The Daemoniac

by Kat Ross

  I could see a crowd of people, just a few blocks away, waiting to board one of the ferry lines. But as I veered toward them, two of the thugs tore around the corner and cut me off. They slowed as they saw me, evil grins widening on their faces.

  I uttered an oath that would have made Mrs. Rivers’ hair curl, and possibly John’s as well.

  Salvation was so close.

  One of the thugs gave a high-pitched whistle, and my heart sank further when it was answered by a whistle to my right, and another just behind. I could see Red Hair coming now, and he didn’t look happy. Dried blood crusted his lips, like a sinister circus clown.

  I thought about screaming again, but the tiny figures milling around the pier would never hear me. Red Hair halted and slapped the business end of a blackjack into his open palm with a frightening thwack. The very same sound I imagined it would make when it shattered my skull.

  Then he started coming.

  He didn’t say anything, or ask me any more questions. The time for that had passed. Now he just wanted revenge.

  I spun in a circle. Every avenue of escape had been closed off.

  I started to back toward the river. In my peripheral vision, I saw one of the thugs circling around to grab me from behind.

  Then he gave a howl of pain and crumpled to the ground. I heard a hollow crack, like a wishbone snapping, and the thug—one of the dark-haired brothers—curled into a ball, clutching his kneecap. Standing over him, a stout cudgel in his fist, was Connor.

  “You’ll pay for that, boy-o,” Red Hair snarled, as he and the four others tightened the circle.

  Connor rushed over and grabbed my hand, his mouth tight.

  “Did they hurt you?” he asked softly.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  But as I watched them advance, my initial surge of hope melted like ice cream on a hot sidewalk.

  It was still five against two. And they were all bigger, stronger and far meaner than us.

  We inched backwards until our heels hung over the edge of the wharf.

  Connor looked up at me. “Know how to swim, Harry?” he asked.

  I nodded, heart pounding, and squeezed his sticky palm.

  “Good,” Connor said. “‘Cause I don’t.”

  And with that he whirled and we both leapt into the river. I felt a brief moment of sublime weightlessness, when the world tilts on its axis and time slows to a crawl, and then the black waters closed over our heads. It wasn’t cold, but the current was strong, sweeping us out towards the middle where the shipping traffic was heaviest. If I’d been wearing my petticoats and corset and usual nonsense, I would probably have drowned. But Connor’s clothing was lightweight cotton, and though it billowed out around me, I managed to keep afloat. What dragged me down was the boots, which were laced too tight to get off. But I found that if I kicked hard enough, they were manageable.

  Connor had been yanked away from me when we went under. I frantically scanned the choppy surface, calling his name. It seemed an eternity, but then his head and arms broke the water about twenty feet away. He thrashed hard and I could see he was starting to panic.

  Several adjacent splashes signified that our pursuers knew how to swim too.

  “Hold on, I’m coming,” I yelled, paddling against the current with all my strength.

  Connor gave a choking cry and slipped beneath the waves.

  The fear I’d felt on the pier was nothing compared to the sheer terror that seized me at that moment. I dove down into the foul murk, kicking and pulling with every ounce of strength I could muster. Aiming for the last spot I’d seen him.

  It was pitch dark. My lungs screamed for air. But I knew that if I surfaced to draw a breath, Connor would be gone forever.

  In the end, it was sheer luck that saved us. Spots danced in front of my eyes and I knew I couldn’t last much longer. Then my boot kicked something soft. I spun, groping blindly, and my fingers closed around a piece of cloth. I hauled us to the surface, flipping Connor onto his back and holding him afloat with one arm. To my vast relief, he coughed up a few mouthfuls of water and fell limp.

  I let the current carry us for a minute while I caught my breath, though I soon realized that the channel was not a desirable location. After a near miss with a square-rigged clipper ship, I stroked hard for the Clyde’s Line pier, where a number of smaller boats bobbed at anchor. The wind rose. I thought I caught a glimpse of a dark head in the water, but the chop made it impossible to see far. Judging by the faint cries downriver, one of the thugs was floundering. Hopefully the others would heed his calls for help and give up their pursuit.

