A Buried Past

by Alexandria Clarke

Stowick gestured at someone behind the two-way mirror. A moment later, another officer came in and dropped a backpack onto the desk. I stared at it.

  “That’s mine,” I said.

  “Excellent deductive skills,” Stowick remarked.

  “You can’t take my things!”

  Stowick sat on one side of the desk, folded his hands together, and grinned. “Don’t you remember, Miss Frye? You gave us permission to search your items.”

  “What the hell are you on about?” I growled.

  “You asked us to check on Miss Evelyn Gray in room 209 of the Royal London Hospital,” Stowick reminded me. “One of my officers did as you asked, and I’m happy to report that Miss Gray is fine. She’s awake, alert, and asking about you.”

  The update on Evelyn’s condition came as a slight respite from the tension holding my body so tightly wound, but my anger quickly returned. “I gave you permission to check on Evelyn, not go through my things. The backpack?”

  “Your knapsack was in Miss Gray’s room, partially opened,” Stowick explained. “My officer happened to see something in your bag that worried him. He called me and explained the situation, and I asked him to confirm.”

  “Confirm what?” I spat.

  Stowick slid my backpack across the desk. “Why don’t you pull the zipper open for me, Miss Frye?”

  I roughly grabbed my bag. “All you’re going to find in here is a few empty bags of crisps. I don’t know what you think you saw—” I unzipped the bag and fell quiet as William Lewis’s and Rosie Brigham’s stolen files poked out. I’d forgotten I’d brought them along on the stakeout.

  Stowick pulled out the Lewis file. “This went missing from the chief investigator’s desk at the beginning of September. Would you like to explain how it ended up in your knapsack?”

  “I—I don’t—”

  “You don’t know?” Stowick’s grin widened. “Because Officer Potter remembers you perfectly. He said you pestered him about the case then knocked a bunch of files off the inspector’s desk. We have security footage of you sliding this file under your jacket before slipping out of the station.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see the footage,” I said stoutly.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Stowick replied. “I have a few movies I’d like to watch with you.”

  He opened the laptop and pulled up a video player. Three files popped up, each labeled by date. He clicked on the first one.

  The video was from the day I’d harangued Officer Potter at the police station near Whitechapel. The footage showed me tapping Potter on the shoulder then hounding him around the room. My attention shifted when Inspector Baker walked in and upset his desk. The files went flying. I hurried away from Potter, distracted the constable in charge of cleaning the desk, and—plain as day on the surveillance video—stole the file and shoved it up my jacket.

  Stowick hit the pause button. “Believe it now?”

  I said nothing. It would do no good to defend myself, and without a lawyer present, I’d probably get myself into more trouble.

  “Nothing to say, eh? How about this one?”

  He clicked on the second video, and another security feed, this time from the hospital, played in the open window. There I was, lingering outside the supposedly locked file room. Matthew Thompson emerged from the room, and I grabbed him. We spoke briefly before he handed me Rosie’s file from beneath this shirt.

  I let my eyes drift shut. I knew what it looked like: that I had hired Matthew to sneak into the hospital’s record room to take Rosie’s file.

  “What’s that look like to you?” Stowick asked.

  I remained quiet.

  “Still not talking, eh?” Stowick shook his head. “Fine then. This last one should do the trick.”

  He clicked on the final video, which was from the CCTV cameras located in Mitre Square. The angles covered the front door of the bank building and the access to Mitre Passage. Eira Kent appeared from the building, put on her coat, and hurried into the alleyway. I kept my eyes peeled on the shadows to the right of the passage, waiting for the killer to follow her. He never came. The next person the video showed entering Mitre Passage, after Eira, was me.

  I spoke at last. “That’s not right.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You’ve tampered with the footage,” I accused Stowick. “You’ve cut out the killer.”

  Stowick’s nose wrinkled. “What are you on about? This is straight off the CCTV records. We’ve got you running after the victim into the alleyway where she was attacked. You might as well admit that you took a knife to her throat.”

