A Commitment to Love, Book 3 (38 page)

She could’ve been right, or she might’ve been playing games. I had no time for either and checked my watch. The tour would begin in an hour. I had to be in place.

“My men will make sure you stay here and safe.” I continued to the door.

“That’s what they’re doing?” She flipped another page in her magazine. “Keeping me safe?”

“Of course. They’re here for Sherman and your convenience.”

“And if we decided to leave and check out London?”

“You won’t.”

Twenty men guarded the suite. Ten guys monitored Sherman and Sophia. The place could have held a forty-person party, and many guests that could afford the space would do so. I only needed a few guys to cover me as I got into the car. More security would follow me to Breaton’s tour. I hoped Jasmine would be there. If not, I would return again and again. If I had to buy out tour tickets for the rest of the week, I would.

As soon as I stepped out of the suite, Sophia called after me, “Try not to die tonight. I like you.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I adjusted my shirt and headed to the elevator.

Will Jasmine come tonight? What’s going through your mind, Benny? Wouldn’t you like to take all of your kids out on a fun field trip through a serial killer’s history?

Benny raved about Jack the Ripper in his journal. Sure the person had been the most famous serial killer in the world. Toward the end of the 19
th
century, he’d spread terror throughout London. But Benny thought the man was his hero.

I thought back to Sophia, Dawn, and Wendy.

For all we know, Jack the Ripper might have been Janet the Ripper. They probably couldn’t solve it because they were so backwards with their thinking, they were just so sure it had to be a man. Women are some of the most skilled murders.

I never underestimated a female. Any being that had the power to hold life inside of their bodies for nine months, and then somehow push it out of something so small and delicate, had my greatest respect. I would never trade my cock for a vagina. Too much responsibility came with it.

What will I do with Sophia? And how much more will she do, once Benny is dead? I can’t think of that. I have to focus on now.

Jack the Ripper, or maybe Janet, was claimed to be responsible for eleven separate murders between the years of 1888 and 1891. Benny described them over and over. For a few of my free hours in the suite, I’d reread his musings.

I still hadn’t slept. Another day of no rest and I’d be well on to the looney bin. I promised myself that I would sleep once Jasmine lay next to me.

In my bedroom, I read more of Benny’s craziness.

Ripper killed the first girl in August 1888. I bet he did a whole lot of others before then. They only called the ones in London. Those had been his great work.

His final masterpieces.

The first was Polly. She’d been a forty-year-old whore, selling her wrinkled pussy in Buck’s Row. The police had referred to the first deaths as the Whitechapel Murders since Buck’s Row was located there.

Later, the newspapers gave Ripper his due.

A delivery driver found Polly’s corpse. She had two slices to the neck and jagged wounds on both sides of her stomach.

Over a week later, the police found the second whore, another old one. She was close to fifty. That had to have equated to and looked like eighty years old in their day.

People died young then.

The police discovered the second prostitute, Annie, in the back yard of a place on Hanbury Street. He’d severed her throat with a sharp knife and then cut at her spine. Her intestines sat on her shoulder. They never found her uterus or part of her bladder.

Ripper was Piccaso.

He showed off on the second one, performing a surgical skill so clean, that the removal process would’ve taken him a good twenty minutes. And he did it all in the dark public streets. Doctors of that time guessed Ripper had in-depth knowledge of anatomy.

Killing does that to you.

Ripper showed off on the next deaths.

He’d sent a letter to the cops, signed it Jack the Ripper, and then killed two whores within the span of forty-five minutes. More women over forty. It was something about that age that messed with him. Plenty young girls had to have gone into that work and made good money.

Something about that age messed with his head.

Did his mom or grandmother do something fucked up to him? Or was that just the easiest age of prostitute to walk down the dark alley with him? It was always that one thing a murderer enjoyed, the one type of person that got our death cock erect and read to bust.

Both women had cuts on their throats and abdomens, as well as intestines placed over their right shoulders. Yet, he’d removed the second victim’s left kidney and uterus.

Why was he so fascinated with those body parts?

Intestines had never been my thing. They looked so much like snakes, and I hated serpents. Old horror flicks taught you to hate snakes and Catholicism. All those demons sliding on the earth to eat our innocent souls.

No.

I never had a thing for intestines, but Ripper loved them, relished in removing them with precision and laying them carefully on the corpse’s shoulder.

I bet a melody played in his head.

He’d gone overboard on one of the last ones, sliced her throat completely, ear to ear. He hacked off her breasts and mutilated the woman’s face well past recognition.

He’d wielded art with his knife.

Displaying his surgeon skills, he removed her uterus, kidneys, and her breasts. He placed one tit under her head, and the other under her foot. For some odd reason, he set her liver between her feet.

How much time did he have?

His signature remained, intestines on her shoulder, but he’d gone wilder. Ripper set her spleen on her left and flaps of skin on the bedside table. He’d cut off parts of her eyebrows, nose, cheeks, and ears.

But most important, he’d cut her heart from its veiny binds and taken it far away from the scene.

