Jaclyn the Ripper (15 page)

Her mood ruined by the thought of Wells, she left her ditty on the secretary, took the kidney pie from the oven and set it out to cool, then shed her apron. She glanced outside. The bright morning sun meant she would have to dump Heather's body soon or the smell would ruin the Mercedes, not to mention the garage. Once that chore was done, she could enjoy a cup at Starbucks, spin a web of alluring smiles and find a male customer who would gladly search for Amy Catherine Robbins on his laptop.

She looked in Heather's purse for car keys, sorting through the girl residue—crumpled twenty-dollar bills, candy wrappers, credit card receipts galore, valet-parking stubs—and—
ah, how smashingly sweet!
—a pink-and-roses notepad that matched her stationery. At the bottom of the purse, she found the keys entwined in a hairbrush, and as she was taking them out, discovered a folder with cheques inside. She glanced at the register, pursed her lips and chuckled.
Heather Trattner did not go poor into her sunny and warm southern California wonderland
.

She took keys and purse, felt strange without Jack's black and shiny Gladstone bag, but shrugged it off and went out through the utility porch. A neighbor's dog started barking, yet she wasn't concerned. There was so much foliage between the houses, she doubted if anyone could see her, and even if someone did, what was so unusual about a housewife? Remembering how Michael Trattner's Porsche had worked, she pushed the button on the car keys, unlocking the Mercedes with a little chirp, then slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Apprehensive, she studied the dials in the dash and wondered how difficult operating the motor car would be, then figured that if millions of fools in 2010 could flit about in them, why not her? It couldn't be that different from the Porsche. She clicked the Mercedes into drive, eased down the long, narrow driveway, seesawing on the steering wheel, but when she heard shrubs brushing the car, she pulled the wheel too hard the other way and dinged the house with the fender. An electronic beep. She hit the brakes and stopped with a jolt. Her hands were shaking. Now a red icon shaped like the side of the car was flashing on the console.
As if I bloody didn't know
. Angry, her teeth clenched, she pulled the wheel to the left and let the car ease forward. Then she glanced up and saw something in front of her. Startled, she hit the brakes again. The car lurched to a stop and died.

A police cruiser was parked on the street blocking the driveway, a uniformed cop waiting behind the wheel.

Lieutenant Casey Holland was at the front door.

 

______

 

He's
wearing a light-brown suit and matching tie
, Jaclyn noticed.
He must be a gentleman copper
. She got out of the Mercedes slowly, minced innocently up to the porch wondering what she should say, but he spoke first.

“Morning, ma'am. . . .”

If he had witnessed the Mercedes scraping the house, he said nothing.

“Are you Mrs. Michael Trattner?”

“No, I'm sorry.” She swept her hair back and managed a smile. “I'm Jaclyn. . . . Jaclyn Smythe, her cousin from the UK. I'm house-sitting.” She let her eyes linger on his square, pleasant face. “Heather has gone off on a lark and no one's heard from her in a few days.”

“Would you have her cell number?”

“Uh, no,” she said, flustered. “I mean, yes, I have it inside.”

“If you don't mind.”

Jaclyn hesitated. “Is there something we should know?” Her smile became innocent, curious and intimate all at the same time. She fixed her wide-set, dark-brown eyes on his and wouldn't let go.

Normally, Holland would've dodged the question, thanked Jaclyn for her time, gone back to the patrol car and called Heather Trattner's cell on the way back to headquarters, but this woman intrigued him and he didn't want to leave yet. She exuded a strange warmth that for a moment took him away from the megacity madness, the depressing realities of his job. He relaxed and returned her smile.

“Is there something wrong?”

Other than a couple of murders, he wasn't sure anymore.

She felt that same warmth. “Would you like to come in . . . ? I mean, that might be better.”

 

She found Heather's number on the message board over the secretary and gave it to him. Perched on the white camelback sofa in the living room, he told her what had happened to Michael Trattner. Jaclyn shed the obligatory tears and expressed sympathy for poor Heather. They had been so happy—she'd loved him so much—what in the world would she do
now? Holland gave his usual spiel, heartfelt and reassuring after years of similar visits, yet he was growing uncomfortable—not with the situation, but with himself. He stood up awkwardly and handed her a card, studiously avoiding her eyes.

