The Truth of All Things

by Kieran Shields

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Kieran Shields

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-72030-6

  Jacket design by Daniel Rembert

  Jacket photograph © Kamil Vojnar/Trevillion Images

  v3.1

  This book is dedicated to

  Cathy, Penelope, and Aidan

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I: June 14, 1892

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part II: July 4, 1892

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Part III: August 5, 1892

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  At the sound of footsteps in the alley, Maggie Keene dimmed the gas lamp and sidled up to the room’s only window. She eased the curtains aside, her fingers barely touching the paper-thin material for fear it might tear and crumble. The gap between two neighboring tenement houses allowed a slice of moonlight to pierce the narrow passageway below. A man in a brown derby hurried past, stepping over the remains of a smashed crate. The splintered boards lay scattered on the ground like animal bones bleached a ghastly white by long exposure.

  Maggie cupped a hand against the glass and peered in the other direction. There was still no sign of John. Her eyes drifted past the lights of the Grand Trunk Railway Station, down toward the waterfront of Portland, Maine. The harbor was a dark canvas, interrupted only by a scattering of ships’ lamps bobbing on the tide. She smiled at a faint memory: fireflies hovering over a field on a summer night. She clung to the image for a few seconds until the distant lights began to blur. The laudanum mixture made her feel remote and empty. It threatened to lull her to sleep until a familiar pain twisted in her gut. A vague, unformed prayer sped through her mind, begging God to let her be all right.

  She reached for the small brown medicine bottle on the nightstand. Against the light of the gas jet, Maggie saw that it was almost empty, even though John had given it to her only yesterday. It helped the cramps, but she worried that she’d be doubled over again when she woke, the same as most mornings that week. She sat on the edge of the bed and gazed around the room, searching for a distraction from the pain. The place bordered on spare, but it was clean, with a sitting area, a fireplace, and even a private water closet. The only thing she missed was a clock.

  John had promised to be back no later than midnight. Maggie knew he’d return, since he paid for the room. He’d even left behind his precious notebook, the one he was always patting his coat for, making sure it was safe in his pocket. The desire to peek inside it washed over her, but she let that thought tumble back into the deep. Even if she could undo the book’s locked clasp, she had never been to school and struggled with even simple passages from a child’s primer. Another cramp snaked its way through her gut. She drained the last of the little brown bottle, then poured a glass of water to rinse the taste from her mouth.

  Maggie wished John would hurry up and get back. Then he could finally show her what he’d been hiding. He would reveal to her the truth of all things; that was how he’d phrased it. Then they would toast his shattering success. Just John puffing himself up, of course, but the thought still made her smile. It would be nice to celebrate something more than turning out a drunk stiff’s pockets and finding loose change. She reached for the black hat she’d bought that day and looked at her reflection in the window. It was impossible to tell from the faint image staring back, but she knew she was paler than usual.

  The sound of a step on the outside stairs stirred her back to the moment. There was the quick ascent of boots, and she met him at the door as the knob twisted.

  “I was starting to wonder,” she said. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything is”—he struggled for several seconds to produce the right word—“perfect.”

  He had these moments of silent effort, and Maggie had already learned to act as if she didn’t notice the awkward pauses. John brought her forward onto the landing. He slipped into the room and extinguished the light. Maggie heard him fumbling in the dark before he reappeared and led her down the stairs

  “So where are we going anyways?”

  “Patience, my dear. You’ll see … soon enough.”

  “Always such a mystery with you.”

  He smiled. “Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep … but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye … at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead … shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

  “What are you on about? Better not start preaching at me.”

  He gave a chuckle. “Just a bit to start you on the way.”

  Maggie’s mind was drifting into the haze of the laudanum; she didn’t take any notice of how thin and raspy his laugh sounded. It held no warmth or humor and was instantly swallowed up by the night air. She stumbled on the uneven ground and then felt John’s grip on her arm as he guided her into the darkness.

