Page 11 of Secrets in the Dark
Sometimes, it was hard for him, for them both.
But they’d managed to make it work. She was trained, as she had reminded herself last night. She was an agent. It was still natural for him to want to protect her. But they’d managed a great relationship—personally and professionally.
“He’s sending us through hoops, but we may still need him alive,” she said. She looked at Philip and grimaced. “At least I think we were right—he did find a follower who had lost a wife to suicide.”
After Dante’s arrest, he had gone on about Bram Castle—and it had seemed that there just might be something there to discover. While Vlad the Impaler hadn’t really spent much time there, it was believed that his first wife had jumped to her death.
Dante still seemed to want to convince everyone that he was a vampire—in one way or another.
He was, she thought, simply a cold-blooded killer.
But his little bits and pieces could help them. She and Mason had gone to Bram Castle before heading to England, and she believed that he was so arrogant and sure of himself that he did throw out real clues—that needed to be followed.
“Hey, he likes you,” she told Philip. “And you have gotten a lot out of him.”
Philip Law was one of triplets, married to one agent with the Krewe and brother to another. They were handsome siblings, all “gifted” with seeing the dead who remained, and especially gifted in other areas. Each had used those gifts in different directions. For Philip, he’d wanted law enforcement along with wanting to know what made the human mind tick, so he had gone through years of schooling, receiving his doctorate in psychiatry while minoring in psychology.
He couldn’t exactly read minds—or all minds. But he could often untangle and discover what a person was twisting or hiding.
“I’ve gotten a fair amount of information out of him, yes. At least we know what happened in several instances in the United States. But listening as he tried to keep you going, I believe that he knew that someone he wastrainingwas fascinated with Jack the Ripper before this all hit the news. I hope, of course, that I pulled you back here for a good reason and I think that maybe we did get it.”
“Has he heard what’s been all over on British media—Jack’s back?”
“Of course, he heard it. Whether people think it’s a hoax or not, something like that spreads and it’s all over the news and social media. But here’s the thing, or what I think we may have gotten from today. Yes, he knows who is doing it—he recognized the sketch you showed him. And whatever made you wary of the man, your intuition was right on.”
Mason let out a grown of disgust. “We had him!”
Philip lifted a hand. “What? If you had caught him, you couldn’t have held him. There’s no law against picking up a pretty—willing—girl in a bar or pub. You’d have had nothing.”
“If he follows Dante’s lead, he’ll change his look. If I had been fast enough, we’d have—”
“Hey, Mason, I was there, too,” Edmund reminded him quietly. “And we had absolutely nothing on him. British law—we couldn’t have arrested him, we couldn’t have detained him. Same here, there wouldn’t have been a thing that could have been done. Okay. So—”
“So,” Philip continued, “like I said, I learned from working with Dante that he was the killer on a few of our unsolved murders. They were hispracticemurders—law enforcement here had put them together but hadn’t been sure because things had been just a bit different, because, of course, he was practicing for getting his vampire ritual right. Between my talks with him and what I observed here today, I believe that you’re going to need to start looking in an earlier direction. Anything that remotely matches the killings that Jack the Ripper carried out—”
“We have slit throats,” Edmund said. “But not the kind of mutilation that was practiced in the past.”
“Because that’s the key word—practice. Like Dante, this killer is perfecting his method. It’s possible he’s quickly strangling or suffocating his victims—something past detectives thought the Ripper might have done to silence them—and then slitting their throats. But most psychiatrists and profilers believe that evenJackhad his practice sessions. The killing wasn’t the turn-on for him. The mutilation was. The first thing that needs to be learned to carry out murders like that is to shut the victim up as quickly as possible. This current killer has probably learned that lesson. But the world is different today. Forensic science has come a long—long—way. But, for now, you need to look through the British Isles. Places the killer can easily reach. Few people have the talent for fake IDs and passports that Dante managed. But he learned from other inmates when he was incarcerated earlier in his life. He gained money from learning where stashes had been hidden by robbers that knew they were never getting out. That’s how Dante funded himself and moved like the wind—he could pay. He used the system to his advantage. I doubt that this killer is going to hop from country to country with the speed that Dante managed. But I do believe that he’s going to be just as obsessed with being the best there is. The king of the Rippers, if you will.”
“You know, we do have something,” Mason said.
Della frowned, looking at him. “What?”
He shrugged. “Me.”
“What?”
“Sorry. It occurred me just as we were speaking here. Della, you went to the table where our suspect was sitting with Shelly, the blond tourist. Our suspect decided to disappear. But as he did, he touched my jacket. He did so trying to get by me as quickly as possible. We need to get my jacket to forensics. We might just get a fingerprint or skin cell...and while it’s a long shot, I think we need whatever shots we can get, long or short.”
“He may not be in any system, but hell, yes, go for it!” Philip said.
“We’re on it,” Edmund assured him.
“Local office, all speed,” Della said. “I’m sure we can find you another jacket. Thank God you’re all into leather.”
“Hey, that didn’t sound right!” Mason teased.
“I’m not touching that comment with a ten-foot pole,” Philip said. “But Dante is still in there slamming his chains around. The guard is letting him wear himself out. I realize you have been wearing it, but Mason, slip out of that jacket. We’ll try for prints. I’d like to see Dante’s reaction to you, since he probably assumes you’re together and he has such a thing for Della.”
