by I D Johnson
“Let’s walk down here and see if we can’t find our friend,” Aaron finally suggested, and Vicky followed him down the dark alleyway without discussion. The street lamps didn’t reach the corners back here, and he absently wondered why anyone would traverse such a place unaccompanied late at night.
The Vampire who had given them their first tip several months ago had shown up two more times, each time insisting on speaking to Aaron and no one else, regardless of who he was partnered with. They could never tell when he might show up, but they’d had little luck finding him on their own. All they could do now was make themselves available.
The entire situation was quite frustrating for all of the team members. Jack left an almost untraceable scene time and again, and others seemed to be imitating him, though it was always hard to say which murders were his and which were not, and eventually Ward had brought in a doctor from the United States to carefully examine each victim and determine whether or not the bodies belonged to the Ripper or something else. While Aaron liked the kid, he was just that—barely twenty years old, inexperienced, and potentially capable of leading them in the wrong direction. Despite the doctor’s recommendations, Aaron always tried to draw his own conclusions.
They turned the corner and headed east up a broader alleyway that ran between one large building and the backs of several more. A few steps into their journey, Aaron began to get a familiar feeling in his gut, and he looked at Vicky, who was nodding. Letting her lead, and following her nose, he proceeded with caution.
At the next intersection, she stopped and turned, entering a very narrow path lined with garbage and other debris where a familiar outline stood several yards down the cobblestone corridor. Vicky stepped back, allowing Aaron to approach while she lingered several feet behind; she knew by now that the informant only trusted “blue eyes” as he called him.
“How are you, friend?” Aaron called halting a good three feet away from the shadow lurker. “Finding the cold weather a challenge?”
The Vampire laughed. “People do walk faster when they are freezing,” he agreed. “I make my way.” Then, as if a second thought, he added, “Not with no innocents, though.”
“Of course not,” Aaron offered, highly doubting that was always the case. “Got any word for us?”
“Not much,” he shrugged, removing his hat and running his hand through what appeared to be thinning light hair. “Even the Ripper ain’t out on a night like this.”
Aaron found that interesting but didn’t pursue why that might be. “Did he do that job before Christmas? The strangulation?”
“Nah,” came the reply. “That drunk done herself in. Not his callin’ card.”
That was just as his team had suspected, and Aaron moved on before the answers stopped coming. “What about the day after Christmas?”
“Yeah, that’s him. Papers ain’t think so, though. Neither do the coppers much. He’s switchin’ it up now. You’ll have a hard time tellin’ the difference.”
“Why?” Aaron asked. “Why switch it up?”
“Why not?” he giggled, and for a moment Aaron thought the maniacal, highly disturbing laugh might be back, but he reined it in. “Coppers is too close. Gotta put some distance, you know?”
“He’s on their list?”
“Sure.” The Vampire adjusted the collar of his long coat. “But then, ain’t we all? I am.” A moment of consideration later, he added, “Bet you are, too.”
An interesting comment which made Aaron ponder if this might be their man. While it wasn’t the first time the idea had crossed his mind, he pushed it aside. This guy didn’t seem nearly intelligent enough to pull off the complicated dissections the Ripper had performed, and he’d ascertained earlier that their friend had spent his living days playing piano in just the sort of establishments that surrounded them now. There was a very slim chance that he was actually talking to the Ripper. “What next then? What changes should we expect?”
“Who knows?” he replied, his leg jumping about, showing he was growing antsy. “Gotta throw dem coppers off, you know? Gotta keep it int’resting, blue eyes.”
“Could you meet me back here tomorrow evening?” Aaron asked, wishing he’d agree to an arranged meeting so he could be more thorough. This was not the first time he’d asked.
“Nah,” the Vampire called, looking back over his shoulder. “Can’t be tied down. Can’t trust you.”
“I’ve given you no reason not to trust me,” Aaron assured him, and though he could feel that his words were having some effect, the man still clearly did not want to become more involved with the enemy.
“Nah. I’ll find you,” he confirmed, another glance over his shoulder, and he added, “after the next one. There’ll be another one, you know? Don’t let dem papers make you think it’s over. It’s just beginning.”
Before Aaron could say more, the Vampire took off in the other direction, and Aaron watched him go.
“We could catch him, you know?” Vicky said, stepping forward now that he was just a form in the distance.
“For what purpose?” Aaron asked, watching him fade into the shadows. “He would no longer trust us and probably wouldn’t tell us anything once we had him.”
“What if he’s the one doing the murders?’ she asked, chewing her bottom lip.
Aaron shook his head. “No, it’s not him. He’s too… scattered. Too unskilled.”
She nodded. This wasn’t the first time she’d posed the question, and he wasn’t sure she was convinced this time either. “Well, I guess we present this information back to the team and see where it leads?” she asked.
Aaron agreed, and they made their way back to Kensington with only slightly more information and no true answers.
The next morning at the team meeting, Aaron prepared to give the notes they’d collected from their friendly Vampire, but another pair insisted that they go first, saying they had found a lead, and he sat back and listened as Frank and Berta described what had happened the night before.
