Carver refused to go down easy. He dug his elbows into Finn’s wide back, hitting his ribs below the shoulder blades, making them both fall sideways. On the floor, they pummeled each other.
Even a soft punch from Finn was nothing to be sneezed at. One landed on Carver’s ear, filling his head with a dull ringing. He let fly with a decent shot to Finn’s nose.
Above the throbbing came the muffled bark of adult voices. The next thing he knew, Finn was sliding away along the marble floor. Carver felt himself lifted by his shoulders.
“Cease this nonsense at once!” a voice bellowed. Carver twisted and saw he was being held by no less than Commissioner Roosevelt. Would there ever be a moment, he wondered, where he didn’t look like a thief, liar or fool to the man he had to convince about his father?
Two detectives were holding Finn, the raging youth helpless against them. Echols rushed up. “Release him at once! Release my son!”
When they let go, the wealthy man pointed a bony finger into Finn’s face. “How dare you cause this scene! You’re lucky the press isn’t here yet! I should throw you back into the gutter where we found you!”
Finn, flushed with rage and embarrassment, muttered, “You’d be doing me a favor.”
“You can let him go now, Commissioner,” Hawking said, trudging up on his cane. “There’ll be no further trouble. Right, boy?”
Carver eyed his mentor. “Yes, sir.”
But Roosevelt ignored Hawking. He kept his hold on Carver until the slight Echols had shoved Finn out the front door. When he did let go, Carver stepped away and straightened his clothes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, still panting.
“You are sorry,” Roosevelt said. “Sanity is in short supply lately. Hold on to what little you have.” He turned to Hawking. “And you, sir, are as poor an example of a mentor as you are a detective!”
There was a barely perceptible twitch in Hawking’s lip. “It won’t happen again.”
Roosevelt seemed oddly disappointed, as if he’d hoped Hawking would fight back. “Well, then, see that it doesn’t.”
They entered the elevator; the operator closed the door. Carver was close enough to Hawking to hear him say, softly, “We shall see how poor an example I am.”
Whether he heard him or not, the commissioner struck a more respectful tone. “Hawking, I’ve been reading about you. It’s a matter of record that you worked with Septimus Tudd at the Pinkertons’.”
“Has the interrogation begun?” Hawking said.
“No,” Roosevelt said. “I only wish to offer my condolences. As the man who had him arrested, I can’t help but feel some responsibility for his fate. But I know what I heard him say on the phone. He thinks I’m completely loyal. There isn’t a shred of evidence to connect me… Had he at least owned up to that much, he might be alive today.”
Carver cringed.
This was not going to be easy.
64
“THE KILLER is your dad, and you’re part of a secret detective organization?”
“Yes.”
“In Devlin’s department store?” a detective asked for the thousandth time.
Once inside the plush offices, Carver and Hawking had been separated. As he was led away, his mentor didn’t offer so much as a meaningful glance. Carver decided to tell the truth, but it turned out to be more difficult than lying.
“Underneath. The headquarters was built as an extension to the Beach pneumatic subway,” Carver said.
“Perhaps you rode on it as a boy?” Sabatier put in, his smile unwavering. “I know I did.”
His green eyes darted from the detectives to Carver to Roosevelt. “Surely two such great minds can at least come up with new questions?” the attorney prompted.
The detective gave the slight Sabatier a wicked stare.
Roosevelt exhaled. “He’s right. This isn’t getting anywhere. Sabatier, I want to speak with the boy alone a moment. Without all this… formality.”
Sabatier shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t allow…”
“It’s all right,” Carver said. “Anything’s better than just sitting here repeating myself.”
The lawyer rose smoothly. “It’s against my better judgment, but as long as you realize any private conversation will not be admissible in court?”
Roosevelt nodded. Sabatier turned to the detective. “Perhaps I can interest you in some scotch?”
“Not while I’m on duty,” he grunted.
“Perhaps you’ll enjoy watching me have some, then,” Sabatier said, walking out with him. Before closing the door, he glanced back at Roosevelt and said, “Ten minutes. No more.”
Roosevelt stepped closer to Carver. “The fellow you fought with before was much larger than you. Are you in the habit of challenging impossible forces, or did you know him?”
“Both,” Carver answered. “I know Finn from Ellis Orphanage.”
“You got in a few good shots. It was impressive, but not right.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“For hitting him?”
“No… for the circumstances.”
Roosevelt allowed himself a chuckle. “Bully. So you’d rather do something than just sit there, unlike your Mr. Hawking, eh? No need to answer that. The purpose of having you repeat your story was to try to uncover inconsistencies. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Carver said.
“There weren’t any, which means either the lies are well prepared or you believe what you’re saying. The late Mr. Tudd wished me to believe you were deluded, but he also wished me to believe he was loyal to me. I know that wasn’t true, and you sound fit to my ears. You interrupted the party at the Times because you’d found the letter upstairs and were convinced it was from your father?”
“Yes.”
“At the Ribes’ you were prepared to tell me the whole story, but Tudd stopped you?”
Carver nodded.
