Ripper (30 page)

“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 soon 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.

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:

“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:

“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.

B. Rowley, B. Rowley. There was something familiar about that, but what?

“Buck’s Row,” he said aloud.

“What about it?”

“B. Rowley. B. Row. Buck’s Row. It’s where Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim, was killed. The
B
is part of Rowley’s middle name, the first victim here.”

Delia stiffened, then sat back down. “Not just her middle name. It’s the custom for women to use the initial of their maiden name.”

They hovered over the list. “Jane H. Ingraham. Can we find her maiden name?” Carver asked.

They pulled out the articles covering Ingraham’s death, nearly ripping the pages in their haste to split them up.

“Here!” Delia shouted, her voice echoing in the empty space. “In the obituary. Jane
Hanbury
Ingraham!”

“Annie Chapman, second original Ripper victim, killed on Hanbury Street,” Carver said. “So there’s got to be more, right?”

Though they failed to find anything spelling out Reza M. Petko’s middle name, Carver uncovered a social announcement listing Rowena Parker’s father as John Dutfield. Elizabeth Stride had been killed in Dutfield’s Yard.

“Which means,” Delia announced, “the next victim would have a married name beginning with
E
and a maiden name beginning with
M,
for Miller’s Court.”

Carver slowly nodded. “Where Mary Kelly, the Ripper’s final Whitechapel victim, was found. She was… she was the most brutally butchered of all. But we’d still have to go through each name beginning with an
E.
It would take hours, maybe
days
.”

“We should get started, then,” Delia said, grabbing the directory from the table.

“Wait,” Carver said, snapping his fingers. “The analytical engine. Emeril said it contains most of the upper-class citizens in the city, and there’s no one here to stop us from trying it out.”

Delia made a face. “But you don’t even know how to work it. And wouldn’t we have to create our own punch card to ask the question in the first place?”

Carver headed for Beckley’s desk. “I know where the instructions are. We could at least take a look. And you’re good at puzzles! A monkey could do it, right? What’s the worst that could happen?”