Kill the Raven: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 3)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  The mother retrieved a bottle opener, and the men took turns drinking from it. She also brought a plate and a knife and began cutting the ringwurst into tiny pieces.

  The father pointed to the mother and said, “Tematea.” He gestured to his older daughter who said, “Charani” and the younger, “Jeta.” The man pointed his thumb at his chest and said, “Patrin.”

  “Kamp.”

  Tematea handed the plate to Kamp, who found he could eat without having to chew. Patrin motioned to Kamp’s boots, suggesting that he take them off. Kamp unlaced them and wiggled his toes.

  Patrin sat on the floor, and both girls sat cross-legged next to him, one on each side. Patrin began telling a tale that was sprinkled with enough recognizable words and hand gestures that he came to understand that they’d come from Hungary and hadn’t yet found a home.

  Patrin finished his story with a rueful nod, stood up and instructed his family to go back upstairs. They smiled at him once more and one by one filed up the stairs.

  KAMP AWOKE ON THE FLOOR in the same position in which he’d fallen asleep, and he listened. He thought he heard what may have been a far-off voice.

  He laced up his boots and heard another, louder shout, then baying hounds approaching. And beyond those sounds, he heard the Black Diamond Unlimited shrieking ahead of the dawn. He looked out the window and down the road and saw lanterns bobbing toward the house. Kamp ran upstairs to the bedroom once occupied by Nyx and her sisters and found the family sleeping there.

  He yelled, “Wake up. They’re coming.” No one stirred. “You have to get out.”

  The father rolled onto his back, muttered, “So kere” and went back to sleep. Kamp hustled down the stairs and hit the back door just as the first man came in through the front, followed by another and another.

  Running from the house, Kamp heard Druckenmiller say, “Ach, I knew it. Goddamned gypsies stole my ringwurst. And my blanket, too!”

  B.H. GRIGG LIKED TO START working after washing his face and hands and before sun up. He’d had a fine sleep, so deep that he couldn’t remember any of his dreams. He walked now to his mahogany cylinder desk. The wood blazed red by the light of his lantern. It was once owned by a man named Philander Crow, his disgraced predecessor, whom he’d never met.

  Grigg rolled back the top, set the lantern on the desk and slid out the leather writing slope. When he focused on the object placed there, Grigg felt his hands go cold as the blood drained from his face. His time on the planet was short.

  KAMP DIDN’T WAIT TO SEE what became of the Hungarian family in the red house. He gained speed as he crossed the road and dropped onto the trail that led to the train tracks, slowing only to step from dry stone to dry stone across Shawnee Creek and then charging up the bank on the other side.

  The Unlimited’s engine had already passed, and Kamp scanned the box cars. When he saw the first car with an open door, he accelerated and made his leap. He caught the hand rail, put his foot in the iron stirrup and let momentum swing his body in a kind of pirouette that landed him on the hard boards of the box car.

  He crawled across the floor, vertigo already overtaking him. He propped himself against the back of the car and watched the breaking dawn.

  GRIGG INSPECTED THE OBJECT by the first rays of morning sun. It was exactly as it had been described to him by Kamp, an eight-sided silver coin. One side pictured a steaming locomotive engine. The obverse depicted the bust of a smiling figure wearing a cap in the Phrygian style, and behind the figure, a crossed pickaxe and shovel, enclosed in a circle. Inside the edge of the circle were the words “Ex Fratrum Ordine, Et in Corvo.”

  Grigg locked the door and closed all the blinds, but that gave him no comfort. They’d already invaded his sanctum and could easily have killed him while he slept. He didn’t pause further to reflect. He pulled on his coat, picked up his briefcase and ran for the train station.

  FIFTEEN

  ADA FARMER HADN’T SEEN THE WANTED POSTER, and even if she had, she never would have thought she looked at all like the person depicted on it. She’d heard of Nyx Bauer, but only because she knew the famous story of how her parents died at the hands of a madman. She’d heard rumors that Nyx had gone insane as a result, or that she was possessed by a demon.

