Michael Prescott: Riptide

“And that may be as good an explanation for Parkinson as any. He got to fool the whole department-people he worked with every day. We all felt sorry for him because of his illness, and secretly he was laughing at us. He was the one in the know, and the rest of us were in the dark.”

“How about now? Who’s in the know?”

Draper didn’t follow. “Everybody knows Parkinson was the killer-”

“But they don’t know he was Jack’s great-grandson. They don’t know about the diary or all the rest of it, do they?”

He got it now. “The only ones who know, or ever knew, are you, me, Casey, Parkinson, and Maura.”

“And now there’s no proof.”

“True. But you could tell your story anyway. Some people will believe you. Harrison Sirk probably would. He could get a book deal out of it, cut you in on the profits. Or…”

“Yes?”

“Not every case has to be solved. The world has done without a solution to the Ripper murders for better than a hundred years.”

She thought about this throughout the next few weeks, as March bled into April. She was living in a residential hotel in Marina del Rey and visiting Richard daily at St. John’s Hospital, where he was undergoing mandatory psychiatric treatment. Forced to take his meds, he had regained a measure of lucidity. He was eating regularly and gaining weight. He would never be the man he was, but she hadn’t lied when she said he could have a new start. And maybe someday he could be moved to a halfway house and resume something close to a normal life. Maybe.

Casey was back on the job. If it bothered him that she was seeing Draper, he kept it to himself.

Only once did he mention the fire. “I heard what you did for me,” he said in a serious tone. “Trying to get me out, rather than saving yourself. That was a standup thing to do.”

“The smoke clouded my brain. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“That’s it, Pocket-Size. Keep messing with me.”

“It’s what I do. And don’t call me Pocket-Size.”

Media interest in the case was intense for a few days, then predictably died down. Harrison Sirk tried to buttonhole her at Maura’s memorial service. Jennifer told him to fuck off.

Draper arrested his prime suspect in the murder of Marilyn Diaz. A search of the man’s house turned up a rough draft of the threat message. He confessed. His motive was just what Jennifer had predicted. He had made advances and had been rebuffed. It was such a little thing, but large enough to end a woman’s life.

A real estate agent from Maura’s office told Jennifer that her parcel of land was worth one and a half million dollars. Jennifer put it on the market. She just might buy the bungalow in the Valley that Maura had always talked about.

For now, she was still near the sea. She walked on the beach one April evening and thought one last time about Draper’s words. He was right. There was no need to tell the world about the diary, no need to reopen the case and refocus the media’s cameras on her family. No need to revisit the past. The past was dead. It was dust and ashes. To cling to it was to die inside. Life moved on.

When the sun was gone and the sky was deep purple fading to black, she walked out onto Venice pier. At the end of the pier, she reached into her tote bag and brought out a rusty tin box.

Parkinson had indeed left the diary in the house to burn, but the box had protected it. The pages, though scorched, were readable. She had found it in her salvage hunt and had told no one, not even Draper. Probably it wasn’t good to start off their relationship with a lie, even if only a lie of omission. But he was a cop, and he might insist that the diary be booked into evidence, and then the whole story would come out.

Alone on the pier, Jennifer leaned over the railing and dropped the tin straight down, well away from the pilings with their tangled fishing lines. It hit the water with a splash, bobbed on the waves, and drifted away into the dark. Perhaps it would be carried out to sea, or perhaps, like Marilyn Diaz, it would be caught in a riptide and returned shoreward. She would let time and chance decide.

She hoped, though, that it would be lost in the ocean’s distant depths. Not every case had to be solved, as Draper said. Let Jack the Ripper remain a mystery. Let him be remembered not as what he was, not as Edward Hare with his motherless childhood and his lurid dreams of blood, but as what the world wanted him to be-a tall man in a top hat and black cloak, striding down an alley, retreating forever into the fog.