by S A Falconi
They shook their heads solemnly. “Not even a blood trail, Detective,” one finally muttered.
Abernathe knelt down to examine the body further. With the initial shock now dissipated, he found himself ensnared by intrigue, frustration, and rage. How could a monster so gratuitous evade him so easily? How could someone who left so much carnage in his wake not leave a shred of indication as to who he was or where he came from? It was truly maddening. Before, the proximity of the murders placed the Ripper right in their backyard. Now, he could be anywhere. But this one was definitely sloppier. The other two, despite their gruesome states, showed the Ripper’s calculation, preparation, and control. This victim indicated none of these qualities.
“You struggled didn’t you?” Abernathe muttered to the corpse. “You didn’t just stand there as he slit your throat. You tried to escape. That’s why the slash is so shallow.”
He considered the lower abdominal wound and it perplexed him even more now. The others had their wombs removed and the wounds sutured days prior to mortality. But not this one. It’s almost as if she woke up halfway through the procedure… woke up and tried to escape. That would indicate the procedure was performed against her will then, wouldn’t it? Perhaps the same applies to the others, they just didn’t wake up halfway through it? Or perhaps the others were willing and she was not?
This only puzzled Abernathe that much more though. If the other victims willingly had the procedure performed, then why were they slaughtered?
Abernathe rose when he heard the raucous rustling of the branches and brambles along the bank of the creek. He thought it might just be the officers combing the area for evidence, but all were still standing on the bank watching him inspect the body. The rustling grew louder and Abernathe placed his hand on his revolver. His hand relaxed though when he saw the bullish form of T.G. Billing emerge from the entangled growth.
“Damn,” Billing hollered as he stumbled onto the bank, “couldn’t be a worse place to get to, that’s for sure.”
Abernathe became enraged. “How the hell did he know about this? Officers, apprehend him!”
The officers quickly grabbed Billing by his pudgy, swollen arms.
“Don’t touch me,” Billing protested, writhing. “I’ll have all your badges for police brutality. Don’t think I won’t!”
“Shut the hell up,” Abernathe barked as he approached Billing and the officers.
“Was it the Ripper again?” Billing inquired, gleeful intrigue replacing his anger.
When Abernathe was a few feet away, he asked, “How the hell did you know about this?”
Billing wiggled against the officers’ restraint. Grinning, he answered, “Why would I tell you my source? Any dimwit journalist knows that a source stops being a source the moment he’s identified.”
“Source?” Abernathe scoffed. “Rats, that’s what they are.”
Billing snickered. “Better a rat than a pig.”
Abernathe plowed his fist into Billing’s prominent gut, doubling the journalist over in a fit of coughing.
Between gasps, Billing barked, “Police… brutality!”
Abernathe’s characteristically poised demeanor evaporated. Although this plump ogre was most responsible for excommunicating Donaghue thereby placing the detective’s star on Abernathe’s breast, Abernathe despised Billing’s boisterous contempt for the police force and his overall denunciation of authority.
Abernathe seized Billing by his jowls and growled, “Get away from my crime scene!” He shoved Billing’s head back as he released his grip.
Billing’s face flushed with indescribable rage as the officers dragged him along the bank toward the bramble-infested hillside.
“I’m gonna have your badge, Abernathe!” Billing roared. “You’re done! Finished! I’ll sink you like I sunk that drunkard Donaghue! Not even Maclellan will hire you to enforce his whorehouse!”
Abernathe inhaled deeply to throw more flagrancies at Billing’s pudgy mug, but just as he was about to shout, Billing’s last statement resonated in Abernathe’s mind. Not even Maclellan will hire you to enforce his whorehouse. The first two victims were whores. Abernathe needed the victim to be identified immediately. If she was a prostitute like all the others, then certainly someone at the brothels noticed an unusual john. An unusual john with incredible strength and skill with a knife.
But who was familiar with the majority of the city’s prostitutes? Only two men came to Abernathe’s mind. Ed Maclellan and Pete Donaghue. Maclellan was safely locked up at the precinct, leaving only Donaghue. He wasn’t the physical brute that Maclellan was, but his notorious ruthlessness was certainly a match.