  “But I didn’t!” I cleared my throat and tried again in a calmer tone. “If you didn’t alter the footage, then someone else did, because I wasn’t the first person to follow Eira. The killer went in before me. I saw him.”

  Stowick played the video again. “Point him out.”

  “He was here,” I said, gesturing to the shadowy area on the right. “He’d been standing there in the dark the entire time. Your team couldn’t see him. Neither did I, not until he followed Eira. He waited for her to go into the passage then went after her. I chased after him, afraid he would kill her.”

  Stowick pressed his lips together as he watched Eira, then me, head into the passage. No sign of the killer. He rewound the footage and played it again. And again.

  “Don’t you have any video of inside the passage?” I asked, exasperated.

  “Nope,” he replied. “But we do have it from the opposite street. Here it is.”

  He played a different video from Creechurch Place, where Mitre Passage let out. The camera was too far from the alley’s mouth for a clear picture, but it showed Eira’s small figure falling to the ground. Not a moment later, I emerged from the shadows and knelt beside her.

  “That’s not what happened!” I said hotly. “The timing is all wrong! I was at least twenty strides behind Eira. I wouldn’t have reached her that quickly, and where’s the footage before this? Of the man in the cloak fleeing from the passage?”

  Stowick rolled his eyes. “Give it up, Miss Frye. There was no man in a cloak. You attacked Eira Kent, and you mostly likely killed William Lewis and Rosie Brigham too.”

  “You are stark raving mad,” I informed him. “Bring that footage to a professional and tell him to check it for alterations. I’m telling you, the Ripper is pulling the wool over your eyes.”

  He stretched, and his chair creaked beneath his weight. A diabolical smile spread across his froggy cheeks. “Miss Frye, we have already had our in-house professionals verify the validity of this footage. We’ve got you. You might as well admit it.”

  “I refuse,” I snapped. “I didn’t do it, and you can’t prove it.”

  “Were you watching the same videos?”

  “At any point in that video can you see me pulling a knife across Eira’s throat?”

  Stowick crossed his arms. “You were right next to her the entire time. It’s plain as day—”

  “It is not,” I countered. “The footage is grainy and dark. There’s no evidence of a blade in my hand. You can’t even be sure that’s me in the video. Did you find a murder weapon?”

  He tried his best to hide his annoyance. “I’m sure you chucked it away when you realized we were right behind you.”

  “But your constables and investigators would have swept the scene,” I reminded him. “They would have found the knife I used, if I had used one. Did they?”

  Stowick’s upper lip curled. “I can’t reveal intimate details of the investigation.”

  “You have nothing,” I said smartly. “Nothing but a few minutes of altered footage. It will get dismissed in court. Shoddy CCTV won’t prove anything. I know how many criminals go loose because the CCTV isn’t enough to identify them. You’ll look like an idiot. Again.”

  His teeth clenched with an audible click, and his face went so red that it was swollen to twice its normal size. He slammed his palm on the desk and stormed out. The other of
ficer, the younger one who’d brought in my knapsack, came back in.

  “Sorry, Miss Frye,” he said. “I’ve got to get you back to holding.”

  I didn’t fight against him. “You can’t keep me here forever. You don’t have enough proof to charge me for this.”

  “But you did steal the files,” the constable reminded me.

  “It appears I stole the files,” I corrected him. “Again, it’s hard to tell who’s who with security footage. That’s not me.”

  The constable cracked a grin. “I gotta give it to you. You’re a slick one. Off we go now.”

  Another two hours passed. The rest of my comrades were released one by one. The crazy woman speaking to herself was last to go, and as she was escorted out, she turned back to me and, with complete clarity, said, “Give ’em hell, honey.”

