by S A Falconi
Donaghue was truly at a loss for words. Never before in his career had he encountered such a demented character before. Kraus’ description of Mrs. Bucke didn’t even begin to describe it. This woman wasn’t afflicted; she was psychotic.
She continued, “You see, I never intended for you to be the suspect, the scapegoat once again. I just wanted your attention, to draw you to us so that I could be the one that destroyed you. I knew if you realized that each girl was connected to you that you’d have no choice but to hunt me down. And you did, Detective, you did!” With this, she giggled almost childishly. “And how I played you and Kraus like the fools you are. I used your pigheaded stereotypes of women against you. I led you straight to my doorstep and yet, there was no way the neurotic, lonely hag could be a murderer – am I right?! Well shame on you, Detective – you of all people should know that every species of being is as capable as any other. A woman is just as capable of being a murderer as she is a homemaker or a whore!
“The fact that I made you and Kraus believe my husband was the Ripper, that’s just the icing on the cake. Soon Detective Abernathe and the other ingrates will find your rotting carcass down here. They’ll think the Ripper is dead. And then another girl will be found, liberated from her earthly hell. They’ll once again realize that they condemned the wrong man, and just as you followed the trail to Blaxton, so also will they. They’ll arrest him and convict him, and when his gluttonous mass sinches that noose about his neck, the bodies will magically stop appearing. Billing and the rest of the fools will proclaim the Ripper is dead! And they’ll be correct. The one ultimately responsible for the deaths of those women is neither me nor Mr. Grafton. It’s my husband and men like him – men like you, Detective.”
Despite his disbelief, Donaghue’s mind was clear enough to know that no plea or petition for mercy would keep Anabeth Bucke from slaughtering him. He was completely defenseless and hopeless, a convicted man awaiting his execution.
Grafton went over to Mrs. Bucke and, after kissing her on the cheek, he began guiding her out of the mineshaft. Donaghue watched as they disappeared into the darkness. When they were out of sight, he frantically searched for something with which to sever his shackles. All that time, he hadn’t noticed that his ankles were bound as well as his hands. But with the throbbing in his head trumped by the sudden surge of adrenaline, he was able to slowly inch himself up along the cragged granite wall. The fractured rock tore into his clothing and abrased his back, but he could care less about a few cuts and scrapes. He needed to find something with which to cut the rope that bound his wrists. If he could just free his hands, then he could manipulate the knot that locked his gait.
He searched about carefully, looking for the slightest glimmer of a blade or sharpened edge. There was an ore cart on the iron trelice nearby, but it was clear the cart was empty save for a few deviant pebbles and stones. Certainly Anabeth and Grafton weren’t foolish enough to leave a means of escape lying around; he would have to resort to unconventional methods instead. That’s when he felt the warm trickles of blood creeping down the length of his spine. The rock wall was quite imperfect, certainly one such imperfection was sharp enough to fray the braids of the binding rope. Donaghue turned, inspecting the wall as if he were a prospector searching for a fleck of gold. He scanned several times, and although he found many that were sharp enough to scrape flesh, they were nowhere sharp enough to sever braided twine.
And then he saw it – a jagged protrusion shaped very much like an Indian’s arrowhead. Its razorsharp point seemed to glisten in the faint torchlight, a minute beacon of hope.
He spun, nudging himself against the wall and feeling for the embedded blade. A stinging sensation came to his fingertip – there it was, as sharp as a butcher’s knife. Quickly, he bounced his hands up and down so that his restraints slid along the edge of the protrusion continuously. Although his efforts seemed fruitless at first, the pressure the shackle asserted was becoming noticeably weaker within a minute. But he had to work faster, free himself before Grafton returned. How long was the mineshaft anyways? How long could it take a man familiar with the mine to exit and return?
Another fragment severed. Then another. Donaghue rubbed his wrists together, testing the knot’s dexterity to see if his hands could finally be broken free. But they were still locked in place, held together by one remaining braid.