~
“It’s wrong to say,” Chapman grumbled as he leaned back in his chair, “but it’s a blessing that girl was dumped beyond the city limits.”
Abernathe was standing in the corner of the office as he stared apathetically through the cigar smoke at his chief.
Abernathe inquired, “A blessing? How so?”
Chapman puffed his cigar and replied, “The mass hysteria is bringing the city to its knees. That, in turn, has the mayor crawling up my ass every five minutes. The last thing we need is another body found in somebody’s alley.”
Abernathe’s head shook. “I’ll have to respectfully disagree with you, Chief.”
Chapman’s brow furrowed. “I don’t follow,” he muttered.
“Initially,” Abernathe began, “the Ripper was operating in a ten-block radius in the heart of the city. Now? He’s hardly in our jurisdiction. Who knows where he’ll be next time.”
Chapman’s only response was a plume of cigar smoke emitted from his mouth.
“We’re getting farther from solving this case, not closer,” Abernathe added hastily.
Chapman was unresponsive for several moments until finally replying, “You’re looking at this the wrong way, Frederick.”
“Wrong way?” Abernathe asked as he stepped closer to Chapman’s desk. “How in God’s name am I looking at this the wrong way?”
Another plume of smoke billowed from Chapman’s mouth. “Did you know I grew up on a sheep ranch up in western Wyoming?” he inquired. “Land’s been in my family since them hills were first settled. Closest neighbor was over a hundred miles away. It was just my family, them sheep, and the wild.”
Abernathe began to pace with agitation. He didn’t have time for Chapman’s senseless narratives. The Ripper was still at large, increasing the distance between he and his hunters with every second. And instead of tracking the beast down, Abernathe was stuck gossiping like a bored, lonely housewife with his dimwit chief.
“For sheep ranchers,” Chapman continued in that garbled drawl of his, “there’s really only two things you gotta worry about: disease and predators. Those are the only two things that can really slaughter an entire flock. I remember when I was ten, hadn’t been shooting my rifle for more than a year or so, we had a wolf attack several of our sheep early in the morning. My father heard the shrieks. Ain’t nothing like it, the shriek of a sheep. It’ll make every hair on your body stand straight. He hears this shriek and knows immediately that it’s a wolf that’s got to the flock. He jumps outa bed, grabs his rifle, and takes off on his horse into the twilight. I was a curious child, foolish, thought I was braver than I really was. I grabbed my rifle and tore off after him into the night.
“The sheep that were attacked were ‘bout a half mile away from the cabin. My father got to them first. The wolf was already skirting away before my father could shoot him. When I reached my father and the sheep, he was kneeling over them assessing the damage. I remember looking out into the night and seeing that wolf skirting away though. He wasn’t but a few hundred yards away, definitely close enough to catch and kill. I said to my father, ‘We gotta go after him.’ But my father didn’t budge. He just stayed knelt down by those sheep. I grabbed his shoulder and said, ‘Pa, we gotta go after him. He’s getting away’. My father turned to me and said, ‘We scared him off. If h
e comes back, we’ll be ready. But we’re not going after him.’ I protested, called my father a coward. He slapped me and said, ‘Better a live coward than a dead hero. You go after that wolf, you ain’t hunting him on your land. He’s hunting you on his.’”
Chapman took another long puff of his cigar and added, “We scared this lunatic out, Detective. If he comes back, we’ll catch him. But he won’t. He’ll stay out and be someone else’s problem. As long as he’s not our problem, I could really care less.”
Abernathe stared at Chapman with bewilderment. He never thought the cowardly, self-preserving balderdash that drove every man’s actions in Chicago would come back to haunt him here. Of all men, Chapman. The man of grit. The epitome of Wild West law enforcement, now a yellow coward just trying to save his own hide. Abernathe couldn’t even look at Chapman anymore. He ripped the door open and stomped out.
