The Franklin Incident (Philly-Punk) (2 page)

I fixed the man the most blasé of glances and asked, "Can I help you, sir?"

"I demand to know the meaning of this!"

"You need be a little more specific than 'this'."

He motioned to The Franklin Building and, clearly, the wooden barricade erected outside.  A lone constable stood behind it.  "The Constabulary has kept us out of our place of business for two hours.  Two hours!  I ask you why, Mr..."

"Jonathan Adams," I replied promptly.  Then, much to his chagrin, I shrugged.  "But I do not know what is going on."

"Are you not with the constables?"

A delicate question, indeed.  And never one that I can answer easily enough for my relationship with the Constabulary was complicated at best.  "I do work for them... occasionally.  In a consulting capacity—"

The man rolled his eyes at me.  “Good Lord, not another self-fashioned Sherlock Holmes."

"Pardon me, sir, but I know not that name," I responded abruptly.  "I am merely a collector.  Sometimes the Constabulary calls on my expertise."

The man squinted his eyes.  “Aren't you a little young to be an expert... on anything?”

I loved repartee as much as the next man but I, as a rule, did not engage it with men who jabbed me with their walking sticks nor assumed my breath of knowledge based on my age.  “Good day, sir.  I have more important things to do than trade barbs with you."

I made to leave but he held his cane tight to my chest.  I felt the tip of the wing bore slightly into my chest.  I thought he might find the handle a little hard to swallow should I elect to make him eat it.  Taking a deep breath to calm my anger, I turned to him.  "Yes?"

He fixed me a stare that must make other men shiver in their shoes.  I was not 'other men.'  “Do tell the constables that Hart would like to return to his businesses as soon as possible."

I bitterly acquiesced with a nod.  Mr. Hart removed his walking stick and I, casting him the briefest of glances I hoped convey my sentiment regarding his existence, continued my way.  I worked the flimsy wooden barricades and nodded to the constable standing at the door.  Clearly the Constabulary's Office had started recruiting from the Irish boxing circuits again for the man looked as if his flesh were made of dough, a nose repeatedly-broken, and hands like sides of beef.  The constable's name was unknown to me – I am horrible with names though faces I remember instantly – but he knew me, nodding me into the Franklin Building. 

The inside was a cavern not of rock but wood paneling, stone pillars, and an ornate glass ceiling overhead.  I could see the airship through the ceiling, a dark shadow against the afternoon sun.  As I made my way across a sea of marble, I could hear echoes of my footsteps and electricity purring like unseen rats humming the same note.

Ahead lay a grand staircase that led to the second floor.  A man stood at the top, his posture military-straight and his eyes glancing upward as if he too were gazing at the airship.  He held a pistol in his hands.  That said something.  In my seven years of associating with the Philadelphia Constabulary Office, I had known the sergeant to pull his pistol only three times.  And one of those was to show the thing to me.

It meant that he was frightened.

And what scared Sergeant Edgar Poe would make normal men soil their pants.

I climbed the stairs to meet Poe.  The sergeant casually glanced back and I saw shadows fill the dark circles around his eyes.  I hoped his wife wasn't sick again.  Every time the consumption came upon her, it seemed as if she drew closer and closer to death's shores only to return miraculously to good health.  Each time, I feared, was driving Poe more and more... mad.

I motioned to the weapon.  "Is that to keep the gaggle outside in order?"

Poe snickered but made no reply.

We stood in a strange silence for a moment or two.  Although we enjoyed each other's company when not on official Constabulary business, I felt uneasy at that moment.  Perhaps it was the mysterious calling – an address and a
Come quickly.  E. Poe.
– or the pistol in his hand.  Either way, the silence was threatening to drive me mad.  "Why am I here, Poe?"

"That's never a good question to ask."

Wry bastard.  Before I could rephrase it better to his liking, Poe left, heading down a hallway.  Having no choice, I followed, my feet treading on the soft carpet that ran up the center of the hallway.  I did not ask him further questions.  It would be like asking a boulder for the time of day.  He would tell me more when he wanted to.

