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

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  “Like who?”

  “That’s not germane to the—”

  “Who?”

  MacBride sat up straighter on his desk and gave Grigg the look of a disappointed father.

  “Well, your minister, Ebbenstick, for one. He said—”

  “Eberstark,” Grigg said.

  “Yes, him. He said you’ve lost your footing.”

  “He’s a fool.”

  “And several of your neighbors. And your superiors, of course.” MacBride picked up a ledger from his desk and read from it. “Multiple instances of prevarication, perseveration and grandiose pontification. Paranoia.”

  “Garbage.”

  “And fraternizing with a known criminal.” MacBride looked up from the ledger.

  “What criminal?”

  “The murderer Nickel Glock.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. You know there’s no such person as—”

  “I suspect the cause may be what we call fragility. Soft brain.”

  “Cause of what?”

  “Madness. I’m afraid, Bartholomew, you’re insane.”

  “They’re lying.”

  MacBride took a thoughtful pull on the pipe and raised one eyebrow. “They’re lying? They’re all lying? And you’re the sole possessor of the truth? Is that it?”

  “Drop this farce at once.”

  MacBride let out a long sigh, pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “It’s not your fault, Bartholomew. There’s no shame in your illness. And you must know that you’re in the right place. We have the finest moral treatments.”

  There was a gentle knock at the door, and a tall, skinny bald man entered the room. He had thick eyebrows and a white coat with blood spatters on the lapels.

  “I’d like you to meet Dr. Schultheis.”

  TWENTY

  THE LITTLE PHARMACIST standing in front of E. Wyles wrung his hands and stared at the ground.

  She said, “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem?”

  “Yes, what do you need?”

  “We’re running out of medicines, ingredients, supplies, everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, right.” He fished a folded paper from his pocket and read from it. “Infusi Taraxaci, rhei, potassae tartratis, hyoscyami, willow bark, jimson weed...”

  As he continued on down the list, E. Wyles realized he’d caught her off guard. She’d assumed her competitor would be antagonistic and hostile. Instead, here was this bashful, well-scrubbed little cherub.

  “…Podophyllum, Theae folium, ephedra, mandrake, and laudanum.” He looked up at her and smiled. “Long list, I guess.”

  She said, “What’s your name?”

  “My full name?”

  “Sure.”

  “Uwe Wedekind Eugen Schiffhorn the Third.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Yes, but no one calls me that.”

  “What do they call you?”

  He blushed again. “Pickler. Everyone calls me Pickler.”

  Wyles unlocked the door and said, “Come on in, Pickler.”

  KAMP NEVER ASKED Joe where he lived, and he always thought it was better that way. Joe had a well-earned reputation for vigorous self-defense of person and property or for cold-blooded murder, depending on one’s perspective.

  Kamp had the utmost respect for Joe, based on the way he treated Shaw as well as for accepting him into their family. He also knew that Joe’s people had been driven into hiding in successive waves of violence and persecution and that Joe had borne up under it.

  It was dangerous enough for Joe to have taken Shaw and Autumn to his home. If anyone other than Lenape recognized them as Kamp’s family, they’d be punished. And if anyone saw Kamp there, the entire community would be subject to harsh repercussions.

  Joe took off his blue wool jacket and turned from the road onto a narrow trail that led through thick undergrowth. Kamp followed, and they walked in silence between tall trees and over a large deadfall.

  They’d hiked at least five miles back already, well beyond the sounds of society and far enough for Kamp to forget his fear they’d be discovered. He was hungry, though, and Kamp hated marching on an empty stomach. The sun had begun its slide behind the mountains, and soon they’d be walking in total darkness.

  “Not far now,” Joe said.

  PICKLER FLICKED THE SWEAT from his brow with his first two fingers and said, “Thank you. Thank you ever so much.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  In the failing light of late afternoon, Wyles surveyed the gaps in the rows of bottles, canisters, boxes and vials on her shelves.

  By the time she finished filling Pickler’s order, the little pharmacist had made seven trips back to Native Plants and Medicines.

  He turned to go, then paused, turned around and said, “It’s most kind of you to help me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He looked at the floor. “Considering the circumstances.”

  “You mean that I’m losing my customers, and you’re taking them?”

  He nodded without looking up.

  Wyles said, “People need medicine. What’s happening to me isn’t the customers’ fault, and from what I can tell, it isn’t yours, either.”

  He looked directly at her for the first time and said, “They’re wrong about you.”

  Then he turned on his heel and closed the door behind him. Wyles watched the little pharmacist cross the street and disappear into Native Plants and Medicines.

  It occurred to her that since Black Feather’s first attempt to ruin her had failed, they’d changed their tactics. Pickler was going to kill her with kindness.

  KAMP CAUGHT THE SMELL of stew on the night air well before he saw the light in the window. It carried him back in his mind to the first meal Shaw ever made for him, and it carried him forward to find them.

  He hadn’t pictured the home where Joe might live, but the waft of supper called forth images of a wigwam, a longhouse or a collection of both, only a remnant of the Lenape’s rich tradition but a community still.

