The Unknown

January 1886, New York, Maiden lane,

A brutal disclosure unfurls in the city. Three murder cases in a single day and the authorities stand dazed and bewildered confused. Zero eye witnesses, dead of the night and three lost lives. No one could recall the anonymous killer in the freezing cold of New York City.

Julia, a high school pedagogue, a professor of mathematics was the first victim. Teaching for nearly eight years in county academics, she was a devout and stern lady commanding an unfeigned and fervent personality. Living in the Maiden lane, 13th floor of Ridge top apartment, she was found brutally murdered in her living room, her throat slashed and organs ripped out. It was a dreadful murder scene with no fingerprints or any fallen knife drenched in blood, clearly the slayer made sure he wasn’t an easy target!

Christopher Michael, a man in his late forty’s, working as a manager of a luxury hotel in Broadway, came second in the list. Unmarried and gifted with fancy and dazzling annual, he led a flourishing lifestyle in his two stories at 151 Street. His slain body was unearthed from his lawn by the cops when the gardener stumbled upon its uneven surface and reported the authorities of a foul smell sensing some probable danger.

Johnson, a juvenile studying in the same school where Professor Julia was a tutor of math, went missing three days prior to the crime scene after dispersal of school. His fretful and perturbed parents made numerous phone calls and rummaged through the entire New York City, helpless and troubled about their son’s whereabouts. Three days later, the police commissioner reported their son’s deceased body from an abandoned house in the same street. A locale reported of profuse blood flow through the stairs when he saw the gates open (which was an unusual scene as no one resided there anymore). However, no person could offer eye-witness to the murders as the cold blooded killer completed his work in a finesse, troubling no neighbors and ensured a smooth accomplishment of his motive. The authorities reached the crime scenes with the help of chaotic and tangled pieces of reports made by people who sensed something uneasy; however no one actually spotted the killer on his way to take away lives of innocents( well, apparently!)

James Both was summoned as a new sergeant major from Madison Ave, and rounds of investigations were carried out by the federal bureau of investigation. Metropolitan police and the city police of New York City deliberated for hours to figure out the subtleties of the cases and the relations of the killer with the victims but all efforts seemed to go in vain. As forensic technologies were not much advanced in those times hence even an inundation of reports, suggestions and names of suspects was largely a futile effort. Innumerable criminologists were called in to try and give a face to the criminal but careful eyes and suspicious minds couldn’t get to the end of the mystery. Mainstream media flashed reports pertaining to the prolonged struggle of the authorities to establish the face of the killer and New York City shuddered in the fear of possibilities of further such killings being planned by the criminal at such a vital point when all the higher authorities were busy tracing his experiments!

After a good long time of nearly half a month, the police commissioner receives a call from an anonymous dialer who doesn’t reveal his name or identity and hangs the call by summoning him to an outlying area somewhere crossing Jericho and the Great Neck gardens. The cop orders his subordinates to trace the call straightaway and heads off to the said location. What awaits them is an eerie scene.

It was a dead body of an unknown man, probably in his early thirties bleeding profusely, blood oozing out from his throat and abdomen. The phone in his hand was the same device through which the commissioner received the call and there was a letter pressed in between his bloodied fingers that read:

“Finally you reached to the end of the tale, officer. Do not forget your failed efforts could yield you no fruit unless I myself decided to address you personally. And yes, you’ll not be able to take me in your heavy handcuffs as I don’t give you the privilege! Madame Julia, that avaricious Christopher and oh so pretentious tiny kid Johnson! All three of them killed my little child. David was his name. They called me a maniac, a jug head. They bullied me and my son for my thinking, urge for excitement and conduct. They used to say I got fooled by my wife who left me for that old Christopher and his wealth! That bitch lady! Christopher took away my wife, my pretty house, my happiness, everything. No one knows where she disappeared after that, I don’t know if she’s breathing or gone. That night when I killed him, I couldn’t find her. Gone she was, probably with all the money? I don’t know. That Julia, she knew my state and yet harassed my son for not having those fancy notebooks she asked for or correct math that she desired. And that Johnson! A spoiled brat with filthy money. He used to call my child a son of a whore and kicked him in his stomach when he couldn’t play well. Officer, my son was not well. He had pneumonia and I had no money to take him to the doctor. And that Johnson threw iced water on my son accusing him of stealing his ball, which he didn’t. I couldn’t see my little child leave me just like his mum. I took away their lives. Yes officer, I’m your killer. However, shame on your “exceptional professionalism” that you couldn’t save my child and punish those scoundrels for what they did. I pity you. Anyways Officer thanks for coming to see me bleed. It’s just the injury, I died many years back. I wish you a good day. I think it’s time for me to call it a night.”