Trumpet of the Dead (Raven Trilogy Book 2)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  She scanned the unmade bed, bending low and pressing her nose to the sheets. No perspiration or gunpowder. Only soap and perfume. She pulled the sheets all the way back and saw flecks of blood at the foot of the bed. Nyx hadn’t appeared hurt when she came out of the cabin and hauled Angus back in. But when Adams looked through the chest of drawers, she found a variety of clean bandages and anti-septic. She got on her hands and knees and looked under the bed. Amidst the dust bunnies lay an empty, green, grooved bottle. Adams stretched her arm and retrieved it. She stood up and inspected the label:

  “Laudanum. Poison.”

  And underneath the ingredients, at the bottom of the label in small letters, it read:

  “Pure Drugs & Chemicals, E. Wyles, Druggist.”

  Leaving the bedroom, Adams went to the kitchen table and found a game bag that contained two fresh rabbits. She turned on her heel and surveyed the cabin’s main room one last time. Adams considered the workbench and the tools, the bedroll on the floor and the blood on the mattress. She reflected on all the care and love Angus must have put into constructing and protecting the cabin, making a safe place for himself, and for fellow refugees.

  Adams went back out onto the porch where the men stood waiting.

  “Torch it,” she said.

  THE KID SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed and looked at the cover of the Bible Margaret Hinsdale had given him. When he opened it, between the end of Genesis and the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, he found that a space had been carved out of the pages. In it, a steel file had been hidden.

  “You’s a sly one, Margaret. You sure is,” he said aloud.

  The kid pulled out the file and then looked up at the iron mesh covering the window. He carried the wooden chair to a spot below the window and climbed onto it. He could barely reach the bottom of the window, and he couldn’t get high enough to work on the mesh. The kid got down and tried moving the bed, but it was bolted to the floor. He switched his focus to the door and gently wiggled the file in the lock until he heard a soft click.

  KAMP LET THE SUN GO DOWN without having answered any of the questions that taunted him. Long after his family had gone to sleep and eons before the dawn, he sat staring into the darkness outside, a black expanse with wind ripping through it.

  He kept falling, tumbling back into fragments of memories, the moment when he first mustered in to his regiment, when his brother handed him the red hat, the moment the kid first appeared in his yard, and when the fiend Daniel Knecht went airborne and the noose coils went taut. Kamp couldn’t discern the connections among these flashes, nor could he see the machine in his mind that produced the pictures.

  Eventually, Kamp closed his eyes and simply listened for the sound of his own breathing. Hours later, but still well before the dawn, he heard footsteps on the porch and then a soft knock at the door.

  Kamp went to the front window, and while he could discern the outline of a slight figure, he couldn’t tell who it was. He picked up the Sharps, which he’d retrieved from Nyx’s hiding place and now kept leaning next to the front door, tucking the stock against his shoulder, raising the barrel and curling his first finger around the trigger.

  “Who is it?”

  Kamp saw the figure on the porch shift from one foot to the other. Through the door he heard a girl’s voice.

  “She needs your help.”

  He lowered the rifle and swung the door open to find the girl with the corn silk hair and the otherworldly eyes staring at him, without expression.

  “Did she say anything else? Is she hurt?”

  The girl kept staring. “She didn’t say it. I’m saying it. Doctor needs your help.”

  Kamp pulled on his boots and jacket and followed the girl off the porch to where her horse was tied. She climbed into the saddle, and said, “Get on.”

  “You sure?”

  The horse nickered loudly, while the girl waited in silence. She extended her hand to Kamp, and he put his foot in the stirrup and swung his leg, with difficulty, over the back of his horse and situated himself behind the girl.

  He said, “I get dizzy.”

  “Yah, doctor told me. Hold tight.”

  She leaned forward, and the horse started down the path. When they reached the road, she said, “Ya!” and the horse started its gallop. Kamp pressed the side of his head against her back to steady himself, remembering at that moment he’d forgotten to leave Shaw a note.

