Jaclyn the Ripper (11 page)

Now she flipped channels on the remote, annoyed that in the thirty-one years since she'd been gone, she could find nothing interesting on the television. The endless succession of talking heads was banal, and how many explosions from wars in the Mideast could one watch before that, too, became boring? She wondered about the paradox: In 1979, there had been only a dozen channels; in 2010, there were hundreds; logically, one would've expected more variety. Not so.

She saw headlights reflected through the living room windows, then heard a car pull in the driveway. She dropped the remote, picked up the razor-sharp Wüsthof and ran for the front of the house, her little feet whisking on carpet, then tile. She slipped into the coat closet off the foyer, took a deep breath and waited for the key in the front door.

The kitchen door opened instead.

“Hi, honey, I'm home,” Heather announced.

Good, bloody Christ, doesn't anyone use their front doors anymore?
Jaclyn heard the rustle of bags placed on kitchen counters. The element of surprise was crucial, so she wondered if she should go after the bitch now or wait. The problem with surprise was that inevitably one missed the foreplay of the chase, the delicious thrill of witnessing a victim's helpless terror. Regardless, she waited.

“I got tacos from Baja Fresh. Why don't you open some wine, and we'll eat in the family room?”

Jaclyn squeezed her thighs together and enjoyed playing the voyeur to Heather Trattner's last, unguarded moments. Unawares, she touched herself with the butt of the knife, released a ragged sigh. Soon, Heather would be annoyed, then uncertain and apprehensive, then—

“Michael . . . ?”

A pause.

Heather started unloading her bags, their rustle irritating and unusually loud, designed to bring a response from somewhere in the house. She stopped, listened.

“Michael . . . ?”

A profound silence.

“You're not home.” Heather exhaled heavily and went through her purse. “Where the hell are you, Michael?”

A tiny, electronic beep resonated from the kitchen, which Jaclyn didn't understand until the cell phone in her pocket started ringing, and she realized with horror that Heather was calling her husband.

Jaclyn slapped repeatedly at the phone, dug in her pocket with both hands, her knife clattering to the closet floor. Frantic, she got the phone out, but it went on ringing, shattering the silence and giving her away. Finally, she opened it. The ringing stopped. She held her breath and stared at the backlit display. Then a small, anxious voice:

“Michael? Did I hear your phone . . . ?”

Jaclyn felt her heart thudding.

“Are you in the house . . . ? Michael . . . ?” She paused. “For God's sake, Michael, I'm talking to you! What is wrong with you?”

Jaclyn flipped the phone shut, held her breath again, waited for normalcy, for Heather to resume her busy work in the kitchen. Instead, the phone rang again.

And again.

Cursing, she opened and closed it and killed the ringing, but too late. She was reaching for the knife and coming out of the closet when Heather walked into the foyer, saw her and screamed.

Heather ran back toward the kitchen. Jaclyn went after her, dove at
her in the kitchen archway, but missed. Heather pushed a chair between them, then hurled a jar from the island that glanced off Jaclyn's head, but she was immediately up again, grinning at the violence, this the overture of her favorite ballet.

Sobbing with fear, Heather bolted for the family room, but a quicker Jaclyn caught her trying to go out the French doors. Screaming hysterically, she turned to defend herself, but Jaclyn feinted and kicked her hard in the stomach. She doubled over. Jaclyn hammered her in the head with the butt of the knife, and she went down.

Jaclyn stood over her, took huge breaths and swallowed an overflow of saliva. Her body tingled with an electric warmth. Her nipples were hard against the sweater and her groin moist. Did she smell of sex or was she imagining that faintly bittersweet, pungent odor?

Meanwhile, the TV droned on softly, a lady in a chef's costume icing a white cake with a French vanilla glaze, smiling into the room, blind to the scene unfolding before her.

Dazed, Heather stirred.

Jaclyn grabbed her by her reddish blond hair, snapped her head back and held the knife to her throat.

Heather started to resist.

“No, no, no.” Jaclyn pressed on the knife and pinpricked her neck. Heather felt a trickle of blood run down her chest, whined fearfully and went limp. “Please, love, don't swoon on me,” whispered Jaclyn, “not when we have work to do.”

Heather looked at her blankly and didn't move.

“If you do as I say, you'll live. If you don't, they'll discover your lovely body somewhat obscenely rearranged.”

Heather nodded that she understood, her red-rimmed hazel eyes wide and dull. “What have you done with Michael?”

Jaclyn cocked her head and smiled. “We don't have to worry about Michael anymore.”

Heather began crying—yet softly, so as not to upset this monster who had a knife, who radiated a messianic glow.

A half-hour later, they were at Heather's desktop computer on the secretary desk in the kitchen, a terrified Heather working the mouse, Jaclyn behind her with the knife.

“On the television these people were going on about this phenomenon that they called the Internet, and at Starbucks most of the customers were staring at screens with light dancing on their faces, so there must be something to it. . . . I'd do it myself except I've been out of touch, and what's more, I love seeing housewives of a certain station being forced to do someone's else's bidding.” She chuckled.

“But, but what do you want?”

“Are you daft, Heather? I want you to find Amy Catherine Robbins.”

“I'm sorry,” she said helplessly. “I mean, I'm not very good at this stuff. I can do email, but that's about it.”

“Look at the screen, you twit,” said Jaclyn impatiently.

Heather obeyed.

Jaclyn pointed with her knife. “That says ‘search,' does it not?”

Heather nodded.

“Then
search
.”

Heather Googled the name, and in less than three seconds, 970,000 results came up, most of the first ten highlighting the name Amy Catherine Robbins in Web sites about H. G. Wells, mentioning her as his second wife. Heather stared at the screen and had no clue what to do next.

