by Jill Jones
Jonathan bolted upright in his bed, his body drenched in cold sweat. It was just a dream, he told himself. Only a dream. But he was uneasy as he drifted off to sleep again.
The specter of the dream followed him into the next day, and he was tempted to call Victoria just to make sure she was all right. That was a foolish notion, of course. The dream was nothing more than his subconscious recalling his terror when Victoria truly was in grave danger.
He finished reading Dr. Gull’s notebook before leaving for work, and once in his office, undertook the chore of photocopying both it and the old police reports before entrusting the treasures to Erik Hensen in the forensic lab. “These are for your eyes only,” he told the man, whose eyes grew to the size of saucers when he saw what had come his way. “I don’t want it known that they exist. For now, it’s our little secret. They may be phony, and I don’t want to look like a fool, you know what I mean?”
Jonathan left with a smile on his face, knowing that the curious and highly efficient little man would put aside everything else to find out if those materials were authentic. Knowing Hensen, he’d probably started on it the minute Jonathan had left the office.
In his own office, the message pile still awaited him. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down, determined to wade through them and get it over with. But his mind tripped back to the intriguing police records and the incredible little diary. To J.K. Stephen and the Prince’s plea for Dr. Gull to stop him from killing again. To the phrase “kill into infinity.”
Kill into infinity.
That expression had not been used in any of the notes sent to the media by the original Ripper, but the copycat had used it three times. The coincidence of coming across it in the diary, in reference to J.K.Stephen, the man he thought had likely been the real Ripper, was too great to ignore, although it was impossible that Billy Ray had read Dr. Gull’s diary. But Coleman had known a great deal about the old Ripper murders. It was possible he might have stumbled across some other mention of the term, but Jonathan could not recall having seen the phrase in any of the considerable research material that he had read on the subject.
Jonathan tried to ignore the misgivings that stirred in his gut. Billy Ray was dead. Why was he suddenly so concerned about Victoria’s safety? Just to set his mind at ease, he picked up the phone to call her, but realized it was only four am in DC. He’d wait a couple of hours.
During that time, he forced himself to return the phone calls that had come in for him while he was away. As he talked, he doodled on a yellow legal pad, and when he hung up, he realized he’d been drawing the infinity sign—a figure eight turned sideways—over and over again.
Kill into infinity.
Infinity. A pattern? A game? A game board?
Haven’t you figured it out yet? Curious, Jonathan left his office, and minutes later in the reference room, he was poring over a map of the United States. He laid a piece of tracing paper over the map and marked an X over each city where the Ripper copycat had struck.
Chicago. Kansas City. Phoenix. San Francisco. Seattle. Boulder. Dallas/Fort Worth. And finally, Washington, DC. He figured that Billy Ray had begun his journey of death from his home just outside of DC, so Jonathan used that as both starting and ending point. With a pencil, he connected the dots, so to speak, moving from DC to Chicago and on along the killer’s route. The result was loosely the image of an infinity sign.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “There was a pattern.” If they’d guessed his game from the note he’d sent to the Denver Post, they might have saved the lives of two women in Texas. And Victoria might have been spared the hours of terror when she’d been held captive by Billy Ray.
Jonathan returned to his office, pleased at himself, but still vaguely uneasy. How had Billy Ray come up with the pattern of the infinity sign? It could only be…that the original Ripper had murdered in a similar pattern.
He called the evidence custodian and requisitioned a photocopy of the rough map of Whitechapel that had been pinned to the wall of Burt Brown’s bedroom. The map that was marked with the Ripper murder sites. Going through the same “follow the dots” motions, he saw another, fatter infinity sign appear before his eyes.
Jonathan pursed his lips, letting out a low whistle as he leaned back against his chair. He hadn’t thought Billy Ray was that smart. He must have observed the same thing, that the original Ripper had killed in the pattern of an infinity sign, and decided to copy him on a grander scale. Had the Ripper of old been that organized? He doubted it. From all he had read, the original Ripper, although an organized killer to some degree, had relied a great deal on chance and opportunity. And yet, according to Dr. Gull’s diary, J.K. Stephen had vowed to kill into infinity. Had it been coincidental that he’d struck in those particular spots, or was it part of a predetermined pattern?
His thoughts were interrupted by an incoming call.
“Blake here.”
The receptionist told him he had an international call. When she put the call through, the voice on the phone was young and female, heavy with a French accent. “Inspector Blake,” she said in a hesitant manner. “You may not remember me. My name is Chantal Dupres. I was at the Sherlockian symposium with my friend Nicole.”
Remember them? How could he forget that pair? “Yes, Miss Dupres. What may I do for you?”
She paused, then told him, “My friend and I have been talking, and we feel badly about somezing. We…uh…did not quite tell your men all ze truth ze day after the murder.”
From the moment she got out of bed, Victoria dreaded the evening to come. Why her mother insisted on something like this was beyond her. She knew that Trey had been estranged from his parents for years and had only lately shown signs of mellowing. Why was she trying to force a reconciliation between them? It was bound to backfire. Victoria wondered at her own stupidity in agreeing to more or less kidnap Trey and deliver him to the doorstep of her parents’ mansion. He’d be royally pissed at her.
