“I’m in no mood for atmosphere,” she said. “We’ve been driving all day and I don’t feel like playing games. I want to know what you—”
Dave cut into the flow of her words: “There it is!”
They both stared at it. Ten thousand tons of fitted stone. Over nine hundred feet of arched granite spanning the dark waters of the Colorado River. Tall and massive and magnificent.
“Christ!” murmured Dave. “Doesn’t it just knock you out?” Imagine—all the way from England, from the Thames River…the by-God-for-real London Bridge!”
“It is amazing,” Alice admitted. She smiled, kissed him on the cheek. “And I’m glad you didn’t tell me…that you kept it for a surprise.”
glittering cold steel
They moved along the concrete walkway beneath the Bridge, staring upward at the giant gray-black structure. Dave said: “When the British tore it down they numbered all the stones so our people would know where each one went. Thousands of stones. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Took three years to build it all over again here in Arizona.” He gestured around them. “All this was just open desert when they started. After the Bridge was finished they diverted a section of the Colorado River to run under it. And built the village.”
“Why did the British give us their bridge?”
“They were putting up a better one,” said Dave. “But, hey, they didn’t give this one to us. The guy that had it built here paid nearly two and a half million for it. Plus the cost of shipping all the stones over. Some rich guy named McCulloch. Died since then, I think.”
dead death dead dead death
“Well, we’ve seen it,” said Alice. “Let’s eat now. C’mon, I’m really starving.”
“You don’t want to walk on it?”
“Maybe after we eat,” said Alice. going inside the restaurant now…will wait…she’s perfect…white throat, blue vein pulsing under the chin…long graceful neck…
—
They ate at the City of London Arms in the Village. Late. Last couple in for dinner that evening. Last meal served.
“You folks should have come earlier,” the waitress told them. “Lots of excitement here today, putting in the final stone. I mean, with the Bridge dedication and all.”
“I thought it was dedicated in 1971,” said Dave.
“Oh, it was. But there was this one stone missing. Everyone figured it had been lost on the trip over. But they found it last month in London. Had fallen into the water when they were taking the Bridge apart. Today, it got fitted back where it belonged.” She smiled brightly. “So London Bridge is really complete now!”
Alice set her empty wineglass on the tablecloth. “All this Bridge talk is beginning to bore me,” she said. “I need another drink.”
“You’ve had enough,” said Dave.
“Hell I have!” To the waitress: “Bring us another bottle of wine.”
“Sorry, but we’re closing, I’m not allowed to—”
“I said bring another!”
“And she said they’re closing,” snapped Dave. “Let’s go.”
They paid the check, left. The doors were locked behind them.
The City of London Arms sign blinked off as they moved down the restaurant steps. to me to me
“You’ll feel better when we get back to the motel,” Dave said.
“I feel fine. Let’s go walk on London Bridge. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Now now, Ally,” he said. “We can do that tomorrow, before we leave. Drive over from the motel.”
“You go to the damn motel,” she said tightly. “I’m walking on the damn Bridge!”
He stared at her. “You’re drunk!”
She giggled. “So what? Can’t drunk people walk on the damn Bridge?”
“Come on,” said Dave, taking her arm. “We’re going to the car.”
“You go to the car,” she snapped, pulling away. “I’m gonna walk on the damn Bridge.”
“Fine,” said Dave. “Then you can get a taxi to the motel.”
And, dark-faced with anger, he walked away from her, back to their car. Got in. Drove off.
alone now for me…just for me
Alice Williamson walked toward London Bridge through the massed tree shadows along the dark river pathway. She reached the foot of the wide gray-granite Bridge steps, looked up.
At a tall figure in black. Slouch hat, dark cloak, boots.
She was looking at death.
She stumbled back, turned, poised to run—but the figure moved, glided, flowed mine now mine down the granite steps with horrific speed.
And the scalpel glitter-danced against the moon.
—
Two days later.
Evening, with the tour boat empty, heading for its home dock, Angie Shepherd at the wheel. Angie was the boat’s owner. She lived beside the river, had all her life. Knew its currents, its moods, under moon and sun, knew it intimately. Thompson Bay…Copper Canyon…Cattail Cove…Red Rock…Black Meadow…Topock Gorge. Knew its eagles and hawks and mallards, its mud turtles and great horned owls. Knew the sound of its waters in calm and in storm.
Her home was a tall, weathered-wood building that once served as a general store. She lived alone here. Made a living with her boat, running scenic tours along the Colorado. Age twenty-eight. Never married, and no plans in that area.
Angie docked the boat, secured it, entered the tall wooden building she called Riverhouse. She fussed in the small kitchen, taking some wine, bread, and cheese out to the dock. It was late; the night was ripe with river sounds and the heart-pulse of crickets.
She sat at the dock’s edge, legs dangling in the cool water. Nibbled cheese. Listened to a night bird crying over the river.
Something bumped her foot in the dark water. Something heavy, sodden. Drifting in the slow night current.
Something called Alice Williamson.
