Her skin glittered in the artificial light of the lecture hall, and the dark mascara drew me to her eyes. I felt a sensation of heat somewhere in my chest, even amidst all the disappointment with the sting operation and the SWK investigation.
“Hey, nice talk, Professor Madden,” she said at the bottom of the stairs.
“Thank you, Professor Waveland,” I returned, with false cordiality. “You look amazing, to say the least.”
“As do you, Professor.” She stepped backwards and led me away from the last remnant of people slowly exiting the lecture hall. “I didn’t see anyone out of place,” she relayed in a low whisper, once we were out of everyone’s earshot. “But I got caught out of position and couldn’t risk a scene with the guy who’d taken my seat. Did any of the other agents signal you?”
“Nope, nothing. Looks like a bust.”
“We still have the reception,” she offered.
“I suppose so,” I said with a genuine sigh. “So we can continue with plan B and head over, though I’m afraid at this point nothing will come of it.” I looked around the empty room. “All of this time and effort. For nothing.”
“Don’t give up. Your own profile says this guy probably blends in … same as BTK. He could have been here and maybe no one would have noticed. We still have the reception,” she repeated, “so don’t give up just yet.”
We walked slowly out of the lecture hall as the AV guy turned the lights off behind us. “I don’t even want to think about what Jimmy will say about this. All this money.”
Woodson intertwined her arm with my own, turning her face to look at me as we walked alone down the hallway. “Don’t worry about the money. The night’s still young. The glass is still half full. Let’s go to a cocktail reception and try to catch a killer.”
I shook my head but couldn’t help smiling at her endless reservoir of optimism as we pushed open the door and walked toward our parking garages. As always, her enthusiasm was infectious, and I actually found myself looking forward to the reception. Maybe she was right; maybe we still had a chance of catching the guy. The Magnolia Mansion was across town near the Quarter, and we’d have to drive to get there.
“I took a cab here,” Woodson said, as if reading my mind. “Would it be possible for me to get a ride, Dr. Madden?” She batted her eyes, asking the question with a slightly pouty smile—the kind normally meant to trick a guy like me into doing anything a woman like her might ask.
“Of course,” I said simply, momentarily unable to refrain from looking into her eyes longer than usual.
She returned my gaze, and then we both looked quickly away. “Let’s hope we can find this guy tonight,” Woodson said, still holding my arm.
I nodded in silent agreement as we pushed open an exit door and walked out into the night.
Woodson and I pulled up outside the Magnolia Mansion fifteen minutes later. As the parking valets took my keys I recognized one of our agents standing on the far side of the street. He was posing as a valet but was responsible for the perimeter of the mansion. He gave me a barely perceptible nod—no eye rub, no yawn—to signify that no one suspicious had yet arrived. Woodson and I walked together through a massive wrought iron gate intertwined with ivy and made our way up the cobblestone sidewalk to the house.
Inside, the floor of the lobby was black-and-white checkerboard marble, and two staircases curled on either side of the entranceway up to the main floor. A green banner was strung between the two staircases welcoming everyone to the Society of Neuroscience reception.
We dropped our coats off at the coat check and recognized the coat checker as the final agent from our so-called sting operation. I was pretty sure this was a waste of his and everyone else’s time, but we’d see it through.
Woodson and I were halfway up the staircase on the right when I heard a familiar voice above the cacophony of conversation around us. A deep and sultry laugh rose above the rest of the noise, and I glanced upward, disbelieving my eyes.
“Lucas! Lucas!” Mara waved over the crowd at the top of the stairs. Woodson looked upward sharply, and I panicked for a moment.
The first thought that ran through my mind was simply to ask myself what the hell Mara was doing out in public. But then I remembered seeing her at the Society of Neuroscience meeting the previous year, accompanying my brother, who’d presented data on neuroendocrinology findings in pregnant women. I should have considered the possibility that they might be in attendance at this year’s reception, and possibly my lecture as well.