  The girl didn’t ease up in the saddle, and the horse didn’t slow its run until after they’d crossed the New Street Bridge. Kamp opened his eyes for the first time and looked up and down Third Street, empty in the pre-dawn. He saw the glow from Native Iron and tasted the foul grit that floated down from the stacks. The girl brought the horse to a stop a block away from E. Wyles’ pharmacy.

  “Get off,” she said.

  TIPTOEING DOWN THE MAIN HALLWAY, the kid realized that once all the patients had been locked in their rooms for the night, the staff of the hospital disappeared, went back to whatever lives waited for them outside the walls. He stepped lightly all the same, going straight for the first of the three doors that led to the yard.

  He tried the file in the lock and found that the point was much too big to fit. The kid ran his hand along the iron mesh that covered the window next to the door. Same kind as the one in his room. He scraped the file on the mesh and discovered that while it cut into the iron, the scraping sound echoed loudly up and down the corridor. And it would take much longer than a single night to saw all the way through.

  The kid spun on his heel and jogged back in the direction of Dr. MacBride’s office. He crouched next to the office door and saw its simple lock, made for a skeleton key.

  “Jesus, boy, that ain’t enough to keep you safe.”

  With a couple flicks of the file, the lock popped open, and the kid slipped into the office. The moonlight was more than enough for him to see the room clearly. He went to the drawer where he’d seen MacBride put the file on Kamp. He opened the drawer and found it still there, labeled: “Kamp, W. W., Capt. US Army.” He looked over the part MacBride had read to him before.

  In the following pages, he found records listing the medals and honors Kamp earned during the war as well as detailed conduct records. He saw that up to a point, Kamp’s record was remarkable in terms of meritorious service and that an abrupt change followed. The kid also saw that according to the records, Kamp had been shot in battle.

  He turned the page and found a photograph depicting the profile of a man’s head, face up and eyes closed. At the temple, there was a ragged hole roughly the size of a silver dollar. In the photograph’s white margin in the bottom right corner, it read, “Patient: W.W. Kamp.”

  A hand-written note had been clipped to the back of the photograph. “December 15, 1862. Fractures of temporal, sphenoid. Removal of bullet fragments (partial). Surgery unsuccessful. Deceased.”

  The kid shook his head and muttered, “Shee-it, son. You’s dead, too.”

  22

  KAMP LISTENED TO HIS BOOT HEELS clicking on the wooden sidewalk and heard nothing else. He made his way to E. Wyles’ pharmacy and found it intact, including a new storefront window. He saw a dim glow at the back of the store but no movement. He walked to the alley and then to the back door of the pharmacy and found it unlocked. He knocked softly on the door.

  “Emma?” No answer.

  He turned the knob and pushed the door open. Kamp saw an assortment of bandages in a pile on the floor. By the light of a kerosene lantern hanging on a hook, he saw the wooden surgical case lying open on the counter, and on the other side of the room, the druggist E. Wyles herself, standing at the counter, sleeves rolled up and blood on her hands.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I heard you were in trouble.”

  “No.”

  “And that you needed help.”

  Wyles washed her hands in a steaming bowl of water. “You’re too late, Kamp. They’re already gone.”

 
“Who is?”

  “And, no, I don’t know where they went.”

  “Who?”

  “Your cousin. And Nyx.”

  He said, “She told me you were in trouble and that I needed to hurry.”

  Wyles looked at him for the first time. “Who told you?”

  “That kid, the girl with the blonde hair. She came and got me.”

  Wyles dried her hands and arms and then threw down the towel. “Well, I suppose I appreciate her concern, but I assure you that I’m in no—”

  A loud knock came at the front door, then a man’s voice. “Open this door immediately!”

  Kamp said, “Emma, hide.”

  “What?”

  “Let me talk to them.”

  She shook her head. “They don’t want to talk.”

