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

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  “They’re saying maybe you had something to do with it. Maybe that hex is on you too.”

  Kamp said, “That so.”

  “Well, everybody seen the way you jumped in there and tried to help that bastard. People are just wondering why, I guess. Said they figured you’d want to uphold the law, not keep them from having to do it themselves. What made you wanna help that fool anyway?” Druckenmiller took off his hat and scratched the top of his head.

  “Who specifically was saying this?”

  “Just people in the crowd. Things I heard. Anyway, they’re fershmeering your name over there. Don’t worry, though. I stuck up for you. But I thought you’d want to know anyhow.”

  Kamp said, “You think maybe what people are saying has something to do with them not wanting to be arrested for murder?”

  Druckenmiller stopped scratching his head and started pulling on his left ear. “I don’t know what people want. Like I said, it’s a real mommick. I gotta go. I gotta get back to the Bauer house, if it’s still there.” He chuckled and tipped his hat. “Say, are you goin’ over there today? We could use the help.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Oh, well, see you then.” Druckenmiller climbed on his horse and trotted back down the path.

  Kamp had thought better of telling Druckenmiller that he couldn’t go to Bauer’s house because he had to stay home and look after Shaw and the baby. As a man alone, he’d guarded the myth of his invulnerability without realizing it. He believed he couldn’t be hurt in spite of evidence to the contrary. But now that he had a family, the notion seemed ludicrous. He’d be vulnerable from now on. Druckenmiller had confirmed his assumption that with regard to his actions the previous day, at best, the citizenry wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. To do so would be to admit the lynching was wrong. At worst, the people would implicate him in the crime somehow and seek retribution. Whatever the case and for a variety of reasons, he thought it wise to stay at home.

  Under normal circumstances the birth of a child would have brought all the mothers and grandmothers in the area to their doorstep. And by now, at least some of the neighbors would have heard about the baby’s arrival. But no one besides Druckenmiller had visited that day. And what to make of Druckenmiller’s visit? He never would have gone back to Jonas Bauer’s house of his own volition. Someone had to have ordered him to do it, but Druckenmiller wouldn’t say who. It also wasn’t clear why he’d come to Kamp’s house. Kamp realized he no longer trusted the man, if he ever did. And as for why the Judge would want to speak with him, he assumed it had to do with the fact that the Judge owned the house where the Bauers lived. The Judge would want him to give him the full story of what happened and to make sure that the buildings weren’t destroyed. The Judge would have to wait.

  He heard the baby crying upstairs, then the creaking of the floorboards. When he reached the room, Shaw was standing at the window, holding the baby in her arms and gently rocking back and forth.

  Kamp said, “You can’t be on your feet. Back in bed. Wyles said so.”

  She smiled at him. “Good morning to you, too. Do you want to hold someone?” She offered him the baby, and he took her in his arms for the first time. The girl had light brown skin, a full head of thick, black hair like Shaw’s.

  “She has my eyes.”

  Shaw lay back down in bed. “Wyles told me they might stay that blue, or they could get darker.”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” He rocked her slowly. “What are we going to call her anyway? We could name her after your mother, or your grandmother.”

  Shaw said, “Let’s not call her anything right now. She can just be who she is.”

  He glided around the room, cradling the baby and singing to her. “Whoever you are…whoever you are.”

  The moment was lost when the first rock hit the side of the house. The second rock sailed through a first floor window. The sounds startled the baby who began to wail. He handed the baby to Shaw and said, “Stay up here, lock the door, don’t go near the window.”

  Kamp ran down the stairs and looked out the window. A dozen men had assembled in the front yard thirty feet or so from the house. They passed around a bottle, each taking a swig, then fishing around on the ground for more rocks. He opened the front door and stepped onto the porch. A derisive cheer went up.

  “Come on out here, you dog. We heard about what you done!”

  “Coward, coward is what you are!” A rock sailed past Kamp’s head and slammed into the doorframe.

  “You think you can take up for a filthy murderer and not pay for it? Did you see what he done to them good people?”

