Fatal Induction, page 18
“How did she manage it?”
March laughed. “She disguised herself as a woman. She borrowed bits and pieces of clothing from other inmates who were only in for one the night, the usual charges,” he said tactfully, “and the guard didn’t recognize her. She simply walked out with the others when they were released.”
“Smart girl,” said Henry.
“Shows how desperate she is.” March shook his head. “She vowed she’d never be seen publicly in feminine attire. To put on a dress, well, looks like we had our man and she was a woman. The hunt is on to find her. Say, there go the lights. We’d better get to our seats.”
Once settled in their plush seats amidst the murmuring crowd, Bradshaw leaned toward Henry and said quietly, “I can’t believe it was Harry. It just doesn’t feel right.”
“I know what you mean. But you did say she was mad about what that tonic did to her friend.”
“But Ralph Hopper wasn’t beaten to death, it wasn’t rage that killed him. He was weak and prevented from lifting his face from the mud. That sort of killing is cold. Evil.”
The orchestra began to warm up and fill the auditorium with discordant expectant music. The stragglers in their finery filed to their seats. Bradshaw looked at his transmitters hanging discreetly above the dress circle. He’d tested his contest device and found the quality of sound delivered to the telephone headsets to be excellent. The loud-talker’s output, as expected, disappointed him to the core. It soothed him not a whit to know that Daily and Smith’s loud-talkers would be no better.
He tried not to think about it. He spied March a few rows over with his devoted date.
He said to Henry, “You didn’t take a liking to Detective March.”
“He’s not my sort.”
“Jealous, are you?”
Henry made a noise that sounded like he was gargling up a lung. “I know his type. Judge and jury and priest on the side.”
“Pardon?”
“Makes his own rules, thinks he’s ordained to lord over the rest of us. Must be nice to know you’re superior. Born to succeed, my ass.”
“Miss Dodwell said that, not March.”
“Didn’t deny it, did he?”
“He’s not modest, I’ll grant you that.”
“Miner, hah! Hands are too soft.”
“He’s been back over three years. His calluses have had time to disappear.”
Henry grunted.
“Look to your left, Henry, at the edge of the stage. Who is that?”
Henry looked, and smiled. “A little pipsqueak named Rudy.”
“Good. Let’s go.” Bradshaw stood up.
“What about Miss Darlyrope and the trolley folly?”
“You can listen in the basement.”
“I ain’t seen a decent show in months, Ben. I don’t want to sit alone in your damp basement when I could be right here. Sit yourself down, it won’t kill you.”
Bradshaw dropped into his seat, as the music swelled and the lights dimmed to darkness. He didn’t hate it. He even enjoyed himself, when he wasn’t puzzling over Nell “Harry” Pickerell and her escape from jail, and carefully considering each detail in the case of Hopper’s death and Emily’s hiding. As usual, he tried to line up facts and clues in a logical manner, searching for connections that eluded him.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Ben, listen to this.”
Bradshaw had just returned home from telling O’Brien what Henry remembered about Victor Rudnikovich. He’d come in through the basement door and still wore his overcoat.
“Is it Victor?”
“No,” Henry said. “I think it’s your friend, O’Brien.” He set the wax cylinder turning, and Bradshaw put his ear close to the Graphophone’s tin amplifying horn. It was O’Brien, talking to a woman. They were speaking so low, his voice carried only because of its depth. Her gender could be distinguished, but not her words or identity. Since the transmitters could pick up whispers in the rooms below which they were installed, the conversation had to be taking place distant from those rooms.
Henry looked at Ben soberly. “Are they saying what I think they’re saying?”
“Give me that cylinder.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
“Give it to me, Henry.”
“Now don’t go storming out of here all riled up, Ben. It might not be what we think.”
Bradshaw elbowed Henry aside and removed the cylinder from the machine. He grabbed his hat, and as he flung open the basement door, Henry said, “Wait, I’ll go with you.”
“No. This is between me and O’Brien.”
He found the detective where he’d left him not an hour earlier, in his office at police headquarters. He was at his desk, filling out some form. With his left hand.
Bradshaw ripped the paper out from under O’Brien’s pen, tore off the official header, and slapped the rough square down.
“Let’s see you perform your right-handed trick. You would have been smarter to find someone else to write your threat.” He leaned down to shout the last in his ear, “Or was there no one you could trust!”
O’Brien flinched away.
“Ben, calm down. I can explain.”
“You son-of-a-bitch.”
“I’ve never heard you say that, Ben.”
“Get used to it.”
“I admit I used our friendship. Let me explain and then if you still want to hit me, I’ll take off my badge and you can give it a go.”
“I’m not going to listen to more of your fabrications. Just tell me where the child is.”
“I don’t know where she is. Not any longer.”
Bradshaw tried to pull the wax cylinder from his jacket pocket. It caught on the fabric and he struggled angrily to free it. It took every ounce of his willpower not to fling it at O’Brien’s head. Still, he dropped the fragile wax with more force than he should have on the desk.
