Wilson shut off the questions in his head. He was exhausted. He knew he had to sleep if he was going to retain a mental capacity that was necessary to react to the unknown of what they were experiencing.
He closed his eyes and thought of his wife who was at their home in New Jersey. He had told her he was going to visit some friends in the Capital and that he would see her in few weeks. She was concerned for him after the death of the President as she knew they were on friendly terms and had offered to come down. He told her not to worry and that Washington, D.C. was not the place for her to be right now with an assassin on the loose.
But he was mainly worried about Jack. How would Jack be around his wife? Right now, she was safe in their other home several states away. But if Jack got it in his mind to harm her, Wilson knew Jack wouldn’t stop until he did just that. Jack wouldn’t be able to help himself; his subconscious wouldn’t let him.
Wilson had to keep his wife away from Jack. Eventually he had to go back to New Jersey, which meant he only had a short time to decide what to do with Jack. He didn’t want to send him away because then he couldn’t watch him. He couldn’t kill him because the universe wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t sure what he would do.
Right now I need sleep, Wilson said to himself for at least the twentieth time since he had lain down. He closed his eyes once more and this time it worked. The world that was full of colors changed to white and then to gray and then to black.
Wilson wasn’t sure how long he had slept when he was awoken by a sound. It had been night when he had gone to sleep and it was light outside now. Wilson opened his eyes and looked around his room. He was sure he had heard a knock.
Through the haze of the morning came another knock. He opened his eyes fully and lifted his head off his pillow. His body followed and he rose from the bed and went to his door. His opened door revealed Vincent.
“Vincent,” Wilson slurred, “good morning. What time is it?”
“It’s eight thirty. I…”
“Eight thirty? Well, I slept for six hours at least. I feel better.” Wilson looked at Vincent in full focus for the first time since opening the door. He could tell something was wrong. “What is it?”
“It’s Jack.”
Of course it’s Jack, Wilson said to himself. It’s always Jack. What now? Did he kill one of the neighbors? Are the police on their way here? What will that mean for me? Surely the neighbors will have seen him around here with me. How do I explain that I am housing a murderer? What will Edith say? What will the university say?
Wilson thought all of these things in a matter of seconds. All the while, Vincent stood in front of him waiting for his response. “What about Jack?” Wilson asked aloud. “What did he do this time?”
“Jack’s gone.”
CHAPTER FORTY ONE
Washington, D.C. – November 1921
The bloated body of Jack the Ripper was found floating in the Potomac River. Bagster Phillips had seen to it personally that the body ended up in the water.
Now that it was done, Phillips wasn’t sure Jack’s death filled the great need inside of him: the satisfaction wasn’t there. After years of hunting down Jack, his actual death was rather anticlimactic. Despite that, he was mostly satisfied and that was enough for the moment – enough to move on with his life.
Phillips had shown up outside of the home of Woodrow Wilson. It was early morning and Phillips was just another elderly man walking down the street. There was a bench across the street from the house and Phillips sat there for some time in observation.
Jack had awakened with a feeling that he couldn’t explain. It was a kind of déjà vu. He rose from his bed and saw that it was early – around five thirty in the morning. The rest of the house was asleep.
He went downstairs to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. As it brewed, he reflected on all that had happened. Outside of the memories that haunted him, he felt great. His concentration was sharp. He felt true kindness and love for the first time in many years. The anger that had consumed him was not gone (mainly because of the memories) but it had lessened. He had been very stressed following his change and had fallen into a mild depression. Now he was coming out of that and he felt truly alive. He had thought the thrill of murder brought him alive but looking back on that, it was more euphoria than a sense of actually living.
When the coffee was ready, he poured a cup and went to the front porch. Wilson had a wide-opened porch filled with miscellaneous chairs; Jack’s particular favorite was a rocking chair built in the 1880’s. The craftsmanship was superb and it seemed to mold to his body as he settled in.
In the chair, he sipped his coffee and looked out over the street in the dim early-morning light that filled the world just before the sun came up. Across the street sat an old man on a bench. Old men sitting on benches was not something unusual in Wilson’s neighborhood. It seemed to Jack that the entire community was filled with the elderly and they all walked and talked and sat with each other on benches. Jack waived at the old man and the old man waived back. Then to Jack’s surprise
