Portrait of a Killer Read Free Page A

the Ten Bells pub. Saucy Jack, as the Ripper sometimes called himself, has starred in moody movies featuring famous actors and special effects and spates of what the Ripper said he craved: blood, blood, blood. His butcheries no longer inspire fright, rage, or even pity as his victims moulder quietly, some of them in unmarked graves.

CHAPTER TWO
    THE TOUR
    N ot long before Christmas 2001, I was walking to my apartment on New York’s Upper East Side, and I knew I seemed downcast and agitated, despite my efforts to appear composed and in a fine mood.
    I don’t remember much about that night, not even the restaurant where a group of us ate. I vaguely recall that Lesley Stahl told a scary story about her latest investigation for 60 Minutes, and everyone at the table was talking politics and economics. I offered another writer encouragement, citing my usual empowerment spiels and do-what-you-love lines, because I did not want to talk about myself or the work that I worried was ruining my life. My heart felt squeezed, as if grief would burst in my chest any moment.
    My literary agent, Esther Newberg, and I set out on foot for our part of town. I had little to say on the dark sidewalk as we passed the usual suspects out walking their dogs and the endless stream of loud people talking on cell phones. I barely noticed yellow cabs or horns. I began to imagine some thug trying to grab our briefcases or us. I would chase him and dive for his ankles and knock him to the ground. I am five foot five and weigh 120 pounds, and I can run fast, and I’d show him, yes I would. I fantasized about what I would do if some psychopathic piece of garbage came up from behind us in the dark and suddenly . . .
    â€œHow’s it going?” Esther asked.
    â€œTo tell you the truth . . .” I began, because I rarely told Esther the truth.
    It was not my habit to admit to my agent or my publisher, Phyllis Grann, that I was ever frightened or uneasy about what I was doing. The two women were the big shots in my professional existence and had faith in me. If I said I had been investigating Jack the Ripper and knew who he was, they didn’t doubt me for a moment.
    â€œI’m miserable,” I confessed, and I was so dismayed that I felt like crying.
    â€œYou are?” Esther’s stop-for-nothing stride hesitated for a moment on Lexington Avenue. “You’re miserable? Really? Why?”
    â€œI hate this book, Esther. I don’t know how the hell . . . All I did was look at his paintings and his life, and one thing led to another. . . .”
    She didn’t say a word.
    It has always been easier for me to get angry than to show fear or loss, and I was losing my life to Walter Richard Sickert. He was taking it away from me. “I want to write my novels,” I said. “I don’t want to write about him. There’s no joy in this. None.”
    â€œWell, you know,” she said very calmly as she resumed her pace, “you don’t have to do it. I can get you out of it.”
    She could have gotten me out of it, but I could never have gotten myself out of it. I knew the identity of a murderer and I couldn’t possibly avert my gaze. “I am suddenly in a position of judgment,” I told Esther. “It doesn’t matter if he’s dead. Every now and then this small voice asks me, what if you’re wrong? I would never forgive myself for saying such a thing about somebody, and then finding out I’m wrong.”
    â€œBut you don’t believe you’re wrong. . . .”
    â€œNo. Because I’m not,” I said.
    It all began innocently enough, like setting out to cross a lovely country lane and suddenly being hit by a cement truck. I was in London in May 2001, promoting the archaeological excavation of Jamestown. My friend Linda Fairstein, bestselling crime novelist and former head of the sex crimes unit for the New York District Attorney’s Office, was in London,