The crunch of heavy footsteps echoed down the dark corridor, and although Donaghue saw nothing, those faint footsteps grew louder and louder as they neared. Faster he rubbed the knot against the jagged wall, until at last the final braid frayed and popped.
Grafton’s shadow began to emerge from the darkness though and Donaghue threw himself down to the ground so as to appear utterly weak and defeated. With his legs splayed out along the ground and his hands still behind the small of his back, Donaghue searched the hidden vicinity for any blunt objects with which he could strike. His left hand found one such object, no larger than an engorged citrus but as jagged as a porcupine’s hide. He fitted the stone firmly in his palm and waited. He sagged the lids of his eyes and drooped his head. The footsteps grew louder and louder until their creator was within a few feet.
Grafton wasted no time. Donaghue heard the slither of a mighty blade as it was removed from a waistline scabbard. Grafton’s calloused hand lifted Donaghue’s seemingly subdued chin, granting him unimpeded access to his throat and carotid arteries. No word or breath was uttered as the immortal man lifted the knife’s gleaming edge towards Donaghue’s skin.
Then, just as the blade kissed Donaghue’s throat, Donaghue swung his left hand deftly and struck the man with one eye thunderously on the top of the head.
“AAHHH!!!” Grafton roared, dropping the knife and stumbling backward as blood seeped from his skull.
Donaghue seized the blade and slashed the ropes restraining his ankles. The blade was so sharp it severed the braids as if it were slicing butter. Freed, Donaghue jumped to his feet and thundered at his one-eyed foe. Grafton was still bellowing, wiping the blood away from his only source of sight. Donaghue raised the blade above his head, then struck mightily at Grafton’s exposed chest. Despite his partially blinded state though, Grafton nimbly seized Donaghue by the wrist, halting the assault like a boulder stopping a rampant locomotive. Donaghue grunted as he drove his body weight against his adversary’s defense, but no amount of mass or will moved the blade any closer. Grafton’s iron grip clenched Donaghue’s wrist, the immortal man’s claws painfully driving into the ligaments and tendons. The pain became too much to endure and Donaghue yanked his hand back, freeing it from Grafton’s incredible grip. Before he could even consider his next attack, Donaghue felt the knuckles of Grafton’s other hand plow into his cheek. An explosion of light flooded Donaghue’s vision and the magnified taste of iron overwhelmed his mouth as he stumbled sideways several feet. He caught himself on one knee, his hand still wielding the butcher’s blade.
Grafton didn’t even bother wiping the blood away from his own eye. He ran headlong into Donaghue, driving his shoulder like a mighty piston into Donaghue’s chest. Donaghue’s lungs flattened instantly as Grafton drove him to the ground. With the bulk of Grafton writhing upon him, Donaghue choked and sucked for air desperately. But no matter how hard he writhed, his lungs refused to cooperate. Grafton took hold of Donaghue’s wrists, pinning each against the ground above his head. With the rest of Grafton’s mass stooped on Donaghue’s gut, the sleuth was rendered completely subservient.
Finally, Donaghue’s lungs expanded and the air tore into his chest refreshingly. Time seemed to slow as Donaghue stared into the face of his foe. The blood drained from the immortal man’s skull like water from a spring, coursed down the crags of his face, and dyed his expression bright red. He stared into that shriveled void that once held Grafton’s eye and he wondered how a supposedly good man could be transformed into such a monster? Then again, wasn’t it possible for the converse to occur – the monster becoming the gentle man?
One of Grafton’s hands released Donaghue’s wrist and clamped around the girth of Donaghue’s straining neck. His windpipe was entirely plugged, a once raging river suddenly dry with draught. His chest convulsed and his free hand seized Grafton’s wrist. But as he attempted to squeeze with every ounce of his might, to wrench the immortal man’s lethal vice away from his throat, he felt as though he were Atlas baring the weight of the world upon his mortal shoulders. Life began to fade from his being, not in an instant but in a slow, peaceful sequence. His vision blurred from the periphery inward – the darkness of the corridor faded into nothingness and soon the heinous features of his executioner became nothing more than an Impressionist’s work of muddled beauty. Donaghue’s chest heaved one final time before his vision transformed fully into nihility.
