Trifles and Folly 2

by Gail Z. Martin

  Teag shrugged. I could see how much this bothered him. All of the young men were about our age. They had families who loved them, friends, classmates, lives ahead of them. Fifty people—maybe more—gone. No trace. And apparently, the police were more worried about how that might look to business investors than they were about stopping a killer.

  “No idea who was doing it?” My throat was tight, my mouth dry. The enormity of the crime, and the apparent lack of interest staggered me.

  “I don’t think the cops ever considered looking for a pattern,” Teag said. “Either they didn’t want to be bothered, or they didn’t have the manpower, or someone paid them to look the other way.”

  “When was the first disappearance reported?” I asked, and the words felt thick on my tongue.

  “January, 1902. Two months after the exhibition opened.”

  I looked up at Teag, stunned. “So if the cops had done something—anything—about the first missing man, maybe the others wouldn’t have been taken?”

  Teag nodded. “And there were more, Cassidy. Anthony’s contact looked at the ledger through January of 1902, six months after the Expo closed. One hundred and fifty inquiries about men whose last known destination was the Charleston Fair.” I heard anger, grief, and frustration in Teag’s voice, and all three emotions bunched in my gut like a chunk of ice.

  “We need to look through James Hibbard’s box,” I said finally. “Harris Tomlinson’s things too, from the museum. And I need to see if I can read the wallets.”

  “We can go through the Hibbard box and the Tomlinson items. As for the wallets—let’s wait until we know more. God, Cassidy! If you read fifty wallets owned by men who were offed by a serial killer, you’ll be traumatized for life! And for what? They’re dead, and the killer is dead.”

  “Dead—but not gone,” I replied. I dreaded reading the wallets. My gift is visceral, and uncompromising. It can show me the resonance of a situation like watching a movie, or throw me into the mind of the object’s owner so that I see, hear and feel what that person felt. But I remembered the malevolent presence from the Archive, and the darkness I sensed at Hampton Park. “It’s back, Teag. Whatever—whoever—it was, they’re back. And I’m really afraid that it might have something to do with Rand and the other new missing men.”

  Teag nodded soberly. “I know, Cassidy. But using your gift costs you. Reading fifty wallets might only tell us that the men are dead—and we can assume that, being murdered, they died badly—it’s just going to wear you down for nothing.”

  I raised my head defiantly. “The murderer can’t have been careful all the time. Not if he killed at least one hundred and fifty people. Probably more.” What about tourists who hadn’t thought to give a detailed itinerary to anyone? Or someone who came in on the train for the weekend, not thinking the jaunt warranted notifying family and friends? If we could look at the missing persons’ reports for the entire East Coast from December 1901 until the June of 1902, how many more men vanished, without a clue to their fate?

  “We know that whatever did this is human,” Teag said. “Or Sorren and the Alliance would have shut it down. So that black entity must be a really twisted ghost.”

  I shook my head. “What if something possessed the killer? Maybe not a demon. Sorren and the Alliance would have picked up on that. But there are so many other kinds of energies out there, so many malevolent spirits. What I felt at the Archive and in the park, it seemed too dark to be fully human.”

  “You think Sorren wouldn’t have noticed?”

  “I think Sorren can’t be everywhere at once, and if this was mostly-human, maybe it slipped under the radar.”

  Teag was quiet for a moment, considering what I’d said. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But what do we do about it? We can’t go to the police and say that we think the men who have gone missing are being grabbed by a century-old serial killer?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that, so I glanced toward the cardboard box. “Let’s look at James Hibbard’s collection.”

  Teag fetched the stained wooden container and set it on the table not quite evenly between us. He went to the office and grabbed a couple of thin woven strips of fabric from a jar on the desk. He wove those strips, and they are filled with his magic. When I use my psychometry and hold one of the woven strips at the same time, Teag can see what my visions reveal to me. That not only saves time on recaps, but it’s also more likely that Teag might notice something I don’t.

  “Where do you want to start?”

  I took a deep breath. “What are my choices?”

