Where Cowards Tread (Ravenwood Mysteries #7)

by Sabrina Flynn

  “So you think it’s Miss Pierce?” Sarah asked.

  Lily shook her head. “I didn’t say that. I only answered your question. Anyone in this house could have written that article. But I’m not convinced it was someone who lives in this house. The article hurt all of us.”

  Sarah cocked her head. “But there were details…”

  “And people talk, Sarah. People gossip. It only takes one stray word to ruin someone.”

  31

  Joss House

  Saturday, October 13, 1900

  The streets were becoming familiar—the stores, the merchants, even the alleyways. Chinatown was no longer foreign to her. Sao Jin had lived her entire life in the Quarter, but she didn’t much know it. She had spent most of that life behind doors.

  She remembered walking with her father, tottering on the sidewalk, holding his hand. But she wasn’t sure if that was imagined memory or real, as she watched a small child doing that very thing.

  A man in silk, with a long queue and impeccable white cuffs, held the hand of his small daughter. She looked like a doll with her rosy cheeks. She squealed with delight, as her mother trailed slightly behind. The mother was dressed in robes, and wore small slippers that bound her feet. She walked slowly, holding the hand of her son, who was leading his smaller brother by letting him hold on to his queue.

  The family talked and laughed, but she could see the father eyeing the narrow lanes where men with broad hats stood.

  Jin watched the men at the alleyway too. They were a blight on Chinatown, a disease that festered in shadows. The criminal tongs ripped the joy from residents.

  The family fell quiet as they passed the men. Ten feet later, the children started giggling again.

  A passenger wagon stopped on the street. It was full of white tourists exclaiming over the adorable children and the robes of the parents. A man hopped off the driver’s seat to open the back gate, folding down the step so the tourists could disembark. They flooded the street, gawking at red banners and lanterns and festooned balconies.

  Hucksters came with wares dangling from wooden poles: puppets and trinkets and tea. Jin trotted forward with a broom in hand, sweeping the way for a frilly-dressed woman trying to keep her skirts out of the dirt.

  “So exotic. Look at his braid.” The woman reached for Jin to feel her hair. She bit back a snarl, and hurried to sweep the street lest she hit the woman with her broom. “Are those some kind of ritual scars?” the woman asked her guide.

  The guide answered in broken English. “Look see. Here. Here.” He smiled and bowed, and pointed towards a joss house.

  As the woman strolled inside, Jin heard the guide swear lightly under his breath. She shared a look with him. “They bring the money,” he said in Cantonese, and flipped Jin a coin.

  Jin stared at the temple. Two stories high, with an ornate roof and red banners hanging from its balcony, the characters reading Tien Hau Temple. Mother Ancestor. Goddess of Heaven and the Sea.

  She watched the white tourists gawking and exclaiming as they walked up the stairs into the dark opening. Curious, she set her broom against a brick wall, and followed.

  Jin found herself gawking along with the tourists. Hundreds of red and gold lanterns hung from the ceiling. The air was thick with incense. A few white women giggled into the deep silence.

  Jin wandered past the group, farther into the temple where men and women prayed at altars. Some shook canisters of sticks—kau cim sticks, her mind dredged the words from a shadow of memory. Fortunes. Others bowed in front of teak altars festooned with candles and ornate statues, burning incense and throwing half-moon-shaped objects on the ground. And in the middle of it all sat Tien Hau, serene in red and gold and surrounded by attendants. Bowls of fruit, flowers, cookies, and cakes were laid out in offering.

  A monk approached Jin and bowed deeply, offering two candles and a bundle of three joss sticks. She glanced to the side, where another woman was accepting candles and incense and dropping a coin into the monk’s hand.

  “What is this for?” she asked.

  The priest looked surprised. “For your prayers.” He nodded towards the goddess statue. “Through the mother’s power, the daughter is powerful.”

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  Again, surprise. “Mazu. Mother Ancestor and Goddess of the Sea, protector of fishermen and sailors. She’s very clever and remembers everything she reads. The two guardians beside her are a Thousand-mile-eye and Wind-to-the-ear. They help her find people in storms, along with her red lantern.”