  Kamp walked down the steps toward the men. He scanned the faces of the group and didn’t recognize any of them. A man in the center of the group stepped forward to meet him. He looked to be in his early twenties, taller than Kamp, and heavily muscled.

  Kamp sized him up and said, “Leave.”

  The men erupted into laughter and jeering. When it died down, the man facing him said, “This is nothing.”

  “Oh, how’s that?”

  “They got plans for you.”

  Kamp studied the man’s face. He had a heavy brow, a wispy beard and blue eyes. Kamp said, “Plans?”

  “Everyone knows you was involved in them killings. Seems like folks know a lot of other shit about you, too. Shit they don’t like at all.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Don’t matter.”

  Kamp’s body stiffened. “Where?”

  The man leaned in until he was inches from Kamp’s face and said, “I’m from right behind you. If you need to find me, that’s where I’ll be.”

  Kamp rolled his eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  A man off to the side yelled, “You dirty son of a bitch!” and lunged at him. Kamp caught him with a straight right hand to the face that put the man on the ground.

  Kamp looked back at the man in front of him. “What’s your name?”

  “We heard you got a family now. Congratulations.” The man turned to leave, and the rest of the men followed. Kamp went back to the porch and picked up the rock that had hit the doorframe and tossed it back into the yard. He went back inside, locked the door and heard a sound at the back of the house, probably the kitchen.

  He said, “Shaw?” No answer.

  Kamp picked up the Sharps rifle next to the door and raised it to his shoulder. He stepped silently toward the kitchen. Blood pounded at his temples as he considered shooting his way into the room. Instead, he let his finger rest on the trigger. He peered into the kitchen and saw a man facing away from him. The man had broad shoulders and thick black hair woven into a single braid and streaked with grey.

  Kamp said, “Joe.”

  The man turned to face him. He was smiling and eating the rest of the breakfast E. Wyles had prepared.

  Joe said, “These biscuits are delicious. Where’s the jelly?” Kamp relaxed his grip on the gun and set it on the table.

  “Did you see that bullshit going on out there?”

  “Yep”

  “How come you didn’t help me out?”

  Joe laughed. “You know I never worry about you.” Joe took him by the shoulders and pressed his forehead against Kamp’s. “Besides, if they’d seen me, there’d have been blood on the ground for sure.”

  Kamp said, “All of it theirs.”

  Joe said, “How’s she doing?”

  “She’s good, Joe, she’s good. Tired, sore.”

  “The baby?”

  “Let’s go see.”

  Joe followed him up the stairs and into the bedroom.

  When Shaw saw her father, she began to cry. She said, “Nux.”

  Joe said, “Nichan.” He walked to the bedside and stroked Shaw’s forehead. He gently rubbed his thumb across the crescent-shaped scar above her right eye. Shaw cradled the baby in one arm. In the other she held her father’s hand to the side of her face.

  “Do you want to hold her?” She
offered the baby to Joe, who took her in his arms. He looked into the baby’s eyes and began to cry as well.

  Kamp said, “Muxumsa. Is that right?”

  Joe laughed through his tears. “Yes, that’s it. Muxumsa. Grandfather.” He held the baby close and talked to her in a soothing voice in his original language.

  Kamp said to Shaw, “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s asking her what she thinks we should name her.”

  FIFTEEN

  AFTER SHAW FELL ASLEEP, Kamp and Joe sat in the front room of the house, each in a chair on either side of the fireplace. Joe produced a tobacco pouch and a pipe with a cherry stem. He filled the bowl with kinnikinnick and lit it. Joe took a long drag on the pipe and let the smoke billow up from his mouth. Kamp smelled the red willow and sumac. Even though it was dark, carriages and sleighs kept gliding to and from Jonas Bauer’s house on the road. They saw the lights of lanterns and heard singing and the tinkling of bells going past. The wind whistled through the boards they’d hammered over the window that had been smashed earlier in the day.

  Kamp said, “How did you know to come here? Did someone tell you?”