On the other hand, he had seemed more open to reconciliation. Only yesterday he’d told her he’d called his mother to let her know he was back in town. And his mother had told him that her mother had said she was shacked up with Jonathan at the cottage.
She had a major bone to pick with both women. But she wouldn’t do it tonight.
Tonight, she’d be there for Trey. She’d made a dinner date with him, ostensibly to pay him back for going to London with her. She’d just failed to mention where she planned to take him. She would tell him before they arrived. If he truly didn’t want to go, she wouldn’t make him.
Victoria dressed for work with an eye to the evening’s party, for she wouldn’t have time to come home and change. She chose an elegant tailored dress rather than a suit, and higher heels than she normally preferred. She wasn’t exactly dressing to satisfy her mother, yet she knew her mother would be pleased. She didn’t know why she cared. But being suitably dressed when she broke the news to everyone that she’d decided to marry Jonathan Blake would at least give her some psychological armor. Her announcement would cause a shitstorm, and she didn’t plan to broach the subject this evening unless it came up. But between Barbara and Marilyn, she knew it would come up, and she wasn’t going to lie any more about her feelings for Jonathan, or their plans for the future. Whatever they were.
She had hoped to spend the day sorting out her desk and doing other housekeeping chores around the office that had been ignored during her vacation and the ensuing case with the copycat Ripper. But when she arrived, she found a group of dignitaries in the main office, including two Congressmen, members of a “watchdog” committee that who were supposed to police the police.
She never made it to her desk, as Mike invited her to join him in giving the group a tour of the headquarters of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. “We sometimes refer to this as the National ‘Cellar’ for the Analysis of Violent Crime because of its underground location,” she joked, trying to sound at ease
, but in fact, these people made her nervous. They could never understand fully what went on here, and she suspected their visit had something to do with funding.
She did her job well, however. Too well, it would seem, for they became fascinated with the new computer system and took their time learning its capabilities. “We’re getting kind of close to Big Brother here,” one remarked skeptically.
“There is a fine line sometimes between criminal investigation and protection of privacy,” she said in agreement. “But this system is not about invasion of privacy. It’s about communication between law enforcement agencies. Because we had this system in place, for example, we were able to assist police departments across the country in resolving the recent series of brutal murders you may have read about.”
“Traveling Jack?” asked one of them.
“That’s right.”
“But I read that you never got a confession out of the man before he was killed,” remarked one of the Congressmen. “How do you know you got the right man?”
The question was fair, and Victoria didn’t mind answering it. But as she began to tick off the reasons the agency had concluded that Billy Ray was Traveling Jack, something in the pit of her stomach turned over. By all reason and logic, Billy Ray had to have been the killer. But the evidence, other than the fact he’d tried to kill her, just wasn’t there. They had no proof that he had so much as looked at those other women, much less been at the crime scenes. She wasn’t going to tell this to the assembled group, however.
“It’s difficult sometimes,” she admitted, however. “In this case, particularly so, because the perpetrator left no evidence at the crime scenes such as bodily fluids, hair, fingerprints, that could give us a genetic match with the man we believe committed the murders. The case has not been closed, but it’s gone cold.”
It was mid-afternoon before the group left, and Victoria hoped she’d answered their questions satisfactorily. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in watchdog committees, but even with completely altruistic motives, they had the power to interrupt the valuable work being done by the profiling unit at Quantico, as well as by their agents in the field.
“I’m starved,” she said, plopping down on a chair in Mike Mosier’s office after they’d left. “Want to buy me lunch?”
“Yeah. Let’s get out of here. That’s enough for one day.”
Two square white boxes tied with identical red ribbons sat on Jonathan’s desk, and huddled in chairs to one side, Chantal Dupres and Nicole St. Germaine looked miserable and contrite. They’d called him from Paris that morning. They had read the continuing stories about the Whitechapel murder and began to realize they might have withheld some pertinent information. They had insisted on driving to London to speak with him in person. It was late afternoon by the time they’d arrived, having driven through the Chunnel, the tunnel beneath the English Channel. The story they were laying out for him chilled him to the marrow.
“We…we should have thought about this from the start,” Chantal said, biting her nails.
“But…but we were afraid.”
No one could be more afraid than Jonathan was at the moment. Afraid they had all made a terrible mistake in thinking that Billy Ray Coleman was the Ripper copycat. Afraid that Victoria was in more danger now than either of them had ever conceived possible. He struggled to remain outwardly calm, but inside he was trembling.
“Let’s see if I have this straight. You say on the night of the Whitechapel murder, Trey Delaney left you for an extended period of time. When was that?”
“About…well, it was right after we got to ze night club. We left ze Jack ze Ripper Pub about half past ten and took a taxi to a new dance place out in ze Docklands. He said he had to go out for a little while, that he wanted to give us a present. He bought us drinks, gave us money to buy more if we finished those before he returned, and was gone before we could say anything. Pretty soon, he came back with flowers for us, in those boxes.” She pointed to the boxes on the desk.
