Mick knew damned well that the only place the police commissioner wanted to send him was straight to hell. But given that there was a badass constable standing sentry at the entrance to Emmaline’s old apartment—and the guy was built like a baby bull—he figured a baldfaced lie was the only way to get his foot through the door.
“The police commissioner, ’e sent you?” Clearly suspicious, the constable ran a hand over his huge, wiry mustache, the likes of which looked like something you might use to scour a toilet.
“Yeah, I’m with the, um, Pinkerton Agency,” Mick said, telling yet another fast one. He’d read in one of the London newspapers that the Metropolitan Police, desperate to solve the Ripper case, had considered using the famed American detective agency to help them find the notorious killer.
“Right. I read about you blokes,” the constable said with a nod, some of the badass attitude softening a bit. “A few years back, the prime minister brought in some Pinkertons to apprehend the Fenian assassins.”
“Yep, that’s us,” Mick gamely replied, even though he had absolutely no idea what the guy was talking about.
The bluff worked. The constable stepped aside so that Mick could cross the threshold. As he entered the small, one-room flat, he noticed two things right off the bat: one, blood and gore everywhere—on the bed, the floor, the walls; and two, a sickly sweet smell that was vaguely familiar. Although he couldn’t quite place the scent.
“Who the bloody hell might you be?” a gruff voice demanded.
“I’m Mick Giovanni,” he said, extending his right hand to the bowler-hatted man who appeared none too pleased to see him. “Sir Charles Warren sent me. I’m with the Pinkerton Agency.”
“Indeed.” Taking hold of the proffered hand, the other man gave Mick a brusque, businesslike handshake. “I’m Inspector Abberline. And you’d be well-advised to stay out of my way.”
“Don’t worry. I’m here strictly as an observer.”
With a grim smile, the inspector expansively gestured to the crime scene. “Observe away. Assuming you’ve got the stomach for it.”
Turning toward the bed where the victim Mary Kelly lay on her back, her legs open and bent at the knees, Mick swallowed a mouthful of stomach bile. He’d seen a lot of gruesome sights in his sixteen years with the NYPD, but this had to be the most sadistic atrocity he’d ever witnessed. The murderer had mutilated the victim beyond all recognition, as well as removed her sexual organs.
As he stared at the lifeless body of what had once been a pretty woman, Mick started to get a strange sense of déjà vu. Liked he’d seen this crime scene before.
And then it hit him–the murder that had occurred the day that he went through the time portal–the dead prostitute on Larimer Street. While he didn’t catch that case, he’d seen the crime scene photos. From what he recollected, there was an eerie similarity between the crime scene in Brooklyn and this one. Not only in the level of brutality, but in the way that both corpses had been posed by the killer.
Jeez, talk about a weird coincidence.
Chalking it up to one of life’s little unexplained mysteries, Mick walked the perimeter of the room, sidestepping a photographer who was setting up an old-fashioned square camera on a tripod. As he examined the bedside table, he noticed a small brown medicine vial. Since he knew fingerprinting was still a few decades down the road, he picked up the bottle and read the label. Potassium Iodide. For some reason, Mick thought the name sounded familiar.
“As you can see, had Mary Kelly not been murdered, she would have died sooner rather than later,” Inspector Abberline remarked, noticing the bottle in Mick’s hand.
“What makes you say that?”
“Potassium Iodide is used to treat syphilis,” the other man replied. “Although its efficacy is rather dubious.”
Because he’d inadvertently wandered into the syphilis ward at St. Ursula’s Hospital, Mick knew firsthand that, had Mary Kelly survived, she would have eventually suffered a grueling death. No two ways about it–the victim’s cards had been stacked against her.
Turning his back on the blood-drenched bed, Mick walked over to the fireplace, where he noticed the remains of a smoldering fire. Going down on bent knee, he stared at the burning embers. In the back of the grate, he saw something that didn’t look quite right. Reaching for the fireplace poker, he pushed aside the burnt debris and lifted what looked like an article of woman’s clothing.
