Her face grows blank. “I decided to keep it simple. I would invite him to my bed. Something he wouldn’t expect. I’d let him do what he wanted with me. And then I’d use the knife under my pillow. I would kill him, and then my son and I would leave this place and go home to Texas. Have a real life.” She looks at me, sad. “I suppose there are those who are good at killing, and those who aren’t. Or maybe it’s not that I was bad at killing. Maybe it’s just that he was so very, very good at it. I didn’t know that at the time, of course, but I’d learn soon.”
She fingers a small gold chain around her neck.
“He was surprised, that much was true. I told him I missed him being in my bed. I saw the lust light up in his eyes like a fire. I was prepared for him to be rough with me; that’s the only way he could enjoy it. He almost ripped my clothes off my body when he took me into my bedroom.” She continues to finger the gold chain. “I let him go on for a good, long time. It was as terrible as it had ever been, but what was a last few hours of that if I had a chance to end it forever?” She nods. “I wanted him good and tired. By the time he was done, one of my eyes was black. I had a fat lip and a bloody nose. He rolled his sweaty body off mine, onto his back, and closed his eyes while he sighed in satisfaction.” Her eyes grow wide as she relates what happened next. “Who would have known a human being could move that fast? Then again, perhaps he wasn’t truly a human being. The moment his eyes closed, my hand went under the pillow and came out with the knife. It couldn’t have been more than a second that passed before I had the point racing toward his throat.” She shakes her head again, in disbelief. “He caught my wrist an inch before that knife would have plunged into him. Caught it and stopped it dead. He was always so strong, stronger than anyone I’d ever known.
“He held my wrist there, and smiled that smile, and shook his head at me. ‘Bad idea, Patricia,’ he said to me. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to go.’” Her hands tremble a little. “I was so afraid. He took the knife away and then he beat me. He beat me good and long and hard. Knocked out some teeth. Broke my nose and my jaw. I could hardly keep conscious. I was going to pass out when he leaned forward and whispered in my ear, ‘Get ready to die now, breeder.’ And then everything went black.”
She grows silent. I am mesmerized by the motion of that gold chain as she twists it back and forth.
“I woke up in the hospital. I hurt so much. But I didn’t care, because I knew one thing: If I was still alive, that meant he was dead. I looked over and Peter was sitting next to my bed. When he saw I was awake, he reached over and took my hand. We just sat there for an hour, not saying anything.
“The sheriff told me what had happened a few hours later.” Tears come to her eyes. “It was Peter. He had heard my screams. He burst into the room just as Keith was about to cut my throat. He killed him. He killed his father to save me.”
She hugs herself, looks lost. “Do you have any idea of the kinds of emotions that go through you at something like that? After all those years and what I’d been through? The relief was almost unbearable. And then to find out that my son was my son, that in the end he chose me over his father.” Tears continue to run down her cheeks. “I was certain I had lost him forever. Excuse me for a moment.”
She stands up and totters over to a shelf where a box of tissues sit. She brings the box over, extracting one to wipe her eyes with as she sits back down.
“I’m sorry about that.”
“Don’t be,” I say to her. I mean it. What this woman went through, it’s unimaginable. Some would look at her with contempt for putting up with that abuse over so many years. For not being strong. I like to think I’m wiser than they are. Patricia dabs her eyes with the tissue and pulls herself together.
“I healed up, and we came home. It was a good time. Peter doted on me. Dinner was no longer an hour of silence, where no one spoke. We were…” Her voice trails off. “We were a family.” Her face falls, the grimness and bitterness seeping back in like a black mask. “It didn’t last long.”
Her hand goes back to the gold chain again. Twisting, turning. “He still went down into the basement every night. He’d spend hours down there. I’d never been allowed inside, didn’t know what he did in there. But I was scared. It was something he had done with his father, and part of me knew nothing good could result from it.
“Months went by with me worrying about that basement. But I didn’t do anything about it. I was—what is that term for ignoring a truth you don’t want to be true?”
“I think you mean denial,” James says.
“That’s it. I was in denial. Can you blame me? Keith, my longtime living nightmare, was dead. I had my son back. Life was good.” She rubs her forehead with a hand. “But I suppose that something inside me had toughened up somewhere along the way. Too much time went by, too many nights where I couldn’t get that basement out of my head. One day when he was at school, I decided it was time to go down and look.
“Keith had always kept his key to the basement door hidden under a lamp in his bedroom. He thought I didn’t know, but I did. So that day I went and got it, and I went to the basement door and unlocked it.
“I stood for a long time at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness. Wrestling with myself. Then I turned on the light and I went down those stairs.”
She stops speaking for so long that I am afraid she has lost sense of the here and now, that she is trapped in that past moment. I almost reach out to touch her arm when she begins speaking again.
“I waited for him to come home from school. When he came in the door, I told him that I’d gone into the basement. What I’d found. I told him that he’d saved my life and set me free, and that he was my son. So I wouldn’t tell. But I told him I could no longer let him live under my roof.