  Instead, he saw a single wooden cabin, a small A-frame whose contours he discerned by moonlight. In the window a candle burned, and by the light he caught a glimpse of Shaw. He leapt up the steps and grabbed the brass door handle. Locked. Kamp pounded on the door but had to wait for Joe to unlock it.

  When he did, the door swung open and Autumn ran and hugged him hard around the legs. Shaw followed her and put her arms around them. The pain, all of it, vanished in that moment. When he stepped back to look at them, he saw tears streaming down their faces. He gathered up Autumn in his arms. He looked into her eyes, one brown and one blue.

  “I missed you, Daddy,” she said. “I missed you so much.” Then her eyes went wide and she said, “But I loved riding the train.”

  ANGUS POURED ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE, took his seat at the workbench and hunched over an assemblage of metal parts.

  Nyx tried to engage him. “How’s your work going?”

  “Say what?”

  “Your work, your gun.” She pointed to the workbench. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Taciturn, even for Angus.

  Nyx pulled up a chair and looked directly across the table, and cradled her chin in her hands. Angus didn’t respond, and Nyx kept staring until he finally looked up.

  She expected him to smile, but he didn’t.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I done a terrible thing,” Angus said.

  SHAW FURROWED HER BROW. “You’re saying they found someone who looks like me?”

  “Sort of like you,” Kamp said.

  “And they stuck her in our house?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s got someone who looks like me to keep her company. I’m sure they’ll keep the place nice until we get back.”

  “I can’t joke about it.”

  Shaw put her face in h
er hands, then stood up from the kitchen table and went to the window. “Did they find a kid who looks like her?” She motioned to Autumn, who’d fallen asleep in a cot by the fire place.

  “They said they had a child who died when their house burned down.”

  Shaw spun around to face him. “We’re going back there. Tomorrow.”

  Kamp put his arms around her, but she shook him off.

  Joe said, “Nichan, don’t wake the girl.”

  Shaw put her head down and balled her fists. “We can’t let them shove us out again. I won’t let them.”

  Joe put his arm around her shoulder. He gently rubbed his thumb across the crescent-shaped scar above her right eye.

  “You’re here now. We’re all together, and we’re safe.”

  ANGUS LIT A LANTERN and then pulled on a heavy coat.

  “Follow me.”

  Nyx put on her coat as well, and the pair went out the back door. They marched through the woods for a few minutes with only the sound of their boots on the forest floor and the squeaking of the lantern as it swung by its handle.

  Nyx said, “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?”

  “I was out hunting for rabbit.”

  He said nothing more after that and kept walking until they reached a low hill with no trees. Angus slowed at the top and then stopped, crouched down and held the lantern at arm’s length.

  Nyx saw the bodies of two men on the ground. One had a long beard and the other wore a straw hat with a black ribbon around it.

  Angus held the lantern over the corpses. “I come upon these two. They didn’t hear me.”

  “And you mistook them for rabbits? What in the—”

  “I heard them talking.”

  “Jesus, it’s not a crime to have a conver—”

  “Goddamn it, girl, they was talking about you. What they was going to do to you. How they was going to bring you back once they was finished. They had these.”

  Angus reached under the body of the man with the beard and pulled out wanted posters of Nyx and Kamp.

  “You didn’t have to shoot them, though, right? They wouldn’t have found us.”

  Angus hardened his gaze.

  “They was all the way up here, say not? Forty miles from Bethlehem and not a half a mile from our cabin. They knew where to look.”

  “Who are they?”

  Angus shined the light on their faces.

  “I don’t know.”

  Nyx fished through the pockets of the man with the straw hat and found a folded piece of paper. She unfolded the note, held it next to the lantern, and read it aloud.

  “Be careful, Abner. I love you.”

  Nyx looked at Angus. “Know anyone named Abner?”

  “Yah, plenty. But not this Abner.” Angus looked up at the moon and then back down at the bodies. “I suppose there’s only one thing to do now.”

  “What’s that?”

  Angus stared down at the corpses. “Get some spades and start digging.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  JOACHIM S. THALER HOOKED HIS THUMBS into the belt loops of his bespoke wool trousers, pulled in a deep breath, leaned back and surveyed the town of Mauch Chunk. His new home wasn’t perched high enough for him to escape the din, but that didn’t matter. In fact, he liked to hear the clatter of commerce, and to be above it.

  The veranda on which he stood was nearly complete. The workmen, a gang of burly Swedes freshly arrived to the new world, hunched and squatted at the edges, laying the final slabs of sandstone and filling the spaces between them. After that, they’d build a majestic stairway that led down to the valley.

  If it hadn’t been a beautiful day for taking the air, Thaler might have joined the Swedes in their labor. He marveled at how hard they toiled for a paltry wage, how they sweated and groaned. But then again, he remembered, hard work is its own reward.

  Normally he wouldn’t have needed them on Sunday, but the work had to be finished on time. He considered shouting an encouragement but didn’t want to break their concentration.

