Ripper (38 page)

“Some poor fellow left this behind,” he said, pouring himself a cup. “No sense letting it go to waste.”

Once the cup was full, Hawking sat up. Briefly, he was at the hunched height Carver was used to seeing. Then came a sharp, bony pop as his back straightened further, adding half a foot to his stature. He paused to wipe some white powder from his hair, revealing how black it was beneath.

Carver tried to make sense of what he was seeing, but sense was the one thing that wouldn’t come.

Hawking twisted again and rose further. The covering blanket fell away, revealing his cape and dark formal attire.

“You’ve no idea how difficult it is to stay in that position,” he said, his voice gaining resonance and depth. “Especially after your thuggish friend wrecked my knee and my own blood smacked me with a brick, shocked me twice with that infernal baton and ran me over with an electric carriage!”

Wide-eyed, slack-jawed, Carver managed to say, “It can’t be.”

His mentor seemed annoyed. “
Can’t?
No fire trucks on a stage? Really, boy, unless you’re ready to deal with the monster, you shouldn’t go looking under the bed. “

He lowered his head, pressed two strips of black hair along his cheeks, and stretched his jaw. When he looked back up, instead of Hawking’s ragged face, Carver saw the leering wide-eyed grin of Jack the Ripper.

Quickly as it came, the demonic visage vanished, leaving Hawking looking more like his narrow-eyed self, save for the muttonchops and darker hair.

He ran his fingers along his black cape and suit. “You know, I didn’t even dress like this in London. This is how a bunch of lurid artists rendered me. A dime-novel character for dime-novel mentalities. A costume,” he said with obvious distaste. He pulled a top hat from beneath the table and held it out. “Care to try it on?”

Carver didn’t know whether to scream or sob. “I saw you knocked out at the apartment on Leonard Street!” he said, as if reason could somehow make the image before him vanish.

His father bristled. “Surely you can guess
some,
now that you have the answer? The fact I used the typewriter so no one would
recognize my handwriting? Then again, you wouldn’t know it was different before I was wounded. As for Leonard Street, Rowena Parker was more worried about her ostrich hat than she was about dying.
She
clocked me on the head. I almost passed out before I killed her.”

“You did it. You killed those women…,” Carver said.

“And Mr. Tudd. Don’t forget dear Septimus.”

“Him, too?”

Hawking seemed briefly regretful. “That was harder than I’d imagined. Not technically. You’d be surprised how easy it is to start a riot once you’ve snuck inside a prison. Easier still to strangle someone in the middle of all that delightful chaos. He never even knew it was me. Better that way, don’t you think?”

“Your own partner,” Carver said.

“Interesting fact: most murder victims are done in by people they know. Tudd made the luckiest guess of his career, but I couldn’t have him figuring out the rest before
you.
You did help there, though, didn’t you? Set him up? Even rifled through the corpse.” He smiled. “You
are
my blood.”

Carver hesitated. “I’m nothing like you.”

“We’ve been through that. Of course you are. Still a bit raw, though. And I am far more entertaining.” He raised the pitch of his voice and sounded like Thomasine Bond. “Sorry, Mr. Hawking isn’t here.” He twisted his head. “Thomas Bond was the only examining pathologist convinced Alice McKenzie was another victim of the Ripper. Never caught that clue, did you?”

“Why? Why did you do this?”

“We’ve been through that, too. It was a game, for
you.
Planned it from the moment I learned you were alive. After Whitechapel, I couldn’t be the detective I’d wanted to be anymore, but my
son
could. Why not let
him
catch the greatest killer in the world? Pretended I was English born; when the boat docked, signed my name Jay Cusack, became Raphael Trone, sent that last letter to Ellis, then waited until you were ready to find me. And here you are, at the brink of greatness. Could have stayed there, too, if you hadn’t followed me.”

The train lurched sideways. They were turning onto Third.

“You were a great detective!” Carver shouted. “You helped stop an assassination attempt on the president! What could have been so horrible that it changed you into this?”