  Deputy Marshal Archie Lean stood in the Portland Company’s cavernous machine shop. He wasn’t quite as trim as when he’d first joined the police a decade a
go, but he still retained the sturdy build developed in his youthful days as a boxer and rugby football player. He doffed his hat and tugged on a handful of sandy hair, as if he could somehow forcibly extract an explanation from his spinning mind. Lean pulled out his notebook and glanced at his earlier jottings under the heading of 6-14-92. Halfway down the page, he caught sight of two lines of poetry that he didn’t recall writing: “She seemed a thing that could not feel / The touch of earthly years.” He crossed out the lines. Lean needed to focus his thoughts, so he lit a cigarette, his fourth in the hour since he’d first seen the body. Maybe he could make it the rest of the day without another. His wife hated the smell on him, but he knew that Emma wouldn’t mind once she heard what he’d seen tonight.

  Dr. Steig had stepped out a few minutes earlier, and Lean was now alone with the woman’s body for the first time. The wooden floor planks had been pried up and removed, exposing a roughly circular patch of dark earth about eight feet in diameter upon which the body now lay. A pitchfork stood before him, plunged into the dirt. Two of the prongs ran straight through the young woman’s neck, pinning her to the ground. She was on her back, arms out to the sides, her legs spread apart. A burned-out lump of candle tallow sat just below her right foot. She still wore her long black skirt, dark hose just visible at the ankles, and black leather shoes. Her white blouse, black coat, and several other garments had been removed and stacked neatly several yards away. Although she was naked from the waist up, that had not been immediately apparent at a distance. Two long cuts crisscrossed her chest. Blood, drying darkly, covered nearly all her torso, though her arms were a ghostly white. Her right arm was severed at the wrist, a pool of blood where the missing hand should be.

  The deputy was no stranger to bodies that had met a violent end. They were mostly men, older ones who had lived out a decent portion of their allotted years. At least it seemed that way, since they typically led hard, unforgiving lives that aged them prematurely and sped them on to their ends. Doubtless, Maggie Keene was on a similar road that would have robbed her of any final traces of hope and innocence in a short time, but earlier that night she had been young and alive.

  Lean noted a fifteen-ton Cleveland crane overhead. The machine was suspended above, resting on rails on either side of the room so it could move heavy steel pieces and equipment the length of the building. The crane’s great hook held a chain from which a massive circular gear dangled at eye level. The large iron cog would soon help drive some powerful engine across great distances, but now it hung motionless and silent.

  Facing him, scrawled along the side of the gear, was a series of chalk letters: KIA K’TABALDAMWOGAN PAIOMWIJI. It was too long to be any sort of worker’s note for some special component for the rail car they were building. He supposed it was either foreign or perhaps some sort of code. The letters were printed in his notebook already. He took a deep drag and let the cigarette smoke linger in his lungs a few seconds more as he prepared for another inspection of the body, hoping to notice something new and telling. Soon Mayor Ingraham would arrive, and Lean would be called upon to explain what steps had been taken, what he made of the scene, and the plan for apprehending the murderer. He could answer the first question.

  As one of Portland’s three deputy marshals, Lean was in a small minority of citizens with a telephone in his home. After receiving the call, he had hurried down to meet the first patrolman who’d answered the watchman’s frantic whistle. Other officers had since swept through the building, but Lean had kept them away from the body. He’d ordered the first patrolman to stand guard over the watchman inside the latter’s shack, quarantining the only two known witnesses to the horrific details of the body. The dozen or so other buildings that made up the Portland Company’s rail-car manufacturing grounds had been searched as well. He’d used the telephone in the company office to speak with the marshal and then sent word to the station to call in every available patrolman. Almost every one of Portland’s three dozen police officers was now out on foot, searching for signs of the killer.

  He looked down at the body once more. The passage of time since Lean had first viewed the corpse did nothing to alleviate the unexpected despair he’d felt when he first stood over the young woman’s body and her face had still been warm to the touch. Even that last hint of life had since been stolen away. Now the woman’s soul was one more hour removed from this world. The wide, unknowing look on her face remained, and the senseless horror of it all weighed on Lean. He fought down the urge to yank away the pitchfork still planted in her neck.