He repeated the words gouged into the cylinder. “Tell her it won’t be much longer, she must be patient and stay hidden.”
O’Brien said quietly. “Wire to your basement. I should have guessed.”
“You keep me in the dark, but you let your stenographers listen to you talk about Emily?”
“No one was manning the phones when I was there. I sent the girl off on an errand.”
“Who were you talking to at the theater?”
“You didn’t record that?”
“Tell me!”
“Miss Darlyrope.”
“Where’s Emily?”
“I don’t know anymore. She’s disappeared again.”
“I’m supposed to believe you? How long have you known where she was?”
O’Brien dropped his eyes.
It was as if someone sucked the air from the room. “No. No. I haven’t slept in weeks, I passed out twice, my housekeeper hates me, I’ve practically abandoned my son, and you stand there telling me this whole time I’ve been worried sick about the child you’ve known where she is!”
“Not the whole time, but soon after she fled your home, she sought sanctuary at Miss Darlyrope’s apartment.”
“At the Eskimo? I was there!”
“Quit shouting and let me explain. The hotel manager didn’t know she was there. No one did. The girl is clever and snuck in unnoticed. You went looking for her and made some very dangerous people nervous. I warned you not to return. Detective March warned you not to return, he told me he even went to your house, but you wouldn’t back off. That night, nerves turned deadly, Bradshaw, and there was a price put on your head.”
“How the hell do you know? You haven’t got any sources in the Tenderloin, or was that a lie, too?”
“March has sources.”
“Oh? The same trustworthy sources that told him Ralph had gone off with the gypsies? Since when are you pals with March?”
“I’m not pals with Reginald March. He came to me at three in the morning with the news you were in the Tenderloin again and soon to be a dead man. We came up with the idea of the note, I wrote it, and he found someone to slip it to you an hour later.”
“You should have told me.”
“Be honest with yourself, Ben. That note scared you away from the Tenderloin. My warning wouldn’t have.”
“You threatened my son.”
“I prevented your son from becoming an orphan. You see? You don’t believe me. You saw Ralph Hopper dead in the muck with your own eyes, and you can’t believe you were slated next.”
Bradshaw paced. The windowless office was so small, he felt like the carnival tiger in its cage.
“How did you find her?”
“By accident. At Frederick & Nelson’s. I was looking for a doll for my daughter’s birthday. She was stealing one. She ran to Miss Darlyrope when I spotted her, claiming she was her aunt and would pay for the doll.”
“And you just went along with the story?”
“Publicly, there at the department store. In private, Miss Darlyrope is my one and only informant inside the Seattle Grand. Besides you. She came to your rescue, I hear, when Victor noticed you crawling around above the dressing rooms. We both agreed Emily was safest with her, mostly because the child wanted to be with her. She never brought her to the theater, and only once did she bring her anywhere else. That was to the department store where I spotted her. Emily quit begging to go out after that, and stayed home with Daisy.”
“The blind girl? The girl sweet on Harry? So Harry knew where Emily was?”
“Yes, but Harry didn’t kill Ralph.”
“Does Detective March know you found Emily? Has he been playing me for a fool, too?”
“No, March has never stopped looking for her.”
“Why would you keep him wasting his time?”
“Same reason I didn’t tell you. The fewer who knew where she was, the better.”
“Maybe March would have more luck finding her now if he knew where she’d been.”
“Telling March might upset my investigation.”
“God forbid we should put a child’s life ahead of your investigation.”
“They’re one in the same. I told you. Finding these smugglers finds Ralph’s killer.”
“You didn’t want me nosing around in the Tenderloin, but you had no qualms about putting me in danger in the Seattle Grand, smuggling central.”
“You were there legitimately. It was publicly known. You weren’t there searching for Emily. I needed you to still be concerned about her, just like I needed everyone to know March was still looking for her. If you suddenly stopped being worried, someone might guess you knew where she was. I couldn’t trust that your acting skills were up to that level of deception.”
“You should have put her somewhere safer. Somewhere secure.”
“She was happy with Miss Darlyrope, worships her a bit. I thought she’d stay.”
“Did you at least discover where she’s from or if she has family somewhere? Or what she saw on the night her father died?”
“I couldn’t be seen going to the Eskimo. I never questioned the child. Miss Darlyrope tells me she wouldn’t talk about her father or home. She’s full of stories, but all of them are make-believe.”
They faced off, Bradshaw glaring, O’Brien unapologetic.
So that was it. The child was missing. Nothing had been learned. And a friendship born of trust and mutual respect had been ripped to shreds.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Ben, you’re a good judge of character,” Henry said, “except one notable lapse, and even that was understandable.”
“I was a young fool.”
“Yep, but you ain’t young or a fool anymore. You’re mad, and you dang well got a right to be. Don’t stop trusting your instincts. You’re too upset to see it now, but O’Brien might have saved your life.”