  Jin felt like she was in a storm searching for people. She glanced at the tourists and the residents, feeling caught between two worlds. She should know how to do this, but she was as clueless as the tourists.

  “I do not know what to do,” she admitted.

  The monk smiled. “I will show you, mui mui.” Little sister.

  Feeling awkward, Jin followed him through the temple, walking in a very specific pattern to visit each altar and deity. He showed her how to light the two candles, hold the incense, and how to bow.

  In spite of the monk’s encouragement, Jin did not introduce herself or ask any questions. She only went through the motions, feeling lost at sea. These rituals meant nothing to her, and so when she finally stood in front of Mazu and her demon guardians, Jin only glared in defiance.

  The monk left her alone, and Jin thrust her incense into the sand, then shook out a kau cim stick. She took the number to a wall of drawers and got her message from the Goddess: The dead trees break into green once more; The woods are alive with buzzing life. The immortal peach tree gives forth its fruit, And all the lost find their way home.

  Jin snorted, crumbled up the paper, and stuffed it into a pocket before marching out. Her question had not been answered.

  32

  Questioning the Dead

  Cold death. It had a distinct smell, a stench that clogged the back of her throat. Isobel wanted to vomit it out, to rid her body of it. She swallowed down the urge, and forced herself to breathe through her mouth, as she walked down the steps to the basement of the city morgue.

  Isobel tried not to think of Ella Spencer laying on a hard slab exposed to the elements. The dead didn’t feel, but the living did. And Isobel currently felt the sting of failure.

  They hadn’t found her in time.

  Riot walked in front of her. As somber as his dark suit, with lines around his eyes and a shadow in them. How many dead children had he found in his career?

  “Does it ever get easier?” she had asked in the privacy of their rooms.

  Riot had given a slight shake of his head.

  Should it get easier? Would she be worried if it did?

  The stairwell opened to a sterile holding room: stark, cold, and filled with corpses. Two rows of waiting dead stretched to the far wall. At the very end, through an alcove, was an operating theater: a washbasin, and a slab with grooves, buckets, and scales.

  Two men toiled inside. They were opposites in every way. One was pristine: thin and older, with muttonchops that extended to form a mustache over his upper lip. The second man was disheveled, with a complexion the color of codfish and ears that looked like they were melting.

  The second man looked up. “Mr. and Mrs. Riot!” Mr. Sims exclaimed. “Settling into matrimony, I see. Splendid timing you have. Why, Ella’s just given up her secrets, and I think she’s happier for it. Fine job you did finding her. She didn’t much care to be in that dark house for five whole days.”

  Mr. Sims was an odd man. He had a voice that could wake the dead, and wore a baking apron that stretched over his gut. His job, as he put it, was to haul bodies around. And he claimed they spoke to him. Whatever the case, he gleaned secrets from them with uncanny ease.

  He shook hands with them both, and Isobel was glad to find him free of blood. For now, the large man blocked their view of Ella Spencer. That was until he moved aside, sweeping his arm out. “You’ll want to talk to her. She’s had quite the number
of callers over the last few days. Family, of course, but others too. Why, she’s barely had time to herself…”

  His words faded into the background. What remained of Ella Spencer lay on the slab. Her eyes stared sightless; her body was exposed and discolored, with a long line of sutures that ran from collarbone to pubic bone, along with a square of sutures on her throat.

  “Mr. Sims.” A stern voice cut into the man’s recitation of visitors. But Sims didn’t immediately trail off—he got one last visitor out. “…a pleasant redheaded friend.”

  Riot looked at Sims. “Madge Ryan?”

  “I didn’t get her name. A stout girl, though. She didn’t even wobble. The mother on the other—”

  “Mr. Sims,” the older man said again.

  This time Sims fell silent.

  Riot looked to the older man. “This is Isobel Amsel. Francis P. Wilson, Police Surgeon.”