Hawking slammed his hand onto the table, rattling the teacup. “You’ve no idea, boy,
no
idea. I thought you and your mother were dead, mutilated worse than anything the Ripper’s ever done, and they made me believe
I
did it. That was
my
abyss. I lived through it, or thought I did, until that last gunfight. Finest doctors in London worked on me after that. I got stronger, grew smarter, but they couldn’t heal my soul. That, I had to do myself. Killing was the only way I had of crawling back! But you couldn’t possibly understand that. Not
yet,
at least.”

CARVER
staggered back in disgust. He’d seen the abyss now, fully. It was standing right in front of him.

His father grew somber. “I was going to die for you, die
as
the Ripper, let Albert Hawking disappear a misunderstood hero. But that was before. Now, well, as I said, I’ve something else to do. The game is over, Carver. Just let me go; I won’t come back. You have my word as your father.”

“I can’t,” Carver said.

Hawking rose. “Why not? It’s just one more step. I’m prepared to let
you
go.”

“I’m not a killer.”

“But you’d have to kill me to stop me.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Schick!
The baton expanded to its full size, the copper tip crackling.

“That again? Very well.” The long butcher knife slipped from a fold in his cloak into his hand. “Go on, boy. Stop me.”

Hoping to end things quickly, Carver snapped the baton up, pointing the tip toward his father’s face. He lunged, but Hawking ducked. He swatted the center of the baton with the flat of the blade so hard it nearly flew from Carver’s hand. Tightening his grip, Carver tried again.

Swack! Ping! Clack!

Both swung, dodged, parried. Hawking not only knew something about fencing, he was also faster and considerably stronger. Try as he might, Carver couldn’t get the copper tip near his father. But… he didn’t have to touch him, did he? Last time, Carver only had to touch the blade. The electric shock had carried through the metal, forcing him to drop it.

Hoping to surprise his father again, Carver aimed for the knife. With blinding speed, the Ripper raised his blade and let the point of the baton slip by. At the last instant, he sliced downward.

Sssp! Crackle.

Carver gasped. The baton had been sliced as neatly as if it’d been made of paper. The copper tip fell. Smoke curled from the severed end.

“See that? You made me break your little toy. What a shame.”

Carver looked from the knife up to his father’s eyes. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No, but I can’t have you follow me. So, one last game. Your appearance here forced me to improvise it, but I think I’ve done well.” He pointed his knife toward the locomotive behind them. “The engineer’s unconscious. Aside from being handy at uncoupling cars, my device is now keeping the throttle down. It’s a nice metaphor for life.
No one’s driving the train.
It
will
stop when it hits
Grand Central, but then our poor engineer will be crushed by tons of exploding steel and burning coal, not to mention what will happen to anyone in
front
of the train.”

Nonchalantly, he tossed the blade from one hand to the other. “So here’s what you can do: pass by, save the engineer and the train or keep trying to fight me, in which case, we’ll
all
die.”

“You just said you wouldn’t kill me.”

“I never said I’d keep you from killing yourself. Some things are nearly impossible to stop. A little like…” He briefly twisted his face back into the berserk visage of the Ripper. “A runaway train?”

Carver gritted his teeth. The cuffs Roosevelt gave him jangled in his pocket. He clapped his hand over them to stop the sound.

“Here, I’ll stand aside to let you through.” He lowered his blade and shifted, making room. “If you are different from me, as you like to think, there’s only one choice.”

Carver stood motionless, his thoughts a jumbled blur.

“Come on, boy, there isn’t
all
that much time left! Decide… decide… decide!”

Carver put his eyes on the door and, trying not to look at the dark figure, walked. He passed Hawking, put his left hand on the door and opened it, letting winter air and hot steam rush in. His father looked relieved.

“You will make a great detective,” he said. “Second best, next to me.”

Carver opened his mouth as if to answer. Instead, he pulled the cuffs out and slammed one end around Hawking’s wrist. Even off guard, his father’s reflexes were phenomenal. He pulled away rapidly, but a sudden rattle from the train forced him to shift his weight to his bad leg. As he winced, the blade fell from his hand.
With his father slightly off balance, Carver clamped the other end of the cuffs to the seat’s metal arm.

