied to your bed. But no, Indi, nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll be back, I promise. I’m going to bring you some food, and I don’t want to have to force it down you. What would you like to eat? I’ll get you whatever you want.