Page 20 of Written in Secret (The Art of Love and Danger)

C HAPTER 20

A FTER TWO HOURS OF TRACKING down two of the four potential victims, Abraham was so weary he could feel the ache in his bones. He leaned his head back against the hack’s frame and closed his eyes. With the breeze cooling his face and the semi-comfortable position, he could sleep until next week. Unfortunately he couldn’t spare even a hack ride’s worth. He still had to meet with Lawson to confirm all four potential victims were accounted for, safe, and warned. Abraham forced himself upright and angled so the door handle regularly jabbed his side. At least another hour, maybe two, lay ahead before he could collapse into his bed.

With any luck, Lawson’s two potential victims had been more cooperative than Abraham’s. Kimball Sullivan had mistaken Abraham for a moneymonger he owed, and had taken off. Abraham could have let him go, but he’d pursued the man instead. Better to be winded and tired than to have a man die because Abraham hadn’t done his job to the fullest of his ability. After a lengthy chase, he’d finally collared Sullivan. The ungrateful brute had landed a decent punch before Abraham got him pinned to a wall and managed to convince the man that he was an officer. With a shrug, Sullivan had said he had bigger problems than a crazy vigilante who might be after him, and then disappeared down an alley. Considering Sullivan owed Weidel the Short a considerable amount of money, it probably was in his best interest to leave town and take care of two threats with one move.

Wesley Xavier had been only slightly better. He’d been deep in a bar brawl when Abraham found him. After breaking up the fight and enduring a few more well-aimed fists, Abraham had hauled him to the nearest station. At least the man would spend the night protected by a jail cell. Once arraigned in the morning for disorderly conduct, it would be up to Xavier to take Abraham’s advice and lie low or continue visiting his favorite haunts for Poe to find him.

All too soon, the hack stopped in front of the McManus Boardinghouse, where Lawson lived. Abraham hated knocking after midnight, but with the door locked, he had no choice. It took several rounds of pounding, but eventually, grumbles came from the other side.

The door opened to a spindly man in a housecoat that swallowed all his features but the fierce scowl. “What do you want?”

“I’m here for Lawson.”

“He has his own entrance so I don’t have to deal with this.” He gruffly directed Abraham down the side alley to access the back entrance to the apartment at the top of the three-story building.

A door with three different locks met Abraham at the top of the stairs. Lawson certainly took preventing break-ins more seriously than any other officer Abraham knew. Then again, Lawson had been on the force longer than most and had probably had lots of experiences that reinforced his vigilance. Lawson answered the door with wet hair, clean clothes, and a grin that turned into a grimace when Abraham mentioned waking Mr. McManus.

“Sorry about that. I should have warned you that I have a separate entrance.” Lawson methodically secured the locks. “After too many middle-of-the-night interruptions from officers needing to speak to me, McManus cleared out the attic and refitted it for my use—at a higher rent, of course.”

Abraham glanced around the open space.

The kitchen was a decent size compared to most apartments Abraham had visited, even if it did share the floor with a large round table with the remnants of an abandoned card game. The place could benefit from a good cleanup. A faint rotten odor tainted the air, probably from the overfull waste bin. When Abraham left, he’d do the man a favor and toss it onto the pile in the alley waiting for sanitation. On the opposite side of the room, two plush chairs framed a large bookshelf filled with the bright orange covers of dime novels intermixed with more reputable titles. The only indication the man might have a family was a photo of Lawson with a teen girl hanging on the wall.

“Not bad for a bachelor, eh? Since I never had a missus, I turned the extra bedroom into an office so I can continue working after my shift.”

“If you’ve never married, who’s the young woman with you in the photo?”

“My goddaughter.” His tender smile revealed a fatherly love, but it dipped into grief a moment later. “She passed just under a year ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He waved away the condolence. “I keep that picture there to remind me why I do this job. It’s a hard one, Hall. It’s best you find your reason for choosing this career, so when the days get long and you get discouraged, you can keep moving forward.”

