him.
Like Richard. Richard, whose nocturnal footsteps disturbed the downstairs neighbors. Richard, who gave female tenants “the evil eye.” Richard, who was in the acute phase of his illness now.
The same pattern. If the diarist was Graham Silence, he had passed on his disease through the generations, to her father, and now to her brother.
Aldrich had killed himself. His rage had been turned inward.
And Richard? How was he channeling his violent impulses?
And what did he do when he went out at night?
twelve
She had it.
He was almost sure she did.
Someone like her would not be able to resist the temptation of such a prize.
And she would keep it to herself, the scheming bitch.
She might be reading it right now. Reading long into the night. Retracing the byways of old Jack’s thoughts. Reliving the momentous events of ’88 and later.
He himself had no need to read of such things. He already knew everything that mattered, knew by intuition, by inheritance, by blood.
He knew Jack.
Was Jack, he sometimes thought. Jack’s ghost, summoned forth from the underworld to animate a new body.
He did feel like a ghost, often enough, and more and more often these days.
Something not quite dead, not quite alive. Inhabiting the gray borderland between the quick and the dead. A dismal land.
A shadow land.
And he himself, a shadow among shadows.
No, he didn't need to read the book. But he wanted no one else to have it. For it to be scanned by unworthy eyes was sacrilege.
Her eyes. She was unworthy.
And in justice she might have to pay for her transgression.
He imagined her eyes, those undeserving eyes, wide open and unblinking, staring sightlessly. She would be a broken thing, a discarded toy, like one of old Jack’s victims, the flophouse floozies he slaughtered in back alleys.
But not cut up as they were. Not eviscerated. Unlike his predecessor, he had no need to soil his hands.
He knew the interior of the human body. He knew that it was blood and bile and shit.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels , said St. Paul. But St. Paul was wrong. There was no treasure. There was only filth and muck.
No need to disassemble them as old Jack did. Making them dead was accomplishment enough.
And now he might have to make her dead.
Possibly. He hoped it would not be necessary.
But it might be.
It just might.
thirteen
Jennifer woke shortly after sunrise, the residue of a nightmare already fading from memory. She’d been running through a maze of fogbound alleys, and a man with a knife was after her, and she slipped on the wet street and he was slashing at her, opening a long rip in her left arm, and she saw his face and it was Richard.
She needed to talk to him. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe just to convince herself that he wasn’t capable of the violence in her dream.
If she called, wouldn’t answer. She tossed on yesterday’s clothes and drove to Dogtown, parking outside the Oakwood Chateau. She took the stairs to the third story and rapped on his door.
“Richard, I know you’re in there. It’s Jennifer. Open up.”
She kept on banging until she was convinced he wasn’t home. He could be anywhere. But the manager said he often went to the cemetery in the morning. It wasn’t far.
She parked on a side street and walked through the gateway, past a sign half obscured by dripping foliage. Traffic hummed on the Santa Monica Freeway, immediately to the north. A homeless man wheeled a shopping cart past the mausoleum, his head bent low.
No one else was in sight. She spent a long moment looking in every direction, but saw no sign of Richard.
There wasn’t any reason to linger. Still, she made her way farther into the graveyard.
Woodlawn Cemetery dated to the early 1800s. Buried here was Venice’s founder, Abbot Kinney, a tobacco mogul who patterned the town after its namesake, complete with Italianate palazzos and sixteen miles of canals navigated by gondolas.
Like Richard. Richard, whose nocturnal footsteps disturbed the downstairs neighbors. Richard, who gave female tenants “the evil eye.” Richard, who was in the acute phase of his illness now.
The same pattern. If the diarist was Graham Silence, he had passed on his disease through the generations, to her father, and now to her brother.
Aldrich had killed himself. His rage had been turned inward.
And Richard? How was he channeling his violent impulses?
And what did he do when he went out at night?
twelve
She had it.
He was almost sure she did.
Someone like her would not be able to resist the temptation of such a prize.
And she would keep it to herself, the scheming bitch.
She might be reading it right now. Reading long into the night. Retracing the byways of old Jack’s thoughts. Reliving the momentous events of ’88 and later.
He himself had no need to read of such things. He already knew everything that mattered, knew by intuition, by inheritance, by blood.
He knew Jack.
Was Jack, he sometimes thought. Jack’s ghost, summoned forth from the underworld to animate a new body.
He did feel like a ghost, often enough, and more and more often these days.
Something not quite dead, not quite alive. Inhabiting the gray borderland between the quick and the dead. A dismal land.
A shadow land.
And he himself, a shadow among shadows.
No, he didn't need to read the book. But he wanted no one else to have it. For it to be scanned by unworthy eyes was sacrilege.
Her eyes. She was unworthy.
And in justice she might have to pay for her transgression.
He imagined her eyes, those undeserving eyes, wide open and unblinking, staring sightlessly. She would be a broken thing, a discarded toy, like one of old Jack’s victims, the flophouse floozies he slaughtered in back alleys.
But not cut up as they were. Not eviscerated. Unlike his predecessor, he had no need to soil his hands.
He knew the interior of the human body. He knew that it was blood and bile and shit.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels , said St. Paul. But St. Paul was wrong. There was no treasure. There was only filth and muck.
No need to disassemble them as old Jack did. Making them dead was accomplishment enough.
And now he might have to make her dead.
Possibly. He hoped it would not be necessary.
But it might be.
It just might.
thirteen
Jennifer woke shortly after sunrise, the residue of a nightmare already fading from memory. She’d been running through a maze of fogbound alleys, and a man with a knife was after her, and she slipped on the wet street and he was slashing at her, opening a long rip in her left arm, and she saw his face and it was Richard.
She needed to talk to him. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe just to convince herself that he wasn’t capable of the violence in her dream.
If she called, wouldn’t answer. She tossed on yesterday’s clothes and drove to Dogtown, parking outside the Oakwood Chateau. She took the stairs to the third story and rapped on his door.
“Richard, I know you’re in there. It’s Jennifer. Open up.”
She kept on banging until she was convinced he wasn’t home. He could be anywhere. But the manager said he often went to the cemetery in the morning. It wasn’t far.
She parked on a side street and walked through the gateway, past a sign half obscured by dripping foliage. Traffic hummed on the Santa Monica Freeway, immediately to the north. A homeless man wheeled a shopping cart past the mausoleum, his head bent low.
No one else was in sight. She spent a long moment looking in every direction, but saw no sign of Richard.
There wasn’t any reason to linger. Still, she made her way farther into the graveyard.
Woodlawn Cemetery dated to the early 1800s. Buried here was Venice’s founder, Abbot Kinney, a tobacco mogul who patterned the town after its namesake, complete with Italianate palazzos and sixteen miles of canals navigated by gondolas.
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