by Ben Hopkin
Taking another item out of Kent’s playbook, Nicole felt behind her, taking in what her stalker was doing. He was still in the queue, but was clearly fidgeting, uncertain of what to do now that Nicole was out of the line. It wouldn’t take them long to get her espresso to her, and then she could be out the door and around the corner before the guy even had a chance to respond.
But when the coffee came, she found that her stalker was wilier than she had expected. He faked a terrible cough, waved at the patron behind him to step up in the queue and was out the door with little to no delay.
Nicole had a tail, and she wasn’t going to shake him anytime soon.
* * *
Kent moved through the hallways toward the morgue, behind him Kyra had to take two steps for every one of his. It would’ve been a small matter for him to slow down, but that wouldn’t make her a better investigator. Keeping up was a physical thing as much as it was mental.
As for him, Kent knew from experience that it looked like he wasn’t trying to move fast at all. Like he was sauntering down to the morgue. Made it all the more frustrating for anyone along for the ride.
Once more, good practice for his protégé. She’d have to work with someone smarter than she was from time to time. Time for her to figure out how to deal.
“That was quite a show you put on for Locroft back there, “Kyra said, her breathy tone an indicator of how hard she was working to keep up.
Kent knew what she was talking about, but all he did was lift an eyebrow. “You think so?”
She nodded. “I know so.”
Kent came to an abrupt halt. “Let’s get one thing straight. You know nothing.”
His mentee skidded to a stop before bumping into him. That was the way. Keep everyone off their footing, push them beyond their boundaries. Force them into sharp observance.
Hanging her head, Kyra murmured. “I know that.”
“And,” Kent continued, almost as if he hadn’t stopped and Kyra hadn’t responded, “you know all. Everything you need is right here.” He tapped a finger on her gut. She blushed and looked away.
Kent stifled a laugh. Kyra truly thought she was a sociopath. A sociopath would never have that response to another human being, regardless of the context.
“I don’t understand,” she replied after a long moment, Kent’s finger still on her abdomen, waiting for her to reply. “Those seem contradictory.”
Time for a teachable moment. Wasn’t that what parents were supposed to do? And absentee benefactors? Well, there was probably less information on those cases, but it had to be something comparable, right?
“Ninety-nine percent of what I do is mind numbing. But it has to be done if you want the one-percentage wow factor. And that comes from right here.” He wiggled his finger, eliciting another blush. What was that about?
“You don’t know how the cases interrelate, do you?” Kyra challenged him, her jaw thrusting out. Interesting. She didn’t like to feel exposed.
“Nope,” he said, turning around and starting to walk again.
“And that stuff about genealogy?”
“An educated guess. Something to get the minions off our back for now. It may come into play later once we’ve done the heavy lifting.”
He heard Kyra’s feet come to a halt once more, but he kept walking. Soon enough she caught up, her heels clacking against the floor. He’d have to talk to her about wearing heels on the job. Didn’t matter how many times he said it to Nicole, she never listened. Maybe Kyra would be different.
A thought of Nicole in her high heels with nothing else on flashed through his mind. He set it aside. Eleven o’clock. He would have to wait until eleven o’clock. Until then…
He had a decades’ old serial killer to catch.
* * *
Kyra watched as Kent performed his magic. He was coaxing a glimpse of the bodies out of the coroner, a woman in her late 40s or early 50s. The woman had the look of someone attached to her fading youth, and Kent was laying it on thick.
“You know Locroft. Always wants to keep his hands so clean. Why d’you think he brought me in?”
The woman, a Dr. Tillburn, tittered into her well-manicured hands. How did she manage to work with dead bodies all day and still keep her nails so impeccable?
“Well, that’s the god’s honest truth,” she agreed. “Never saw one more for keeping in with the higher-ups.” Tillburn made a face.
“Which explains my being here,” Kent said, leaning in to whisper. “A dirty American for a dirty job.” He winked at her, and for a moment Kyra was convinced the poor woman was going to pass out.
More Kent magic. Get in close, make the conversation intimate, make her a co-conspirator. Then, when it came time to make a decision, the choice had already somehow been made on a subconscious level.
Clever. She would need to remember that.
Speaking of manipulation, it was time for Kyra to check in on her team. She didn’t want to miss out on the show, but there were updates that her team needed if they were going to do their jobs.
She motioned to Kent that she was stepping out into the hall. An irritated wave was all she got in response, but Kyra knew that was more for Tillburn than out of any real irritation on Kent’s part.
Besides, he would get his job done faster without her there to interfere. There was a part of her, though, that felt a flash of some unfamiliar feeling. Kent’s attention was heady stuff, and right now it was going somewhere other than her. Clueless as the Medical Examiner clearly was, Kyra had a strange desire to put her hands around the woman’s neck and start squeezing.
Odd.
Pulling out her cell, Kyra hit the second number on her speed dial. The first slot was reserved for Kent. No matter how little contact she had with him on a regular basis, he would always hold the first place in her phone.