It was good advice, and something Abraham would have to think on. Up till now, his reasons for becoming an officer had to do with protecting the innocent and upholding justice. They weren’t bad reasons, but they were rather generic. He studied the picture of the young woman. Who would serve as his reminder of why he did this job? Lydia’s distraught face came to mind, and he shifted uncomfortably. Shouldn’t someone closer to him, like Clara or Mother, cross his mind first? This attraction to Lydia was growing unwieldy.

He purposely redirected the conversation and his thoughts. “Is it necessary to have an office in your home? Shouldn’t you leave your work at the station?”

Not that Abraham could throw stones. Since starting this case, he’d gone home every night and continued working the puzzle on his own time. But that wasn’t sustainable. Was this to be his life as a detective?

“Not much else to keep me busy in the evenings, but I do a lot of reading and have weekly card nights. You just missed the last one, but you ought to come next week.” Lawson collected the empty glasses and dumped ashes into the trash on his way to the sink. “Have a seat. I’ve got some ham in the icebox and a bottle of bourbon calling our names.”

Abraham declined and chose a hard wooden table chair rather than a plush one, where the risk of falling asleep was too great. A half-read copy of Shadow in the Night sat splayed open.

Abraham picked it up and frowned. “I thought you lent me this.”

Lawson rattled around in the icebox, stacking thick ham, a hard-boiled egg, and an apple onto a plate. “I have several sets of the books. I’ve been studying Dupin since before these murders. Even tried my hand at writing my own dime novel once, but it was flatly refused.”

“You wrote a dime novel?”

“O’Dell should have burned the awful thing instead of sending it back.” He settled at the table with the odd assortment of food and a double portion of bourbon. “It’s locked away in my desk drawer until I finally get up the nerve to do the job myself. Any luck tracking down your two potential targets?”

“Sullivan’s been warned, and I arrested Xavier for disorderly conduct. You?”

“Noah Grant was diagnosed with consumption last week and has traveled to Colorado for treatment. He’s out of Poe’s reach for now. Samuel Ross hasn’t been home for over a week, but his neighbor says he frequently disappears without warning. She wouldn’t know or care except that he leaves his dog in the house. She’s been tossing scraps through a broken window just to stop his howling.”

Scraps weren’t likely enough with as long as Ross had been gone. Still, Abraham could do nothing about it tonight. “Did she know where Ross went?”

“No. We’ll just have to wait for him to come home or for his body to show up.”

“Which book was he from? We should watch the area where he died in the story.”

“Not a bad idea, Boy Detective. You’ll have me beating out Carlisle yet.” Lawson abandoned his plate, examined a row of dime novels, and pulled one out to flip through. “Ross’s character was beaten, bound, and gagged, then shoved into an attic with a plate of food and glass of water out of reach. It fits Ross’s crime. Officers found his children locked in the attic, living in their own feces, starved, and half clothed in the middle of winter. One was barely three and almost died. Ross was convicted and sentenced to Longview Insane Asylum, but his government friends bought him a pardon from the governor. The children were returned to him until family found them locked in the attic again. They won custody, but he didn’t get charged again.”

“Ross is a special breed of scourge.”

“Makes you want to drag your feet in rescuing him from Poe’s hands, doesn’t it?”

Abraham refrained from responding. It wasn’t his place to execute vengeance, but it made him sick to think of how the children had suffered under Ross’s hands and how the justice system had failed them. They deserved better. The heinousness of both acts were enough to make a man jaded.

No matter how hard Abraham worked to rid the streets of evil, evil won more often than not. Dime novels couldn’t even begin to touch the horrors. Newspapers provided glimpses that were quickly lost to claims of sensationalism. The public walked in blissful ignorance of the fathomless darkness and corruption that surrounded them. The sort of corruption that allowed a man like Ross to not only go free but to have another opportunity to slowly kill his children.

