Ax & Spade: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 1)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  Knecht said, “Admit it.”

  “Ach, Danny. You gave me such a start.”

  “You can admit it.”

  “Admit what, Danny? Christ!”

  “Shh, don’t wake the family. You missed me. You were worried about me.”

  “I could throttle you is what I could do.”

  The fear returned immediately to Bauer’s chest, and he felt his windpipe constrict.

  Knecht said, “Ach, you don’t need to throttle me. I ought not have been upset yesterday. I’m sorry.” As he said it, Knecht wrung his hat with both hands.

  “It’s in the past.”

  “I noticed you put up the last couple fensariggles. Looks good.”

  Bauer said, “Thank you.”

  “So you forgive me then?”

  “Why, sure, sure.”

  “And you’re not mad at me no more?”

  Bauer realized that Knecht had instantly, effortlessly worked his way back in.

  “No, Danny, I ain’t. I wasn’t mad at you to begin with.”

  Knecht heaved a dramatic sigh. “Well, that is a relief. Jesus, I thought I shit the bed for sure.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Right, right.” Knecht bounced from one foot to the other, then stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together. “I’m about to freeze. Let’s go.”

  “Now wait, once.” Bauer took two steps toward Knecht, inches from his face.

  He spoke low in a grave tone. “Listen, Danny. No more monkey business.” Knecht nodded soberly. “And mind your manners around the girls. ’Specially Nyx.”

  Knecht said, “Where’d that come from?!”

  Candlelight appeared in an upstairs window.

  “Give me your word, Danny.”

  The window opened above them. The two men looked up to see Nyx, bleary-eyed.

  She said, “Is everything okay, daddy?”

  “Yes, honey, I’m just out here talking. With Danny.”

  “Oh, hi Danny. Don’t freeze. Bye.” And she shut the window. The two men faced each other again.

  “I have your word.”

  Knecht looked him in the eye. “Why sure, you got it. You have my word.”

  KAMP ALSO HAD A DREAM that morning before sunrise, a dream about the Black Diamond Unlimited. In it he’d seen the sparkling engine constructed of a great framework of words, every seam, rivet and bolt. In the dream Kamp himself was the stoker, shoveling ever more words into the firebox, which had begun to blaze bright orange. Though the fire burned hot in the dream, he didn’t feel its warmth. And all of the answers drifted out the smokestack, unseen and lost to the air. He awoke to an empty bed, toes cold with a frigid wind rattling through the cracks between the bedroom window and its frame. He accepted that he didn’t have answers, not yet, though as he lay in bed, he sorted through what was what.

  He reflected on his brief conversation with Jonas Bauer the previous day, and he felt relieved that a mile separated his house from Bauer’s. Kamp had seen in Bauer’s eyes and in his manner that the man had glimpsed the side of Knecht that some people detested and feared. And Kamp remembered Bauer had daughters. He’d also taken Jonas Bauer’s measure during their talk. He’d struck Kamp as upright, wary and exact, traits that would serve him well in managing a character such as Knecht. Regardless, he resolved to pay his neighbor another visit or two to say hello and keep Knecht in line, if necessary.

  As for his latest conversation with Philander Crow, he didn’t know how the district attorney knew about his injury from the war, but it was clear to him that Crow hadn’t simply guessed correctly. Someone had provided him with the information which meant that Crow had gone looking for it in the first place. That meant that Crow had been sufficiently curious, or sufficiently worried, enough to investigate him. As for the source of the information, that remained a mystery. Almost no one knew about Kamp’s war record, or where to look for it.

  And as for Crow’s admonition regarding the “forces arrayed against” him, Kamp assumed this was not an exaggeration. During his first three months as the city’s detective, he’d come across evidence of no fewer than twenty-seven secret societies in a town of fewer than five thousand people. He knew these organizations were typically nothing more than a reason for men to get together and drink beer. And in some cases secret societies contributed to the civic good, for instance, providing money to widows and orphans. The membership rolls, meeting times and objectives of most secret societies were also made public. Crow had hinted and Kamp had intuited that secret societies—whose membership and activities actually were a secret—existed. He understood that bringing justice might mean laying bare such an organization’s secrets. He still believed that Crow may have been trying to taunt him into quitting, though Crow would have deduced by now, and the Judge would have confirmed, that Kamp wasn’t one to quit.

