Chapter 18: Bill Opens Up

We returned to Pennsylvania the next day. No mention was made of Beatrice or Lizbeth, except for Dennis' comment that I would have enjoyed her pussy. I shrugged him off and changed the subject to baseball.

The Series was down to the seventh and final game. We found a tavern and settled in as the third inning started. The Dodgers had gone ahead 2 – 0 in the second, knocking out the Yankees ace, Spec Shea in the process. From there on out it was all Yankees. They chipped away for five runs in four different innings, and Joe Page thwarted the Dodgers with five innings of one-hit relief work; the Yanks clinched the Series with a 5-2 victory.

That night after several strong scotches, Bill/Dennis stunned me by saying, "I see your investigation is moving in the right direction now."

"I don't follow you, Bill," I said curiously.

"Oh, come off it, Roy. Arthur must have told you about me. You're not all that interested in writing a novel about an old time ballplayer."

Sensing something unusual was up with him, I merely nodded and waited him out.

When he remained mute, I decided to push the envelope, and taking a deep breath, exhaled and said, "Have you ever heard of the man known as Jack the Ripper?"

"Of course I have. Who hasn't?"

"What do you really know about him?"

"Why don't you tell me, Roy?"

I looked into his eyes. He seemed sincere and intent on what I was about to tell him, so I did. "Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of London from August through November of 1888. In the section known as Whitechapel, one of the poorest and most decadent parts of the city ... not unlike Kingsbury Run in Cleveland. You do know Kingsbury run, don't you, Bill?"

"Course I do!" He replied. I played and managed the Cleveland club for years. You know that!"

"Yes, I do, Bill. Anyway, the Ripper was responsible for the death and mutilation of several female prostitutes. The victims had their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated in ways that revealed substantial physiological knowledge, perhaps medical training."

"A doctor, you say..."

"Perhaps, but I didn't say he was a physician. He could just as easily have been a butcher. He seemed particularly interested in destroying female reproductive systems. Actually, he ripped them to shreds, hence the name."

"Go on," he said, and nothing more.

I saw that I had his complete attention, gave myself a vote of confidence and continued. "The murders ended as suddenly as they had begun; one school of thought is that "Jack" was a Russian sailor, who left London, never to return. Over the years the killings have been ascribed to such varied persons as a doctor, a woman, a man in woman's clothing, a well-known painter, or a member of the nobility, or even the royal family. The crimes have given rise to many novels, plays, and other dramatic works."

Bill reached inside his jacket pocket and produced a Cuban cigar. He took his time with it, sniffing the fragrant odor, biting off one end and spitting it deftly into the ashtray at his side and then lighting it and blowing the smoke toward my face.

"What I suspect..." I began, never once taking my eyes off his, is that you have taken the gift given you by Arthur and used it to kill people over a very long period of time.

Bill closed his eyes as if lost in thought, and then opened them and stared back at me. "And you're implying that I'm this ... Jack the Ripper as well as the one's killing people in Cleveland these last few years?"

I let my eyes drift heavenward, and answered slowly. "Yes, I am saying that. And I'll say a lot more if you'll continue to listen to me and not cut me off saying I'm crazy."

"I'm listening," he said. "You've got my undivided attention."

"Good, then please bear in mind that anything I say about Jack the Ripper, or anyone else for that matter is meaningless; unprovable in a court of law. Because of Arthur's gift, you cannot be punished for what you've done. I can and hopefully will write about what you've done and all you need do is change with someone new; someone I don't know exists and you're home free to kill again and again.

"I can tell your story ... but only as a work of fiction. Who would believe it was actually possible to do what I believe you've done? I still haven't put it all together, Bill. But I will. It will take time, but I will put the pieces together. Probably not all of them, for I suspect that aside from the serial killings, you've killed singularly and there is no way, short of a confession that anyone could possibly connect you to any of them. In fact, I doubt anyone will ever stop you. It's you who must stop yourself."

Bill smiled at me then. I will tell you, the reader that it was a friendly smile, with not an ounce of malice or threat in it. He glanced at my drink, saw that it was nearly empty and took a moment to refill both our glasses with scotch. Then he began to talk about what had happened back in August, 1888.

"I wuz on the Etruria," he said, slipping back into Bill's familiar accent. "We spent six weeks in great Britain, mostly in London. Well, there wuz a side trip to Paris, but we wuz mostly in and around London."

"I happened to meet a gentleman named Tumblety on the ship, who professed being a medical doctor, but who struck me as something of a misogynist and definitely a quack. I entered his body and confirmed I was right on both counts. But there was something else about him that I found so compelling that I kept going back to him as we steamed across the Atlantic.

