A Killer in Time

by Jim Laughter

  “I see.”

  “Whoever kilt that poor girl was either hidin' in the garage or he got there some other way. But you can bet your ass on one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He ain’t employed here at the Luxury Suites.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Lynn Keller pushed through the door of their third floor office. She had an excited expression on her face, a look Benjamin hadn’t seen since the first day they’d identified the serial killer in the Apostle Murders case. He knew without asking she’d received good news from the Washington DC coroner where she’d spent the morning.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, not waiting for any of the other agents to ask her what she’d learned at the Medical Examiner’s office.

  “The M.E. found hair traces on Anita Chapman’s body.”

  “The hooker at the Lincoln Memorial?” Morris asked.

  Keller nodded.

  “And it’s not hers?”

  “Not a chance,” Keller said. “He found short, curly black hair fibers on the back of her neck and shoulders, probably from when the killer held her from behind.”

  “Anita Chapman was blond,” Benjamin said. “So the hair couldn’t come have come from her.”

  Keller handed the report to Morris. He started to make a wisecrack about the possibility that short curly black hair could have come from another part of her body then thought better of it. This was the first real physical evidence they had in this case. No need to screw it up now. After all, Anita Chapman was blond, so his remark wouldn’t make sense anyway.

  “They’re doin' a DNA trace on it, ain’t they?”

  Keller stared that ‘are you kidding me?’ look at Morris as if to ask what kind of fool he thought she was.

  “Hell no,” she said. “I had them put it in a petri dish to see if they could clone the son of a bitch for us.”

  “Smart ass.”

  “Can they match the DNA to a certain person, or just a range of people?” Benjamin asked.

  “That’s called individualization,” Cooper said. “It’s the process of attempting to determine whether a given hair came from one particular person or source to the exclusion of all other sources. This is not possible with forensic microscopical hair comparison without a comparative sample.”

  “They do it all the time of TV. Seen it on Dexter,” Morris said.

  “This isn’t TV,” Keller said.

  Morris examined the report. He read through the details of the hair the M.E. had removed from the murdered woman’s body. When he got to the description, he balked at the scientific term.

  “What the hell is Negroid?”

  Morris handed Cooper the report. It never ceased to amaze Keller at how Morris could be so dense one minute and brilliant the next.

  Cooper and Benjamin exchanged glances. What the hell was Morris talking about, and how the hell could he ask such a question? If anyone in the room was familiar with racial terms, it was Morris.

  “Negroid is the forensic description for hair follicles from a person of African descent,” Cooper answered, trying to keep his disbelief of Morris’ ignorance from his voice.

  “A black man? Our killer is a black man?”

  “What?” Benjamin asked. He wasn’t sure he’d heard Morris’ question.

  Cooper handed the report to Benjamin. He examined it, amazed at the revelation. They were all convinced from the profile Cooper had outlined of the killer that he was a white male in his twenties or thirties. This evidence put a whole new twist on their investigation.

  “Might be a kissin' cousin of yours,” Morris said. He smiled at Benjamin, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “You want to phone your daddy and see if there’s any loose screws in the family toolbox?”

  Morris had never let Benjamin forget that he’d called his father the very first day they’d met. His father, a doctor of divinity, was able to help shed light on the murder of a victim in the Apostle Murders case. It was also that same phone call that prompted Benjamin to tell Morris he had his head stuck up his ass, which was another bit of information he’d never let the young agent forget.

  Now here Morris was again chiding him about his African heritage, a sore subject between the two agents. He’d often thought he was going to have to kick Morris’ wrinkled old white ass. This might be as good a time as any to do it.

  “Or maybe your old grand pappy back in the homeland is calling out to you.”

  “No sir,” he answered instead. “But if I hear anything from either of them, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Can we get serious here?” Keller asked, stepping between the two agents. “This sheds a whole new light on this case. We’ve got to start thinking differently if we’re going to catch this maniac.”

  “I can’t believe the killer is black,” Benjamin whispered, his voice masked with uncertainty. “It doesn’t fit the profile of modern day serial killers, much less Jack the Ripper.”

  “It’s not Jack the Ripper!” Morris snapped. “That sum'bitch has been dead for a damn century.”

  Ignoring Morris’ reprimand, Benjamin pondered the implications this new evidence cast on the case. Keller was right. They had to start thinking outside the box. It wasn’t going to be easy. The number of known African-American serial killers could be counted on two hands. It just didn’t make sense to him but he was prepared to accept it. He couldn’t imagine how they were going to narrow their search down to one individual but he knew they had to do it.

  Another thing he couldn’t imagine was why the spirit of Jack the Ripper would choose to inhabit someone completely opposite the original killer.

  “You ok, George?” Cooper asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Benjamin didn’t answer. He stared at the forensics report and knew they had a long, difficult case ahead of them.

  What if it is a ghost we’re chasing? We may never catch him.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Morris didn’t like what he was going to say to the rookie agents but he had no choice. Neither of them had the experience to pull off the detail they’d been assigned but there was just no one else to send. If they accomplished the mission, they would be heroes. If they failed, they’d either be ruined or killed. Either way, they were in for a rough assignment that would prove their metal or destroy them.