“If you—”

“Oh, please don't go yet.” She blocked his path, smiling generously, her skin radiant, her eyes aglow. “Would you like some tea or something to nibble on perhaps?”

“Really, I—”

“I've just made a kidney pie. You haven't lived until you've tried my kidney pie.”

He grinned and shook his head. “No, thanks. I'll pass. To be honest, I'm not a fan of British food.”

“Beef Wellington. Next time you come, I'll make a beef Wellington.”

She walked him to the door, her hand impulsively on his back, the touch cool and warm and electric all at the same time.

He turned. “I don't know how long you're staying, but there is a serial killer in the Brentwood area, so please be careful.”

“I will.”

“Oh. D'you have a cell?”

That stumped her. She shook her head slowly.

He was surprised, yet didn't seem concerned or suspicious. “You can get one and buy minutes for the time you're here.”

“Buy minutes?”

“Sure. A lot of tourists do it. I mean, I don't know how they do it in the UK, but . . .” He noticed her confusion. “Look, I'll just call you on the house line if something comes up.”

“Thank you. You've been so kind.”

 

From the porch, she watched him go, gave him a flutter wave with her fingers, pressed his card to her chest. She felt wholesome and good; she wanted to dance and sing. She understood none of it. Going inside, she skipped across the living room, then stopped abruptly and tried to think clearly and move past the sea of pastels in her mind, but
failed. She glanced up, saw herself in the mirror over the fireplace and was mortified.

“Good Lord, I look terrible!”

She ran into Heather's bathroom, went through the vanity and found cosmetics. Then, like the artistic surgeon she was, she bent to the mirror and applied cream, rouge, eyeliner and a dark-cherry gloss to her lips. A half-hour later, she stepped back, satisfied that she had transformed her natural beauty into a face that could easily grace one of the magazine covers she'd seen—or perhaps even launch those proverbial thousand ships.
Never again will Lieutenant Casey Holland see this girl looking unkempt and dowdy
.

She left the house and got back in the Mercedes. She concentrated on small moves with the steering wheel and made it out of the driveway without incident. Once on the street, she found the car smooth and easy to handle, and got the knack of steering, accelerating and stopping before she came to the madness of traffic on Sunset Boulevard. Only then did she remember who she truly was. She howled with rage inside the sealed confines of the motor car.

 

Twenty minutes later, she had turned off Sunset in to Will Rogers State Park and was trolling the former estate for a secluded spot to unburden herself of Heather's remains—although not too secluded. She did want them to find the body. After all, that was the point. Carry on the good works of Leslie John Stephenson aka Jack the Ripper in spite of gender so that one might look back—or forward to 2010 with pride and glory. Make them so petrified with fear that every night you are the lead story on the television news, and then Wells will have no choice but to blunder into the investigation and make a fatal mistake.

She stopped on a curve above the Will Rogers compound and surveyed the slope to the west that disappeared into a thick fog not yet burnt off by the morning sun. Though the site was too bucolic for her taste, the fog reminded her of London, and she decided that the slope was ideal for a final resting place. She would take care to arrange the body parts so Heather would indeed resemble the Venus de Milo—sans
implants and head, of course. The latter she would leave on the road as a signpost so that someone—preferably lovers—might stop and look further.

Humming that melody from the music box, she opened the trunk and began carrying pieces of Heather through stately, centuries-old eucalyptus trees down the slope, her feet crunching on the layers of bark.

When finished, she drew a cute little happy face on Heather's flat belly and added the words “REMEMBER ME?” Then she left the park and drove east on Sunset, planning to go back to Starbucks for a gentleman with a laptop. Except she couldn't get Lieutenant Holland out of her head. If this were happening in, say, 1893, she would rush home in a hansom cab, write a flowery note on perfumed linen stationery asking if she might see him in Regent's Park some Sunday afternoon, then have a boy on a bicycle deliver it to his flat. She smiled.
Intentions and desires are so much more accessible these days. Even murder does not require the furtive nature of a shrinking violet
. No need for a boy on a bicycle, no need for a customer at Starbucks.