Noticing that Mick had something hanging from the end of the poker, Inspector Abberline stepped over to the fireplace. “I dare say the fiend resorted to burning odd bits of clothing in order to keep the fire going while he went about his diabolic chore.”
Or he was attempting to burn the evidence, Mick thought, but kept his opinion to himself.
In the next instant, the photographer snapped a picture, and the flash of magnesium light filled the room with gray smoke. As the smoke cleared, Mick noticed a bloody scrawl on the opposite wall.
“This is not the first time that the Ripper has left behind a cryptic message written in the victim’s blood,” the inspector remarked, following the direction of Mick’s gaze.
No surprise there. A lot of criminal psychopaths liked to leave lurid messages in order to taunt the police and scare the hell out of the general public.
“ ‘My time has come,’ ” he read aloud.
The inspector pointed to the message. “As you can plainly see, the Ripper underlined the word ‘time.’ Evidently, the word holds some significance for the fiend.”
“Yeah, I wonder what it—” Shit.
The reason why the Ripper had underlined the word “time” suddenly hit Mick like a sucker punch to the belly. In that instant, it all made horrifying sense: the sickly, sweet smell that permeated the room; the bottle of potassium iodide; the half-burned dress in the fireplace grate; and most damning of all, the word “time.”
From the get-go, I had this case all wrong.
Mick quickly tossed the charred dress back on to the grate. “Did any of the Ripper’s victims display signs of a struggle?”
“Not a single one,” the inspector replied. “By all accounts, they each went meekly to the slaughter.”
Which means that all five of the Ripper’s victims—six if you count Emmaline—knew her murderer.
“And were there any screams heard at any of the crime scenes?”
Again, the inspector answered in the negative.
That explains the room’s sickly, sweet smell. All of the victims had been rendered unconscious with chloroform before they were murdered.
“Let me take a guess? The five victims all had syphilis,” Mick said, needing to confirm his final suspicion.
With a terse nod, Inspector Abberline said, “Not surprising given the nature of their business. The disease is all too common within the ranks of Whitechapel whores.”
Who then spread it far and wide, Mick would hazard to guess.
Quickly running through his options, he decided against confiding in Inspector Abberline. If he voiced his suspicions and he was wrong, it would mean ruining the reputation of an innocent person. And if he was right about the significance of the evidence, it was probably best that the London police not get involved.
What he needed to do ASAP was get to Madame Mazursky’s house. Unless he was greatly mistaken—and his gut feeling said he wasn’t—Phoebe’s life was in imminent danger.
Thank God Lettitia is safe and sound at her uncle’s townhouse. He couldn’t handle the thought of her being mixed up in this brutal business.
Hoping he had enough money to pay for a hansom cab to take him across town, Mick charged toward the door. On the verge of exiting the flat, he was suddenly hit with an uneasy thought. He turned on his heel and took one last gander at the scrawled message that was written in blood on the opposite wall.
MY TIME HAS COME.
Time. That was the key that unlocked the whole damned mystery.
“How do I get to The Ten Bells pub from here?�
�� he abruptly asked the inspector, rethinking his plan of attack.
The photographer, in the process of packing up his camera equipment, shuddered as he glanced at Mary Kelly’s lifeless body. “After this gruesome bit of business, you’re of a right mind to adjourn to the nearest rub-a-dub for a drop of satin.”
“Indeed, a grisly sight like this would make even the most temperate of men crave the bottle,” Inspector Abberline concurred with a nod. “If it’s The Ten Bells where you seek forgetfulness, you’re not too far distant. Head toward the Spitelfields market. You’ll find the pub on Commercial Street. But have a care, man, if you wander the streets of darkest London this night.”
* * *
A thick fog hovered over the city, creating a sinister, otherworldly atmosphere.
As Mick charged through the back streets that honeycombed the area, it was as if he were running through the very bowels of Hell. With each passing second, he prayed that his hunch was correct and that he’d made the right decision. So much was at stake. If the hunch didn’t pan out, the course of history would be changed, with numerous lives affected.
