“Damn it,” Falconer muttered as he lay in bed and rubbed his eyes. He looked at his watch on the table next to the bed: just after ten o’clock. He got up and slowly moved out into the main room of the apartment and over to the locked door. “Who’s there?” he said. “Identify yourself.”
“Patrolman Cunningham, sir,” said the man from the other side of the door. “I’ve been sent by the Central Office. They need you down on the waterfront.”
“Why?” Falconer asked. “I’m not on shift until later. What’s this all about?”
“Well…there’s a body, sir,” the man said. “A prostitute—badly mangled and all. They are asking for you to assist since this is your precinct.”
Falconer stood still and closed his eyes for a moment, feeling that he needed to sleep for a week. Then he spoke: “Show me your hands, and your badge.”
He unlocked the bolt lock on his door from his position standing just to its side along the wall inside the apartment. As he opened the door slightly, leaving the chain lock attached, he fingered a small revolver held aloft near his shoulder. A hand protruding from a blue sleeve then slowly appeared from the outside; clutched within its fingers was a shiny copper badge with the distinctive design of the New York Metropolitan Police Department and a badge number etched at the bottom: 3587.
Falconer scanned the badge and then unlocked the chain from the door, beckoning the officer to enter the apartment.
“Sorry,” Falconer said as he moved towards the bedroom and the tall, youthful officer entered behind him. “Have to be careful around here—you understand.”
“Of course, detective, completely,” Cunningham replied, scanning the room as he walked a few steps inside and held his large domed police hat in his hands.
Falconer kept speaking as he moved to get dressed inside the bedroom.
“You say it’s a prostitute and she was—what—mangled, did you say?”
“Yes, sir,” Cunningham replied. “I didn’t get a look at the body myself, but from what everyone’s saying, she was….” The patrolman stopped himself. “Well, she was pretty badly cut up by the murderer, sir.”
Falconer popped his head into the main room, peering right at Cunningham. “And where was this?” he asked.
“Um, the East River Hotel, sir—down on Catherine Slip.”
“Any witnesses?” Falconer inquired as he tucked his shirt into his pants.
“Ah, there are several people who saw the lady earlier that night,” Cunningham answered. “Apparently, she was with some foreigner, and they took a room there…but…I imagine you already figured that out. Sorry.”
“Yes,” Falconer said as he stepped into the room a moment later, attaching his Army revolver and holster to his side. “I guessed that would be the case. I’m all ready now—sorry for the wait. Shall we head out, Cunningham?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Cunningham said. “I have a wagon waiting downstairs.”
“Good,” Falconer said. “Let’s just stop at the washroom and then be on our way.”
The two men exited the apartment and bounded downstairs. Moments later, they stepped out from the first floor into the bright, sun-drenched city street, where a police wagon with a team of two horses and a driver stood at the ready. The ride down to the wharves took thirty minutes, during which time Falconer was able to glean from Officer Cunningham some more details about the grisly overnight murder of Carrie Brown.
6
The police wagon bearing Falconer and Cunningham pulled up at the crowded intersection of Catherine Slip and Water Street and the driver yanked hard on the reins, forcing the two horses to halt in their tracks. Falconer hopped off with Cunningham and took a quick look around. A large crowd was enveloping the entrance to the old East River Hotel, and a discordant symphony of shouts and yells was rising high above the intersection.
Falconer led Cunningham through the mass of people and finally came through to the other side near the hotel’s entrance, where a cordon of large, imposing policemen in long coats lined with shiny gold buttons kept the yelping onlookers at bay. Near the front, he could see a line of reporters with pencils and pads in hands, yelling desperately at anyone who happened to enter or exit the little entrance to the hotel. “Detectives! Detectives! Can you tell us? Is it the Ripper? Is the Ripper in New York?”