  “Go.”

  Wyles reached down, opened a trap door that led to the cellar and started down the steps. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t let them—”

  Kamp shut the trap door and went to the front room of the pharmacy. He could see lanterns and torches bobbing up and down outside the window like fireflies.

  The voice came again, “By order of the police, we will be forced to gain entry if you do not immediately—”

  Kamp swung the door open to find a group of six men in blue wool uniforms, each wearing an angry countenance and holding a pistol. He recognized one of the men as the young officer whom Nyx Bauer had kicked in the shin, though none of the other officers looked familiar.

  “What do you need?” Kamp said.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?” The young police officer tried to push past Kamp, who stood in his way. “I’m here alone.”

  The young officer took handfuls of Kamp’s jacket, and with the help of the two officers behind him, spun him around and slammed him face first against the door jamb while the remaining policemen filed in. They pinned his head and yanked his hands behind his back.

  Kamp said, “Who told you to come here? Adams? Was it Adams?”

  “We know Nadine Bauer was here.”

  “Adams is a liar.”

  “Yah, we have it on good information that the fugitive Bauer was here, maybe still is.” The young officer frisked Kamp while he talked. “And we know that tribadist gave her medical assistance, too.”

  “That what?” Kamp shook his head free, and the young officer punched him in the cheek, drawing two shiny beads of blood. The two men holding him turned him back around to face the young officer.

  “Your friend the druggist has been rendering aid to Nadine Bauer. And also to that abomination, Agnes.”

  The young officer pushed his hat back and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “Seems like you’re just a magnet for all kinds of scalawags and defectives, say not? Christ, you got enough of your own problems. You better would mind your own business.”

  The young officer hit Kamp on the jaw with a right cross that put him on the floor, then kicked him in the ribs. “That’s for what you did.”

  Kamp rolled onto his side, breathing hard.

  The young officer continued, “Yah, we know what you did. We know you got away with the murder of an assistant chief.”

  He took a sheet of paper from his vest pocket and unfolded it. “This is an order from your buddy, the Big Judge. It says we have to arrest Emma Wyles.” He put it back in his pocket.

  The young officer picked up a canister of kerosene from the floor and poured it on Kamp, splashing it over his legs, torso and face. “Now, I could set this pharmacy alight, starting with you. Call it a mishap. Or you can do the right thing and save the nice store Miss Wyles has here, and spare yourself in the process, say not?”

  Kamp propped himself on one elbow, closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to reorient himself. The young officer pulled a match from his pocket and struck it on the counter.

  He said, “When I come here before to see about a break-in, I met that Nadine Bauer. I was respectful about it, too. Not that I had to be. After all, she was the one breaking the law. And all I got for being nice? A kick in the shins. Well, that won’t happen no more.”

  Kamp rolled onto his back and stared up at the young man, his square chin, precisely clipped mustache and hard blue eyes. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand any of it.”

  The young officer bent low and held the match six inches from Kamp’s face. “Yah, well, mebbe there’s plenty of things I do understand.” The young officer moved the flame closer to Kamp’s face. “People tell me you’re a smart man, that you was a fine detective. But you don’t seem smart to me, no how.”

  The young officer blew out the match, and a thin curl of smoke twisted into Kamp’s nostrils. The rest of the men filed out the back door, and then the young officer left, calling over his shoulder, “Tell Emma Wyles to report to the police station. Tell her the Judge said so. And have yourself a pleasant evening.”

  ADAMS SAT ASTRIDE her horse at the end of the alley that went past the back door of the pharmacy. When the door opened, she caught a whiff of kerosene and counted the police officers emerging one by one. She waited to see if perhaps the fugitives had been hiding and would now try to make their escape. As the grey dawn started sifting in with the last of the night, she saw a man, Kamp, stagger out the back door. He bent over and vomited, then pulled in a few ragged breaths and righted himself. He shuffled the opposite way down the alley, and if he’d seen her at the other end, he made no gesture.

