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“Lord!” Jude stared at Whitney across the hole they had created.
“What? Did you find Annie’s bones?”
Jude looked over at Jackson. “Yeah, maybe,” he said.
“Maybe?”
“There must be at least a dozen skeletons in this hole!”
Despite the very early hour at which they had found the skeletons, the sun was up by the time the right people had arrived to start working the site. Because the poor souls in the hole had long been buried, they were down to skeletal remains and bits of clothing. Forensic anthropologists and archaeologists joined the crime scene unit arriving on the scene.
Jude worked with the techs in the area of the pentagram, where, he believed, if a modern-day Jack the Ripper had twisted history, he might have brought his earlier victims as he felt his way into the murders.
Sean Meyer, head of the unit, tried to ascertain just what Jude was trying to find; Jude pointed out what he assumed were the lines of the pentagram in the ground, and explained that he believed, due to the killer’s determination to emulate Jack the Ripper, that he had certainly looked into the history of the House of Spiritualism, and though police had never proven foul play had taken place at the time, the killer believed that it had. He might have practiced the art of murder at the site.
Meyer’s people went over the floor for trace evidence, which might mean nothing; construction crews had been at the site, movie people had been at the site, members of the New York Film Commission had been at the site and safety officers had been there as well, since a movie crew was setting up at a dangerous location. Those working on set construction had been given strict boundaries, but the city was in the midst of budget cuts, which meant that protecting the integrity of the rules might have been nearly impossible. Not to mention that the one guard might not have seen teenagers who scaled the poor chain-link fencing—which did have signs in many areas warning of injury and death, to keep the curious out—or idiots who thought of themselves as a cult and also read the history regarding the place.
“Meyer, I understand all that,” Jude told him quietly. “What I want to find out is if we have any evidence of recent violence having taken place here—murder. If it happened, I believe it happened on the pentagram. ”
Meyer nodded. “I’ll let my people work on trace first, and then we’ll bring in the Luminol and the cameras. You know, I’m sure, that Luminol can destroy other evidence, so we’ll go there last. And you know, too, that it will also pick up feces, animal blood…and if someone has bleached out the place, that will give us problems as well. What we pick up is the iron in blood, so there aren’t any real guarantees, and, as I was saying, we may pick up other sources of iron. ”
“Humor me,” Jude told him.
“Of course,” Meyer agreed.
Police photographers now waited for the go-ahead with their long-exposure camera equipment to capture the blue chemiluminescent appearance of any blood spray near the pentragram.
Hannah arrived at the scene, assuring him that Deputy Chief Green had seen to it that the time for their task force meeting had been changed, and the time was now TBA. She bore the gift of a cardboard tray with cups of coffee. Jude accepted his gratefully, and walked around the supporting wall to observe the forensic anthropologists at work. He mused wryly that where they had taken pickaxes to the ground with a vengeance, the work was now being done with tiny picks and very small, soft-haired brooms. Angela had joined her team; he assumed Will and Jenna were watching the proceedings on the screens back at Blair House, since he had asked that their cameras and recorders not be disturbed.
Hannah hovered near him, but, eventually, she struck up a quiet conversation with Jake, growing more animated as she talked to him. Eventually, she walked over to Jude and said, “I’d like to go over with Jake to Blair House and see his trail of investigation. ”
Jude nodded. “Sure. Two heads are better than one, so they say. ” He glanced at Jake with a shrug. “Especially two brilliant heads. ”
As they left, Jude heard Hannah say to Jake with awe, “Your fiancée owns a plantation? A real plantation?”
They left; the digging went on.
He noted that Angela and Whitney hovered together, speaking softly now and then. Jackson, arms folded over his chest, watched the proceedings.
Eventually, the crime scene unit finished all the initial photography and trace, and sheeting was rigged over the pentagram to create darkness.
Jude walked over to the section, taking a position where Meyer said he could observe and be out of the way. The photographers were ready; the Luminol had been prepared. Jude knew it was important that it be sprayed expertly and evenly.
And it was. And in the thirty seconds that followed, he saw the floor light up.
The cameras caught the glow and the patterns.
The room lit up like blue lightning.
The rigging was moved.
Meyer looked at him grimly.