Falconer motioned for Cunningham to join him as he moved toward the door of the hotel. He flashed his badge to the officers standing guard and walked inside. Looking around the spare lobby, he could tell that it hadn’t changed much since he had last crossed its threshold. The place was crumbling and decrepit as so many other flophouses were down here in this seaside quarter of the city. Officers milled about around him, checking into nooks and crannies for clues or evidence, taking statements from bar hands with soiled hands and sweaty brows, and bounding up and down the stairs that led to the crime scene.
Falconer looked that way, up towards the fifth floor, and decided to bypass the activity in the lobby and bar, and head directly up to the death room. “I’m going upstairs,” he said to Cunningham. “Thanks for bringing me down here.”
“Certainly, detective,” Cunningham said, and then the young patrolman walked back outside to where the noisy throng of people stood waiting expectantly for some news of the murder.
As Falconer walked up the dark staircase, he had to nudge by several officers coming down with persons who appeared to be tenants, and some of them looked visibly shaken. At the fifth floor, he turned and headed down the hallway to Room 31 at the end. After two quick steps, however, he stopped in his tracks, having noticed a square metal scuttle leading to the roof just above where he stood. On the side of the hallway to his right stood an iron ladder, obviously intended for use in getting up through the scuttle to the roof. He examined these items for a moment, and then moved on down through the passageway filled with various police personnel, taking care to carefully look over the walls and floor as he walked.
Arriving at Number 31 at the end of the hallway, he showed his badge to the two officers standing outside the door. They moved aside, and he entered the room where the lady had been killed and where now about a dozen or so detectives and officers either stood or crouched, gathering evidence. The familiar scent of the blood got his attention first. It was a sweet, metallic smell, like wet iron. He glanced around past the men moving in front of him. At his foot, next to the door, was a woman’s shoe, which was acting as a doorstop for the constant traffic of police personnel tramping through to do their work. To his right was a simple chair, wooden and nondescript, and against the far wall, straight ahead and right next to the window looking out onto Catherine Slip, was a small table that held a drinking tin of some sort and a deadened candle.
Over on his left, behind a group of detectives, was the deathbed. Lying in a heap on top of the soiled, rumpled sheets at its center was a partially covered body of a woman. She was lying on her right side with her right arm twisted back beneath her torso. Her left arm was draped down over her breast and tangled within her clothing. Her face was hidden, as some sort of garment had been wound tightly around the head, covering it entirely, and her legs were pulled up as if frozen in an agonizing death struggle.
Crimson stains were everywhere, and Falconer could see that on the side of the bed, the dripping sheets draped down towards a small pool of blood drying on the floor. As he looked back at the bed and the woman lying on top, he thought that he could then see what appeared to be remnants of human entrails hanging from the actual bed posts and frame, with parts of the woman’s viscera spread out on the sheets. He blinked several times to make sure that he was not mistaken in this observation.
He entered a little farther and nodded as men looked up at him. These detectives were from Chief Inspector Byrnes’ own group from the Central Office, he could tell. He, in fact, recognized a few of them—McCloskey, Frink, Von Gerichten—but several were strangers who apparently never strayed over to these parts near the river.
A det
ective in plain clothes approached him as he stood near the chair in the small, eight-by-ten-foot room.
“You’re Falconer, right?”
“Yes,” Falconer replied. “I was asked to come down to assist in any way this morning.”
“Detective Sergeant McNaught from the Detective Bureau,” the man said, holding out his hand, which Falconer shook. “Yes, we did ask your captain who would be good in these parts—who could give us a head start with the locals and such—and your name came up. He said you’re the best he’s got, Falconer. Not a bad thing to hear about yourself, right?”
“I suppose not,” Falconer answered, “but I can’t see why he’d say a thing like that—we’ve got some good men over there.”
“Well, we’re glad to have you, Falconer” McNaught said. “You heard them out there, didn’t you? They’re demanding to have the killer’s head by sundown, and they’re all screaming that it’s the Ripper. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything like this,” he said, pointing to the blood-stained walls over near the bed, “but like the chief, I think this Jack the Ripper stuff is all damned bosh—a whole lot of hysterical melodrama. Some crazy fool drunkard or swabbie did this when he didn’t get his way, and he’s probably halfway to Brazil by now.”