As much as Abraham wanted to deny it, he understood why Lydia wrote her stories and even why Poe chose to take matters into his own hands. Abraham was tempted to take matters into his own hands too, if only by delaying his inquiry into Ross’s whereabouts.

Lawson broke the lingering silence. “I’ve been thinking about Clemens being the one to rescue Miss Pelton at the church. I hadn’t considered that he has a connection to each of the cases, and he has a very personal association with the first murder victim. Otis Wakefield was the man exonerated for violating Clemens’s fiancée. She eventually took her own life.”

Abraham sat up in his chair. “What? How did we miss that?”

“It’s easy to miss when reporting on the murders is part of his job. His personal association didn’t cross my mind, because he had no connection to any of the other murders at that time.”

That shed new light on Clemens’s interest in Lydia and the Billy Poe case as a whole. Clemens was the reason behind Cincinnati’s push to expose Dupin’s pseudonym. If that article hadn’t been published, much of Cincinnati would still be oblivious to the murders. Had he seen Dupin as his partner but was now no longer satisfied by the distance Dupin’s pseudonym created? Stooping to incite citywide upheaval was just the type of unethical strategy Clemens would employ to uncover Dupin’s identity.

Now that Clemens knew Dupin was a woman, he’d convinced himself that they were a perfect match for serving justice. A love match. The thought disgusted Abraham almost as much as Ross’s treatment of the children. Clemens’s attachment to Lydia would explain why he had been nearby at the church, especially given what his fiancée had suffered at the hands of a man. If the love of Abraham’s life were violated, he was pretty sure murder would cross his own mind.

“We need to question Clemens.”

Lawson waved the statement away. “Not yet. Everything we have is circumstantial. At this moment, he doesn’t know we suspect him. If we try to question him, he’ll walk free and with the advantage of knowing we’re on the hunt. He’s not our only suspect either. Monroe has just as much potential to be Poe. Both men need our attention, and Miss Pelton needs our protection. The department won’t cover the cost of an officer’s staying with her or the family, but we can take turns with our off shifts. I’ll take tonight. You resemble a busted punching bag. Get some ice on your face and then some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“What about checking Ross’s attic?”

“We can do that tomorrow. One more night won’t kill him.”

Abraham wasn’t so sure about that, but there wasn’t much he could do to argue. He was dead on his feet, and what were they going to do tonight? Bang on the door until the dog’s howls woke the neighborhood? He didn’t like it, but tomorrow would come.

Hopefully with answers.

Sleep should have come the moment Abraham’s head hit the pillow. Instead, he tossed and turned, the horsehair mattress stiff and unyielding. Just like his conscience.

One more night won’t kill him.

But what if it did? They knew Poe actively sought his next target in an attempt to impress Lydia with his affections. If Poe were re-creating the victim’s crimes, Ross wasn’t likely to starve over the course of one night. Still, lying in bed, knowing there was a man whose life was potentially in danger didn’t sit well with Abraham, no matter how exhausted he felt. He had a duty to serve and protect. They had reasonable cause to enter Ross’s house and check on his well-being. A warrant wasn’t needed. On the other hand, if Ross were waist-deep in criminal dealings, they wouldn’t be able to use the evidence against him in a case, and a jail cell might be the safest place for him.

After struggling to sleep for over an hour, Abraham rose from his bed, redressed, grabbed a hand lantern, and slipped out of the house.

Three a.m. meant Lucian still patrolled his beat. It covered a section from Smith to Pearl to Broadway to Water Streets, an impossibly large area to find one man on the move. Still, after how the other two victims had received Abraham this evening, having a second person with him when he knocked on Ross’s door seemed prudent. Abraham found the nearest police box and used his key to access the phone Cincinnati had installed the year before. The dispatcher at the station house informed him where Lucian had last checked in, and Abraham headed in that direction.