  Time slogged by. The holding cell grew cold, and with my sweater gone, I curled in on myself and balled up to keep warm. No one came in to offer water or food. My blood sugar dropped slowly until I began to shake slightly from the inside out. At long last, the door opened, but my hope sank when I saw it was Stowick again.

  “Come on,” he said, dragging me out of holding. “The press wants a picture of you.”

  “For what?”

  He pushed me along to where I had originally been admitted and made me stand against a white wall, where a photographer took my picture. I officially had a mugshot. Well, I technically had two; the first had been courtesy of the San Diego Police Department.

  Once the photo was finished, Stowick shoved me back into the holding cell. I stumbled inside, too weak to worry about keeping my footing.

  “We’re releasing a statement,” Stowick nastily informed me as he locked me in. “That we’ve got the killer in custody. All we need is a confession from you.”

  “Good luck getting it,” I spat. “I want to speak to the chief investigator. Baker, right? Get him in here.”

  “You don’t have the right to speak to anyone,” he answered. “Get comfortable, Miss Frye.”

  I shouted after him as he made to leave again. “I need something to eat. If I pass out in here, I’ll make sure you lose your job!”

  Stowick’s answering chuckle echoed back to me before he slammed the door and left me alone once more.

  In hindsight, I’d gotten myself into this mess. Evelyn had warned me from the beginning about nicking William Lewis’s file off the investigator’s desk. At best, I’d likely be charged for interfering with the investigation or whatever the UK equivalent was. At worst, Stowick and Baker would find a way to frame me for the three attacks in Whitechapel.

  As I mourned my fate and worried about Evelyn’s health, a bickering match broke out in the main area of the police station. The argument was so loud that I could hear the men’s voices clearly from the cold holding cell.

  “She is my client!” a familiar voice boomed. “You can’t keep her here without better evidence. I am taking her with me.”

  “She is a killer,” Stowick shouted back. “I refuse to let her loose in the streets!”

  “She’s not a killer, but you are a moron,” the other man replied. “I demand you release her to me. You do not have the authority to hold her any longer. When you have a solid case, you can get back to us.”

  “She stole confidential files from our headquarters and from a hospital’s locked record room! What do you have to say about that?”

  “That you have yet to prove her involvement in this crime either,” came the answer. “And that I have provided you with the money you demanded two hours ago for her release. Are you going back on your word, sir?”

  Stowick’s reply was too rude to be repeated in public, which might have been why Investigator Baker—who seemed to be in the vicinity—inserted himself in the conversation.

  “For God’s sake, Stowick, stow your pride!” the chief barked. “You know as well as I do we can’t convince anyone with that rubbish you call surveillance footage. Get Frye out of here. She’s no more than a snooping busybody.”

  “Sir, I gave an interview to the press—”

  “You did what?” Baker thundered.

  The rest of Stowick’s lashing was drowned out as an officer escorted a familiar man into the holding area. He was shorter than average, a few inches below six feet, but his thick stature and impressive shoulder width made up for it. His dark hair was shorter and grayer than I remembered, and his nose was crooked, as if he’d broken it since the last time I’d seen him.

  “Dad?” I gasped.

  “Hi, Jack. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Not ten minutes later, we had been cleared to leave the station. Stowick glared at us as we left, but he couldn’t do anything to stop us. My father kept a firm but gentle grip on my arm as he led me out of the station and across the street to the nearest sandwich shop.

  “Your bones are lighter than a bird’s,” he commented as we headed inside. “Don’t you eat?”

  “Often,” I said. “But it’s a bit harder from inside a police station. Dad, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in—”

  “Five years,” he finished. “When you told me that you couldn’t attend my wedding at the rehearsal dinner the night before.”

  Guilt gnawed at my stomach. Or perhaps what I felt was hunger.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t bring myself to turn up. Not when Mom—”

  “Your mom’s gone,” Dad said shortly. “Did you expect me to stay miserable forever? That I would never meet anyone new?”

  “You replaced her.”

