Oehler said, “I don’t remember.”
“There was another man. A runaway slave. Around the same time. Maybe even in the same place. Lutheran Church. Both murdered, maybe.”
“Then talk to the police. You remember the police? All those fellows who tried to help you and despise you now.”
“I already did.”
Oehler stopped writing and looked at him. “Well, I don’t remember, I don’t care, and, no, you may not look at the files under any circumstances.”
Kamp felt flames of anger tickling the base of his skull. He said, “I know you don’t care about doing the right thing, either. You make your living writing things down, but none of them, none of these people matter to you, do they? Everyone of us is just like the rest. You just run ’em through, like a factory. Is that it?” Kamp gestured to the roomful of corpses.
The coroner removed his wireframe glasses, looked him in the eye, and spoke slowly. “You’re insulting me, insulting the integrity of the work I do, of which you know nothing and understand even less. You have no regard for anyone, living or dead, but yourself. And you have no business here.”
Kamp pulled in a deep breath. “The white man was murdered outside the Lutheran church eleven years ago. Possibly the black man as well. Their names were Abel Truax and Onesimus Tucks, respectively. If you had anything to do with it—and by that I mean, if you performed the postmortems—I’m sure you’d remember it.”
“Kamp?”
“Yes.”
“Get the hell out of here.”
THE MORE PEOPLE DISAVOWED KNOWLEDGE of a murder or said they didn’t remember it, the more certain Kamp became that it had happened. He realized that this logic was unsound. But in practical experience, he’d found that often the pattern held true. And, of course, the more forceful and obstreperous the denials, the greater the likelihood of any person’s involvement. In war it was the opposite. Everyone wanted credit for the kill. Moral inversion.
Kamp shuffled back over the bridge, staring over the railing and contemplating the river’s turbid swirls. The less people told him, the greater his compulsion to reveal the invisible, the narrow road to madness. His boot heels scuffed on the heads of nails in the wooden bridge as he fixed his sights on the police station.
An armed guard stood at the door, and when the man noticed him approaching, Kamp saw his shoulders tense and his grip on the shotgun tighten. Kamp relaxed and took a deep breath.
Kamp said, “Wie gehts?”
“What?”
“How goes it?”
“It goes.”
Kamp saw the blood drain from the man’s knuckles as he squeezed the stock of the gun, though his finger wasn’t on the trigger.
The guard said, “Show me.”
“Show you what?”
An emotion passed across the man’s brow. It may have been annoyance, or malice. “That you don’t have no gun, nor no knife.”
Kamp held his jacket open, lifted his hat above his head and then showed the man the contents of the haversack.
“Boots, too.” The man sniffed, cleared his throat and spat on the ground, while Kamp took off one boot, then the other and turned them upside down. The man motioned for Kamp to go inside.
The High Constable Sam Druckenmiller sat back in his chair, feet up and boots off, reading a broadsheet. When he saw Kamp, he winced.
Kamp said, “You look comfortable.”
“Yah, well, why wouldn’t I be?” Druckenmiller set down the paper and planted his feet on the floor.
“I guess if I had a guy with a shotgun protecting me, I’d feel comfortable, too.”
“I don’t have no time for your horseshit today. And that guy out there, not my idea.”
“Whose was it?”
“What do you want now?”
“Answer one question.”
Druckenmiller’s face went purple. “Ach, one question, then another and another and another! It don’t quit with you. You promise to shut up, and then you don’t. You promise to go away, and then you come back.”
“The rifle, Sam. The Henry I saw in your cellar.”
“Ach, leave!”
The front door opened, and the guard leaned his head in. Druckenmiller said, “It’s all right, it’s okay.” The guard shut the door again.
“Eleven years ago, a man who came here from West Virginia, looking for a runaway slave. He brought that rifle with him, and he was murdered. And the rifle ended up in your cellar. That means there’s a direct line between you and a murder. My question, Sam.”
“Yah.”
“How did you get that gun?”
The High Constable scratched his head and rubbed his eyes and then focused on Kamp. “Years ago, my pappy had a farm. Vegetable farm, a big, beautiful garden, ya know. Acres and acres. My pappy loved it. But there was one problem.”