  Ada Farmer didn’t know that anyone who caught Nyx Bauer would be a thousand dollars richer.

  On a bright, warm afternoon in early autumn the sixteen-year old Ada Farmer wasn’t thinking about crime or money. She was thinking about a seventeen-year old boy named Klaus Vogel and looking at the red handkerchief in her hand.

  They’d arranged a meeting in the woods about a mile from her home in Bethlehem. The plan was that when they got close enough to see each other, she’d wave the handkerchief and know she’d kept their date. Who else would it be? But for her the red handkerchief made it more exciting, much more romantic.

  She walked beneath the cover of maple trees and stared at the blue sky looking back at her through the leaves. Ada Farmer felt a powerful tingle at the base of her spine and a twinge of guilt in her throat. Her father would disapprove, because she was going to meet a boy and because the boy was German, not Hungarian.

  But the thought of Klaus Vogel’s blue-grey eyes, the curls in his chestnut brown hair and his strong shoulders propelled her forward. She didn’t know what the two of them would do when they met, but the possibilities thrilled her. And so she started running.

  THE TWO HUNTERS IN THE WOODS that day had seen the wanted poster. They’d seen it on a lamppost outside their church and had talked about it, about the shame of Nadine Bauer’s misdeeds and how she deserved punishment. They talked about how far a thousand dollars would go. The first hunter had taken down the poster, folded it and put it in his pants pocket.

  Each man now carried a long rifle in his hands and a clip point knife on his belt. They shared sips of whiskey from a tin flask. When they came to a meadow, they paused to take a break and finish the liquor.

  The men had first heard her when she stepped on a fallen branch at the edge of the meadow. If they hadn’t stopped and knelt in the grass, Ada Farmer probably would have seen them. But instead she went running right past. They saw her dress and the silk ribbon in her hair.

  The first hunter whispered, “Gut im himmel. It’s her.”

  “Who?”

  “Ach, Nadine Bauer.”

  “Who?”

  “The murderer.”

  “It is?”

  The second hunter felt a flicker of doubt. This girl could be anyone. And a stone criminal like Bauer wouldn’t be caught out like this in broad daylight. But this misgiving wasn’t nearly enough to quell the building excitement, and he ignored it. Their euphoria, mixed with fear and alcohol, easily overpowered rational thought.

  The first man shouted, “Stop!”

  Ada Farmer heard the man’s voice and knew that if she stopped, they’d ask questions. They’d figure out who she was and where she was going. And then they would tell her father.

  Even if she didn’t stop, they’d probably recognized her and would tell him all the same. This is my last chance to be with Klaus Vogel, she thought, as she put her head down and ran faster.

  The second man would have been happy to tell the story of the day he’d seen Nyx Bauer in the flesh, running through the forest, and how she’d barely gotten away. The first man wasn’t satisfied with the prospect of nothing but a tall tale.

  He raised his Sharps and fired. The bullet entered the back of Ada Farmer’s right arm, causing her to spin and fall in the meadow.

  “Got her.”

  When they reached Ada Farmer, she was gasping for air, clutching her ruined arm and going into shock.

  She looked up at the men standing over her and said, “Help me.”

  They stared down at her, transfixed by the sight of their wounded quarry and dumbfounded by the sudden, exhilarating turn of events. They’d found and captured a most wanted fugitive. The hunters also knew that this fugitive existed outside t
he law and that they wouldn’t be held accountable for anything they did to her.

  They didn’t know that in addition to destroying the bone in her upper arm, the bullet had also severed an artery. So, by the time each man had had his turn, Ada Farmer had bled to death.

  With the bloodlust draining away and with sobriety returning, the men stood up and began to assess the situation.

  The first man rubbed his chin and said, “Dead or alive.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what the sign said.”

  “So?”

  “So we still get the money.”

