The Black Midnight Page 7

  Annie read that last sentence again, and her heart lurched. Surely not.

  Chapter 9

  With a sigh, Annie tucked the letter into her pocket and returned to her hotel. Bypassing the desk clerk who was busy trying to speak French to a guest who obviously did not speak English, she hurried upstairs and locked the door to her room behind her.

  The letter with the stamps that had intrigued the clerk was still where she’d put it. Annie slid the invitations over to reveal the envelope with her father’s familiar handwriting emblazoned on it.

  Alice A. von Witten

  12 VanZant Place

  Chicago United States of America

  She sighed. Part of the arrangement Simon had made with the Pinkerton Agency for her employment was that she would be given an address where her family could write while she was “away.” The Pinkertons forwarded any letters from her family to whatever location she’d been sent, as long as it did not compromise the mission.

  She picked up the letter and moved to the seat beside the window. The afternoon was warm for December, excessively so. Annie lifted the sash. Instantly the sounds of the street below drifted up to her.

  Papa was a dear and was rightly protective of her and Beatrice. Though Granny paid Papa a generous allowance, or so she had overheard, Annie and her sister were the assets that would assure solvency would be maintained into future generations. Keeping a manor house and a country home was no inexpensive endeavor even for royalty, her father often complained.

  If only Beatrice would decide on which of her many suitors she would bestow her favor. Then perhaps Papa would not be so frantic to keep track of Annie and have her wed.

  When his protective nature kept Annie from accepting the hard-won appointment to the Metropolitan Police’s Crime Investigation Department as a special constable, she’d been nearly inconsolable. She had been thrilled by the opportunity. Her parents obviously had disapproved.

  Then dear Simon, her godfather and a close friend of the family, called her into a meeting. “Though you are named a special constable, your father has made it impossible for us to put you to work here in London. However, I have a friend in Chicago.”

  I have a friend in Chicago. Six words that had changed her life. And her address.

  Though her father never would have allowed her to take a position as a Pinkerton detective, he had no qualms about placing her under the protection of Simon’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pinkerton, who would be introducing her to Chicago and New York society.

  She weighed the letter in her palm. Another sigh and Annie opened the letter, dated the twentieth of October.

  Unlike Simon’s terse one-page missive, her father had written a chatty multipage account of life in the English countryside these past few months when the family traditionally returned to the family home for the fall. He described village life at length, including weddings, funerals, and a brief list of births. Then he moved on to their plans for Christmas with Granny in London.

  Your mother and I would like very much for you to be in attendance. Come home, Daughter. It is time.

  Annie let the letter drop into her lap. Simon was right. What would she do?

  She rose to return the letter to the top of the stack on the desk and looked over at the window. The afternoon was not half spent.

  Tonight she would put together a draft of her thoughts on today’s investigation and write Papa. For now, she had more work to do.

  Starting by interviewing as many eyewitnesses to the monster’s crimes as she could locate. She began by paying a visit once again to the location of the first murder.

  “Tom Chalmers is who you want to speak with,” the lady of the house told her. “My husband and I were in Galveston when the events occurred. We have nothing to say other than we felt terrible about the whole thing.”

  Her experience was similar at every other place. Either the homeowner refused to come to the door, knew nothing, or wanted nothing to do with an investigation. She would have preferred to interview the servants, but that was an impossibility if she could not get inside the door or attract anyone’s attention from the alley.

  Though she hated to admit it, Mr. Blake’s allegation that the people of Austin, both the employers and their servants, wished to forget the awful ordeal seemed to be true. Overhead, dark clouds gathered and the wind had picked up. Dejected, Annie hailed a cab with the intention of returning to her hotel.

  The cab that stopped, however, already had a passenger. “Good afternoon, Miss Walters,” Cameron Blake said with a smile. “I wonder if you might have a minute.”

  “I don’t actually,” she told him.

  Blake’s smile was swift. “Yet you’re standing there hoping to catch a cab to keep out of the rain. I have one. Let me deliver you to your next meeting.” He paused but only for a second. “Or wherever it is you might be going.”

  As the first fat drops of rain began to fall, she looked up the road in hopes of seeing another cab. Nothing.

  Annie turned back to the reporter. “I will accept your offer. Thank you.”

  A moment later, they were headed in the direction of her hotel with the rain pouring against the roof of the cab. “Just in time, I’d say,” Blake told her.

  She offered a weak smile. “It was indeed.”

  An awkward silence fell between them. Then the reporter spoke up. “Were any of them willing to talk to you?”

  Annie looked up sharply. She briefly considered pretending she did not know to whom he was referring, then changed her mind.

  “No,” she said. “Not one.”

  “I could have told you that,” he said, leaning back and crossing his arms. “They’re circling the wagons. No one wants to talk to an outsider.” Blake shook his head. “What am I saying? No one wants to talk about the crime spree, period. You heard what Swain said at the governor’s dinner. It’s just not a topic anyone wants to think about.”