“I wasn’t sure if he would believe me, at first. About not telling what I’d found, I mean.” Her smile is bemused. “I suppose there was something, some part of him, that loved me. I don’t know if it was because I was his mother, or if it was because he felt that he needed something he could hold on to, something that would remind him he was still a human being. Whichever it was, he barely said a word. He packed up his things, grabbed a few items from the basement, kissed me on the cheek, and told me he loved me and understood—and walked out the door. I haven’t seen him since. It’s been almost thirty years.”
Tears are running down her cheeks again. She looks up at Don Rawlings. “When I read about that poor girl and saw that Peter was a suspect, I knew he had to have done it. It fit, you see. With what I found in the basement.” She wrings her hands. “I know I should have said something. Should have come forward. But I…he’d saved my life. He was my son. I know none of those things makes it right. It seemed right at the time, somehow. Now…” She sighs a sigh that seems to contain decades of exhaustion. “Now I’m old. And I’m tired. Tired of all the pain and secrets and nightmares.”
“What did you see in the basement, Patricia?” I ask her.
She looks into my eyes, fiddling with the gold necklace.
“Go and see for yourself. I haven’t opened that door for nearly thirty years. It’s time to open it now.”
She pulls the necklace I have been watching her twist up over her head. Attached to it is a large key. She hands it to me.
“Go ahead. Open that door. It’s time to let the sunlight in.”
54
I BELIEVE WHAT Patricia has said. That no one has entered through this door for a long, long time. The lock resists the turn of the key. It probably hasn’t been opened for almost thirty years. Alan works on it, alternating between being a picture of concentration and cursing like a mine worker.
“Ah…” he says, followed by the click of the lock. “Got it.”
He stands up and swings the door wide. I see a set of wooden stairs, leading down into darkness. For the first time, the question occurs to me.
“Patricia, this is California. This house didn’t come with this b
asement. Did Keith put it in?”
“His grandfather did.” She points to the left side of the door. “Do you see the discoloration on the wall there? Keith said a fake shelf on hinges used to hide the door. I don’t know why he ever took it off.” She is standing back, away from the opening to the basement. Afraid. “You’ll find that the stairway leads down to a walkway. The basement is not actually right underneath the house. Keith said his grandfather built it that way on purpose. Due to the earthquakes.”
“Have you been down there since the ’91 quake?” Jenny asks.
“I haven’t been down there since that day. Light is on the wall to the right. Be careful.” She heads back to the living room at a fast pace. Not a run, but close.
Jenny looks over at me, eyebrows raised. “That’s not good, Smoky. There’s a reason we don’t have basements in California. Reasons called ‘seismic events.’ It might not be safe down there.”
I think about what she’s saying. But only for a minute. “I can’t wait, Jenny. I need to see what’s in that basement.”
She looks at me for a second, and nods. “Me too.” A faint smile. “But you go first.”
I head down the stairs, followed by everyone else. The clopping sound of shoes on wood is muffled the farther down we go. I assume it is the dirt around and above us, natural soundproofing. It is cool down here. Cool, quiet, and alone.
It’s as Patricia said. At the bottom of the stairs, we find ourselves in a narrow hallway of concrete. Approximately twenty feet away, I can see a shadow in the shape of a door. It takes just a few moments to reach, and I see a light switch outside it. I turn on the light and all of us enter.
“Wow,” James says. “Will you look at all that?”
It is a large room, about five hundred square feet. Nothing about it is decorated or distinct. It’s a thing of gray concrete, stark lighting, and utilitarian furniture.
What had drawn James’s remark was what he saw against the far left wall.
I walk toward it, amazed. The wall is covered, ceiling to floor, with life-size professional diagrams of the human body. All precisely labeled, starting first with the exterior, a fully fleshed body. Then skin removed, showing the muscular system, followed by more diagrams showing the internal organs in detail.
I move closer to this wall, and in doing so notice a far wall, which had been obscured by the bad lighting. What I see on that other wall sends a jolt through my system.
“Everyone,” I say, “look at this.”
This wall had been painted white, so as to emphasize the black of the lettering on it:
The Commandments of the Ripper:
1. Most of humanity are cattle. You are of the ancient predators, the original hunters. Never let the morality of the cattle deter you from the mission.
2. It is never a sin to kill a whore. They are the spawn of the devil, and a boil upon the skin of society.
3. When you kill a whore, and you have moved from the shadows, kill her in the most ghastly way possible, as a lesson to her fellow whores.
4. Feel no guilt if you exult in the murder of a whore. You are from the ancient line, and you are a meat-eater. Your bloodlust is natural.
5. All women have it in them to become whores. Take a woman only to pass on the line. Never allow them to confuse your mind or heart.
They are breeders, nothing more.
6. If the teachings are passed on, they may be passed on only to a son,
NEVER a daughter.
7. Each Ripper must find his own Abberline. You must be hunted if you are to keep your senses honed, your skills sharp.
8. Until you find your Abberline, you must keep your work hidden from view.
9. Die rather than be caged.
10. The descendants of the Shadow Man are fearless. They satiate their needs without hesitation or compunction. Always strive to exemplify this. To seek out the calculated risk, the gamble that makes your blood sing.