“What was that?”
“Ach, the grundsow. Grundsow diggin’ his holes and tunnels hither and yon. Pappy goes to plow the field, workhorse steps in one of them holes and snap, there goes a leg. All Pappy wanted to do was farm the field. All the horse wanted to do was plow that furrow. They was just minding their own business. And now Pappy has to put the horse down just because of a worthless goddamned groundhog.”
“Answer my question, Sam.”
“That’s what you are, Kamp. A grundsow that keeps digging holes and poppin’ up here and there. But Pappy had a solution for his problem, same one as for you, someday.”
Kamp reached across the desk and slapped Druckenmiller hard on his face and grabbed a handful of his shirt. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Where’d you get the Henry?”
Druckenmiller said, “Someone seen your cousin in town today. Your cousin, Agnes. Remember her? Except they said she looks more like a man now. Like she wants people to think she’s a man.”
“The gun, Sam. Where’d you get it?”
“Agnes is a good girl, I’m sure. But folks don’t like to see something disgusting like that. Makes ’em nervous and boseheit, ya know, very angry. You should talk to your cousin before something bad happens to her, too.”
The fire erupted at the base of Kamp’s skull, and he closed his free hand around Druckenmiller’s throat. Before Kamp could cut off his breath completely, Druckenmiller let out a loud croak. The guard burst through the door, gun raised, finger on the trigger. Kamp relaxed his grip.
Druckenmiller said, “Show this man the door.”
KAMP KNEW HIS COUSIN would never risk going to town unless the situation were urgent. And he knew there was only one person in Bethlehem Angus trusted.
When he reached the door of the pharmacy, Kamp saw a hand-written sign that read, “Gone for the day.” He sprinted around the back of the building, where he saw E. Wyles standing next to her horse and cinching the saddlebag that clinked with the sound of metal implements. She put a foot in the stirrup.
“Emma.”
“Not now.”
“I have to go with you.”
“It’s private business.” E. Wyles swung her leg over the horse’s back, snapped the reins and was gone.
14
KAMP REACHED THE TRAIN YARD as the wheels of the Black Diamond Unlimited started turning. He knew the locomotive was headed back up the line and that if he caught it, he had a decent chance of getting to Angus’s cabin before E. Wyles. He tossed his canvas haversack in an empty boxcar, climbed in after it and situated himself in a dark corner. Getting on this train was easy enough, he thought. Getting off would be harder. He watched landscape fall away through the open door, the last few yellow blades of autumn and brown branches under an iron sky. The train chugged past homesteads with sturdy clapboards and fresh paint, and farms with grain silos that soon gave way to hills thick with trees and bare outcroppings of rock with just enough space for the river to slither through with the Black Diamond Unlimited alongside it.
The back-and-forth sway of car put Kamp in a lucid trance that slowed his thinking. He replayed the conversation with Druc
kenmiller. He hadn’t expected the High Constable to share information with him, especially information linking him to a murder. Druckenmiller’s refusal to answer the question didn’t mean the man knew precisely how or why he had the rifle. People often preferred not to know the origin or history of a gun in their possession. But knowing him, if there had been a simple story, he would have told it. And, Kamp reflected, the High Constable had never threatened him before. Something must have emboldened him, probably fear. In the safety of the boxcar, he reflected on the moment the guard came through the door, shotgun raised, first finger on the trigger. He knew the man wouldn’t shoot. Why did he feel certain of this?
THE UNLIMITED BLASTED its whistle as it rounded the bend for Lehighton. Kamp remembered that sometimes the train stopped there, and sometimes it didn’t. He’d know soon enough, though, because if it were stopping, he’d feel the train beginning to slow. And he had to get off, regardless. His cousin’s cabin was a few miles due east of the town. It became clear that the train wasn’t stopping. A few more shrieks of the whistle, and the Unlimited reached the rusty truss bridge over the river.