Poe made a right at the end of the hall into another, longer and with handsome cherry furniture and wall sconces.  Electric light seemed to stretch for miles.  He headed down, passing identical doors with names etched in glass.  It was in front of such a door, this one marked FRANKLIN JAMES, ESQ, that he stopped.  Without another word, Poe opened the door, revealing a simple office furnished in a mahogany banker's desk, two leather chaises, and a plush Oriental rug.  A single Tiffany lamp illuminated a pool of viscous liquid in the center of the rug.

The coppery smell of spilt blood hung heavy in the air, invading my nostrils and clothing fibers alike.  A woman's body laid on her side, her hand reaching out for something that wasn't there.  Her face was calm though her death spoke otherwise: something sharp had bisected her head just above her eyebrows.  Where the dome of her skull should have been, there was only a concave cavity empty of its major inhabitant.

I stood in the doorway watching this horrid tableau in front of me.  My soul did not fill with dread.  I did not scream in fear, lest I lose my sanity.  I only stared at the dead woman.  I did not know her but that wasn't a particularly good reason why the sight of her death caused no emotional response in me whatsoever.  No, the only thought that did come was one of identity.  "Who was she?"

Poe stood beside me, his breathing controlled.  When he looked at this woman, did he see his wife?  He motioned to the name on the door.  "Eliza Goodkind.  She's Franklin James' personal maid."

I turned to Poe and repeated my earlier question: "Why am I here, Poe?"  I'm not doctor nor am I an expert on murder.  Why am I here?"

Poe made to reply, his lips opening just partially then he closed them.  Saying nothing more he stepped carefully into the room and took an item off the top of the banker's desk.  He put it in my hand.

I took a large magnifying glass that I carried in my valise and ran the glass over every centimeter of the object.  It was metal, light in weight, and the length of my forefinger.  In the shape of a V, the two pieces that jutted from the base looked like fountain pens that ended not in a nib but ten or fifteen hair-thin metal pieces.

"Wires?"  Poe asked me, looking over his shoulders.

I ignored him though people looking over my shoulder was about as horrid as people who talk during operas and continued my inspection.  "They look more like antennae."

I closed my eyes and turned the piece over and over in my hands, letting my fingers do the 'looking.'  The base was a thicker metal tube that ended in jagged metal and strands of flimsy broken wires.  It had been broken off as if someone—

thump! thump! thump! thump!

Loud footsteps suddenly sounded out behind us and a voice boomed into the room.  "Sergeant!" 

Poe and I turned to see another constable in the doorway.  A tall, wiry man with a bushy moustache, he wore a
Fightin' Jack
on his left arm: his hand encased in an iron fist and the rest of his arm and shoulder folded into a brace.  I had seen one used with devastating effect by a debt collector years ago.  They were still picking pieces of the debtor's jaw out of a brick wall.

"He's done it again!"

"When?"

"Now!" the constable barked.  "Upstairs!"

Poe turned to me.  "The killer's in the building!"

The excitement in his eyes scared me slightly.  What kind of world of pain was my friend in that the thought of a sadistic killer loose in the building was something to get excited about?  I shook my head slightly.  "What have you dragged me into, Poe?"

He made no reply but dashed after the mustached-constable, who had already given flight down the hall.

I turned back to the dead woman splayed on the Oriental rug.  It is untrue that her death produced no emotion in me.  I felt shame for the disrespectful way she had been laid on the floor like a spilled sack of potatoes.  She had lived a life of servitude only to end like this.  She deserved more.  I took off my beloved coat and laid it over her body.

Then I begrudgingly followed the constables.

* * *

We took the stairs, not trusting a steel trap of an elevator with a murdering madman on the loose.  The stairwell was gloomy and sounds seemed to reverberate off every surface as we climbed, single file.  The constable led the way, I, the monkey in the middle, and Poe, pistol drawn, brought up the rear.  As we climbed, Poe told me that the call had come over two hours ago from a terrified woman who was a maid for one of the other tenants.  All the servants in the building took lunch together.  Eliza, the dead woman, had gone back to work a little early to tidy her employer's office up.  However, when Maggie, the woman who called, came to the office to speak to Elisa, she found her dead.

"How many staff are inside the building at this very moment?"  I asked as we reached the landing for the third floor.  I need not tell Poe that the chances that the killer was one of the staff was very high.  He knew this better than I.