  I reached one of the smallest boats and clung to it like a barnacle, but I didn’t think I could hold us both for long.

  I hissed Connor’s name and shook him a little. His eyelids fluttered.

  “Don’t let go,” I whispered, wrapping his thin arm around the gunwale. “Or we’ll be swept out to sea.”

  Connor mumbled something too soft to hear, but he held tight. His red curls stuck to his forehead and his lips looked blue in the darkness. I locked my wrists together and we stayed like that for longer than I thought humanly possible. And then for a few minutes more.

  Of course, I hadn’t thought to save a little energy in reserve for when we let go and had to swim to the mossy green ladder of the pier, so I did almost drown us both on the way there. But my stiff fingers finally closed around the bottom rung and we dragged ourselves up out of the river, cold and tired but glad to be alive.

  “How’d you find me?” I asked as we trudged east on Pike Street.

  “Followed you,” Connor said, wringing his shirt out. “Figgered you was up to something and I might have to save your bacon. I was about to jump in before when you dowsed that Jack Cove’s mug with a fine right hook. It was lovely, Harry.”

  He gave me a happy smile. I shrugged as if it was nothing special for me to engage in fisticuffs with James Moran’s henchmen, although I was feeling rather pleased with myself.

  It was a long walk home.

  The little money I’d brought had been sucked right out of my pockets. But this was New York, so we barely earned a second glance, wet, dirty and bedraggled as we appeared. On the bright side, no one chased us, or tried to brain us with a blackjack.

  At least it was August.

  My clothes had dried by the time we climbed the front steps at Tenth Street, where I found another unpleasant surprise. The only thing in the world I wanted was to get undressed and crawl under a set of clean, starched sheets. But all the lights were burning in the windows, even though it had to be nearly midnight.

  You’re in the soup again, Harry, I thought glumly. Mrs. Rivers woke up and found you out of your bed, and though she might be a mighty tolerant old lady, she’ll be forced to take some kind of stand on unauthorized nocturnal escapes.

  I opened the front door, steeling myself for a righteous dressing down. But it wasn’t Mrs. Rivers we found in the formal parlor. Well, she was there too. But so were Nellie, Edward and John. They all turned and looked at me like I had two heads.

  “Oh no,” I said, slumping against the doorway. “Not another body.”

  Nellie shook her head. “Not a body,” she said, downing a tot of Mrs. Rivers’ dry gin.

  “Thank God.” I pulled a strand of seaweed from my hair.

  Nellie gave me her tight smile. “It’s two bodies this time.”

  Edward wrinkled his nose. “Do you smell something? It’s like…sewage.”

  “I think that’s Harry,” John said. “Or maybe Connor. What happened to you? Where did you go? We’ve been worried sick. I was afraid…”

  “George Xavier Kane was Becky’s lover,” I said. “I went down to the Bottle Alley Saloon. Now what’s this about two bodies?”

  We all talked at once for a confusing few minutes. I related my trip to the bar and run-in with Moran’s thugs, and Nellie told me what she’d heard just two hours before through the police beat grapevine. Two more victims, only blocks a
part, both strangled. Both faces were covered, one with a linen handkerchief, the other with her own bedsheet. It had happened inside the woman’s flat.

  I felt sick. While I was out playing dress-up, the Hunter had been conducting his grisly work. I stared into space, picturing their wide, terrified eyes as they realized what was about to happen.

  I wondered if they had children.

  I wondered what I could have done differently, if I could have prevented it somehow.

  John must have sensed my feelings, for he came and stood next to me.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said quietly.

  “How do you know that?” I demanded. “How?”

  “Because you’re the smartest person I know.”

  “It’s not enough,” I said bitterly.

