Fatal Induction, page 11
He changed out of his rumpled good suit into fresh and comfortable work clothes before going down to his basement workshop, taking the threatening note with him.
He read it again carefully. The writing was unfamiliar, yet certain elements gave him information. The flow was unsteady, the vertical lines wobbled, and there was no forward slant. The writer had used a nondominant hand, a right hand most likely because there was no smudging of the ink, which was very difficult to avoid when writing left-handed. The paper was of standard weight, clean and white, sized four inches by five, and slightly uneven. The edges were sharp. This had been cut with scissors from a larger piece of paper.
The folds were as precise as could be given the slightly imperfect cut, the creases pressed firmly and smoothed. The creator of the note had a careful and methodical nature. But the creator need not have delivered it. Only a professional, seasoned pickpocket could have slipped the note inside Bradshaw’s buttoned inner pocket without his noticing.
As best he could with a memory fogged by the exhaustion he’d felt and the interceding blackout of sleep, he reviewed his movements the night the note had been slipped to him. Only in one place, the Occidental Theater, did it seem remotely possible. A noisy place, with a piano player plunking out ragtime melodies, and women on stage in what looked to him like frilly undergarments, bouncing to the tunes. He’d crossed the crowded room to get to a corner table near the doors to the backroom in order to steal a look into the kitchen to see if Emily was there scrubbing or peeling. He might have bumped, or been bumped, along the way. Yes, now that he thought of it, he’d been jostled, and someone had said “pardon” just as a waitress had approached him and asked him his pleasure in a way that seemed unrelated to drink. He had no memory at all of who had jostled him.
He folded the note, tucked it in a small cardboard box of brass screws, and set it on a high shelf above the workbench.
O’Brien and March had been right in warning him. The Tenderloin was dangerous. He’d been aware, of course, of immediate dangers, crooks, drunks, suspicious types who didn’t like outsiders asking questions. He’d known he might become a victim of a random attack of violence. It had never occurred to him he would be targeted like this. He didn’t regret searching for Emily; he would not stop searching for Emily. He regretted only that now his identity was known, he couldn’t return to the streets to search for her. Besides being a foolish risk, it would be a waste of time. If O’Brien had bruised a toe, well, Bradshaw had broken a foot.
He heard Henry’s voice in his head as clearly as if his old friend were standing beside him. “Don’t let the bastard win.”
“No,” Bradshaw said aloud. “No, Henry. I won’t.”
So. He must be more clever than the criminal he was up against. More adept than the criminal’s associates. What did he possess that they did not? What were his weapons? He looked around his basement. He had science. In particular, immediately before him on his workbench, he had transmitters and receivers. Mechanical ears and mouths. Could these be put to use?
If the music of the theater could be brought to his home, why not simple conversations? Could he listen from afar to places he now dare not tread? Not to everything said in every joint in Seattle, no, but one or two specific places? Where? That was the real problem. If he knew where to listen, where he might hear news of a child hiding, or trying to earn money, he wouldn’t have had to walk the streets and stir up this threat. The odds of overhearing a discussion about Emily or her father were miniscule. And setting up such a system would take a ridiculous amount of subterfuge. He’d have to go in disguise, make up some legitimate-sounding excuse to the business owners for installing the wire and hardware. Oh, it was absolutely impossible. It could never happen.
Yet the visionary dream beckoned. Small listening devices secretly installed, bringing to him all the whispers of the dark corners. His transmitter was sensitive enough, he was sure of it. For a few minutes, he indulged the dream. He imagined his devices hidden in walls, disguised in lamps, sending the secrets through a private cable to his basement. And then? How to manage the dozens of conversations ceaselessly flowing? He couldn’t sit down here twenty-four hours a day listening to them all simultaneously. He’d need a team of listeners. He only had himself, and limited time. He looked again around his basement. What device could take the place of many human listeners? What device not only listened but saved sound?
The Graphophone and Phonograph, of course, recorded sound onto revolving cylinders of wax or tinfoil. Could he record conversations using one of them? Would the sound have to be played from a horn to be recorded, or could he bypass the horn and get the stylus of the recording instrument to move in coordination with the receiving components of the telephone? That’s how a new invention by a man in Denmark worked. Poulsen was the man’s name, and he called the device a Telegraphone. Poulsen had figured out that by replacing a telephone receiver with an electromagnetic assembly in which a length of steel wire streamed from one spool to another, a magnetic recording was made upon the wire. This recording could be played back by placing the electromagnet in series with a telephone receiver and spooling the magnetized wire through. It was an ingenious device, not yet perfected, but oh, so full of possibilities!
Wax cylinders could only hold two minutes worth of sound, while spools of wire held the promise of much longer recordings. But even then, when would he have time to listen to what he recorded? He needed to find a way to filter out the useless conversation. Find a way to hear only something that might lead him to Emily.