  Thaler turned and went in the mansion, also under construction and also nearly finished. Soon, the Gujarat teak bookshelves would be lined with all of his beloved tomes, and soon the stone fireplace would glow. It helped, he thought, to step back on occasion from the ugliness of the affairs of men and to take perspective, to reflect on what the good lord had bestowed upon him. A magnificent home, a warm hearth, an exquisite view.

  Still, there was business. The gathering was only a month away. In addition to overseeing the completion of his mansion and grounds, Thaler had work to do, starting with the appointment set to commence directly.

  He looked out the back window and saw a figure emerge from the trees. Thaler pulled the watch from his vest pocket. Noon. On the dot.

  AFTER JUST A DAY INSIDE the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, B.H. Grigg began to lose his sense of time. At first, he’d been shackled to a bed in a small room in the cellar with no light. There was no way to discern the passage of time, so when he was eventually brought back upstairs, he didn’t know what time it was, or even what day.

  They’d taken his clothes, in which he’d shat and pissed, hosed him down with cold water and given him the drab uniform all the patients wore.

  They shaved his head but let his beard grow, and they strapped him on his back to a bed without a mattress in a room without heat.

  Grigg still didn’t feel insane or even believe in the concept. He assumed that MacBride’s plan was to drive him mad by removing the components of his identity one at a time.

  He’d stopped straining against the binds at his wrists and ankles, because they’d begun to cut into his skin and because they didn’t give. He became motionless and to quell the panic, Grigg forced himself to conjure memories that calmed him—picking apples with his father, walking to church alongside his sister, skipping a stone across the surface of a pond.

  At the moment the blood stopped pounding at his temples, the door of his room swung open, and the two large attendants entered.

  “Someone wants to talk to you,” the first one said.

  “YOU WANTED TO SEE ME.”

  Joachim S. Thaler extended his hand, but his visitor didn’t shake it. They stood on the stone patio behind the mansion.

  “Truth be told,” Dis Padgett said, “I didn’t want to see you before, and I don’t now.”

  Thaler’s mouth turned up at one corner. “And yet, here we are.”

  “Your man come to me three days ago, said you wanted a parley.”

  “Might I offer you a drink?”

  “You might.”

  Thaler turned and went in the back door. “Follow me.” Once inside, he retrieved a whiskey bottle and two tumblers. He poured three fingers in each and handed one to Padgett.

  Thaler held up his glass. “Zum Wohl.”

  “Yeah, and your mother, too.”

  THEY TOOK THE SHACKLES OFF Grigg’s ankles so that they could lead him to a room with a concrete floor and a sturdy, rectangular table in the center. The attendants strapped him to it and left him there for what may have been hours.

  When the door creaked open, he couldn’t see who came in until the oval-shaped face of Dr. Schultheis hovered above his own.

  Shultheis grabbed him hard by the chin and leaned in closer to inspect his face and head.

  “Yah, you are suitable.”

  “Suitable for what?”

  “For being cured of madness.”

  Schultheis left the room. The attendants covered his eyes with a blindfold and then left as well.

  Now Grigg began to go insane.

  PADGETT DRAINED HIS DRINK, then motioned for Thaler to pour him another.

  Padgett said, “I’ll gladly finish the bottle for ya, but I donna think tha’s why I’m here.”

  “Why do you think you’re here?” Thaler took a sip of his own drink.

  “No, lad, this ain’t hide and seek.”

  Thaler studied Padgett’s face. He noticed t
he black whiskers and blue eyes but most of all his skin. It was clean, porcelain white, devoid of color. Not even a freckle.

  “I can give you what you want,” Thaler said.

  Padgett stared into his glass and shook his head and said, “You canna give me no devil’s bargains. And you canna give me what’s already mine.”

  Thaler’s expression didn’t change. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something.”

  “Why don’t I tell you what you want and we’ll go from there?”

  “Fine.”

  Padgett motioned out the window and said, “You want them workhorses out there to finish your porch, so you can enjoy the view. You want them moles in the mines to keep filling seven cars a day, so your own coffers fill with gold. You want the good lord to keep blessing you in such a fine and fancy way. You want that black river to keep flowing out the hole. But if the miners ainna doing their seven cars a day, the coal, the money, the lord’s blessings, they donna flow.”

  “Go on.”

  “An’ you want me to get them to shut up and get back in line and work. Full bore. You know all they need is my say so.”

  Thaler pulled a tin of Turtle Island Tobacco Bits from his vest, unscrewed the cap and put a pinch inside his lower lip, then said, “And for you to get what you want—which is absolute power in the mine—”

  “I already have that.”

  “If you had it,” Thaler, said, “you wouldn’t be here. In order for you to get it, you need it to be all Irish.”

  “In time.”

  “No Germans.”

  “I can make it so, certain as I can drink your whiskey.”

  Thaler shook his head.

  “Alas, you can’t. The panic is still on. So many men, so much desperation. Masses of men willing to kill just for the chance to die in the mine.”

  “An’ you bastards intend t’ keep it that way.”

  “You can’t stop it. You can’t keep going to the train station and throwing rocks.”

  Padgett poured himself another glass and downed it. “Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man—”

  “I can make certain your men will keep working.”