By the time Mick reached Commercial Street, his heart was hammering against his ribs—hard, erratic thumps that reinforced his dread.
Spying several late-night revelers lurking near the front door of The Ten Bells, he picked up his speed. His destination wasn’t the pub, but the hidden alley across the street.
As quietly as possible, Mick entered the murky passageway. He wished to God that the fog would clear; he couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. Suddenly catching a whiff of the same sickly-sweet scent that he’d smelled at the murder scene, he headed toward the source of the distinctive odor. A few moments later, he damned near stumbled over Phoebe Mazursky’s sprawled body.
“Shit,” he muttered, going down on bent knee beside her. The smell of chloroform was so strong that it nearly knocked him over.
In the shadowy light, Mick could see that Phoebe’s face was imprisoned in some sort of wicker cage secured to her head with a thick band of rubber.
Ripping off the chloroform mask, he lightly slapped her face. “Come on, Phoebe. Wake up,” he ordered, hoping, praying, he hadn’t arrived too late.
When Phoebe finally took a deep, ragged breath, Mick lifted her upper body from the ground, hugging her to his chest.
“Unless I am greatly mistaken, Detective Giovanni has just joined our ranks,” a voice suddenly reverberated in the fog.
That has to be the Ripper!
Hearing the disembodied voice, Mick swiveled his head and tried to discern where exactly the voice emanated from. Christ, I can’t see an f-ing thing in this damned fog.
Carefully laying Phoebe back on the ground, he bent down and whispered, “Sit tight,” in her ear before lurching to his feet.
“I know you’re there, Detective. There’s no use pretending otherwise.”
With no visible line of sight, Mick had only that lone voice to guide him as he made his way through the dense fog.
“You’re right, Sister Gillian. I am here.” Trying to get his bearings, he came to a standstill. “Or do you prefer that folks call you Jill the Ripper?”
“I would prefer that you call me Sister Gillian,” his adversary retorted, a testy edge to her voice. “The Ripper’s sudden notoriety has become most tiresome.”
“Yeah, fame can be a real bitch.”
Mick cautiously took another step. He was bass-ackwards disoriented, the fog so thick he couldn’t see his own hand when he held it in front him. He guesstimated that Sister Gillian stood approximately ten feet from his current position. But it was just that, a guess.
“I warn you, Detective Giovanni. Don’t take another step!”
Muttering under his breath, Mick paid heed, coming to an abrupt halt. Until he had better visibility, he needed to stay put. While he assumed Sister Gillian had a knife, nothing said that she wasn’t also armed with a gun. Before he launched an offensive, he needed to know what he was up against.
“My curiosity is piqued, Detective. How did you know where to find me?”
“You left a shitload of clues at Mary Kelly’s murder scene,” he purposefully taunted, knowing that was the sort of put-down that drove perps crazy.
“I did no such thing!” Sister Gillian exclaimed. “I took every precaution to ensure that no incriminating evidence was left behind.”
“Oh, I admit that burning your blood-soaked dress showed good planning,” Mick grudgingly conceded. “And, no doubt, you had the foresight to bring along a clean change of clothing.”
“How do you know that?”
“Good plan, poor execution. The fire went out before your dress was completely burned.”
“Nonetheless, that wouldn’t have been enough to lead you here,” his adversary insisted. Like most perps, she was defensive as hell, unable to take a little constructive criticism.
“True,” Mick said as he slowly inched forward, trying to keep his footfalls as light as possible. “But it was all of those other clues that you inadvertently left behind that led me to the alley. For starters, as soon as I walked into the flat, I smelled the chloroform. Then I saw the bottle of potassium iodide on the night table. And when I read the phrase ‘My time has come’ written in blood, well, all the pieces just sorta fell into place.”
Mick paused, giving the Ripper a chance to rebut so that he could trace her voice. When she made no reply, he took another forward step, hoping to God that he was heading in the right direction.
