The Killings (19 page)

She knew he was concerned and worried for her. He’d assured her that he would use his influence to keep her name out of the news and he did. The story that broke over the local networks and the leading area newspapers was that Michael Carter had been killed by an employee of the firm that handled security for the
Atlanta Constitution’s
headquarters. The police acknowledged the security guard was a hero - he’d stopped a brazen attack by a man homicide detectives were confident was the Atlanta Lust Killer. The potential victim’s identity was being kept private. Usually in large media stories like this homicide detectives divulged names, and if they didn’t, journalists used the Freedom of Information Act or managed to get the information through devious means. Jacob had put the word out to senior editors at other dailies and news organizations, though, and for once the wolves had been kept at bay.

A few days later the news hounds got their ID - the potential victim had been a young runaway named Tina Collins, who had already been reunited with her family in rural Missouri. It wasn’t the first time the police and news organizations had worked together to concoct a fictitious person to satiate a public hungry for more information. If anything, it kept the media at bay.

Naturally she’d told the detectives and Jacob the basics - she was leaving the office late and Alfred followed her, angry that she had rebuffed his sexual advances. She admitted not filing sexual harassment charges against him before because she thought she could handle the matter herself. Regardless, he’d followed her to her car and tried to assault her. Michael Carter happened to be close by, intervened, and shot Alfred - and then attacked her. It was during this fight that the security guard had arrived, having grown concerned that Carmen had failed to leave the parking garage after she left the building. The guard had acted quickly and not only got Michael Carter off Carmen but had shot him in self-defense when the killer had brazenly tried to attack him.

The press had a field day with this, of course. Once Michael Carter’s DNA was run through the database and it was matched with the Lust Killings, a swarm of media activity had descended on the
Atlanta Constitution
. It was one thing for a newspaper journalist to be on the brink of a breaking story like this, it was quite another to have a major aspect of the case unfold on newspaper property, involving their own employees. The way it was spun in the media over the past week, Alfred was made to be the hero. He had come upon Tina Collins being attacked, had tried to save her, and was killed by Michael, who then continued his assault, only to be stopped for good by the security guard. Carmen’s name was never mentioned in the press.

“And that’s how we want to keep it,” Jacob Little had told her.

That was fine with Carmen. She didn’t want to be associated with what had happened. Didn’t want her name splashed in the paper as part of a story. The security guard in question didn’t want the attention either, and he readily accepted an undisclosed sum and signed a non-disclosure agreement with the paper and his employer. He was also given a raise and transferred to a more cushy post. Carmen was confident he wouldn’t talk.

Today was her first day back at the office since the incident. She’d arrived late that afternoon, shortly after four, at Jacob’s invitation to “talk things over,” as he put it. From what he’d told her over the phone, their coworkers had no idea what had went down between her and Alfred and they thought she’d been on vacation. Of course they knew about Alfred, knew that he had intervened to save a young teenage runaway and had paid with his life. At least one of her coworkers was skeptical of this story, though. Carmen had received an e-mail from one of the stringers, Roberta Bloch, who told her she wouldn’t be surprised if Alfred had tried to get a piece of that teenage runaway’s ass for himself before being blown to hell by the Lust Killer.

She felt she owed it to Jacob to tell him the truth. He’d been straight with her from day one when she started at the paper. He’d given her incredible leeway with her assignments, let her take risks, encouraged her, mentored her. So of course she had to tell him the whole story.

Jacob Little sat behind his large oak desk; the way he sat sometimes, with his long, skinny legs pulled up on his chair, his lanky body bent over the table, or slouched over to the side, he sometimes looked like a human pretzel. He’d sat there like that silently listening as she spun the story out, listening to everything - her research at the library, what she learned about Grandma Sable, and the alleged curse. She was afraid he would dismiss it as superstitious mumbo-jumbo, would tell her she was wasting her time. Instead, she was somewhat relieved at his response.

“You need to follow this through,” he said.

