The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (8 page)

“I ain’t no Spiritualist!”

“Hey, fella, neither am I, but I’ve attended a séance or two, and I don’t mind saying I saw some things I won’t forget my whole life long. And just now I saw you lay hands on that corpse before you started hollering.” Trace stared at him, caught, and Reynolds half-shrugged, as if to say he couldn’t help being right all the time. “You oughtta let me do a story on you. Whistler might give your opinion more weight if he thought you had some, er,
insight
on the matter.”

“Why’n hell would he do that?”

“You’d be surprised who-all believes in Spiritualism,” Reynolds said dryly.

“They really got Miss Anna locked up?” Boz interrupted.

“They really do,” Reynolds said. “I hear they brought in one of the bailiffs’ wives to sit with her, but make no mistake—they ain’t likely to let her out except to the gallows.”

“What in hell’s the matter with you?” Trace demanded. “That young girl didn’t kill anybody.”

“Hey, I don’t decide whether she’s guilty or not. But you might wanna keep in mind, the court of public opinion has a lot of … swing.” Reynolds looked back and forth between the two of them, making sure the pun sank in. “Fact is,
I’m
the best advocate Miss Herschel could have right now, and you could do worse than tell the public you sensed evil spirits about the place. People’d rather believe
that
than admit their own precious daughters could turn on Mama and Papa with an ax.”

The reporter nodded at Trace’s incredulous look. “Think about it. Reynolds.
Times.
Leave word. I’ll find you.” He nudged the brim of his hat with the stub of his pencil, and made for the road.

“Damn vulture,” Trace said to his retreating back.

Boz shot him a worried look, but before he could start clucking like a mother hen, the young man with the camera barged into their midst.

“Excuse me, fellas. Sorry bout that.” They backed away as the photographer parked the tripod by the corpse’s feet. He was a very young man, maybe eighteen, but very intent and businesslike with his equipment. His hair was black and so were his fingernails. He glanced up and saw Trace watching him. “You oughtta stay away from that reporter, mister.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Trace said tartly.

The kid looked embarrassed. “I don’t mean to tell you your business. It’s just I know the guy. He’s the dirtiest ink-slinger in town.”

“Ain’t you one?” Boz said.

“Um … not really. I’m just the printer’s devil, but I was the only one in the office this morning, and I figured my boss’d crown me if I didn’t check out this murder. Will you pull that sheet down for me?”

Boz exchanged a disgusted look with Trace and bent to pull the shroud back from the body. Trace touched the crucifix around his neck, muttered a quick benediction for the dead.

The photographer glanced around again. “You friends of the Herschels?”

“We knew him,” Trace said. “Why?”

“Didn’t figure you were from the neighborhood,” the young man said. “But I meant to say, the Roths are progressive—they’ll let Gentiles attend memorial services, if you wanted to pay your respects.”

“Thanks,” Trace said. It was about the nicest thing anyone had said to him all day.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“So what’d you see,” Boz said, as they were finally riding away from the Herschel farm, “made you holler like that? You have some kind of vision?”

“Guess you could call it that. First I saw these … black things comin out of the body, kinda like when McGillicuddy died—”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You probably couldn’t see it. But to me it looked like somethin nasty beatin a retreat. And when I touched one of ’em, I saw—it was like I got pulled into Herschel’s skull, and I saw him beatin down the girls like I was doin it with my own hands. And laughin while he did it.”

Boz looked shocked, but not incredulous. “You think somethin got into him and made him take after the girls with an ax?”

“You said it, not me.”

“Makes as much sense as Miss Anna doin for ’em.”

“Amen.”

Boz chewed on that for a while. “You notice the living room, how neat it was?”

“Aside from the blood, you mean?”

“If they were fightin in there, whalin on each other with axes and pokers, they shoulda been staggerin about, knockin into things. None of the chairs was knocked over—the
rug
wasn’t even out of place.”

It was true. Trace remembered Whistler’s blunt fingers gliding over the checkerboard, the undisturbed bowls of popcorn and cider mugs beside the game. Mrs. Herschel’s needle woven through the fabric of her embroidery, the way a woman would if she had to get up for a moment. It was as if, at some prearranged signal, the family had set aside their peaceful evening activities in order to murder one another.