  Joe handed the pipe to him and said, “Dreamt about it.”

  “Which part?” He took a pull and handed the pipe back to Joe.

  “All of it. Last night. A man with two heads started a fire that grew and grew until it swallowed this entire mountain. And in the fire I saw you and my daughter and that little child. And other people, too. Dead, ruined.”

  “Those were our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Bauer.”

  “Yes, them and many more. In the dream this Doublehead’s blaze burned down through four generations. One of his heads felt shame and regret. The other one felt great pride. Both heads had enormous, black, wide open mouths. Great hunger. Ravenous. He wanted to take everything into his mouths. And whatever he couldn’t eat, he destroyed, burned it up.”

  “Well, he’s dead now.”

  “You sure?”

  “Put him in the ground myself,” Kamp said. “Why?”

  He looked at Joe’s wide face and high cheekbones. He noticed the scars across the knuckles of both the man’s hands. Joe puffed the pipe and stared out the window at the road.

  Joe said, “Why do you suppose they’re going to that house? What do they want to see?”

  “Good question. I don’t have an answer. How long can you stay, Joe?”

  “Till tomorrow morning.”

  “Emma Wyles will be here to check on Shaw. Do you remember her?”

  “Yes. We can be out before first light.”

  “We?”

  Joe banged the ashes from his pipe. “They should come with me.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Joe motioned to the broken window. “This is how it starts.”

  Kamp felt a flicker of anger. “I thought you said you never worry about me.”

  Joe looked at him. “I don’t. But this, whatever is happening here, has nothing to do with you. It’s much larger, and you are simply caught up in it. You won’t be able to protect them.”

  Kamp said, “They won’t be any safer with you. Could be even more dangerous.”

  “Could be.”

  “And besides, Wyles said Shaw can’t go anywhere yet. She’s too weak. Tell you what. Stay here with us for another day or two. See for yourself. See if things settle down. After that, we’ll decide.”

  Joe said, “Good enough.”

  KAMP WAS OUT THE DOOR before first light. He knew Joe would take care of things until E. Wyles showed up, and she could take over from there. He figured he had all day to work on finding answers to the questions that gnawed at him. He hustled to Bauer’s house to see what condition it was in. By moonlight, he could see that all the windows had been broken and that the front door hung open. He walked down to the chestnut tree by the creek and found that, as he’d suspected, Daniel Knecht’s body had been unearthed, and all the clothes had been removed. By the first rays of dawn, he saw mud caked in the eye sockets. He noticed, too, that the tongue had been cut out. He’d have to see to it that the body was buried again, but he couldn’t do it now. He heard the whistle of the Black Diamond Unlimited in the distance, and by the time he made his way to the tracks, the train was almost there. He made his run alongside the train and then his jump, and he was on his way back to Easton.

  Kamp rested his back against the slats of the boxcar and breathed a sigh. It felt good to be back on the train, and free. He let the snow-covered branches of the trees beside the tracks run together and blur by allowing his eyes to un-focus. He tipped his head back and let it loll back and forth with the rhythm of the wheels. He began to wonder. He wondered what the coin in Knecht’s pocket meant, where it came from and who made it. He wondered about the Latin words Knecht spoke to him. Who’d told him that, and why? He reflected on Joe’s arrival. Where had he come from? What made him want to take Shaw and the baby? And how long until someone came calling for Joe himself? He wondered where the souls of Jacob and Rachel Bauer had flown. Kamp received no whole answers, just half-formed ideas and speculation, fragments.

  He opened his eyes and unfolded the sheet of paper with the pencil drawing of a house and two smiling faces. A simple gesture of love from a little sister to a big brother. And yet it too raised a new set of questions for him. Considering the condition of Daniel Knecht’s corpse and the sorry state of the house where the Bauers used to live, he wondered, dreaded actually, what kind of shape Knecht’s sisters would be in when he got to 2 Ferry Street in Easton.

