The Killings (11 page)

“He was about your size,” Moses said, gesturing to Robert. Moses appeared to be around Robert’s age, and his friend, Mike Brown, appeared younger. Both men were dressed to the nines - dark coats, white shirts, dark vests, ties, dark slacks, felt hats. They were dressed to impress. Mike Brown was built like a lumberjack and cut an imposing figure, more than six feet tall with shoulders as wide as two average fellows. “He was very well-dressed, had on a black broad-rimmed hat.”

“Like this one?” Robert asked. He tipped his own hat.

Moses gave Robert’s hat a once-over and shook his head. “Same color, but broader around the rim.”

“Okay.” Robert made a note of this in his notebook. “What else?”

“Well, he went down Irwin Street,” Moses continued. “And then he just disappeared. Didn’t think much of it, as Mike and I were standing out here that night having a conversation. It gets pretty loud in there, as you can see.”

“So what happened?”

Mike Brown continued the story. “We seen Ellen walk that way. We said howdy do as she walked by.”

“She was going home from work,” Moses said. “She works as a cook for an Inman Park family.”

“I see,” Robert said, jotting this down. Inman Park was just the next community over.

“We didn’t hear nothin,” Mike Brown continued. “We was just talkin’, and then somebody started yellin’. They was down the street.”

“They was so loud, the doorman poked his head out and asked us what the ruckus was,” Moses said.

Robert raised his eyebrows. “You don’t say?”

“No, sir,” Moses said. “Mike and I ran down Irwin Street and we came across Ellen lying on the sidewalk, near the Atlanta Stove Works. An old man was yellin’ to beat the band. He looked petrified. Said he’d come across her body ‘cause he heard a noise. Said he’d heard some kind of ruckus and so he got up, went outside and ... well, he found her like that.”

“Do you remember the man’s name?”

Mike and Moses shrugged. “I don’t,” Mike admitted.

“Okay.” Robert jotted some more notes down and regarded the two men. “Did you see that other man again? The one with the broad black hat?”

Moses and Mike shook their heads.

“You didn’t say anything about this to the police?” Robert asked.

“No, sir, we didn’t,” Mike said.

“Why not?”

They looked at him as if he were crazy. “Do I have to spell it out for you?” Moses asked.

Robert tried to be assertive. “Look, I’m working with the Atlanta Police now and we’s tryin’a catch this beast that’s killin’ our women, but we need everybody’s cooperation. I know y’all ain’t keen on talkin’ to them paddies, but you need to start. That’s the only way we gonna stop all this killin’. It’s the only way our women are gonna be safe again.”

Moses looked Robert over from head to toe with one eyebrow raised and a sly grin on his face that slowly hardened into a sneer. “And I guess them paddies figure an Uncle Tom like you can get us niggers to talk to ‘em, right?”

Robert ignored the taunt. Under different circumstances, he would have challenged the smaller man on it, but with Mike Brown standing next to him he didn’t want to risk a fight. “What do you remember most about this man you saw?”

Mike and Moses glanced at each other. Robert read the look that passed between them. They were nervous.

“What is it?” Robert asked.

“There was something about him that just seemed ... off,” Mike said.

“Off? Like how?”

Moses tried to explain. He gestured with his hands as he spoke. “He walked like ... well, like he was stiff or somethin’. Like he’d just learned how to walk but was trying to be real casual about it. You know, like he was tryin’ to fool people that he was normal, like people do when they’re drunk, but he wasn’t drunk.”

“How do you know?”

Moses shrugged. “Because when drunk people try to act normal they just look even more
drunk
. This cat was too smooth with it. You wouldn’t have really noticed anything different about him if you weren’t lookin’ real close.”

Robert tried to picture what Moses was describing. He couldn’t quite imagine it, and then Mike interjected a comment that made the hair along the back of Robert’s neck stand up. “There was something about his eyes ... like they was dead but there was still something living inside them ... like one of them vampires. You know, how they say vampires are dead folks that get possessed by evil spirits that bring them back to life and make them drink blood and such?”

Robert nodded. “Yeah, I think I heard about them. You think this guy is one of them? A vampire?”

“Well, that’s how this cat was acting, like there was something in his head that he was listenin’ to, like a guy tryin’ to remember something real important or like them crazy people that talk to themselves, but he wasn’t. He was just kinda listenin’.”

