by Jim Laughter
Some people believed Fairy Fay was a figment of the journalist’s imagination. The only problem was they had a dead body mutilated in exactly the same fashion as Jack the Ripper’s known victims. If she wasn’t one of his, then who killed her?
Could there have been another serial killer in London at that time? If not, why had she been killed almost a full year before Mary Ann Nichols in exactly the same fashion? Was it possible Jack had a partner or accomplice and Fairy Fay inadvertently fell into their web of murder? There were too many unanswered questions to suit Cooper so he decided to take it slow and be more meticulous in his research.
Casting his eyes down the page of murder victims, he stopped on a name he knew he’d seen before. The body of Faye Broussard, a prostitute in Nashville, Tennessee had been found in a downtown back alley the day after Christmas three years ago. Her murder remained unsolved but the circumstances of her death were eerily similar to the victims of Jack the Ripper.
Cooper remembered this particular murder simply because the President had visited Nashville during that time. He’d only been a rookie agent at that time but Chief Wills had instructed all new agents to be aware of the case.
Faye Broussard, as it turned out, was a common street hooker that worked the entertainment district in Nashville. She’d been seen Christmas Day in the company of several other prostitutes. But when questioned, the other ladies of the night told the police Faye had been picked up on the corner of 5th and Broadway near the Nashville Convention Center around 11 pm by a man in a big black car but hadn’t been able to tell them the make or model, only that it was certainly an executive model, something a fat cat would drive. They’d assumed she’d landed an all-nighter since she didn’t return to the street to compete with the other girls. That was the last time they’d seen her until a report of her murder was released by the news media.
Cooper compared the details of Fairy Fay and Faye Broussard. Both women had been diminutive in size, standing only a few inches over five feet tall and weighing less than one-hundred twenty pounds. Their hair color had both been dirty dishwater blond, and neither woman had been particularly attractive.
Cooper couldn’t imagine why a man looking to pay for sex would pick up an ugly woman. But then again, he didn’t imagine a woman’s looks was exactly what a man cares about when he’s desperate enough to pay for sex. Not that he’d ever stooped that low for personal gratification but he understood the desperation that some men feel when their sexual desires or phobias are not satisfied.
“So you think this Broussard woman was a victim of our killer, do ya?” Morris asked Cooper. He nodded.
“You just pick her name off that list and decide she’s one of ours, huh? Is that how they do it in Tennessee?”
Cooper knew Morris was trying to bait him into saying something stupid but he wasn’t going to rise to the lure.
“No sir,” he said. “Faye Broussard’s name was on George’s original list alright, but I recognized it from another case.”
Keller and George stopped collating the files they’d been working on and turned their attention to Cooper and Morris.
“You recognized it?” Morris asked.
“Yes sir.”
“You recognized it from another case?”
“Yes sir.”
Morris looked at the kill date on the page.
“That case is damn near three years old. How the hell do you recognize it? You hadn’t been an agent more than a few months when it happened.”
“Yes sir, I know.”
George crossed the room and stood behind Cooper, curious that he’d discovered something none of the rest of them had seen.
“What did you find, Grundy?”
Cooper handed George a separate sheet of paper. George recognized it as an FBI cover sheet from a case file from the Nashville, Tennessee office. He examined the sheet and recognized the name of the murdered prostitute from his list of names.
“You’ve seen this name before?”
“Uh-huh. Recognized it from an unsolved homicide in Nashville.”
George read down through the facts of the case. With exception to the similarities in the names, nothing special stood out to him.
“What makes this case special, Grundy?”
Cooper didn’t want to say anything that would make him sound stupid, so he hesitated with his answer. The thoughts running through his mind didn’t make much sense, even to him. But he knew he couldn’t ignore the facts, incredible as they were.
“Grundy?” George prompted. “What makes this case special?”
Cooper pushed away from the work table he’d occupied since arriving in Washington. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped red hair and scratched an invisible itch on the back of his head.
“It’s the date,” he finally answered.
“The date?”
“Uh-huh. December 26th.”
“So?”
Cooper lifted the cover sheet out of Benjamin’s hand. He took his pen and circled the date indicated as the coroner’s official date of death.
“I’ve been comparing the dates on the case files of these murdered women,” he said. “So far, they all have one thing in common.”
This bit of information caused Keller to leave her desk and draw closer to Morris and the two rookie agents. Keller wondered what hidden fact Cooper could have uncovered. Morris wondered what kind of tom-foolery was going to spew from the knot head from Tennessee.
“Ok, rookie,” Morris said. “What the hell are you talkin' about?”
Cooper hesitated again. If he was wrong, he’d never hear the end of it from Morris. But he wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t prove it but he knew he wasn’t wrong.
“Grundy,” George prompted again. “What have you found?”
Cooper resigned himself to the fact that his career as an FBI agent was fixing to either end here and now or be propelled to a new level. Either way, he knew he couldn’t stop the current momentum.