—
Dan Gregory had no clues to the murder. The husband was a logical suspect (most murders are family-connected), but Gregory knew that Dave Williamson was not guilty. You develop an instinct about people, and he knew Williamson was no wife-killer. For one thing, the man’s grief was deep and genuine; he seemed totally shattered by the murder—blamed himself, bitterly, for deserting Alice in the Village.
Gregory was tipped back in his desk chair, an unlit Marlboro in his mouth. (He was trying to give up smoking.) Williamson slouched in the office chair in front of him, looking broken and defeated. “Your wife was drunk, you had an argument. You got pissed and drove off. Happens to people all the time. Don’t blame yourself for this.”
“But if I’d stayed there, been there when—”
“Then you’d probably both be dead,” said Gregory. “You go back to the motel, take those pills the doc gave you and get some sleep. Then head for Palm Springs. We’ll contact you at your sister’s if we come up with anything.”
Williamson left the office. Gregory talked to Angie Shepherd next, about finding the body. She was shaken, but cooperative.
“I’ve never seen anyone dead before,” she told him.
“No family funerals?”
“Sure. A couple. But I’d never walk past the open caskets. I didn’t want to have to see people I’d love…that way.” She shrugged. “In your business I guess you see a lot of death.”
“Not actually,” said Gregory. “Your average Highway Patrol officer sees more of it in a month than I have in ten years. You don’t get many murders in a town this size.”
“That how long you’ve been Chief of Police here, ten years?”
“Nope. Just over a year. Used to be a police lieutenant in Phoenix. Moved up to this job.” He raised an eyebrow at her. “How come you being a local, you don’t know how long I’ve been Chief?”
“I never follow politics—especially small-town politics. Sorry about that.” And she smiled.
Gregory was a square-faced man in his thirties with hard, ice-blue eyes, offset by a quick, warm way of grinning. Had nev
er married; most women bored him. But he liked Angie. And the attraction was mutual.
Alice Williamson’s death had launched a relationship.
—
In August, four months after the first murder, there were two more. Both women. Both with throats cut. Both found along the banks of the Colorado. One at Pilot Rock, the other near Whipple Bay.
Dan Gregory had no reason to believe the two August “River Killings” (as the local paper had dubbed them) had been committed near London Bridge. He told a reporter that the killer might be a transient, passing through the area, killing at random. The murders lacked motive; the three victims had nothing in common beyond being female. Maybe the murderer, suggested Gregory, was just someone who hates women.
The press had a field day. “Madman on Loose”…“Woman-Hating Killer Haunts Area”…“Chief of Police Admits No Clues to River Killings.”
Reading the stories, Gregory muttered softly: “Assholes!”
—
Early September. A classroom at Lake Havasu City High School. Senior English. Lyn Esterly was finishing a lecture on William Faulkner’s Light in August.
“…therefore, Joe Christmas became the victim of his own twisted personality. He truly believed he was cursed by an outlaw strain of blood, a white man branded black by a racially bigoted society. Your assignment is to write a five-hundred-word essay on his inner conflicts.”
After she’d dismissed the class, Lyn phoned her best friend, Angie Shepherd, for lunch. They had met when Lyn had almost drowned swimming near Castle Rock. Angie had saved her life.
“You’re not running the boat today, and I need to talk to you, okay?”
“Sure…okay,” agreed Angie. “Meet you in town. Tom’s all right?”
“Tom’s it is.”
Trader Tom’s was a seafood restaurant, specializing in fresh shrimp, an improbable business establishment in the middle of the Arizona desert. Angie, “the primitive,” adored fresh shrimp, which had been introduced to her by Lyn, the “city animal,” their joke names for one another.
Over broiled shrimp and sole amandine they relaxed into a familiar discussion: “I’ll never be able to understand how you can live out there all alone on the river,” said Lyn. “It’s positively spooky—especially with a woman-killer running loose. Aren’t you afraid?”
“No. I keep a gun with me in the house, and I know how to use it.”
“I’d be terrified.”
“That’s because you’re a victim of your own imagination,” said Angie, dipping a huge shrimp into Tom’s special Cajun sauce. “You and your fascination with murder.”
“Lots of people are true-crime buffs,” said Lyn. “In fact that’s why I wanted to talk to you today. It’s about the River Killings.”
“You’ve got a theory about ’em, right?”
“This one’s pretty wild.”
“Aren’t they all?” Angie smiled, unpeeling another shrimp. “I’m listening.”
“The first murder, the Williamson woman, that one took place on the third of April.”
“So?”
“The second murder was on the seventh of August, the third on the thirty-first. All three dates are a perfect match.”
“For what?”
“For a series of killings, seven in all, committed in 1888 by Jack the Ripper. His first three were on exact matching dates.”
Angie paused, a shrimp halfway to her mouth. “Wow! Okay…you did say wild.”
“And there’s more. Alice Williamson, we know, was attacked near London Bridge—which is where the Ripper finally disappeared in 1888. They had him trapped there, but the fog was really thick that night and when they closed in on him from both ends of the Bridge he just…vanished. And he was never seen or heard of again.”
“Are you telling me that some nut is out there in the dark near London Bridge trying to duplicate the original Ripper murders? Is that your theory?”
“That’s it.”
“But why now? What triggered the pattern?”
