Jaclyn the Ripper (35 page)

Good God, the pain, the—

Panicked, she took the belt from her pantsuit, looped it over her
wrist, pulled tight until the blood was only trickling. She slumped in the car, held her head down so she wouldn't pass out. The pain subsided to a throb in rhythm with her pounding heart. Curiously calm, she recalled unloading the pieces of Heather from the trunk and seeing a first-aid kit, and thinking that its juxtaposition with her victim was ludicrous. She got it from the trunk, ripped it open gratefully, dumped it on the front seat and set about closing her wound.

Dizzy, she lay down and dozed. Minutes later, she was up and out of the car, walking around to clear her head. A park ranger drove up the road, giving her a curious look as he went by. She waved and smiled, but grew panicked. She picked up her knife and, back in the Mercedes, noticed bloodstains on her pants and sleeve.
This will never do.
She started the car, turned around and sped out of the park.

Pain was shooting up her arm now. She couldn't use her hand, and her bandage was already sopping red. One-handed, she drove in a fog, drove erratically as if she could speed away from what she had done to herself.

 

She found an Urgent Care on the corner of Wilshire and Chelsea, gave them Heather's name and insurance card, was in a treatment room within minutes. Anna, a young and pretty nurse practitioner, cut away the makeshift bandage, all the while asking a set of questions that Jaclyn mistook for concerned small talk.

“My boyfriend locked me out of the flat and so I broke a pane of glass so I could open the door from the inside. I tried to be careful, but I guess I was angry. You know how those things are.”

“Yep. Sure do,” said Anna, smiling. She made notes on a clipboard. “Okay. This is gonna sting a little.”

As Anna cleaned the wound, Jaclyn gasped and saw white, almost passed out, and was left clutching at her chair.

“Worst is over.”

As she laced the wound with a painkiller and antibiotic, numbed the wrist and quickly stitched it up, Anna went on with the questions as if they were meant to be a distraction, but Jaclyn had already figured it
out and responded with glib and vague answers. Finally, Anna patted her wrist gently, left it exposed on the table and stood.

“Doctor's gonna come in and take a look, okay?” Anna pressed a red button on the wall, gave Jaclyn a professional smile and left.

Seconds later, Jaclyn fished the clipboard from the slot on the door, scanned the paperwork. “Suicide watch” told her all she needed to know. She bandaged her wound by herself, tentatively flexed her hand. It worked. Relieved, she smiled.
In Jack's day, they might have cut it off.
She rolled down her sleeve. It covered most of the bandage, yet was still bloodstained.
I must go back to Heather's. This silk clings to me like death.

 

After Dr. Tom Fogel had washed up, he went down the corridor, glanced at Jaclyn's paperwork on the clipboard, then put on his best smile and swung into the room. “Hi, how are we—?”

Concerned, he backpedaled into the corridor. “Anna . . . ?”

She didn't hear.

“Anna?! Where did you put the suicide patient?”

 

On Sunset, Jaclyn passed a black-and-white, saw another one coming from the other direction, thought nothing of it. She turned on North Bundy Drive, heading for the Trattner house—already it seemed like home. She was starting to relax, looked forward to a hot shower and a glass of vodka, then—up ahead where Bowling Green Way curved—she saw police cars lining the street, vans parked in the driveway, technicians in full-on crime-scene ballet, neighbors staring. She pulled over on a side street and parked under trees. She was shaking.
How did they find me . . . ? How?

She turned around and eased back to Bowling Green, waited at the corner, peering at the police presence. On the lawn, detectives in suits were talking. More were on cell phones. Technicians carried boxes from the house; the boxes no doubt held evidence linking her to the Trattner
murders. She figured they had assumed she was the Brentwood killer—a Jack instead of a Jaclyn—so she wasn't yet a full-blown fugitive. She noticed her clothes.
Still, I look absolutely awful. I looked damaged.
She remembered a cute little boutique she'd seen on Montana, spun around and drove away.

 

At Only Hearts boutique, Jaclyn made small talk with a chic zombie of a salesgirl, finally chose a light-gray camisole with lace trim to go under a sheer black blouse and clingy pants. Smiling, she was anxious to wear it out of the store and didn't understand what was taking so long, why they were frowning and repeatedly pushing buttons on one of their machines. Then the manager came over, handed her Heather's Visa card and smiled apologetically.

