“Fascinating,” Levine said to Falconer as they followed Speed down the noisy hallway. “I’ve studied a bit of psychology in the past and have read of diseases of the mind, detective, but to actually be walking amongst them—it’s something else altogether.”
“Yes,” Falconer said. “A different world over here, eh?”
“What a thing it is,” Levine said, “to lose one’s mind, the strange, incorporeal, puzzling thing that makes us who we are. The organ that gives us emotions, wants, desires, and allows us to build immense bridges, tunnels, concoct miracle potions for medical patients, and create and teach the very laws that bind us as human beings. What a tragedy to lose all of that, don’t you think?”
“You seem to think of this a little more than I do, professor,” Falconer said. “Can’t say that I’ve thought of it all that much.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Levine replied, smiling.
“Do you think I will let you go that way? Do you? Do you, my dear?!”
The woman came at Levine from across the hallway and was upon him before Falconer knew what was happening. She grabbed onto Levine and pushed him against the wall, as Falconer and Speed moved quickly to grab her hands, which had grasped Levine’s lapels tightly. Falconer looked over at her face as she continued to scream at Levine just inches from his face, and they pinned her arms behind her. Her eyes were ringed by great dark shadows and her teeth—those that remained, that is—were crooked and discolored. She fought them mightily and then started to scream even louder and more desperately. “YOU BASTARD! YOU ROTTEN BASTARD, YOU…YOU’VE NEVER TREATED ANY OF US LIKE A DECENT HUMAN BEING…WHY? WHY? WHY?”
Falconer and Speed managed to wrestle her down to the floor as a couple of orderlies rushed up and took over. They raised her up to her feet again and started to speak in her ear, calming her and whispering in her ear as they led her away.
Falconer looked back at Levine, who was fixing his glasses upon his nose and looking down the hallway at the woman.
“Sorry about that, professor,” Speed said as he walked up to Levine. “Sometimes they can be quick, and I should have alerted you all to be on your toes. Again, she is actually quite harmless, and you were never in any danger, although I imagine that is not very helpful to hear at this point.”
“No, I’m quite fine, Mister Speed,” Levine said, dabbing his forehead with his handkerchief. “Don’t think anything of it.”
Once Levine had brushed off his jacket, Speed led them down the hallway another twenty yards, where he turned abruptly into one of the large asylum wards where patients lingered for much of the day. As Falconer followed him into the room, he beheld dozens of female patients walking about or sitting on chairs, beds, or benches, some yelling, some chattering away quietly to themselves, some pretending to be royalty, and some apparently thinking that they were merely infants. The cacophony of voices was deafening, and he wondered how one could work here, in this hidden world of horrors. He scanned the room watchfully and then turned to Speed.
“So, the witness who found the body is one of these attendants?”
“Yes,” Speed replied. “Gentry…over there helping that woman off the floor.”
The four men looked over at Timothy Gentry, an earnest young staff member of twenty-two who was at that moment quietly helping a heavyset patient up off the floor where she had been rolling in melodramatic anguish. Speed strode up to him and pointed towards the detectives, and the two men then walked over to where Falconer, Dysert, and Levine were standing just inside the entrance of the ward.
“Detective Dysert,” Speed said, “you already know Mister Gentry. Gentry, this is Detective Falconer of the police, and a consultant, Professor Levine.”
“How do you do, gentlemen?” Gentry said.
“Nice to see you again, Mister Gentry,” Dysert said. “We’re sorry, but we were wondering if you would just take a few more minutes out of your day to speak with us.”
“Certainly, sir,” Gentry replied. “There’s a staff room just down the hallway—shall we go in there?”
“Yes, that would be just fine,” Dysert said. “Thank you.”
“It’s just down this way, gentlemen,” Speed said. “If you’ll follow me.”
The men followed Speed a short distance down the hallway and then entered a small breakroom utilized by staff throughout the day. After they all sat down, Dysert spoke first.
“Right. Well, Gentry, I know we spoke yesterday briefly, but I just wanted to follow up a bit, if you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all, detective,” Gentry said. “Happy to help.”
“So,” Dysert began, “you were saying yesterday that you found the woman’s body in a closet down the hallway here?”
“Yes, sir,” the young attendant answered. “I was just about done with my shift, so I went to return a broom that I had been using to clean up the ward a bit, you know. Then, when I opened the door to the closet, there she was—on the floor and not moving.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious in the immediate vicinity?” Dysert asked.
“No,” Gentry replied. “Nobody except a few other staff members and patients down the hallway a piece.”
“Did you touch the body in any way?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I did briefly. I just nudged her a bit with the broom, you know, to see if she was just asleep or something. And then I saw her face and the blood on her front, and I knew that she must be dead.”
“What happened next, if you can refresh my memory please?” Dysert asked.
“Yes,” Gentry said, “I went to get Mr. Andrews, my shift supervisor, down the hallway. He came back with me, saw the girl, and told me to go to the front office and alert the police, so that’s what I did.”