Just then, another detective walked into the room and stopped by McNaught. “Captain O’Connor has a few of the employees and a couple of possible suspects locked up over at Oak Street,” the man said. “The chief is with him now, and they’ve invited you to come back and be there for questioning.”
“Thanks,” McNaught said to the man, and then he turned to Falconer. “That’s our cue,” he said. “Shall we jump over to your station and check these people out?”
“Sounds good,” Falconer replied. “You lead the way.”
The two men then left the blood-soaked bedroom, stamped down the hallway, and bounded down the stairs to the street below, where the newspapermen, barflies, dock workers, and peering onlookers still gathered in great numbers. Falconer and McNaught pushed the crowd apart as people screamed and tugged at the line of officers guarding the entrance to the hotel, and after making it through this mass of humanity, the detectives made their way by foot over to Falconer’s home base of operations—the Fourth Precinct’s Oak Street station—where Mary Miniter, bartenders Eddie Fitzgerald and Sam Shine, and several other individuals drawn into the murder investigation sat in locked cells, awaiting word of their fate.
Manhunt
7
Arriving at the station on Oak Street, Falconer saw another sizable crowd lingering outside the front entrance. He followed McNaught through the people and went inside. Moving up the stairs to the second floor, they walked down the hallway and stopped at the door leading into Captain O’Connor’s private office. McNaught knocked and the door opened moments later, revealing Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams, one of the chief inspector’s top lieutenants over at the Central Office. “Come on in, boys,” he said to them, and they both entered.
Inside, Falconer saw Captain Richard O’Connor, Detective Sergeants Michael Crowley and Francis McCloskey, and Chief Inspector Thomas Byrnes standing around the seated figure of a young man in the center of the room. The man appeared frightened and confused as he huddled in the wooden chair and gazed about at the officers surrounding him.
O’Connor turned to Falconer and McNaught. “Come on in, gentlemen,” he said to them, sitting in a chair next to the man. “We’re just talking to Mister Eddie Fitzgerald here. He’s bartender at the hotel and he found the body this morning.”
Falconer looked around the room. The other detectives stood nearby, while Byrnes, the acknowledged head of the investigation and already famous across the land as the most successful detective and crime fighter of his day, curiously lurked over near a wall, hidden in the shadows and smoking a cigar. Falconer had never actually met the celebrated policeman, and he wondered what the man would be like if they came face to face.
He turned his attention back to O’Connor as the captain questioned Fitzgerald. “Tell us now, Mister Fitzgerald,” O’Connor stated to the nervous bartender, “what were the circumstances of your finding the body?”
Fitzgerald paused for a moment as if he were searching for the correct words. “Well, sir,” he finally said, looking up at the imposing police captain, “I went upstairs at about 9:00 a.m. to collect the room key from 31. I knocked lightly on the door, but there was no answer. I tried again, knocking louder this time, and still, there was no answer. So, I reached into my pocket, got the master key out, and unlocked the door, careful not to barge in on anyone who might not be, you know, decent and all. And that’s when I saw it—I mean, I saw her—the poor lady lying on the bed.”
“Did you notice the knife at that time, Fitzgerald?” O’Connor asked.
“The knife?” the man said, looking down at the floor and cradling his chin in his hand. “No, I…I don’t believe I noticed it at the time, sir. I was just so…horrified at that moment…all that blood everywhere. I just ran downstairs to tell Mister Thompson and Mister Jennings.”
O’Connor looked over towards the shadows where Byrnes stood surrounded by the smoke of his cigar. Falconer thought he saw the two men lock eyes, as if they were communicating telepathically somehow. O’Connor then turned back to the bartender sitting in the chair.