The last time Kamp jumped from a moving train, it hadn’t gone well. Instead of landing in a fluffy snow drift, he’d crashed into a submerged railroad tie. His prospects for a safe landing looked even worse now. The rocky riverbank dropped sharply to the water, and the river itself looked far too shallow. Still, he had to get off, now.
He stood up, cinched the strap of his haversack around his wrist and prepared to make his leap. He saw that three-quarters of the way down the bank, fifteen feet or so, jagged rocks gave way to loose gravel. Kamp took two steps back. The Unlimited let loose one more wild shriek, and he launched himself out of the boxcar. He sailed over the rocks and down the steep bank, heels digging squarely into the soft gravel before momentum and gravity conspired to take him tumbling to the river’s edge.
He stood up, brushed himself off and tested his limbs. Definitely nothing broken. Apart from muddy knees and a new tear in the elbow of his jacket, he was no worse for the wear. Kamp picked his way across the dry tops of rocks in the river and hopped onto the far bank. In an hour he’d be at the cabin.
“WELL, WHEREVER THE HELL I AM, it’s better than the last place they had me. Better by a damn sight,” the kid said.
“And where was that?” the nurse said. She wore a spotless, white linen dress with a plain, matching mob cap.
“Hospital in Bethlehem. Had me rolled up tight in a closet.”
Without smiling, the nurse said, “No one’s going to do that to you here.”
The kid said, “Well, if that’s so, go ahead an’ loose these binds, wouldja?”
The nurse ignored the question.
“How’d I get here anyways? I don’t remember no journey, not at all.”
“Well, you’re here now.” While she talked, the nurse poured liquid from a colored glass bottle into a table spoon.
“Where’s here?”
“Open your mouth.”
The nurse approached him with the tablespoon.
She said, “This is the Pennsylvania Asylum for the Insane.”
With a little more force than necessary, the nurse shoved the spoon in the kid’s mouth. He gagged and then swallowed.
A smile spread across the kid’s face. He said, “Nurse?”
“Yes.”
“No matter what anyone says, you don’t seem insane to me. Not at all.”
“Becket, you’re safe here. Our mission is to restore you to health, and I assure you we will be unflagging in our efforts until you’re all better again.”
“Unflagging, huh.”
“Yes.”
“Nurse?”
“Yes, Becket.”
“Two things. First off, I greatly appreciate what you just said. I can see I’m better off here than anywheres else. And second, I’d love a smoke right about now. You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, wouldja?”
“Of course not.”
AS SOON AS KAMP GOT WITHIN FIFTY YARDS of the cabin, Angus appeared on the front porch, holding a rifle across his chest.
Angus called out, “Normally I shoot first.”
When Kamp reached the porch, Angus hugged him a little harder and a moment longer than usual and then took a step back.
Angus said, “Let me look at you. Jesus but you look a little rough.”
“Nice to see you, too.”
He waited for Angus to invite him inside, and when he didn’t, Kamp said, “How’s she doing?”
Angus made a wry face. “She’s better now, or she will be soon enough.”
He took a long look at his cousin. “I heard you went to Bethlehem.”
“Yah.”
“Are you all right?”
Angus met his gaze. He said, “This ain’t about me” and led him into the cabin.
It didn’t surprise Kamp that E. Wyles had gotten there first, after all. What did surprise him was how much work she’d already accomplished. Water boiled on the stove, and an assortment of bandages and medicines were arrayed on the dining room table.
Kamp knocked softly on the bedroom door and then cracked the door open. He saw E. Wyles drawing liquid into a syringe from a small medicine bottle. She looked over her shoulder, then shook her head dismissively. He entered the room and saw Nyx lying on her back. Her hair was fever-sweat matted to her forehead, and her eyes swam in their sockets.
When she saw Kamp, she said, “It’s me this time.”
Wyles inserted the needle into Nyx’s arm and depressed the plunger.
Kamp gently brushed the hair from Nyx’s forehead and said, “Everything is all right.”
Nyx stared into his eyes until the drug took hold. She said, “No, it’s not” and slid into semi-consciousness.
Wyles put the stopper in the medicine bottle and turned to Kamp. “Since you’re here, you might as well do something useful.”