"There were five when we arrived," Poe answered.  "Though, I imagine, there are four now..."

"Any constables other than you and—"

"O'Conner, sir?' the constable supplied from above.

"Yes, O'Conner, thank you."

"There are three others.  They are downstairs talking to the staff."

"So the staff plus the constables makes seven people in this build—"

"Plus us," added Poe.

"And the killer," Constable O'Conner said as he reached the door to the fifth floor.  He did not open the door, though.  Only waited for us to catch up. 

"So there are nine... possibly ten people in this building.  And one of them is a killer."

Poe made his way to the door, pistol at the ready.  He put his hand on the doorknob but glanced at me.  "You really should have brought a gun."

Oh how funny he is!
  "You know I don't own a firearm!"

Poe shrugged.  "Doesn't mean you shouldn't."

He opened the door and entered the hallway.

* * *

The second body was male, in his late fifties or so, and wearing a handsome suit that signified he was a personal valet.  Slumped against the hallway wall, his hands hung at his side and his head was bent slightly forward.  Like the woman, something had cut open his skull and removed his brain.  However, unlike before, there was a misshapen hunk of grey meat lying just between his splayed legs, sitting in a small pool of blood.  I knelt down and examined it with my glass: a piece of the aforementioned brain.

A shuffle of feet revealed O'Conner wandering off, watching the hallway and, it would seem, mostly averting his eyes from the dead man.  Poe knelt down in front of the body and gave him the briefest of glances before making a noise like a mother duck clucking disapprovingly at her ducklings.  "Can I have the glass?"

I handed it to him and Poe returned to his examination, making a noise much less disapproving and more... intriguing.  "The skull was cut by a very sharp tool.  It was done slowly and... with a very skilled hand, I would say."

"A hunter?"  I asked as I noticed a strange coloring on the man's neck.  Kneeling before the man, I quickly pulled a handkerchief from my vest pocket and covered my mouth lest I choke on the horrid smell.  He had clearly soiled himself upon death. 

"Do hunters often remove the brains of their kills?"  Poe asked me, glancing up.

I did not meet his gaze but continued my line of examination.  "I do not know.  I buy my meat."

One handedly, I carefully pulled the collar of the man's jacket back to reveal the greater portion of a bruise.  It was a dark, violent thing that bespoke of horrible pain and brute force.  I began to search the rest of the man's person, speaking only when I had found a number of bruises.  "He's covered in contusions as if someone repeatedly beat him down with fists."

"Beaten into submission," Poe began, "only to have his skull skillfully cut open and brain removed?"

All of a sudden, a stench more horrible than the dead man enveloped me.  I instantly smelled rotten meat, something smoky like burned... flowers?  The others smelled it too.

"What is that—" Poe exclaimed!

He never had the chance to finish his sentence for the electric lights lining the hallway flickered once then shut off completely.  My vision gone completely dark, I quickly stepped up from the dead man and took two steps back.  I heard Poe's voice not too far from me, "Blown breaker?"

"Someone shut the power off," Constable O'Conner said nervously as he rushed toward us, turning on the torch he carried on his belt.

I took out my own from my valise.  I had an extra one for Poe, however I watched him turn his own on and sweep his circle of light across the hallway, searching for something.

Would the killer have turned off the lights?  I said so to the others but neither of them commented on the question.  Without a word said, we formed a very loose circle around the dead man, our lights slowly sweeping in different directions.

That silence – and vigilance – continued for a few moments until a sudden cry seemed to leap from O'Conner's lips.  I swung my light around to see O'Conner's light suddenly jerk as a loud smacking noise exploded behind him.  A flash of movement and I felt something wet and warm shower my face like an unexpected summer rainstorm!

Then something smacked into my left foot.  I turned my flashlight down to see the
Fightin' Jack
iron fist still in O'Conner's severed arm resting against my boot.

O'Conner howled, his voice torn with intense pain.  He jerked forward as if something had shoved him. A jet of bright red liquid sprayed out from an arm that now seemed never to have left his torso.  I dashed toward the constable but got no more than two steps when something literally sliced through O'Conner's chest and cut the man in two.