Second down was Jacques. He was the public relations for the team, but it went a bit deeper than that. Jacques acted as International Hunters, Inc.’s therapist, their marketing guru, their liaison with the outside world. Without Jacques, Kyra’s team wouldn’t be here.
Somehow, in the time since she had formed the group, the Belgian man had managed to sweet talk the team into collaboration with the law enforcement agencies in several European countries, Italy being his latest coup. Kyra brought home the bacon, but Jacques made everyone think it was pancetta.
Two rings and Jacques’ voice was in her ear, his slight Belgian-French accent grating on her ear even through the sound barrier created by the cell phone. There was excitement, as well as some level of irritation, in his tone.
“How goes the interview? Has your knight in tarnished armor charmed the trousers off Locroft yet?”
“That was never even the slightest possibility, Jacques, and you know it,” Kyra replied, her tone flat. She couldn’t be positive, but it sounded as if there were a certain amount of possessiveness in the Belgian’s tone.
His reaction reminded her of Italy. Throughout Giovanni’s seduction, Jacques had been snappish, distant. Jealous.
Her only response had been to think how that might benefit her in the future. Sometime when she had to negotiate with him for some extra clean-up from one of her PR disasters.
That was it. No sense of being flattered. No anger at being treated like an object. Just facts. Information.
Kyra could see that others reacted in an emotional, or at the very least instinctive, way. Her responses didn’t ever seem to match up. Even though she found Jacques attractive, there was nothing more than an analysis of how she could use the information.
“What do you need?” he asked after a pause, his voice back to its businesslike timber as if a switch had been flipped.
Jacques didn’t like to be chastised, even mildly. Much as he claimed to be a modern metrosexual, there was an undercurrent of something less typical of a French Belgian in his behavior. Kyra being the leader of the team never seemed to sit easy with him.
Or maybe it was just the fact that he
thought she was a human tornado, stirring things up for no reason. But Kyra always had a reason. Well, most of the time, anyway.
And clearly he had never met Kent.
“I need you to get Darchak in on something,” she said, her tone crisp and to the point. Getting back into the morgue was her number one priority right now.
“What is the task?”
“Have him look up any descendants of the possible Jack the Ripper suspects, past or present.”
“What are you looking for?”
Kyra snorted. “Hell if I know. Just see if anything interesting pops up.”
Considering the amount of suspects there were, and the exponential way genealogy expanded with each generation, it was a shot in the dark. But at least this way, she felt like she was contributing something to the investigation.
“I’ll tell him,” Jacques answered, sounding ready to get off the phone.
Kyra responded to a calculating inner voice, putting some warmth into her tone. “Jacques?”
“Yes?” he answered, his tone suddenly hopeful.
“Kent says we’ll have this wrapped up tonight,” she said, adding in a playful hitch to her voice. “Perhaps we can grab some fish and chips.”
She could hear the man gulp even through the phone line.
“That would be… nice,” he said.
Hanging up the phone and sliding it back into her pocket, Kyra rubbed her hands against her thighs, a sour taste in her mouth. She manipulated Jacques because she could. Because it might be helpful down the line.
Or, even worse, in spite of the fact that it might not.
What, exactly, did that say about her?
She shook her head to clear it. This was not the time for introspection. Jack the Ripper was calling from the past, and she and Kent were answering that cry.
* * *
Didn’t matter if the women were American, British or Japanese, Kent knew how to work them. Once Kyra had left, it had taken less than a minute to get what he wanted out of the ME.
And now he was standing in front of the Jack copycat bodies.
Kent inhaled, the familiar rotten, sweet scent creating a feeling of sense memory for him. How many times had he been perched as he was now, ready to discover the secrets of the once-living human being in front of him?
Okay, it didn’t happen so much any longer. Mostly because of the restraining orders. Which was part of what made this moment so delicious.
Kyra entered the room, the expression on her face revelatory. Kent knew her well enough to know that she’d been doing some manipulation of her own. And now she was worried once more that she was a sociopath.
Didn’t she realize that the very fact that she was worried about it pretty much made it an impossibility? Besides, sociopathy got a bad rap. There would be more than a few men and women… okay, mostly women… who might refer to Kent in those terms.
It wasn’t sociopathy. It was just Kent being thorough. So sue him.
He snapped on the gloves, and Kyra’s focus seemed to narrow, honing in on what he was doing. Her gaze darted around the room, looking for the missing doctor.
Silly girl. Kent had already taken care of that detail. Dr. Tillburn was out to take her tea, courtesy of the charming American who had been sent in to do the tasks that her prissy boss didn’t have the balls to take on himself.
“What are you doing?” Kyra hissed.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“It looks like you’re about to contaminate evidence,” she whispered.
“Please. I’m using gloves,” he responded with a grin.
Kent took a stroll around the corpse in front of him, the one that had, in life, been referred to as Mary Ann. Pulling back the white sheet, Kent ran his hand down to the wound in the abdomen. Cut from left to right in a jagged line, just as Jack had done it decades earlier.
“You want to learn how to do what it is that I do?” Kent murmured as he slid his hand into the wound. Kyra gasped at the violation, her own hand lifting in what seemed to be an involuntary motion, as if she would stop him.
