The Cutthroat

Fair-haired young victims like Anna Waterbury, Lillian Lent, and Mary Beth Winthrop turned out to be mostly actresses in theater and vaudeville and the circus, but some were prostitutes. What these poor souls had in common was what he had told Van Dorn: these were girls on their own, without family or husbands to protect them.

Of the mutilated bodies, many had their necks broken.

Coroners and cops recalled strange marks carved in the girls’ skin.

Bell told Joseph Van Dorn, “I stood in with the Herkimer County coroner. The man barely noticed these cuts. When I remarked on them, he wrote them in his notes as ‘superficial stab wounds.’ It never occurred to him she was already dead before he took out his knife.”

“What do you suppose they mean?”

“I’m racking my brains. I have no idea.”

“I think they’re a calling card,” said Van Dorn.

“Some sort of message,” Bell agreed.

“Lunatic.”

“But no less dangerous for it, and too slick to get caught.”

* * *

Another pattern formed, the most disturbing yet. Some bodies had been hidden in old cellars, abandoned buildings, and deep woods.

“How many were never found?” Bell wondered aloud.

Van Dorn said, “You’ve got a monster on your hands, Isaac.”

“A monster who travels. He’s left victims in Kansas City, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago — the list keeps growing.”

“A traveling man,” mused Van Dorn. “A salesman? Or a railroad man? How long has this been going on?”

Bell answered bleakly, “The Chicago field office just found one of his capes in an abandoned lake boat. Inside was a skeleton.”

* * *

“How long” became almost unbelievable when Grady Forrer brought Bell a clipping from the Brooklyn Eagle dated July 24, 1891. The paper made the usual Jack the Ripper comparison, though to be fair to the writer, this killing went so far back that it was not long after the London rampage.

“If this is him, too, he’s been killing girls for twenty years.”

* * *

“What do you suppose drives him?” Marion asked late at night. Bell had staggered in at two o’clock and sat with her in bone-weary silence.

“No motive of the sort we understand. He’s not killing for gain, or revenge, or love. He’s just doing what he feels like doing.”

“A wild animal.”

“I’ve been calling him a monster. The trouble is, believing he’s a monster doesn’t get me any closer to stopping him.”

“That would be the same as calling him evil, wouldn’t it?” Marion asked.

Bell agreed. “It’s not enough to think he is evil. In fact, it’s not even helpful.”

Marion said, “I’m beginning to understand why the newspapers keep referring to Jack the Ripper. He’s like an explanation for the unexplainable.”

“Even though we don’t know a thing about Jack the Ripper.”

“What do we know about him?” asked Marion.

* * *

Bell had already observed that the further back Research delved into newspapers, the more recent the memory of Jack the Ripper, the more their reporters invoked the connection. Now he asked Grady Forrer for information on the actual Jack the Ripper. Forrer had anticipated the request. Waiting for him was a thick packet of yellowed clippings from the Sun, the World, the Herald, and the Times. The top sheet’s headline read

CARNIVAL OF BLOOD CONTINUES

POLICE PARALYZED

“What do they boil down to?” Bell asked.

“Theories,” Grady told him, “all unfounded. Speculation, all imaginative. Conjecture, all fanciful. Guesses, all hopeless. Jack the Ripper is said to have been a nobleman or a surgeon or a Freemason, or a Polish radical, or a merchant seaman, or a leather worker, or a butcher. All that is known for sure about him is that eventually he stopped killing women in London. Although exactly when he stopped — whether 1888, or 1889, or 1891—is hotly debated. Also debated is why he stopped. Did he kill himself? Did he die of natural causes? Did he get bored? Did he immigrate to Australia? Did he flee to Brazil? Did he settle down to a quiet life in the country?”

“Do they debate whether he ever stopped at all?”

Grady shrugged. “The consensus seems to be that if he didn’t die, at some point he must have run out of steam.”

Bell slung the clippings under his arm and found an empty desk in the bull pen.

* * *

“Where is the Boss?”

“Went downstairs for supper.”

Downstairs was the palatial dining room of the Knickerbocker Hotel. An orchestra played. Every table was taken and conversation was animated. Bell waved to Enrico Caruso, who was dining with coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, but continued on a beeline toward Joseph Van Dorn, who was reading the menu at a corner table with his back to the wall. Bell eased onto the banquette, catty-corner to him, with his back to the other wall.

“Welcome,” said Van Dorn. “We haven’t broken bread in a long time. How are you?”

“Intrigued,” said Bell.

“Good Lord. We better order first.” Van Dorn looked up, and the table captain came running.

“Cocktail?” asked the Boss.

“Not yet,” said Bell.

Van Dorn ordered a Manhattan.

“With Bushmills Irish Whiskey, Mr. Van Dorn?”