Trace shivered and passed a hand over his face.

“You all right?”

“I’m
tired,
” he complained. “Seein them all dead like that, and then standin around for hours gettin worked over by that detective, tryin to make out whether we’d been involved in it somehow, and then havin that vision on top of it—”

“Was their spirits in there?”

“No,” Trace said, which was surprising, now he thought about it. Usually people who had died bad tended to haunt their deathplace, screaming and clawing at him as soon as he got near. “No, they seemed to have gone on, at least.”

“So how was it you saw what Herschel saw?”

“I don’t know. I never had that happen before.” This questioning was making him acutely uncomfortable. He’d always had the sense of his curse being a private thing, not only because of the nasty events connected to it, but also because it was so tightly tied to his faith. Boz was not in the habit of respecting the unseen, and so tended to go at the subject like he was killing snakes. “Everything’s been so quiet, the last couple weeks…”

“You mean you ain’t been seein things?”

“I
always
see them,” he said, though that was half the truth. The spirits
were
always there, but for the past fortnight or so they had been less inclined to come near and demand his attention. It was as if the misadventure in Sikeston had burnt out a pocket of bad air in his brain, and left him feeling clear and relatively unburdened.

Boz was quiet for a moment. “You reckon that Fairweather woman knows anything about this business?”

Trace turned his head so abruptly that Blackjack snorted and sidestepped in the road. “You ain’t sayin
she
did for them—?”

“Naw, I didn’t mean
that,
but you said she knows about spirits and such. She’s still sendin you notes, right?”

Trace grunted. She had sent him three notes in the past two weeks. The first two had been brief and high-handed: she had another job for him and looked forward to discussing it at his earliest convenience, et cetera. Trace had burnt them both, railing to Boz about the sheer gall of the woman.

But yesterday there had been a third message, a single line in elegant copperplate script:

Have the spirits been less troublesome, since last we spoke?

He wondered how she could know that. And what else she knew. And what it would cost him to find out.

“You think I should go see her?” Trace asked, half-hoping Boz would advise against it.

“I dunno,” his partner said, after a moment’s contemplation. “I was thinkin maybe if she could tell you somethin—if there was some way you could prove Miss Anna didn’t do it … but I don’t know what. And I don’t reckon you want to be beholden to her at all.”

“No,” Trace agreed.

*   *   *

“
T
HERE
YOU ARE!
” Jameson bellowed, as Trace walked in from the back of the store. “Lawd a’mighty, boys, I was starting to think you’d been copped.”

“Whyn’t you announce that a little louder?” Trace said, glancing around to see the place was empty but for Miss Fairweather’s pet Chinese, keeping company with the wooden Indian in the corner. “What the hell is
he—
?”

“Been here an hour or so,” Jameson said, lowering his voice. “I told him you were out working all day and he insisted you’d be back soon. Then I saw this and I started to wonder if you were coming back at all.”

Jameson reached for the stack of newspapers on the end of the counter, snagged a
Carondelet Citizen,
and thrust it at Trace. For a second Trace wondered why he was being handed a page of want ads. Then the print in the third column brightened from black to crimson and began to ooze down the page.

Trace smothered a grunt of revulsion and dropped the paper on the counter. The text instantly reverted to orderly black rows.
THREE MURDERED AT LOCAL HOMESTEAD,
proclaimed the headline.

“Is that true?” Jameson asked.

“Yeah, it’s true.” Trace rubbed his hand on his shirt. “We just came from there.”

“Jeezly Crow,” Jameson swore. “I mean I hardly knew Miss Anna, but Herschel’s a good sort, and he doted on those two girls…”

“What’s it say?” Boz asked.

“‘A trio of grisly murders occurred in the late hours of Monday evening,’” Trace read, “‘at the small but prosperous farm of landowner Judd Herschel, who with his wife and eldest daughter were hacked to pieces and their bodies thrown into the family well by an unknown assailant.’”