“Gentry,” Dysert said, “did you ever see Mr. Neumann, the cook from downstairs, nearby? You know him, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I do know Mr. Neumann. I have seen him the kitchen before and have spoken to him about meals and such. I’m sorry, but I did not see him yesterday at all.”
Dysert turned to Falconer. “Anything you’d like to ask?”
Falconer looked at Gentry from across the table, and then spoke.
“Yes. If someone not associated with this facility wanted to get up here onto the second floor, could they do it? How secure is this floor?”
Speed spoke up before Gentry could answer. “The floor is very secure,” he said. “You need a key to get through the doors to any of the staircases leading up. For obvious reasons, we cannot let patients come and go as they please.”
“So, does Neumann have one of those keys?” Falconer asked.
“No,” Speed replied. “As a cook down on the first floor, he is responsible for preparing meals, but he does not have authorization to come upstairs on his own.”
“So how would the man get up here without a key?” Falconer inquired. “And they know him up here. Wouldn’t he be out of place if he were seen walking around? Wouldn’t everyone recognize him?”
“Well, perhaps,” Speed answered. “I suppose it would seem a little out of the ordinary to have one of the kitchen staff walking this hallway.”
“But you have a bloody knife found inside his own personal bag hanging in the kitchen, right?” Falconer asked Dysert.
“Yes,” Dysert stated. “And don’t forget the ripped shred of cloth found in his pocket that matches the material from the lady’s gown.”
Falconer looked away at a wall of the room and rubbed his hands together, and the room fell silent for a moment. Then, Speed spoke up.
“Are you doubting that Neumann is the killer, Detective Falconer?”
The men all looked at Falconer, who finally looked back from the blank wall.
“No, I’m not,” he answered. “I just find it strange that he would be able to get up here without being noticed and then strangle and stab a patient with no one hearing anything. Not a scream, not a struggle heard. It beats the hell out of me how that can happen.”
“Well, anything is possible, after all,” said Dysert. “However Neumann managed it, the evidence shows that he did do it. Anything else now for Mr. Gentry?”
“Nothing else,” replied Falconer. “But I would like him to show us the room where he found her, if that’s possible.”
“Certainly,” Speed said. “We can do that now. Gentry, will you please join us for this?”
“Yes, sir, certainly,” Gentry answered.
The five men exited the breakroom and walked a little bit down the hallway, where Speed stopped and opened a door to a small closet that held various cleaning items and supplies. Gentry moved to turn on the light switch so that the men could see clearly in the initially darkened space. Down on the floor, Falconer could see a round stain of dried blood, but beyond that, not much else caught his eye in the nondescript little room.
“So, you found her curled up down here?” Falconer asked Gentry, pointing to the wooden floor.
“Yes,” Gentry said. “She was actually on her back, but her torso was twisted in such a way that I could not immediately see her face or front. I had to gently move her a bit with the broom handle to get a look at her face.”
“What sort of wounds could you make out?” Falconer inquired.
“I suppose I could see bruising on her neck there,” Gentry answered, “but I couldn’t make out any stab wounds at the time—only the blood stains on her gown.”
“Dysert,” Falconer turned to the detective, “what sort of wounds are we talking about here? Pretty severe?”
“Well, yes,” Dysert replied. “I must say that the wounds to the abdomen and torso are fairly deep and significant. Plus, the X-shapes were a little odd.”
“X-shapes?” Falconer asked. “What’s that?”
The men all looked at Dysert. “Well,” he said, “we took a look at the body after we removed the gown, and there were a couple of cuts over the ribs that, well, how shall I put it?—that were in the shape of the letter ‘X.’”
“Our victim down at the East River Hotel had the same markings on her,” Falconer stated. “Weren’t you aware of that?”
“Well, yes, I had heard that, detective, but we quickly found the knife, the cloth, the blood in the bag…we just felt that Neumann was the killer here. I don’t think some ‘X’ mark on the body necessarily links these two killings.”
“You don’t?” Falconer asked.
“Um, may I just interject here?” Levine said as he pushed his way past Speed and Dysert in the doorway. “If I may briefly, detectives…uh, Mr. Gentry, did you notice any notes left at the scene?”
“Notes?” Dysert asked. “What do you mean, ‘notes?’”
“It is thought that the killer back in Whitechapel left certain messages for investigators after some of the killings,” Levine explained. “Some were scrawled on walls, some were simply mailed to investigators, although admittedly, there is no consensus as to whether these were genuine messages from the killer himself or simply the heartless ravings of some depraved voyeur playing games.”
“I didn’t notice any sort of a note left here, sir,” Gentry stated.
“And we didn’t find anything else, frankly,” Dysert chimed in.
“I see…and what about up on the walls here?” Levine persisted. “Did anyone check?”
“The walls?” Dysert asked. “What do you mean, ‘the walls?’”
“Well, I don’t see anything down here,” Levine said, glancing down low at the walls of the closet. “But I wonder if there’s anything possibly higher up—a message of some sort, perhaps. It is rather dark up there. Does anyone have a match?”