What if he could find a way to selectively record? Automatically. He’d need to be able to distinguish the important conversations from all others. If he were listening in person, how would he know he was hearing something that might lead him to Emily? He would hear her name, or Ralph’s name, maybe the tonic’s name. How could he get his listening devices to be selective? Could he develop an auditory closure that completed the circuit only when certain sound waves triggered it? Maybe the selection could take place at this end. Could a recorder be set in motion by certain auditory signals? Record two minutes of conversation, then reset itself? That was within the realm of possibility.
Bradshaw spent several hours completely absorbed in designing this eavesdropping system he knew he would never be able to install in the practical world. There were aspects that would, if he ever undertook them, challenge him to the core. The auditory closure and the telephone recording device taunted him like the concept of a practical flying machine taunted others. He knew it must be possible, but how—that was the money question.
The process invigorated him, focused his attention on minute details, and gave him a feeling of control he didn’t possess when pondering Emily Hopper’s whereabouts. He didn’t consider his work a waste of time. Past experience had taught him the value of turning away from a puzzle completely. Direct confrontation could obscure vision and narrow approaches. By looking away, often the answers would slip in sideways.
He wasn’t aware when he heard Detective O’Brien call his name and heard his footsteps descend the stairs to the basement that an answer was slipping in sideways. An answer, and the chance to turn his far-fetched invention into reality.
Chapter Thirteen
“The coroner has completed the autopsy. Ralph Hopper drowned. A small stream runs under the lot, makes the ground swampy. That’s why building has been delayed.” As O’Brien spoke, he stood beside Bradshaw at the workbench, his eyes on the drawings depicting the elaborate eavesdrop system.
Bradshaw’s own vision had turned inward, to the image of Ralph Hopper face down in the muck, unable to lift his head, unable to breathe. He swallowed an instinctive gulp of panic.
O’Brien picked up the outer shell of a telephone transmitter from which the internal workings had been removed. “Mrs. Prouty told me you took a long nap.”
“Mrs. Prouty blames my association with you.”
“She told me that, too.” He swapped the outer shell for a bar magnet.
“Was Ralph ill or drunk, did you learn? I spoke with Dean Nordquist this morning. He sent Cline his findings from examining a bottle of Ralph’s Restorative.”
“Those results coincided with the autopsy findings. Ralph was consuming his own tonic. A few witnesses have said he began drinking it heavily to prove it was safe. There’s no conclusive signs of physical restraint. It would seem he was unable to lift his head, but whether from weakness due to drinking his poison, or obstruction, it’s not clear. He appears to have died where he fell, face down. There’s dried mud on the back of his head.”
Bradshaw imagined a chase, Ralph weak, stumbling, falling, his pursuer standing over him, lifting a foot and setting it down. A small weight able to suppress what little strength Ralph had left. And Emily had seen. It was assumption, yes, but logical and likely, and supported by that threatening note.
“Is there bruising or other evidence of force?”
“Nothing conclusive.”
“Will there be an inquest?”
“Yes, but the outcome is likely to be cause of death accidental drowning, or at best, undetermined. It depends on the jury, of course. It’s a fact of life that we judge death by our feelings about the victim. Many will feel Ralph Hopper got what he deserved. We need a witness.” O’Brien set the magnet down with respectful care and at last looked at Bradshaw.
Emily was the only witness.
“That’s it then?”
“Unless more evidence comes forward. We’re still looking for Emily, but we can’t search every home and place of business in the city without cause and search warrants. It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”
“She’s afraid of her father’s killer. Isn’t that enough cause to search every inch of this city?”
“Hearsay, Ben, from a child, and she implicated no specific person or place.” The words were in a tone of apology.
O’Brien lifted next a length of silk-covered copper wire with his left hand. What percentage of the population was left-handed, Bradshaw wondered? He glanced at the shelf above the workbench, at the box of brass screws where the threatening note was hidden and decided it was not a likely candidate for the detective’s restless hands. Should he show him the note? To what end? O’Brien had already warned him the Tenderloin wasn’t safe. He didn’t want to hear I-told-you-so. Yet the note might contain clues the detective could decipher.
Before Bradshaw could make a decision, O’Brien asked, “What did you learn at the courthouse?”
“Nothing. I barely made a dent in the records.”
“It’s not a filing system designed for investigation. You have to know names and dates and counties to find anything. And if you knew all that, you wouldn’t be searching records. This is a beauty.” He was looking covetously at the polished oak horn.
“It’s for a contest.”
“Music and frivolity piped into your parlor. Listen in leisure,” quoted O’Brien, revealing his knowledge of the contest. “I hadn’t realized such magnificent horns would be part of the system.”
“Horns will be available for an extra fee, but not ones as fine as this.”
O’Brien chewed his lip, rubbing a restless hand over his closed mouth. Bradshaw had spent the past eight years of his life in a self-imposed social vacuum, but from within that protective sphere, he’d watched others, he’d studied them. And he now recognized that revealing gesture. O’Brien was struggling with information he was unsure of revealing.
At last, his hand dropped, and he cleared his throat. “Ralph—well, he bought his supplies on the cheap, from a supplier that makes a lot of money selling what it doesn’t have. You tell this supplier you want food-grade alcohol for your tonic, he gives you a crate of bottles labeled grain alcohol. The contents could be anything.”