“Fitzgerald, this is very important,” he said. “You need to search your memory very thoroughly. Did you ever see any man come out of that room that night? Out of Room 31?”
Fitzgerald looked up again at O’Connor, and then over at Byrnes. “No, sir,” he said, gazing back at the captain. “I’m sorry, but I was never up there until I opened that door and saw her lying there on the bed.”
“Did you ever see a suspicious looking man leave the hotel during the night?” O’Connor then asked.
“Well,” Fitzgerald said, “I saw the fellow in 33 leave kind of suspicious like at around 5:30 this morning.”
“What suspicious fellow?” O’Connor asked.
“I’m not sure of his name,” Fitzgerald replied, “but he stays occasionally. He’s a dark Muslim, a seaman. The ladies I work with would probably know the name.”
Falconer watched as O’Connor reached into his pockets and jingled some coins. The captain looked down at the bartender, and then glanced around the room at the other men.
“Very well, Fitzgerald,” he finally said. “We’re done here for now. You will remain here at the order of the chief inspector as a material witness. You are ordered not to speak to anyone about this—not the press, not your family, not with any other witnesses, you understand?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Fitzgerald replied.
“Very well then. Detective Sergeant Crowley will assist you to your cell, and we will do our best to see to it that your stay here is not long.”
Crowley then helped the man up and took him by the arm out into the hallway, and as they left, McNaught beckoned Falconer to follow him over to where Byrnes was standing.
“Sir, this is Falconer,” McNaught said to the chief inspector. “He’s a ward detective here at Oak Street and he knows the hotel, knows the people who linger in that area. He’ll be assisting us.”
Byrnes looked up at Falconer. Falconer at once noticed that the chief appeared to be an athletic man, nearly six feet tall with broad shoulders and a deep chest. His hair was thinning at the top of his head and he sported a heavy brown mustache. He wore a black cutaway coat edged with gold braid, and Falconer’s eyes were immediately drawn to the gold watch chain that draped down over the buttoned vest where it disappeared into a pocket. Falconer could see why people were so drawn to this man. He carried himself upright with an almost military bearing and dignity, and his tall, stern figure cried out to be respected and listened to.
And the man’s record also demanded that respect: he was celebrated as the detective who could not be beaten, who could not be stymied by any criminal, who would solve the crime eventually, no matter what the obstacle,
based on his own innate ingenuity, doggedness, and pure God-given instinct. Byrnes was said to be a man who was born to solve crimes, and his men loved him for it and defended him to the last, and the people of New York felt safer because of him.
“Falconer,” the chief said at last. “I have heard about you around here. You have an excellent reputation. I am glad you are assisting us on the case.”
“Thank you, sir,” Falconer replied. “Glad to help.”
Byrnes began to speak again, but as he did, he moved slowly about the room, as if in deep concentration.
“Falconer, this is not just another murder,” he said. “This woman, this…prostitute—Miss Brown—was horribly disfigured and disgraced. We cannot have this happening in our city. They let something like this go on over in London, and you saw what happened there. We are not going to let this maniac run free for very long. We’re going to run him down and catch him very quickly before he can kill someone like this again. I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Falconer—they think it’s the Whitechapel killer who’s come to our shores. You’ve heard that?”
Falconer felt on the spot, as if the gaslights in a theater show were all shining on him on the stage, and he felt the beads of sweat forming on his brow. He knew how Byrnes had boasted during the Whitechapel mess that if the Ripper ever tried to kill within the boundaries of New York City, he would be caught within days. Byrnes had perhaps gone too far with his comments about the London investigation, and clearly a schism had formed across the wide ocean between the British authorities tasked with finding the Whitechapel killer and the Detective Bureau here in the city over the chief’s brazen words of contempt for the British investigators. Falconer also knew that people would now be starting to ask whether the Whitechapel killer had finally taken the chief up on his boast and had come to New York City two years after the grisly London murders to test the chief’s theory out.
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