  “Until it happens again,” she said. “If it does.”

  “It might not,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I pray it doesn’t.”

  “How long have you been working on this story?” she asked him.

  “Since the beginning,” he said. “Though I finally got the paper to see that this was a big enough story to send me down here. Took a while. I arrived just before the September murder. The big one.”

  “Why do you call it that?”

  “Because he killed a man. That hadn’t happened before.” He shrugged. “Felt to me like he was either escalating or going out with a bang when he attacked Orange Washington and hauled Gracie Vance a good distance from the place where he grabbed her. I’m still not sure which.”

  “Have you spoken to any of them? The survivors and witnesses, I mean,” Annie clarified. “I wonder if there’s some piece of evidence they saw or heard that they do not realize is important.”

  “I tried. When the alarm was raised about Gracie’s murder, I ran off to the scene just like half of Austin did.”

  “So you were a witness yourself, of a sort.”

  “I was.” He paused as if recalling the moment. “It wasn’t anything I want to see again, Miss Walters, and I’ve looked at some pretty grisly crime scenes in my day. And written about them too. I can tell you that Orange Washington is no small man, so whoever bested him cannot be either. There were two other women there who weren’t harmed, but they were too terrified to recount what happened. And what he did to Gracie…”

  Blake looked away and said nothing for a full minute. Annie left him to his silence.

  “Trouble is, it took no time for that crime scene to be trampled beyond repair. If there was any evidence that could be identified by a footprint or something of the like, it was gone.” He shook his head. “These people are their own worst enemies when it comes to preserving evidence. But this is Austin, not New York. I guess things like that don’t happen much around here.”

  “No,” she said. “This is a first for Austin. Who do you think did it?”

&nb
sp; Her abrupt change of direction took him off guard, as it was intended to do. “Now that is the question, isn’t it? The interesting thing is, I could make a case for a dozen men—and surely it is a man—off the top of my head. Men in power whose hands never get dirty and working men I’ve seen hauling more bricks on their shoulders than a human ought to be able to. Any man whose anger can spark—or whatever it is that drives him—sufficient to kill. That’s your man.”

  Annie nodded. “Yes, I agree there appears to be nothing to define him as far as race or station in life. He’s a killer who is driven by something we cannot yet determine to murder women who are sleeping in their beds.”

  She let that thought take hold. There was something to that last statement.

  “He only kills women who are sleeping and defenseless,” she continued. “That speaks to something inside him. A defect. Or a wound. I just can’t quite define it yet.”

  “Here’s how I look at it,” Blake said. “I don’t care why. That’s for the article I will write after he’s caught. What matters is who.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Rule out anyone who cannot lift a heavy ax over his head more than once. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Blake shrugged. “Then we pray that is enough.”

  The cab pulled to a stop in front of her hotel, and Annie moved to exit. Before she stepped out, she looked back at the reporter. “Thank you for allowing me to share your cab. And for the information. You’ve kept me out of the rain and given me some things to think about.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t told you anything you didn’t already know. The question is, do you have anything you want to tell me?”

  Annie frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I know you’ve seen the police reports. They’re off-limits to reporters, so maybe you saw some interesting fact that isn’t being circulated to the general population?”

  “Mr. Blake,” she said in mock astonishment, “are you priming me for information I am not supposed to be giving out?”

  He grinned. “Of course I am. Is it working?”

  “It is not,” she said firmly.

  “A pity. I can pay a generous finder’s fee for any information that is usable,” he told her. “Even a Pinkerton detective must have expenses. It is nearly Christmas. Perhaps there are gifts to be purchased. Baubles and trinkets to be bought. A new frock or a pretty hat, perhaps.”

  A new frock or a pretty hat? She stifled a groan. Did he honestly think her conscience could be appeased with baubles and trinkets?

  “Thank you, Mr. Blake, but your fee is wasted on me,” she said evenly. “If you really want to do something good, however, why don’t you advertise that finder’s fee in your next column and see if you can get any takers. Someone out there may be in possession of valuable information and in need of ready cash.”

  “A good point indeed,” he said. “Perhaps I shall.”

  “Then I will leave you to it. Good afternoon, Mr. Blake.”

  “And I will be certain to credit you with any information you provide, if credit is what you wish.”

  “Please don’t mention you’ve spoken with me,” she said hastily. Too hastily. She could see the interest pique on the reporter’s face. “I don’t want to compromise an investigation by allowing too much information to go out. I’d rather it not be widely known that I am here.”

  “I understand.”

  Annie did not miss the fact that while he said he understood, he made no promises that he would comply with her request. She stepped out of the cab and hurried through the rain to duck beneath the shelter of the hotel’s broad green awning.

  As the cab pulled away, she spied Cameron Blake watching her. In that moment, she was certain of one thing: she should have chosen to walk back in the rain rather than sharing a cab with Cameron Blake.

