Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(31)
She slashed and sliced again, grunting and staggering. She nicked my wrist, and that was all.
I grabbed her hand and twisted, and she dropped the knife. I spun her around with a yank. I swung the axe again, and this time, I heard it bang dully against bone. It landed wetly, heavily, behind her ears and above them.
She fell to her knees and the smoke roiled and billowed, as if it wanted to fight me for her.
Too late for that. I struck, and struck, and struck, sending bits of brain and bone flying, I know. I felt the spatter on my face, and heard it land against my collar. I felt my hands growing slick with it. My grip faltered, and I was winded.
The cold fog quivered, and rallied to cover her. Then it drained away, vanishing as if it’d never been present at all—spilled back into the ground or back into the ether or wherever it went, as easily as blood washed down a drain.
Inspector Simon Wolf
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA SEPTEMBER 26, 1921
Last night, I had dinner with the Gussmans.
It was delicious, for starters; informative, for latters; and thought-provoking all the while. They are so afraid, bless them. They are lost in their own city, hiding from their own families. And, unsurprisingly, they are not entirely prepared to trust the goodwill of an outsider like me. Ruth (in particular) told me plenty . . . but she probably kept even more to herself. If she had nothing to hide, she wouldn’t be so exceedingly careful about what she reveals.
Something is amiss in Alabama, that much is certain. This investigation of mine may prove useful to us yet, and the Quiet Society may well commend me for taking the time to visit.
I ought to say, there’s plenty more than one something amiss. Chapelwood, the axe deaths, Father Coyle’s murder. Three components, related by proximity and context, and I want to believe there’s something else, too, though it’s difficult to say. The three come up together in conversation again and again, so closely aligned in the thoughts of everyone who knows anything about any of them.
As I walked back to my hotel room, I pondered what connection might bind them.
Yes, I walked. I’d realized how close they lived to my quarters, and the night was cool enough that I didn’t feel overburdened by the perambulation. I wanted to know the city better, anyway—I wanted to walk around it, smell it, sense it for myself. Everything I’d gleaned so far was hearsay at best, secondhand gossip at worst. I had much to learn. Much to think about.
Aggravatingly, I kept finding ways to pin two of my three quandaries together, but nothing firm to hang them all upon.
Edwin Stephenson was a member of the Chapelwood congregation, and likewise he was the killer of Father Coyle. The axe murders were committed against Catholics (initially, predominantly), and the Chapelwood congregation harbors an unhealthy hatred toward Catholics. But Father Coyle wasn’t subjected to anyone’s hatchet, and there’s nothing connecting Stephenson to the other murders, either . . . except by distant proxy, via his congregation.
It’s a thin string. It would break with the slightest tension.
And, I was forced to conclude, I was only tying Stephenson into the other two because I hated him. It’s not a kind or fair thing, to hate a man before ever setting eyes on him—not ordinarily. But this was a man who’d terrorized his own family and murdered a friend of mine.
In all reality, he probably shot the priest because he was furious about his daughter’s impromptu elopement. A gun is a weapon of opportunity, of rashness and anger. It’s not the tool of a complicated plot, or a peculiar sect. It’s not a thing that requires much forethought or manipulation.
Having come to this assessment, I forced myself to remove that man from the equation. If Coyle’s murder was a separate thing, much as I’d prefer it wasn’t . . . then the axe murders and Chapelwood still remained.
Were they tethered purely by circumstance? Or was there something more driven and sinister behind them both?
I walked past a newspaper stand. An older fellow was closing it down for the night, clearing away the day’s papers and making way for the new ones, which would arrive in another eight hours or so. I bought one off him anyway, for the news was only a little late—and I didn’t much care. I’d only made it through half the paper that morning, and now I needed the second half. If I wanted to learn about the local situation, I should start with the local news.
From streetlamp to streetlamp, I scanned the front page.
The big headlines focused mostly on the recent election, and made note of the changes I’d heard about in passing already. George Battey Ward: Out. Nathaniel Barrett: In. Reorganization of the police structure: Chief Eagan essentially evicted, and Thomas Shirley instated in the role.
I sneered at the blatant descriptor of “Klan favorite,” as applied to a man whose job it would be to uphold the law. Sounded like a terrific conflict to me. Not that anyone here cares “how we do it up north.” (As I’d already heard, once or twice in my travels below the Mason-Dixon. Fine, then. Duly noted.)
When I reached my hotel room, I settled in with the paper—and with a couple of messages from the Boston office. Those I ignored, until I’d finished reading what passes for journalism down here.
Are all the local papers so biased everywhere across the land? Well, probably. That doesn’t make it right, or good. I’m sure it happens in Boston, and I don’t really see it. Maybe the people here don’t notice it anymore, either. There’s plenty we’re all prepared to ignore, by virtue of familiarity.