The Ripper

The Second Night

"Erik, I wanna stay up and play," Chris, his little brother, whined. "Play with me! Play with me!."

Erik scooped up the small child and carried him over his head. "You wanna spin around?"

"Yeah!"

Erik laughed and spun around with the kid raised in the air. Chris squealed and shrieked with joy. Normally, Chris would have been asleep by now, but since Jean was staying over tonight, the little kiddo was full of energy.

"Time to come down!"

Erik brought Chris lower then dove onto his bed with the boy in his arms. The two sat up laughing on the now messy covers. Jean sat in the corner of Chris's room and laughed along with the brothers. Erik and Jean had come in to try to get Chris to go to sleep after his mother failed to put him to bed. As it turned out, the two boys weren't very good at it either.

"Come on, time to sleep," Erik said and threw a blanket over Chris's head.

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

After a few more minutes of struggling with the child, Erik finally managed to calm him down. Chris wasn't asleep yet, but Erik and Jean left the room after the boy promised he would doze off. Erik blew out the lamp then closed the door to Chris's room.

"Thanks for coming over," Erik replied.

"No problem. Shall we continue?" Jean said.

The two boys headed to Erik's room, where they had already started their investigation on The Ripper. Erik's father insisted that the boys were to stay home the entire night, but that didn't stop the boys from planning to stay up all night to do some investigating. Papers were scattered all over Erik's floor. Some were wanted posters; others, old inventory reports that Erik created for his father's guild.

"So The Ripper has killed thirteen people, and there's no connection based on location," Erik said. "He's attacked people from all over Meryl."

"There aren't any clear trails on how he gets away," Jean replied.

"He's probably just hiding," Erik said. "There's lots of places to hide all over town. I'm thinking if we can figure out who this man targets, we can catch him."

Erik picked up a piece of paper with a list of the victims names. Earlier that evening, he and Jean had compiled a list of names from memory and various ledgers. With the records from his father's guild, the two managed to create a small profile for many of the victims.

"Since The Ripper left the message about infidelity, I thought he might be targeting people with mistresses and the like," Erik said, "but a lot of the victims were single."

He and Jean laid out the list of names and the scatter pieces of papers dealing with each victim. In all honesty, the paper mess was beginning to hurt Erik's head. They had gathered so much information, but most of it was useless.

"Targets all classes. Targets both men and women." Erik threw a piece of paper into the pile. "No connections whatsoever."

With a loud groan, Erik flopped backward onto the floor.

Jean poked at his cheek. "Are you alive?"

Erik flicked his hand away.

Jean picked up the list of names and pretended to be engrossed reading it.

"You know," Jean said, "I can see a link between all the victims. It's small though. Some other people were talking about it when they came through the bakery too."