  Isobel expected the man to huff and dismiss them. Instead, he set down his clipboard and extended his hand to her. “Miss Amsel.” He didn’t hesitate over having been offered her given name rather than her married one. “Excellent work in Calistoga over the summer. I’m told we have you to thank for this.”

  Isobel raised a brow. “For what?”

  Wilson inclined his head towards Ella. “Weston and Detective Sergeant Dillion are idiots,” he said bluntly. He gestured towards Ella, and they gathered around her corpse.

  “Sims here spotted it first.”

  Sims had folded his hands behind his back, and was humming softly to himself.

  Wilson forced an eyelid of the corpse closed, and traced his pen over tiny pinprick dots on the skin. “Petechiae. Hemorrhaging. The presence of petechiae doesn’t prove strangulation, but you will note these marks.” Wilson traced what looked like faint smudges on Ella’s neck on either side of her larynx. “We laid her pharynx bare and found two bruises, one of which was about the size of a half-dollar piece. The killing was carefully done.”

  “May I?” Sims asked, a hint of near glee in his voice.

  Wilson nodded to the man.

  Sims moved to the other side and placed his hands carefully over Ella’s throat. Thumb and forefinger placed just so on her larynx. His left hand covered her mouth. For all his eagerness, he demonstrated it with a kind of reverence. After he was sure Riot and Isobel got the point, he covered the cadaver with a thin sheet.

  “The room she was in was cold and enclosed, so the body is in better shape than it should be. With these considerations, we estimate time of death to be sometime Sunday morning.”

  The weight of failure lifted. Ella Spencer was murdered before her brother had hired Ravenwood Agency. That fact didn’t help Ella any, but it would help Isobel sleep better at night.

  “Any indication of rape?” Riot asked.

  Wilson glanced at Isobel, then cleared his throat. “Hard to say. There were clear signs of recent sexual activity. Minor tearing, too.” Again, throat clearing. “Along with the blood on the towel we found, er… semen. But the amount of blood and tearing was consistent with what you might find on, er…”

  “A wedding night?” Isobel asked.

  “Yes,” Wilson said.

  “Tearing doesn’t always occur,” Sims said. “Though we did note blood under her fingernails, and a few torn nails.”

  A significant detail. Isobel picked the cadaver’s hand up and studied the nails. Short and clipped, the hands of a worker. And healthy. She could have been trying to fight off her attacker, or… she could have been running her fingers down the back of her lover. Isobel was sure she had added a scar or two to Riot’s collection on his back.

  “No signs of poison, or organ damage, and only a mild amount of alcohol in her blood,” Wilson concluded.

  “Were you able to get fingerprints off the skin on her neck?” Riot asked.

  Wilson shook his head. “We tried.”

  Isobel stared down at the girl’s glazed eyes. “Do you know if she was strangled during sex?”

  “There’s no way to be sure,” Wilson said.

  “Would that matter?” Riot asked. There was a hint of curiosity in his question.

  “Some men enjoy choking women during sex. Not to kill, but for power and pleasure,” she said it lightly, but Riot wasn’t fooled. A muscle in his jaw twitched, and she instantly regretted her observation.

  She quickly looked away. On the surface, Riot seemed calm, but that slight twitch in his jaw told her otherwise. If Alex Kingston, her ex-husband, had walked through the door in that moment she had no doubt Riot would have gunned him down.

  “It may have been an accident,” Sims agreed cheerfully. “And you know some men like to be choked. It raises the blood pressure. Most hanged men are buried stiff as a board. And by that, I mean…”

  “Sims,” Wilson said. “I don’t see how that’s important, Miss Amsel.”

  Isobel gestured at Ella. “None of this makes sense,” she said quickly. “John Bennett, or Hawkins, courted her for months. Why arrange all of this only to kill her within hours? Everything points to John Bennett setting Ella up as his mistress.”

  The men were silent.

  Finally, Riot spoke. “Some men find the act of killing far more stimulating than sex.”

  “But do they leave a forwarding address to the house they plan to kill a woman in?”

