“Keep it,” said Matters. “Detective Bell doesn’t need it.”
Rivers stuck it in his belt with a grin.
Bell said, “If you like that, wait ’til you see my derringer.”
Rivers knocked Bell’s hat off his head. He snatched it from the grass, dipped into the crown, and removed the miniature, custom-built single-shot derringer Dave McCoart had lent him while he built him a replacement for the two-shot Bell had lost in Russia.
“Wow! You’re a high-class walking arsenal. Look at this—”
Rivers had made two mistakes. In picking up the tall detective’s hat, he had placed himself partly between Bell and Matters. And he had already let Bell distract him. In the split second before Matters could move to clear his field of fire, Bell kicked with all his might, rocketing his left boot deep into the prizefighter’s groin. Then he dropped to the grass and reached into his right boot, drawing and casting his throwing knife in a single motion.
Bill Matters cried out in shock and pain. The heavy Remington six-shooter fell from his convulsing fingers and he stared in horrified disbelief at the razor-sharp blade that had passed between the bones of his wrist. The flat metal shaft quivered from the front of his arm and a full inch of the point protruded red and glistening from the skin on the back.
Bell picked up the Remington and brought it down like a sledgehammer on Rivers’ skull as the gasping butler tried to straighten up. Then he whirled back at Matters and landed a blow with the old pistol that knocked the oil man flat.
He had one pair of handcuffs. He secured Matters to an iron ring in the oil rig, took the guns from the unconscious Rivers, removed his whiskey flask and his bootlaces, dragged him forty feet away, and tied him to the rig by his thumbs. He returned to Matters.
“What are you going to do?” asked Matters.
“Take my knife back, to start,” said Bell. He yanked it out of his wrist, wiped the blood off on Matters’ shirt, and sheathed it back in his boot.
“I’ll bleed to death.”
“Not before you answer a heap of questions.” He screwed the cap off Rivers’ flask and poured whiskey into the wound the knife had slit. Matters sucked air. “Beats infection. Now, Bill, let’s talk.”
The rage that Bell had seen explode on the Bremen boat train flared red-hot in Matters’ eyes. Bell said, “It’s over. I’ve got you dead to rights. There is no escape. It’s time to talk. Where is your assassin?”
Slowly, the fire faded.
“Where? Where is the assassin?”
“You’re looking at him.”
—
“You shot your old partner Spike Hopewell? What about Albert Hill and Reed Riggs, and C. C. Gustafson in Texas?”
“Them, too.”
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
“Hunting in the woods. I was a natural. Good thing, too. Bloodsucking bank foreclosed when Father died. The sheriff drove off our pigs and cows and turned my mother and me out of the home. We lived on the game I shot. Later, I ran away to the circus and a Wild West Show.”
Isaac Bell reminded Bill Matters that they had been sitting together in the Peerless with Rockefeller when the assassin fired at them in Baku.
“I paid a Cossack a thousand rubles to throw off suspicion.”
“Did you pay him to wound me or kill me?”
Matters looked Bell in the face. “Wound. My girls were sweet on you. I reckoned it might turn out well for one of them.”
“No one ever denied you were a loving father. Did you arm the Cossack with one of your Savages?”
“I didn’t have any with me. He used his own rifle.”
“Really?” said Bell. “The 1891 Russian Army Mosin is about as accurate as a pocket pistol. The short-barrel Cossack version is worse— You were never the assassin. Why are you trying to protect a hired hand with your own life?”
“What hired hand?”
“It’s not in your character to protect the assassin. You are not an honorable man. Will you look me in the eye and tell me you’re an honorable man?”
“Honorable never put game on the table.”
“Then why are you protecting your hired killer?”
“There is no hired killer. I did my own killing.”
“And poisoned Averell Comstock and threw Lapham off the monument?”
“I did what I had to do to advance in the company.”
“You’re trying, and failing, to protect a hired killer.”