  “Don’t,” John said. “Self-pity’s not your style, Harry. Now, pull yourself together and let’s get back to work.”

  I looked into his calm brown eyes and nodded.

  “Right,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He went to squeeze my shoulder, then thought better of it.

  “You really are ripe, Harry,” John said with a laugh.

  I surveyed my companions on this strange, grim journey. Edward just kept repeating “George Kane!” in an amazed voice. They’d apparently just seen each other at the races that very afternoon. Our friend was impeccably dressed as usual, making me feel even more like the proverbial skunk at the garden party.

  “There’s no point in trying to get to the scenes now,” Nellie sighed. “It’s a full on mob scene. They’ve got the whole area closed off.”

  “Where did it happen?” I asked.

  “Ninth Avenue and Seventeenth Street. Oh, and before I forget, no luck on that stockbroker named Gerald. I checked the employee records of the largest houses. There’s only two, and they’re both in their late sixties, highly respected. I can’t imagine they’d be involved with this man Straker. As for the smaller houses…well, there are dozens. It would take months to check them all.”

  “Hold on a moment,” I said. “I really have to change.”

  Even I could smell myself.

  “That’s a good idea, dear,” Mrs. Rivers said.

  She was acting suspiciously mellow, a state I attributed to the half-empty bottle of Hendricks gin at her elbow.

  Not one to question divine good fortune, I dashed upstairs and washed as best I could, thinking hard as I donned a clean dress. John was right. We were at a pivotal moment in the case. We had a new suspect, a real one this time, and I felt a breakthrough was imminent.

  “Let’s review what we know so far,” I told my friends when I returned to the parlor.

  I rolled out a map of the city on the table and we all gathered round.

  “The first victim, Becky Rickard, was killed at home.” I used a fountain pen to mark Baxter Street with an X. “Raffaele Forsizi here at Union Square, and Anne Marlowe here, at Sixty-Third Street. The last two at Ninth Avenue.” I made four more Xs. “What do you know about the latest victims, Nellie?”

  “Not much. They were both women. He seems to be developing a preference. The one killed in her flat was a housewife whose husband worked nights. The other may have been a prostitute, I’m not sure.”

  “But he still took the time to cover the faces,” John pointed out. “The ambivalence hasn’t changed.”

  “Other than that they have nothing in common though,” Edward said. “And he’s escalating. The risk of getting caught in the act tonight was twice as high, but it didn’t stop him.”

  “But they do have something in common,” I said, feeling a surge of grim excitement. “Look at the map. We couldn’t see it before, because there were only three, and Becky doesn’t fit. But that’s because her murder was different. She wasn’t chosen randomly. The others were. Now if we take away Becky…” I covered Baxter Street with my hand.

  John was the first to see it.

  “The elevated trains,” he breathed. “They were all killed within shouting distance of the elevated.”

  “Except for Anne Marlowe,” I said triumphantly, “who was found on the waterfront, but her crime scene doesn’t count because we know from Mary Fletcher that he first saw her on the train. That’s where he stalked her. I’d thought it was just the one time, but it’s every time. It’s where he finds his victims, John. The perfect anonymous place to watch someone, to follow them when they get off. He dresses as a soldier because it makes them trust him.”

  Edward leaned over the map. “You’re a genius, Harry. Union Square—the Third Avenue El. Then Anne Marlowe. Then two in the shadow of the Ninth Avenue El.”

  “John, do you still have your notes from the interview with Raffaele’s family?” I asked.

  If the organ grinder had taken a streetcar home, my grand theory would collapse like a house of cards.

  “Yes, of course.” He rummaged through his coat pockets. “Let’s see…”

  We all waited impatiently as he found it and flipped through his notes. When he looked up, I knew from his eyes that I had been right.

  “His sister said Raffaele always took the El downtown after he played for the afternoon in Central Park,” he said. “Trying to earn a few more pennies in the evening near the theaters.”

