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

by Kurt B. Dowdle

Wyles had grown accustomed to this and other forms of harassment, but she knew that her role in the community had thus far given her a large measure of protection. She’d cared for hundreds of families in the area, including those of Black Feather executives.

  Still, they wanted her gone, as she represented part of the living memory of their misdeeds. Eventually, she assumed, they’d step up their efforts. In the meantime, there were babies to deliver and prescriptions to fill.

  She filled the mortar with ingredients in the correct proportions, picked up the pestle and started grinding. At first she didn’t notice the two women in long dresses and bonnets who came through the front door. Wyles didn’t pay attention until they stood facing her, and she smelled whiskey. The women pulled back their bonnets to reveal that they were men.

  As the first man went to the front door and locked it, the second one said, “I was wondering whether you got anything for a headache.”

  KAMP KNEW HE SHOULD AVOID the train station at Mauch Chunk, skirt the commotion and continue on his way. But he wanted to understand what was going on, and in order to do that, he needed to get close.

  He walked alongside the passenger train and toward the platform, noticing right away that the mob wasn’t entirely made up of Irish miners.

  Kamp heard German swearing combined with imprecations in an Irish brogue. All of it was directed at the people on the train. By the time he reached the platform, members of the mob had begun smashing locks on the train doors and trying to get on. He walked up to a porter in a black wool uniform, who was leaning against a pillar and taking in the scene.

  The porter said to Kamp, “You won’t be getting anywhere today, not on a train. That’s sure.”

  “Why the ruckus?”

  The porter pulled in a long breath, sighed, and began, “Yah, well, these hoofties here don’t want them hoofites on the train, they don’t want them to get off.”

  “Why not?”

  The porter turned to him in mocking disbelief and said, “Why not? Because them on the train are here for jobs in the mines. There ain’t enough work for them that’s already here. When we was heading into the station, I told them on the train, just wait a couple of months. All those angry fellas throwing rocks will be dead from hard labor. Then yous can take their jobs, and they won’t complain so much.”

  Kamp’s gaze drifted above the porter’s head to a poster that had been affixed there. It began, “Wanted, the Murderer Nickel Glock,” and beneath the text was a drawing that most certainly looked like him.

  E. WYLES FELT her heart thudding in her chest, though her expression remained flat. She scrutinized the men’s faces and decided she hadn’t seen either of them before.

  The first man cleared his throat loudly and spat on the floor.

  He said, “Lady, my headache is getting worse, an’ you’re a druggist. I bet you can make a whole lot of things feel better.”

  The man produced a knife with a shiny blade and held it up before her. The second man pulled a length of lead pipe from his sleeve and swung it, taking out a row off large bottles on a shelf along the wall.

  Wyles said, “That’s enough.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” the man said.

  THE MOB ON THE PLATFORM SWELLED, and unable to break into the train, men tried to crawl through windows or jump in through the vent in the roof of each passenger car.

  As the tumult neared its crescendo, a fine four-in-hand carriage with a driver and one passenger, and two paddy wagons drawn by teams of horses pulled up to the station. Men in wool uniforms, some black, some blue, leapt out, truncheons at the ready.

  Kamp scanned the scene and saw a girl, perhaps eight years old standing at the edge of the platform and holding the hem of her mother’s plain dress. Instead of watching the uniformed men wailing on the miners, she was staring at him.

  She looked at Kamp, then at the wanted poster on a pillar above her head, then back at him. Her eyebrows shot up, and then she started tugging at her mother’s dress and pointing.

  He couldn’t hear her above the din, but Kamp could see what she was saying.

  “It’s him! It’s him!”

  “THE POLICE WILL BE HERE SOON. You need to leave now.”

  The man with the knife said, “That’s a good one, lady. You need to learn how to stop giving orders and start taking them.”

  As he said it, he lunged across the counter and reached for a handful of her white blouse.

