Katie blinked. “Burned.”
“Committed to micro-fiche first, of course...”
Katie sighed.
“…and from micro-fiche to computer hard drive thereafter.”
My turn to blink. “So…any newspaper articles older than 1920 are on computer?”
“Where are the computers?” from Katie, clinging to hope.
The pinched face pointed in the opposite direction. “First room on your left, past Fiction...”
Katie grabbed my arm.
“…except…”
Katie let go of my arm. “Except?”
“All our computers are down today.” She canted her head impatiently as if addressing two idiot children. “Have you tried Google at home?”
* * *
Back in the rental I drove angry. “It’s nice to know celibate old maids aren’t limited to movies and certain portions of the Midwest!”
“Slow down, you’ll get a ticket.” Katie was wrestling with an area map. “Turn left at your next light if it says Grape Street.”
“Left? Why?”
She had her cellular out now, punching in numbers. “Just do it.”
I fumed behind the wheel, watching street signs. “It’s not Grape!”
“Next one, then. Hello--? Mr. Adams? Hi, it’s Katie Bracken! Just fine, how about you? Listen, we’re in town, not far from Kensington, and I was wondering—pardon? No, Ms. Liz isn’t with us just now. Anyway, Elliot and I were wondering if you sold any old newspapers at the shop—local ones, old ones. You do! Oh, very old, I’m afraid…before or around 1917. Uh-huh…uh-huh…really! Oh, that would be great! May we stop by then? Wonderful! Pardon? No, Ms. Liz isn’t with us this trip. Oh, she’s fine, said she had a wonderful time with you at the Del! No, I’m not kidding! All right, then, see you in a few minutes!”
Mr. Adams had two large stacks of yellowed newspaper piled up at his front door for us when we pulled up.
He kept craning around us toward the rental at the curb as if Liz might have somehow escaped our notice in the backseat.
Katie went to her knees ravenously before the stacks, speed-reading headlines and sub-headers, combing the first page of each folded issue quickly but carefully.
“That’s all I could find between 1885 and 1917!” he nodded, prideful, “they ain’t exactly in order!”
“This is great!” Katie enthused, not looking up, “thank you so much, Adam!”
“T’weren’t nothin. S’all I got to do anyways. Sorry they’re so musty!”
Katie nodded, “Uh-huh,” ignoring him—ignoring me—sitting on her bottom on the plank wood floor of the shop now, fully engrossed, unfolding, turning pages, refolding.
“Been meaning to throw the dern things out, tell the truth! Nobody much interested in the past these days. Jest takin’ up room.”
Katie nodded automatically. “Uh-huh.”
“Anything else you need from that period, jest ask me! Got a whole store of junk from the old days, more of it in the storeroom out back!”
“Uh-huh,” from Katie, not looking up--then looking up quickly, shooting me a quick: I got this--you entertain the old man! look.
“Yessir, been collecting that stuff now fer years, ever since my daddy quit the shop!”
“Thanks again for the films, Mr. Adams,” I said, stepping gently before Katie, blocking his view, “we really do appreciate all your help!”
“Aw, ‘tain’t nothin!”
“Well, it’s a lot to us!”
“Need any help there?” the old man said, peering around my shoulder at the floor.
“Uh-huh,” from Katie, not hearing him.
“She’s fine, Mr. Adams!” I took his arm, tried to lead him away. He was like a fireplug.
“Oh! I meant to tell you! Liz says ‘hello.’”
Suddenly I was the one being led away, the icy blue eyes sparkling. “She did? For real!”
“Oh, absolutely! Said she never had a better evening in her life!”
Adams beamed—then frowned suspiciously up at me. “You ain’t jest sayin’ that now, on account I collected of these here newspapers for—“
“No, no! Not at all. Talked about it all through breakfast this morning! Very kind of you to give her the tour of the Del, by the way!”
“Mentioned my actual name, did she?”