"He had earned a small fortune posing as an Indian Herb doctor throughout the United States and Canada. His hatred of women surfaced almost every time we came in contact with a female on board and I had to use most of my ability in manipulating him away from my wife to avert any embarrassing situations.

"I don't profess to posses any special medical skills, however, I have inhabited a few highly skilled physicians and as a consequence, do have certain knowledge that the average man does not. It was this knowledge that convinced me he was a charlatan insofar as the medical profession was concerned.

"My main interest in the man was the fact that he had been arrested for complicity in the assassination of President Lincoln, but released without being charged. Once inside his mind I found that he had been involved more than from a distant periphery as thought. He had knowledge of Booth's intention more than a week before the act, but no one was going to prove it, and he remained a free man."

Having never heard of Dr. Tumblety, I interrupted him, thinking to get him back on track. "Where is this going, Bill?"

He glared at me with so much fire in his eyes that I was silenced for the next few minutes.

"As I recall," he said, resuming his narrative. "It wuz the last day of August; we had left the ship in Liverpool and I found myself pacing up and down the lobby of our London hotel waiting for Tumblety to arrive while trying to quell a strangely exciting urge. Minutes earlier, my wife, Florence had complained of a headache, and I had left her after giving her a couple aspirin knowing they would help her sleep, freeing me to become one with Tumblety for several hours.

"The craving intensified as soon as I took possession of his body, leaving Yaller Bill sitting in the hotel's spacious lobby reading the times. Ever since I'd taken over his body I'd felt these sensations. It wuz unlike anything that had occurred with the other times I'd moved into someone. I wondered briefly if it were some reaction between his mind and mine, but gave up the struggle and ventured into the foggy streets looking for god knows what. I say that because I honestly didn't know what I wuz looking for.

"I moved stealthily down the quiet streets, shielded by the darkness and fog. I examined my feelings as they emerged; found them to be violent, and evil. I wanted to smash, slash and savage the first woman I happened upon. Several minutes later I encountered a bedraggled, smelly whore, who made the fatal mistake of accosting me, offering her foul body for a meager fee. She hoisted her skirts and revealed her putrid cunt for my viewing. The sight so disgusted me that I wuz filled with a rage I had never felt before. Later I determined it must have been Doctor Tumblety's misogyny, spilling over and blending perfectly with a rage that had lain dormant within me all those years.

"I never even bothered to seek an alleyway, or other refuge from plain view, but hacked at her throat with such force that I nearly beheaded her. Then with the whore having fallen to the ground, I drove the knife into her, making a deep gash that ran along her stomach, ripping and tearing at her so that she was for all intensive purposes, disemboweled.

"Amazingly, there was only a small amount of blood on my hands, which I wiped on her skirt, and after glancing around and seeing no one, I quickly left the area and returned to my hotel where I returned to my own body, discarded the Times and went to my room and joined my sleeping wife in bed.

"The following day I read in the papers that her name wuz Mary Ann Nicholls, a forty-three-year-old prostitute, who had been ejected from her lodging house just two hours earlier, because she didn't have the money to pay her rent. "I'll soon get my doss money, " she had confidently predicted, "See what a jolly bonnet I've got."

"As for myself, I had these euphoric feelings after reading the lurid stories in the press. It seemed that they were attributing two earlier killings to me as well, that of one Emma Smith, on April 3^rd, and of Martha Tabram, or Turner, as she wuz also known, three days later. But of course neither Tumblety or me wuz in London at the time of the murders ascribed to me.

"They had even come up with a possible suspect in the form of a man whom the local prostitutes had nicknamed, "Leather Apron," and whom, they were claiming, had been making violent threats toward them, including that he was going to "rip them up." Unfortunately they didn't know his name, couldn't provide an address, and the only description they could give was that he habitually wore a leather apron, and that he sometimes wore a deerstalker cap.

"Just such a man was seen at 5.30 am on the 8^th of September, talking to a prostitute named Annie Chapman, whose mutilated body wuz found on Hanbury Street around 6 am. Of course I had gone out and purchased a deerstalker cap before the urges became overpowering and sent me back into the streets hunting, but not deer. This time, as a precaution, I wore a leather apron to keep the blood off my clothing and to add to the confusion of those investigating the murders.

"Actually, I didn't see Anne, but passed right by her, only to hear her calling after me. 'Would ye be wantin' a good time, mate?' she said. I turned and waited for her to come up to me. She wasn't as rancid as the first slut, but she had my blood a boil with rage all the same, and I hacked away at her throat, and then ripped her intestines out, taking them back to Tumblety's room, along with several rings she wuz wearing, while leaving the apron neatly folded on the ground next to her.