@deathoween liked for a starter
“I didn’t know her. Miriam. I taught her, but—I don’t know any of them, not really.”
And that’s what made it so easy, what made it that he could stand in that observatory and feel nothing. If anything, he could almost appreciate it, the art of it. The meticulous planning and presentation, two years in the making. And the effect—Jack had been more rattled than Will had ever seen him, enough that he horribly, sickeningly, enjoyed it. Just for a moment, less than a moment. Just when their eyes met over the lecture hall, Miriam Lass’s larger than life face looking down at them from the projector screen. Only because he wanted her to be found. Know when you’re beaten, Jack, you won’t get him. Not like this.
And they hadn’t. The lead with Silvestri had gone nowhere—not to the Ripper, not even to anything useful, when the idiot hadn’t made a single successful sale. He had some degree of interest in his handiwork, but no names, just vagueries about middlemen, and the FBI was chasing their tails—and the Ripper had slipped away. There’s nothing in it when things are quiet. There’s a few more lines for the case file, his longtime friend, and there’s Jack and his grief and his dying wife and no organ harvesters and the Ripper’s painted pictures to distract from either.
Will’s not good with apologies, not in the habit of forming relationships where he often owes them. But he sets a hot cup of coffee down in front of Jack like the stereotypical grade schooler leaving an apple on the teacher’s desk and hopes the message is clear.
“—I’m not going to ask you if you want to talk about it. But I’d listen if you did.”