“You mean ...”

“You need to finish this,” he said, nodding at her.

Carmen felt a tinge of relief flow through her. She was afraid he would agree that what she’d uncovered was interesting, but that it was simply too big a story to follow up on her own, that she was needed here at the paper. She sighed. “You mean ... I can pursue this? For the paper?”

“Not for the paper,” Jacob Little said. He scooted forward, straightening up in his chair. His silver tooth sparkled. “You need to do this for yourself, Carmen. This is big.”

The implications weighed heavily on her. “I just don’t know,” she said. “There’s no proof Michael Carter’s murder spree was in any way inspired by Grandma Sable. I feel like I’m still grasping at straws with the whole voodoo thing. If anything, what I’ve learned is that Wayne Williams has a split personality. He thinks something called the Fury compelled him to murder those boys. That same phrase was used by other killers.”

“Michael Carter’s mother said he used that word a few times at the house,” Jacob said, reflectively. “Lots of killers use that term, or something similar, to describe what they feel when they get that urge to kill. But there’s something about this story that has you hooked. I can tell.”

“Is that why you’re letting me continue with it?”

Jacob shrugged. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t. I think you’ve just struck the tip of the iceberg. The stuff you found in our archives section seems to be yielding a treasure trove of information. I’d be interested to see what else you can come up with.”

“So I can continue with this? My non-compete with the paper won’t be an issue?”

Jacob Little offered her a smile. “I give you my blessing.”

Carmen felt relieved. “Thanks, Jacob!”

“But there’s one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“What happened with you and Alfred? Not a word of it in anything you write. I don’t even want to see an allusion to it. Understood?”

Carmen nodded. “Yes, of course.”

“As long as you can guarantee that, you have complete access to the archives,” Jacob said. “You can take stuff home if you want.”

“Thank you, Jacob,” Carmen said. She got up from her seat, feeling excited again. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”

Jacob Little pushed himself back from his desk, still seated cross-legged in his chair. “Just let me see a first draft when you’ve finished it. I want to read this story for my own curiosity.”

“You know I will!” Carmen picked up her purse and turned to leave.

“Oh, and Carmen?”

“Yes?” Carmen turned back to Jacob.

Jacob Little grinned at her. “Welcome back!”

TWENTY-SIX

September 1, 2011, Duluth, Georgia

Carmen set the old, spiral-bound notebook on the end table by the sofa and stretched. It was late - almost midnight - and she’d been reading through Robert Jackson’s notebooks for the third time since arriving home from the office. Her own notes on the case - totaling seven thousand words on a Word document - were open on the iBook, currently resting on the sofa. Carmen saved the file, closed the laptop, and sighed.

She had a solid grasp of everything now, from beginning to end. She’d managed to find more than sixty other cases spanning a hundred-year period, all relating to the murder cases she’d singled out. In more than a dozen instances the Fury was mentioned at least once, even if it was in passing. In half of those cases, the suspects had been declared mentally unfit for trial and committed to psychiatric institutions. In most of the cases, though, like Wayne Williams and several others, the murderer had been judged sane and found guilty. She had paid close attention to Wayne’s case, rereading court transcripts and notes made by attorneys, mental health professionals, prison officials, and criminal profilers. Based on this information, she believed Wayne was truly psychotic.

She had gone back to the Atlanta Ripper case in an attempt to find the psychological pattern - primarily higher than normal incidents of racial violence. It was inevitable violent outbreaks between different races would be prevalent in major cities, but what she was looking for was incidents that were higher than the norm and were sustained for long periods of time. She found a few, but none had reached the proportions of Atlanta, Georgia. She was of the growing belief that the higher percentage of murders perpetrated against Blacks and mixed-race Blacks in Atlanta had started with Grandma Sable, for reasons she was still trying to make clear. Grandma Sable might have been a feared voodoo priestess ... she might have even placed a curse designed to protect her great-grandson, as Wayne Williams alleged. But what was a curse exactly? To the superstitious, it could be a death sentence. Tell a believer he has been cursed and he subconsciously believes it. Carmen had read plenty of cases in which those cursed by voodoo or similar magic succumbed only because they had been made aware of it. The power of suggestion was everything. Perhaps it was the strongest form of magic. Once a thought entered a person that something bad was going to happen, if there was some form of emotion involved such as guilt, anger, love, or revenge, it was very likely the curse would work.

