Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 15
The boy flinched. His mouth hooked into a sour grimace as he snatched the cap away and squared it back onto his head. Dropping to the floor, he galloped away.
The detective tensed up. He could no longer see the legless child, but he heard the slapping of his hands against the floor as he ran off. “Where did he go?”
“He’s gone.” Billie pulled closer to him, her eyes still bright. “Do you think that’s his name? Archibald?”
“Hard to say. His reaction was odd.”
“Archie,” she uttered, as if testing the sounds of the word. “My God. Archie.”
He asked her to spell it for him, writing it down precisely in his notepad. “It’s a good start. The date on the penny too.”
The flash of delight stayed in her eyes. She took Mockler’s hand. “I need to know more. How he lived and how he died.”
“We can try,” he said as he closed the notepad. “But it won’t be easy with a death this old. Just temper your expectations, okay?”
“I will,” she grinned and leaned into him, resting her temple against his shoulder. She whispered the word again in reverent invocation.
Archie.
~
“I told you,” Kyle snipped the moment they arrived home to the condo on Stinson Street. “I told you Billie was trouble.”
“Don’t start, Kyle.” Kaitlin tossed her coat onto a chair and crossed to the kitchen sink. Her head was splitting.
“I can’t believe we all fell for it, too,” Kyle went on. “Running out of there like scared little kids.”
Kaitlin ignored his baiting, rooting through the cupboard where they kept a bottle of pain relief handy. “Where’s the Advil? Did you use it all?”
“Where we always keep it.” Kyle brushed past her as he plucked a beer from the refrigerator. “How did she do it? How did she pull it off? The lights and stuff falling over?”
The pill bottle was hidden behind a honey jar. She took it down and shook it. No rattling sound within. “Kyle, what’s the rule about the Advil? Whoever empties it, replaces it.”
He wasn’t listening. “Did she rig the place beforehand? Was someone helping her orchestrate it all?”
“She didn’t fake it, Kyle!” Kaitlin hurled the empty container into the trash. “It happened. Wrap your head around it already.”
“Jesus Christ, you fell for that shit?” Looking at her, he mimed a fake flush of surprise. “What am I saying? Of course you fell for it.”
Kaitlin kneaded her temples. “How can you question it? After everything that’s happened? It’s real, Kyle. Wake up!”
He scoffed. Kaitlin watched him sneer and chug back the beer, almost in contempt. She had been through a literal Hell of the paranormal and even Kyle, with his stubborn refusal of anything that defied logic, had experienced it. Yet, now, he blew it off, like it was all a bad joke. “You don’t get it,” she said. “After all of this, you still don’t get it. Do you?”
“No, I get it.” He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “It’s plain as day. She hoodwinked you. Not that that was hard, was it? You’ve always been into this shit. Tarot cards and Ouija boards. My mistake was keeping quiet about it. I figured, no, Kaitlin’s got her head screwed on right. This is just a phase. She’ll move past it and then everything will be fine. But no. Your insane friend says she can see ghosts and you fall for it hook, line and sinker!”
This was going to end badly and Kaitlin knew it. She walked away. “I’m not having this discussion again.”
“Because you know I’m right,” he snarled. “Your friend Billie is a nutjob looking for attention. She’ll stop at nothing to get it, end of story. The chick is trouble and she’s a complete fraud. And you? You fucking fell for it.”
“Shut up!”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” he said, dropping onto the couch and digging for the remote. “The weirdo mousy chicks who turn crazy on you. Do yourself a solid, babe, and broom her.”
The TV clicked on, the sound of the hockey game booming loud over the room. Maybe it was the mindless chatter of the commentators that pushed Kaitlin over the edge, maybe something else. She snatched the remote from her hand and killed the screen. Then, she threw the remote to the floor and stomped it under her bootheels until it shattered.
Kyle blinked at her with a stupid look on his face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Get out,” Kaitlin seethed. “Get out and don’t ever come back here. We are OVER!”
He laughed. She couldn’t believe it, but he laughed at her. He turned back to the television like there was something still on the screen. “Gimme a fucking break.”
“Fine. You stay.” Kaitlin snatched up her bag and her coat and yanked open the door. “I’m leaving. I’ll send someone for my stuff. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
He failed to heed the tone in her voice and shrugged it off. Kyle was of the belief that whoever got the last word in an argument was the winner and kept that faith now. A dismissive wave of his hand and a condescending tone. “You’ll be back,” he derided.
She wanted nothing more than to slam the door shut with a thunderous bang, but it levered slowly on a hydraulic swing arm that gently eased the door home to avoid any such slamming. Disgusted, she simply turned and marched for the stairs.
Chapter 20
“WHERE DO WE start?” asked Billie.
Getting an early jump on the day, they ran out the door to get coffee before Mockler left for work. The pair of them yawned and rubbed their eyes against the brightly lit cafe. Neither had gotten much sleep after the party had been crashed by ghosts.
“We start with what we know,” Mockler said, producing the notepad from his pocket. He flipped through to the last scribbles taken down. “Male child, Caucasian. How old would you say he is? Or was. You know what I mean.”