It took another half hour to locate Lucian, but his friend didn’t hesitate to change course and join him. All was quiet on the dark street. The drinking establishments had closed their doors hours ago, and their patrons had either stumbled home or into a gutter somewhere. Even the gas streetlamps seemed too tired to do anything more than cast a faint glow over the cool mist hanging above the rutted street.

Abraham raised a fist to knock on the door but paused. “You have that baton ready to keep the dog away, right?”

“Got better than that. If it’s as hungry as you say, I’ve got a meat pie in my pocket.” Lucian pulled out a grease-blotched paper wrapped around an odd-shaped lump.

A treat for any dog, hungry or not.

Abraham hammered with a force that echoed down the street and made the door shudder. “Mr. Ross, this is the police. We need to speak with you.”

No sounds came from within. Not even the dog. Abraham frowned. Was the poor creature too weak with hunger to respond?

Abraham pounded and yelled louder. A dog inside the neighbor’s house barked, and a stooped salt-and-pepper-haired woman yanked open the door of her home.

“Land sakes, man. I told that other officer that Sam has been gone for over a week. No need to go on trying to wake a man who ain’t there.”

The dog nosed its face between the thin material of her wrapper and the doorframe. He snarled, and the woman pinned its head between her leg and the frame. “Hush, Butcher, or I’ll put you back where I found ya.”

“That wouldn’t happen to be Ross’s dog, would it?” Lucian asked as he pulled out the meat pie and tossed it at the woman’s feet.

The dog pushed through and pounced on the morsel of food. A waft of urine and rotted meat slammed into Abraham at the animal’s nearness. Matted fur couldn’t hide the ribs that protruded enough to be counted. Ross’s utter neglect of the living astounded him.

“Butcher’s not Ross’s anymore. He got out this evening, and I’m not givin’ him back.”

“How did he get out? We have reason to believe Ross may be in danger.”

“Oh, he’s in danger all right. If I ever see his face again, he’ll wish he were back in Longview.” After a glare that indicated Poe had competition, she waved to the narrow alley between their buildings. “The door out back has been rotting for years. Butcher probably finally busted it open.”

Without a further word, she pulled Butcher inside and slammed the door.

The farther down the alley they proceeded, the worse it smelled. An animal’s carcass must be nearby. No wonder Butcher broke out. He probably wanted to eat it.

Though the door remained closed, the bottom corner had been chewed through. Abraham knelt to take a better look, and the miasma of death assailed him.

God, let that be a dead animal.

He wrenched the door open with ease and, with the hand lantern, moved through the kitchen where the dog had scrounged for food. Empty sacks lay strewn and shredded on the floor. Cans punctured by teeth marks provided an obstacle course. The kitchen led into a main room that wasn’t much better. Having given up on food, Butcher had gnawed on cushions, furniture legs, and any exposed wood. There was no sign of Ross, but as Abraham and Lucian climbed the stairs to the second floor, the air turned from pungent to putrid.

Lucian tugged his coat over his nose and nodded to the closed door at the top.

When Abraham reached it, furious buzzing hummed on the other side.

Flies.

How many did it take for the noise to be that loud?

Please let a family of raccoons have gotten in and died.

There was little hope for it, but he prayed it all the same. After a bracing breath through the material of his coat, Abraham opened the door.

The potent stench exploded from the room with the force of dynamite.

Lucian took the stairs two at a time but didn’t make it to the bottom before casting up his accounts.

Bile rose in Abraham’s throat and threatened to make him follow Lucian’s example, but he battled against the response. He needed to see, to know for certain.

A quick glance was all it took.

A black cloud of startled flies hovered over a bloated body stretched across the floor. Gagged, bound, and chained to the wall, the body was clearly Ross’s. A plate of dried-out food sat next to a tipped-over water glass, inches from where Ross must have fought to his last to reach.

In contrast to the death and decay, next to the plate stood a fresh bouquet of roses with a note addressed to Lydia in Poe’s handwriting.

He’d beaten them again.