“Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Son. Glad to see you. What brings you out in the middle of the week like this?” He joined his father.
“Beer?” Daniel asked, watching him curiously.
“Sure.”
His father reached into the ice chest at his side and produced his newest, self-bottled microbrew. Sean grinned, and swigged. It tasted damn good.
“Okay, so what’s the problem?” Daniel said.
“I need answers.”
“You need fingerprint experts, technologists, those new high-tech lights that show sperm all over like in that Sharon Stone ice-pick movie—”
“I’ve got all that, Dad. Guess what else I have?”
“Don’t know. Tell me.”
He told Daniel about the corpse that had been beheaded, and he kept talking, describing Mamie, and even admitting he’d gone down to Jackson Square and that Marie Lescarre had given him a cross to wear.
“Interesting,” Daniel said.
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it? Can you give me anything out of history even remotely like what’s going on here?”
“Sure.”
“What? Great! Help me.”
“Jack the Ripper.”
Sean sighed. “Dad, Jack the Ripper’s last murder was in November of 1888—so say the leading Ripperologists, even if a few more victims are thrown in the heap now and then.”
“You’ve been reading,” Daniel said solemnly.
Sean shrugged. “There’s a task force on this, Dad. Everyone’s been reading.”
“All right, so you know about the murders ... dwell on the suspects. Some say Montague John Druitt, an affluent young man who didn’t quite make it through med school, died in the Thames soon after the last murder. Then there was a fellow named Ostrog, wound up in an insane asylum. There’s the school of thought convinced that there might have been a Jill the Ripper—probably a bitter midwife or the like, you know?— and there’s the Royal theory—either the Duke of Clarence himself, Victoria’s grandson, or a court physician, William Gull. There’s the latest, stemming out of the Jack the Ripper Diary, written by Maybrick, who died of gastroenteritis not long after the murder. Now, that was a sad case! Not for Maybrick, but his wife. Poor thing. She was condemned for murder without much proof, but it was Victorian England and the poor dear had been having an affair while her husband ran around all over the place. I think the chap’s family had a lot to do with the wife winding up condemned. She was to hang—
got reprieved at the last minute.”
“Dad—none of these people is in New Orleans ripping up hookers and beheading corpses!” Daniel shrugged, offering him a half-smile. “Well, then, there’s the theory that Jack the Ripper was a true monster. Made out of the mists and dirt and the tawdry poverty of the East End. True evil.”
“Great. I can just tell the chief—and the newspapers—that I’m looking for an evil mist.” Daniel grinned. “Tell them you’re looking for a monster. Men are quite capable of being monsters. You asked.”
“Is that all you can give me?”
Daniel thought a minute. “Well, it is New Orleans. Supposedly, zombies have walked in the shadows of the old plantations—and in the French Quarter, too, I would imagine.” Sean grunted.
“Then there was that case in the prison in 1909 ...”
Sean frowned. “What case?”
“An interesting one. All the beheadings reminded me of it.”
“Well?”
“A retarded boy, Josh Jurgen, was condemned to death for the murder of a playmate. Josh—and his mother—claimed during the trial that a drifter had killed the little girl. Apparently, a lot of folk thought the boy was telling the truth, but you know how cruel some people can be ... wouldn’t have happened now, I can tell you, but back then ... well, anyway, the mother was hysterical, the boy terrified, crying and carrying on during the days before his execution. He was kept in solitary, waiting for the big day, then—I’m not sure I’ve got this just right.”
“Dad! Damn, now, tell me what you know.”
“Probably has nothing to do with anything. The night before he’s due to hang, the boy kills himself.”
“Strange,” Sean said slowly.
Daniel grinned. “Strange—but why am I telling you this, huh? He hanged himself. And managed somehow to hang himself so tightly and with such force that... well, that, he managed to pop his head right off. Beheaded himself.”
“Whoa—now that is one for the books,” Sean admitted.
“There’s a little more to it—as far as your interest in the story might go,” Daniel said.
“Yeah?” Sean said.
Daniel took a long swig of his microbrew. “Good batch, this, wouldn’t you say?”
“Dad, are you trying to provoke violence?”