  Riot looked thoughtful, while Sims continued humming quietly to himself.

  “And that’s why I’m not a detective,” Wilson said. “I wish you luck in finding her murderer. Regardless of circumstances,” he frowned down at the girl, “it never gets easier seeing a child under my scalpel.”

  The medical examiner turned back to his notes.

  33

  The Fallen

  Monday, October 15, 1900

  Ella Spencer was dead. Isobel had failed her. No matter how she tried to quiet her imagination, she couldn’t stop picturing her own daughters in that empty house.

  With shops and stores closed, it was near to impossible to investigate on Sunday, so they had taken the day off to spend with their daughters. Sailing had helped. Isobel needed that time to reassure herself that Jin and Sarah were alive and breathing.

  Now, Monday morning, refreshed and rested, she focused on her task—finding C.B. Hawkins. She and Riot had divided forces. But she wasn’t entirely on her own. Riot had sent Matthew Smith with her under the pretense that the agent needed experience. It felt more like being assigned a bodyguard.

  After sifting through the business cards that had been left behind, and making some inquiries, they discovered that Ford and Co. Real Estate owned the house—the very same company that Lewis Fletcher worked for as a junior clerk. The office was large and orderly, and a few men worked at desks, but Lewis wasn’t in that day.

  There were no women present, so she let Matthew take the lead, curious to see how he would do. He was her own age—tall, blond, and handsome in an athletic way. She wondered if he played football in his off hours.

  “I need information about a house your company owns at 2211 Sutter Street,” Matthew said.

  “You and every reporter,” a burly clerk said.

  “We’re not reporters.”

  The clerk eyed him, then glanced at Isobel. “You’re not police either.”

  “We were hired by the family of the girl who was found dead,” Isobel said. “The sister of one of your employees.”

  Matthew took out his notepad, and made a notation.

  The burly clerk licked his lips. “What are you writing?”

  Matthew nodded to the nameplate on the desk. “Your name.”

  “Why?”

  “In case you dodge my questions.”

  “You didn’t ask any,” the clerk defended.

  “I’m about to.” Matthew glanced down at him. “Who rented 2211 Sutter Street?”

  The burly clerk’s mouth worked, his eyes darting from the notepad in Matthew’s hand to a file cabinet on the wall. “Wait here.” He rose and returned with a little
man in a neat suit, who introduced himself as Charles Lahanier.

  “Nice work,” Isobel whispered as they were led to Lahanier’s office.

  “It’s easier to manage with a badge,” Matthew said.

  Confronted with Matthew’s official air, Lahanier admitted that he had rented the house to a Carl Bennett Hawkins two weeks before. He described him as a middle-aged man of medium height, stout of build, and florid complexion, with a blond or reddish mustache.

  Isobel frowned at this. But then it was easy enough to dye hair and glue on a fake mustache. How many personas did Hawkins have? Isobel was certainly no stranger to multiple personalities.

  She unfolded a sketch that Sarah had made of the suspect. They had taken her around to Estelle Baker and Laura Marshal to get a description.

  “Is this him?”

  Lahanier frowned at the sketch. “That’s him all right. He paid thirty dollars for the month, with a six month agreement. He gave his previous address as the Golden West Hotel. He said he planned to settle in the city. I sent a man out to check his references at the hotel, and they checked out.”

  “Who did you send?” Matthew asked.

  “I don’t remember. Priber maybe.” He nodded towards a burly clerk at a nearby desk.

  “I gave Hawkins the keys, but he came back the next day complaining about rubbish left in the house. So I sent a man—yes, it was Priber—down to inspect it and clean it up.”

  “Can you call Priber in here?” Isobel asked.

  The burly clerk was duly summoned.

  “Did you check on 2211 Sutter Street?” Matthew asked.

  “I did.”

  “Was there rubbish?”

  “There was.”

  “And did you remove the rubbish?”

  “Not personally,” Priber said. “I had some boys clean it out and sweep.”

  “Was Hawkins present?” Isobel asked.