Anatomy of Evil Read Online Free Page B

get to a compliment. It was like a verbal writ, acknowledging flavor. I’ll give Israel this: he recovers well and he knows what questions to ask, a fine quality for any reporter.
    “What do you make of these murders, Mr. Barker?”
    Fine thing, I thought. Get someone else to do your thinking for you, Israel.
    “I would say that this killer is enacting some sort of ritual. The cutting of the throat, possibly after near strangulation, followed by the second cut of the abdomen. The exact moves both times. This was not a frenzied attack, but carefully planned out and possibly rehearsed.”
    “Was it some sort of pagan ritual done by followers of Satan?”
    “As I recall, the ritual you mention requires some sort of altar. I meant it was a personal ritual to the killer. For whatever reason known only to him, he is going through the steps in a process.”
    “Could the murders have been some sort of punishment for their wicked lifestyles? The stabbing of the abdomen was so close to the child-bearing organs. Could the murders have been intended to kill a child within them?”
    “They were past childbearing years, for the most part,” Barker said, puffing on his pipe placidly as Frobisher recharged his cup.
    “Oh, yes, I suppose they were. Could it be possible that the killer meant to kill Annie Chapman the first time, but in the dark mistook Mary Nichols for her? Then he’d have to kill her all over again.”
    “That is possible. In fact, all of your theories are possible, and a thousand theories besides. It is better, however, to gather more facts before trying to test a theory. Chances are, one of them might be correct, but it will get buried under another more sensational and grotesque one. I suspect at the end of the day, the killer will be revealed to not be the monster we all think and even hope he will be, because he will be revealed not to be a monster at all, but a man, a man like you and me. This is reality, you see, and not high opera.”
    “Of course,” Israel said. “That makes perfect sense.”
    That was Israel’s way of interviewing people, to slap them with a blunt or fantastical question, followed by a soothing pat on the back, as if to say, “We’re mates, you and me.” Questioning was akin to riding an unbroken horse; the trick was to not be thrown off. To do so, one has to be able to discern what the animal is thinking.
    The problem with Barker, however, is that he knows what the other man is thinking. He doesn’t fidget, he never seems hurried, and he’s rarely out of control. Only by watching Barker day in and day out for years can you deduce—no, can you guess —what he may be thinking or may be about to do next, and even then you are often wrong. For example, he often approaches our offices by different routes, crossing Westminster or Waterloo, alighting on a different corner each day, sometimes as far away as Downing Street. But then, I have seen him in the bathhouse in his garden, covered with scars, studded with bullet pocks, burn marks, charred flesh, and tattoos from a dozen secret societies. He came by his methods the hard way. As good as Israel was, well, he may think he was riding the steed, but I suspected that crafty old steed was in fact riding him.
    “One idea put forth is that the Whitechapel Killer hates women,” Zangwill pontificated. “Such men are the worst examples of their sex. The killer not only cuts their throats, which of course silences them—the original Silent Woman, eh? But then he cuts them open down there, you know. There is an unconfirmed rumor he removes the organs. Surely this is the work of a virulent woman hater.”
    Barker gently knocked his pipe into the depression in the table. The clay churchwarden looked extremely fragile in his blunt hands. Then he drained his cup, which must have been cold by then, but when the Guv starts something, he always finishes it. He set the cup back in the saucer with a click.
    “He could just as easily be a medical