  We were all silent for a minute. I hated The Hunter more at that moment more than I ever had before.

  “So who is he?” Nellie asked briskly. “Straker? George Kane?”

  “Or Thomas Sweet,” Connor ventured.

  “Or Temple Kane,” Edward said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t put it past the woman.”

  “Or James Moran,” Nellie added. “Why else would his thugs have hassled you? It sounds like they knew exactly who you are, Harry.”

  “It could be George Kane and Thomas Sweet,” John said, as if the waters weren’t muddy enough already. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

  “Perhaps we’ll find out tomorrow night,” I said, turning to Edward. “You obtained those invitations?”

  “Engraved in gilt, on the finest paper,” Edward said, twirling his pocket watch. “Seven o’clock sharp.” He sniffed again. “You might want to take another bath beforehand, Harry.”

  “If it is George Kane, he’s not going to admit to anything,” John pointed out reasonably. “So what do we do then?”

  I thought for a moment. “Then we turn the tables on him. We know where his stalking grounds are now. We hunt The Hunter.”

  Chapter 13

  It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when my friends said their goodbyes. Mrs. Rivers had drifted off on the sofa, and Nellie helped me wake her up and settle her in bed before jumping in Edward’s barouche with John.

  It may have been the first time in his life that Connor didn’t object to a hot bath.

  I’d forgotten that we were supposed to meet with Uncle Arthur’s demonologist the next day, but John hadn’t. He was clearly looking forward to it more than I was.

  As I finally snuggled under my covers, I decided that the somewhat inexplicable aspects of the case were useful insofar as they caught the interest of the powers that be at the S.P.R. In fact, it was fortunate, because the Society had no use for a straight-forward murder investigation. However, despite the strange things I had seen and heard over the last days, I remained firmly in the rationalist camp.

  I knew in my heart that this man would be caught not through a bunch of psychic mumbo jumbo, but because he had made a mistake. He had revealed his pattern. And I vowed to myself that I would do all in my power to prevent any more innocents from falling prey to his blood lust.

  Perhaps you think I should have gone to the police at this point. And perhaps you would be right.

  I could defend myself by saying that we didn’t really have anything concrete, but that wouldn’t be the full truth. We had enough. Sergeant Mallory, at least, would have listened.

  No, the full truth is that I still wanted to solve it myself. Despite what I had told Mrs. Rivers, I did care what Myrtle thought, ve
ry much. For once, just once, I wanted her to look at me with something approximating approval. I wanted to be the one coolly laying out my unimpeachable reasoning while my audience sat in quiet awe.

  And it was nearly my undoing.

  I spent the morning catching up with the papers. As I’d suspected, Nellie had coined the colorful moniker “Jekyll and Hyde” in her article on Anne Marlowe for The New York World, and her colleagues had leapt on it like a bunch of hyenas on the body of a dying wildebeest. The coverage was feverish: I counted the phrase “diabolical fiend” no less than nine times. That the killings were connected was no longer a secret, and The Herald declared that “no one was safe from his heinous depredations,” pretty much guaranteeing widespread panic.

  Two hours before my appointment at St. John’s College, a knock came on the door. It was my client.

  “Miss Pell,” Brady said.

  It was raining again, and he shook the water from his umbrella before stepping inside.

  “A body has been found,” he said as we entered the parlor and sat down.

  “I know. Two actually,” I said.

  Brady looked at me in some confusion. “No, I mean Robert. Well, I’m not sure it’s him yet. But after much thought, I decided to do as you suggested and filed a report at the Bureau for the Recovery of Lost Persons yesterday. I didn’t tell them everything, just that my friend had disappeared.” He swallowed. “They contacted me this morning. A body was fished out of the Hudson. It fits Robert’s description. But they said…they said it had been in the water for a while.”

  “I’m truly sorry,” I said.

  “I’ll go to the morgue this afternoon to try to make an identification. I just wanted you to know.”