“Why would I bother?” asked Matters.
“Only one answer makes sense.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“The assassin is your stepson.”
“My stepson?”
“Billy Hock.”
“You could not be more wrong.”
“Your stepson who ran away and joined the Army.”
“I never thought of Billy as my stepson. He was my son. Just as both my daughters are my daughters.”
“Call him what you will,” said Bell, “he became the finest sharpshooter in the Army. You made him a murderer.”
Matters’ expression turned bleak. There was no more anger in him. “My son is dead.”
“No, your son is your own personal murderer.”
“I know he is dead.”
“Your daughters don’t know. The Army doesn’t know. How do you know?”
“I found his body.”
38
The tall detective, who was leaning close to interrogate the handcuffed criminal, rocked back on his heels. He stared, eyes cold, mind racing. He paced a tight circle, cast an eye on the still-unconscious Rivers, gazed across the pond, and down at Matters. The man was as skilled a liar as Bell had ever encountered. And yet . . .
“If Billy was dead, why would Edna and Nellie tell me that he ran away from home and joined the Army?”
“That was my story. I told them that. It was better to let the girls think he died a soldier.”
“How did he die?”
“He drowned in that pond.”
“Here? In your backyard? But you never reported his death.”
“I buried him myself.”
“Why?”
“To protect the girls.”
“From what?”
“He committed suicide. The poor kid tied a rope around his neck. He tied the other end to a concrete block. Then he picked up the block and waded into the pond until the mud got him and the block dragged his head under. I saw his foot. His trouser leg had trapped air and it floated. Don’t you understand, Bell? The girls loved him. The idea that he was so unhappy that he would commit suicide would destroy them. I know, because I still ask myself every day what did I do wrong? What could I have done better?”
“Spike said you were never the same after that.”
“Spike was right.”
“Why did you have Spike shot?”
“Spike wasn’t as dumb as I thought. Or as ‘honorable.’ He figured out what I was up to, and when the Standard started breathing down his neck in Kansas, he threatened to tell Rockefeller that I was out to destroy him. He thought I could help him, that I could stop the Standard from busting up his business . . . Before you start blaming some other innocent, I repeat, I didn’t ‘have Spike shot.’ I shot him myself.”
“No you didn’t,” said Bell. “You were a thousand miles away at Constable Hook at your regularly scheduled meeting with Averell Comstock.”
“I was not at Constable Hook. I was in Kansas.”
“Van Dorn detectives read it in Comstock’s diary,” said Bell. “You were not in Kansas the day Spike was shot. And before you cook up a new lie, Comstock’s secretary confirmed that indeed you did show up for that meeting, on time, as always . . .”
Matters tugged at the handcuffs. In a bitter voice he asked, “When did you start checking up on me?”
“We checked up on all the new men who were in a position to attack Standard Oil from within the company. After you tried to kill Mr. Rockefeller, we naturally focuse
d full attention on you. Where did you bury Billy?”
“Right here.” Matters pointed at the headstone. “Shakespeare’s grave.”
Bell peered at the stone, imagining the sequence of events. The boy was dead. The headstone was already there. Matters dug a hole. The stone marked an unmarked grave.
Matters said, “Funny thing is, he never wanted to come to the theater. Hated it. Poor kid never could fit in. Fidgeted the whole play.”
“You buried him right here when he drowned himself?”
“Like I just told you. You can dig up the poor kid’s bones if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe that you buried him. But I don’t believe that he drowned himself.”
“He drowned,” Matters repeated doggedly.
“Drowning was the least likely method Billy would have chosen to kill himself. If he drowned, he was not a suicide.”
“He drowned.”
“Then someone murdered him.”
“I would never hurt him.”
“I believe you. But you found his body.”
“I told you.”
“Did the girls mention that I knew Billy slightly at college?”
“They told me you stood up for him.”
“As bullies will, they found his worst fear and used it against him. Do you remember what that was?”