Her hand lowered. “Yes,” she murmured.
He had her. She was no Nicole, a sharp but reluctant pupil. Kyra wanted what Kent had to offer more than anyone he’d encountered in his entire career. She made Joshua look like a mere hobbyist in comparison.
“Then you need to be willing to go where I go. Do what I do.” His hand entered the body, and he felt his way inside Mary Ann, seeking for the information that would only come through his senses.
“I don’t understand,” Kyra said, her face flushed. “Won’t the ME’s report tell you anything you might need to know about--”
He cut her off with a gesture from the hand that was still free. “There is information that goes beyond photographs and descriptions in an ME’s report. You have to feel the evidence. Here.”
Kent grabbed Kyra’s hand and guided it toward the body. She pulled back.
“I’m not wearing gloves,” she demurred.
Chuckling, Kent reassured her. “I only put them on so you wouldn’t have a heart attack. They already have the evidence they need.” Again he pulled her hand toward the body. “You need to get inside the victims, literally as well as psychologically.”
Without any further hesitation, Kyra thrust her hand inside the body. That was one of the things Kent loved about her. The fearlessness. Once a decision was made, she wasn’t backing off.
There was a moment while she was figuring out what she was feeling under her fingers, a brief instant of revulsion. And then it happened.
The rapture. The sensation of power, of beauty, of connection to the victim. Kent could see everything she was experiencing, apparent in her face. That was the moment he had been looking for.
And now to teach.
“What do you feel?” he probed.
“I… it’s… This is incredible,” she practically gasped.
Kent waved that aside. This was not new information to him, and he’d moved on from the mysticism.
“I mean, what do you feel in your hands?”
A look of concentration spread across Kyra’s face. She was a lovely young woman, her features sharp almost to the point of being hard. But there was a glint of something in her eyes that spoke of her lack of boundaries, a wild abandon that was both compelling and a bit frightening. He wondered if that’s how people saw him.
“I feel… I feel her intestines,” she murmured.
“Yes. And what else do you notice?”
She seemed to focus on what she was feeling underneath her hands. “Everything seems to be intact.”
“Exactly,” Kent agreed. She was a quick study. Most students would have groped around for much longer, trying to guess what it was that he wanted. Instead, Kyra had centered in on what was right in front of her. “What do you know about the original case?”
Again, Kyra went right for the jugular, figuratively speaking. “Jack didn’t take organs from his first victim. It wasn’t until Mary Ann Nichols that he started taking his trophies.”
“What else?” Kent pressed.
There was a pause as Kyra’s mind appeared to be working in overdrive. “Catherine’s death was right on the heels of Elizabeth Stride’s.”
“Yes,” he breathed. “And tell me about Elizabeth.”
Kyra’s eyes glistened in the low light of the morgue. “No mutilations on her abdomen. No organs taken.”
Kent stepped back, urging her to continue with a gesture. She was getting it, feeling the flow of the narrative, finding the driving force behind the killer.
“The first murder didn’t fulfill his desires. He wanted trophies but wasn’t brave enough yet to take them,” she said. “He slashed her belly multiple times, but couldn’t force himself to search inside.”
She pulled her hands out of the first victim and walked around to the fourth, Catherine. Without putting on gloves, Kyra thrust her hand into the corpse’s belly, searching around inside. This time, the
re had been no hesitation.
Kent could not be more proud.
The look of fierce concentration on Kyra’s face was compelling. Continuing, her tone sounded flushed with some dark emotion.
“He was interrupted in the middle of Annie’s murder. Couldn’t take what he wanted. That’s why Catherine’s death came so close on her heels.”
She was good. Kent felt a rush of what he could only guess was parental pride swell in his chest. He might not have raised this prodigy, but she wouldn’t be here if not for him.
And her being here was proving to be a revelation for them both.
“Now that you’ve gotten a taste for forbidden fruit,” Kent crooned, “let’s go pluck some more, shall we?”
Kyra nodded, her eyes bright. Kent had found his prodigy.
And he was going to take her on the thrill ride of her life. She was going to be a part of solving the highest-profile cold case in existence. Kent only hoped she was properly grateful.
Watch out, Jack. We’re coming for you.
CHAPTER 4
Nicole wanted to punch something.
Preferably the face of the man who was still on her tail. What did the kids say these days? Her stalker was really “harshing her buzz.” A little hard to sightsee when you had a guy on your six.
She had first walked north and east, gone through the bustling crowds of Oxford Street, even wandered through a lingerie shop called La Senza to try to get rid of her stalker. The traffic zipped by, inches away from her. What was it with London, and the fact that there was no space between the sidewalk and the cars caroming along not inches away?
And another thing about London traffic… they didn’t honk, not unless there was thick fog. No matter how jammed up they seemed to get, the likelihood of a Brit laying on their horn seemed to be somewhere between slim and none.
The lingerie shop she stopped in front of what appeared to be a British version of Victoria’s Secret, and Nicole had been hoping that a young man would stick out in a shop like that. Seemed like sound reasoning.