“I'm sorry. It won't go through.”

“Oh.”

“D'you have another card?”

“Yes, of course.”

Hot under the manager's gaze, Jaclyn went back in her purse knowing that Heather had at least a dozen of them, then stopped abruptly, realizing that the transaction probably hadn't gone through because of something the police had done. Obviously, they now knew that Heather, like her husband, had been murdered and that the murderer had their credit cards. Forcing a smile, she looked up at the manager.

“Will a cheque be all right?”

“Of course.”

Jaclyn dug out Heather's cheque book.

“That's . . . let's see . . . five hundred and eighty-seven dollars and twenty-five cents with tax.”

As she wrote out the cheque, she felt the manager's eyes on her bandaged wrist and the blood on her sleeve, yet she smiled back confidently as if it were a fashion statement.

“Do you mind if I see your driver's license?” the manager asked discreetly, taking the cheque.

She gave him Heather's. When he frowned uncertainly at the lack of resemblance, she gave him a dazzling smile and pirouetted. “I've changed my hair.”

She took back the license, then picked up her outfit in designer bags, gave the manager a little flutter wave and waltzed out the door.

 

Worried now, she left Santa Monica, drove to Venice and felt more comfortable on its dingy streets, but couldn't think clearly. She was famished. She found a little tapas place on Abbot Kinney, with parking and an entrance from the back. She took her new outfit with her, planning to change after a bite, and was shown to a table by a sullen and indifferent waitress who read the menu off a chalkboard as if reciting a language assignment. Jaclyn ordered a shredded cod salad with tomatoes, peppers and onions, then a Spanish omelette Gypsy-style, and was surprised the food was so delicious. She ate slowly, and the food relaxed her, despite the loss of her safe house, her credit cards. She sensed that she was running out of time, but couldn't just run. No, not without the special key. She smiled, determined.
Satan has given me feminine wiles in this here and now. I must use them.

She scanned the dessert menu, torn between the crème brûlée and the chocolate tart with French vanilla topping, then thought of Casey and couldn't stand the thought of something sweet. She left two twenties for the bill and went out the back way, averting her face from the customers at tables in the garden.

Dispatcherspeak from a police radio split the air.

She stopped short at the gate to parking, pretended to admire the weed-choked garden, and when no one was looking, when she thought it prudent, she edged through the gate.

Two patrol cars were in the alley, one blocking in her Mercedes. One cop peered in the tinted windows while his partner was on the radio, telling West Division that they'd found the Mercedes registered to Heather Trattner. Two more cops were gathered around the Libyan parking attendant, showing him the rendering of Leslie John Stephenson, circa 2010. The attendant was shaking his head, no, jabbering on
in broken English, gesturing effusively at the small shops and restaurants.

Jaclyn crept closer—until she had a good look at the rendering. Relieved, she almost laughed.
Ah, Leslie John, you should see what they've done with your rather forbidding visage.
With that, she went back inside the restaurant and left via the front door on Abbot Kinney. She walked along the street and window-shopped as if she hadn't a care in the world, but felt that very same world closing in, crushing her from all sides. She came upon a coffee shop that seemed deliberately dirty and ramshackle, was put off by the patrons lolling outside, their dogs and the abundance of flies. She took out her cell and called a cab.

Minutes later, she was speeding away from Venice and knew suddenly how she would play it. She called the Four Seasons, asked for Amy Wells, but she wasn't in, so Jaclyn called the Robbins house and found her there.

“It's Jaclyn Smythe ringing,” she said cheerfully, “how are you today?”

“Oh, Jaclyn,” said Amy, “how nice.”

“Beautiful day, isn't it?”

“Yes, lovely.”

“I know we're in America, dear girl, but are you interested in doing tea this afternoon . . . ?”

When his taxi arrived, H.G. left the West Division engrossed in self-discovery. The
Scientific American
had captivated him. In a fit of excitement, he borrowed it and left a note for Lieutenant Holland promising to return it, and continued reading in the taxi.

