The Killings (20 page)

Carmen nodded. From the scant information on the Ripper killings of Atlanta, most who had studied the case narrowed the canonical murders that spanned the period of 1911 and 1912 as the be-all, end-all of the unknown serial killer’s reign of terror, much like Ripperologists canonized the five victims of London’s Jack the Ripper. Like the London Ripper case, though, many thought the Atlanta Ripper continued on well after it was believed he’d ceased his murderous activities. Some true crime historians believe he might have continued well into 1923. This was where Carmen’s theory of Grandma Sable’s curse came into play. Could those later murders be the result of the curse? That once the seed was planted, it had continued to grow, spreading outward as the years moved on?

August 28, 1911

Ran into Chief Marshall today downtown. He told me I have to stop asking questions about the killings. He says I am no longer a civilian investigator. He says that even though the grand jury only handed down indictments on Henry Parker for two of the murders (he was charged with six), it is the opinion of everybody involved in the investigation that he killed those other women, no matter what the grand jury says. I reminded Chief Marshall that women were still being killed in this neighborhood. Do you know what that sanctimonious White sonofabitch did? He smiled at me and said us “darkies have been killin’ each other since they were brought over to this country on slave ships.”

God, how I wanted to smash his smug face in. But then I thought of Officer Lacey, still off duty and recuperating from his beating, or so I’ve been told.

Robert Jackson still believed the killer was out there,
Carmen thought. It was clear to Carmen that Henry’s arrest was a means to an end, a way to get a noted high-profile criminal off the streets. If that meant pinning some of the murders on him and claiming he was the elusive Atlanta Ripper, so be it. Despite everything she’d read on the case, modern day true crime historians never attributed the Atlanta Ripper killings to Henry Parker, nor anyone else for that matter. Rather, Henry was merely one of more than half a dozen men who were arrested and tried in connection with various murders all attributed to the Atlanta Ripper. Being that the very concept of a serial killer was alien to law enforcement at the time, it was easy to understand why the police were grasping at straws.

She flipped through another few pages of the notebook and stopped, frowning at the disjointed handwriting.

She’d come across earlier entries in the journal, often interspaced with his entries on his investigative work. These entries were often personal thoughts, musings on everyday doings at the barber shop, at home, or random observations taken after a walk through town. Some of them were cruel barbs aimed at other people, unnamed in the journals, but the tone was different. Robert Jackson’s prose in most cases was fluid, portraying a bright, educated, and industrious young Black man of the early twentieth century.

But these other entries were markedly different. The handwriting was sloppier, the prose style resembling that of a disjointed mind, the syntax clumsy, with various misspelling of words, suggesting an entirely different person. But it couldn’t be a different person - it was certainly Robert, as evidenced in the way he referred to earlier events and people mentioned in the notebook.

July 23, 1911

Henry can rot far’s I care. That nigger means nothing to me. Always swingen his dick around like he the king. Fuck him!

When she’d encountered that entry her first thought was Robert was angry at Henry’s suggestion (
no, not suggestion,
Carmen thought ...
Henry forced him
) he join the civilian Negro investigators. That this was a random entry, probably made in anger and under the influence of alcohol.

But as time went on and the events wound to their conclusion in that late summer of 1911, that other voice began to assert itself more and more in its own distinct style.

August 22, 1911

I’s feeling the itch a little bit. Want to head out to the speakeasy and have me a drink. No, I wants to have several drinks! For once maybe bring a hussy to the house and go to town on her in the right proper way. Not let him out. He itching to come out, but he ain’t goan to. He locked up nice and tight.

When Carmen had first read that entry a few weeks ago, she’d noted it in the Word document. Robert was obviously referring to Henry in this entry. Then other elements of her research had beckoned, she’d had that confrontation with Alfred, and then Michael Carter, and she’d lost track.

Now it was time to look into this further.

Carmen read the entry a second time and then paged slowly through the notebook. She looked through the entries, making careful note of each one: Robert’s calm, measured voice expressing dismay at being kicked off the force; his continued search for clues, for evidence his friend was innocent of the crimes he was being held for. And interspaced with those entries were the others, in a different script, that wild, untamed voice, the words seeming to leap out at her.

Did Robert Jackson have a split personality?
she wondered. She stopped paging through the notebook, frowning.
Was this where it started? With Robert?
It made sense. She believed Wayne Williams suffered from a similar split personality. Were these journal entries written in the different script made by Robert’s alternate personality?

She flipped the page, venturing into a portion of the journal she hadn’t looked through, and something there on the page stopped her. Her heart froze in her chest as she read what was written there.

I killed them all.

The words came out of nowhere. He’d been describing the scene at Pastor Marcus’s murder, his flight from the church, and his subsequent meeting with the derelict in the Civil War uniform, and then those four cryptic words.

I killed them all.

Carmen stared at the words. Could this be Robert Jackson’s confession? There was one other entry after that. It answered her question. Carmen felt chills race across her flesh as she read this last entry.

September 2, 1911

Bitch last night tasted fine and sweet. She was so wet inside I creamed her all up in there and I drank her down, tasted her juices and mine all mingled together and then I cut a piece of her woman parts off and took it home, fried it like bacon this morning and ate it and it was very good and I put her tit in newspaper and have it in the icebox I will have some tonight because that’s what he wants its what I want its what she wants and she wants me to go for more, get some more of them half-breed hussies get more and I will go get more of that tonight and let him out let him out let him out-

Heart racing, Carmen reached for the hardcopies of her notes and began paging through them. She ran her finger along the page of murder victims of 1911 and came across an entry for September 1. A woman named Wanda Rutledge, found eviscerated in a dark corner of Fir Street and Lime in the Old Fourth Ward. Her murder had been reported in the
Atlanta Constitution
the following morning. What wasn’t reported was the coroner’s report that the victim’s left breast, uterus, and vagina had been severed and taken by the killer.