“I’m working on that angle.” Lyn’s eyes were intense. “I’m telling you this today for a vitally important reason.”
“I’m still listening.”
“You’ve become very friendly with Chief Gregory. He’ll listen to you. He must be told that the fourth murder will take place tonight, the eighth of September, before midnight.”
“But I…”
“You’ve got to warn him to post extra men near the Bridge tonight. And he should be there himself.”
“Because of your theory?”
“Of course! Because of my theory.”
Angie slowly shook her head. “Dan would think I was around the bend. He’s a realist. He’d laugh at me.”
“Isn’t it worth being laughed at to save a life?” Lyn’s eyes burned at her. “Honest, Angie, if you don’t convince Gregory that I’m making sense, that I’m onto a real pattern here, then another woman is going to get her throat slashed open near London Bridge tonight.”
Angie pushed her plate away. “You sure do know how to spoil a terrific lunch.”
—
That afternoon, back at Riverhouse, Angie tried to make sense of Lyn’s theory. The fact that these murders had fallen on the same dates as three murders a century earlier was interesting and curious, but not enough to set a hard-minded man like Gregory in motion.
It was crazy, but still Lyn might be onto something.
At least she could phone Dan and suggest dinner in the Village. She could tell him what Lyn said—and then he would be there in the area, just in case something happened.
Dan said yes, they’d meet at the City of London Arms.
When Angie left for the Village that night she carried a pearl-handled .32-caliber automatic in her purse.
If. Just if.
—
Dan was late. On the phone he’d mentioned a meeting with the City Council, so maybe that was it. The Village was quiet, nearly empty of tourists.
Angie waited, seated on a park bench near the restaurant, nervous in spite of herself, thinking that alone, her back to the trees, thick shadow trees, vulnerable maybe she should wait inside, at the bar.
A tall figure, moving toward her. Behind her.
A thick-fingered hand reaching out for her. She flinched back eyes wide, fingers closing on the automatic inside her open purse.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
It was Dan. His grin made her relax. “I’ve…been a little nervous today.”
“Over what?”
“Something Lyn Esterly told me.” She took his arm. “I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.”
lost her…can’t with him
And they went inside.
—
“…so what do you think?” Angie asked. They were having an after-dinner drink. The booths around them were silent, unoccupied.
“I think your friend’s imagination is working overtime.”
Angie frowned. “I knew you’d say something like that.”
Dan leaned forward, taking her hand. “You don’t really believe there’s going to be another murder in this area tonight just because she says so, do you?”
“No, I guess I don’t really believe that.”
And she guessed she didn’t.
But…
—
There! Walking idly on the Bridge, looking down at the water, alone, young woman alone…her throat naked, skin naked and long-necked…open to me…blade sharp sharp…soft throat
A dark pulsing glide onto the Bridge, a swift reaching out, a small choked cry of shocked horror, a sudden drawn-across half-moon of bright crimson—and the body falling…falling into deep Colorado waters.
—
Although Dan Gregory was a skeptic, he was not a fool. He ordered the entire Village area closed to tourists and began a thorough search.
Which proved rewarding.
An object was found on the Bridge, wedged into an aperture between two stones below one of th
e main arches: a surgeon’s scalpel with fresh blood on it. And with blackened stains on the handle and blade.
It was confirmed that the fresh blood matched that of the latest victim. The dark stains proved to be dried blood. But they did not match the blood types of the other three murder victims. It was old blood. Very old.
Lab tests revealed that the bloodstains had remained on the scalpel for approximately one hundred years.
Dating back to the 1880s.
—
“Are you Angela Shepherd?”
A quiet Sunday morning along the river. Angie was repairing a water-damaged section of dock, briskly hammering in fresh nails, and had not heard the woman walk up behind her. She put down the claw hammer, stood, pushing back her hair. “Yes, I’m Angie Shepherd. Who are you?”
“Lenore Harper. I’m a journalist.”
“What paper?”
“Free-lance. Could we talk?”
Angie gestured toward the house. Lenore was tall, trim-bodied, with penetrating green eyes.
“Want a Coke?” asked Angie. “Afraid it’s all I’ve got. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“No, I’m fine,” said Lenore, seating herself on the living-room couch and removing a small notepad from her purse.
“You’re doing a story on the River Killings, right?”
Lenore nodded. “But I’m going after something different. That’s why I came to you.”
“Why me?”
“Well…you discovered the first body.”
Angie sat down in a chair opposite the couch, ran a hand through her hair. “I didn’t discover anything. When the body drifted downriver against the dock I happened to be there. That’s all there is to it.”
“Where you shocked…frightened?”
“Sickened is a better word. I don’t enjoy seeing people with their throats cut.”
“Of course. I understand, but…”
Angie stood up. “Look, there’s really nothing more I can tell you. If you want facts on the case, talk to Chief Gregory at the police department.”
“I’m more interested in ideas, emotions—in personal reactions to these killings. I’d like to know your ideas. Your theories.”
“If you want to talk theory, go see Lyn Esterly. She’s got some original ideas on the case. Lyn’s a true-crime buff. She’ll probably be anxious to help you.”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 153