The Whitechapel Project

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Previously on Whitechapel

Six killed again. This time, his victim was Liz, the mysterious woman who met him in the hotel he woke up in after a hospital stay. The murder was much more intense than previous ones, as he was under the influence of Jack the Ripper while it happened. Six even started thinking of the unnatural urges inside of him collectively as “Jack.” After the murder, Six was covered in blood and had to think of a way to deal with the situation he was now in.

Episode Fifteen – Dead Letter

The first thing I need to do is find out who Liz really is… although “was” would be more accurate, I guess. Maybe if I can figure out who she worked for, that’ll give me something to go on. I briefly consider searching going back into the other room and searching Liz’s body for clues, but my stomach lurches at the thought. I’ll look around the house first.

I take another drink from the bottle, and my eye catches a piece of paper on the counter, partially tucked under a napkin holder. I pull it out, and it’s written in the same handwriting as the note from the hotel.

“Nothing is what it seems. Elizabeth.”

You were fucking right about that, Liz. I drop the note on the counter, leaving red smears all over it. Maybe instead of depositing more forensic evidence around the house, I should clean myself up a bit. I wash my hands quickly in the sink. My hands are still red when I’m done (red with her life, the life I stole), but I don’t have time to be more thorough – I need to get back to work figuring out who Liz really was.

I open the coat closet and find her purse. I bring it back to the kitchen and dump the contents out onto the counter. I go right for her wallet and start digging through her credit cards. Each one seems to have a different name on it, but I notice that the name “Rachel Parks” shows up a few times. The last one is a corporate card – black with silver accents. I’m about to toss it onto the pile with the others when I notice that it’s not in any of her other names, but it’s still a name I recognize.

ZM Lacuna.

God damn it, she lied to me! She was working for Lacuna. This had to all be another attempt to get me back in a fucking cage. On a hunch I quickly shuffle through her business cards, and sure enough one turns up one under the name Rachel Parks for the Whitechapel Project.

Fuck, isn’t anyone who they say they are anymore?

I flip open the wallet and take the cash within – I don’t count it, but I see a couple of hundred dollar bills flash by as I shove the wad into my pocket. I debate taking the credit cards too, but I toss them into the trash instead. If Liz or Rachel or whatever the fuck her name is was right about Lacuna coming after me, they’ll track any transactions made with her cards. Even if she was lying to me about that too, once she turns up dead the police will track her cards anyhow, and thus far I’ve been doing good to stay away from the police since my time in the hospital. I do grab her car keys, though. The rest of the contents are useless – a pack of gum, a couple of cheap pens, a notebook. I open the notebook, hoping for a Hollywood-style clue, like a mysterious phone number scrawled with the words “My Boss” next to it, but it’s just blank. I sweep it all into the garbage.

My headache starts to build up again. I stumble through the living room, trying to find something that resembles a bathroom, and maybe some painkillers. I catch sight of the corpse out of the corner of my eye, and I feel nausea welling up inside me again. I try to force it down when the headache explodes, throwing spots in front of my eyes, and a buzzing noise fills my world again. I stumble down the hallway and yank open a door without looking. I can barely make out a medicine cabinet through the spots. I open the door. I find a bottle of pills. I open the bottle of pills. Buzzing, churning chaos rings in my ears. I can just make out words as I dry-swallow a handful of pills.

Where’s her cell phone?

I blink hard, staring at the mirror in the darkened room. The spots start to fade, and I can think again. I never found a cell phone in her purse, and there wasn’t one anywhere in the kitchen. If I can find it, there might be emails or texts or something on it that will give me a better clue as to who she is. I stumble out of the bathroom and start looking.

Each room is as sterile as the last. The bed looks like it’s never been slept in. All of the books in the library are Reader’s Digest compilations, lined up as neat and orderly as a showroom. I open every drawer and door and look under every chair and couch, not being too careful or subtle in my search. I even looked in the dryer, and was about to close the door when I instinctively checked the top of the empty drum and found two pistols taped there. I ripped the tape off and stuck the guns into the waistband of my jeans.

Now I have money, a car, guns, and some pain pills. Just what a serial killer needs for a night on the town. But where in the hell is her cell phone?

I walk back into the main room. Her corpse is still there, her back to me like a petulant child curled in a ball. I take a deep breath to steady my nerves, but the smell of blood and shit overpowers me. I gag, and cover my face with my hand as I make my way over to her. I try not to look at her as I dig around in her pockets.

I find something hard, about the size of my palm, and I pull it out. It’s her phone. I quickly leave for the safety of the kitchen. My hands are covered in blood again, but I try to smear some off of the phone’s screen. I notice that it’s a single unit, not a flip phone, and I can just make out the name of the last person she called in the glow of screen – Zachary McPhearson.

Wait a minute. I smear the blood off of the screen some more. There’s a timer, and it’s counting up. Looks like something’s been running for the past twenty minutes or so. Maybe she didn’t get a chance to hang up her phone.

Which means that whoever she called last heard everything that happened.

I stab at the button to end the call, just as I hear someone starting to open the door.

What should I do?

Try to find a back door to escape?

Find a place to hide so I can see who it is?

Shoot whoever comes through the door?

Or shoot myself before they can take me?

The choice is yours.

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