“Was this a fight, then? Ralph against his supplier?”
O’Brien didn’t reply. He picked up the transmitter Bradshaw had been working on earlier. It was about the size and shape of a large round tin of shoe polish, with open slots for admitting sound to the diaphragm. “Is this the contest transmitter? How sensitive is it?”
“I’ll show you.” He attached one end of a length of silk-covered wire to the transmitter, the other end to a telephone headset which he placed upon O’Brien’s head.
“You stand there.” He directed O’Brien to the far corner of the basement by the door, while he went with the transmitter and a dry cell battery to Mrs. Prouty’s shelves of pickles on the opposite wall, trailing the cord between them. He opened a wooden floor chest and set the transmitter and battery inside, nestled between rubber hoses and garden tools. He closed the lid and moved as far from both O’Brien and the transmitter as he could get.
He whispered, “Can you hear me?”
“Ah! Crystal clear! Is that thing picking up your voice from inside the chest? Whisper something else.”
“Is the drug supplier operating in my neighborhood?”
“No, I still don’t know why Ralph came up here, or died up here. Maybe he was being chased, or followed. He could have come up here to camp in Volunteer Park for the night. It’s quiet and safe. It’s not permitted, of course, but tramps do it all the time.”
“And then what? Was he so ill he became lost? Turned down my back lane by accident? It doesn’t seem likely.”
“Only because it was your back lane, Ben. You could accept a random abandonment anywhere else.” O’Brien pulled off the headset with a satisfied smile, and they met again at the workbench.
O’Brien asked, “Where will you position that at the theater? How far away can it be from the stage?”
“Suspended above the seats in the fourth row, and above the stage. Emily couldn’t be alone where she’s now hiding. Someone must be helping her. Why haven’t they come forward for protection?”
O’Brien rubbed his jaw and mouth again, but his reply came quickly enough. “She could be with people who are as leery of the police as they are afraid of her father’s killer.”
“You know who it is? Or have an idea?”
O’Brien nodded at the transmitter on the workbench. “That’s why I’m here.”
“What? The Seattle Grand? Emily’s at the Grand? But that’s above Yesler. You said Ralph’s death was, how did you put it, ‘tangled in the Tenderloin’.”
“It is. The Seattle Grand sits north of the deadline, but that’s an arbitrary line. Emily’s not there, Ralph’s supplier…listen, Ben, your dean of chemistry’s report told me more than it told Cline.”
He paused and met Bradshaw’s gaze squarely. “If I make you privy to something that must remain secret, even from your household, that puts you at risk, are you willing to know?”
“Will it help us find Emily?”
“It’s our best shot.”
“Then yes. Of course, yes.”
O’Brien took a deep breath. “Sit down.”
They sat on stools, side-by-side, at the workbench. O’Brien lowered his voice.
“Ever heard of phenacetin?”
“What? The fever drug? Yes, of course.”
“Have some in your medicine cabinet?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Prouty gets prescriptions for Bayer aspirin now.”
“Hmm, so does my wife. If you have any phenacetin, throw it out. A few weeks ago, I was approached by the Feds and a German whose name you don’t need to know. This German works for Bayer, the firm that holds the patent to phenacetin.”
“Something wrong with it?”
“Most likely. It was introduced into the United States ten years ago and took over the market. It’s now in something like eighty percent of all prescriptions. It’s only supposed to be brought into the country through official channels, duty paid. But more than half of the phenacetin circulating in the country doesn’t enter legally, it’s smuggled in.”
“To avoid custom fees,” Bradshaw said.
“I believe in patents, Ben. Folks ought to be rewarded for their hard work and ingenuity. But I don’t think patents have any place in medicine, and I especially don’t like a German company forcing Americans to pay more for a drug than is necessary.”
“Yet you told the Germans you would work on their investigation.”
“A federal investigation for the United States. For three reasons. Duty taxes on imported phenacetin keep our fighting boys armed and clothed and fed. Second, the smugglers don’t care about saving lives. It’s all about profit, and they double their profit by cutting the smuggled drug with other cheaper drugs. They usually mix phenacetin with acetanilid.”
“That’s the crystal residue the dean found in Ralph’s.”
“Exactly.”
“He said it was a fever drug.”
“It’s a lot like phenacetin, reduces fever and pain, only it’s far cheaper, and far more toxic. When I give my daughters a drug to bring down a fever, I want it to work safely, not hurt them.”
“And the third reason you said yes to this investigation?”
“The same as your own. To help Emily.”
“Did Ralph Hopper sell smuggled phenacetin?”
“There was none in the wagon, but I believe when he bought supplies to make his tonic, he stumbled on the phenacetin smuggling ring. I believe he learned more than he was supposed to, so someone laced a case or two of his tonic with poisons they had ready to hand with the intent of ruining his business. Methyl alcohol and carbolic acid are common, sold everywhere. But acetanilin is only sold by prescription. The smugglers have it, and I think they used it. And I’ve discovered that they’re operating out of the Seattle Grand.”
“Mr. Fisher?” Bradshaw thought of the manager’s concern for profits.