“How long was he gone?”
“About…thirty minutes. Forty-five at the most. He must have known a place open late at night to buy ze flowers. He was such a gentleman. We do not believe he would have done anyzing else, so when your men asked us if Mr. Delaney had been with us all night, we said yes. We thought he meant…well, you know…with us in bed all night. Which he was.”
Jonathan was reeling. Thirty to forty-five minutes! Trey Delaney had left them for that long right around midnight, which was the hour the coroner had reckoned as the likely time of death. It was enough time to hop a train back into London—a train that went almost directly back to Whitechapel for that matter, it wasn’t that far—commit the murder, and return, flowers in hand. There was probably one of those all-night shopettes in the neighborhood of the night club that sold flowers.
The timing was tight, but it could have happened.
But most damaging were the gift boxes in front of him.
“You say the next day when you were packing, you noticed one of the gift boxes was missing.”
“Yes, but we were in a hurry. We did not think anything of it. I could not honestly remember if I’d brought mine back from the club,” Chantal admitted. “I’d…had quite a bit to drink by that time.”
They had brought one of the boxes with them from Paris that morning, thinking it might somehow be cogent to the case. Jonathan had retrieved the other from Scotland Yard’s evidence custodian. It was the box in which the murdered woman’s liver had been delivered to Victoria’s door.
Two rooms away from Trey Delaney’s room.
The boxes were identical in every respect. When the young women had learned what the missing box had been used for, they were horrified.
Jonathan did not know Trey Delaney well, but he had instinctively disliked him from the start, feelings that he had chalked up to jealousy. Maybe his intuition had been operational all along, and he’d chosen to ignore it.
“Did he leave the room any time during the night?”
They shook their heads in unison.
“But like I said,” Chantal reminded him, “we’d had a lot to drink. Strange,” she said reflectively, “he didn’t seem to want to…you know, have sex with us. We just curled up together and went to sleep. He could have…left the room, and we wouldn’t have known it.”
Nicole began to cry. “Zis is so horrible. I am so sorry.”
Jonathan felt sorry for them, for they were in deep trouble. But he felt sorrier for the women who had died because these two had protected the man whom he now fully believed was the real Traveling Jack.
Trey Delaney.
Victoria’s childhood friend.
How could she have overlooked him as a suspect? he wondered. She never once considered him at all. Maybe it was because she knew him, was his friend and could not believe it was possible for him to be the killer. But he fit her profile much better than did Billy Ray. A young male between twenty and thirty…Jonathan would guess that Trey was in his late twenties…who came from the same level of society as his victims and moves easily among them… Trey Delaney would have had no trouble meeting his victims in social surroundings. Well-educated. Yes. Well-financed. Yes. Well-organized in his crimes, a careful planner. Yes. He must have planned the Whitechapel murder carefully. Otherwise, he would have become bloodied from the act. He had had to plan ahead, for he must have taken some kind of receptacle along with him to store his bloody souvenir. Where had he come by the zipper lock plastic bag? He had also had to find a way to obtain the gift box he wanted in which to deliver Victoria’s present.
Victoria.
Ignoring the two frightened young women, Jonathan dialed Victoria’s office number. He got her voice mail and left a message for her to call him on an important matter. He wanted to tell her his suspicions directly, not leave what surely would be a devastating message on a recording. And what if he was wrong? He would be accusing her friend of the most heinous of crimes. Would she ever forgive him?
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br /> But he had to press the issue. The French women’s story was too important to ignore. He called Victoria’s apartment but it, too, was answered with a recording. His apprehension mounted. He had to talk to her, to warn her before she innocently opened her door to a man who might be the killer, thinking him a friend.
And then dismay washed over him as he remembered that she’d said she was taking Trey to a surprise birthday party at her parents’ house. Tonight.
Oh, God.
He looked at his watch. It was four o’clock Greenwich time. That would make it only ten am her time. He had to get through to her before she made what could be the worst mistake of her life. Maybe the last.
He turned Chantal and Nicole over to two of his best CID men who were to tape formal depositions from the women and question them further. He returned to his office and paced the floor, telling himself this was madness. There was no way Trey Delaney could be the Ripper copycat. Perhaps the young women had made up their story. But why? What motive did they have for that? None. They had, in fact, put themselves at considerable risk by coming forward. They could have kept quiet, and no one would have known the difference.
Trying to convince himself that Trey could not be the killer, Jonathan considered the issues of Trey’s motive, means, and opportunity in the Whitechapel murder.
Motive. What motive did he have for the killings? None that he knew of. But then, psychopathic killers needed no real motive. They were driven by madness. But Trey Delaney did not seem mad in the least.
Means. Did Trey Delaney carry a knife? Did he know how to use it? Again, it seemed unlikely. He’d gone to Whitechapel that night dressed like a young lord of the realm, complete with high hat, spats and cane. Where would he have secured a knife?
Opportunity. If the French women’s story was true, he did have the opportunity. It was the only element that fit. But even so, the window of opportunity was narrow.