Billie wrinkled her nose as she guessed. “Ten? I’m no good at guessing kids’ ages.”
“Let’s say eight to 12 years of age,” he stated. “Severe trauma to both legs, tongue severed. Possibly accidental, but more likely a violent assault. The penny you found in his pocket means his death occurred after 1902. Do I have that right?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking at him through the steam of her coffee cup.
He lowered his voice. “I’m assuming the stuff in his pockets was there when he died. Or do ghosts collect things after they die?”
“It was there. So, we narrow it down to anytime after 1902. Wouldn’t his death be in the police records?”
“I hope so, but we’re talking about an incident from a hundred years ago. I’ve never had to go back that far with a case.”
She was a little annoyed at his caution, but refused to let it spoil her mood. “Regardless, we have his name. I still can’t believe that’s his name after all this time. Archie. Like the kid in the comics.”
“Don’t settle on that as fact, Billie. It’s just a name stitched into a hat. That doesn’t mean it was his.”
“Who else would it be?”
“Maybe it’s not his cap,” Mockler shrugged. “Maybe it was second hand or he found it in the streets? Stitching a name into a cap would have taken time, if his mother did it. Or it would have cost money to hire a seamstress to do it. The boy doesn’t look all that prosperous.”
“Don’t be such a Negative Nancy,” Billie said. “It’s his name. It has to be.”
“It probably is. I hope it is. But don’t make assumptions, and don’t fall in love with your assumption.” He checked his watch. “I gotta run. What are you up to?”
“I’m going to the library. The local archives might have something.”
“That’s a good idea. Look through the newspapers from that year and beyond. It’s a slog going through it all, but the microfilm might turn up something.”
Gathering their things, they stepped out into a cold wind and an overcast sky.
“I’ll check in with you later.” He walked toward his car, digging out his keys. “Good luck, honey.”
A kiss and then she waved goodbye. She felt silly that her heart had thudded hard hearing the tiny endearment from him, but it left a smile on her lips that lasted the whole way home.
~
The first search attempt was a washout, but that was to be expected with an incident this old. An obligatory general scouring of police records from his desk terminal turned up no information on the name Archibald Crump and the searchable database of homicides only went back as far as the late 60s. Digging deeper meant a trip to the archive depository off site. Mockler looked over the schedule for today to see if there was anywhere to slot in a trip to the depository.
He rolled his chair back to look into the next cubicle. “Odin, can we push back the follow-up with the McMartin woman?”
“Again?” Odinbeck looked over his glasses at the younger detective. “Gibson ain’t gonna like that. She wants that mess tied up with a bow before sending it down to the crown prosecutor.”
Mockler scratched his chin. “I’m gonna call McMartin, see if we can move the follow-up to the end of the day.”
“Don’t leave an interview to the end of the day, butthead. End of the day means the kids come home from school and she’s busy getting dinner on the table. It’s chaos.” Detective Odinbeck slid the glasses from his nose. “Did something come up?”
“Not officially. Just something I want to look up in the archive depot, but they close up shop at four.”
“Archives? The hell you want there?” Odinbeck turned back to his screen, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. “On second thought, I don’t even want to know.”
Mockler shot up and grabbed his jacket. “Tell you what, I’ll take care of the interview with McMartin. You can double-check my report in the morning before we toss it upstairs. Deal?”
“Knock yourself out, kid,” Odinbeck laughed.
~
“Here ya go,” said the clerk as he slid three enormous books onto the counter.
Mockler looked down at the oversize volumes before him. “That’s it?”
“The records only go back so far,” said the clerk. “A lot of stuff gets lost or destroyed over the years. It thins out the further back you go. Whatever has survived gets bound into volumes like this.”
The volumes in question were two feet tall by a foot and a half wide, bound in hardcover that was dusty and smelled of mildew. Each oversize volume was four inches thick with the years in question embossed into the cover. Mockler pulled the nearest one closer, its cover declaring 1902 - 1904. Opening it, he leafed through its yellowed pages. The typeset was achingly minuscule.
“It’s killer on the eyes,” the clerk said. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“The death of a child, possibly a homicide.” He turned another fragile page and his heart sank at the blur of type. “Sometime after 1902.”
“A child’s death?” The clerk’s smile faded. “That’s a tough one. It might not even be documented in here.”
“Why not?”
“A lot of times, the death of a child went unreported. A lot of adult deaths went unreported too, but a child’s death was considered a family matter and, therefore, private, no matter the circumstances.”
“Even a homicide?”
“Yes, sadly. Child mortality was shockingly common back then,” the clerk said. “And reporting it to the authorities would only bring unwanted attention to the family. Especially if that family was poor or newly immigrated. They did things the old way, keeping it in house.”
Mockler flipped the pages again, trying to discern a pattern or classification to the dense information on the flimsy paper. “Is there a trick to indexing this stuff? These crime reports seemed jumbled together with no division by subject.” He ran his finger down a column of type. “You got a death here, followed by a fire at a blacksmith, then a drunken brawl at a pub on King.”