  Teag rummaged through the box. “There’s another postcard from the Expo, so it was obviously written before Hibbard got into trouble. We know where his wallet is,” he added with a wry look. “Otherwise, odds and ends, the kinds of bits and pieces you leave in a drawer at home when you go off to school.”

  “Anything that might give me an idea of him—before?”

  Teag sorted through the items. “How about a nice fountain pen?”

  “Let’s give it a try.”

  Teag picked up the pen and handed me the fabric strip, then settled in to a chair next to me before passing over the pen. The sleek shape and retro styling made a functional item into usable art. Just the kind of thing for a young man on the edge of seeking his fortune.

  An image of a young man came to mind, and I recognized him from the wallet’s contents as Hibbard. I picked up a hint of nervousness, and an image of Hibbard concentrating hard as he wrote something on a tablet. Taking a test? Filling out a job application? I couldn’t see the paper, but the resonance of Hibbard’s desire to do a good job carried through. The images shifted, and I saw Hibbard shaking hands with a man in a business suit who looked pleased and friendly. Although I couldn’t glimpse Hibbard’s face, I sensed that the meeting succeeded. After another moment and a few images of Hibbard in classrooms, presumably taking notes, I shook myself awake and set the pen down.

  “Nothing particularly useful there,” Teag said with a sigh.

  I shrugged. “Not a bad warm-up. Better than diving into the gruesome guts of something right away.” I’d done that enough times. “Besides, it’s helpful to have a sense of Hibbard before whatever happened, kind of a level set.”

  Teag passed me a yellowed postcard. Unlike the one claimed by the exhibit, this card had been damaged by time and water. Those scars didn’t affect its resonance, and I caught my breath the minute my fingers touched the fragile paper.

  Excitement. Loneliness. Anticipation. Longing. Hibbard’s emotions washed over me, strong enough that I struggled to remember that he had been dead for over a hundred years. Sometimes visions feel like I’m inside the person’s head, and other times I watch from the outside, still me. Now, I was an invisible observer, standing in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the Charleston Expo. The grand, gleaming white palaces of commerce built to impress foreign and domestic business magnates loomed tall, even more impressive than in their pictures. So much promise, so many dreams packed into the exposition grounds that the air fairly hummed with the electricity of it.

  I recognized Hibbard right away, dressed in his Sunday best suit. He tried for natty with a pocket watch on a chain, but his wide-eyed expression made it clear he was a country boy set loose in the big city. Despite knowing how the story ended, I smiled at the unabashed youthful enthusiasm. Hibbard looked to be only a year or two younger than I was, with his whole life ahead of him. A life that had been stolen—

  Hibbard crossed the grounds with two friends his age. They laughed and talked, and I heard them joking and making plans. Hibbard stopped at one point and bid his friends goodbye, then continued on alone, walking a block or so beyond where the Exposition grounds ended, past the sunken garden. The bandstand from Hampton Park still stood in its original location, where it would remain until after the grand Expo closed its doors and workers dismantled its plywood palaces.

  I watched Hibbard walk past homes, trying to commit what I saw to memor
y, hoping something might still look familiar. Charleston valued its history, but it’s a living city and a lot had changed in a century. He stopped in front of a gray clapboard house memorable for the ornate wooden ‘gingerbread’ trim that decorated its cornices and for the colorful accents that made it the kind of house people called a “painted lady.” Hibbard took something from his pocket and dropped it in a mailbox. My vision went dark.

  This time, Teag pushed a glass of sweet tea into my hand, giving me a minute to take several deep gulps before I was ready to talk.

  “Nothing bad,” I told him, and drank more of the tea, relishing the mix of strong and sweet. “He looked so happy and normal, taking in the sights with his friends. And let me tell you—the Expo is a lot fancier in person. The photos don’t do it justice.” I paused, trying to sort through the images I’d read from the postcard.

  “He seemed excited, and a little nervous. Not like he thought he was in danger; more like being in a strange place on your own. And he was either homesick or missing someone special.”