BANG! BANG!
The dried river suddenly raged with flood waters again. The pressure enveloping Donaghue’s throat was completely released, granting uninhibited passage of air into his lungs. He gasped, hacked, choked for the much-needed oxygen. His eyes fluttered open and his vision quickly pieced together the unanticipated reality before him. There was the face of the one-eyed man, one glistening red hole above his nose and another in the wrinkled void that once held his eye. The bulk of the beast, once writhing with unfiltered rage, was now entirely motionless, heaped upon Donaghue’s gut like a sack of flour.
“Donaghue!” one voice yelled.
“Pete!” another hollered.
Donaghue heard footsteps racing toward him, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the heinous mass before him.
“My God,” the first voice uttered, right behind him now. It was a voice that Donaghue had dreaded encountering for the last few days and it was a voice he thought he’d never be excited to hear. It was Abernathe.
“Let’s get this beast off of you,” Abernathe added, grabbing Grafton’s lifeless shoulders and shoving him aside. “You alright, Donaghue?”
Donaghue’s brain was still paralyzed by disorientation and disbelief. Grafton was dead, and the life that Donaghue felt seeping from his being was suddenly restored. An indescribable sense of relief had overcome him, a sense that made his body paradoxically numb and hypersensitive.
“Pete?” the other voice murmured beside him. “Pete, you alright?”
Donaghue’s head turned slowly, his gaze falling upon the peculiar yet familiar expression of his colleague, Dr. Kraus.
Donaghue rasped, “I … told … you … to get … the sheriff. Not … this … moron.”
Kraus laughed uproariously, glancing up at Abernathe dragging Grafton’s body away.
“That moron just saved you,” Kraus blurted, hilarity overcoming him again.
Abernathe approached, retorting, “If someone accused me of being a demented mass murderer, I think I’d call him a moron too.” Kneeling down by Donaghue’s side, he added, “Looks to me like you found him though.”
Donaghue’s head slowly began to clear. Although the near asphyxiation had caused his memory to partially falter, the image of Anabeth Bucke spilling her guts to him was tattooed in his mind.
“He’s … not … the Ripper,” Donaghue whispered.
Abernathe and Kraus exchanged glances of shock and confusion.
“He’s disoriented,” Kraus replied. “Side effect of oxygen deprivation.”
“No!” Donaghue barked hoarsely, raising himself from the rocky ground. “He’s not … the Ripper,” he rasped again.
“If he isn’t,” Abernathe retorted, “then who is?”
“Walter Blackburn?” Kraus answered.
Donaghue shook his head eagerly.
“Blaxton Bucke?” Kraus added.
Donaghue’s head shook again.
“If not Blackburn or Bucke,” Kraus muttered, “then whom?”
Donaghue stared hard at Kraus as if his gaze alone would reveal the answer.
The realization struck Kraus moments later though and his eyes grew wide with complete disbelief. “My God,” he added, “it’s Anabeth?”
XVIII.
“I still can’t believe that the infamous East Side Ripper is a woman,” Abernathe exclaimed.
He was seated in a private rail car clicking and clacking its way along the Clear Creek Rail Line from Denver to Blackhawk. Seated across from him was a pair of unlikely associates, men he’d wrongfully denunciated for the heinous crimes. Although it was against protocol to involve civilians in an investigation, he never would’ve found the Ripper without them. It seemed only fitting that he bring them along.
“She said that you would say that,” Donaghue answered. “We all believed it.”
Kraus shook his head. “After all the time I spent with her, how did I not notice her homicidal tendencies?”
“A master manipulator, Dr. Kraus,” Abernathe commented. “She very well might be the Antichrist.”