It was barely four in the morning, but Abernathe needed to get out of the precinct and walk the steam off. He opened the main entrance and was about to descend the stoop when he saw a folded newspaper lying conspicuously off to the side. Abernathe reached down and grabbed it. Tucked into the newspaper was a tattered letter. The dawn sky was still void of any illumination and he couldn’t even read the newspaper headline no less the letter. But something told him that his walk would have to wait. He needed to see what this letter was.
He quickly moved across the main floor and flew up the staircase to his office. He lit the oil lantern and placed it on his desk as he took a seat in his chair. He removed the letter from the newspaper and placed both items next to each other on the desk. As he stared at the items, his eyes grew wide and his heart began to race. He didn’t know which was more alarming – the newspaper or the letter. His eyes bounced to and fro, bounded like a crippled jackrabbit trying to escape a starving coyote. To the left was the newspaper with its bold headline seemingly shrieking at him. To the right was the letter with its crimson ink splattered on it in ghoulish elegance. After moments of contemplation, he couldn’t help but read the newspaper first.
Denver Police Incompetent Swindlers
Chapman Hides Ripper Letter & Third Victim
By T.G. Billing
The Denver Police Department has proven itself to not only be incompetent but also fatally deceitful. Anonymous sources revealed late yesterday evening that the East Side Ripper attempted to communicate with Denver Police Department Chief Harold Chapman through a letter delivered several days prior. This letter was deemed inconsequential despite its clear authenticity. The message read as follows:
“I’ve freed the innocents – two thus far but my work has only begun. They were innocent, you see. All of them. They once were not, but I transformed them. I made them so. But this Sodom in which we live recognizes not my work for that which it is. It is not murder I am committing. It is redemption! It is salvation! It is freedom!
Regards,
The Ripper”
This utterly morbid message was written not in ink, but blood. Further, it indicates that the two victims are only the first of many. This fact leads to the law enforcement’s deceptive actions yesterday afternoon. On the banks of Clear Creek just east of Golden, yet another Ripper victim was discovered disemboweled and throat slashed. No reports of such a victim have even been presented though, once again indicating the department’s lackluster affect toward all three crimes and their unfortunate victims.
This reporter can’t help but question the ability of law enforcement to maintain the safety of its city. We also must question the efforts of this investigation as led by Detective Frederick Abernathe. Did this city trade a drunkard for a fool?
Abernathe could hardly believe his eyes when he finished reading the article. He grabbed the letter and stared at it disbelievingly. Every word mentioned in the article was identical to that in the letter. And the ink, how peculiar it was! Although it was too dark to tell, Billing could very well be correct that the letter was written in blood. Whose blood? Was the letter really from the Ripper or was it from a demented jester, a pervert seeking notice? How did Billing get the letter in the first place? Who was the anonymous source and was it really in Chapman’s possession before?
The rage that filled Abernathe before was a drizzle in comparison to the torrent he felt now. Snatching both the newspaper and the letter, Abernathe rushed out of his office and down the staircase. When he threw the door to Chapman’s office open, he saw Chapman was still plopped behind his desk.
Abernathe slammed the newspaper and the letter on the desk. “What in the world is this?” he barked.
Chapman snatched the newspaper and read it in the gloomy glow of the lantern. His eyes raced back and forth across the page. Like the dusk horizon, crimson rage washed over his cheeks. His brow furrowed in deep crags. But he said nothing. He returned the newspaper to his desk and lifted the letter. He glanced at it momentarily before letting it fall back to his desk.
Abernathe awaited Chapman’s eruption, but Chapman didn’t respond. He just sat there, motionless.
“Well?” Abernathe probed.
Chapman continued to stare down at the newspaper and letter. He was transfixed, locked in a state of mental paralysis. But just as Abernathe stepped forward to shake Chapman out of it, Chapman’s fist rose and thundered against the desktop. He shoved his chair back and leaped from his seat.
Abernathe stumbled back several steps. “What are you doing?” he uttered.
Chapman was still locked in his mind though. He removed his revolver from his holster and checked the chambers.
“Chief?” Abernathe probed. “What are you doing?”