  Teag looked at the postcard, which had been addressed to Hibbard’s sister. “Train ride uneventful. Charleston beautiful as ever. Wish you and S could see the grand fair. Tell you all about it. Love, James.” He shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I wonder who ‘S’ was?”

  “Friend? Girlfriend? We could ask his grandniece, but I doubt she’d know.”

  “She said her grandmother said James never really fit in. Are you picking up anything like that?”

  I thought back over what I had seen and sensed. “He seemed to be comfortable with the friends or traveling companion I saw at the Expo. Maybe he hid his insecurities well?”

  Something about the comment made me feel like I’d missed a clue, but nothing that I’d seen in the vision suggested an answer. “All right. I’ve dodged a bullet twice now. Let’s get to the wallet.”

  Teag refilled my glass and set it aside, knowing that if this vision proved more traumatic I would need it. I swallowed hard, knowing Teag could see my fear, and reached for the worn leather billfold.

  As soon as I touched the wallet, everything changed. My head pounded, and my sight blurred. Drugged. I’d been drugged. I was certain; a single glass of beer at dinner shouldn’t have nearly knocked me out. But who? And why?

  My brain felt sluggish. I tried to stand up, and fell back on my bed like a marionette with cut strings. I saw the teacup and plate on the bedside table, and I knew.

  “Enjoy your nightcap, Mr. Hibbard?” The voice from the doorway made me try to shift backward, away. Brannigan, my landlord.

  “Why?” The words sounded slurred, even to my own ears.

  The man silhouetted in the doorway shrugged. “Easier for me to handle you. Quieter. Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”

  “Why?” I repeated, and struggled again to rise, only to collapse beside the bed.

  “The fairgrounds makes for such a good hunt,” Brannigan replied. He shifted, and I could see him in the gaslight, tall and spare, with wiry brown hair and blue eyes that regarded me with the cool gaze of a predator. “Because you’re far from home, and no one will notice. Because no one will care about the likes of you.”

  I felt the chill of his words into my bones, knew the truth of it. My family dared only push so far to find me, for fear the police might uncover secrets best not spoken aloud. Secrets that had to go to the grave.

  “What?” One word at a time seemed the best my body could do with the drugs coursing through my system. The man moved into my room, bent down and lifted me as if I weighed nothing, and moved to the small closet. He pressed against something I did not see, and the back panel swung inward, into darkness.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to trust me on this,” he said, and hiccupped an obscene giggle at the thought—me, trusting him as he hauled me somewhere I knew in my bones would be a very bad place.

  “Ten steps in,” he said as if dragging a body was an everyday occurrence. My heart clenched at the fear that perhaps it was. So many men came and went from the boarding house. I hadn’t paid attention. No one had. Where did they go? Elsewhere. We assumed they went on about their lives, left the Expo behind. Now, I feared that some—perhaps many—did not.

  “Five steps down.” I fell more than walked down the stairs, supported by my captor. “Not much farther.”

  He stopped and I heard a door creak as he opened it. “Don’t worry. I’ll come back to take care of you very soon,” Brannigan said. A hand patted me down, searching my pockets, and found my wallet, which he removed. The vision went dark.

  I came back to myself with a shudder and a gasp. “He took them,” I managed as Teag reached for my wrist to steady me and put the sweet tea in my grasp. “He took them. Killed them.” My head pounded and my heart thudded like it would jump out of my chest.

  Teag waited for me to drink the tea and slow my breathing, leaving his hand on my wrist to anchor me. “Who did it, Cassidy?” he asked when I had recovered enough to be able to speak.

  “Brannigan. The landlord. Oh god, Teag. Just like in Chicago.”

  Teag frowned. “Did you get a full name?”

  I shook my head, and realized that the glass trembled in my grip. “No. But I can describe him, and I could probably recognize him in a picture.”

  Teag moved Hibbard’s wallet back to the cardboard box with the other billfolds, and when he came back, he handed me a package of peanut butter crackers. “Here. Eat. I’ll do some digging.”