“He lied to me!”
“Yes, he did. Because he was afraid for your life. And he was right about your acting talent. Or lack thereof.”
“How do I know what’s the truth? How do I know O’Brien isn’t behind everything. Maybe it was him that kept Ralph Hopper from rising from the mud.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
Too angry to do anything but walk, Bradshaw had stopped home long enough only to get Henry. Together they now tramped the winding dirt paths of Volunteer Park. Henry gave an occasional grunt of complaint about his back. Bradshaw deliberately avoided the newly built reservoir that was sunk deep, rimmed by concrete, and looked like a bottomless black pit. He steered them through the woods of tall evergreens.
“I’ve got an idea, Ben. Here, wait a minute, have a heart. Let’s sit.”
Henry eased onto a park bench. Bradshaw stood, hands shoved in his coat pockets.
Henry said, “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. Don’t think about your answers, just tell me, quick. Do you trust O’Brien?”
“Henry, I’m in no mood for games.”
“Don’t be stubborn, I learned this from a wise man tending bar, and it works. Truth pops out when you don’t give yourself time to think. Course it helps to be drinking. Bring any whiskey?”
“No.”
“Me either. Mrs. Prouty must have confiscated my flask, darn her steely eyes. We can do it dry. Now, let’s start again. Are you mad?”
“Yes.”
“You trust me?”
“Yes.”
“You trust O’Brien?”
His brain immediately said yes, but it took him a moment to fight through his anger to get the word out. He lifted his chin and stared at the clouds. “Yes.”
“You trust that other one, March?”
“No.”
“Hah! Me either. You trust Victor, Rudy, what’s-his-face?”
“No.”
“You love my niece?”
An exhalation escaped him before he could stop it.
“Thought I didn’t notice? No, don’t deny it. Can’t lie to me, I’ve known you too long. You were mooning over her the other night. Damn firelight. Saddest sight I’ve ever seen. You gonna do anything about it?”
Bradshaw rubbed his face, not meeting Henry’s eyes.
“Do me a favor? If you decide to do anything about it, you tell me first? I don’t know how I feel, truth be told. I reserve the right knock you flat.”
Bradshaw nodded faintly. “Fair enough.”
“I say we leave the smugglers to O’Brien and his stenographers and go find the girl. Now, we can’t go snooping around asking questions, you already tried that, and about got yourself killed.”
“That note was from O’Brien.”
“That don’t make the threat any less real. He was doing you a favor. You trust O’Brien, so trust that note and don’t go snooping around. We got to think like that little girl. She knows who to hide from, and who’s safe. We need to know what she knows. So think. Who’s she hiding from?”
“Who?”
“Hell, I don’t know, I’m asking. You’re the one with the sign in front of your house saying you’re an investigator.”
“I’m not a—” oh, why bother. He was an investigator of sorts. Who was Emily hiding from? That was the money question. He didn’t know.
“Try algebra, Ben.”
“You flunked algebra.”
“That’s why I said for you to try it.”
It took him a few minutes to get his mind to calm enough to enter the rational world of mathematics. He paced before Henry, reciting simple equations in his head, mumbling a bit, until at last he could begin to put the problem of Emily Hopper into logical perspective. He needed to know who Emily feared. That was the unknown. On the opposite side of the equation were those people she didn’t fear.
A local famous actress. Emily had felt safe enough to run to Miss Darlyrope, even accompany her to Frederick & Nelson, a major department store. She’d initially run from O’Brien, yet until recently, she’d stayed with Miss Darlyrope knowing full well that the detective knew she was there. She had felt safe with Justin, in Bradshaw’s home.
What didn’t fit? What factor in the string of events didn’t balance? The child had witnessed her father’s murder, but she hadn’t come forward to point out the culprit or ask for help from the very people society is supposed to trust to protect them. The police. Bradshaw had taught Justin to look for a uniformed patrolman if he ever found himself alone and in need of help.
“A patrolman,” he said at last. He stopped pacing and stood before Henry. “She’s afraid of a patrolman.”
“Bingo. Brass buttons!”
“You said you didn’t know.”
“Didn’t till you said it. Feels right. She leaves your house and goes to folks she knows and trusts, the sort of folks who know how to avoid the police. It’s their way of life. But she’s not hiding from O’Brien. Not the detectives, they’re in plain clothes.”
“Miss Darlyrope must have convinced her that O’Brien was keeping her hideout a secret.”
“So why didn’t that golden-boy detective find evidence against a patrolman? If he’s so brilliant, got all these sources, why didn’t he turn anything up? I don’t trust him cause he’s an arrogant ass. Why don’t you trust him?”
“A gut feeling.”
“Any reason he’d withhold evidence against a patrolman?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for the timing to be right. So he can use the arrest and saving Emily to further his career.”
“What else you got?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s protecting someone.”
“Uh-huh, that’s more like it? So who’s he protecting? What doesn’t he want anyone to know?”