“The dates of these murders,” he said, reluctant to finish his sentence, “all coincide to time windows when the President of the United States was visiting the cities where the murders occurred.”
Now it was George’s turn to stare in disbelief at Cooper’s accusation that the President of the United States could somehow be involved in a capital crime.
“You’re crazy as a shit house rat!” Morris said before Benjamin could say anything. “To suggest the President could be a killer.”
“I’m not suggesting it, sir,” Cooper answered. “But facts are facts.”
“My God in heaven!” Morris exclaimed.
He paced around the room in their third floor office of the FBI headquarters building in Washington, D.C. After twenty-five years in law enforcement, he thought he’d heard and seen everything.
He’d worked conspiracy theories and high profile assassination threats. Once when the Pope visited the United States, they’d received word some nut job Islamic splinter group threatened a religious jihad against him. He remembered standing watch outside the Washington Hilton in the freezing rain while the pontiff slept safe and warm inside.
There’d been countless hours of grueling investigation when two jet liners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. He’d been part of a task force assigned to the Beltway Sniper Case when two men killed or wounded 13 people from the trunk of their car. This was the case where he’d met Keller and recommended her for admission into the FBI.
But this? How the hell did I get involved with this case and these two rookies? Does God hate me? Have I done something to offend him so bad that he’d burden me with a seminary dropout and a Fruit Loop from California?
“So what you’re sayin' is,” Morris said, turning back to Cooper, “the President of the United States is somehow involved in the murder of prostitutes all over this damn country. Is that what you’re sayin', Cooper?”
“Sir, I…”
“You’re sittin' there on your California ass tellin' me the
leader of the free world is a damn serial killer? Is that what you’re tellin' me?”
“Now Dunc…” Keller tried to intervene on Cooper’s behalf but Morris cut her off.
“No, Keller, I wanna hear it from his own damn mouth.”
He turned back to Cooper. “Is that what you’re sayin', rookie? That the President is a killer?”
“No sir, I’m not suggesting the President is a…”
“But you just said these women were kilt in cities where the President was visitin'. Ain’t that what you just said?”
“Yes sir, but…”
“And you and Reverend George here have so much as stated you believe Jack the Ripper is alive and killin' women in the United friggin' States. Ain’t that what you just said?”
“Yes sir, but I…”
“So you two fresh fish think the President of the United States is Jack the Ripper?”
“No sir, that’s not what I said.”
“How much do you weigh, Cooper?” Morris asked. “Somewhere around one seventy, one eighty?”
Cooper looked into Morris’ eyes. He had no idea how to answer his question. Where was the old fool going with this?
“I suppose so, sir,” he stammered. “But I don’t see…”
“Then you should know about sixty pounds of that is pure bullshit.” He stepper toward Cooper as if he were going to physically assault the young agent.
Keller pushed in between Morris and Cooper, inserting herself into the tension between the two men. She took Cooper by his left elbow and lifted him out of his chair.
“Where the hell do you think you’re goin'?”
Keller didn’t answer. Her glare was enough to let the aggravated agent know she wasn’t in the mood to be messed with. Cooper, on the other hand, wasn’t sure about anything. Keller’s reassuring touch on his arm afforded him limited comfort, but only to the degree that he didn’t have to argue with Morris.
Benjamin stood aside. No amount of argument was going to convince Morris that Jack the Ripper was reincarnated in the President of the United States.
Then again, he didn’t believe that part of Morris’ assumption. Cooper had never said the President was Jack the Ripper, only that the Jack the Ripper style of murders had taken place in cities where the President happened to be visiting at the time. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. He was sure there was a rational explanation. He just wished he could come up with one.
Keller led Grundy Cooper from the office in the direction of the break room. The coffee in there was notoriously bad, but the sanctuary away from Morris, even if only for a few minutes, could prove invaluable.
Morris scratched an invisible itch behind his ear.
“How the hell am I going to convince Truck to open an investigation on the President of the United friggin’ States and accuse him of being Jack the Ripper?” he muttered under his breath.
Should’a kept my ass in Texas.
Chapter Seventeen
The boy shook and shivered in the cluttered corner of the Chicago tenement apartment. He pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his hands. Tears coursed from is eyes while he tried to hide from the scene of sex and brutality taking place across the room.
The naked, dirty man atop his mother wasn’t satisfied with the sex. Every few seconds he would slap her hard across her face and curse at her, calling her names the boy didn’t fully understand. With every assault, he’d glare across the room at the scared child as if he were going to leave the bed and abuse him as well.
The winter wind cut through the cracks around the windows and under the door. Any heat provided by the hot water radiator attached to the wall of the old apartment escaped with every gust of frigid air.
But the chill saturating the boy wasn’t just caused by the weather. There was something else—something that bit into his psyche that nullified his emotions. He didn’t understand the dark place his mind went to during moments like this. It was someplace far away and occupied by an evil man he didn’t recognize but was certain he knew.
