by Stacy Green
“What does Professor Walton’s murder have to do with it?” Neil asked.
“Bonnie confided in her.” Presenting the theory as fact was the only chance she had of getting Neil to talk. “Virginia was killed because of what she knew.”
Neil tugged at his graying hair. “My brother’s a bastard, but he wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“We think he hired a woman Bonnie knew to kill her. And anyone who can lead us to Simon is in danger.” Erin turned her attention to Carmen, who stood on the bottom step, wringing her hands. “This killer is vicious and signing her name as Jane the Ripper, and a little girl named Mina is calling me begging for help. She says Jane is going to do it again, and you people are all I’ve got. Give me something to throw at Simon Archer other than your accusation he covered up the molestation. Give me more details. Help me find your daughter’s killer!”
“Ted Moore molested Bonnie.” Carmen hushed her husband when he rounded on her. “Enough, Neil. You think it’s not going to come out? They’re saying Bonnie made violent sex videos! That will become public knowledge. The least we can do for her memory is to help people understand why she had such low self-esteem.”
Neil emitted a string of unintelligible pleas.
Erin stepped between the couple, focusing all of her attention on Carmen. “Keep talking.”
“Ted and Simon went to college together. When the girls were little, Ted hadn’t made a name for himself yet. Simon let him stay with them when Ted ran out of money. Simon and Melinda had a function, and Ted volunteered to watch the girls. Bonnie said Sarah was already asleep when he came into the bed.” She clawed at her head, tangling her already unkempt hair. “He raped my eight-year-old daughter and then told her she would ruin her uncle’s life if she told. He did it again a few days later. I noticed something changed in Bonnie, and she finally told me. We confronted Ted and Simon. Ted Moore is a great actor, and Simon wanted to believe him. He said Bonnie was a manipulative child who just wanted attention.”
Carmen’s broken tone turned bitter. “Sarah was so delicate, and people were drawn to her, especially with those beautiful, strange eyes. Bonnie got jealous sometimes. But for Simon to say Bonnie made something like this up? The doctor confirmed she’d been molested. She was ... injured.”
“But Ted Moore’s semen was already gone.” As a mother, Erin couldn’t imagine any set of circumstances or any threat big enough to keep her from cutting off Moore’s balls. No way in hell would she have kept silent.
Carmen nodded. “Simon said Neil must have abused our daughter, and we coached Bonnie to say otherwise. He threatened to call the police and have Neil investigated. And he assured us he would make our lives—Bonnie’s life—miserable. We were too scared to do the right thing.”
Judging them accomplished nothing, and the little voice in her head debated on whether or not the security of her family name would have played a part in her decision. Beckett and Clark were right. No matter how far she ran from the Prince legacy, she would always view life through that veil of experience.
“How long did Ted Moore stay in town?”
“At least a couple of months,” Neil said. “I saw him once, in the grocery store. Shopping with Sarah like nothing had ever happened.” He slammed his right fist into the opposite palm. “I will never forget the look on his face. He grinned like a sly fox, patting the top of Sarah’s head. His way of letting me know he’d gotten away with it.”
The sick feeling swept over Erin with the force of a hurricane. How could these two not have considered the obvious? “What did Sarah do that day?”
“She wouldn’t look at me,” Neil said. “Stared at the floor the entire time. And yes, we knew Moore had likely abused Sarah too. But we had to take care of Bonnie first.”
“How did you find out Moore went to California?”
Neil’s chin jutted out, his narrowed eyes glossed over from the memory. “I got drunk and showed up at Simon’s a couple of days later. He told me he’d banished Moore the day before. That Moore moved to California. I hired someone to find out whether it was true. Once he confirmed it, we tried to go on with our lives.”
“He used the word banished?” The truth hit Erin like hives festering just beneath her skin.
“Yeah. They had some kind of argument, I guess.”
“You said you got Bonnie therapy, but therapists are required to report sexual abuse. There is none on record for Bonnie.”
Neil shuffled his feet. “All I ever wanted to do was protect my daughter. I failed her by leaving her at my brother’s. Risking her going into the foster system because my brother made my wife and me look like the ones who did something wrong terrified me.”
