She was less than ten feet away when the figure broke into a run.

“Richard!” she screamed. “Stop!”

She ran in pursuit.

He covered ground awkwardly in an ungainly loping stride. Though he had a head start, she thought she could catch him. Then he veered onto the wide concrete strip of the boardwalk and cut past startled pedestrians, racing north. She followed, but in the sudden crush of people she lost sight of him. A banner was strung along the shop fronts: March Festival. That was why the crowd was so heavy—one of the numerous open-air events sponsored by the city.

She glimpsed him once, the gray hood bobbing in the sea of heads.

Behind her, Casey appeared. “It’s him,” she gasped, pointing. “Gray sweatshirt.”

Casey gave chase. People darted out of his way, opening a path for a cop in uniform, and she had a momentary hope that he might catch up with his quarry.

Then he stopped. He reached down for something crumpled on the ground. As she ran up to him, she saw that it was the gray sweatshirt. He’d shed it as he ran.

She scanned the promenade in the sunset’s dimming afterglow. Richard had vanished.

“You’re sure it was him?” Casey asked.

She nodded.

He keyed his radio and reported that the subject had been seen outside the building. “Last seen northbound on foot on Ocean Front Walk. Too many peds—I lost him in the crowd.”

Draper ran up as Casey asked dispatch to request all available Pacific units in the vicinity to proceed to Sunset and Speedway.

“You think they’ll get him?” she asked Draper.

He shook his head. “Too many places he can run. Side streets, alleys, the beach, other red-tagged buildings...”

She nodded. “I’m afraid you’re right.”

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

She turned and saw a teenager with pierced lips, pierced nostrils, pierced eyebrows, and a surprisingly respectful expression.

“That guy you were chasing dropped this.” He handed her a bracelet. “What’d he do, boost it off you?”

She stared at the object, catching a gleam of copper and turquoise. She didn’t answer.

“Jennifer?” Draper asked.

She looked at the teenager. “Thanks,” she managed to say. “Thanks very much.”

Casey was watching her now. “Is it yours?”

She shook her head. Couldn’t speak.

“Talk to us, Jen,” Draper said.

“It’s not mine. It belongs—it belongs to Maura. Maura Lowell.”

“The woman he used to go out with?”

“Yes.”

Casey shifted his weight. “Maybe he stole it from her, back when they were seeing each other.”

“No. She just got it. She was wearing it this morning. There’s no way Richard could have this.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“You told us she’s a friend of yours,” Draper said, his voice low.

Jennifer nodded, still staring at the bracelet, unable to look away. “My best friend,” she whispered, realizing it only now.

thirty-two

Maura lived in a condo on Windward Avenue. It was a security building, and Casey didn’t have a key. A helpful tenant let them in.

The apartment was on the second floor at the end of a hallway lit by green-shaded lamps in brass sconces. Jennifer had walked this hall many times, but her knees had never trembled the way they did now, as she followed Draper, Casey, and the two patrolmen who’d come from the hotel.

Casey rang Maura’s doorbell and rapped on the door. No answer. He tested the knob.

“Unlocked,” he said, then pulled his hand away. His palm was marked with a purplish stain.

Blood.

Jennifer knew then. The world seemed to drop away, and she felt a sudden unreal detachment, as if she were observing someone else’s life.

“Stay outside,” Draper warned. It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her.

Casey pushed open the door and stepped in, followed by Draper and the uniformed cops. Jennifer, standing in the hall, heard a gasp, and a voice saying, “Jesus,” two or three times.

Slowly she approached the doorway. No one tried to stop her. No one was paying her any attention. The four men stood and stared, immobile, at whatever lay in the apartment.

She crossed the threshold and looked for herself.

At first she couldn’t react. Like the cops, she was shocked into passivity. The scene before her wasn’t anything real. It was impossible to take in, impossible to process. A shock cut in a movie. Or a picture in a book. A photograph, grainy, black-and-white...

She thought of that, and she knew what this was. It was the rented flat in Miller’s Court. It was the room in the East River Hotel. It was Mary Kelly. It was Carrie Brown.

What the Ripper had done to those women, her brother had done to Maura Lowell. The same frenzied obliteration, the same horrific disfigurement. He had carved her open and emptied her out, leaving pieces of her strewn around the living room—hunks of bloody tissue.

Maura lay sprawled on the sofa. Her head rested on a pillow which had been white and now was burgundy. There was no expression on her face, because there was no face. Her breasts, which she flaunted for the benefit of the surfer busboy only two nights ago, had been slashed off. The skin had been peeled from one arm, the arm that had flaunted the bracelet. Her clothes had been ribboned by the killer’s knife, their tatters falling among the glistening ropes of her intestines which had unspooled across the carpet in a lake of blood.

“God...” whispered a small shocked voice, her own.

Draper turned. “I told you to stay out.”

She barely heard him. She was looking at one pale hand that lay palm up, the fingers open as if in surrender.

Then Draper’s arm was around her shoulders, and he was guiding her into the hall. “You need to get out of here.”

“I don’t want to leave her alone,” she said stupidly.

“She’s not alone. We’re with her.”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“It’ll be all right, Jen.”

Neither his words nor her own made any sense.

“Richard couldn’t to do this.” She shook her head, insisting on denial. “He couldn’t.”

“You need to sit down.”

She didn’t know why he was saying this, except that her legs felt suddenly weak. She allowed to Draper to ease her to a sitting position against the wall of the corridor.

“Couldn’t,” she said again, though she knew the word was a lie.

Draper knelt beside her. “We need to find him. Right now. Do you have any idea where he might go?”

“No.”

“Think.”

“I have thought about it. It’s all I’ve thought about. He could be anyplace local. Anyplace at all.”

“Okay. We’ll find him.” He started to rise.

“He saved me,” she whispered.

“What?”

“He came and found me, and he got me help. I’m alive only because of him. Because of my brother.”

“I understand.”

He didn’t, of course. Neither did she.

No one could understand.

thirty-three

That had been close. He’d never thought the persistent little bitch would spot him in the crowd, much less give chase. After what had happened in the library, he would have thought she’d show more sense.

He still wasn’t sure how she’d noticed him. He’d been wearing his cloak of invisibility. That was how he thought of the hooded sweatshirt with the long, loose, baggy sleeves. The garment covered his head and hands, made him a faceless thing—like Abberline, or like old Jack. Of course an observer might still see his face up close, but that was the wonder of it. No one ever got close. They saw him in his hood, bopping to the music in his head, and they assumed he was crazy. No one made eye contact with a crazy person. No one wanted to see him, or even to acknowledge his existence. In his cloak of invisibility he was anonymous, blending with his surroundings as seamlessly as a chameleon, safe from any threat.