“Several times. Right there at the table. Didn’t she, Katie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, yes, prattled on like a schoolgirl! You know, Mr. Adams, she—oh, never mind, I probably shouldn’t mention it…” I wandered over by the tuba.
“What! Mention what? Somethin’ about Ms. Liz--?”
I picked up a cast iron deer absently, blew off the dust. “She might not like my mentioning it—“
“Mention what? She all right? You kin tell me! Why, ya’ll are practically like family to me now! What’s wrong with her?”
I appraised the deer. “Oh, she’s fine, fine. It’s just that…well, she does have a birthday coming up.” I turned to him. “How old are you, Mr. Adams, by the way? If you don’t mind my asking…”
“A birthday! Soon? Really?” He spied the iron deer in my hand. “And you want to get thet for her!”
“No, I—“
He grabbed it from my hand. “Wrap it right up! Jest give me a second!”
I caught his arm. “No, no, I didn’t mean—“
He looked down at the deer, crestfallen. “Oh. Yeah. Yer right. Too heavy. Whad she want with a dang deer anyway?” Shoved the deer back at me and grabbed a porcelain statue from atop a stack of books: a milkmaid with bright yellow pigtails and a yellow-painted pail. “How ‘bout this? She partial to statues!”
“No. I mean, I don’t know, but…say, that looks expensive…”
“Make you the best deal in town! Name yer price!”
“No, I couldn’t—“
“Yer right! Danged old fool! Here, it’s free!” He shoved it at me, almost breaking it against the heavy deer.
“Mr. Adams, I don’t think—“
He held up a silencing hand. “Yer right! Ain’t enuf! Not fer a woman like her!” He craned around him, yanked me toward a tall oak display case, the ancient wood and glass probably worth more than the knick-knacks inside it. “How ‘bout these Royal Daltons here, she partial to Royal Daltons?”
“Mr. Adams, it’s really not—“
“Not her taste, huh? Hey, I know!” yanking me toward the Indian curtain. “How ‘bout some nice perfume! Got some real expensive stuff in back, straight from France!”
“Mr. Adams…“
* * *
I kept glancing in the side mirror on the way back, unable to see anything through the rearview past the pile of junk jostling in the backseat.
“Does she really have a birthday coming up?”
“Next autumn.”
“You’re terrible.” Katie folded newspaper pages carefully from the foot high stack in her lap—everything of value she’d gleaned from Mr. Adams’ shop. Free of charge, of course. “Elliot, look at this!”
“You look for me.”
“A whole article devoted to the Panther Killer! But look at what else I found! And on the society page of the San Diego Union!”
“Society page?”
“’July 5, 1876!’,” she read, “‘Murder at the Del’!”
“The Del, really?”
“—Mrs. Lucy Hawkburn, a beautiful young socialite, was found murdered last night in the ballroom of the famous Hotel del Coronado across the bay on Coronado island! The crime was apparently committed during the hotel’s annual 4 of July celebration sometime around midnight when the other guests were gathered outside on the beach to witness the hotel’s fireworks celebration, displayed from a scow anchored off the coast. No weapon was found near the victim but she appeared to be bludgeoned to death. Mrs. Hawkburn is the daughter of prominent industrialist and local resident James P. Rowlins, one of the area’s best known philanthropists and businessmen. The dre
adful incident sends area society into a tailspin that--”
“What about witnesses?”
“—“I’m looking…” She was folding pages quickly now, much less carefully. “Here we go, page sixteen! “No adults were in attendance inside the building during the crime excepting two people at the front desk and part of the kitchen crew, both several rooms away and out of earshot. However, the Hawkburn woman ….oh, God…Elliot…”
“What!”
“…however, the Hawkburn woman’s parents told police they sent a family member back inside the hotel to fetch Lucy when the fireworks display began. One of the staff discovered three-year-old Theodore Hawkburn standing over his mother’s lifeless body. Reports then indicate that Lucy’s young husband Wenchley was overtaken with grief and threw himself into the Pacific ocean, where his drowned body was retrieved later the next day…’”
A chunk of lead hit my stomach.
