Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(92)

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But first I went to the dry goods store, and I was too late, thank God.

(If He exists to receive any appreciation. I remain ever the filthy atheist, but He’s crept into my language, and it’s just as well. It keeps people fooled. So thank God, I say.)

By that, I mean that I did not have to intervene in anything. No one else was involved, and the woman was dead before I arrived, the scissors opened just enough to stab through both her eyes. Self-inflicted. I saw it in a moment.

I saw it in the gory fingerprints, and the bloody messages she’d scrawled across the floor, the walls, the windows. Using her blood for ink.

They were hardest to read on the windows, for they were runny and almost washed clean with water. Like everywhere else I’d seen the phenomenon so far, the water came from nowhere and smelled terrible. It drained out through the store, and seeped through the floorboards to soak the foundations. It was gone by the time I got there, just like the life of the woman whose troubles had summoned me.

(As for the message—mostly it was one word, written again and again: out. And perhaps even more oddly, the handwriting did not appear to belong to one person alone. It came in script, in print, and in combinations of the two. It was smeared in angular lines, and smoothly composed with a flowing hand. I do not know what this means, but I’m writing it down as I write everything down, and for the same reason. It might be useful. To someone. Eventually.)

I told the officer on the scene that I’d send for Inspector Wolf, and whoever the young man was, he looked relieved—for this was out of his hands at last. Thank heaven there was someone more qualified to manage these unmanageable acts.

It isn’t true, really. To the best of my immediate knowledge, Wolf is no more qualified than anyone else. Certainly no more qualified than Lizzie or myself, and if we are the best informed of mankind, then there are dire times ahead indeed.

Or . . . no. I might be wrong.

It could be, Wolf is looking at patterns just like we are—but he’s seeing different ones, that’s all. He’s seen the crimes as they connect, even if he cannot draw the lines precisely between them. And I call him “inspector”—everyone refers to him thusly—but now that I pause to consider it, I have no idea what force or office employs him. Is he a policeman? A federal agent? Some kind of marshal?

I wonder whether I ought to call him and tell him to join us at the spinsters’ house, that he may wait with us. He did offer to deploy security men, didn’t he? I’d prefer if he came himself, alone. He might be able to help.

Or he might be one more body when the smoke clears.

I don’t know what to do. Well, he’s the one who sent me the article, so he knows already how near at hand is our peril. The decision is his. He can come if he wants, or leave us if he doesn’t.





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I walked around the scene of the crime, if suicide by gruesome means can be considered a crime. Is it? Surely not. If suicide is illegal, then nothing in the world makes sense.

At any rate, Mrs. Easley harmed no one but herself, however violently she might have done so. I did not want to investigate it. There was nothing I could tell the earnest, frightened policemen. Nothing to ease their worry or reassure them that this was an isolated incident. They already knew it wasn’t. They already knew about the Hamiltons; and they knew about the Davids, the Jessups. They knew about Mr. Winters and Miss Angeline Frye. They were aware of the situation with Harlan Sykes.

They know they might be next. Oh, those poor boys. They are so afraid.

I am jealous of them, because they do not know how afraid they ought to be.





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I left the scene without taking notes. I did not mention the waterlogged floor, the damp-damaged walls, or the scissor handles protruding from the woman’s face, like a demented pair of spectacles. I made no commentary on the blood—they thought it must be too much for one corpse to hold, but they were mistaken. The water made it look worse, having diluted and spread the gore around; if you don’t know the viscosity of blood, you wouldn’t know the difference. Besides, those boys had no idea how much fluid a body can hold. They’d never seen one drained before. I have. In the war, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. Those were bodies broken apart, smashed and incomplete, oozing rather than gushing or spilling. So little left inside them that nothing pumped, ticked, or flowed.

I didn’t tell them any of that. I only told them that they knew where to find me, and I said I would send Inspector Wolf a wire.

I couldn’t if I wanted to. He’s never given me any contact information, or any office where a telegram might be received. I still have no idea who he works for, or why.





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All day, the knowledge that the monster was so close, and coming closer, weighed on me. All through those hours, I carried the weight of Zollicoffer’s impending arrival.

I shouldn’t have bothered to visit the late, lamented Mrs. Easley. I’d known already what I would find, and I contributed nothing to the conversation as to her demise. It would’ve served no purpose to tell the young officers that she’d been driven mad and committed suicide because there was a monster who had been transformed by something pulled from the ocean last year. It would’ve done nothing to help, if I’d added that the monster was on his way, and the nearer he drew, the more events like this we ought to expect.