“Yeah, you could say that.” Sandra produced a throaty chuckle.

“I was wondering if we could get together and review the outstanding cases.”

“Review, huh? You’re a police consultant, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t you review the cases with your cop buddies?”

“This is something I’m handling on my own.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re playing Nancy Drew, huh?”

“I’m just trying to collect some facts...”

“You’re shining me on, is what you’re doing. Look, I got enough on my plate without fielding crank calls.”

“This isn’t—”

Dial tone. Sandra had hung up.

Well, that could have gone better. She frowned at the phone for a moment, then hit redial. After two rings she heard Sandra’s raspy hello.

“Me again.”

“I told you—”

“Here’s the thing. I really am a consultant to the police, but I’ve come across something that’s kind of...sensitive. Something I don’t want to bring to their attention yet, because it involves a person who’s close to me, and who may be—in fact I hope he is—completely innocent. You with me so far?”

“I’m still on the phone, aren’t I?”

“Good. So I need more information before I can make any decisions on what to do. And I thought no one outside the police department knows more about unsolved local crimes than you.”

“Now you’re just flattering me.”

“Is it working?”

“A little. I don’t get flattered too often.”

“I’d like to sit down with you for a half hour and get the lowdown on unsolved crimes in this area. Specifically, violent crimes.”

“How violent?”

“Assault. Homicide.” She thought of the bodies in the cellar. “And disappearances.”

“Sounds like you’re working on quite a theory.”

“It could be nothing. Of course, if you’re too busy, I can track down the info another way. Online or in back issues of the newspaper—”

“Don’t waste your time. The news stories never go into detail, and half of what they do report is wrong. And if it’s assaults and disappearances you’re after, some of them didn’t even make the news.”

“Really?”

“This isn’t Westwood, honey. A purse snatching there gets live satellite coverage. Dead body in Dogtown gets a stringer from the L.A. Times, who may or may not get a one-paragraph item on page B14.”

The reference to Richard’s neighborhood made her nervous. “Is that where these crimes are concentrated? Dogtown?”

“Dogtown’s where everything is concentrated.” A sigh. “Look, I can help you out. But I’ve got a little thing I have to do first. We’re holding a neighborhood meeting tonight at the Venice High School gym. Should last from six to seven. After that, I’m free. What do you say you meet me at the gym after the meeting, and we’ll take it from there?”

“Will do.”

“Okey-doke. By the way, you been to one of our community meetings?”

“Not recently.”

“Be warned. It’s a free-for-all. I’m just hoping Lady Godiva doesn’t attend.”

“Who?”

But Sandra had already ended the call.

She returned to her computer and checked the Ripperwalk site. She found three responses on the message thread she’d started.

Somebody with the screen name downinthedumps had posted, Just what we need, another suspect. Why does every newbie feel the urge to waste our time with a pet theory?

She wondered how he knew she was a newbie, until she noticed that her online identity, Jeneratrix, was credited with a grand total of one post.

The second respondent, ominously named AxMan, tried for humor. Edward Hare? He changed his name to Edward Scissorhands. A real cut-up. Could be our guy.

“Dork,” Jennifer muttered.

The third was a pedant named MSturbridgeMD. Are you by any chance thinking of William (not Edward) Hare, who partnered with William Burke? Burke and Hare were notorious body snatchers, but they predated the Ripper case by 60 years.

At least the condescending MSturbridgeMD had taken her seriously. There were no other replies.

It appeared her Web inquiry was going nowhere. Maybe no one had ever heard of Edward Hare. Which meant no one had ever suspected him of being the Ripper. No one in more than a hundred years.

Until now.

eighteen

Jennifer was running late. She’d spent too much time online hunting down details on the Devil’s Henchman. The Web archives of the L.A. Times didn’t go back that far, and there was little information elsewhere. One site had a brief review of the crimes, specifying the number of victims—four, all female—and the condition of the bodies. Reading the summary, she thought of Mary Kelly and Carrie Brown.

On her way to the high school, she stopped at Richard’s apartment. He wasn’t there. On the stairs she ran into the manager, who informed her that her brother hadn’t been seen all day. “Good fuckin’ riddance. And he still hasn’t paid his rent, okay?”

She was starting to fear he had disappeared. He might have been scared off by her visit yesterday, when she told him there was damage to the cellar. Of course she’d said nothing about the bodies, and she hadn’t even known about the diary at the time.

But he might have known. If the family papers mentioned the crypt and the diary, Richard might have guessed that the earthquake would open up the weakest part of the cellar wall, the rebuilt section, exposing the bones and the book. He’d even mentioned a body in the cellar, though she had chalked it up to coincidence.

She wasn’t sure it was a coincidence anymore.

At six-thirty she arrived at the Venice High School gym. The meeting had been in progress for a half hour. She took a seat near the door.

More than a hundred people were seated in the bleachers. On a low, wheeled dais parked in the middle of the basketball court, a stout black woman who was Sandra Price paced and gesticulated. Her voice was loud enough to fill the hall without amplification.

“We are talking three homicides in the last eighteen months, people. Three cases still outstanding. No suspects, no persons of interest. Now I’m asking you, if there were three murders in Bel Air or Pacific Palisades, and they were still unsolved after all this time, don’t you think you’d be hearing about it?”

The audience erupted in whoops and yells. A chorus of churchgoers released a volley of amens.

Many attendees were teens, wearing gangsta garb, their faces sullen and hostile. The older people looked like aging hippies, with long gray hair, granny glasses and Che Guevara T-shirts. The sickly sweet aroma of pot wafted down from the higher tiers. At the far end of the bleachers, one solitary figure in a hooded sweatshirt sat silently, rocking back and forth.

“You know we would.” Sandra’s gaze swept the stands. “It would be on the local news, on talk radio, in the paper—everywhere. And the police would be doing something about it. But when it’s Dogtown or Skate Town or Ghost Town, no one cares. Everyone looks the other way. It’s someone else’s problem. The police don’t allocate the resources. They don’t prioritize us. They don’t give us what we need.”

Heads bobbed in agreement. Applause popped like firecrackers. Above the dais big flying bugs whirled among the lights.

“We had an earthquake and it was on the news night and day, every channel. You know how many people died? Zero. Not one single person. But when people are getting murdered around here, it doesn’t make the news...”

Behind her, Jennifer heard a husky baritone say quietly, “Check her out.”

“Tight little ass. But I can’t see her face. Could be a skank.”

“So? Do her doggy style. If she be fugly, you ain’t gotta look.”

With a start she realized they were talking about her. She flashed on a memory of San Francisco—the rainswept streets, the dark underpass, the faceless stranger throwing her down—