“What do you mean?” Matters asked warily.
“The crew boys were throwing him in the river. Billy was rigid with fear. Absolutely petrified—he looked like his skull was popping through his skin—screaming he couldn’t swim. They’d have pulled him out in a second, but he was so terrified of water, he couldn’t see it was just college hijinks. There is no way on God’s earth that boy would have killed himself by drowning . . .”
But even as he spoke, Bell remembered Billy’s courageous attempt to conquer his fear by asking the crew to let him train to be coxswain. Could he have tried again and triumphed in a final deranged act?
Isaac Bell found himself staring intently at the Shakespeare gravestone.
“Did you say that Billy didn’t like the theater?”
“Hated it.”
—
Bell could hear old Brigadier Mills thundering in his mind. Ticket stubs from an opera house . . . Shakespeare shows . . . We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania. The thunder shaped a bolt of lightning. Why would the boy keep ticket stubs to plays he hated?
“I asked why you didn’t report Billy’s death.”
“I told you. To protect the girls.”
“Which one?”
39
Which one?” Bill Matters echoed Isaac Bell.
“You’re protecting one of your daughters. Which one?”
“What do you mean, which one?”
“Edna? Or Nellie? The one who killed Billy.”
“Killed him? You’re insane.”
Not insane, thought Bell. Not even surprised, looking back. He himself had remarked on the New York Limited, Strange how the three of us keep turning up together where crimes have occurred. And when he engineered Edna’s job covering Baku for the Evening Sun and the editor asked Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on? some sixth or seventh sense had already made him a sharper detective than he knew: Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.
Not insane. Not surprised. Only sad. Deeply, deeply sad.
Bill Matters was shouting, “They loved him. Why would one of them kill Billy?”
“Because she’s a ‘natural,’ to use your word.”
“Natural what?”
“Assassin.”
—
“She snapped,” Matters said quietly. “That was the first thought in my mind when I saw them. She snapped.”
“Who?” Isaac Bell asked. “Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shifted his eyes from Bell’s burning gaze and stared at the pond.
“Who?” Bell asked, again. “Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shook his head.
“Who did you see?”
“She was out there. In the water. I thought she was floating on a log. ’Til I saw his leg. I leaped in, grabbed her, tore her off him. Pulled him out, dragged him onto the grass. He was incredibly heavy. Such a little guy. Deadweight.”
“Dead?”
“I held him in my arms. She climbed out and stood behind me. I kept asking her why. Why did you do it? She didn’t deny it.”
“She admitted that she drowned him?”
“She said it was Billy’s fault. He was a coward. Wasted his opportunity.”
“What opportunity?”
“Of being a man. Men are allowed to do anything.”
Bell realized he did not fully believe Matters. Or didn’t want to. “No one saw? No one in those houses?”
“Night.”
“You saw them.”
“Full moon. Lunatic moon.”
“Who? Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”
Matters shook his head.
“Which of your girls is innocent?” Isaac Bell demanded.
“Both,” Matters said sullenly.
“One is guilty. Is it Nellie, your blood daughter? Or Edna, your stepdaughter?”
“I love them equally, with all my heart.”
“I don’t doubt that you do. Which is the assassin?”
“I can only say neither,” said Matters. “Even if they hang me.”
“Oh, they will hang you, I promise,” said Bell.
“Your question will hang with me.”
Isaac Bell realized that if somehow the assassin were to stop killing and commit no more crimes, then he could spend the rest of his life wondering and never truly knowing which of them was the woman she seemed to be and which had been a murderer. But why would she ever stop? How many more would die before he caught her?
He was struck suddenly by a terrible insight. He saw a way, a way as cruel as it would be effective, to force Bill Matters to confess.
“There is no question you will hang, Bill.”
“I don’t care.”
“The only question is, will the girl who hangs beside you be the right one?”
“What do you mean?” asked Matters. But Bell saw that he knew exactly what he meant. The blood had drained from his face. His jaw was rigid. His hands were shaking so hard, they rattled the cuffs.