“What do you mean?”

Both men shrugged and turned back to Robert, looking sheepish.

“Don’t know,” Moses said. “But Mike’s right. It’s like he was ... like he wasn’t all there, like he was drunk or high or something, but he wasn’t staggering or nothing. He was just really focused, you know? Like he wasn’t aware of stuff around him like he should have been. Like he didn’t see anything but whatever was going on in his head. I’ll tell you this, whatever he was on, it wasn’t moonshine and it wasn’t horse or white lady either. It was something completely different. That guy was over the moon.”

“White Lady?” Robert asked.

Moses shook his head and laughed.

“You really is a square, ain’t you? I mean ‘pony,’ ‘girl,’ ‘powder.’”

“Girl? Oh, you mean cocaine?”

“Yeah, man. Cocaine.”

“You know, he could have been on cocaine. I’ve seen guys get all weird like that after snortin’ pony all night,” Mike added.

“Yeah, you right. He might have been high or something. I don’t know. It was just more like the cat was sleepwalkin’ than high.” Moses answered as Robert continued scribbling in his little notebook.

Another song started up within the nightclub. Inside, a glass shattered to the sound of laughter. Whatever it was that happened in the roadhouse, it completely shattered the mood. Moses and Mike seemed to regain their composure.

“Listen, we need to get back inside,” Moses said. “We gots women in there waitin’ on us.”

“Sure you don’t want to come in and have a nip of somethin’?” Mike asked Robert. His tone was friendly and open now. “I’m buyin’.”

“Thanks,” Robert said, flashing a smile. “But I’ll take a rain check. Thanks both y’all for your help.”

And with that Moses and Mike went back into the roadhouse, and Robert took a step down Irwin Street, heading into the darkness where Ellen Marshall had met her end.

THIRTEEN

August 4, 1911, Downtown Atlanta, Georgia

Main Street was busy this Thursday afternoon as Detective Martin Douglas climbed out of his Ford and retrieved his hat and coat from the rear seat. Shops were open and doing a bustling business, and the street was filled with traffic - automobile, bicycle, and horse-and-buggy, all jockeying for position. Damn street was getting so crowded with traffic, the chief of police was drawing up plans with the city commissioner to put in some kind of street lights. Other cities across the country were beginning similar measures, and since Atlanta was in the beginning stages of replacing their gas lamps with electric streetlights, it made sense to install some kind of traffic lights. This year alone there’d been a dozen accidents between automobiles and horse and buggies, three of them fatal. It got to the point where Martin hated driving the Ford anywhere in town. He much preferred driving it on the country roads on the outskirts of town.

Martin climbed the steps to the new police headquarters and let himself in. He threaded his way through the lobby and down the hallway. He took a deep breath as he steeled himself for his meeting with the chief.

He stopped in front of Chief Marshall’s office and rapped lightly on the closed door. It sounded like Chief Marshall was in there talking to someone; the moment he rapped, the conversation stopped. “Yes?” Chief Marshall asked.

“It’s Detective Douglas,” Martin called out.

“Come on in.”

Martin stepped inside and started in surprise.

Seated in one of the chairs Chief Marshall had for visitors was Officer Lacey. The younger officer grinned at Martin. Officer Lacey looked like he had just come off his afternoon shift. The top button of his collar was unbuttoned, his tie was loosened, and the standard-issue cap all patrol officers wore was resting on the edge of Chief Marshall’s desk. There was something about that grin that put Martin on guard.

“I thought you wanted to see me at four,” Martin said to Chief Marshall.

“That’s correct,” Chief Marshall answered. “And it
is
four o’clock. Have a seat.” He gestured to the empty seat next to Officer Lacey.

Suspicious, Martin sat down, ignoring Officer Lacey.

“I asked Officer Lacey to sit in on this meeting, since he’s had some success in the arrests of more than half of our suspects in the Ripper murders,” Chief Marshall said.

Martin scowled. “Success? You call hauling in half a dozen men on suspicions, hearsay, and flimsy evidence success?”

Officer Lacey turned to Chief Marshall. “See what I mean, Chief? He just doesn’t understand. That’s the kind of attitude I gotta deal with.”

