David Golemon: Ripper

Jack watched Sarah closely. He knew she was feeling indebted to the Frenchman for coming after her in Mexico. But he also knew there was something else he couldn’t quite grasp. The why of it, he supposed. He saw the sadness in her eyes when he had hinted at Henri’s fate.

“Listen, I think—”

A knock sounded at Jack’s door. Sarah stood and hesitated a moment and then looked down at Jack.

“I love you.”

Collins didn’t say anything; he just winked.

Sarah went to the door and opened it but not before noticing that Jack didn’t respond when she had said she loved him. She looked up when she opened the door. Niles Compton stood there with a pair of crutches supporting him.

“Lieutenant, may I come in?”

“Of course,” she said as she stepped aside. “Would you like Jack…,” Sarah caught herself a bit too late, “the colonel to yourself?”

“No, I think you better be here for this.”

Sarah’s brows rose as she closed the door and worriedly looked at Collins who lay in bed bare-chested and bandaged heavily across his broken ribs. He was silent as once more he waited for the other shoe to drop on his head.

Niles nodded at Collins and leaned against his desk.

“Do you want a chair?” Sarah asked.

Niles just shook his head no.

“I’m no good at this Colonel.” Niles lowered his eyes. “So I guess I better just say it before … before I lose the courage.”

“Just say it,” Jack said, keeping his wary eyes on the director.

“Colonel, uh, Jack,” he said turning to the familiar. “Your sister Lynn was murdered in Baltimore last night — she and a friend of hers from Langley.”

Sarah was stunned as she looked from Compton to Jack’s frozen features. He seemed not to know what to do with his eyes as he looked from the director back to Sarah and then quickly away again. He cleared his throat and then again swallowing several times.

“What … what happened?” he finally managed to ask, avoiding Sarah’s look of shock.

“The Maryland State Police say she and her companion were killed randomly after they had a flat tire after midnight two days ago.”

Jack Collins went silent and remained that way for several minutes.

“Would you excuse me? I have to call my … our mother.”

Niles nodded and limped to the door as Sarah opened it. He didn’t use the crutches as he felt they would fail him at this, the worst possible moment.

Sarah remained by the door, but Jack never looked up as he reached for the phone.

After Jack had informed his mother of the death of her only daughter, he went silent for two days. Alice had volunteered to take Cally Collins back to D.C. to make arrangements for the family. Then the colonel clammed up. Sarah couldn’t reach him, and even when Carl Everett came to check on him and jokingly report on the progress of Lieutenant Ryan, the candy striper, Jack remained silent, only nodding that he heard what was said. Even when the president of the United States came into his room just before the debriefing Niles had ordered he remained almost totally mute, nodding his head and mumbling at the appropriate times in the conversation. He did that with everyone he came in contact with.

The conference room was only half full as most of the departmental managers were busy cleaning up the mess in their various departments from the recent attack on the complex. Niles Compton had decided to keep all of the information to be explained to the people meeting that day tightly controlled. The director had ordered a select few to hear Pete Golding explain, in theory, what they had been dealing with.

Jack sat in his customary place at the opposite end of the long table facing Dr. Compton. His eyes were dark and still haunted as Everett came in and sat beside him. Sarah was three seats down from the president and chanced a glance at Collins, but he never looked up until the meeting started.

Virginia sat next to Compton. He nodded his head, not making eye contact with anyone. The assistant director stood.

“Okay, we have a lot to cover, and the president can only fool the Washington Post for so long before they discover he’s missing.”

No one in the room laughed at her small joke except for the president. As he saw no one else, not even Charlie Ellenshaw, crack so much as a smile, he went as silent as the rest of the men and women present. Will Mendenhall, who was attending his first debriefing in the conference room, sat next to Gloria Bannister, whom Niles thought deserved to be in on the tale Pete had to relay because of her losing so much in the attack.

“Pete,” Virginia said, “the floor’s yours.”

“Thank you,” Golding said as he stood with pointer in hand. He strode to the main viewing screen and nodded his head at the navy signalman.

“Perdition’s Fire,” Pete began, “has been kept a well-guarded secret for over a hundred years, but has been in existence for over three thousand years.” Everyone in the conference room exchanged glances at the claim Pete had just made. “The formula has been analyzed by Europa and our Event Group people at CDC and the Harvard School of Medicine. We also brought in the CSU School of Botany and the National Center for Genetic Research. The information is factual and indisputable.”

The first slide provided by Europa appeared on the screen. It was of Lawrence Jackson Ambrose.

“Our friend here did something truly amazing and also a hundred years ahead of his time. But somehow the good professor Ambrose lost his way. The man was brilliant but quite possibly the most insane person of his time.” Pete nodded and the next picture depicted confused those watching. “This is an official police report submitted and classified as top secret by the government of Great Britain. It concerns a series of murders that occurred in the year 1888 at a location in London called Whitechapel.” Pete saw the recognition in the faces around the table. Even the president leaned forward in his chair to read the hazy report from 142 years ago.

Jack finally looked up and stared blankly at the screen. Everett and Sarah watched, but the colonel made no move to take part in the debriefing.

“The report was filed by the metropolitan police, in conjunction with the chief medical examiner’s office in London. This document is part of the most unbelievable cover-up the world has ever seen. It all started with a writer of some renown doing research for a little book he was writing on aggressive behavior through the miracle of modern medicine. The name of the book researched was a novel we know today as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and that author was Robert Louis Stevenson.”

This bit of information caused another round of talking and exclamations around the table. Still Jack Collins remained silent even though he heard every word spoken.

“It was Robert Louis Stevenson who originally tried to warn the metropolitan police about the true nature of just what they were dealing with.”

“What is it we are looking at on the screen?” Virginia asked Pete.

“This slide lists the autopsy reports of six women murdered in Whitechapel in 1888. These reports are in direct conflict with the reports filed by the medical examiner in Whitechapel. The local medical examiner listed the horrendous wounds received by these women. They were bad enough that anyone reading them would never suspect the police, or the British government, of trying to hide anything. That is where these reports come in.” Pete slapped the large screen with the pointer. “They were discovered buried in the archives of Scotland Yard and in the journal of Lawrence Ambrose himself, which the Event Group had in its possession for the past 120 years. But the real gold is the culpability of the British government in all of this that Europa uncovered through police sources directly.”