11. Never forget that you descend from him—the Shadow Man.
“God damn,” Don whispers.
I’m inclined to agree.
“Look over here,” Alan says.
There are three rows of shelving in the room.
“More anatomy. All kinds of texts on Jack the Ripper.” He peers closer, pulls something off one of the shelves, opens it up. “I thought so.” He looks at me. “Journals.” He flips through the pages, stopping at one. He holds it out for me to see.
Taped inside are a series of black-and-white photographs, stretched out over a number of pages. They show a young woman bound to a table and gagged. The walls in the photo look like this room. I stop for a moment, walk around the shelves.
“Alan,” I say. He moves to me and I point to the table in front of us, then to the photo.
“Damn,” he says, his face tightening. “That’s right here.”
The series of pictures show the rape, torture, and evisceration of the young woman. They all have a ghastly “how to” look to them. As though the masked man in the photographs is delivering a seminar on suffering and depravity.
“Jesus,” I say. “How many of these are there?”
“Close to a hundred, I’d guess.”
I flip past the pictures to one of the written entries.
Peter is showing himself to be of the line, even at eight. He watched as I murdered the whore, taking photos and asking intelligent questions throughout. He was especially interested in the mechanics of the evisceration. I am happy to note that his vomiting problem, which has been gone for a year now, shows no signs of resurfacing.
I move along to another entry.
I brought Peter along on the hunt this time. It wasn’t a school night, and I feel it’s important that he begin to be more personally involved. He is ten, after all. I was pleased. He is gifted.
Side note—he was embarrassed when I stripped the whore down and he noticed that his penis had gotten hard. I explained the mechanics of this to him and forced the whore to pleasure him with her hand. He was fascinated and seemed to enjoy this. He thanked me afterward.
And more:
Peter asked me today how old I was when I killed my first whore. I hesitated to tell him the full truth of it. He is so filled with the strength of our line, I was afraid of revealing my father’s weakness to him. I feared he might begin to doubt the nobility of our blood. In the end, I told him all: How my father had hidden the secret of our lineage from me. How I had only discovered the truth through my own research of our genealogy. About my father’s weak denials when I confronted him with what I had found. How he and my mother had attempted to make me think I was crazy. I needn’t have worried about Peter. The look of adoration he gave me when I told him my tale of perseverance, of my search for truth and of the vengeance I exacted on my father, is something I will cherish forever.
“Christ,” Alan mutters. “It’s just like Patricia said. He started warping the kid early.”
“Never had a chance,” James remarks. “Not that it matters now. It’s been too long. He’s unsalvageable.”
I don’t respond. My ears are filled with a roaring noise, and I am dizzy. Electric shocks dance through my body. I have flipped to the last page in the book, and the signature I see there has my mind spinning in terror, rage, disbelief, shame, and betrayal.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, I think to myself.
I know it’s not.
I look up at the commandments painted on the wall, reading number seven again: 7. Each Ripper must find his own Abberline. You must be hunted if you are to keep your senses honed, your skills sharp.
“Smoky?” Alan’s voice is sharp, concerned. “What’s the matter?”
I don’t say anything. Just hand him the journal, pointing at the signature I had seen. Keith Hillstead, it was signed.
Hillstead.
Son Peter.
I knew who Jack Jr. was. And he knew me.
Intimately.
55
MONSTERS WEARING HUMAN masks, and acting
their parts to perfection.
Peter Hillstead has fooled everyone, including me. Worse, he has been with me in my moments of greatest vulnerability.
But there is something even more terrible, something that makes me want to vomit as I realize it. He has not only fooled me, used me, and violated me—he has also helped me. To his own ends, true, but still…The thought that some part of me is better for having met him makes me want to scream and puke and shower for a year.
“I know who he is,” I say, answering Alan’s question.
Shocked silence, followed by a babble of voices. Alan shushes them all.
“What are you talking about?”
I point at the signature on the final page of the journal. “Keith Hillstead. His son’s name is Peter. My shrink’s name is Peter Hillstead.”
Alan looks doubtful. “That could be pure coincidence, Smoky.”
“No. I can be a hundred percent certain if I can see photos of Keith and Peter Hillstead. But the ages match up.”
“God damn,” James mutters.
I head toward the stairs. “Come on.”
Patricia is still in the living room. “Ms. Connolly? Do you have a picture somewhere of Keith Hillstead? And of your son?”
She tilts her head, looking into my eyes. “You’ve found something, haven’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. But if I could see pictures of Keith and Peter, I could be sure.”
She lifts herself out of her chair. “I found out after he left that Peter had taken all the photos I had of him. I do have one of Keith. It’s buried at the bottom of a drawer, but I kept it to remind me what evil looks like. Hold on for a moment.”
She heads toward her bedroom, returning with an eight-by-ten photograph. “Here it is,” she says, handing it to me. “Handsome as the devil. Which makes sense, I suppose, since he and the devil were such good friends.”