I glanced over behind the wheel, saw the newspaper tremble visibly in Katie’s hands.
“’...when asked if he had witnessed the killer, the toddler Theodore was unable to reply. Obviously traumatized, he was taken immediately to San Diego Mercy Hospital in a state of shock. The child, normally garrulous, remains fully conscious in good physical health since witnessing the incident, but, according to doctors, has become mute. After fifteen hours of vigil and attendance, assisting physicians were able to elicit only two words from the boy regarding the heinous death of his mother’…”
Katie closed the paper gently, folded it and laid it in her lap.
She stared quietly a moment out the front windshield.
I waited for her next words, but somehow I knew with a crawling certainty what they would be.
“Animal People,” she whispered.
TWENTY-ONE
I pulled in front of the Sanderson home and cut the rental’s engine.
I turned to Katie, who was flipping pages again by then. “Anything else from the tabloids?”
She finished perusing the last paper in her lap, closed it, and tossed it on the floor in front of her with the others. The articles she’d saved out were still in her lap. She grabbed the latest one, folded it over, creased it in half again and handed it to me.
It was a small article on page three of the Union.
“That’s the last thing I could find relating to the serial killer. It’s dated August 11, 1917 just a few weeks after the war began.”
I held up the article.
“’Panther Man Vanishes Along With Troops. The first troops shipped out today for Germany to join the Great War in Europe, exactly two months after the last fatal attack from the notorious Gaslamp Panther Man on prostitute Elma Wiley. Did the Marines take the killer with them? There is speculation from local officials that that may indeed be the case. Though top San Diego Army and Navy Departments deny anyone connected with the homicides amid their ranks, the consensus of area police officials leans heavily on the theory that The Panther--tracked relentlessly throughout the county for the last several months but without fruition--escaped capture by law enforcement officers and technicians by ‘hiding in plain sight’ among the area’s enlisted men.’”
I lowered the article, stared up at the Sanderson’s third story nursery window. “And nothing after that?”
“Nothing for the rest of the year. The War took up most of the headlines, front page and interior. People were more afraid of the Kaiser than local killers, it seems.”
I turned to her in the seat. “What--?”
Katie looked at me. “What-what?”
“You don’t look like you believe that was the end of it.”
She took the article back from me, glancing over it again. “Actually I do believe it. Mainly because it explain why The Panther and any articles about him stopped so abruptly with America’s involvement in the war.”
“He was killed over there?”
She nodded. “Maybe an unknown soldier, maybe not. But his tracks were so thoroughly cold by then I doubt we’ll ever know. What better cover for a mad killer than among the hundreds of dead doughboys that never reached American shores again?”
“So why are you still frowning?”
She put down the paper. “’The Animal People.’ Nathaniel claims to have met one and little Theodore uttered the same words.”
I nodded at the house. “The last words he ever muttered, apparently.”
I turned at a thump, found Katie lain back against the headrest, eyes closed.
“You okay?”
“’Animal People.’ Where would two three-year-olds from two different centuries see something like that?”
I sighed, thought about it. “Not TV. Not the movies, not little Theodore anyway. I don’t know, a picture book?”
Katie chewed her lip, eyes still closed. “I don’t remember anything like that from the brothers Grimm, and there are no panther people in Alice in Wonderland, at least that I recall. No. He saw a man that looked like a panther and he saw him at the moment of the killing—both children did. An image so vivid it defied the laws of time and space and traveled all the way here to a 21 Century nursery.”
“They said Animal People, Not Panther Man…both boys did.”
Katie shook her head. “It’s him, though, it’s our Panther Killer, I can just feel it…”
I stared at the nursery window up there through the windshield.
Then I turned quickly to Katie.
“What--?”
“Where’s the article on the 4 of July gathering at the Del?”
Katie shuffled through her lap, bent to the car floor, shuffled through that pile, and finally produced the paper, handing it to me.
I scanned the article carefully. “…all it says is ‘an annual 4 of July fireworks party’…that lasted until….here, ‘fireworks on the beach at midnight.’”