“Well?”

“There's nine hundred and seventy thousand references.”

“Then hadn't you better get started?”

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“She's somewhere in San Francisco. I want to know exactly where.”

Heather refined her search, and this time got only 516,000 results, the first being the Web site of a pediatrician named Amy Chang. Helpless, Heather started crying again.

Jaclyn sighed impatiently, surprised herself with a twinge of sympathy, although she couldn't imagine ever being so helpless. “Why on earth must you cry? That never changes the way things are, don't you understand?”

Confused, Heather blinked up at her through her tears as if asking for a reprieve. Jaclyn wondered why she didn't just end it right then, knowing in her bones that this pathetic, privileged housewife would be of no use to her. But she couldn't just yet; she wanted to give Heather a chance; she wanted to be
reasonable
. Right then she realized that she, too, was acting like a woman and seemed powerless to stop herself.
Bloody hell.

“Why don't you try another reference,” Jaclyn hissed, “while you still have fingers on your hands . . . ?”

Heather gulped and went back to the search engine. Jaclyn spied the name H. G. Wells on the screen and—forgetting herself—bent over Heather's shoulder for a closer look. She was reading the result's brief description when Heather slammed the mouse into her face and shoved her hard.

Jaclyn hit the wall, lost her balance and fell, knocking the flat screen off the desk. She was scrambling to get up when Heather swung the chair and hit her in the head. Jaclyn went down again, the knife flying from her hand. She was on her hands and knees feeling for it when Heather kicked the knife away, lifted the chair again.

Jaclyn rolled just before the chair smashed into the floor and splintered. She caught Heather by an ankle and jerked her feet out from under her.

Heather landed on her back, her head smacking the tile. She gasped with pain, yet managed to get up. Unsteady, she staggered, recovered her balance, reached for another chair, but Jaclyn had found the knife.

She brought it up with all her strength and drove it between Heather's legs.

Heather shrieked and fell, writhed in pain, knew in a flash that she would die, and her hands instinctively clawed for salvation at some unseen force above. Then she went limp and began choking on her own blood.

Jaclyn straddled her form and watched her die, imagined that the knife buried between her legs was an extension of her own body. Indeed, she felt at one with Heather—beautifully connected in pain and death, for how else could one explain the ecstasy, the utter release? She
laughed low and in her head, heard the melody from that long-lost music box.
Penny. You lovely little whore.
Her excitement waned; her breathing slowed. She closed her eyes and smiled nostalgically. For one beautiful moment, she no longer felt like a woman.

 

The kitchen lights had startled Jaclyn. A little flip of the switch, and the entire kitchen was bathed with a diffused illumination that had brought on a giggle of surprise. She was used to working in the darkness. Now she appreciated the brightness and felt a deep satisfaction from her “assignation” with Heather, whom she was cutting up in the stainless-steel kitchen sink.

She'd found a box of “Hefty” one-zip storage bags in the pantry. She had most of Heather's body parts removed and bagged—the head was washed and clean and quite lovely on the dish rack—except she wasn't sure exactly what to do with Heather. Granted, the torso was perfect in that it reminded her of Venus de Milo, but, alas, Venus had already been done—no thanks to some Greek artisan from the second century
B.C.
Jaclyn frowned and put the knife down, frustrated. Butchering Heather Trattner had become busywork. No matter what she did with the remains, she was no closer now to finding Amy Catherine Robbins—hence, Wells—than she had been when she'd run from the Getty Museum.

She glanced at the secretary desk. The computer had shut itself off, its monitor broken on the floor, a greenish liquid-crystal fluid seeping from behind the screen. No help there. After she disposed of Heather, perhaps she should return to Starbucks, observe the customers for a while and pick up a gentleman who seemed comfortable with his computer.

She went back to the torso and gazed at its breasts, fascinated that they were so shapely and alluring even in death. Always the surgeon, ever curious, she cut them open, then suddenly stepped back, her eyes going wide with astonishment. She howled with laughter at this postmodern housewife-whore, this would-be Venus de Milo.

Two silicone implants slid down the torso, leaving a bloody trail.

“Do you ever worry about earthquakes?” said H.G.

“No,” said Amber, “not really.”

“They do still happen.”

“So do fires and floods.”

“Someday I should think that governments would be advanced enough to prevent all that, yet obviously, not in 2010.”

“No, but now the Japanese can actually predict earthquakes.”

He raised his eyebrows at the news.
Indubitably reassuring if one's in Tokyo, but what about San Francisco, traditionally a hotbed of seismic disturbances?
They were on the Bayshore Freeway in a rental car speeding north toward that very same city, H.G.'s euphoria over his first flight having been replaced by anxiety. He had never given much thought to natural disasters—man-made catastrophes were his forte—yet he couldn't ignore the fact that a mere two months before he left, the 1906 earthquake and fires had devastated San Francisco. Now Amy was here somewhere on a mission to save her family before another quake, supposedly the mother of them all, would level this fair city for good, and he had no desire to end up at its epicenter.

“I was in the '94 quake,” Amber said brightly.

He looked at her quizzically.

“The Northridge quake. L.A. It woke me up and threw me out of bed and broke Momma's ugly teacups.” She laughed. “It was like a vacation. We got the whole week off from school.”

“So you were . . . nine or ten?”

“Eleven.”

“I recall living in a moldy basement when I was eleven,” he said softly. “My mum was a maid at Up Park.” He turned to her. “So that makes you twenty-six.”

“Yep. And you're—wait, don't tell me, don't tell me!” She was visualizing the exhibition and his passport. “You're . . . forty.”