Again

Special thanks go to the following who provided encouragement and sometimes sanity throughout the completion of this book: Sabrina Collins, who told me to write another book when I was discouraged from a first attempt; Desiree Dawson, Alexandra Tschaler and Beverly Johns who were enthusiastic readers and gave me much needed critiques. To my agent, Janell Agyeman, who read the first draft and believed in it enough to take me on. And to the Kensington staff who made this final book possible: Kate Duffy, Hilary Sares and Sulay Hernandez.

New York—January 1880

T
he nearly arctic wind bit through his wool coat, chilling flesh and blood. But even the cold could not quell the fetid smell of the open sewer a few feet away. The heat of human waste sent up a vapor visible in the chilled air. Reeking garbage marred the frozen snow drifts piled along the alley floor. Intent on his purpose, Joseph barely noticed the odors. He squeezed his fingers together, trying to get the blood to flow. His leather gloves provided little protection against the unusually cold day.

It wouldn’t be long now. He had been waiting nearly forty minutes, yet he knew this alley was where he would find the one he sought. Joseph had studied his quarry for nearly a month now, ever since the coward skulked back into town thinking it was safe to do so. Joseph had passed money around to keep ears and eyes open around the wharfs, piers, and the streets. Three weeks ago, his investment paid off. Charlie Rhodes was back in town. Word on the street was that the man had crossed into Jersey, hiding out until everything had blown over.

For a time, the grisly murder of three men at the warehouse played on the front pages of most of the New York papers, the details glorified for the rabid readers. But with each passing week, and given the low pedigree of the victims, eventually the curious and the sensation hounds found other news to sniff after. Work at the warehouse had resumed and blood was washed away, leaving no reminders of the deaths that had taken place there. It was as though nothing had ever happened.

As though his world had not been torn away, leaving him no foothold.

He knew Charlie took this way home from the job he had gotten as a stevedore. The route was a lone shortcut through the alley a few feet from the hovel Charlie shared with a decrepit prostitute named Sally. Hardly anyone ever came this way, wisely afraid of robbers or mischief makers. Which made Charlie a fool. And which worked into Joseph’s plan. A plan he had decided on after Rachel was found.

Nearly a month ago, a dock worker discovered Rachel’s body frozen in the East River. By chance, Joseph came across the article in one of the daily periodicals. The other papers hadn’t bothered to report the discovery. Even in the one paper, Rachel’s death had been summed up in very few words, a toss-away among news about the invention of something called a light bulb and the ever-growing media parade surrounding the Kiehl murder. The poisoning death of the eighty-one-year-old dowager had horrified the city. A Miss Catherine Zell was set to stand trial for the murder. But no one would stand trial for Rachel’s death. And with the discovery of her body, Joseph’s decision had crystallized within him. No, there would be no hue or cry for the death of a Negro woman, no matter how wonderful or beautiful. And most of those who cared about her either had no power to bring her justice or were too cowardly to come forward. So in the end, he realized what he had to do.

There was something else driving him, also. A half-remembered dream…or rather dreams…that had been recurring lately. Dreams ensconced in a past that he couldn’t decipher but that piqued his suspicions about the workings of this world as well as the one beyond. That gave him hope.

As for these past two months, he had played his part well. Son to his father, friend to his cronies…masks that at one time he had worn comfortably. Lately though, the masks had begun to chafe like a hair shirt against the skin—prickly, burning, painful…or more like the bars of a prison which he had come to realize enclosed him as much as they once had his mother.

A sudden movement made him turn. A ball of gray scurried out of sight around the corner of a shack a few doors down. He breathed again, not realizing that he had stopped altogether. His pulse was racing. It was just some vermin scrounging for food. He heard its pathetic foraging in the snow, searching for discards from its human counterparts. In that second, his mind wandered as he thought of the rat. It was a second that almost cost him. He turned at another sound and saw the lone body rounding the northern corner of the alley. The newcomer’s feet crunched against the snow and the man wheezed into the lapel he held against his face, half hiding his features. Still, Joseph recognized him and knew that his wait had finally come to an end.

It was an early evening and the sun hovered among slate clouds, the sky dimmed by a pall that had settled over the city this winter. A pall that reflected the lifelessness within himself. Today was Friday. Appropriate. Rachel had died on a Friday.

Joseph stepped away from the building where he had been half hiding in wait. Charlie Rhodes stopped abruptly, his body stiffening at the sudden appearance of a stranger before him.

“Yeah? Whatcha want?” Charlie barked, his voice phlegmy. Then his mouth gaped and his eyes bulged with sudden recognition. He put a hand up as though to ward off the devil himself.

“Oh, oh, noww, noww, wait, you…you got it all wrong!”

Joseph smirked. “Do I?”

The man began backing away, shaking more from fear than the cold. “Noww, noww, it wasn’t me what planned the thing, Joseph. I didn’t want no part of it. I tole ’em…I tole ’em all it was a bad deal. But that lousy dago, Roberto, he was the one that wanted you dead. And the others, too. It was all them. Not me, Joseph. I just…I just went along ’cause they made me. You gotta believe me.”

Joseph’s hatred made his voice clipped. “All I believe, Charlie, is that you are a liar, a coward, and that you are about to die.”

“No!” Charlie yelled out. Joseph advanced as Charlie continued backing away in panic. The predator steadily rounded on his prey, assured that there would be no escape.

Joseph saw Charlie reach inside his coat pocket. He had been expecting it. But he was quicker. He had his knife out before Charlie could clear the ragged tears of his pocket. In two steps, Joseph closed the space that separated them and shoved the blade deep into the other man’s stomach until only the Victorian bone of the hilt was visible.

Charlie’s eyes widened in pain and horror. Joseph, his soul as cold as his body, felt nothing as he pushed the blade in deeper, as blood spurted out on his gloved hand. Then he pulled the blade free and Charlie’s body fell slowly to the ground, his eyes vacant in death. Joseph dropped the knife next to the dead man, blood splattering the snow.

For a few seconds, Joseph stared down at the man who had become his obsession since Rachel’s death. Since it seemed his own life had ended.

He bent, reached inside Charlie’s pocket. He pulled out the cheap, dulled-blade knife that Charlie hadn’t been able to retrieve.

Joseph knew how the accounts of his own death would read. That he had died in a common knife fight. There would be speculation why someone of his station had died so casually. Those who knew him well would guess that it was his debauchery that finally caught up with him. And for once, his father would not be able to sweep away the scandal. Joseph felt a slight satisfaction at the thought.

At least suicide would not be linked with his name. As it hadn’t been linked with his mother’s.

Joseph cursed the dullness of the blade. It was going to hurt like the dickens. But it had to appear that there had been a fight. There could be no suspicion of any self-inflicted harm so he could not use his own knife. He opened the coat, tore off a few buttons to make the struggle seem authentic.

He placed the blade at the silk of his waistcoat. Hesitated for a second. The sky had darkened in a matter of minutes. It would be night soon. More than likely he wouldn’t be discovered until the next morning, if then. The alley rat would have a meal at least for the night. But these things did not bother him. He was beyond all that. Beyond this life.

He shoved the knife through the material, through the taut skin of his belly. The pain seared, paralyzing him. Immediately, his breath became fire in his lungs. He fell to his knees, his remaining thoughts of her. Remembering. Praying. Hoping.

As he lay taking his last breaths, he smiled a little. Because if his dreams meant what he had begun to realize, that he had lived before, that he had known Rachel before in another incarnation, then he was destined to meet her…again.