“We were doing our rounds, as usual,” Frank began, “nothing out of the ordinary when suddenly I get that feeling in my gut, like somethin’s amiss. And this ain’t one of those regular flip flops either, mind you. My stomach is screaming an alarm.”
“So, we turn down a narrow alleyway,” Berta continued, and Aaron absently wondered how narrow it could be in order for her muscular stature to squeeze through, “and at the other end, we see the outline of a man, standing in the shadows, silhouetted by a nearby gaslight.”
“He’s wearing a top hat and cape, just as the eyewitnesses have described, and when he sees us, he takes off running, like he knows he’s been caught,” Frank continued.
Berta picked up where he left off, her German accent making it slightly difficult to understand what she was saying once she became excited. “We gave chase, but he was fast—much faster than anyone we’d encountered before.”
“I’m no spring chicken, and Berta’s more strength than speed,” Frank reminded them.
“Eventually, we turn the corner and see him leap up and over a tall stone wall. By the time we got there and reached the top, he was gone,” the female Guardian concluded with a shrug.
“And you think this was our man?” Ward clarified.
“Absolutely,” Frank nodded. “We retraced our steps, and once we got back to the original alleyway, we discovered something we hadn’t seen in the first place because it was dark, and we were focused on the Vampire.”
“What was it?” Harvey asked. All of them were listening intently as the story unfolded.
“A woman,” Berta replied, and Aaron heard Vicky gasp quietly to his left. “She was on the ground, in the shadows. She was still breathing but her neck was bruised. It’s as if he strangles them before he feeds, then he dismembers their bodies to leave little trace of their true wounds.”
“Why would he do that?” Edmund asked, the question in general and not pointed at anyone in particular.
Ward let l
oose a sigh they could each identify with before turning to face the young man on his right. “Dr. Joplin, do you have a response to that?”
The doctor cleared his throat, and Aaron could tell he was very nervous, not used to addressing groups of this variety. Aaron’s understanding was that he had Transformed shortly after completing his medical degree at Harvard Medical, which he had gained entrance to and graduated from remarkably quickly as an outstanding physician, and then served a few years in training in his home state of Massachusetts before Ward heard of his skills and brought him here to consult on this particular case, which was the most complicated any of them could remember.
“Well,” he began after some consideration, “there could be a number of reasons why the Ripper might take such actions, but, in my opinion, he’s doing it to prevent blood loss from the wounds he inflicts after death.”
“How’s that?” Ward asked, leaning forward in concentration.
“So… if you think of the heart as a pump, driving blood to the various parts of the body, if one were to make an incision, particularly the large slashing cuts the Ripper uses in the neck and torso areas, while the heart is still pumping blood, there will be a splattering effect, far beyond what we are seeing now, which is only due to the particular motion the slayer is using when he makes the cuts. Asphyxiating the victim before the incisions are made is one way to lessen the effects the pumping motion has on the blood splatter.”
“Do you think he does this so that he can drain the victim?” Vicky asked, her face contorting into a grimace as she pondered the information supplied to them by the doctor.
He cleared his throat again, and Aaron could feel his confidence rising just a bit the more he spoke. “I believe that is part of the reason,” Dr. Joplin nodded, “though we know that Jack does not feed off of his victims to the extent one would expect from a typical Vampire. He seems to be more fascinated with both the hunt and the dissection, at least in most of these cases, so it might just be that stopping the heart before he makes his incisions gives him a cleaner work area if you will.”
That explanation seemed reasonable to Aaron, and while he still wasn’t sure what to make of the newbie, he could see why Ward had brought him in. He certainly seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to medical information.
“Thank you, Jamie,” Ward said with a smile and a nod. “I think it is fair to say, then, that the Ripper was in the process of dispatching this young lady when you discovered her, and there’s likely a possibility that Dr. Joplin’s explanation is the reason why.”
“Did she live?” Carlo, a Hunter with a thick Spanish accent asked.
“We alerted the police, and they took her to hospital. Since she hasn’t made the papers, I’m assuming so,” Frank replied.
“Do we think Mylett could’ve been another victim interrupted then?” Harvey asked, referring to the victim from early December that both the police and the press refused to attribute to the Ripper.
“Actually, we got some information on that last night,” Vicky dove in before Aaron had a chance to. She looked to him, and he raised his eyebrows, an indicator that she could proceed if she wanted to. Clearly, she preferred to defer to him.
“We ran into our informant last night,” he explained. “According to him, Mylett was not a Ripper victim. He says she killed herself.”
“That seems implausible,” Edmund chimed in. “Who strangles herself in the dead of winter in a public park?”
“One of the reasons we haven’t accepted the police’s official report,” Ward reminded him.
Aaron continued. “Our friend also says that the girl found with the stake through her stomach the day after Christmas was a Ripper victim. He says this is an indicator that the Ripper is ‘changing things up,’ that the police are on to him, and we can expect more diversification in the future.” He looked around at the faces, and each of them seemed stoic, as if they realized they still had a long road ahead of them.
“Jamie, you examined the late December victim yourself, didn’t you?” Ward asked. The doctor nodded, and the leader continued. “Did you find her wounds consistent with the Ripper’s tactics?”