“Alice was impressed with you,” Roosevelt said, narrowing his eyes. “I’m not, not completely, not yet. Being sane doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth. The anagrams you’ve uncovered are based on a trail that began with a letter you say has gone missing.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and stalked around the office. “I make it my business to know my enemies well. Echols is a lizard. Would you agree?”
“Yes,” Carver said, surprised Roosevelt used the same word as his mentor.
“He seeks to undermine me partly because he owes much to the corruption I’m fighting, partly because he loves the attention. Yet you’d have me believe that unlike Mr. Hawking, Tudd was not working for Echols. Instead, he remained silent to defend the existence of a wondrous organization. At the same time, a room away, your mentor has said nothing about them or about your relationship with the killer. Why?”
“I don’t know,” Carver said.
“Can you guess?”
He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, that lately his mentor seemed increasingly unbalanced. “He’s protecting… me? Wants me to be the one to show you? He sees a great future for me.”
“Does he? Jail is not a great future, young man. You should consider your opportunities more carefully.”
Carver scrunched his brow. “We don’t all have the same opportunities, sir.”
Roosevelt nodded. “True enough.”
He leaned his square head and beady eyes forward. “I don’t know what to make of you. You’re intelligent, you seem principled, but there’s something about you I can’t place. You’re like some new creature one might stumble across while hunting. But I’ve bigger game to hunt and can’t be sidetracked. In the end, it’s simple. My detectives will take you to Devlin’s and you can show them this magical headquarters of yours, if it exists.”
Carver exhaled and grinned. “Thank you.”
“For more reasons than one, I hope it does,” Roosevelt said. “Such an organization could be invaluable. If it does not, if you are trying to deceive me for any reason, as so
on as we’ve caught the killer and I can spare the time, I will make sure charges are brought against you for interfering with a police investigation.”
Though Roosevelt meant to frighten him, Carver kept smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s there.”
Roosevelt gave him a sharp nod and exited.
Mysteriously, Hawking remained behind, but shortly, Carver, Sabatier, and two of Roosevelt’s detectives stood on the side of Devlin’s.
Thinking that Roosevelt’s last words meant there might be a future for the New Pinkertons after all, an excited Carver knelt by the four curved brass posts. The detectives positioned themselves on either side of the off-color concrete rectangle. Sabatier busied himself by filing his nails.
“It’s sort of like a combination lock,” Carver said.
“Get on with it.”
Grasping the tube with both hands, he twisted and… nothing.
It wouldn’t budge. He grabbed and turned again, harder. Was it jammed? He tried a third time, twisting hard until his hands squeaked across the cold surface.
The detectives eyed each other.
“It’s here!” Carver shouted.
“Just like a combination lock.”
“It’s right here! Don’t you understand? Someone’s changed the combination!” Carver kicked and pulled at all four tubes but couldn’t get one to budge. It was only when a small crowd paused to stare that he finally stopped.
As one detective motioned for the onlookers to keep moving, the other turned to Sabatier. “We’ll go tell the commissioner. He will make good on bringing those charges.”
“Good thing the boy has an excellent lawyer, then, isn’t it?” Sabatier said with his bright smile.
The two detectives climbed back into the police carriage and drove off.
“I don’t understand,” Carver said, tugging at the posts.
Sabatier waited until the detectives’ carriage was out of view, then pulled a white envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Carver. “For you.”
“What is it?”
“I do not know.”
“Who is it from?”
With a tip of his bowler hat, he said, “Good day, Mr. Young,” and melted into the midday crowd.
Furious, confused, ashamed, he tore open the envelope and unfolded the single sheet of paper inside. There, painstakingly typed, one letter at a time, was the new combination.
65
CARVER once enjoyed the elevator’s pneumatic silence but this time wished for some noise to drown out his pounding heart. He stormed the corridors, paced the subway car, then stood in the center of the lonely plaza and screamed, letting the sound echo along every hollow in the empty headquarters of the finest crime lab in the world.
It’s a game for you.
Now there was no way he could prove anything to Roosevelt short of solving the case himself. Was that what Hawking thought would make Carver rise above the chaos? And where was the mad detective now? Limping back to the Octagon to count Echols’s money? Was there anyone left in his entire life that he could trust?
After another scream, he grabbed the phone and dialed the New York Times.
“There’s a rumor going round that you lied to Roosevelt?” Delia said in a hushed voice.
“Actually,” Carver said, gritting his teeth, “I’m in trouble because I tried to tell him the truth. Can you come to Devlin’s? I’m going stir-crazy; I could use some help… or even some company.”
“Considering the fact that everyone is in the newsroom talking about the latest murder and I’m stuck here trying to make up puzzles, I’m dying to do something. Just give me fifteen minutes to finish today’s anagram. Honestly, a monkey could do it.”
The line went dead, but Carver felt some of the enormous weight he’d been carrying lift, just a little.
When he opened the elevator door to the street, she was already waiting.
“That was fast,” Carver said.
She gave him a knowing smile and pushed in beside him. “I’ve got an hour, maybe two. Everyone’s so distracted, I don’t think anyone noticed when I said I was going for lunch. So what happened?”