  Wyles pulled a pistol, raised it, pressed it to the man’s forehead and fired. The slug exited at the back of his head, taking clumps of brain and skull with it.

  As the second man bolted for the door, she trained the gun on him and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went through his left cheek and out his right. She fired three more times into his back and head, then waited for him to breathe his last.

  She put the pistol back in its place beneath the counter and walked to the front door. When she put up the sign that read “Closed for the Day,” E. Wyles noticed one of her bullets had gone through the glass.

  So much for the new window.

  THE UNIFORMED MEN quickly gained the upper hand on the miners, who, truth be told, were already starting to fade when the paddy wagons appeared. The police and Black Feather security men bludgeoned some, handcuffed others, and the rest they chased off.

  The girl’s screaming grew louder. “He’s there. That man in the picture. He’s right there!”

  Kamp looked for an easy way to get off the platform without being mistaken for a miner and without being recognized by anyone else. A solid wall of uniforms blocked his exit.

  At the moment the girl finally convinced her mother to turn and see what her daughter was pointing at, Kamp felt a rough hand on the back of his neck as a burlap sack was jammed over his face.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  SEVENTEEN

  JOACHIM S. THALER STOOD ATOP HIS CARRIAGE, pulled a small tin of Turtle Island Tobacco Bits from his vest pocket and put a pinch in his mouth. He watched the riot drawing to its conclusion with some miners being led from the station in shackles and others left bleeding on the ground.

  Reducing their pay had made them angry, but it was the arrival of potential replacements that turned them murderous. Wherever he looked, Thaler saw productivity lost. If the miners were here, they weren’t down the hole shoveling. He’d need to fix that.

  As he savored the hit of nicotine, Thaler saw a police officer leading another man with a burlap sack on his head.

  He climbed down from the carriage and called out, “You there. Halt.”

  The hand on Kamp’s elbow took a firmer grip and pulled him to a stop. He could tell that whoever had called out was standing directly in front of them now.

  “Where are you taking this man?”

  “He’s not supposed to be here.”

  Kamp thought he recognized the voice of his captor when he first heard it. Now he was certain of who it was.

  Thaler spoke without hurry. “Well, if he’s a miner, he needs to be in the mine.”

  “He’s not a miner. He’s one of them that rouses the rabble and gets them to misbehave.”

  “An agitator.”

  “Yah, agitator.”

  “Take off that bag. Let me see him.”

  When the sack came off, Kamp squinted against the sunlight, and before his eyes could adjust, Thaler slapped him hard across his face. The pain in Kamp’s jaw made his eyes water and nearly buckled his knees.

  When Thaler finally came into clear focus, Kamp saw wavy, flaxen hair, oiled and combed straight back to reveal an unlined face with a straight nose and eyes the color of a glacial pond.

  Thaler said, “Do you know the trouble you’re causing?”

  The man holding Kamp put the sack over his head again and said, “Time to go.”

  “You’re taking him to the police station, then?”

  “No, we have a different place for this kind.”

  NYX WANTED TO TELL HIM. In fact, the lo
nger she worked beside Aodh, the more she yearned to confess everything about the past two years. She wanted to describe her parents and how, whenever her mother made a pie, she always ended up with a smudge of flour on her right cheek. She wanted to tell him what it felt like to be gathered up into her father’s arms and to be loved.

  Nyx wanted to be close to Aodh and to feel him. But she wouldn’t allow it. That was a risk. If anyone ever recognized her, they’d assume Aodh knew all along. And if she never told him who she really was, he could honestly say he never knew.

  And maybe she also didn’t want to risk him telling someone else. Beneath that, most importantly, she didn’t want anyone to know her.

  Still, she needed information, and Aodh was her only source.

  As they hewed lying side by side in their tiny crevice, she said, “Where was everyone today?”

  “How’s that?”

  When I went for my Gezähe, it seemed like half the men weren’t there.”

  “They musta been somewhere else.”

  Nyx picked up irritation in his voice, but she tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh, well, do you know where they might’ve been?”