“So you didn’t get her therapy?” This family created their own brand of cancer by allowing their daughter to be victimized long after the sexual abuse stopped.
“We did,” Carmen said. “Someone Melinda recommended. A friend of Simon’s. He agreed to keep things quiet and focus on Bonnie’s mental health.”
“Jesus Christ.” Erin threw her hands in the air, but she envisioned taking them both by the hair and knocking their skulls together.
“We tried to talk to Melinda and Simon, and they wouldn’t hear of it. I begged Melinda to keep Sarah away from Ted Moore.” Carmen’s voice broke. “I don’t know if she did. When I saw Sarah years later and she talked about therapy, I worried Melinda didn’t listen.”
“Did you ask who her therapist was?”
Carmen’s eyes closed. “The same one Bonnie went to.”
Erin should have walked away. But the venom rolled through her. A parent’s job was to protect the child, even if the price required self-sacrifice. “Congratulations. You failed your daughter and your niece. And those failures may have gotten Bonnie killed.” If she stayed one more minute, Erin would end up saying something guaranteed to earn a suspension. And Mina still needed her. Erin turned to leave, but Neil Archer seized her elbow.
Spit bubbled in the corners of his mouth. His hair jacked up in all directions. “Don’t you think we know that? I’ve lived with the guilt for years. I watched Bonnie go through hell time and again, and I couldn’t do anything because she didn’t trust me. She didn’t think I would fix it because I never made things right with Ted Moore. He never had to answer for what he did.” Something feral flashed in his eyes. A satisfied smile tugged at his frothing mouth. “But I guess he finally did, didn’t he?”
Cold, stinging air rushed through Erin’s esophagus. She yanked free of Neil’s bony grasp and moved toward the door, never taking her eyes off him. “I’m going to ask you two one more time—do the names Jane, Charlie, or Mina mean anything to you? Do any of those names have a connection with Sarah?”
Still breathing hard and looking like something straight off the crazy train, Neil shook his head.
But Carmen made a sound of recognition as something clicked into place. “Sarah’s middle name is Jane. Her maternal grandmother’s name.”
Erin left them standing in the doorway crying and holding each other. Her call to Sarah Archer’s cell went unanswered as expected. No one picked up at the Archers’ Chevy Chase home. Beckett’s phone went to voicemail. Erin left a message with the new information and told Beckett where to meet her. “I’m stopping at Virginia’s first. I need to check something.”
Virginia Walton’s home in Takoma Park had been cleaned by a crime scene crew, but the aura of violent death still hung in the air like a cloying perfume. Violence like that left a black mark, a dark energy felt by all who crossed its path.
The dark energy clung to Erin as she eased through the house. She had no reason to be quiet, but silence seemed like the right thing. The jagged circle had been cut out of the carpet where Virginia’s blood soaked through to the subfloor. The wood had been cleaned, but the stain gleamed in Erin’s flashlight beam.
She wished Rylan hadn’t canceled the power and prayed she didn’t take the box from her mother’s bedroom. The night of the murder, she and
Beckett didn’t think much of it. Just a regular cardboard storage box marked as old thesis drafts and works in progress—Marie called the woman a paper pack rat. The dates marked with a sharpie on the box were several months old. Likely not pertinent to the investigation. Had that decision changed everything?
Sarah Archer’s words played on repeat in Erin’s mind as she moved with quiet reverence down the hall. My second thesis ... the first one was too emotional and personal ... like a memoir.
Questions raced through Erin’s mind. What about the Dear Princess letter? And what about the letter Sarah received earlier?
Had Sarah really been ballsy—or disturbed—enough to hand deliver a letter she’d written? And why?
Because she could. You didn’t see what was right in front of you.
Sarah practically waved it in Erin’s face the other day at the CID. The two of them had even discussed her embroidered initials on the handkerchief: SJA.
Sarah knew Erin would empathize with her upbringing and the terror of being cut off from the money.