“The only truth you’ve ever told is that you love both your daughters.”
“I do. I do.”
“Your assassin covered her tracks so cleverly that she could be either of them. Either Edna. Or Nellie. But justice must be done.”
“Hanging the wrong one won’t be justice.”
“Sadly, justice makes mistakes. In this case, the better liar—the natural—will go free.”
40
Grim-faced Van Dorns in dark coats and derbies flanked Isaac Bell as he strode the grassy field across the road from the Sleepy Hollow Roadhouse. The ancient tavern was still surrounded by mud. The hayfield was a verdant, boot-pounded carpet under a multicolored fleet of gas balloons in various stages of inflation.
Nellie Matters’ yellow balloon was the tallest, its bulbous top rising higher than the trees at the edge of the Pocantico estate. It was fully inflated, and she was ready to soar under a gigantic billboard for equal enfranchisement.
To VOTES FOR WOMEN she had added NELLIE MATTERS’ NEW WOMAN’S FLYOVER almost as if to ask When you get the vote, will you vote for Nellie?
Other balloons were almost filled or half-filled, hanging odd rumpled shapes in the still air. The suffragists who had brought them had added the names of their states to VOTES FOR WOMEN and phrases aimed at Rockefeller in hopes of persuading the Standard Oil titan to put his influence behind their push to amend the Constitution to give women the right to vote.
Newspapermen and -women wandered among them, invited under the rope that held at bay the public, for whom a tiered fairground grandstand was provided. Typewriters pounded away on picnic tables in an open tent. Photographer
s swarmed, lugging glass-plate cameras on tripods and waving smaller Kodak instruments that allowed snaps on the run.
Bell spotted Edna Matters darting about in a white cotton dress and made a beeline for her. She had perched a New York Sun press card at a jaunty angle in the hatband of her straw boater and was jotting notes in a pocket diary. Seen from behind, the wisps of chestnut hair trailing her graceful neck could have belonged to a boy until she turned toward him and a smile lit her beautiful face.
“Hello, Isaac! What a day Nellie’s made! Everyone came. Even the dread Amanda, in a scarlet balloon.”
Bell took her arm. Edna saw the Van Dorns. “Hello, Mack, Wally. Lovely to see you again. You’re just in time. They’re about to soar. Nellie’s going first, then the rest will follow.”
Bell said, “The boys will escort you to New York.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I am terribly, terribly sorry, Edna, but we have your father at our office.”
“Is he—”
“A doctor’s patched him up. He’s all right. I will hold off turning him over to the police until you have a moment with him.”
“I better get Nellie.”
“I’ll get Nellie.”
—
He saw Nellie watch him coming.
She gave him a warm smile and a big wave, as if inviting him to join her.
It had been years since Bell’s one ride in a balloon, but he recognized the working parts from her exuberant stories: the ten-foot-diameter wicker basket of tightly woven rattan; her bank of “emergency gas” steel cylinders containing hydrogen under pressure that she could pipe into the narrow mouth of the envelope; the “load ring,” the strong circle that rimmed the mouth, holding the fabric open and anchoring the basket that hung from it; and the giant rope net that encased the towering gasbag.
The controls were simple: three levers on the edge of the basket were linked by wires to drop sand ballast to ascend or release gas to descend. The dragline to reduce weight and stop descent was coiled in the bottom of the basket. A fourth, red-handled lever was connected to the bank of cylinders of emergency gas.
Nellie was smiling in a shaft of sunlight that shined down through the fabric dome eighty feet overhead. She reminded Bell of a sea captain about to set sail—in command, confident, and alert. She stood with one hand inside her vest in the classic pose of Admiral Lord Nelson. Or Napoleon, he thought grimly. And he thought, too, that he had never seen her more beautiful. She had high color in her cheeks and excitement blazing in her eyes.
The Assassin Page 26