  And behind all of those questions, or maybe encompassing them all, was a much larger question. Who was writing the story, or to put it in Joe’s terms, who was feeding the inferno which might engulf them all?

  As he turned from First Street onto Ferry, Kamp braced himself for what he’d find when he got to Knecht’s house. It seemed possible that the house would be empty, the girls having been taken to live with an aunt or uncle. More likely, once the news of the murders reached Easton, Knecht’s sisters would have been put in an orphanage. He thought about what their lives would be like now that their parents and brothers were dead. When he reached 2 Ferry Street, however, he saw that the walk had been shoveled, and a wreath made of pine boughs hung on the front door. Everything looked normal.

  He knocked on the door, and it opened almost right away. Margaret Knecht stood in the doorway. She wore a dress that appeared to be new and a bright red ribbon in her hair.

  She said, “Hello, Kamp.” He caught the smell of baking bread coming from the house.

  “Hello, Margaret.” The girl stared at him, motionless. “Margaret, I came to check on you and your sister. See how you’re doing. Looks like you’re doing fine.”

  “We’re doing fine, yes. Thank you for coming. Have a good day.” She tried to swing the door shut, but he stopped it with his hand.

  “I was wondering if I might be able to come inside for a moment.”

  “No, I’m sorry. You can’t.”

  Mercy Knecht called from the back of the house, “Who’s that?” and then came running. She too was outfitted in what appeared to be a new dress and ribbons in a bow on each pigtail.

  “Good morning, Mercy.”

  “Hi, Kamp.”

  “Mercy, he can’t stay. Say goodbye to him.”

  He pulled the drawing from his pocket and showed it to the girls. “Mercy, do you remember making this?”

  She stared at the picture for a few seconds. Her bottom lip began to quiver.

  Margaret said, “Give that back,” and she grabbed it from his hand.

  “Do you remember drawing it, Mercy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Leave her alone, Kamp.”

  “Why did you write, we’ll miss you? Why did you write that? Where did Danny say he was going?”

  The little girl’s eyes brimmed with tears. “He told us he was going away.”

  “When? When did he say—”

  Margaret stepped in front of her
sister. “It was last year before Christmas, okay? Danny had got in trouble, and he told us he had to go away for a while. He meant jail, all right?”

  Kamp leaned down so that he was at eye level with Mercy. “Did you draw this last year? Or this year?”

  Margaret screamed, “Leave us alone!”

  He straightened to his full height and took a step back. “I’m just trying to understand. It’s important.”

  “We heard the whole story about what happened to Danny.” Now Margaret’s lip started to quiver. “We heard about how you were the only one who tried to help our brother, even when they were…doing what they did.”

  Mercy stepped out from behind her sister and rushed to him. She hugged him hard around the waist and started wailing.

  She said, “Why did they hurt him?”

  He put his arm around the little girl’s shoulders. “I’m sorry it happened, girls. I’m sorry.”

  Margaret Knecht gently peeled her sister away and guided her back into the house. She looked back over her shoulder and said, “You can’t come back here, Kamp. Never.”

  KAMP RAN to the station and barely caught the train headed for Bethlehem. He rode it past his normal jumping off point, all the way to the yard on the South Side. Kamp hurried into the courthouse and straight to the office of Philander Crow. The office door was locked, and he looked through the window. No one there. Kamp ran down the stairs, across the street, burst into the police station and found Druckenmiller at his desk.

  Kamp said, “Seen Crow?”

  “Jesus, where’s the fire?”

  “Sam, where’s Crow?”

  Druckenmiller leaned back in his chair. “Beats me. Hey, Judge wants to see you. Be careful not to piss him off.”

  Kamp wheeled around and headed for the door.

  Druckenmiller called after him, “Come to think of it, I remember something about him going back to Phila-delph-eye-ay.”

  He ran to the back of the courthouse building and saw Philander Crow taking off his hat climbing into a Brougham carriage.

  Kamp said, “Hold up, hold up.”

  Crow stopped and turned to face him. “Not now, Kamp. Not now.”