  We had done this kind of thing enough to have a routine. The pitcher of sweet tea—strong a hurricane, sweet enough to make your fillings buzz—the crackers, and in my office, for really bad visions, a bottle of bourbon, were the mainstays, along with enough coffee to keep a hospital awake. I told Teag what I saw from the wallet’s resonance, describing the house and Brannigan in as much detail as I could manage.

  “So he walked a few blocks from the Expo grounds to mail his postcard, into a residential area,” Teag mused. His fingers flew on his keyboard, and I knew he had shortcuts to all the old maps of the city. “Did you get any landmarks from inside the Expo? That might help me figure out which side of the park he was on.”

  I gave Teag all the information that I had seen, though some of it made little sense to me. Unfortunately, what I could provide did little to narrow the search. “How about that ‘painted lady’ Victorian house by the mailbox? Maybe there’s a photo of it. Maybe it’s still around.”

  “Working on it,” Teag muttered. I know better than to be hurt by how short he gets when he’s on a digital trail. He gets single-minded, laser-focused, and I know he’s harnessing his own hacker magic, which takes a concentration all its own.

  Half an hour later, Teag sat back, irritated at himself. “Nothing. Bupkis. Nada. The house is a bust.”

  “Okay, let’s come back to that,” I said, setting aside my empty glass and the cracker wrapper. I felt mostly human again. My headache had receded and my heartbeat had returned to normal. “How about this Brannigan character?”

  “Give me some time. Maybe we’ll find a deed that ties Brannigan to the house.” Teag’s optimism seemed strained. We were rarely that lucky. He gave me a look. “You ready to see if the box from the museum tells you anything?”

  I wasn’t, but we had a job to do. “Let’s see what Harris Tomlinson left behind.”

  Business records filled most of the box Rand left for me, along with yellowed clippings and program flyers about the Expo. Only a few were personal items: a single cuff link, and a broken watch fob.

  Bracing myself, I reached for the cuff link, and Teag stretched the woven strip between us. Images hit me in a jumble. Exhilaration and nervousness, confidence and a sense of accomplishment. Anticipation and longing, the sense of being separated from someone beloved, and looking forward to a reunion. Shame and fear—of discovery, punishment, consequences. Determination and loyalty, worry and evasiveness.

  I blinked, clearing my mind. “I think Harris Tomlinso
n was having an affair.”

  Teag passed me more iced tea, and raised an eyebrow. “He wasn’t married, so what makes you think that?”

  “He felt excited about the business aspect of the Expo, but being here took him away from someone he cared about,” I said, sorting through the resonance. For whatever reason, Tomlinson’s memories felt vague, as if even long after his disappearance and death he would not relinquish his secrets. “But he looked forward to going to Atlanta. I think that’s where the person he loved was, or they were going to meet up there. But he was afraid of being caught, that something bad would happen. That’s why I think his beloved must have been cheating on a spouse, or at least breaking a betrothal.”

  “Or maybe it was a Romeo and Juliet thing,” Teag suggested. “Maybe Tomlinson fell in love with someone from the wrong side of the tracks.” Unfortunately, we would probably never know.

  The watch fob fit in the palm of my hand, a simple silver circle engraved with Tomlinson’s initials. It looked well-worn, as if its owner toyed with it as a nervous habit, and I could see where the link that connected it to the watch chain had pulled loose, allowing it to be lost. Nervousness, to the point of feeling sick. Fear of discovery, of scandal, being ruined. Anger at being forced to do something hated. A bribe? No, a payoff. Blackmail.

  I came back to myself, gasping. “Someone was trying to blackmail him. He was terrified. Whatever the blackmailer had on him, it was enough to make him consider suicide. But the love he felt was real. That came through, too.”

  Teag put the items back in the box and moved it away from me. “Since the Tomlinsons are still players here in Charleston, I doubt we’ll get anyone to ‘fess up even if they do know the truth. Let me see what I can find about Brannigan.”

  While he ran through databases, I texted Sorren. “We don’t know what Sorren has found out. Maybe he’ll remember something important.”

  “Or maybe Brannigan wasn’t on his radar because until now, there was nothing supernatural involved, just good old fashioned bloodthirsty psycho,” Teag muttered.