Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(32)

My attention snagged on another mention of the Klan, buried on page four.

It was in reference to a recent parade, and I, for one, could not ignore it. (Yes, the Klan exists elsewhere above and beyond the fabled line, but nowhere else is it so ubiquitous. Or I must hope and pray.) Apparently, there were rumors that the early axe killings were perpetrated by black men . . . and someone thought that the solution to this matter would be to invite the Klan to put on a show of strength. Not that they put it that way, but I can read between the lines with the best of them.

I doubt it will work. It was a stupid idea in the first place, and it will serve only to frighten and intimidate perfectly honest men . . . and maybe cause the assault and horrific death of a few, because everyone else will be worked up as well.

I hate to consider it, but the atrocities committed by this group are no great secret; if anything, they go out of their way to advertise their brutality, mounting a campaign of fear against the populace at every available turn. And to think, I’d reflexively felt it best to preserve my hosts from the details of the Massachusetts case of yore—when, apparently, it’s common practice to perform comparable acts of terror on negroes with virtually no evidence (or none at all).

I won’t record any of it here. It turns my stomach.

And that said . . . though less creative in scope, and more limited in production . . . these assorted instances of mob justice do remind me of those terrible crimes in Massachusetts.

Several things have reminded me of them since I learned of Coyle’s death . . . as if a reminder is being suggested by the universe, repeatedly. A gentle hint, growing louder. It’s not just the brutality of the Klan attacks, or the repetition of the axe motif. (And it is a motif. Everything is, when you stand back far enough and squint.) But just when I was prepared to write it all off to coincidence . . . young Ruth brought up the notorious Miss Borden. Just as the chief did, before I left Boston.

I haven’t thought of her in years, and now she’s come up twice.

The old Fall River case and these new cases aren’t the same, no. Not the same parties or location, not the same anything—except for a common weapon and a shared sense of dread that escalates the longer I remain here. But I am listening to these hints from the cosmos all the same, and so I am thinking about what it all means.

I am thinking about the brief time I spent in the company of Lizzie Borden.

No. That wasn’t her name, not by then. She was using her father’s name, Andrew, or something like that. But a simple change of name is no change at all, not really.

? ? ?

We never did know what happened in the Massachusetts cases. Something was headed for Fall River, barreling toward Emma Borden—we’re confident of that much. It wasn’t someone so much as it was a thing, wearing the skin of an upstate biology professor.

That thing killed dozens. (And that’s only to count the deaths we confidently know of, and can tie directly to it.)

And then . . . then it reached Fall River. Or it should have, according to our calculations. No one from our team was ever able to stop it, at any rate—so either it stopped of its own accord, or someone else stopped it.

My money has always been on Lizzie Borden.

Lizzie Andrew. Whatever.

Her sister (an invalid) was in no position to defend herself, and that old doctor friend of theirs was once in the army, but he lived on the other side of town . . . so there was but one person on the premises at all times with a hypothetical history of violence, and a physical capacity to perform it.

The math supports my conclusion, even if she never did.

There’s some connection here, between Alabama and New England. I don’t know what it is, but I must listen harder, pay attention, and see what the universe is trying to tell me.

? ? ?

Stephenson’s trial doesn’t begin until Friday, and since he’s confessed freely to his involvement in Father Coyle’s murder, there wasn’t much “solving” to be done on that particular case. He’d either be convicted (unlikely, I fear) or cleared of all charges due to insanity or some other loophole of a justice system with no intent whatsoever to jail him (much more likely, yes). True, I’d collected my stipend and headed south in order to address the priest’s murder, but what was there to address? I’d sit in at the courthouse out of respect, if I could. Not that it would make any difference.

Meanwhile, there was always the matter of the axe murders. Coyle thought they were important, and he was no fool—so I decided I might as well take a crack at them while I’m here. I’m still on the fence with regards to their strangeness (or I should say Strangeness), but the Chapelwood business is mighty weird; and if the two are related, I might be right—and this may yet count as a business trip and I might successfully petition you for full reimbursement.

With this in mind, I made a phone call to the police station, to see how their change of leadership was progressing. It sounded like more mayhem over there: plenty of shouting, plenty of questions, plenty of background noise that made it difficult for the young secretary and me to understand each other. Eventually I extracted a bit of useful information from her, which was to say that the axe murder case files were no longer on the premises. They’d been removed to the city commissioner’s office a month before, due to concerns about security.

That’s how she put it, “concerns about security.” From whom or what, she declined to say.