  That left the possibility that Crow had simply told him the truth. In other words, someone was or would be gunning for him. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow and for a reason that he had not yet discerned. But whatever the reason, a real threat existed. He resolved to meet it. Kamp smelled breakfast wafting from the kitchen and shook himself from the last of his stupor. Time to let that magnificent word train run its route, black clouds be damned. Time to move.

  NINE

  THAT KNECHT HAD RETURNED to his familiar role and returned to his former standing in the Bauer household could not be doubted. He sat in his same chair at each meal, told the same stories and drank from the same cup. Like a semi-feral house cat that leaves without explanation and seemingly for good only to return and immediately curl up on the preferred windowsill, Daniel Knecht was back. And yet, no one felt quite the same as before the argument with Jonas Bauer, before Knecht had run off down the road. Bauer felt a twinge of annoyance and suspicion whenever Knecht made a joke. In the months before, he’d appreciated Knecht’s humor for the most part. Now, he saw it as ingratiating and manipulative. Bauer could tell that Rachel regarded him differently as well. She’d introduced a degree of distance and formality between herself and Knecht, unspoken but unmistakable.

  Having had a lifetime of looking out for and interpreting other people’s suspicion, anger and malice toward him, Knecht must have noticed the shift most of all. Bauer detected no overt change for the worse. He thought, if anything Knecht’s doing an even better job as a boarder than before. But Bauer sensed that behind the jovial demeanor and the flashing smile, the wheels turned. Bauer knew that the fears and misgivings that led to their argument hadn’t been resolved and that the conditions required for resolution couldn’t be met. Knecht needed something he’d never get, and Bauer needed him gone.

  Bauer had decided he’d wait until after the Christmas holiday, hoping that the girls would feel less anguish and that Knecht would be more amenable to moving on. Naturally, Knecht seemed to know it was coming and redoubled his efforts to play the part of family member. A week before Christmas, the family had hiked up the mountain to get the weinachtsbaum, cheering on Bauer with each swing of the ax. Knecht singlehandedly dragged the tree back down the mountain, stood it up in the front room in an iron stand he fashioned himself and helped the girls decorate it. When they finished trimming the tree, Knecht was the first one who ran out the front door so that he could look at it through the front window.

  “Now that’s a tree!” he’d said.

  The day after that, Knecht had given Rachel a small bandbox adorned with a pattern of reindeer. When she opened it, Knecht said, “It’s a bayberry candle, Mrs. Bauer. They say it gives you good luck if you burn it on Christmas Eve, but you have to let it burn all the way. Otherwise, it don’t work.”

  As usual, Knecht had caught Rachel off-guard. She blushed and said, “Why, thank you, Danny. That’s very thoughtful.” She held up the candle. She said, “Lieb, lieb,” and then retrieved a candlestick. At the time Bauer had wondered where Knecht had gotten the candle and whether he’d paid for it.

  With each kind word and gesture, Bauer’
s anxiety grew. He felt considerable relief when, the Sunday before Christmas, Knecht vanished early in the afternoon. Bauer hoped that he’d gone to Easton to celebrate with his own family. He felt relieved, too, that the girls made no mention of his absence and were content to recite rhymes and sing carols with each other. As he sat in his chair in the front room, he breathed in the aroma of the turkey cooking in the kitchen, listened to the sweetness and joy in his daughters’ songs and watched the last orange rays of the afternoon slip behind the house. Jonas Bauer let the sensations overtake him and allowed himself to relax. Gott ist gute, gott ist gute, he thought and dropped off to sleep.

  A moment later he snapped awake to the sound of loud banging on the front door. The girls’ singing stopped abruptly, and they ran to the front door. The banging continued, and Bauer also heard what sounded like chains rattling on the front steps. The girls stood at the front window and craned their necks to get a glimpse. Rachel came running from the kitchen.

