Page 12 of Secrets in the Dark
Della looked at Mason. He shrugged and nodded, turning to Philip. “Whatever you think. You are the mind man. He’s not obsessed with me, though, as he is with Della.”
“No. He just really hates you,” Philip said cheerfully. “Want to head on in?”
“All right.”
Della watched as Mason tapped for the guard and was let through the door to the hall of interrogation rooms and then through to Stephan Dante.
Dante had been creating all the noise and havoc he could with his cuffs and chains.
Seeing Mason, he went dead still.
“You!” he snapped venomously. “Of course, I knew you were here.”
“It’s my job. You’re not going to tell me anything, but hey, I’m here. Bored out of my skull, but they asked me to come in and so...here I am.”
“Right. If I was going to tell anyone anything—”
“You would have told Della. Hey, yeah. So, you really think that you’re getting out?”
“I know that I’m getting out. A good lawyer... You have no proof against me.”
“Well, there’s your confessions,” Mason pointed out. He’d slid into the chair across the table from Dante by then and was almost sprawled out in his seat—displaying boredom.
“A good lawyer? And we have no proof? You’re dreaming, man. Your confession was recorded.”
Dante waved a hand in the air. “You know, Della was just talking about the fact that as far as most so-called learned men think, all the letters received by the police and the newspapers in the Ripper days were hoaxes. So, maybe I’m just a crazy hoaxer.”
“Well, I’m not arguing that you’re crazy.”
“I say brilliant.”
“Brilliant—crazy. There’s a fine line sometimes that gets blurred,” Mason told him. “Anyway, I’m not sure. They do a study of that case in a lot of the profiling classes they have for us at the Bureau. I’m not sure that all the letters were hoaxes. They couldn’t test. Maybe the Dear Boss letter that was signed Jack the Ripper wasn’t a hoax. Anyway, until then, the killings were called the Whitechapel murders. Then, there’s what they call the From Hell letter or the Lusk letter. See, I disagree. I guess Della and I have watched different documentaries. I think that the piece of the kidney sent to Lusk with the letter did belong to Catherine Eddowes. The medical examiner back then believed that it was part of a human kidney, left side, and that the person had suffered from Bright’s disease, something called nephritis now, and a catchall for autoimmune situations and others—like alcoholism. Anyway, what does it matter? You’re in here. And he’s out there...” Mason paused, smiling sadistically, and leaned toward Dante. “He’s out there, and he’s going to outdo you all over the place!”
If Stephan Dante hadn’t been secured to the table, Della—watching the exchange intensely along with Philip and Edmund—believed that he would have leaped over the table to attack Mason with fists flying and teeth gnashing.
But he was secured by his cuffs and the chains, and while he tried to bolt up, he was forced back, slamming down to his chair.
“Sometimes, he goes by John Smith,” Dante spat out. “Then there’s David Jones. But I tell them at the get-go, never give anyone your real name, not even a partner!”
“Hey, wow, thanks, that’s something!” Mason said. He stood. “Well, hey, enjoy. Oh, and I hope you get that good lawyer. It will cost you a fortune before you get the death penalty.”
As Mason tapped for the guard and left the room, Dante went into a rage again. “I will be out and you will be sorry. I will make you watch. You will watch every single thing I do to her and with her and you will watch me drink her blood before you die!”
Mason ignored him and rejoined the others, arching his brow and looking from Philip to Della.
“Anything?” he asked Philip.
“Well, he gave you two of the most common names in the English-speaking world, but yes, the man who would be the Ripper King goes by those names. He may change up. But—”
“It’s something,” Edmund said quietly. He was carefully holding Mason’s leather jacket. “Should we head into forensics now?”
“We should. Philip?” Della asked.
“Thank you for coming all the way here. I think that you did get what you could—”
“And it is something,” Edmund said quietly. “So, if we’re all in agreement, I think we need to get moving. And I think we need to head back right away.”
“You’re good. I think it will be good, too, that Dante has been agitated and it will be an honest thing when I tell him that Della is already gone and you don’t even want to bother with him. He could want to throw out more bits of info to me to make me call Della to bring her home again, hop back and forth across the Atlantic,” Philip said. “Hey, will this all get...tricky?”