The bedroom still held a faint whiff of Virginia’s flowery perfume, and it looked exactly the same. Rylan must not have been able to bring herself to go through her mother’s things yet. Erin didn’t blame her. She hadn’t been inside Brad’s room yet. Mrs. Bakas had brought out his clothes for Erin to choose from for the burial. She blinked against the sting in her eyes and called up the memory of Mina’s terrified voice to stave off the threat of crushing despair. She shined her beam into the corner and exhaled hard when she saw the box still sitting in the corner.
Heart racing, she knelt down and balanced the flashlight between her ear and shoulder. Dust rose from the papers, making Erin sneeze. She sliced her fingers on the edges of the paper three times before she reached the middle of the pile and caught the name Sarah Jane Archer.
Her original thesis discussed unreported sexual abuse in children and the longstanding ramifications. Erin licked her thumb and tried not to let her disgust mess up her focus. She could easily see why the paper had been rejected. The tone was more conversational than academic, and instead of any real evidence, many of Sarah’s theories were only conjecture.
And it did read like a memoir, with names omitted. But the text made it clear Ted Moore molested Sarah, possibly before he touched Bonnie.
Things picked up on page five. Sarah theorized violence in women throughout history could have been the result of sexual abuse and the rejection from loved ones. Women had been forced to live lies, Sarah wrote, and in some of them rose a violent need to lash out. This time, she cited evidence.
The next four pages laid out the theory Jack the Ripper was a woman. A woman Sarah referred to as Jane.
* * *
Beckett answered his phone this time. He swore when Erin told him what she’d read.
“She took the metro to the station the other day. Which means if she walked to the metro then, she could have done it the night of Bonnie and Virginia’s murders. Her mother and the housekeeper wouldn’t have noticed, especially if Sarah was supposed to be locked in her room and working on her thesis. I missed it.” Erin clenched the wheel until her hands throbbed. Sarah had practically given her the truth giftwrapped with a big, red bow.
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Beckett said. “You’d been dealing with the press, and we’d already eliminated her as a suspect.”
“I’m on my way to Chevy Chase.” The faintest tinge of pink decorated the eastern horizon. “I should be there before six, but traffic’s picking up. Let’s hope Simon Archer is still alive. And Aleta and Mina and Charlie.”
“We just walked out of Sid’s.” Beckett’s rapid breaths sounded like he might have been running.
“Please tell me you’re in Fowler’s car. He always uses the department ones. You need a siren.”
“I can do that. Fowler!”
“You’re still at least twenty minutes out.” Erin jammed her foot on the accelerator and ran a yellow light. “I’ll be there in five.”
“Don’t go in by yourself,” Beckett said. “If Sarah’s the one behind this, she’s extremely dangerous.”
How had Erin missed all of the signs? Sarah might be an incredible actress, but she thought back to Beckett’s words. Had she ignored the obvious because she allowed her and Sarah’s similar backgrounds to influence her?
A terrible thought skidded through Erin’s racing mind. What if Mina was actually Sarah’s child? What if she’d been kept hidden for some strange reason? But why? Unless Ted Moore fathered the child, which made no sense. Simon’s? A product of incest? Simon might have kicked Ted Moore out of their lives, but how long had he looked the other way? Or did he have some kind of twisted thing for his adult daughter, and that’s why she kept Mina hidden?
But what about Charlie? The boy who took care of Mina. An older brother? No, too dark. If Sarah had children she kept hidden, the more likely reason was those kids didn’t look good for Simon’s conservative agenda.
“Erin? Do you hear me?”
She took a sharp left into the Archers’ stately neighborhood. “Hurry.”
* * *
The Archers’ small mansion seemed as lifeless as Virginia’s modest home. A red convertible sat in the driveway. Sarah’s car? Headlights off, Erin blocked it in and tried to summon patience.
She had to be wrong. But it all made sense.
Sarah and Bonnie reconnected after Ted Moore came back into town. That had to be the catalyst. Sarah probably apologized and told her cousin what she’d gone through. They bonded again and hatched the blackmail scheme.
Why would Sarah snap on her cousin?