Power of suggestion.

So was Grandma Sable’s curse merely a subtle form of mind control? A suggestion to her great-grandson that he was not to associate with White people lest he be taken advantage of, hurt, or worse? Could that suggestion have weaved its way through the community, culminating in the Ripper murders and the more than two dozen mixed-race victims?

Carmen thought it was very possible. Grandma Sable was a force within the neighborhood. She was feared. Respected. People believed in her powers, in the dark magic of voodoo, just as equally as they believed in God, in the resurrection, in the Virgin birth. Wayne Williams obviously believed in the curse. Had the subtle suggestions of Grandma Sable’s curse stayed with him as he grew up, only to manifest in his own particular fetish toward young boys, resulting in his own murder spree, which he then blamed on the Fury?

The power of suggestion,
she thought. She pulled Robert Jackson’s notebook into her lap and opened it up again, paging through it slowly.
If that’s the case, it started here.

She read an entry marked July 28, 1911:

Henry stopped by the barbershop today. Old man Stan was sitting there looking at a magazine, as usual, and Henry told me rather casually that he had known one of the Ripper victims - Lena Sharpe. Of course, I had suspected this. Some of the victims were Henry’s girls. If Detective Douglas knew I wasn’t revealing this information to him, he would fire me, but I didn’t join the civilian investigator’s team to make friends. I joined at Henry’s request, probably to feed him information on Chief Marshall’s investigation into Henry’s own activities. This has put me in a precarious position.

Carmen flipped through another few pages, wondering how Robert Jackson’s personal journal came to be in possession of the newspaper.
Maybe it had something to do with the journalist who wrote that story for the
Atlanta Times, she thought.
Maybe whoever wrote that story teamed up with somebody at the
Constitution
following Henry’s arrest and Robert turned his journal over willingly?

Unlikely,
Carmen thought. Why would Robert Jackson turn his personal notebook over willingly to the
Atlanta Constitution
? There was no record of Robert Jackson after 1911. Did he die? Was he killed by Chief Marshall’s boys for his indiscretion when Henry Parker was arrested? Perhaps that’s how his journal wound up in that old box down in the archive room. It could have been placed there anytime after 1911 or 1912, where it would have lain for decades until she came across it a few weeks ago.

Carmen flipped forward through the notebook, scanning the pages. She’d mostly concentrated on the case spanning the summer of 1911 and Henry’s arrest, ignoring what appeared to be notations on Robert’s personal comings and goings - these notations had been written with the same pen, in a similar style of handwriting, but they appeared more hurried, as if he had just been quickly jotting down his thoughts on the fly. As a result, she paid special attention to his notations on the investigation.

August 21, 1911.

I didn’t go back to Henry’s house. I couldn’t. Not after what I’d seen. Lacey was probably dead by now and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t hit him, Lacey would have killed Henry. Roscoe would have killed Lacey and I would have just walked away. Now I’m probably an accessory to murder.

So that explains his arrest for his so-called indiscretion,
Carmen thought. She continued paging through the journal. There wasn’t much mention of Henry after this. The few times Robert did mention him he expressed sadness that his friend was facing a trial for a series of crimes he did not commit.

August 27, 1911

I know Henry didn’t kill those women. Chief Marshall says the murders have stopped, but word on the street says a lady was killed last week. Of course the few police officers I talk to admit there was a murder, but they’re not calling it a Ripper killing. What else can it be called? The lady was found ripped to pieces, with her insides yanked out of her and strewn all over the street like confetti!