Donaghue considered the comment. Was Anabeth Bucke really the Antichrist? Was she inherently monstrous, a beast merely hiding behind the guise of a harmless, lonely woman? Or was she as she claimed – transformed into a fiend not by nature but by circumstance? Had the sculptors of her existence molded her once pure and gentle being into the gargoyle she now was? Donaghue didn’t know – no one could know. However, Donaghue knew that his near-death contemplation, that man was capable of complete transformation, good and bad, was correct. Just as men such as he could transform from worthless drunakrds into honest Samaritans, so also could men decay from gentlemen into mongrels …
… and so also women.
Finally, Donaghue muttered, “She’s not.”
“I beg your pardon?” Abernathe retorted.
Donaghue shook his head. “She’s not the Antichrist.”
“Come on, Pete,” Kraus replied, “the woman tried to have you killed. She slaughtered five innocent women … mutilated them in the most unchaste way. How could she not be the Antichrist?”
“Because,” Donaghue answered, “if we deem her the Antichrist, if we claim her evil is innate, then in effect we’re saying that history will never see someone so demented ever again.”
“I believe that to be true,” Abernathe interjected.
“That’s foolish,” Donaghue uttered. “Because if you believe that, then you grant uninhibited access for the next lunatic to strike. They’ll do the same as Anabeth Bucke has done and we’ll stand around another dilapidated body wondering how we missed it. We missed it, gentlemen, because we believed it to be impossible. If there’s one thing this profession has taught me, it’s to believe that anything is possible and anyone is capable of anything.”
Abernathe inquired, “So what, Donaghue, we gotta be skeptical of everyone? Keep a watch out for all the freaks that may be out there?”
“No … just destroy the things that create them.”
“I don’t know,” Abernathe muttered, “I’m uncomfortable thinking like that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Kraus interrupted, “it means that anyone is capable of becoming a monster.”
Abernathe glanced at Kraus now, still perplexed by the whole matter.
“What Pete is saying is quite consistent with Dr. Freud’s observations and hypotheses. The psyche is very much a blank canvass, experience its painter. Given the right tools, the right oils, and most of all, the right artist, the psyche can be a beautiful masterpiece. But if the artist is dilapidated …” Kraus shook his head, “the result is horrific.”
A heavy lull settled within the train compartment, all three men contemplating the philosophical matters.
After several moments of awkward silence, Abernathe finally said, “All this ominous conversation isn’t settling my nerves about what is still left to be done. Are we certain that Anabeth Bucke is going to be at her home in Blackhawk?”
“No,” Donaghue answered, “but she said herself she has a proclivity for strays. There’s no better place for them than Blackhawk.”
For the remainder of the train ride, the three men discussed the potential c
ircumstances that could be encountered at the Blackhawk mansion. The best case scenario was that Anabeth was nonhostile and compliant, her naturally subservient being causing her to drift into custody. The worst case scenario was that Anabeth, set on continuing her demented life’s work, was fatally combative if not self-destructive. Chief Chapman had made it quite clear that he wanted the Ripper alive. To a great extent, Kraus wanted her alive too, not because he still possessed affections for her, but because he wanted to place her psyche beneath his psychoanalytic microscope. He wanted to reveal that which made her diabolical. He wanted the world to know of what the human mind was capable.
When they reached the scant depot, the sun was bearing down upon them from its highest elevation. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a feature, Donaghue hoped, that foreshadowed the events that were to transpire. He and Kraus were understandably exhausted. They hadn’t earned quality slumber in over three days, and although adrenaline pushed them beyond their physical limits, even that source of fuel was becoming meager.
They trudged up the alpine drive with the four police officers they brought along for backup stomping in their wake. Kraus adjusted his trousers with the bulk of his new revolver disturbing the equilibrium. Despite the cool breeze, the sun seemed oppressively hot to him. As they neared the summit of the peak, their hopes for capture grew when they saw a lone carriage resting at the drive’s end. Someone was home, and if Anabeth’s earlier claims were accurate, it was unlikely her husband.