  The second man said, “There’s a problem, Abner.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It ain’t her.”

  “Ach, it is.” He pulled the wanted poster from his pocket and unfolded it and pointed to the girl in the picture. “See?”

  “No, I recognize this girl.” He pointed at the corpse on the ground. “I seen her before.”

  “Then how come she was running?”

  The second man stroked the orange and brown whiskers in his long beard to calm himself.

  “I know who her father is, Abner. We done a terrible thing here.”

  The first man took off his straw hat with the black band. He saw a red handkerchief in the girl’s open palm. He picked it up, wiped the sweat from his brow with it and said, “We didn’t know that when we done it.”

  “I guess.”

  The first man said, “Well, then there’s just one thing to do now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Go in them woods and start digging.”

  KLAUS VOGEL WAITED AN HOUR before giving up and going home. He figured maybe the gunshot he’d heard had scared her off, or maybe she’d just changed her mind.

  When it became clear to all that Ada Farmer was missing, rumors swirled. Some said it was Nyx Bauer herself who’d led the girl astray. Within weeks, the gossip faded away, and Ada Farmer’s body would never be found. Her father assumed she’d run off with a boy.

  NYX BAUER KNEW NOTHING of the many cases of mistaken identity, of which Ada Farmer’s was the first. She sensed the bloodlust all around her, of course, borne out of the explicit permission to hunt any girl who looked remotely like her. Or, rather, what she used to look like.

  No one recognized her the day the wanted poster appeared. No one even gave her a second look. By the time she went with Aodh to the tavern in the patch town, Nyx felt emboldened, believing that her ability to walk among these men without them recognizing her made her safe.

  Nyx stood elbow to elbow with the other miners, detecting no threat, apart from Dis Padgett, who walked in just as she was leaving. He looked straight at her, giving her a long stare before turning his attention to the crowd and announcing he’d buy every man in the tavern a beer.

  She parted ways with Aodh, and by nightfall she was back on the front steps of the cabin. Before going in, Nyx turned to scan the small clearing and then the tree line. She heard nothing, save the low croak of a raven.

  When Nyx went in, she saw Angus hunched over his workbench. He always paused to say hello when she came in, but Nyx waited a full minute, while Angus kept working.

  She said, “Thanks for that gun.”

  No response.

  “I said, thanks for the gun.”

  Without looking up, Angus said, “What gun?”

  “The pistol.”

  “Ach, I don’t know about no pistol.”

  Nyx fished the pepperbox from her boot and laid it on the workbench and said, “You left it here yesterday, with a note.”

  Angus picked up the pistol and inspected it, turning it over in his hands and then setting it back down.

  “Yah, well, I didn’t.”

  Nyx felt the panic rising again.

  “Then someone else was here. No one else can come here. No one can know we’re here. That was our rule, right? Was someone else here?”

  Angus raised his eyebrows.

  “You mean no one else, apart from that big fella you brought over for supper and a cuddle?”

  “You’re angry about that?”

  “Not as such.”

  “This is serious.”

  “Yah, it is.”

  Nyx set her jaw. “Was someone else here?”

  Angus’s voice dropped lower. “Not exactly.”

  “But you’re saying someone else was here, inside.”

  “Yah.”

  “Did they take it? Tell me they didn’t take it.”

  Nyx’s gaze went to the canvas bag atop the cabinet in the kitchen.

  His concentration now broken, Angus wiped his hands on his shop towel, then went to the kitchen and retrieved a whiskey bottle and two shot glasses and motioned for Nyx to sit across from him at the table.

  He filled the glasses, slid one to Nyx and said, “Zum wohl.”

  Angus tossed back the shot and let out a sigh.

  “Okay, girl, here goes. People come here all the time. They come to drop off guns, and then they come back once they’re fixed.”