He was scared but not afraid. He knew the dirty man could just as easily turn his anger against him instead of his mother. He didn’t care. He didn’t hate or blame the man for his behavior. Instead, he hated his mother—disgusted at the way she displayed herself before any man with a twenty dollar bill in his pocket and a few minutes to spare.
Bitch, he thought, rehearsing a word he’d heard the man call his mother during a moment of violence and abuse. He didn’t know what a bitch was or how it applied to his mother, but whatever it meant, he hated her for it.
Chapter Eighteen
The Town Car handled perfectly, smooth and quiet, not a squeak or rattle—a leviathan on the prowl. The powerful V8 purred with anticipation of release but obeyed its master’s command to glide down the wide Detroit avenue in search of his next conquest.
How was it possible for such a great American city to fall from a once lofty pedestal of manufacturing greatness to its current condition of financial ruin, crime and debauchery?
A person only had to look at his surrounding to recognize how far the motor city had declined. Areas of downtown that had once boasted of prosperity now reflected the ghetto spirit that inhabited it. Graffiti symbolizing gangs marked off territories like a surveyor would document his plat. Trash littered once magnificent blocks of buildings raised during a time of growth and prosperity.
Groups of people cluttered street corners, hanging out together with no purpose in mind except to cause trouble and act belligerent. Young men that could make something of themselves if they wanted to wore their pants droopy down in the back exposing their underwear. Were they so ignorant that they didn’t know this was a fashion started in prisons to indicate the availability for homosexual sex? Was it the poor urban curse that caused these young people to act that way, or was it the ‘poor me’ attitude that had overtaken the mindset of the young urbanite?
The killer didn’t know. He only knew that he’d raised himself up from this exact same poverty and inner city slave mindset. He’d pulled himself out of the back alleys and whorehouses where his mother spent her nights, often times with him alongside her. He’d fought to attain an education and make something of himself. He had no tolerance for these young hoodlums that displayed their ignorance on the city streets, making themselves no better than the prostitutes, both male and female, that sold their illicit wares to whatever scum would pay for it.
The Town Car pulled past a group of young women working a street corner of downtown Detroit. But he wasn’t looking to pick someone out of a crowd. The voice speaking to him would lead him to the woman he needed and was certain he’d find her before the sun rose over the motor city.
Chapter Nineteen
The phone on Morris’ desk squealed the annoying ringtone he hated so much. Why couldn’t it just have a bell like a real telephone instead of this Tinker Bell sing-song crap to keep from disturbing an office? Isn’t that what a ringing telephone is supposed to do, disturb an office?
“Morris,” the agent said into the irritating instrument.
“You want to come see me?”
Morris recognized the voice of Division Chief Lewellen Truck.
“Why the hell would I want to come see you? I saw your ugly ass at the mornin' briefin'”
Truck wasn’t in the mood to banter back and forth with Morris. He wasn’t the only person suffering with a headache. The difference was Morris’ headache was the result of excessive alcohol consumption. His was a lingering pain caused by the mountain of shit he was being forced to climb just to stay on top of his job.
“Come see me,” Truck said without explaining himself. “Right away.”
“Yes sir,” Morris answered and hung up the phone, certain Truck was going to drop another load of bad news on them. Why shouldn’t it be Truck? After all, he was bureau chief, top of the heap.
“Shit rolls downhill,” he muttered under his breath.
Keller overheard the conversat
ion between Morris and the division chief. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Morris call Truck sir, or anyone else for that matter.
“This can’t be good,” she whispered to Benjamin.
Twenty minutes after leaving the office, Morris returned carrying a stack of multi-colored folders and envelopes, every one of them marked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. Keller recognized them for what they were but Benjamin and Cooper had never seen them before.
“You shouldn’t have those in here,” Keller admonished her partner.
Morris didn’t bother to hide the coversheets on the folders. Along with the TOP SECRET stamp affixed to each one was another seal that neither of the rookies recognized. Cooper reached to pick up one of the folders only to have his hand slapped by Keller.
“Not yet.”
“But ma’am…”
“Not yet,” Keller repeated. “This isn’t something you want to get involved with. Not yet anyway. Once you do, there’s no going back.”
Cooper and Benjamin backed away from the table where Morris had nonchalantly dropped the files. He knew the rookies would eventually be thrust headlong into the shit storm that was heading their way.
Lynn Keller opened the first folder in the stack Morris dropped on the table. Its designation of TOP SECRET caused her hands to shake just a little. She’d dealt with sensitive material before but this was something completely out of her depth.
“Are these what I think they are?” she asked Morris who stood at their third story window overlooking the bureau parking lot.
God, to be back in Texas, he thought.
“Yep,” he answered without expanding on his answer.
“And just what are we supposed to do with them?”
Morris turned back to Keller, a serious expression on his face. There were times when he loved his job. Then again, there were times when he wished he’d stayed with the Texas Highway Patrol. This was one of those times.
“You know damn well what we’re supposed to do with 'em.”
Benjamin and Cooper still hadn’t seen the contents of the folders. Benjamin assumed the files represented secrets that were many levels beyond his pay grade.