“Here,” Speed said, extracting a small box of matches from his jacket and lighting one. Levine carefully took the match and held it up higher in the closet, scanning the walls. After a moment, he stopped and held out his hand, pointing. “There…in white—aren’t they words?”
The four other men all directed their gaze to the spot to which Levine was pointing. Levine moved closer and held the lit match as high as he could. Falconer walked closer, too, and looked up. There, about six-and-a-half feet above the ground, he saw some words, scrawled in what appeared to be white chalk in letters approximately two inches high:
“THAT’S TWO.”
28
“Well,” Byrnes said from behind his desk as he finished reading a short report filed by Falconer and Dysert, “we have some scrawling inside of a closet at a lunatic asylum referencing ‘two,’ but what does it mean? Two what?”
Falconer stood with Dysert before the chief inspector and several of his closest advisors in Byrnes’ inner sanctum at the Mulberry Street headquarters a day after their visit to the asylum out on Blackwell’s Island. He looked at Dysert, who met his gaze, and then Dysert quickly turned back to the chief inspector and responded to what appeared to be Byrnes’ growing impatience and frustration.
“Well, chief inspector…it appears that the Whitechapel killer may have left similar taunting messages with Scotland Yard during that investigation, and so…we thought that, given the earlier killing of the prostitute down at the East River Hotel, this should be looked at. We thought that perhaps the ‘two’ meant, well…two murders…sir.”
Byrnes raised an eyebrow and glared at Dysert.
“Whitechapel killer?” he said. “Are we still hanging onto that loose thread that’s been beaten into the dust by the press? Let’s get something straight here, gentlemen: there is no Whitechapel killer in this city; the East River Hotel murder has been solved, and Ali is close to being convicted. And this latest death of the lunatic woman out on the island—it’s my understanding, Dysert, that you’ve found a bloody knife in the personal bag of the German cook, AND—”
Byrnes’ voice grew noticeably louder as he finished his remarks.
“And…we also have some torn clothing of the poor wretch inside of the cook’s pocket. That seems to me, gentlemen, to be an open and shut case. Unless you somehow feel that the German is the Whitechapel killer himself. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“No, sir, absolutely not,” Dysert replied quickly. “Again, we were just concerned about the possible connection to those similar messages supposedly left by the Ripper in London, back in ’88, sir. That’s all.”
Byrnes tossed the report onto his desk.
“If anything, detectives,” he said, “this is clearly a fool of a German kitchen worker who wanted to create a little stir by scrawling a message on the spot where he killed a helpless patient at a women’s lunatic asylum. But he is just a pathetic copycat killer, that’s all, and he failed miserably in his attempt to cause a stir. Get the charges filed on him, keep this quiet, and treat it like a straightforward murder of a mental patient by a fumbling staff worker. This is to be kept quiet and dealt with discretely, is that understood?”
“Yes, chief inspector, absolutely” Dysert answered.
Byrnes shifted his glance to Falconer.
“Detective Falconer?”
The other men in the room also turned their attention to Falconer, who looked slowly from side to side and then spoke to the chief inspector.
“I won’t go to the press with this, if that’s what you’re asking, sir. But something’s not right with this German cook. I question whether he did it, frankly. It was too easy to land on him. The bloody knife in the bag and the torn cloth—I don’t see how even a dumb cook could be so sloppy. And then the message in the closet…it should be looked at, with all due respect, sir.”
He looked at Byrnes, who appeared to be clenching his jaw. Byrnes then walked up closer to Falconer.
“Falconer,” he said, “the investigation into the lunatic murder is now closed. Do you understand me? You are not a part of that investigation, and you should never have even been out there with Dysert, in the first place.” Byrnes looked quickly over at Dysert, and then returned his gaze to Falconer.
“Falconer,” he continued, “you are a good detective, that is clear. You have a great future on this fo
rce, if you play your cards right and don’t stumble because of your own misjudgments. Do you get me? You will return to your other cases in the Fourth Ward and forget this nonsense about the Whitechapel killer. Otherwise, your future with this department will be placed in serious jeopardy. Do I make myself clear?”
Falconer stared back at Byrnes. “Yes,” he said finally. “Clear, sir.”
“Good then,” Byrnes said as he returned to his seat behind his large desk. “I appreciate you both looking into the Blackwell’s killing. You did a good job closing it up quickly and getting the German into custody. Dysert, I will be commending you to your captain, I can assure you of that.”
“Thank you, sir,” Dysert replied.
“You are both dismissed.”
Dysert and Falconer then turned, exited the room, and walked downstairs to the street below. Outside, Dysert turned to Falconer.
“Do you really think that, Falconer—that the Ripper is actually here in New York and he basically framed Neumann?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Falconer said as he adjusted the bowler atop his head. “I’m off these cases, and those suspects are probably headed to Sing Sing, whether they killed those ladies or not.” Then he turned to leave, but, stopping himself suddenly, he looked back at Dysert. “Dysert,” he said. “The lady out on the island—did you ever get a name for her?”
“Yes, actually,” Dysert replied. “Her name was Jenny Tompkins, from Ohio, we think. We’re trying to contact next of kin out there. Any reason you ask?”
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