“The classification is simply chronological. The incidents recorded by date alone.”
Mockler closed the book and surveyed all three thick volumes. “I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew here. Any chance I could take these home with me?”
“Officially no,” reported the clerk. Then, he leaned in to whisper. “But if you promise to treat them gently and return them in two days, no one will be the wiser.”
“Thanks,” Mockler said. Stacking all three books under his arm, he checked the hallway to make sure it was empty. “I promise to take good care of them.” He turned to wink at the clerk, but the man behind the counter had already vanished into the back storage room.
~
Two hours into her search of the microfilm archives, Billie’s eyes began to blur from the scroll of old newspaper pages. She leaned back from the screen and rubbed her eyes, losing hope that she would find anything useful here.
She had arrived at the Central Library shortly after saying goodbye to Mockler, finding her way up to the Local History and Archives Department on the third floor. A polite librarian named Debbie walked her through the process of accessing the archives on the microfilm files and feeding the spool of film onto the machine. Once she had mastered the controls to get the negative squared up in the screen, Debbie showed her how print any pages she needed. Tingling with anticipation, Billie began scanning through the newspapers of 1902, scrutinizing the fine typeset and archaic language for anything relating to the death or dismemberment of a little boy.
Nothing appeared. Pages and pages floated by in the screen, but she found no articles pertaining to a child’s death, let alone any hint of the legless ghost child who had become part of her life. The crime reports she saw related only to adult deaths and not one obituary mentioned any children at all. Speculating that the death of a child simply didn’t merit an obituary at the turn of the century, she made a note to ask the librarian about it later.
Pushing through another roll of film, she got up to stretch her legs before feeding a fourth spool into the machine. All of the eager anticipation pent up over finally finding an answer to her mysterious companion had completely dissipated, leaving behind an oily film of hopelessness. Finish the roll, she bolstered herself, then go hunt down some lunch. If she had the strength, she’d come back for another try later. Scrolling through the last of the film, her eye caught something and she wound the pages backward and scoured the print again. What had hooked her attention had been a single word.
Séance.
There, in a lower column of small print, the tiny headline read ‘An Invitation to a Séance’. Billie skimmed through the article, a simple notice of a séance being held by a supposedly renowned clairvoyant in the Tea Room of the Lavender Hotel on Bay Street, May 4, 1903. She had seen three séance invitations already but something about this notice had ripped a tingle up the back of her neck like nothing else. It was the name of the ‘famous clairvoyant and spiritualist medium’.
Archibald Crump.
~
The West Town Bar and Grill had a quiet atmosphere if one hit it at the right time and time was something they didn’t have a lot of. He was winding down his workday as she was heading off to start hers. They settled on the upscale diner as a halfway point to spend what little time they had. Mockler was waiting for her at a table near the window when she came through the door and searched the faces inside. His smile lit the moment he saw her.
“Hey handsome,” she said as she kissed him. She was still surprised at how easy the flirtation bubbled out. It never had before, often fumbling out in an awkward jumble, but it came easily with him. “You look tired.”
“Long day.” He leaned back to take a look at her. “You look gorgeous.”
“It helps with the tips,” she said, shrugging off the compliment. Sitting down, she saw two pint glasses on the table.
“I ordered for you,” he said by way of explanation. “I know you don’t have a lot of time.”
“Thanks.” She clinked her glass against his. “Tell me about your day. What made it so long?”
“Lots of detail stuff, tedious as hell.” Mockler shrugged. “That’s all.”
Billie searched his eyes. “You don’t talk about work much anymore.”
“I don’t?”
“No. How come?”
He shrugged again. “I don’t want to bore you with it.”
“You can bore me with anything you want,” she said, meaning every word. He smiled at that and she liked the way his eyes crinkled as he did so. “Did you get a chance to check the records on our friend? I was hoping we could compare notes.”
“Sure.” He took out his phone. “But be warned, I don’t have a lot of notes to compare to. The police archives from that era are pretty slim. I poured through a third of it today without finding anything that even remotely comes close. In fact, I found very few reports of children’s deaths at all.”
Billie straightened up. “I found the same thing looking through the newspapers of the time. Didn’t kids die back then?”
“Child mortality was high, but it was rarely reported. Most deaths were considered family matters and not reported.”
“That’s just weird,” Billie stated. “It’s almost callous.”
“Life was different. Kids died all the time. That’s why people had big families back then, knowing that some of the kids wouldn’t make it.” Mockler sipped his beer. “Did you get a chance to hit the library today?”
“I did,” Billie said proudly. “I got schooled in using the archives, and I think I found something.” Digging into her bag, she produced a sheet of paper and unfolded it against the table. She pointed at a narrow column of type. “Here.”
She watched his reaction as he skimmed the piece. His eyes shot up to lock on hers. “Archibald Crump?” he said.
“How weird is that? At a séance no less?”
“I don’t know what to make of it,” he said. “Did you find anything else with this name?”