The answer came to Erin like a zing from a live wire. The amateur rape videos. Had Sarah snapped over the violence Bonnie perpetrated?
Virginia Walton was the snitch because she could have pulled out the original thesis and started talking.
Yari Malek was the filth responsible for turning Bonnie into a whore. Aleta—if she hadn’t been killed—was another enabler.
Erin watched the house, bouncing in her seat and tapping her uneven fingernails against the steering wheel. Where the hell were Beckett and Fowler?
A call came through her Bluetooth, flashing onto the car’s touchscreen as unknown. Erin’s eyes never left the Archers’ home. “Mina?”
The dark drapes in the house’s front bay window parted. “I see you, Princess. Do you want to come play?”
Adrenaline flushed through her system until Erin’s throat nearly closed. She should stall the girl and wait for Beckett, but the child could be attacked at any moment. Erin took the safety off her gun and exited the car. “Of course I want to play. I’ve been trying to find you for weeks.”
The little girl giggled. “I know. I like games.”
“Me too.” Erin moved slowly up the walk, trying to see inside the small opening in the drapes. They fell closed, and Erin dropped to a crouch. Jane’s weapon of choice appeared to be a knife, but Erin didn’t know whether the Archers’ kept a gun in the house.
The click of a lock escaped into the stillness.
Erin’s gaze shot to the front door slowly opening into a mouth of darkness. “Mina? Is that you? Come out to me, sweetheart.”
Pale feet appeared first. Erin tried to draw a breath, but her lungs fought against her. Never moving from her crouch, she slipped the gun out of its holster at her waist, keeping the weapon low. “Mina, are you coming out to play with me?”
Sarah Archer moved into the open doorway. Shadows obscured her face as she stepped onto the granite entry clutching a large knife dripping with blood. Her blonde hair stuck up in the back and tangled around her face. Dark streaks marred her ghostly white nightshirt.
“Princess.” The excited, childlike voice of Mina singsonged from Sarah’s lips.
Erin went cold and still inside, but her entire body convulsed.
“I told Jane not to do it. But she never listens to me.”
“Mina.” Erin’s mind stayed blank. Had she ju
mped into another dimension? “Sweetheart, can you come closer? I can’t see you very well.” The pieces clicked together. I had called Sarah from my personal cell. That’s how Mina got the number.
Sarah cocked her head, revealing clumps of blood on her neck. “Okay.”
Slowly, she padded forward on tiptoes, the unmistakable gait of a whimsical child. The movement triggered a motion sensor, and artificial light suddenly bathed the front of the house. Sarah froze. Her eyes popped wide, and her mouth curled up like a toddler getting ready to wail. She jerked the knife into a defensive stance. In her other hand, she held an old, beat-up, leather-bound book.
“Mina, shut up.” Her new voice was a tenor and decidedly masculine. Her expression shifted from a scared little girl to a surly teenager. “You’re going to get us all in trouble.”
Erin’s knees throbbed, but she didn’t dare stand up. “Charlie?”
Sarah’s narrowed eyes met Erin’s. Her lips curled in cocky, adolescent defiance. “Go away. I’ve got the situation under control.” Her—his—voice cracked at the last word.
Her brain screamed this could not be real, but it very much was.
Charlie edged closer, knife still hiked up, face twisted.
Erin noticed more blood—Simon’s or Melinda’s? Or both? “Charlie, I don’t want to piss you off, but I’m too old to be kneeling like this.”
Charlie curled up his nose like he’d just noticed a steaming pile of dog shit. “You are old. You’re what, like thirty-four?”
Erin mustered a smile. “Nice compliment. Thirty-eight and feeling every minute. Is it cool if I stand?”
He waved the knife, making blood fly. “Throw that gun behind you, and it’s cool.”
Erin obeyed, tossing the Sig Saur behind her into the soft yard. Hopefully, she hadn’t thrown it so far she couldn’t get to it if she dived fast enough. And the Taser rested inside her jacket, heavy and secure against her ribs. Her knees throbbed, and she made a show of shaking her legs out. “Thanks. So what’s going on here?”