The only thing left was to get out of his reach. Carver threw himself backward through the open door, trying to stay on his feet as he reached the small space between the car and the locomotive. Furious, Hawking lurched forward. Steam billowed around them, fanning the dark man’s cape.

Carver kept backing up, slamming into the rear of the coal bay. Hawking’s long strong fingers nearly grabbed him but were stopped dead by the steel cuffs. Caught, the killer yanked as if he were willing to rip the hand off. He snapped his arm, gnashed his teeth and let loose a feral scream that seemed louder than the thrumming engine, louder than the wheels screeching against the steel tracks.

But then, he started cackling. “Excellent, boy! You’ve chained the devil! Now what are you going to do with him?”

HIS FATHER’S
laughter loud behind him, Carver climbed atop the coal bay. Sooty smoke covered his eyes, filling his mouth like a vile liquid. Having made its last turn, the train barreled along 42nd Street. He could see the rounded tops of the three Grand Central towers visible in the distance, marking the end of the track.

He lowered himself to the open cabin door. The coal smoke let up, and he tried to spit the grit and foul taste from his mouth. Once inside, blasted by the heat, he was amazed how quickly his father managed to wreak such havoc.

The engineer, a compact, older man whose auburn hair and sideburns mixed with the blackish smears on his face, lay in a heap, lolling dangerously as the train swayed. A bright swelling rose on the side of his forehead, but his fitful breathing told Carver he was still alive.

He turned to the controls, a series of unfamiliar levers and a panel of gauges, the dials all pointing into the red zone. Carver didn’t need to know much to realize the boiler could explode before the train even crashed. He searched the cabin, at first not even recognizing Hawking’s curious brass instrument because it fit so seamlessly with the design.

He wrapped his hands around it and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. Finding a crowbar, he swung at the device. Still nothing. He wedged the flat end of the crowbar into it and yanked with all his might. His grip snapped. The brass pole didn’t move.

On a straightway now, the train stopped rocking and picked up speed. Below the elevated track, pedestrians gaped up in wonder. Calling to them would be useless, but he did need help.

He turned to the prone engineer and shook him. “Wake up! Wake up!”

The man’s head rolled as if it was barely connected to his neck. There was a lunch pail on the floor, a drinking bottle jutting from the top. Carver grabbed it, opened it and poured the contents on the man’s head, realizing too late that it was whiskey.

As it splashed against the man’s ruddy nose and mouth, the sparks flying from the boiler threatened to set him aflame. Frantic, Carve tried to mop the liquid with his shirt. As he did, the man sputtered. Seeing Carver, he screamed and withdrew a pistol from the thick pocket of his overalls.

Carver winced. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t attack you! You’ve got to help me stop the train!”

The man looked highly dubious until Carver pointed to the brass pole wedged against the throttle. Together, they grabbed and pulled. The engineer was short, but his arms were thick and powerful. As he strained, his eyes grew so wide it seemed they’d pop out of his head.

With a gasp they both let go. The brass pole still hadn’t budged.

“Forget it!” the engineer said. He looked out the door at the blur of tracks and then ahead. The great terminal building grew larger every second. “We’ll have to jump!”

Carver nodded and then remembered his trapped father. He was a vile, crazed killer, but he’d also been his mentor and, in some sick, twisted way, tried to care for him. Leaving him to die, handcuffed to a speeding train, sounded more like something the Ripper might do.

“I left someone behind!” Carver shouted.

“Get ’em fast!” the engineer said, aiming himself at the door.

Carver pulled him back. “Can I have your gun?”

The engineer shrugged and then handed him the pistol. An instant later, his small, thick body was rolling and bouncing along the tracks. Carver had no idea if the man even survived. He didn’t have time to wonder now. Grand Central was less than four blocks away.

He climbed out of the heated cabin, back into the chill and smoky air. Pistol in hand, cocked and ready to fire, he made his way back to the passenger car.

He formed a plan. He’d toss his father the keys. He could unlock himself, and they’d make the leap together. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all he had.

But the doorway was empty. So was the rest of the car. His father was gone, the door at the far end of the car still open. Only the handcuffs remained, one end connected to the seat arm, the other jangling free, a thick ring of dark blood marring the steel.