Chapter 27
Dr. Joplin seemed nervous as he surveyed the group at the table, preparing to answer Ward’s question. “Well,” he began after some consideration, “there could be a number of reasons why the Ripper might take such actions, but, in my opinion, he’s doing it to prevent blood loss from the wounds he inflicts after death.”
“How’s that?” Ward asked, leaning forward in concentration. He was clearly interested in hearing more about the doctor’s theory. Aaron listened as well, but he was also trying to read the physician to see if he was legitimate or some sort of a fake looking to advance his own agenda.
“So… if you think of the heart as a pump, driving blood to the various parts of the body, if one were to make an incision, particularly the large slashing cuts the Ripper uses in the neck and torso areas, while the heart is still pumping blood, there will be a splattering effect, far beyond what we are seeing now, which is only due to the particular motion the slayer is using when he makes the cuts. Asphyxiating the victim before the incisions are made is one way to lessen the effects the pumping motion has on the blood splatter.”
“Do you think he does this so that he can drain the victim?” Vicky asked, her face contorting into a grimace as she pondered the information supplied to them by the doctor.
He cleared his throat again, and Aaron could feel his confidence rising just a bit the more he spoke. “I believe that is part of the reason,” Dr. Joplin nodded, “though we know that Jack does not feed off of his victims to the extent one would expect from a typical Vampire. He seems to be more fascinated with both the hunt and the dissection, at least in most of these cases, so it might just be that stopping the heart before he makes his incisions gives him a cleaner work area if you will.”
That explanation seemed reasonable to Aaron, and while he still wasn’t sure what to make of the newbie, he could see why Ward had brought him in. He certainly seemed to know what he was talking about when it came to medical information.
“Thank you, Jamie,” Ward said with a smile and a nod. “I think it is fair to say, then, that the Ripper was in the process of dispatching this young lady when you discovered her, and there’s likely a possibility that Dr. Joplin’s explanation is the reason why.”
“Did she live?” Carlo, a Hunter with a thick Spanish accent asked.
“We alerted the police, and they took her to hospital. Since she hasn’t made the papers, I’m assuming so,” Frank replied.
“Do we think Mylett could’ve been another victim interrupted then?” Harvey asked, referring to the victim from early December that both the police and the press refused to attribute to the Ripper.
“Actually, we got some information on that last night,” Vicky dove in before Aaron had a chance to. She looked to him, and he raised his eyebrows, an indicator that she could proceed if she wanted to. Clearly, she preferred to defer to him.
“We ran into our informant last night,” he explained. “According to him, Mylett was not a Ripper victim. He says she killed herself.”
“That seems implausible,” Edmund chimed in. “Who strangles herself in the dead of winter in a public park?”
“One of the reasons we haven’t accepted the police’s official report,” Ward reminded him.
Aaron continued. “Our friend also says that the girl found with the stake through her stomach the day after Christmas was a Ripper victim. He says this is an indicator that the Ripper is ‘changing things up,’ that the police are on to him, and we can expect more diversification in the future.” He looked around at the faces, and each of them seemed stoic, as if they realized they still had a long road ahead of them.
“Jamie, you examined the late December victim yourself, didn’t you?” Ward asked. The doctor nodded, and the leader continued. “Did you find her wounds consistent with the Ripper’s tactics?”
“I didn’t,” Jamie admitted, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t do it. If what Aaron and his informant are saying is true, the different tactics could be an effort to throw the police off of his trail.”
“And this Vampire you meet with says that’s what he is trying to do?” Frank asked. “Get the police off of him?”
“Yes,” Aaron confirmed. “He also admitted that he, himself, is on the police’s list of suspects.”
“And we’re sure that this guy is not the killer?” Berta asked.
“I have never truly suspected him,” Aaron replied, “but I think we’ve confirmed it if you saw the Ripper last night, blocks away from where we spoke to the Vampire informant, and the man you chased was dressed much differently than the one we spoke to.”
She nodded, and Aaron now felt certain the man he’d been speaking to could not be the killer—though he was no closer to discovering who Jack the Ripper really was.
“We do know, then, that one of the suspects on the police list has to be the Ripper, then,” Edmund noted, “if we believe the informant.”
“Great. That narrows it down to a hundred men,” Vicky reminded them.
“There are some suspects from the initial list we can remove,” Ward said, “though the list would still be quite long and growing each day.”
“It still might be a good place to concentrate our efforts,” Dr. Joplin added, and Aaron was surprised to hear him speak up without being asked a direct question, a first. “As I’ve stated before, I do believe the Ripper has medical experience. If we hone in on those suspects already on the list who have some sort of medical practice, we should be able to narrow it down considerably. Then, we can determine how best to proceed.”
“A fine idea,” Ward said with a smile. “Let’s get to it.”
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