The piece went on to describe, in lurid detail, the scene at the house and yard, lingering over the image of Herschel’s mangled face gazing up from the waters of the well. It also gave a lengthy recounting of Anna Herschel’s story to the police:

 … Miss Herschel claims an argument between her father and sister, Leah, escalated to bludgeoning each other with a stick of wood and a fireplace poker. Anna and Mrs. Herschel attempted to intervene, and the mother was struck down in defense of her child. Mr. Herschel then vented his rage upon Leah, and battered his elder daughter about the head until she fell senseless.

Then, seeing what he had done, Mr. Herschel sought to dispose of the bodies by tipping them into the family well. Anna, believing her father to be “possessed or mad,” tried to dissuade him, but he swore he would kill her, too, and Miss Herschel ran for help. She claims her father was still alive when she left him, though “not in his right mind” and can offer no explanation for how he was killed or ended up in the well.

Anna Herschel is being held at Four Courts jail pending further questioning.

“I can’t believe it.” Jameson shook his head. “I’d hate to think any child could turn on her parents like that.”

“You can’t think Miss Anna did it?” Boz said.

Jameson looked uncomfortable. “Well, you gotta admit it looks funny—her being the only survivor, and blaming her old man when he ended up dead like the rest of ’em. Herschel was worth some tin, you know. It wouldn’t be the first time the heirs thought to inherit early.”

“It wasn’t Anna,” Trace said, folding the paper. He looked at Boz, inclining his head slightly in the direction of the waiting Chinaman. “I’m gonna…”

“Yeah,” Boz said. “I’ll see you at home.”

CHAPTER NINE

Miss Fairweather’s neighborhood was genteel but aging, built by well-to-do German families before the war. It was not a street where roughnecks typically rode up in work clothes and left their shaggy quarterhorses on the curb. But Trace had not been raised in a barn, either; he touched his hat to the two young ladies who dawdled on the sidewalk, looking him over with a mixture of terror and fascination. Their mother gave him a well-bred eyeballing herself, before hastening her charges along.

The Chinese, who had trotted the whole way uptown like a hound at Trace’s stirrup, let him into the house. He took Trace’s coat and hat, said, “Miss Fairweather will see you in the laboratory,” and set off across the foyer.

Trace followed the man up the grand staircase, past the quiet and richly carpeted second-floor landing, to the narrow and dimly lit third-floor hallway. The place was eerily quiet—not even the muted bustle of servants at work. The silence made him uneasy, as if the house were holding its breath, listening back at him.

At the north end of the hall was a rough stair leading up, and a trapdoor opening into the attic. The Chinese gestured for Trace to go ahead. He had to duck to avoid the trapdoor, and the sudden onslaught of daylight made him blink.

The back half of the attic rolled out before him, as big as a ballroom. The entire north face of the roof was glass, braced by girders and sealed with lead between the panes. The clouds rushing overhead teased his balance and he grabbed the nearest cabinet for support.

There were a great many cabinets and shelves along the wall, all of them packed to bursting with intriguing objects: jars of preserved specimens, bins and boxes, glassware and iron armatures and rubber hoses. There were several large trestle tables, most of them painted black, but one was a solid slab of white marble, and another supported a tin basin the size of a wagon bed. The wall behind the trapdoor was stacked with cages and tanks, in which small creatures flopped and fluttered and whistled.

In spite of himself, Trace was impressed. He’d seen Miss Fairweather’s library, and he’d guessed she had a capable and curious mind, but this was no mere dilettante’s parlor. This was a place of serious work. He moved farther into the room, trying to look at everything at once.

Built into the central wall of the house was a massive fireplace, onto which was grafted a network of ovens and ductwork. Copper pipes ran down from the roof to a large heating drum, and from there more pipes snaked overhead to feed valves above the tin basin and the marble table. Above the water drum, a vent opened every few seconds to let out a puff of scalding vapor.

Trace eyed the water line leading to the tin basin. He touched a porcelain valve handle marked
HOT
with the tip of one finger and it turned easily, letting a spill of water into the tin basin beneath it. He felt the heat of the steam against his hand and closed the valve again, marveling at the luxury of hot water anytime one wanted it. The water sped down a series of grooves and vanished, gurgling, through a tube in the floor.