  Dr. Virgil Steig was a slight man of about sixty with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard gone mostly white. From where he stood by the entrance to the machine shop, the doctor could hear the gentle sloshing of the harbor against the wharf pilings just a good stone’s throw away. The various buildings of the locomotive foundry and machine works were crammed into ten waterfront acres near Portland’s East End. At the sound of approaching horseshoes and the clatter of carriage wheels over the cobblestones, the doctor returned his attention to the land. He let his gaze drift past the carriage to the open space before him, then up to the dome of the Grand Trunk Railway. Dr. Steig stepped away from the machine shop door, ready to greet the mayor’s landau as it arrived at the entrance to the Portland Company. A uniformed patrolman moved across the compound and opened the carriage door. The ample frame of Mayor Darius Ingraham disgorged itself from the cab.

  “Dr. Steig. I should have known,” the mayor said between heavy breaths. “The officer didn’t mention it was you.”

  “Would you have come if he had?”

  “This is no hour for jokes. Why the hell am I here?”

  “I thought you’d want to see this, in a manner of speaking. It’s going to cause quite a stir: a young woman.” Dr. Steig led the mayor toward the front door.

  “Prostitute?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s something. I mean, it could be worse.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” said Dr. Steig.

  “Who’s the investigator?”

  “Lean.”

  The mayor drew in his breath.

  “You appointed him,” said the doctor.

  “There were other considerations.”

  “Aren’t there always?”

  The mayor seemed to weigh the need to defend himself but settled for, “Where is he?”

  “Inside with the body.”

  “I don’t know; he seems bright enough,” the mayor said.

  “Plenty bright. Not the most seasoned.”

  “He’s been around a few years.”

  “I have scars older than him.” The doctor turned and reached for the doorknob. “I just think this case might warrant someone with a bit more expertise.”

  “It’s just a dead whore, Virgil.”

  “And Macbeth is just a play about a Scotsman. All the same, better prepare yourself for what you’re about to see.” Dr. Steig led the way inside. Deputy Marshal Archie Lean was standing twenty paces ahead.

  “Holy Mother of God!” The mayor drew a handkerchief and clapped it to his mouth.

  “Not by a long shot,” Lean said.

  The mayor moved forward with halting steps. “Who is she?”

  “Maggie Keene,” Lean said. “One of Jimmy Farrell’s newer girls. Usually works North Street.”

  Mayor Ingraham tapped his cane on the ground. “Oh, just wait until news of this gets out. Blanchard and his temperance fanatics will drag me over the coals. A dead whore, some bloody killer roaming about—”

  “And a watchman too drunk to notice anything.” Lean saw the mayor grimace. The Maine Temperance Union had been firing broadsides against the mayor since the day he took office. Newspapers with Republican leanings routinely ran stories accusing him of failing to enforce the Maine Liquor Law that—on paper, anyway—had banned the sale, and nonmedicinal use, of alcohol since 1855. There were even allegations of payoffs by the larger Irish gangs that controlled much of the flow of booze
into Portland.

  “Why isn’t Marshal Swett here anyway?” asked the mayor.

  “Prefers not to conduct business before breakfast,” Lean said.

  “Takes a better photograph after a full night’s sleep,” Dr. Steig added.

  Mayor Ingraham stared at them in disbelief, his jowls starting to quiver.

  “I did speak with him on the telephone,” Lean said with the unenthused voice of a man obeying dubious orders. “He wants the men to scour the docks and alleys, dredge up whatever drunks and vagrants they can. Find one with no memory of the last few hours, some blood on him, and that’s our man.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Apart from those few still on watch outside, I’ve got everyone out looking.”

  “Good,” Mayor Ingraham said. “So we throw out the net and examine the haul.”

  “You think they’ll find him?” Dr. Steig said.

  “I don’t know what to think about … whatever you call this.”

  “Someone killed a whore.” The calm was returning to the mayor’s face. “Someone in the grip of extreme passion. Wouldn’t you agree?”