  He grimaced. “Not here, Jacqueline. I won’t talk about this in a sandwich shop. Order something, will you?”

  We ate lunch in tense silence. Each of us did our best to examine the other without being noticed. When Dad’s eyes were focused on his sandwich, I looked him over. I noticed his thinning hair and bigger belly. I supposed his new wife was feeding him well.

  He glanced up at me, and I quickly averted my eyes. I could feel his gaze on me, checking me up and down for bumps and bruises, as he had always done.

  “Evelyn called me,” he said without prompting. “Three days ago. She filled me in on this Ripper situation. She said your killing obsession was getting out of hand.”

  “I don’t have a killing obsession,” I told him. “I study serial killers. It’s different. Besides, I don’t believe you. Evelyn was the one who encouraged me to go after the Ripper last night.”

  “Maybe this is about more than the Ripper.” Mustard squirted out of his sandwich. He wiped it with his pinky finger and licked it off. “She says you’ve been looking into your mother’s murder too. This isn’t good for you, Jack. It’s what drove us apart in the first place.”

  I let my food drop as my appetite vanished. “You know what drove us apart, Dad? The fact that you went out and found yourself a new family after Mom died. You moved to DC for her. For them. After all those years of refusing to be with Mom and me in the same place, you uprooted your entire life in New York for a woman you hardly knew.”

  He looked stunned. “That’s what you’re upset about? That I moved to DC?”

  “What do you mean? Of course!”

  He reached across the table to take my hand, but I moved it away from him. He sighed. “Honey, you moved all the way to California after your mother died. We both needed to get away from the places that were saturated with the memories of her. I didn’t move to DC for Grace. I moved because I got a decent job offer at Georgetown, and it felt like a good opportunity to get out of New York. I didn’t even meet Grace until after I’d been living there for two months.”

  All the fight drained out of me. It occurred to me that I had never bothered to ask my father how he met Grace. I was too bothered by the idea of him moving on while I was stuck in the past.

  “You drove me away, Jack,” he said softly. “What was I supposed to do?” He reached for my hand again. This time, I let him take it. “I’m here now, okay? And I’ll be sticking around fo
r a bit.”

  “Why?”

  “To help Evelyn,” he said. “And to watch over you.”

  16

  Upon my reunion with Evelyn, I threw myself onto her hospital bed and sobbed across her chest until her gown was soaked through with my tears. She stroked my hair and laughed as I muttered unintelligible apologies over and over again.

  “It’s not your fault,” she insisted. “My shoulder had been aching for days, but I kept working through the pain. I should have told you when I started feeling ill. Please stop crying.”

  At some point, I gained control of myself and waved my dad into the room. He shuffled in and extended his hand to Evelyn.

  “Hi there,” he said. “It’s been a while, but I remember you well. If I recall, you were the only person to keep Jacqueline in line while she was in school. Do you remember me?”

  Evelyn beamed. “Of course I remember you, Mr. Frye.”

  “Please, we’re all adults here. Call me Nathan. Now—” He pressed the call button to page the nurses. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  After a lengthy dismissal process, Evelyn was declared healthy enough to return home. The IV antibiotics had chased the worst of the infection out of her body, but she was prescribed other oral medications to make sure it stayed away.

  For the next ten days, I refused to let Evelyn move without my express permission. Every morning and evening, I unwrapped her shoulder, sanitized the incision site, and rewrapped it with fresh bandages. I set an alarm to remind her to take her medication. I helped her to and from physical therapy, once she was cleared to return, and I washed her shoulder brace with religious devotion every two days.

  My father kept to his word. With Evelyn’s permission, he took up residence on her luxury sofa and kept his things in a large duffel bag under the coffee table. Wherever I went, he followed, whether to the laundry room in the basement or the market down the road. If I was busy in the kitchen, he volunteered to chop vegetables and help with the cooking, but after he burned a perfectly good pot roast beyond recognition, I banned him as my assistant chef.