“We,” Chapman answered returning the revolver to his belt and proceeding out of the office, “are gonna get to the bottom of this.”
Abernathe spun as Chapman stomped by him. “I thought we weren’t chasing the wolf?” he asked.
“We’re not,” Chapman replied. “We’re hunting the ranch hand that let the wolf in.”
Abernathe chased after Chapman as he bounded toward the stable. By the time Abernathe reached his own colt, Chapman was mounted and tearing off into the dawn. Abernathe clambered onto his horse, thrust his spurs into the beast’s ribs, and flew after Chief Chapman.
Chapman was headed to the offices of The East Side Herald. What he was going to do there, Abernathe hadn’t a clue. All he knew was that for the first time he was witnessing that infamous temper of Chapman’s, that temper that made him one of the most feared lawmen of the seventies and eighties. Rumor had it that Chapman once bound a man and drowned him in Clear Creek because of his refusal to cooperate with an investigation. Rumor also had it that Chapman was a freelance regulator for the railroad companies, hunting down and dismembering thieves foolish enough to hijack the trains. Regardless of what was true and what was false, Abernathe knew that at the core of any rumor was a shred of truth, and in the case of Chapman, that truth had to be frightful.
When Abernathe reached the newspaper office, he saw Chapman’s horse waiting alone out front. Abernathe jumped from his mount before the horse even stopped. Revolver drawn, he burst through the entry. Abernathe heard Chapman’s booming voice echo throughout the building.
“Where’d you get the letter?!”
When Abernathe looked into Billing’s office, he saw Chapman had Billing pinned in his chair and his revolver was shoved into the journalist’s mouth.
“Where’d you get the letter!” Chapman thundered again.
Billing choked and wept uncontrollably. The floorboards beneath Billing’s chair glistened with moisture.
“WHERE’D YOU GET THE LETTER!”
“Chief,” Abernathe interjected, his revolver now at his side. “Chief, what are you doing?”
Chapman kept Billing pinned to the chair but answered, “I’ve been kowtowing to this fat piece of manure for the last five years. Now he pulls some gutless nonsense like this. I’ve had it!”
Chapman shoved the revolver deeper into Billing’s mouth, plugging his weep
s and magnifying his chokes.
“Chief, for God’s sake, you’re gonna kill the bastard.”
“One less serpent in the fields then,” Chapman replied.
Billing gagged and flailed his arms about desperately.
“Don’t you want to know where the letter came from?” Abernathe retorted.
Chapman turned and glared at Abernathe. “Don’t you get it? This pudgy swindler made it all up.”
“The blood on the letter though?”
“Cow’s blood probably. All I know is this bastard is the greatest deceiver of them all. He’s made his livelihood playing people for gulls.” Chapman’s gaze returned to Billing as he said, “But that’s all gonna stop. I don’t give a damn if I get the gallows for it either.”
Just as Chapman cocked the revolver, Billing gurgled what Abernathe swore he heard as words.
“Wait!” Abernathe blurted. “He’s trying to speak.”
Chapman stopped and removed the revolver from Billing’s mouth. “Last words?” He hissed.
Billing coughed and gasped violently. Finally, he uttered, “The… letter’s… real.”
“How do you know?” Chapman thundered.
“Because,” Billing answered, “he… sent it… to me.”
Chapman glanced at Abernathe quizzically. “Who sent it?” Chapman muttered.
“The Ripper.”
Abernathe interjected, “You? He sent you the letter?”
“Yes!”
“When?”
“A few days ago! My assistant found it on the stoop early in the morning. But it wasn’t just a letter. The Ripper left something else.”
“What?”
Billing gasped, “Look in my top desk drawer.”
Chapman tore the drawer open. Sitting inside like a pearl in a clamshell was the lock of brunette hair.
“My God,” Chapman grumbled as he removed the hair from the drawer. “It’s Molly’s.”
“What Chief?” Abernathe interrupted, rushing over to see for himself.
“Nothing,” Chapman replied, handing the hair to Abernathe. “Take this over to the coroner’s right away and see if it might match one of the victims. Find out if the report is finished on the third girl too.”