The magazine's current science was light-years beyond his biology studies with T. H. Huxley at the Normal School, and the articles were so clearly written that he grasped the principles quickly. He had been lost when 'Dusa was talking about DNA and chromosomes, but not now. Like he'd told the secretary, female X chromosomes were more dominant and complex than their male Y counterparts and that struck him as amusing; that they would be superior on a cellular basis was somewhat frightening.
No wonder the suffragettes strike terror in men's hearts
. Yet, he was reassured to learn that chromosomes in normal red-blood cells lacked genetic material, hence:
Maybe there is hope for the males species, after all.

Alas, no. He learned in next essay that stem cells in the blood do contain genetic material and was wondering why the discovery seemed so important to him. No matter. The rest of the article fascinated him: the fact that skin cells could be manipulated into stem cells which in turn
could ultimately produce “replacement parts” for the human body was yet another example of how magical technology had become.
Indeed, but what about the fact of wars, fought with new and improved weaponry? Some scientists are in a rush to prolong human life
, he mused ironically.
Others seem hell-bent on finding better ways to destroy it.

“Here we are, sir. Four Seasons.”

He paid the cabdriver and hurried across the lobby to the elevators. Going by politicians on a junket and their coterie of starlets brought him back to his twenty-first-century reality. He had gotten the rendering of Leslie John Stephenson to every newspaper, TV station and patrol car in the city, yet had this uncanny feeling that the Ripper was nearby, playing with him, making him tap-dance like a marionette.

H.G. got off at the fifth floor. He appreciated that their suite was at the end of the hall in a cul-du-sac and private. Once inside, he almost relaxed, almost felt at home.

“Amy . . . ?” His smile faded. “Hullo, Amy . . . ?”

The suite was empty.

He started out, but stopped and went back. From the bedside table, he took the Beretta he'd bought from Xerox, shoved in it his coat pocket, and hated himself for doing so. Then he saw the note on the table in the foyer from Amy. She had gone downstairs for tea with Jaclyn Smythe and would love it if he would join them. He relaxed and smiled, the idea of her writing him a note lifting his spirits and erasing the worry from his mind.

 

H.G. met an unctuous, grinning maître d' in the foyer of the Garden restaurant who led him past eighteenth-century Italian paintings on red and orange walls toward the patio. They went through arched French doors and drapery columns into the Garden's “garden,” where music and laughter and conversations were muted by palms and lemon trees, and the sound of fountains. Orchids and tall candles were on the tables here. The maître d' nodded, and H.G. saw Amy at a table in the corner, loose and relaxed. Jaclyn, resplendent in her black-and-gray outfit, was beside her, giggling as Amy whispered the end of a story.
Then they both laughed uproariously, went back to their drinks on the table.

“Oh, Bertie!” Amy exclaimed, looking up and smiling as he came forward. “We started out with tea and ended up with cocktails before dinner!” She laughed again. “Doesn't that make us
so
L.A.?” She gestured. “You remember Jaclyn Smythe, don't you?”

He nodded politely. “Hullo, Jaclyn.”

“Hullo to you, Mr. Wells. . . . But that seems awfully formal.” She gave him a dazzling smile. “Um, may I call you Herbert?”

“Herbert is fine.” He hated that name.

“I think it's so fascinating that you're related to H. G. Wells. You look very much like him, you know.”

“Yes.” He sat down and turned to Amy. “Before I forget—”

But the waiter was there, pleased that H.G. had finally arrived. Assuming that they were mere tourists, he explained Asian fusion—a cuisine which went extremely well with California wine, and so on.

 

Later, H.G. was amazed that Australian lamb could taste so good when cooked with cilantro and hot Korean spices. The dinner had been excellent, a small example of what a world without borders could do, he told himself. Grilled Chilean sea bass with garlic ginger and Japanese soy. Filet titaki. Lemongrass marinated duck.
Such would be fare for Citizens of the World planning a better life, a Utopia.
He frowned at his naïveté.
No. This is the manner in which people of privilege dine. Serve the hoi polloi lemongrass marinated duck and then you have the right to think like Pollyanna. Then again, would they appreciate it? Or demand the ubiquitous burger and fries?