Every book I’ve read never discussed this detail.

Ripper had taken the heart away!

Why the heart?

For all the others, that organ remained in their chest, but for some reason on that particular whore, he’d done something with it. No one pursued that fact further. They ignored the symbolism.

The lovely, subtle nuance of love in the mind of a madman.

That victim was the one that broke his heart.

Evil men do bad things over love.

Had they considered that mere point, they might’ve solved all of the murders. But investigating death makes many a callous people, and by the time that victim surfaced, they’d probably lost their love for humanity.

Ripper had hardened them.

And who could’ve done it? I had my suspects. The police pointed to so many people from Prince Albert to the famous painter Walter Sickert.

No one proved to be Ripper.

Then there was the clue dropped in the middle of East End. Ripper had tossed a cloth in a dark passageway. The police found it, and when the constable raised his lantern to the wall where the cloth was discovered, a message decorated the break.

“The Jewes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.”

Clearly he meant Jewish men, but why did he mention them the police wondered. I knew as I always did. He hoped it would be seen as anti-Semitic. He was being tricky. I believe he was Jewish, a particular butcher named “Leather Apron.”

And Benny rambled on and on. It gave me no doubt that the sicko would want to go on the tour. Even better, Jasmine confirmed it in our last phone call.

And due to your fascination, Benny, I’ll trap you.

As my limo headed to Dr. Breaton’s tour site, my phone rang. I expected my father’s image to come up on the screen or maybe Troy’s unidentified number signal.

That time, security called.

I answered the phone, “Yes.”

“We’ve spotted Ms. Jasmine Montgomery.”

“Where?” I sat up in the seat, ready to jump out of the car, if necessary.

“The Breaton Tour for Jack the Ripper. Mrs. Montgomery is standing at the entrance with the other patrons. The person you identified as—”

“Is Benny there?”

“Yes, sir. He is the man on her right. Another man stands on her left. He is of an old age with scars all over his face.”

“And her brother or—”

“No one else is with Ms. Jasmine Montgomery besides the one identified as Benny and the other guy I just mentioned.”

“There’s no tall black guy there, thinking with his eyes?”

“No, sir.”

“What about a short white girl with blonde hair?”

“No, sir.”

This is a set-up. Benny must’ve heard our phone call. He’s expecting me to show up, and save the day.

“What do you want us to do, sir?”

I let out a long breath. “Keep your target on his skull, and if you have a clean shot that won’t put Jasmine in danger, then go for it. If not, wait there, until I arrive.”

“Should we go to plan B, sir?”

“Definitely. And make sure everybody knows their parts.”

Let’s end this tonight.

C
HAPTER
22

Jasmine

B
enny
and I waited for the tour to begin.

Buildings surrounded us. Bright stars dotted the London sky. Stormy clouds hovered over us. The moon lay full and stark white, almost showing off its glow. The one night in this godforsaken city that Troy no longer walked earth, and it didn’t storm.

I wouldn’t have minded a downpour. Something cold and dark, booming thunder and laser hot lightning. I would’ve welcomed cold rain.

For once, the weather would’ve symbolized how my insides felt.

My heart sank in a thick sludge of black.

I hadn’t said much today. All I did was wrap my arms around Vivian and rock her to sleep. Benny’s cook Lou brought a sedative tea. I gave it to Vivian. She needed the sleep. I had to stay awake and deal with the pain.

Had it somehow been my fault? Was Troy’s blood on my hands? Sure Benny played his part, and Vivian did, too, but what could I have done?

Alternatives ran through my head like a B-list film that remained on repeat—the same ole cinematic action scene. A slow motion bullet flying through the air. My frozen body. The cries. The screams. The blood as it splattered. Troy’s blood. His body slumping to the floor. My brother’s corpse.

Death was fucked up.

There stood a body, a husk of something that was filled with so much amazingness. And then with a click of a madman’s gun, he lay lifeless on the ground, hollow and empty. I’d seen so much death in these past months, but not one of them prepared me to handle Troy’s.

My twin was gone.

A part of me lay dormant.

It had happened before.

When he went off to jail, I could swear that somehow, someone had cut something out of my insides—whether a lung or kidney, maybe even a bit of my liver—something left me, when the police took him away. And although I’d learned to live on without those empty parts of me, I always knew that it would return once I saw him again.

And it did, for that short moment of time, in these past months.

He spent most of his life in jail, and now … he’ll never get a chance to make it up.

“The tour is going to start in twenty minutes.” Benny turned to me. “Are you as excited as I am?”

I didn’t respond. By now, he probably didn’t expect me to. I hadn’t said anything more than a few sentences to him.

Hours ago, the first statement to Benny was an answer:

“Why are you holding that knife?” Benny asked, when he walked into my bedroom.

I folded the blanket over a sleeping Vivian, stuck the pocketknife in my pocket, and then zipped up my jacket. “I have a knife because you killed my brother, and if I get a chance I’m going to stab you in the neck.”

Nodding, he turned his view to the bed. “Vivian isn’t going with us?”