Michael Prescott - Riptide

“Well, I had assumed you knew… Surely you’ve been informed… But then I suppose you might not have been. He was never named as a suspect.”

Her throat was dry. “A suspect in what?”

“This is very awkward.”

“Tell me.”

He took another drink. “There was a series of murders in Venice and the surrounding area in the late 1970s. Women and girls, found mutilated, eviscerated with almost surgical skill. Four in all, as I remember. Back in the day, it was the fashion to append a nickname to a serial killer. This one was the Devil’s Henchman.”

“I’ve heard that name,” she whispered.

“It was taken from a rather undistinguished 1949 B-picture that happened to be playing at the Fox Venice Theatre, the old revival house, when the first murder occurred. The killer was believed to roam the neighborhood on foot. At least, no vehicles were ever witnessed in the vicinity of his crimes. And no one ever got a look at him. He was a faceless figure, a boogeyman haunting the night.”

Like Jack the Ripper, she thought.

“The case attracted considerable notoriety at the time. The police believed the culprit was a white male in his late twenties to mid thirties, mentally ill, with some medical training, who resided in Venice or nearby. A number of suspects were considered.”

“And my father was one of them?”

“I’m afraid so, yes.” He waved a doughy hand. “It was all very preliminary. His involvement never made the news. I know about it only because I researched the subject for a book I considered writing. But I gave it up.”

“Why?”

“Because there was no ending. The Devil’s Henchman was never apprehended, never identified. The case remains unsolved.”

“After my father died…did the killings stop?”

“Actually they had stopped some months before.”

“And there were no more, after his death?”

“No. But that could, of course, be merely a coincidence. There are a great many coincidences in life.” He peered at her over his glass. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”

“It’s all right.”

“Given your line of work, I thought you would be aware… It was rather stupid of me, though. The case is decades old, and you would have no reason to know anything about it.”

“I know about it now.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself. There was never any evidence linking Aldrich Silence to the crimes. It was purely a matter of his fitting the profile. And he was far from the only one to do so. In Venice there is never any shortage of…well…”

“Lunatics?”

He flushed. “Perhaps I had better say nothing further. I fear I’ve gotten our meeting off to a most uncomfortable commencement.”

She was thinking of her mother. Had she known? She must have. If the police had come asking about Aldrich, she would have been interviewed. She was the only one who could establish an alibi. If there was an alibi. And if there wasn’t…

Her mother never said anything. Never even hinted at it, not once in all the years after Aldrich’s death.

His death. A suicide. Had the pressure of being a suspect in a murder investigation driven him into the tool shed with a gun in his hand?

Or was it guilt?

“Now tell me, Jennifer-why would a research project involving Venice’s history inspire you to study up on a man who victimized Whitechapel whores twenty years before Venice even existed?”

“I live in a very old house in Venice,” she said slowly, “one that dates back about a hundred years. I’ve found some things hidden in the house that suggest the original owner may have committed crimes. Murders. I know it sounds stupid, but the crimes might be similar to Jack the Ripper’s. And so I thought…”

“That old Jack might have resided at your address, back in the day?”

“I told you it sounds stupid.”

“On the contrary, it’s most intriguing. But what things have you found in the house to set you on the Ripper’s trail?”

She hesitated. “Human remains.”

“Ah. The plot thickens. Females?”

“Apparently.”

“A century old?”

“They may be.”

“Brought to light by Poseidon’s fury, I presume?”

“What?”

“The earthquake, my dear. Poseidon was the god of seismic events.”

“Oh. Yes, it was the quake.”

“So you have forensic evidence of a homicidal maniac at work in Abbot Kinney’s Venice. How Grand Guignol. But as you surely realize, a proclivity for acts of violence against the fairer sex is not unique to our man Jack. Your killer might have been anybody.”

“Well, there are…other possible connections.”

“Pray tell.”

“I’d rather not. At least not right now.”

His fixed smile had taken on the quality of a grimace. She took a certain malicious pleasure in withholding morsels of information from this man’s snapping jaws. She couldn’t entirely escape the suspicion that he’d known very well that the news about her father would throw her off balance.

Sirk produced a dissatisfied sigh that segued into a wheeze. “Very well. I shall contain my curiosity-for the time being. Patience, however, is not among my very short list of virtues.”

She believed him. He was only an obese silver-haired raconteur, but when she looked at him, she saw a shark scenting blood.

“What I’m mainly interested in,” she said, “is any information you might have on murders in the Venice area around 1908 or 1910-that general time frame.”

“That’s easily answered. I have no information at all. As far as I know, there was never any suspicion of a serial killer at work in Venice, or anywhere in the Los Angeles area, at that time.”

“Would you know about it, if there had been?”

“Naturally. It’s my life’s work. I know all the dark corners of this city’s past.”

“Well, then I guess I’ve taken up your time for nothing. Sorry about that-”

“No need for apologies. And no need to rush off, either. My company isn’t so appalling as all that, now, is it?”

“Certainly not,” she lied.

“I may not be able to fill you in on evil doings in turn-of-the-century Venice, but I can answer any questions about old Jack.”

“I have a stack of books that will give me those details.”

“Have you read them?”

“Not yet. I’ve looked at some photos and a timeline, that’s all.”

“Then let me give you a proper introduction to the Ripper. It’s the least I can do, after you’ve come all this way.” He leaned back in his chair, hands folded on his lap. “When you think of Jack the Ripper, what’s the image that comes to your mind?”

“I suppose…a man in black, wearing a top hat, maybe a cape, creeping along some alley in the fog.”

“Very good. A most evocative visualization. And entirely inaccurate. Jack the Ripper wore neither a top hat nor a cape. Such accoutrements would have stood out altogether too obviously in London’s East End, a neighborhood not known for its well-dressed habitues. Most likely he wore a deerstalker hat or perhaps a bowler-what Americans call a derby.”

Sirk himself was American, Jennifer thought, but apparently he didn’t think of himself as one.

“The murders took place in street corners and courtyards, not in alleys. And fog? Not a single one of the Ripper’s canonical murders occurred on a foggy night.”

“Canonical?”

“The ones that are indisputably his. No one can agree on when the Ripper started killing. The conventional wisdom is that he killed five, his last victim being Mary Kelly in November of 1888. But some people aver that Jack’s career continued until as late as 1891. There are even a few fanciful souls-now this will interest you-who claim he relocated to the United States in that year. They credit him with the murder and mutilation of a certain Carrie Brown, an aged and rather down-at-her-heels prostitute in New York City.”