“Which would coincide with the chiming of the mantle clock.”
I nodded rapidly, “And the first appearance of the carpet ball! Which seemed to drop off the toy shelf.”
“’Seemed’?”
I turned excitedly to her. “But only Byron’s smaller ball was ever kept on the toy shelf! That means the big one—the one with the blood-colored rust—came from somewhere else?”
“Time?” She gasped. “The clock!”
“Or somewhere in close proximity to the clock. The fireplace maybe, or the wall or, hell—it could be anywhere, Katie, it’s a time portal!”
She watched my eyes breathlessly…so close…we were so close…
Both our mouths fell open at the exact same moment—like the moment the clock chimed, the carpet ball dropped.
“It isn’t rust!” Katie whispered. “It is blood! The debutante Lucy was bludgeoned, the article said!”
“But the Gaslamp girls were ripped and torn, as if by an animal. That’s where the Panther Killer got his name!”
She grabbed my arm reflexively, squeezed until it hurt. “A knife! Like Jack the Ripper! Only he struck Lucy Hawkburn with the carpet ball—something guests played with at the Del! Why?”
I took her hand. “Because he didn’t intend to kill anyone at the hotel party! It wasn’t premeditated, it was a crime of passion—of the moment--something he might have dodged with an insanity plea if he hadn’t run off to the war!”
“Oh, Jesus, Elliot! He must have been in love with her! With Lucy Hawkburn! Killed her in some kind of jealous rage or something!”
“But both Theodore and Nathaniel saw the crime, and they both said the same thing, ‘Animal People.’ They saw a panther, Katie. And panthers don’t attend 4 of July celebrations.”
Katie slumped. “Shit.”
Then just as quickly, she sat up straight again.
She grabbed one of the newspaper pages from the seat, threw it aside, then grabbed another, eyes scanning, flying.
“…it doesn’t say…it doesn’t say anything about it here, but that has to be it! It has to!”
“What--?”
She was s
miling now, nodding triumph as she turned to me. “Yes, Elliot! You’re right! Only one killer, maybe…”
My breath caught.
And then it rang through my head, clear and distinctive as clock chimes.
“Animal People!” I gasped. “Everyone was dressed like an animal!”
Katie winked, kissed me hard. “It was-a costume ball!”
TWENTY-TWO
The next morning there was a flurry of activity.
I woke in my usual spot, the narrow sofa, with Katie’s camping mattress beside and below me. But not Katie. Katie was asleep in my arms.
I didn’t recall how she got there, when or for how long, but I was pretty sure (no, very sure) we’d done nothing during the night but snuggle. Also, deep in the secret most part of my mind, I was pretty damn sure that’s where I wanted her the next morning, in my arms, and all the rest of the mornings of my life. I wanted to touch her, smell her, feel her warmth and soft curves against me. I felt so much that way that it seemed as though it had already happened—had happened years ago, decades ago, that there had never been anyone else, only Katie and me, me and Katie, from the beginning…to the end.
Yeah, my inner demon raised its ugly head, and what if the sex is bad? You haven’t even been there yet!
I don’t need to go there, I told myself. This is all I need, this wonderful, sleepy, slightly-sour breathed creature beside me, nothing more. This completes me. I don’t want more.
My demon chuckled smugly. “You will…you will…”
I don’t need you either. Go away. Screw off.
And Rita? Sweet, understanding, ever-forgiving Rita? Going to tell her to screw off too?
Just you for the moment; screw off!
“—Elliot?”
I looked down into Katie’s sleepy face, sleepy eyes looking up at me from the crook of my arm. I had to catch my breath, she looked so beautiful, so perfectly natural there. It might have been the morning after our wedding.
“Who are you talking to?”
I swallowed. “Um. You. Of course.”
“I was asleep.”
“Sorry.”
“Did you say something about screwing?” She pulled her head back a little for a better look, tresses tickling my arm.
NIGHT CHILLS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery Page 21