  She said, “Father, wer ist es?”

  “I don’t rightly know who it is. Get back, girls, get back!”

  “Let me in,” a low voice growled from the other side of the door, and the girls shrieked in unison. Bauer’s mind went to the four-barrel revolver on the windowsill in the bedroom. The banging continued, as did the rattling of the chains.

  Heidi shouted, “Let him in, daddy!”

  Anna echoed her. “Yes, let him in.” Bauer realized that the scene had been rehearsed somehow, or at least mentioned to the girls in advance.

  Bauer turned to Rachel. “What do you know about this?” She shook her head.

  He swung the front door open to see a figure dressed in black wearing a fearsome, snarling mask with horns and an audacious, red wooden tongue. The figured was covered in an array of black furs and wore a black felt hat. In his right hand he carried a wooden broom. In his left, a coiled iron chain.

  The girls screamed in unison, “It’s Belsnickel!”

  Rachel said, “Oh, gott im himmel.” Under the hat, the mask and the furs Bauer recognized the unmistakable form of Daniel Knecht.

  “Let me in!”

  The girls let out a peal of laughter and ran to the back of the room. Bauer stepped aside and let him pass. He noticed that Knecht also had a burlap sack slung over his shoulder.

  Knecht said, “I have questions for you girls,” and he walked across the room to Anna who hugged Nyx’s leg.

  “What’s your name, little girl?”

  Anna laughed and said, “You know my name.”

  He yelled, “What’s your name!” All three girls shuddered and screamed.

  “My name is Anna. What’s your name? And what’s that chain for?”

  “Silence!” Knecht set the chain on the floor and opened the burlap sack. He removed a stack of paper dolls, girls holding hands, and offered it to Anna who snatched it from his fingers.

  Knecht said, “They try to keep me in chains, but it don’t work!”

  He turned his attention to Heidi, who’d sat down in a chair. He bent down. “I have a question for you, girl.”

  “What is it?” Heidi said, stifling a giggle.

  “Can you pray?”

  “Can I pray? Why do you care?” She rolled her eyes.

  “If you can pray, I’ll give you a treat. If not, I’ll beat you with this broom!” More shrieking, more laughter.

  Heidi said, “Yes, yes, I can pray.”

  Knecht fished around theatrically in the burlap sack and produced a white porcelain figure of a ballet dancer. Heidi took it from him, amazed. Knecht turned to Nyx, and silence descended on the room. He leaned in toward her slowly, his mask inches from her face. She stood facing him, one eyebrow raised.

  He said, “How old are you?”

  Nyx said, “How old are you?”

  “Me? Why, I’m three thousand years old!” He leaned in even closer so that the nose of the mask brushed Nyx’s nose. “How old are you…Nadine?”

  She said, “I’m old enough. Now what do I get?”

  Knecht stood upright, arched his back and bellowed, “You…get…nothing!” At the same time, he tossed a handful of candies, each wrapped in brightly colored paper, into the air. He cackled as the candies clattered to the wood floor. He threw another handful, then another. Heidi and Anna scrambled on hands and knees to collect the treats. Rachel bent down discreetly to retrieve one for herself. In the corner Jonas Bauer fumed but kept his mouth shut.

  KAMP KNEW THE ROADS would be swept clean of carriages and people the day before Christmas. And in place of the typical muddy ruts was a new coat of snow, placid and untouched. He figured that not seeing anyone on his walk to town would lift his spirits. Kamp hadn’t slept the night before, his mind crowded with the loud voices of unwelcome guests with whom he’d likely never make peace. Reminders of the season–a carol in the distance, a Christmas tree in a family’s front window, the cookies Shaw made–any of them could set off an explosion of disturbing memories and associations. He walked the road to town, forcing himself at first to focus only on each step. Having established his walking rhythm, he lifted his gaze to the snowflakes spinning down and listened to the tiny sound they made when they landed on the brim of his hat. In this way he lulled the demons to sleep.

  When he reached town, he discovered a great deal more commotion than he expected. In fact, he found the streets even busier than normal, despite the weather. He heard the Black Diamond Unlimited pulling out of the station, and he saw the stacks of Native Iron going full bore, blowing great plumes of black smoke as if light had never come into the world, and never would.