“You were right. There was a bloodbath down here. ”
There were three members in the team who had come to remove the bones, one with the New York Police Department, and two from the museum. A no-nonsense woman named Dr. Mary Drew was calling the shots; Whitney quickly learned that she was one of the most admired experts in her field. She supervised the removal of the bones. Years had gone by in which they’d lain undisturbed, but the conditions had been right for some preservation, she informed them. Simple biology, soft tissue decayed, and the decay created the browning they saw on the remnants of fabric that really didn’t seem to go to any of the skeletons. It had also seeped into the earth, so they’d be taking dirt samples along with the bricks that had housed the skeletons in the hole within the hole.
While Dr. Drew was talking to them, Dr. Wally Fullbright arrived at the scene. He quickly assured them that they would have all the facilities they needed at the morgue to work with the bones. Mary Drew frowned, certain that her facilities at the museum were better when they were working with remains that were certainly well over a hundred years old. They bickered politely, but Fullbright held the trump card; the deputy chief of police wanted the remains studied at the New York City Morgue because they might be part of a current investigation.
Fullbright didn’t interrupt the proceedings; he didn’t even put on gloves, but he hunkered down by the bones that had already been painstakingly removed and looked at Dr. Drew. “They were beheaded?” he asked.
“Hard to say until we’ve had a chance to study them,” she said. “By now, the disarticulation is almost complete. ”
“All women?” Fullbright asked.
“So it appears, so far. ”
“How many?”
“We’ve discovered thirteen skulls, so I’m going to assume that thirteen were buried here,” Dr. Drew told him.
“Fullbright, did you read anything that would indicate what happened here?” Jude asked.
“What?” Fullbright asked, frowning.
Jude smiled. “You spend a lot of time studying old documents at the Pierpont Library. Did you glean anything that might help here?”
“You checked up on me?” Fullbright asked him, clearly puzzled.
“Your name was on a list,” Jude explained.
Fullbright chuckled. “You know that I’m fascinated by all this. No, actually, I didn’t find anything more than we already know. Most of the references are vague—the outside world speculated, but they didn’t really know what was going on here. All I can say is that someone was heavily into the concept that human sacrifice was necessary. ”
“Yes, so I’d say,” Jude agreed.
He walked over to Whitney, and nodded. He was excited to think that she knew about the history of the Ripper in America, and he seemed thrilled to find that the House of Spiritualism had hosted incredible horrors.
“But there was nothing that ever suggested Jack the Ripper was a Sata
nist,” she reminded him.
“No, of course not, he was just a butcher, and the police were so inept back then. In London, the Metropolitan police were pitted against the City of London police, and the investigation was hampered entirely by politics—I mean, who erases evidence because it might cause someone to be offended?”
“‘The Juwes are not the men to be blamed for nothing,’” Whitney quoted. In London, they had discovered the words written over a doorway after the night of the “double event” when two victims had been killed.
The words may or may not have been written; they were never even photographed. They had been ordered removed; the words, it was feared, would cause racial rioting among those of different beliefs crowded into the East End at the time.
“Personally,” Jude said, joining them, “I’m afraid that our killer will reenact the double event—the Mary Kelly killing and then the Carrie Brown murder. They happened the same night those words were written. And no matter how ridiculous the theories out there may be, he’ll kill as many people as armchair detectives and historians have credited to the original man. ”
By late afternoon, both teams were wrapping up. Jude realized that his back hurt, his muscles hurt, and that he was exhausted.
Ellis Sayer and a number of his team arrived. Ellis eyed him for a few minutes and then said, “You look like hell, Jude. You’ve got to have some faith in me and the others—get some rest. We’re a task force, remember? I’ll alert you to anything I learn. ”
Jude nodded. “Thankfully, so far, we don’t have another victim. ”
“Not yet,” Ellis said. He still had a dejected-basset-hound look to him. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a notepad. “We’ve interviewed everyone on the set by now, and we’ve made it through the security company and the limo drivers as well. I have the names of the six limousine drivers who were assigned to the director and the stars. They’ve all been interviewed and, according to the drivers, they picked up and dropped off the major film entities just as we were told. But you may find something I haven’t. One drove Sherry Blanco, one drove Bobby Walden, one was assigned to Angus Avery and three were on call to drive anyone back and forth as requested. ”