Riptide

But Sandra had already ended the call.

She returned to her computer and checked the Ripperwalk site. She found three responses on the message thread she’d started.

Somebody with the screen name downinthedumps had posted, Just what we need, another suspect. Why does every newbie feel the urge to waste our time with a pet theory?

She wondered how he knew she was a newbie, until she noticed that her online identity, Jeneratrix, was credited with a grand total of one post.

The second respondent, ominously named AxMan, tried for humor. Edward Hare? He changed his name to Edward Scissorhands. A real cut-up. Could be our guy.

“Dork,” Jennifer muttered.

The third was a pedant named MSturbridgeMD. Are you by any chance thinking of William (not Edward) Hare, who partnered with William Burke? Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers, but they predated the Ripper case by 60 years.

At least the condescending MSturbridgeMD had taken her seriously. There were no other replies.

It appeared her Web inquiry was going nowhere. Maybe no one had ever heard of Edward Hare. Which meant no one had ever suspected him of being the Ripper. No one in more than a hundred years.

Until now.

eighteen

Jennifer was running late. She’d spent too much time online hunting down details on the Devil’s Henchman. The Web archives of the L.A. Times didn’t go back that far, and there was little information elsewhere. One site had a brief review of the crimes, specifying the number of victims-four, all female- and the condition of the bodies. Reading the summary, she thought of Mary Kelly and Carrie Brown.

On her way to the high school, she stopped at Richard’s apartment. He wasn’t there. On the stairs she ran into the manager, who informed her that her brother hadn’t been seen all day. “Good fuckin’ riddance. And he still hasn’t paid his rent, okay?”

She was starting to fear he had disappeared. He might have been scared off by her visit yesterday, when she told him there was damage to the cellar. Of course she’d said nothing about the bodies, and she hadn’t even known about the diary at the time.

But he might have known. If the family papers mentioned the crypt and the diary, Richard might have guessed that the earthquake would open up the weakest part of the cellar wall, the rebuilt section, exposing the bones and the book. He’d even mentioned a body in the cellar, though she had chalked it up to coincidence.

She wasn’t sure it was a coincidence anymore.

At six-thirty she arrived at the Venice High School gym. The meeting had been in progress for a half hour. She took a seat near the door.

More than a hundred people were seated in the bleachers. On a low, wheeled dais parked in the middle of the basketball court, a stout black woman who was Sandra Price paced and gesticulated. Her voice was loud enough to fill the hall without amplification.

“We are talking three homicides in the last eighteen months, people. Three cases still outstanding. No suspects, no persons of interest. Now I’m asking you, if there were three murders in Bel Air or Pacific Palisades, and they were still unsolved after all this time, don’t you think you’d be hearing about it?”

The audience erupted in whoops and yells. A chorus of churchgoers released a volley of amens.

Many attendees were teens, wearing gangsta garb, their faces sullen and hostile. The older people looked like aging hippies, with long gray hair, granny glasses and Che Guevara T-shirts. The sickly sweet aroma of pot wafted down from the higher tiers. At the far end of the bleachers, one solitary figure in a hooded sweatshirt sat silently, rocking back and forth.

“You know we would.” Sandra’s gaze swept the stands. “It would be on the local news, on talk radio, in the paper-everywhere. And the police would be doing something about it. But when it’s Dogtown or Skate Town or Ghost Town, no one cares. Everyone looks the other way. It’s someone else’s problem. The police don’t allocate the resources. They don’t prioritize us. They don’t give us what we need.”

Heads bobbed in agreement. Applause popped like firecrackers. Above the dais big flying bugs whirled among the lights.

“We had an earthquake and it was on the news night and day, every channel. You know how many people died? Zero. Not one single person. But when people are getting murdered around here, it doesn’t make the news…”

Behind her, Jennifer heard a husky baritone say quietly, “Check her out.”

“Tight little ass. But I can’t see her face. Could be a skank.”

“So? Do her doggy style. If she be fugly, you ain’t gotta look.”

With a start she realized they were talking about her. She flashed on a memory of San Francisco-the rainswept streets, the dark underpass, the faceless stranger throwing her down-

Slowly she crossed her legs.

“See that, bro? She’s covering up. She don’t want you poking around in her snatch.”

The two of them laughed.

“So that’s where we are, people.” Sandra was winding up a long harangue. “Too poor to get protection, too middle-class to attract any media attention.”

On cue, a bored photographer clicked off a few flash photos. He seemed to be the only member of the press in attendance.

“We’re not as sexy as Rampart or South-Central, and away from the canal district we’re sure as hell not as affluent as Westwood and Los Feliz.”

One of the creeps behind her started touching Jennifer’s hair. She jerked her head away.

“We get lost in the shuffle. And that’s why we need to get together as a community and take action, put pressure on the authorities, make our voices heard.”

She stopped, giving the audience a chance to be heard right now. More amens blew through the room. A tall man in gray dreadlocks raised a fist and yelled, “Right on!” The sweatshirted figure rocked faster.

Someone was touching Jennifer’s hair again. She whirled to face him. “Quit it, asshole,” she hissed.

The guy and his friend couldn’t be older than seventeen. They laughed at her-stupid, giggly laughter-but at least the hand was withdrawn.

“All right, then. Now I know we want to be fair and balanced, as a certain right- wing news operation says”-boos from the crowd-“so I’ve invited representatives of the LAPD’s Pacific Area station to address these issues. Two officers have kindly consented to join us. Sergeant Casey Wilkes and Detective Roy Draper, please come on down and face the music.”

She said it with a humorous flourish that drew a few halfhearted chuckles, sounding like dry coughs. The rest of the crowd was unnervingly quiet.

Jennifer’s own relief surprised her. It felt good to have allies in the room.

Casey and Draper stood up from the front row of bleachers and made their way to the stage. From her vantage point she hadn’t seen them, but it made sense that they would be here. Casey, as watch commander, often pulled public-relations duty. And Draper was a homicide cop.

She wished the crowd hadn’t fallen so silent, though.

Casey, in uniform, was first to speak. He observed that police resources were stretched thin all over, which was why residents of affluent communities like Bel Air typically hired private security patrols.