“You see, I remembered having smelled the chloroform at the hospital,” he continued in a conversational tone. “I also saw a bottle of potassium iodide in Sir Willoughby’s office. And it was also at St. Ursula’s that you overheard Lettitia and I talking about Madame Mazursky’s time portal and the fact that syphilis can be cured with twenty-first century antibiotics. Now feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but my theory is that your dearly departed husband contracted syphilis, probably from Mary Kelly. He then passed the deadly disease onto you. When the blackmail letters started to arrive, threatening to expose Sir Willoughby’s embarrassing medical condition, that was the straw that broke your back, wasn’t it? That’s when you took a sharp surgical knife and went on the rampage.”
“I commend you, sir. For an American, you display a keen mental acuity,” the Ripper mockingly lauded. “But that still doesn’t answer my question: How did you know where to find me?”
Given the pitch and clarity of her voice, Mick determined that the Ripper was no more than six feet from where he stood.
“I admit I almost dropped the ball on that one,” he answered truthfully, figuring his honesty would cost him a few mental acuity points. “Because I knew that you had to first retrieve the time device, I was going to head over to Madame Mazursky’s house. But then it dawned on me that your ultimate destination would be the time portal itself. My operating theory is that you intend to travel to the future so that you can cure yourself of the clap.” And given that the time portal was located only a few feet away, he’d arrived in the alley just in the nick of time. Had he gotten there several minutes later, the Ripper would have already vamoosed.
“You assume correctly, sir. And, of course, there is the small matter of escaping the police,” the Ripper appended sardonically. “What better way to elude capture than to travel to the future?”
Yeah, but first you have to elude me.
Giving no advance warning, Mick suddenly charged forward. Christ. No sooner had he launched his offensive than it was trumped by the Ripper.
Uttering a horrified expletive, Mick came to a skidding halt, his heart pounding like a jackhammer against his breastbone. Standing some three feet from the Ripper, he could finally see what the thick fog had obscured.
Oh, God! Please, please, tell me that this isn’t really happening.
It was his worst nightmare come to life–the Ripper, a demented smile on her face, had Lettitia clutched to the front of her chest like a human
shield, and held a knife to her throat.
“I take it that you are surprised to see Miss Merryweather?”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Mick muttered, doing his utmost to stay calm.
Which was damned hard to do with Lettitia staring at him, terror-stricken. Tears were streaming unabated down her cheeks. From her shell-shocked expression, Mick knew that she’d abandoned all hope of surviving the ordeal.
“Are you okay, sweetheart? You’re not hurt, are you?”
When Lettitia’s head moved ever so slightly from side to side, he offered up a quick, grateful prayer. Thank you, God.
Although his first impulse was to launch another offensive, Mick quickly scrapped that from the playbook because Lettitia’s life was on the line. He’d have to rely on his brains, not his brawn, to best the Ripper. Meaning he had to outthink, outsmart, outfox a homicidal maniac. And he had to do it sooner rather than later.
Noticing the time device clutched in the Ripper’s left hand, Mick decided to use that as his opening gambit. “Looks like I interrupted your travel plans.”
Just as Mick had hoped, the casual remark enraged his adversary.
“As usual, Detective Giovanni, your presence is most unwelcome,” the Ripper snarled, her eyes furiously narrowing. “Had it not been for your incessant snooping and asking so many intrusive questions, I wouldn’t have had to—” She broke off mid-sentence.
Detecting the sheen of tears in the Ripper’s eyes, Mick deduced what she’d been on the verge of confessing.
“You wouldn’t have had to kill Sir Willoughby,” he finished for her, knowing that this was the button he needed to push.
“I lay my husband’s death wholly at your feet,” she accused, her voice noticeably quivering.
“Whoa. How do you figure that? If you’ll recall, I arrived on the scene after your dearly departed husband kicked the bucket.”
“Because of your impertinent meddling into other people’s private affairs, I feared that you would soon discover the reason behind the blackmail letters. And that you would then use that information to publicly slander my husband’s good name.”
A Love For All Time Page 27