1988.

Jasmine had the police blanket over her shoulders when Hank arrived. He found her sitting on the front stoop with emergency lights painting the sides of the tenement buildings and bodegas all down the block. When she saw him walk up to her, she reached up like a child to be picked up by their father, letting the blanket slip away. Hank held her.

“What happened?”

Into his shoulder, she said, “It was the worst. The absolute worst thing I ever saw.”

Detective Jorgé Villagrana approached them. “This is a friend of yours, sir?”

It took Hank a moment to realize the detective was calling Jasmine sir.

“Yes,” said Jasmine. “This is Hank.”

“I see,” said Villagrana. “Sir, were you acquainted with the victim as well?”

Hank shook his head.

“And where were you this evening?”

“I was at work.”

“Where is work for you, sir?”

“Bobby D’s Delicatessen.”

“Oh, really? Bobby D’s. I love that place. Can I get your full name just for our report?”

“Henry,” said Hank. “Mills.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mills. And you’ll see that Mr. Gates gets home safely?” The detective made a slight nod toward Jasmine.

Hank had never heard her last name before.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You take it easy tonight, Mr. Gates,” Villagrana said. “We’ll call if we have any further questions.”

Eyes followed Hank and Jasmine as they walked away. He could feel both cops and bystanders watching him put his arm around her and knew what they all must have thought of their relationship. They could all go to hell.

Back inside their apartment, Jasmine went straight to the kitchen and took a bottle of Medusa’s Head from the cabinet, but she couldn’t get it to her mouth. She just started crying.

“Who would do that? What kind of animal… What kind of monster… I just don’t understand… Some Johns are sick, Hank. They want real crazy shit they don’t think they can get from no wife or girlfriend. And, hell, it ain’t all bad. Some of it’s cute even. Like this one guy wanted me to rock him like a baby, and I’m like, aw, honey, let Momma Jasmine take real good care of you…”

She wiped her face hard with her sleeve.

“But this?” Her voice cracked. “What the fuck?”

That night, Jasmine had gone to visit a friend of hers, Mandy. It wasn’t meant to be anything special. Their plans went no further than gossiping about girls Jasmine had known when she was still hooking and painting each other’s nails.

But when Jasmine had knocked, there was no answer. She had called out that the bucket of chicken she brought was getting cold. 

Silence stretched past what her crime-fighting senses told her was right. She tried the door. It was unlocked.

What she found inside made her scream.

Mandy’s body sat in a chair, pointing toward the doorway.

It had been decapitated, wrapped in heavy purple velvet with a tasseled edge. At her feet, black feathers spelled out the word NEVER.

Then something wet struck Jasmine from above. 

She looked up.

Mandy’s head hung over the doorway, dangling by its hair from a hook in the wall.

“We’ve got to get that son of a bitch, Hank,” Jasmine said. “We have to. For her.”

They had dealt with killers before. Plenty of them. But for those, murder had been a means to an end — money, power, leverage. This was something else. Hank couldn’t understand why anyone would do this.

“We will,” he said. “But I think we’re going to need help.”

Later…

At lunch counters, coffee shops, and on public transport, those who flipped to the The Titan Gazette personals the next day might have found an ad with the title: Lady in Red seeks a Good Man

Since 1975, that was how Harlan Goodman — now Commander of the TCPD — knew the Crimson Wraith was reaching out to him. 

Do you remember when we went riding after that fight? I nearly fell eleven times that night… 

Goodman understood. Eleven o’clock in the evening, at the Stone Horse in Keaton Park, a memorial to the fallen of World War I.

At ten-to-eleven, he sat waiting on a bench, dressed down in a blue windbreaker, khaki pants, and a gray driving cap. The memorial reared on its hind legs above him, its silhouette cutting into a low sky heavy with clouds that reflected the amber of streetlights below.

Then he felt it. That familiar sensation on the back of his neck always told him when his old friend — or one of those who fought under his mask — had arrived. For the past five years, it had not been the Crimson Wraith but the young man who previously worked alongside him as the Wily Wisp, now fighting crime as the Zephyr. 

Goodman turned to see a man with shaggy dark hair, a black domino mask over his face. He wore a long overcoat to cover his black bodysuit marked with a Z. 

“The Raven,” said the Zephyr.

“Is that the name the murderer goes by?”

“No, the poem by Edgar Alan Poe. The details of the crime scene are references — head placed over the door, purple curtain, the feathers…”

“Black feathers,” Goodman said. “A raven.”

“Bingo.”

Two more figures emerged from the shadows. One, the Wily Wisp in her blonde wig and purple domino mask, a long coat covering her fighting attire as well. Beside her loomed the Crimson Wraith, who might have been mistaken for any late night jogger in his red hooded sweatshirt until one looked into his hood to see his black ski mask had been painted with a white skull.

“Finally, face to face,” said Goodman, extending his hand.

The Crimson Wraith shook it.

He turned to the Wily Wisp. “And you must be his fearless fighting companion.”

She grinned, “Fighting companion, personal stylist, surgeon, and spokesmodel.”

“Of course. So the three of you will be working together?”

The Zephyr said, “Yes, sir”

“Did you bring the notebook?” the Crimson Wraith asked.

“That I did,” said Goodman, reaching into his pocket. The personal ad that set up tonight’s meeting included the line, How I wish to once again hear you read from that little notebook you kept at your bedside, the one with camellias on its cover… 

The TCPD had found one such notebook at the crime scene, but how the Crimson Wraith knew to ask for it, Goodman had no idea. It was covered in white flowers and filled with names and dates, annotated with some kind of code. 

The Wily Wisp took it from him. “This was her client list.”

“I take it you knew the victim personally?” asked Goodman.

“You can take it that I know what I know.”

“My apologies.”

Then she found what she was looking for, “Right here. This has to be our guy. See these marks? The diamond means something kinky the client will pay extra for, but the two Xs means he only saw her three times before. He’s still a newbie. Ain’t established trust…” She shook her head. “But guess he offered enough to make her look past that.”

“Is there a name for him?” asked Goodman.

“What he told her to call him anyway: E. Valentino.”

“As in, Esteban Valentino, the Troubadour?”

The Wily Wisp shrugged. “That’s what it says.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Goodman. “Esteban Valentino has to be almost fifty. And something like this… Certainly the Troubadour had a flair for the dramatic, but nothing so…”

“Bloody,” said the Crimson Wraith.

The Zephyr shook his head. “We have eyes on Valentino. This wasn’t him.”

“Then who?” asked Goodman, “and why the name?”

The Crimson Wraith said, “Maybe he wants to be like the person who used that name before.”

“Valentino didn’t consider what he did to be crimes but a form of art,” said the Zephyr. 

Goodman asked, “So, how exactly are we supposed to interpret this murder?”

“Those feathers on the floor,” said the Zephyr. “In the poem, the Raven doesn’t say, ‘Never.’ It says, ‘Never-more.’ The killer wants us to think about what we know isn’t there.”

“More,” said the Crimson Wraith. 

“He’s letting us know there will be more,” said the Zephyr.

The Wily Wisp closed Mandy’s notebook. “This motherfucker is only just getting started.”