  “You two shave-tails are going on special assignment,” Morris said to Benjamin and Cooper sitting at the table with him and Keller.

  “Assignment, sir?” Benjamin asked.

  Cooper thought about his recent meeting with Chief Wills in Nashville when he’d been told he was going on assignment to Washington D.C. Being sent to Washington was beyond his wildest dreams as an agent, a posting every agent sought after.

  He couldn’t imagine what new detail Morris was planning to send them on. Whatever it was, it had to be better than sitting around this damn office looking at pictures of murdered women and travel itineraries. Maybe now he’d get to do some real police work.

  Morris nodded, still not enthusiastic about the detail the rookies had drawn. How could he expect two inexperienced agents to infiltrate a closed society like the Executive Branch of the U.S. government and not be affected by it, either physically or emotionally?

  “First off,” Morris began, “I want you to know that neither of you have to accept this assignment.”

  Benjamin and Cooper exchanged a wary glance.

  “Sound ominous, sir,” Benjamin said.

  “You bet your ass it is. So if you think it’s out of your depth, tell me now. Once you get started, there’s no pullin' out.”

  “What’s the assignment, sir?” Cooper asked.

  “There’s got to be better way than this,” Keller interjected. She considered her own daughter, Mazie, a college student only a few years younger than these two men. Would she be willing to risk her life the way they were risking Cooper and Benjamin’s?

  “We can’t expect these boys
to do this.”

  Morris just shook his head, a head that throbbed from a tension headache that had developed since leaving the meeting with Truck and Wheeling. He didn’t like it any better than Keller but both of them were too old to go on his detail, so what choice did he have?

  “Don’t you think I know that, Keller?”

  Morris rubbed his eyes, pushing his glasses out to the end of his nose.

  “Don’t you think I know how damn dangerous this is?”

  The word dangerous caused Benjamin’s skin to crawl. He knew there was always the possibility of facing a precarious situation. After all, he’d graduated from the academy and had been through all of the crime scene scenarios. He’d seen the wall of stars in the lobby of the headquarters building depicting the names of agents that had died in the line of duty.

  But to sit in an office and listen to Morris and Keller discuss it like something could actually happen disheartened him. What would his wife, Latrice do if anything were to happen to him? How would his children grow up without a daddy?

  “You listenin', rook?” Morris asked Benjamin.

  He’d drifted off into a world of his own thoughts. Cooper just sat at the table as if he didn’t have a care in the world. After all, he was single with no attachments. This would be just another adventure for him.

  Or would it? Benjamin noticed a faraway expression on Cooper’s face. Perhaps he was more concerned than his demeanor revealed.

  “George!” Keller said, poking him in his ribs.

  Benjamin stirred and turned his attention back to Morris. “Sorry sir. Just thinking.”

  “Well, that’ll be a first,” Morris said. “But if you don’t mind stickin' around here for a while, I’ll tell you about your new detail. You reckon you can do that?”

  “Yes sir. I’m all ears, sir.”

  “What I’m fixin' to tell you here might save your life, that is, if you can spare me a minute or two.”

  “Yes sir. Go ahead sir,” Benjamin stammered.

  Morris rearranged a stack of papers piled in front of him, shuffling them until the edges were perfectly straight.

  How the hell did I get myself into this? These knot-heads ain’t gonna be able to pull this off. A religious screwball that thinks Jack the friggin' Ripper is still alive and a dumb-ass rookie from Tennessee. Or is it California? Who the hell cares? They’re gonna get their damn selves kilt dead and I know damn well whose ass is gonna get blamed for it. Should'a kept my fool self in Texas, that’s what I should'a done.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The school boy hovered over the dissection table in the biology lab at Carter G. Jones Junior High in the 4000 block of East Evans in Chicago, Illinois. The school was only a half dozen blocks from the tenement building where he’d been raised and still lived with his mother. He hated this place almost as much as he hated the tenement building and all of the painful memories associated with it.

  He also hated the lab teacher, the same dirty man that years ago had molested him in the shower in another school. He wondered if the man recognized him. He hadn’t seen him since leaving the elementary school, and the man had never visited his mother again. He wondered if he ever thought about the pain he’d caused or the shame he’d inflicted on an innocent youth. He wondered if the time would ever come when he’d be able to settle an old score.

  The student examined the safety goggles, gloves, apron, and forceps arranged on a sterile cloth on the table. Also on the table was a dissecting tray, pins, paper towels, plastic storage bag, twist ties, scissors, marking pen, and a dissecting needle. More importantly, a preserved frog in a glass bottle stared out at him through dead eyes.

  He donned the safety goggles, gloves and lab apron and placed the frog on the dissection tray. His first task was to determine the frog’s sex, which he could tell by looking at the hand digits, or fingers, on its forelegs. A male frog has thick pads on its ‘thumbs’ which is one external difference between the sexes. Male frogs are also usually smaller than female frogs.