  “Yes, I know, so who—”

  “And you know that I don’t know who them people are. And I don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “They know I’m here. But they don’t know you’re here. Not that we know.” Angus stopped talking, stared at Nyx and then at the glass. A moment passed and then she downed the shot. “So, it don’t bother me that folks bring me guns to work on, since we can use the money. And, no, it don’t bother me that you brung your friend.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Well, a couple things, I suppose.” He refilled his glass and drank it. “I didn’t put that pistol there, and I didn’t write no note.”

  “So someone broke in and left it there?”

  “Yah. Seems like. Now, it could be that this person wanted me to have it and wrote ‘For you,’ meaning for me. And they didn’t feel safe leaving it on the porch.”

  “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “No, especially on account of I recognize this gun.” Angus held up the pistol. “Construction, design, and Damascus steel. Uncommon for here.”

  “So whose is it?”

  He turned the handle to Nyx so that she could read the initials inscribed on it.

  “J.B.”

  “Yah, Jonas Bauer. This here is a pistol your father owned.”

  In her mind’s eye Nyx saw the cigar box on the windowsill of her parents’ bedroom. She remembered opening the box, seeing the pistol and wondering why it was there.

  “How do you know?”

  Angus leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, he had me fix it once on account of it didn’t have no spark. That, and also my cousin told me he found it after what happened to your parents.”

  “Kamp?”

  “Yah, he told me he got it off of Danny Knecht when he caught him.”

  “So, Kamp brought it here.”

  “No. He told me they took it off him when they strung up Danny Knecht.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “I don’t recall that he said.”

  “Kamp can tell us, and that would lead us to whoever put it here.”

  Angus shrugged. “Mebbe. There’s something else.”

  He unfolded a piece of paper and smoothed it out on the table. A wanted poster.

  “Oh, I saw that already. It doesn’t look like me.”

  “Yah, well, did you see this?”

  Angus unfolded another wanted poster. It read:

  $1500 REWARD

  Will be paid in gold coin for the apprehension

  DEAD OR ALIVE

  of

  the MURDERER NICKEL GLOCK

  Beneath the writing was a hand drawn portrait of a man’s face.

  Nyx stared at the poster for a few moments, then said, “Fifteen hundred?”

  “Yah.”

  “Fifteen hundred for him and only a thousand for me? That’s not fair.”

  Angus laughed. “No, it ai
n’t.”

  “And who is Nickel Glock?”

  “I don’t know, but he looks one hell of a lot like Kamp, don’t he?”

  SIXTEEN

  THE UNLIMITED CAME TO A STOP a half mile before the station at Mauch Chunk. At first Kamp thought he was just hearing the typical sound of train wheels grinding the tracks, combined with the rumble of anthracite shifting in a hopper.

  But now he discerned individual sounds, men shouting as well as a banging noise, persistent and loud. He climbed down from his box car and walked alongside the idled train. When he reached the front, he turned his head up to look at the engineer, who stared straight ahead, stone-faced.

  Kamp called up to him, “Was ist?”

  Without looking down the engineer said, “Troublemakers.”

  Kamp looked down the tracks to the station. On the platform beside a passenger train, a crowd pulsed and surged. Rocks pelted the side of the train parked beside the platform. He heard breaking glass and a woman screaming.

  “What’s it about?”

  The engineer took off his hat, scratched his head and said, “God damned Irish louses want money, but they don’t want to do nothing for it.”

  “Which?”

  “Why, the miners. They’d rather throw a rock than work an honest day.” The engineer craned his neck to look down, and he studied Kamp’s face. “Say, don’t I know you?”

  EMMA WYLES PEERED out the front window onto Third Street. Or, rather, she looked at the window itself, without a single scratch or pock. She might have admired the plate glass longer had it not been the fourth one she’d bought in the past year.

  “Irish confetti” is what people called it when bricks sailed through the window. She didn’t know who was doing the damage, nor could she fathom why any Irish person would be involved. Blaming outsiders is always convenient, she knew, and much easier than holding the real culprit, Black Feather, accountable.