Daniel grinned. “The kid’s mother was best friends with Mary Montgomery—who must have been your girl’s great-great-grandmother, maybe. Mary pleaded for the boy at the trial. Despite her prestige, the boy was condemned. They say that she was the last one with him before he killed himself.”
“Interesting, indeed,” Sean said. What was it with everyone? Trying to make Maggie’s family out to be cursed or the like.
So then why did he feel himself as if there were something so damned strange about her?
“The bayou is full of ghost stories,” Daniel reminded him.
“Thanks.”
“Full moons bring out werewolves. Naturally, there is basis in such legends. The gravitational pull of the moon causes physiological responses. Luna—lunatic. Anyone working in the emergency ward of a hospital can tell you that violence escalates during the full moon.”
“What a help,” Sean said dryly.
“I’m doing my best. Then, the city is big on vampire cults, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Daniel grinned. “Your cross is silver. Wonder if old Marie was worried about werewolves or vampires.”
“Dad—”
“The Montgomerys—and a Canady, come to think of it— supposedly killed a man once, suspecting him of such foul habits. Remember? We were talking about it the other night. Some say they killed him just for being French, but that’s a little drastic, don’t you think, especially in a city like New Orleans? Then, of course, that gave rise to legends that the Montgomerys popped out a vampire now and then, every other generation or so—something in the genes, I imagine. There have been strange rumors about the Canadys as well.”
Sean groaned.
“Well, hell, we couldn’t all be heroes. Though, of course, it’s nice to have a few in the family line, don’t you think?”
“Sure, Dad. Nice.”
“Honest to God,” Daniel said, “I wish I could be more helpful.” He shrugged. “As far as Jack the Ripper goes, we’ll probably never know. We didn’t have the technology then that we have now. But there were truly those back then who believed that the very air in the East End was so rank with poverty, cruelty, and crime that evil actually lived there. You’ve been there, remember the trip we took to Europe your senior year of high school? You’ve toured the Ripper’s haunts, and you know that there are still areas that desperately need renovation, where mist still hides murder, and where you can really believe in evil.
Not just in London. In most cities. And throughout history—across the world—there have been reports of supernatural creatures. Some people today are convinced that angels guard them. And in the Middle Ages, well, men thought they had reason to believe in haunts and vampires. There are dozens of cases, legally documented by sane officials, of outbreaks of vampirism. Some of it can be explained. Sadly, people were sometimes buried alive, and so, if dug up, their corpses appeared fresh. Also, even after death, some bodily functions continue, and so corpses have ‘sat up’ after death. As for vampires, blood pools to the downward position of the body after death, leaving the face extremely pale.”
“So, uneducated men believed natural phenomena created vampires,” Sean said.
Daniel shrugged. “Ah, but there are other historically documented cases as well. Many in Europe, not so many in the United States. There was a New England family who lost a daughter who then began to appear at night to her sisters. Five children died before the father determined to dig up the offspring he had buried, stake their hearts, cut them out, and burn them to ash. The deaths then stopped.”
“The children probably had a contagious disease they passed to one another.”
“But the four remaining children survived—after the five had been disinterred, dealt with, and reburied.”
“So, a vampire is doing all this?”
“There have been those who historically think they are vampires. Countess Bathory took the lives of hundreds of young women, believing that their blood would give her youth. There was a case here in the early twenties when several people were murdered by men who drank their blood. Real or imagined, you need to look at every angle, and study what you’re up against.” Sean stood, patting his father on the shoulder. “Thanks, Dad. You were a big help. Honest to God.” Daniel smiled. “I try. You leaving already?”
“Have to—there are just so damned many corpses around these days, I don’t seem to have a choice.” His father waved, and he did the same, returning to his car.
As he drove, he replayed all the conversations of the day in his mind.
He’d just reached the French Quarter when he realized that his end of the pager he’d given Mamie was vibrating in his pocket.
He pulled out the device, and scanned the neon lights that platted out the city. He frowned for a minute, getting his bearings. She was in an alley, off Bourbon Street.
He flipped mental pages to see the area with his mind’s eye.
He floored the car. He sweated every moment of the drive.