The second thought was a decidedly more personal question, which was whether Mara was going to make a scene or not. I watched as she excused herself and walked down the steps toward Woodson and me. A tall man still half hidden by the crowd followed her and I felt a surprising sense of anger surge in my chest. I wasn’t sure if it was some vestigial jealousy over our previous relationship, or some subconscious remnant of the protective instinct I’d never outgrown for my younger brother.
Regardless of why, I suddenly became keenly interested in making her new companion’s acquaintance.
I climbed the last few steps behind Woodson and felt a sense of relief as I recognized Mara’s partner as none other than Dr. James Kinsey, her psychiatrist. In fact, in a convoluted way I was slightly indebted to him: I’d conjured up the original idea for our sting operation after seeing a filled-out registration form for the Society of Neuroscience lying on his desk when we’d interviewed Mara.
“Lucas,” Mara said pleasantly, using my name as a salutation.
Woodson and I did a double take. “Hello, Mara,” I offered politely, still uncertain as to how the conversation would go.
Kinsey stuck out his hand. “Dr. Madden, we meet again. I greatly enjoyed your lecture.”
“Thank you very much.” I glanced from Mara. “Mara, Dr. Kinsey, you’ve met my companion, Dr. Waveland.”
I watched Mara as I introduced Woodson and saw a fire illuminate in her pupils. Her eyes became watery and caught the light of the chandelier above. “Dr. Waveland,” she said with a less than genuine smile, placing an emphasis on the word
doctor
that made it sound like slander rather than a title.
“Hello,” Woodson said.
Of all people, Kinsey appeared oblivious of Mara’s passive-aggressive salutation. “Well, it was nice seeing you all again. Please, go mingle,” he said, gesturing toward the crowds. “I’m on the board of directors and I must go do some requisite mingling myself. Please enjoy your evening if I don’t see you again.”
Kinsey nodded, gave a final reassuring pat to Mara’s arm, then faded into the crowd, leaving us alone with her.
“So, Mara,” I said, “where’s Tyler?”
Mara, however, continued looking at Woodson, who had by now become aware of Mara’s glare and pretended not to notice. Mara stared at Woodson for a second longer, then turned to face me, a falsified smile across her lips. “Tyler’s coming a bit later. He has a grant application or something. I came down alone.” She looked over my shoulder, caught the eye of someone, and waved daintily. “I was just about to say hello to the Prevines, so if you don’t mind,” she said, offering her hand to me without looking at Woodson.
The smile from the top of the stairs was gone, replaced by a piercing stare more akin to the look she’d given me on the basement floor of her grandmother’s house.
“It was good seeing you again, Mara.”
She turned and walked away into the crowd without another word.
“Good-bye,” Woodson called out, but Mara didn’t seem to hear.
* * *
A few minutes later Woodson and I found a corner in the second-floor ballroom where we could speak in relative privacy.
“Friendly girl,” Woodson murmured, popping a shrimp appetizer into her mouth.
“Oh, that’s just Mara’s way of saying hell—” I began to say, but stopped midsentence as a chorus of shouts and intermittent sirens split the night outside. Adrenaline surged through my body.
Without another word Woodson and I walked rapidly through the ballroom and knifed our way through the crowds on the stairs in the entryway, moving as quickly as possible toward the commotion outside.
At the front entrance a police officer was addressing a crowd of people gathered on the porch. Their attention was focused collectively across the street. Woodson and I pushed our way through the crowd, flashed badges discreetly to the unfamiliar officer, and ran to the road, where the reason for the commotion soon became apparent.
A young woman sat strangely huddled against the low stone fence on the other side of the street, facing the Magnolia Mansion. Looking more closely I could see that she held an apple, and bloody letters were visible on her forehead. It was only at that moment that I realized she was dead.
The newest victim of the Snow White Killer sat across from the very cocktail reception in which we had hoped to trap him.
And her body had been sitting there less than an hour.
* * *
Within five minutes Woodson and I and the other undercover agents had secured the area with crime scene tape. No one could raise Simmons, the homicide agent originally stationed on the perimeter, the man we’d seen from our cars when we’d arrived at the Magnolia Mansion, by radio contact.
Unfortunately, I had little doubt as to his fate.