  WELL BEFORE SUNUP, the kid returned Kamp’s medical file to the desk drawer and retraced the path back to his room, making sure to lock every door behind him. Finally, he returned the file to its compartment in the King James Bible as the dawn chorus swelled in the branches of trees in the hospital yard.

  KAMP SAW ADAMS sitting in the saddle when he staggered out the back door of the pharmacy. But he didn’t much feel like getting reacquainted. He felt tired, sick, pissed off and beaten up. And he knew sooner or later, she’d be coming after him anyway. No need to tangle with her now. He pointed himself north and shambled back over the New Street Bridge in the direction of his house.

  He pieced together what had happened, surmising that Nyx and Angus had fled from Adams to the pharmacy. Kamp assumed that neither Nyx nor Angus had perished, given the absence of a corpse. Kamp willed his own body forward, feeling the old fires in his left temple and right hip as well as the new ones in his ribcage. He found that he could focus on the rhythm of his feet crunching the gravel road and the rapid chuff-chuffing of his breath. He didn’t focus on the miles he had to go to get home. Instead, he pulled his slouch hat low, stared at the road in front of his toes and did his broken marionette march out of town.

  When Kamp finally hauled himself up the steps onto his porch and tried to bend down to unlace his boots, he found that, owing to the pain in his ribs, he couldn’t reach that far. He let his kerosene-soaked jacket fall from his shoulders, then tried to take off his shirt. He couldn’t do that, either. Kamp’s body went rigid, and an intense fury arose in him. Stifling a scream, he took the deepest breath he could and blew out a sigh.

  The front door creaked open, and Shaw stood in the doorway, her eyes welling with tears.

  “Come in, love. Come in.”

  23

  THE KID HADN’T BEEN ASLEEP for more than an hour before the door of his room opened, and the nurse entered.

  “Good morning, Becket.”

  The kid didn’t stir.

  “Becket, it’s time to wake up.” She went to him and gently rubbed his shoulder.

  He mumbled, “Much obliged,” rolled over and went back to sleep.

  The nurse pulled the covers all the way down to the foot of the bed and grabbed him under the armpits. “Becket, we need you to get up.”

  “For what?”

  “An examination.”

  He rubbed his eyes with the knuckles of his left hand. “Christ, what else is there to examine?”

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t take the lord�
��s name in vain. And remember to be polite to the doctors. They’re trying to help you.”

  “Is Doc MacBride going to be there?”

  “Why, yes he is.”

  “Miss Nurse?”

  “Yes, Becket.”

  “May I bring my Bible with me? I find it most comforting to carry the good book when my heart is troubled.”

  The nurse smiled. “Of course you may, Becket. Of course.”

  She led him out of the room, down the main hall, past MacBride’s office and into a cold room with a wooden table in the center.

  “Lie on the table, Becket.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Just lie down.”

  The kid looked at the nurse and then back at the table. He climbed up slowly and stretched out on his back, clutching the Bible to his chest with both hands.

  “Good boy,” the nurse said. “Now just wait there.” She left the room, and as soon as he heard her lock the door, the kid jumped down from the table, took out the file and went to the window. He began filing and immediately cut into the lock. In seconds, he’d sawed through the latch as well, but as he swung the metal lattice away from the window, he heard men’s voices approaching. He closed the lattice, hopped back onto the table and returned the file to its hiding place.

  The two orderlies entered the room and stood on either side of the table. They were followed by MacBride and a tall, skinny bald man with thick eyebrows and a white coat. The kid had never seen the man before.

  MacBride said, “Good morning, Becket. Very good to see you.”

  The group waited for the kid’s reply. “Mornin’.” The kid pulled the Bible close to his side.

  “Becket, I must say that I’m very encouraged by your progress, and very pleased.”

  “That so.”

  “Yes, so much so that I’ve already begun thinking about your discharge.”