“I didn’t,” Jamie admitted, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t do it. If what Aaron and his informant are saying is true, the different tactics could be an effort to throw the police off of his trail.”
“And this Vampire you meet with says that’s what he is trying to do?” Frank asked. “Get the police off of him?”
“Yes,” Aaron confirmed. “He also admitted that he, himself, is on the police’s list of suspects.”
“And we’re sure that this guy is not the killer?” Berta asked.
“I have never truly suspected him,” Aaron replied, “but I think we’ve confirmed it if you saw the Ripper last night, blocks away from where we spoke to the Vampire informant, and the man you chased was dressed much differently than the one we spoke to.”
She nodded, and Aaron now felt certain the man he’d been speaking to could not be the killer—though he was no closer to discovering who Jack the Ripper really was.
“We do know, then, that one of the suspects on the police list has to be the Ripper, then,” Edmund noted, “if we believe the informant.”
“Great. That narrows it down to a hundred men,” Vicky reminded them.
“There are some suspects from the initial list we can remove,” Ward said, “though the list would still be quite long and growing each day.”
“It still might be a good place to concentrate our efforts,” Dr. Joplin added, and Aaron was surprised to hear him speak up without being asked a direct question, a first. “As I’ve stated before, I do believe the Ripper has medical experience. If we hone in on those suspects already on the list who have some sort of medical practice, we should be able to narrow it down considerably. Then, we can determine how best to proceed.”
“A fine idea,” Ward said with a smile. “Let’s get to it.”
While the rest of the team continued to pound the pavement of Whitechapel, Aaron and Vicky volunteered to go through the paperwork supplied to them by the local police documenting each of the nearly one hundred suspects they took seriously. There were a few hundred more that were dismissed, and while Aaron was a bit apprehensive of taking anyone’s word for it, he did trust the members of their own team who also worked for the police department to make accurate recommendations.
The job was simple at this point; look at each suspect and add medical practitioners to a narrowed list which the team would then more closely examine. However, as Aaron and Vicky began to go through the pile of documentation, they realized the task wouldn’t be as simple as first imagined. Some of the suspects had no career noted or the information was so incomplete, it wasn’t clear whether or not they could potentially have a background involving some sort of medical experience.
Letting out a sigh, Vicky shook her head and said, “We need a list for ‘unknown’ or ‘not sure,’” she said, grasping a document in each hand. “This one says he was currently employed as a ‘worker,’ and this one says, ‘unable or unwilling to articulate his profession’.”
“I agree,” Aaron nodded. “Set those in a separate pile, and we’ll jot them down independently.”
They were sitting across from each other at Aaron’s desk, the daylight long since faded, and Aaron was glad his eyesight had improved since he Transformed or else he might not be able to read some of the handwriting in the dimly lit room.
“Oh, this is helpful,” Vicky went on, holding a sheet up close to her face as she read. “’Place of employment? Yes.’ Really, what are they thinking when they write this out?”
Trying not to laugh at her frustration, Aaron said, “I think the police are probably just as overwhelmed as we are, perhaps more so. With so many officers collecting data from dozens of people each day, tips coming in, ridiculous responses to newspaper articles, we’re bound to get some inaccurate or incomplete information.”
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br /> “Hmmm,” Vicky nodded, either considering his remark or contemplating the next sheet. After a few moments of silence as they both continued with the documentation, she asked, “What about butchers?”
The thought had occurred to him as well, although Ward said Dr. Joplin thought it was highly unlikely that a typical meat cutter could make the same sort of precise incisions the Ripper had displayed on a few of his victims. Still, it would potentially save time later if they went ahead and made a list of butchers now in case it was needed later. “List number three,” Aaron nodded.
After several hours, they cleared through the pile and began to write the three lists, a task that took them into the morning light, and when they had finished, they had a list of eight medical professionals, six butchers, and ten “others” they needed to research more to verify they did not belong on either of the two previous lists.
“Well, that took longer than I expected,” Aaron said, stretching.
“You tired?” the blonde asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you tired before.”
“No,” he assured her. “Just not used to sitting for so long.”
Vicky nodded. “Are you sure it’s not me? I hear I have a reputation for causing stiffness in men.”
Aaron’s eyes widened, and he felt the heat rising to his face. He was used to off-color jokes from the male members of their team, but he couldn’t remember ever hearing Vicky, or any other lady, make such a comment.
“Oh, lighten up,” she insisted, readjusting in her seat. “It was meant to be a joke.”
“Yes, quite humorous,” he agreed. “I’ll laugh later. When I’m by myself.”
She pursed her lips together and shook her head. “I guess that must not be the only thing you do when you’re by yourself?”
“Pardon?” Aaron asked, unable to believe her brashness.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to be rude. It’s just… I’ve known you for thirty years now, Aaron. Thirty. And I’ve asked you to join me for dozens of meals, done my best to draw your attention, even showed you my ankles, and while every other male I come into contact is more than willing to get to know me better, you insist on disinterest. I see the way that you look at me, though. I know you find me fetching. Why? Why won’t you even explore the possibility that we could be more than just colleagues?”