  Kamp headed straight for the police station and found that it, too, was busier than normal. The jail cell, which normally held one or two wayward souls, was packed with men, some singing, some crying, none quiet, all drunk. He scanned the faces behind bars. Most of them he recognized, and a few called out to him.

  “Wie bischt, Kamp?”

  “Shouldn’t you be at church?”

  “Come down here to get a break from the old lady?”

  Kamp could only make out part of what any of the men said due to the collective din they produced. And yet Druckenmiller sat at his desk, calmly reading a book. Kamp snapped fingers in front of Druckenmiller’s eyes. Druckenmiller looked up, bemused.

  “Sam, I need to talk to you. It’s too loud in here. Let’s talk outside.”

  “What!”

  Kamp said, “Let’s go outside. I need to talk to you!”

  Druckenmiller pointed to his ears and said, “I can’t hear you.” He’d stuffed a large cotton ball in each ear. Kamp leaned over and gently removed them.

  Druckenmiller said, “This book is fantastic.” He held it up. “Die Schwarze Spinne. The Black Spider. You hafta read it when I’m done. Pure horror.” The front cover showed an enormous black spider engulfed in flames. “Only problem is those goddamned noisy louses!” He jerked his thumb toward the holding cell. “It’s too loud in here. Why don’t we talk outside?“

  As they headed for the door, the shouts of the men followed them.

  “Was it something I said?“

  “Don’t forget about us!“

  As soon as they got outside, Druckenmiller pulled the flask from his vest pocket, held it up and said, “Merry Christmas.” He took a long swig and tried to hand the flask to Kamp, who looked at him with a blank expression. Druckenmiller stepped back and studied him. “Ach, what’s the matter? You look a little ferhoodled.”

  “Sam, every guy in there is drunk, and you’re standing on the steps of the police station, drinking.”

  “Yah, it’s the holidays.” Druckenmiller noticed Kamp’s sour expression. “Jesus, what got up your ass?”

  Druckenmiller took another pull from the flask, then put it back. When he did, Kamp saw a blaze of leather and metal inside his jacket.

  “What’s with the rig?”

  “What rig?

  “The holster, Sam. The pistol.”

  “Oh, yah.”
/>   “I thought you didn’t carry a gun. Didn’t you tell me the shepherd’s crook was enough? What changed?”

  Druckenmiller’s expression darkened. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  “What do you know about secret societies? Crow told me–”

  “Crow. That goddamn guy.”

  “Crow told me that there’s real trouble coming, coming after me, and you.”

  Druckenmiller shifted back and forth and pursed his lips, looking very uncomfortable. He looked past Kamp’s shoulder and then at the ground.

  Kamp said, “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “I want to know what you know about that.”

  He saw the color rise in Druckenmiller’s face. “It’s just, it’s just, you come down here…” He looked at Kamp and then at the ground. “You come down here, and I’m tryin’ to be friendly, you know. Sociable. I’m tryin’ to be sociable on account of Christmas and whatnot, and you’re my friend, but you’re being, you’re being a, a…”

  “A what?”

  Druckenmiller’s face went purple. “An ass, Kamp! You’re being a horse’s ass!”

  The people streaming past the scene stared as they went by. A voice called out, “You tell ’em, Druck!”

  Kamp watched the theatrics without flinching. He said, “I think you know what I’m talking about. You wanted to pretend it’s not there, get soused, plug up your ears. This whole time you’ve been telling me nothing’s really wrong, just drunks brunsing on the sides of buildings. Business as usual. But I think something scared you. Someone said something to you, or did something. You can’t pretend. You can only go along with it, if they let you.”

  Druckenmiller stared at the ground and mumbled something.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, what do you care?”

  Druckenmiller looked up to meet Kamp’s gaze, and Kamp saw shame and sorrow in the man’s eyes. He’d meant to give him a shock, sharp and short, to jolt him. But he realized that instead he’d cut his friend to the bone. He’d overdone it.