  He stopped hewing for a moment, sighed, and said, “I heard maybe there was gonna be an action.”

  “What kind of action?”

  Aodh slammed down his pick. “Christ, Nef Bahr. Let me work.”

  He crawled backwards out of their space, and Nyx followed him. As he stood facing her with his hands on his hips, she felt a surge of lust that started at the base of her spine and radiated. It was so powerful she almost lost the ability to speak.

  “What kind of action?” she said, forgetting her fear but still stifling the urge to devour him.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “A protest at the train station, all right?”

  “A protest for what?” She couldn’t help picturing him taking her then and there.

  He winced. “Jaysus.”

  “What kind of protest?”

  “If I tell ya, will ya shut up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Scab train, full of men the company wants to take our jobs. Some of us was going down there to stop it.”

  “Some of us, as in Irish?”

  “Irish, German, any miner who wants to keep working.” He turned and crawled back into his crease.

  She called after him, “Then how come you’re not there?”

  “You keep your secrets, Nef Bahr, an’ I’ll keep mine. Now leave me be.”

  E. WYLES ASSUMED that the police would arrest her for murder. Even if she explained the circumstances first, they wouldn’t care, given her adversarial relationship with the Judge.

  They’d never liked each other, to put it mildly. She didn’t hide her disdain for a man she considered to be a manipulative, mendacious, power hungry bastard. Over the years, they’d managed not to clash directly until Wyles came to the defense of Nyx Bauer and upstaged the Judge in his own courtroom.

  Nevertheless, Wyles hurried now to the police station to make the case that she acted in self-defense. When she burst through the door of the police station, she saw the low-brow High Constable, Samuel Druckenmiller, with his feet up on his desk, face hidden by the broadsheet newspaper he held in front of him.

  “Constable, I need your help.”

  “Good morning to you, too, Emma,” he said, without lowering the paper.

  “My shop was invaded. I was forced to defend myself.”

  Druckenmiller rustled the newspaper. “Says here that Native Plants and Medicines is having a sale. You know Native Plants and Medicines, the outfit across the street from your place.”

  “Don’t goad me, Constable.”

  “Says they’re having a sale on liver and kidney tonic. Sasparilla, too.”

  Wyles slapped the newspaper out of his hands. “Goddamnit, you fool, people are dead.”

  Druckenmiller stared at her with brow furrowed and mouth agape.

  He said, “Easy, easy now. Just give me a minute once, and we’ll perform a full investigation.”

  He glanced across the room at a uniformed officer, Falko Stier, and then at the gun cabinet. Stier unlocked it and pulled out an 8-gauge shotgun.

  THE THREE OF THEM WALKED back across the South Side with Falko Stier leading the way, shotgun held across his chest. While they walked, E. Wyles told them the details. As they approached the door to the pharmacy, Stier went into a crouch and slowed his walk.

  He said to Wyles, “Is it locked?”

  She nodded and gave him the key. He crept toward the door and gently turned the key in the lock. Stier braced himself for the sight of the dead men and for the possibility that he might be attacked by their associates.

  “Wait here, ma’am,” he said.

  Falko Stier raised the shotgun, kicked the door and went in. She heard his boot heels clicking on the floor, first at the front of the store and then at the back.

  Druckenmiller called to him, “Was ist?”

  “Nix. Nothing.”

  E. Wyles went in and surveyed the room. The bodies were gone, and all of the gore, even the bloodstains, had been cleaned. The floorboards were already dry.

  Certain there was no danger, Druckenmiller walked into the shop. He saw Wyles staring at the spot on the floor. He took off his hat and cocked his head to the side.

  “If you’ll allow me to say it, ma’am, I don’t see no victims lying there. Do you?”

  She was too dumbfounded to put him in his place. Wyles stared at the spot where the first man had stood when she shot him, then at the place where she’d stood. Every trace of what had happened was gone.