  She said nothing of value to a reporter. Any question he asked, she deflected. Instead, she had been the one to question him.

  Annie went over their conversation in her mind as she reached for the door. It was all fine. All above board.

  Why then did she have a knot in the pit of her stomach?

  She certainly hadn’t worried about speaking with the reporter at the governor’s dinner. Others had been seated around them, to be sure, and the comptroller had held sway during most of the conversation.

  Perhaps it was because now that she had returned here, the task of writing to her father would be the next item on her list of things to get done. And she definitely needed to write to Papa.

  She also had no idea what she planned to say. So perhaps that was the problem.

  Annie stepped inside the hotel’s lobby and froze. Waiting for her with a newspaper in his lap and a scowl on his face was Isaiah Joplin.

  “What are you doing here?” Annie demanded.

  “Waiting for you.” Ike looked past her to be certain the reporter hadn’t spied him as the cab drove away and decided to join them. Then he turned to Annie. “You told me you were going back to your hotel. You didn’t mention that you and Blake had plans together today.”

  “Because we didn’t.”

  “I saw you getting out of the cab just now. Blake looked pleased with himself.”

  “And that’s what I’m worried about.” She waved away the comment. “Isaiah, I respect you as a fellow Pinkerton detective. I would hope you do the same for me.”

  “I do.”

  The lady Pinkerton fixed him with a look. “Then reconsider the direction this conversation is going. I do not have to account to you for my time, just as I would not require you to account for yours.”

  She had a point. Yet Ike found himself irrationally bothered by the fact he had caught Annie returning to her hotel with Cameron Blake. Even though he knew where she had been.

  “Has Blake been with you all afternoon?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Did you not hear what I just said?”

  “I did, but my question remains the same. Was the reporter with you all afternoon?”

  “I only met up with him on my way back here,” she finally said. “It was about to rain, he had a cab, and I did not. Truly, I find the man insufferable. You, however, are edging very close to insufferable as well.”

  “Past it, I think,” Ike said.

  Annie stifled a smile. “You’ll get no argument from me on that point.”

  “A doctor friend of mine sent a message that he would like to speak with me.” He paused for emphasis. “I’m certain this has to do with our case, so I thought you ought to come along. Since we’re a team.”

  “Enough, Isaiah,” she snapped. “I should have asked you to go along with me today. I admit it. So I am telling you now. I went out to speak with witnesses, though not a one of them wished to speak with me.”

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  He shook his head. “Austin is a big city, but it is still very much a small town. As soon as the front door closed at the Hall home, the news that a Pinkerton detective was asking questions started spreading. After the first time you knocked on a door, were you able to get anyone else to answer?”

  “I was not,” she admitted.

  “Now you know why.”

  Annie let out a long breath. “This conspiracy of silence is why that monster has not been caught. Could it be he’s one of them?”

  A theory Ike had tossed around for a while. “I’m not ruling that out, but I don’t have any suspects. Do you?”

  “No.”

  He removed his watch from his vest pocket, checked the time, then looked at Annie. The time was never right on the thing, but replacing it would require a shopping trip he did not wish to take. He looked over and noticed she was wearing a watch.

  “What time is it, Annie?”

  She told him. “Is your watch broken?”

  “More like inconsistent,” he said.

  “You should get it fixed then.”

  “I don’t like it enough to bother. I don’t even remember where I got it.” He shrugg
ed. “Anyway, I’m hoping Dr. Langston will have something that will change this. Are you coming with me?”

  “I am,” she said. “And Isaiah?”

  “Yes?”

  Her face gave away nothing of what she might be about to say. “Never question me like that again, do you understand?” She paused as the beginnings of a smile rose. “Unless I deserve it. I assure you I will hold you to the same standard.”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter 10

  Dr. Langston was not, as Annie expected, a medical doctor. Rather, the bespectacled Langston, with his shock of unruly dark hair and pale blue eyes, was a lecturer in the science of astronomy.

  The second-floor room where they met on the University of Texas campus was part classroom and part science lab with chairs set up in rows in the back and a dozen tables filled with scientific equipment in front. Incandescent lighting had been strung up down the center of the room, but gaslights still marched at regular intervals down each side of the deep green walls.

  Someone had written a string of equations on the blackboard that extended the length of the wall on the lecture end of the room. As the men chatted about old times, Annie looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows situated behind the chairs to watch a campus bustling with students even as a light rain continued to fall.

  The room, for all its size, felt claustrophobic and smelled of chalk dust and chemicals. Laughter turned her attention back toward the two men.

  Isaiah was smiling. Oh, but he was handsome when he grinned that way.

  “I met your father several decades ago when he was just a young pup and I was a newly employed lecturer in the study of rocks that fall from the sky,” he said to Isaiah before turning his piercing gaze on Annie. “That would be what we now call astronomy. The elder Joplin needed my help identifying rocks he’d found on a dig, and now it appears that the younger Joplin could also benefit from my assistance.”