Now at a stop sign in 2010, she took Michael Trattner's cell from his wife's purse, and was about to attempt calling the lieutenant when it rang. Startled, she dropped it on the seat, started to retrieve it when the driver behind her honked impatiently. She turned and lurched up a side street, was afraid to answer and drove faster as if to outrun the noise, but the phone kept on ringing. Finally, it stopped, and over the speakerphone, she heard a beep, Michael Trattner identifying himself, and then the caller: “Hey, Mike, where are you? We had a meeting this morning, dude. . . . I tried you at home, but nobody's there. Call me.”

Another beep and the cell went silent. Jaclyn frowned.
This will never do. What if the police should call and yours truly should answer . . . ? They'd no longer be looking for a man now, would they? And, as the lieutenant implied, what is a girl to do in this world without a cell phone?

 

She pulled into a strip mall on Bundy Drive—not because she'd spotted another Starbucks. Rather, a Verizon store was three doors down, and she liked that the name rhymed with horizon, as in “event horizon,” a
term she remembered from 1979 for that vista of dark energy where—stretched out like diaphanous spaghetti—her agonized soul had languished for so long. It was also the same name that was on Michael Trattner's cell, and in this case familiarity did not breed contempt.

She tossed Michael's cell in the trash and headed for the Verizon outlet, going past a small bookstore. She stopped abruptly. On a “bargain books” table outside, a $6.99 title jumped out at her:
Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed
, by Patricia Cornwell. She flipped through pages, read at random, Jack's sordid spree coming back as if yesterday.

Jaclyn discovered that Patricia Cornwell had pinned the killings on one Walter Sickert, a renowned artist with several studios in the East End, one of which was in the same building as Leslie John's loft. Indignant, she read further, growing more and more annoyed with this Patricia Cornwell, a forensic scientist turned author who claimed that DNA taken from Jack's letters to Metropolitan police commissioner Charles Warren proved that Sickert was the Ripper. Jaclyn laughed derisively.
Walter, that neurotic little twit, used to post letters for me. On occasion, I would pay too much money for one of his morbid drawings and copy their style when I penned a note to Scotland Yard
. She scoffed,
Sickert, indeed. After I've finished with Wells, I might just look up this Patricia Cornwell and prove to her that despite gender, I am who I am
. She snapped the book shut, then realized that she had been standing outside the bookstore far too long, took the book inside, paid for it, stuffed it in her purse and went straightaway to Verizon.

 

A tall, lithe black salesman showed her phones, seemingly impervious to the subtle vamps she tried, her smiles and soft innuendoes. She wondered whether she was giving out masculine or feminine vibes, was about to try something more forward when he brushed against her breasts, and then she knew she had him. Reassured, she backed off and concentrated on the phones, as opposed to those little alien things they called “Blackberries” for some unfathomable reason. Eventually, she chose a cell that included a video camera.
How simply marvelous. I can
photograph “works in progress,” and perhaps send them anonymously to television stations looking for more thorough coverage of my victims. I could send one to Patricia Cornwell as grist for a sequel
. She paused.
Then again, if I wanted to speak with someone about Jack's deeds, it wouldn't do for them to hear the voice of the comely young woman that I am, would it now. . . ?

She turned back to the salesman. “You wouldn't happen to have a device that disguises one's voice . . . ? If, say, you were speaking with an ex-beau or someone, and you didn't. . . ? You know.”

He chuckled and shook her head. “Naw. . . . You'd have to go to Radio Shack for something like that.”

She raised her eyebrows quizzically.

“There's one on Santa Monica toward the beach and another one up on Wilshire. . . . But they have them all over the place.” He couldn't stop gazing at her. “But, hey, if you're looking for some privacy, you can always block the caller ID feature on your phone.”

“I like that idea. . . . I like that a lot.”