Robert Jackson was the Atlanta Ripper,
she thought.
But who is the “she” he’s referring to in that entry?

Her cell phone rang, jarring her out of her thoughts. She looked at the number on the display screen. It was coming from a Herman Alexander - the professor she’d been trying to get in touch with at the University of Georgia.

“Hello,” Herman Alexander said, his voice rich and deep. “I’d like to speak with Carmen Mendoza please.”

“Speaking,” Carmen said, setting her notes aside. She could hardly contain her enthusiasm as she made plans to see Herman Alexander the next day in her hopes to solve one more piece of this puzzle, namely that rare volume on voodoo she’d had photocopied from the library -
Yoruba Magic in Georgia.
Her assistant at the paper had done the necessary research and found out that Herman Alexander was the last person to have had access to that book. As much as she was having a hard time with the voodoo aspects of this case, she felt it imperative to follow up on it. She only hoped it would provide the knowledge she needed.

TWENTY-SEVEN

September 2, 2011, Atlanta

Dr. Herman Alexander was a big man. Standing a good six feet, five inches and as wide as a house, when Carmen entered his cluttered office space in the humanities building on the University of Georgia’s Atlanta campus, he conveyed warmth and good cheer. He was in his late sixties, with dark skin and a full beard that was pure white. He was dressed casually in blue jeans and a tan button-down shirt. His wooly hair was unkempt and also pure white. His eyes were warm and inviting.

His voice matched his imposing size; it was a deep bass rumble, booming, yet warm and friendly. “Ms. Mendoza. So good to meet you.” His hand engulfed hers as they shook. “Please excuse the mess. I’m preparing for the upcoming semester.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

“What can I do for you?” Dr. Alexander asked. He beckoned for Carmen to sit in one of the chairs by his desk.

Carmen scooted over and sank into the chair, which was old and worn. The chair next to it was piled with books.

“You asked me about that book from the Atlanta Public Library’s Special Collections room.
Yoruba Magic in Georgia
?”

“Yes,” Carmen said. “I found it about a month ago during some research. The library said that it had last been checked out back in nineteen-eighty-one by a university professor. That’s how I was able to find you.”

Dr. Alexander smiled. “Very persistent.”

Carmen smiled back. It had taken the intern she had for the summer, a tall, bespectacled, skinny White girl named Amy Williamson, most of the past week to track Dr. Alexander down. Carmen had Amy call every college in the greater Atlanta area, focusing on professors who specialized in religious studies, American and African American history, and anthropology. Dr. Alexander was a tenured professor of history at the University of Georgia.

“May I ask what your interest in Yoruba magic is?” Dr. Alexander asked.

“Voodoo, specifically.”

“Voodoo as it relates to African Americans in the United States?”

“Yes,” Carmen nodded. “Specifically, I want to learn more about the author of the book. Do you know who wrote it?”

“There’s no formal record on who authored that particular volume,” Dr. Alexander began. “But I have it on good authority that it was a man by the name of Daniel Weber, who was an occult scholar of some repute.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Dr. Alexander paused momentarily. “He later fell into some foul business with a cult out in California while researching them. This would have happened much later, in the early 1920s.
Yoruba Magic in Georgia
was his first publication.”

“If he wrote it, why didn’t he cop to authorship?”

“I’m not sure. I can only speculate. I understand Mr. Weber was very secretive while he was researching that other cult in California too. He approached both subjects - Yoruba magic and the group in California - with great care and reverence. From what I understand, he wasn’t afraid of Yoruba magic or its various offshoots in any way. In fact, later he investigated and wrote about Haitian and New Orleans voodoo, Macumba, Santeria, and visited with Marie Laveau’s daughter in 1892, just a few years before she died. The younger Laveau was said to be just as powerful as her mother.”

“In his book, he mentions a woman named Sable,” Carmen said. “Did he ever meet with her?”

At the mention of Grandma Sable, Dr. Alexander’s demeanor changed. The smile went away. The laughter in his eyes became darker, narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you want to know?”

“I told you over the phone that I’m a journalist,” Carmen said. “I’m working on a story about Sable’s influence in the Old Fourth Ward. The few people I’ve talked to, who remember her, seem very afraid of her even after-”

“They have every right to be. That woman let something out!” Dr. Alexander stopped suddenly, as if realizing he’d said too much. He looked flustered. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”

“You researched that book for a reason, Dr. Alexander, and I’m not leaving until you tell me why.”

“It’s too late for that!” Dr. Alexander barked at her. “I know it’s started it up again. I read the papers. The Lust Killer they’re calling it this time. Fourteen young women and girls, all biracial like you. The papers say he was caught, but that’s not enough. The killings
will
continue. You
are
watching out for yourself on the streets, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am,” Carmen said, stunned by this sudden reversal of behavior in Dr. Alexander. “And what do you mean by ‘that’s what they’re calling it this time’?”

Dr. Alexander regarded her from across his massive desk. “You’re a smart woman. I can see that. This story you’re working on ... it led you to that book, and that led you to me. You’re researching Sable, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I need to know more about her.” Carmen leaned forward. “What happened to her? What was it about her that still causes so much fear in people?”

“You’ve talked to others about her?”

“Yes.” Carmen nodded. “An old man who still lives in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood. He lives across the street from a home owned by a succession of White folks since 1925 or so ... only as far as I can tell, those people never lived in that house. Sable lived there. For some reason, they
let
her live there. Why would they do that?”

“Her power,” Dr. Alexander said, shaking his head. “She could use that power to great will. When she regained her strength following her near death in 1901, the family that employed her for so long, they let her live in that house. That neighborhood was brand new in the 1920s.”