Chief Marshall ignored Officer Lacey’s comment. His cold gray eyes fixed on Martin’s. “So tell me the latest.”

Martin brought out his notebook and began flipping through it. “Well, you already know we have an ID on the victim found Easter Sunday. Poor woman was unidentified for so long. Name was Mary Kate Sledge. Coroner said there was a deep slash to her neck and that her skull was crushed, probably by a rock. There were signs of a struggle.”

“Newspapers called her an octoroon,” Officer Lacey said. “That another name for nigger?”

“No, jackass,” Martin said, barely able to contain his rage, “it means she was of mixed race. An Octoroon means she had one great-grandparent of colored descent.”

“Now, Martin,” Chief Marshall said, “you know I frown on senior officers verbally berating their inferiors.” Chief Marshall’s eyes were fixed and steely on Martin’s.

“As I was saying,” Martin said, meeting Chief Marshall’s gaze with his own. “Mary Kate Sledge was killed on Easter Sunday. She was nineteen years old. Two weeks later an unidentified woman was found floating in the Chattahoochee. Coroner hasn’t IDed her yet, but he estimates she was probably around fifteen years old. Her throat was cut and she was disemboweled. In fact, she was pretty badly mutilated.”

Martin shuddered at what Coroner Pearl had told him, which he’d neglected to put in his official report. The Ripper had not only cut the young woman’s belly open, he’d also pulled her uterus out through her vagina.

“What’s being done to identify her?” Chief Marshall asked.

“Three of my men have her description and are canvassing their neighborhoods,” Martin answered. “They’ve been knocking on doors, talking to business leaders, spreading her description around town. So far nobody has stepped forward claiming to know the girl.”

“How many does this make it so far, Detective?”

Martin flipped through his notebook. “By my count, this brings the toll to thirteen since January of this year.”

“What about the murders that happened in 1909?”

Martin nodded, knowing what the chief was getting at. Half a dozen colored women had been brazenly murdered on city streets since 1909, some shot, others throttled and then beaten about the head. The only connection Martin could see was the victim type. “They were different. Those women were shot or beaten.”

“They were colored, weren’t they?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the murders happened in the same area? The colored neighborhoods?”

“Well, yes ...”

“And wasn’t one of the victims from this year also shot?”

Martin saw where Chief Marshall was going with this and he let out a long sigh. “That’s what’s been frustrating me about this case. We have Negro women being killed left and right, we have two good eyewitnesses who say the killer is a well-dressed colored man - hell, he stabbed that poor girl just last month and she lived. What was her name?”

“Lena Sharp’s daughter?” Chief Marshall asked.

“That’s her. Poor lady went out looking for her mother not knowing the woman was already dead, butchered by that maniac. Then he stabs her. She’s our best eyewitness too.” Martin frowned. Her description of a well-dressed colored man with broad shoulders wearing a black broad-rimmed hat matched every young Negro man in Atlanta. It also matched most of the investigators he’d handpicked out of the colored community to canvass the area and report suspicious activity.

“Mmm hmmm.” Chief Marshall regarded Martin for a moment and then turned to Officer Lacey. “Six arrests in just under two months, Officer Lacey. That’s some fine work there.”

Officer Lacey grinned lazily. “Just doin’ my job, sir.”

Chief Marshall directed his gaze back to Detective Martin. “I should add that we got another grand jury indictment on a suspect.”

“Nigger’s name is Ben Wise,” Officer Lacey said with a sneer. “And he’s one ugly sucker.”

“Officer Lacey picked him up last week in a Fourth Ward saloon,” Chief Marshall said. “So far, two witnesses have come forward saying they saw him with one of the victims, a Miss Sadie Holley.”

“She’s the victim Henry Huff was seen with also,” Martin said, frowning.

Chief Marshall nodded. “Yes, her and Todd Henderson too.”

“That whore was just givin’ it up to them darkies, wasn’t she!” Officer Lacey cackled.

God, I would give a week’s pay to get this man alone for just two minutes,
Martin thought, feeling himself get angrier the more he had to listen to Officer Lacey’s drivel.
Two minutes, and I will punch his teeth down his throat.

“I should add that Officer Lacey has been the arresting officer in all three of those cases,” Chief Marshall said.

“Why am I not surprised?” Martin muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chief Marshall asked.