Carver filled her in as quickly as he could.
The first thing she said was, “Poor Finn.”
“Poor Finn?” he said, aghast. “He insulted Mr. Hawking!”
“He only said what you were thinking. Is that why you called me here, to feel sorry for you?”
He wanted to say yes, of course. “No… but… what do you think of Hawking?”
“Assuming you’re not going to punch me for agreeing with you, you’re probably right. The attack and losing Mr. Tudd may have shaken his brain loose. In a very weird and horribly dangerous way, he seems to be still trying to teach you.”
“By making Roosevelt think I’m a liar?” Carver said as they entered the empty athenaeum.
“Well,” Delia said, “he has left you with a nice library.”
Originally, he’d only wanted to see her, but seeing their worktable made Carver eager to do something rather than “sit there.” He pulled a chair out for her.
“Big deal. All the books in the world are useless unless you know what to do with them. My father’s been leaving clues to his identity, anagrams of his names, but that’s not exactly an address we can look up. We have no idea where he is or who his next victim might be… unless… he left a clue about that, too?”
Delia stared at him dubiously. “It’d have to be a very good clue. There are a million people in the city, at least.”
Carver slumped into his seat. “Mr. Hawking taught me to narrow the list based on what I know. We know the Ripper attacks only women, right?”
“So that cuts it down to half a million,” Delia said.
“But it’s not just women, is it?” Carver went on. “In London he may have targeted prostitutes, but in New York he’s gone after only socialites. That cuts it down a lot, doesn’t it? What else do we know? Anything, even what’s most obvious.”
“Most obvious? He’s fond of word clues and names, his at least.”
“His name. That’s good,” Carver said. “What about the victims’ names?”
He tugged at a bound newspaper volume from 1889 and opened to a bookmarked page. “This reporter tried to figure out where the Ripper lived. Assuming he had to be in Whitechapel somewhere, he made this list of the victims and where they were killed.”
He pushed it near her and pointed to the list:
Mary Ann Nichols, Buck’s Row
Annie Chapman, Hanbury Street
Elizabeth Stride, Dutfield’s Yard
Catherine Eddowes, Mitre Square
Mary Kelly, Miller’s Court
“Fine, but what are we looking for?” Delia asked.
“I don’t know. You’re the puzzle expert. Any kind of pattern in the names? The dates, the words, something… ?” Carver said.
“You mean, like maybe he’s duplicating the original crimes somehow?” Delia said. “It’s not an anniversary; the dates don’t match…”
“There was a double murder,” Carver said. “He even quoted the original letter. Stride and Eddowes were killed on the same day, like Parker and Petko. Roosevelt noticed that both their last names start with a P, but what could that mean?”
They stared at the list long and hard, coming up with nothing. Delia broke the silence. “Maybe we’re doing this backward.”
“Okay, I’ll list the new victims,” Carver said. He’d just finished writing when he made a face.
“What?” Delia said. He turned his pad toward her and pointed to the list of the victims’ names:
Elizabeth B. Rowley
Jane H. Ingraham
Rowena D. Parker
Reza M. Petko
“I don’t understand,” Delia said, scanning the list. “I…”
Confident she’d see it any second now, he waited. Before another word could form, her eyes lit. “Oh my heavens! RIPP, the last names of the victims are spelling out Ripper. It�
�s his name again!”
“All except an e and an r.” Carver nodded. “Another stupid game. And two murders yet to come.”
“I can’t believe no one noticed this,” she said.
Carver shrugged. “Maybe someone has; maybe the police are working on it right now. I told Roosevelt about the anagrams. He would have believed me if Hawking hadn’t changed… Where are you going?”
Delia was rushing to the shelves. “If we’re right,” she said, “the next victim is going to be a wealthy woman whose last name starts with E.”
She returned with a volume of a recent social directory, flipping the pages as she walked. She slowed and stopped, disappointed. “Edders, Egbert, Eldwin… there are hundreds.”
Remembering his own daunted feeling when he started searching for his father, Carver said, “That’s better than half a million.”
“If we can’t save her,” Delia said, putting the open book flat on the table, “it’s not better than anything at all, is it?
“Is there anything else? Some other kind of pattern?” Delia ventured.
“What about the locations?”
“The Lenox library, the Tombs, police headquarters,” Carver said, shrugging. “City buildings.”
Up against a dead end, they scanned the list of the dead, new and old, over and over. As they worked, Carver’s tired mind drifted, but he enjoyed having Delia here so much, he didn’t want to say. He found himself staring at her skin, her cheeks, especially when she pulled back from the table and stretched her neck.
She stopped stretching and noticed him. Their eyes met.
“I should get back,” Delia said. “Maybe I can sneak out early and we can try again. At least I can tell Jerrik about how the names spell out RIPP. That’s something they won’t ignore.”
As she rose, Carver felt a sudden urge to stop her. He nervously turned away, his eyes falling again on the list of new victims, Elizabeth B. Rowley at the top.
Ripper Page 23