  Druckenmiller produced a silver flask from his jacket and unscrewed the cap.

  He raised the flask and said, “To the dearly departed, wherever they may be.”

  Then he took a long pull and then offered the flask to Wyles, who declined.

  Falko Stier returned to the front room, shotgun at his side and said, “I’ve found no evidence of a crime. You said it was two men, wearing dresses.”

  “That’s right.”

  Druckenmiller took another long pull and smiled, eyes shining from the drink.

  He said, “Ach, mebbe they was angels.”

  Wyles tried to regain her bearings.

  She said, “I shot them. I shot them both with this gun.”

  As she said it, Wyles went behind the counter to retrieve the pistol. But when she reached under the counter, she found that it was gone, too.

  “It was right here.”

  Druckenmiller said, “So, help me understand on account of you being much smarter than me. You’re saying that two imaginary fellas, wearing imaginary dresses, come in here. And you shot them with your imaginary gun.”

  “Oh, for the sake of—”

  “Pardon me for asking, Emma, but have you been tasting some of the more powerful medicines you got here?”

  “Stop being an ass. For once.”

  Druckenmiller put his hat back on and walked out the door. Falko Stier tipped his hat to her, said, “Ma’am” and then left as well.

  As soon as they were gone, E. Wyles resumed mixing the compound she’d started before it happened. But she couldn’t stifle the fear she’d felt only once before, the fear that she was alone and exposed, no ground beneath her feet. And this time, she feared, there’d be no branches to break her fall.

  KAMP TRIPPED and tore a hole in the knee of his pants before the man hauled him up by the arm and forced him to start walking again. His jaw ached, and he still wore the burlap sack on his head, but the commotion was fading and with it, the danger.

  The man stopped him and took the sack off his head. Kamp felt a lump rising in his throat when he saw Shaw’s father, Joe, staring back at him.

  Joe put his hands on Kamp’s shoulders and studied his face. Kamp had a couple scratches and a small cut on his chin, where the butt of Falko Stier’s gun had hit him.

  He took a step back and looked at Joe, who wore an old
, ill-fitting police uniform.

  Kamp said, “You mean no one noticed?”

  “Noticed what?”

  “No one noticed you weren’t an actual policeman?”

  Joe said, “I’ve told you this before. Òpinkòk never notice anything.”

  WHILE HE RODE THE TRAIN, the district attorney B. H. Grigg penned a letter to the Honorable Tate Cain, notifying him of an indefinite leave of absence.

  He didn’t mention the appearance of the silver coin, the calling card of the Fraternal Order of the Raven. According to local legend, the recipient of the coin faced certain death.

  He explained none of this in his letter and listed his rationale for the leave as “special circumstances.”

  He’d heard the rumors regarding the demise of his disgraced predecessor, Philander Crow. The official story was that at the end of a booze-soaked evening, Crow had committed suicide by gun but not before shooting the prostitute with whom he’d been consorting. This story struck anyone who knew the man as patently ridiculous.

  Another rumor was that Philander Crow was executed for attempting to expose the members of the Fraternal Order of the Raven and bring them to justice. Grigg had also heard that on the morning of the day Crow died, he’d found a silver coin on his desk at work.

  B.H. Grigg couldn’t prove any of it, and proving it wasn’t his intention. As the train rolled into the station, he scanned the platform, looking for anyone who might be lying in wait.

  Aside from a man and woman and their small child, the platform was empty and quiet. He hopped off the train and searched the station until he found a U.S. Mail letter box. He dropped the letter to the Judge in it, then hurried out. Grigg buttoned his wool coat against a cold wind and started his march across the city, unaware of the cloaked figure who’d followed him off the train.

  EIGHTEEN

  THE TWO MEN DIDN’T SPEAK until they were at least a mile out of Mauch Chunk. The clatter of the town gave way to warblers and wind in the trees. Kamp focused on the feeling of his feet on the gravel to distract himself from the throbbing in his jaw.