  Since his frog was larger than the specimen on his neighbors table and did not have pads on its forelegs, he determined it was a female frog. He used a diagram copied from his text book to identify the external features of the head; the mouth, external nares, tympani, eyes, and nictitating membranes.

  The student turned the frog on its back and pinned down its legs. He cut the hinges of the mouth and opened it wide so he could identify the structures inside the mouth and make note of them on the diagram.

  Using a probe to help find each part, he identified the vomerine teeth, maxillary teeth, internal nares, tongue, openings to the Eustachian tubes, the esophagus, the pharynx, and the slit-like glottis.

  Looking for the opening to the frog’s cloaca, located between the hind legs, he used the forceps to lift the skin. He then used the marker pen to trace lines up the center of the frog’s body, and used the scissors to cut along the lines from the cloaca to the lip. Turning the skin back, he cut toward the side of each leg and pinned the skin flat.

  Lifting and cutting through the muscles and breast bone to open the body cavity, he noted it was full of dark-colored eggs, another indication this was a female frog. He removed the eggs so he could see the organs of the digestive system underlying them—the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, cloaca, liver, gallbladder, and pancreas.

  Turning back to his diagram, he identified the parts of the circulatory and respiratory systems inside the chest cavity. He found the left atrium, right atrium, and ventricle of the heart. One artery was attached to the heart and another near the backbone. Another small vein stood out near one of the shoulders. Two lungs also filled the chest cavity.

  Using a probe and the scissors, he lifted and removed the intestines and liver. Again referring to the diagram, he identified and noted the parts of the urinary and reproductive systems. He then removed the peritoneal membrane, which is connective tissue that lies on top of the red kidneys. Yellow fat bodies were attached to the kidneys. He found the ureters, urinary bladder, ovaries, oviducts, and uteri.

  His final step was to remove the kidneys and look for the threadlike spinal nerves that extend from the spinal cord. He dissected a thigh so he could trace one nerve into a leg muscle.

  When the hour drew to a close, he stood over the body of the frog he’d just dissected. It lay cold and lifeless before him, a destroyed piece of meaningless nature. He glanced at the table next to him and saw that the other student’s frog looked exactly like his. How had nature created two identical creatures? Was there a divine source that designed life or was evolution the answer? Perhaps a little of both?

  He looked again at the frog and imagined it was his mother. He’d envisioned many times her body lying dead before him for the pain and shame she brought upon him every day. Could he do it? Could he take her apart as easily as he had this poor creature?

  Instructions from the lab teacher rousted him out of his thoughts. Opening the plastic disposal bag, he shoved the dissected frog, the internal organs, and his used materials into it and sealed it with a twist tie. He washed his hands and dropped the bag into a bio-barrel on his way out the door. The teacher stood by passively, watching each student dispose of their laboratory experiments and collecting their diagrams as they passed by him. He didn’t make eye contact with the students, even with the boy he’d abused and threatened to kill.

  Life is unfair, thought the boy. But my day will come. Someday it will come.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  George Benjamin pushed through the front door of the small apartment he shared with his wife Latrice and their two-year old son, Calvin II.

  Latrice saw the stress and concern on his face, a look she hadn’t seen for some time. His promotion from the fraudulent check department to the violent crimes division had been sudden and unexpected. He wasn’t sure he was ready for the promotion and had expressed his concern to her a number of times. She had faith in him and his abilities and knew he could do a
nything he set his mind to. He’d been key in identifying and tracking down a serial killer in his first big case, so she had no doubt he’d work through this one.

  The new case his team was investigating was taking a particularly hard toll on him. He hadn’t been able to tell her all of the details, only that another serial killer had surfaced, a particularly brutal one the bureau had not been able to identify. She also knew they’d called in Grundy Cooper, one of George’s old academy classmates, to help with the case. She knew if that crazy old Morris was bringing in outside help, especially Cooper, they were surely desperate.

  Latrice couldn’t understand why George put up with Morris’ constant racial remarks and abuse, but she’d leave that decision up to him. Being a paralegal, she’d told him a number of times that he should call Morris out about it, that he’d have every legal right to address the racial remarks and bring them to the attention of Morris’ superiors. But he’d always insisted that Morris meant no harm. He knew that in his own way, Morris liked him and he liked Morris, not just as an agent but as a person. Besides, he believed he could learn something from Morris if he could just overlook his redneck attitude. He wanted to become a good agent and he believed Morris could help.

  “You ok, babe?” she asked when George laid his briefcase on the dining room table.

  He looked tired. No, he looked worn, as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. He wasn’t as spry today as he normally was when he got home. He’d usually gather her into his arms and kiss her passionately and tell her how beautiful she was. And depending on if the baby was awake or not, he’d often sweep her off her feet and carry her to the bedroom for a private moment of love making even before she could fix their evening meal.

  “Where’s C2?” George asked.

  They’d started calling little Calvin C2 right after his birth simply because when his parents had visited them at the hospital and his mother took over the baby, his father had said, ‘I want to see too,’ and the name stuck.