Woodson walked back across the street to the mansion to help the local police with crowd control and then to organize the available agents to interview attendees and valets alike, to ask if anyone had seen anything strange. She also mobilized a couple of agents to fan out and begin looking for our missing agent within a five-block radius.
At the crime scene I squatted to face the nameless victim sitting against the brick wall. The young woman, just as I’d feared, possessed the next sequence of letters from the ripper gene on her forehead, GCGA. The theory that SWK was leaving a message encoding the nucleotide sequence of the ripper gene was no longer in doubt, confirmed by the nonsensical lettering in the sequence. I stared at the unfortunate young woman, forcing myself to avoid her still-open eyes.
Accusatory in death, they seemed to ask me if she really had needed to die on my behalf.
My attention was soon thankfully diverted, however, to her hands: copious residues of caked black blood sat beneath each of her fingernails. Finally, a girl had been able to fight back. I instructed a nearby CSI to wrap her hands in plastic immediately. I wondered whether the killer’s blood beneath this woman’s fingernails would, as we’d suspected all along, match the blood lettering left on the foreheads of all the other victims.
A light rain began to fall, and I helped the CSIs get a tarp above the body to preserve the crime scene. As we worked I suddenly couldn’t shake the feeling we were being watched, and I wondered whether the SWK might be observing his handiwork. As inconspicuously as possible, I swept my head slowly through my full field of vision as we unrolled the tarp and began setting it up.
I turned my head as we secured the last corner, looking in the direction of a dark alley at the end of the block. At that moment a dark figure crossed the alleyway.
Somehow I knew it was our man. I broke into a full run as I saw the figure jerk to a stop, turn wildly at the sight of me running, and then vanish into the darkness.
The figure ahead of me ran full tilt, and I followed in silent, grim, maniacal determination. At one point he was only thirty yards ahead in the night, but I didn’t dare to stop and shoot. If I missed, the time lost in stopping to aim would make it impossible to catch up to him again. I couldn’t lose him. Finally, he turned right into an alley, and as I made that alleyway he vanished down another. All of a sudden, I felt more like prey than predator. I pulled a two-way and spoke into it between gasps for air. “Woodson. It’s Lucas. I have a bead on him. He’s in an alleyway off Saint Martin’s Street, about seven or eight blocks south of the mansion. Bring backup. It may be a trap.”
“Where the hell,” Woodson voice crackled into the air. “Oh for shit’s sake, we’re on our way. If you really think you saw him, don’t go after him. Just wait and we’ll be there for backup in less than five minutes. Do you hear me, Madden?”
“Ten four,” I said, even though I had already entered the smaller alleyway, turning the corner with my gun held aloft. I had no intention of waiting for backup.
The narrow alley into which the fleeing suspect had vanished was empty except for a single doorway at the end. A tiny, unreadable sign rocked back and forth above the door, creaking eerily in the night.
I walked slowly forward, catching my breath in the otherwise silent night. I walked farther into the alleyway, my heavy wingtips methodically clomping against the damp cobblestone beneath my feet. “Come out, with your hands up,” I said aloud, mist pouring from my mouth, realizing that I’d never spoken that phrase in my entire life. Nothing greeted me in return. I flicked on my flashlight and held it away from my face at eye level, illuminating the brickwork of the alleyway surrounding me.
The small sign above the doorway at the end still swung slightly back and forth, telltale evidence that the person I’d pursued had ducked inside or somehow brushed against it. I looked at the sign and illuminated it with the flashlight. I took a half step backwards in grim amazement as the words became visible.
A sign announcing the Ripper Gallery greeted me. A caricature of Jack the Ripper, replete with cape, top hat, and saw, was painted beneath the title of the sign, which resembled a pub sign one might find in London or the English countryside.
Beneath the Ripper Gallery sign, my flashlight illuminated the outline of a shape at the end of the alley, a human form crouching near the doorway entrance. I trained my flashlight on the person and leveled my gun. “Don’t move,” I said, stepping closer until I finally recognized the face reflected in the wavering light of my flashlight.
At the end of the alleyway was Simmons, the young agent originally stationed on the perimeter. “Simmons?” I asked into the darkness, but received no greeting in return.