Angus stood in the doorway, and Wyles said to him, “Keep lookout.” She turned back to Kamp and looked him up and down. “Change your clothes, scrub your arms and hands. Get as clean as possible.”
As she said it, Wyles set the wooden case on the bed next to Nyx and opened it. Kamp saw an assortment of surgical tools. She pulled back the blankets to reveal Nyx’s frostbitten toes. He immediately recognized the sight and smell of gangrene.
“Kamp, get ready. And hurry up.”
WHEN KAMP RETURNED he saw that Wyles had scrubbed both of Nyx’s feet, and under them, she’d placed a metal pan. He noticed, too, that she’d strapped Nyx’s lower body to the bed. From the wooden surgical case, Wyles selected a metacarpal saw with a fine ivory handle.
She said to him, “You’ll her down at first. Then, you’ll help me control the bleeding while I tie off the blood vessels. Understand? This will go fast.”
He placed his palms on Nyx’s shoulders, and faced away from Wyles. Nyx didn’t stir. He heard Wyles draw a deep breath, and then she said, “Here goes.”
An instant later, Nyx’s eyes opened wide and she thrashed under Kamp’s hands. Nyx wailed, “Daddy! Daddy!” Then she shut her eyes.
Kamp looked back over his shoulder and saw that Wyles was working with great speed and precision. In seconds, she’d sliced off two toes. He turned back to face the wall and heard another toe land in the metal pan.
Wyles said, “All right, one more thing.”
Nyx opened her eyes and looked at Kamp, “No more, no more! Don’t let them do it.”
Kamp said, “Why don’t you—”
He turned around to see Wyles holding Nyx’s left wrist tight. In one deft motion, she sliced off the little finger.
Nyx’s body went slack, as the blood sprayed the wall.
Wyles said, “That’s it. Stanch the bleeding there while I tend to her feet.”
Kamp followed her instructions, and within minutes, Wyles had sutured and dressed all of Nyx’s wounds. She put all of the blood-soaked gauze and linens in the metal pan and handed it to Kamp. Lastly,
she removed the straps from Nyx, who now lay motionless. Wyles wiped the sweat from Nyx’s forehead and then motioned for Kamp to leave the room. She closed the door behind him.
Through the back window of the cabin, he could see that Angus had started a fire outside. When the bedroom door opened again, E. Wyles emerged wearing a clean white dress, and she handed the clothes she’d been wearing to Kamp.
“Burn everything,” she said.
He set Wyles’ clothes atop the metal pan and carried it all out the back door to the fire. He tossed it into the blaze, including the pan and the severed digits. He looked at his own clothes, covered with dirt and large splotches of blood. Kamp unlaced his boots and took off all of his clothes and threw them in the fire, too. He carried his boots back into the cabin. When Wyles saw his naked body, she turned, scoffing.
“You said ‘everything.’ ”
Angus followed Kamp in the door and gave a laugh. “Don’t worry, cousin. Nothing I haven’t seen before. I got some clothes you can wear. Clean. Follow me.”
Angus gave him a union suit, canvas pants, a flannel shirt and a pair of wool socks. After he got dressed, Angus said, “Good as new.”
When Kamp returned to the main room of the cabin, E. Wyles was packing up the medical case and cinching the bag she’d brought. She put on her coat and scarf.
Without looking at him, she said, “I need to go.”
“Where?”
“There are a number of expectant mothers who require my assistance.”
“Ach, you can’t just—”
“And I must return to the store tomorrow.”
Wyles disappeared into the bedroom. She turned out the lantern next to Nyx’s bed and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Kamp said, “Is she going to be all right?”
“I don’t know. She’s hypovolemic. In shock.”
“And you’re just going to leave her here?”
Wyles approached Kamp and stood directly in front of him. “I removed all of the gangrenous tissue. There’s little else to do, except for keeping the wounds clean and making sure that she’s properly nourished. Angus can do that. And when she comes to, be certain to keep her off her feet. Understand?”
Trumpet of the Dead (Raven Trilogy Book 2) Page 12
