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

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  “Yes, I do.”

  “It means boar. Wild boar. We all have a sinful nature. Martin Luther himself knew worldly pleasures. He ate the food, he took the drink. And women, probably. Jesus, Jesus was wounded. He had a wound in his side. The little side wound! But that doesn’t mean we can dishonor the Lord, Kamp. Doesn’t mean we can just, just disobey!”

  KAMP COULD STILL HEAR THE REVEREND raving as he left the building. He knew that Eberstark would forget most, if not all, of the conversation. The church was only a couple of miles from his house, and as soon as he started walking, he felt greatly relieved to be moving again out in the cold air. The conversation with Eberstark hadn’t told him anything new about the inner-workings of the Bauer family or their relationship with Daniel Knecht. It simply added some color and texture. He reflected more on what Eberstark hadn’t mentioned at all, namely that Nyx Bauer had tried to strangle him. If nothing else, perhaps the Reverend’s need to get drunk could be explained by the trauma of having been attacked. What was new, however, was what he’d said about Kunkle’s role in Jonas Bauer’s life. Much more interesting to him than the information itself was the reaction it evoked from Eberstark. And the undertaker, when asked whether he knew Kunkle, alluded to “stories” about the man. Kamp resolved to look deeper.

  As he walked, the sun dropped behind the mountains, and with it went the harsh wind that had been blowing all day. He listened to his breathing and to the soft creak of snow-heavy limbs. He felt his body warm and felt the first few beads of perspiration under the band of his hat. He watched the starry host appear, and he saw Saturn twinkle into view next to the crescent moon. When he reached his front door, he expected to see Joe, smoking his pipe by the fireplace, and he braced himself for yet another scolding by the druggist and midwife E. Wyles. Instead, he found the front door locked and the downstairs of the house empty. He unlocked the door and went inside. There was a fire smoldering in the fireplace and the smell of blended tobacco in the room.

  Shaw called from the upstairs, “Kamp, is that you?”

  He said, “Is your father here?”

  “No.”

  “Wyles?”

  “No.” Shaw must be doing better, he thought, and he walked upstairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw Shaw sitting in a chair and slowly rocking the baby by the bedroom window. A candle burned on the table next to her. He crossed the room and shut the open window.

  Shaw said, “What are you doing?”

  He fastened the shutters. “Closed. And doors locked. Front, back and cellar.”

  “Why?”

  “From now on.”

  “Don’t worry. My father was here, and then after that Emma came by. And then Emma left, and the Judge stopped in. He told me he saw you at the funeral and that you’d be home afterward.”

  “Right, but now it’s dark, and you’re alone.”

  “You’re here.”

  He shook his head. “What did the Judge want?”

  Shaw said, “And anyway what are we supposed to be afraid of? The Judge said no one’s going to bother us.”

  “Why was he here?”

  She smiled. “He came by because he wanted to see the baby.”

  His expression softened. “Ah, yes, the boppli. How is she doing this fine evening?” He reached for the baby who began to cry when he took her from Shaw’s arms.

  “Shh, it’s just me, just me. Daddy.” He turned to Shaw. “What are we going to call this girl?”

  “Well, you know whatever we decide to call her, it’s not her real name. It’s just a nickname.”

  “Then what’s her real name?”

  “Just like my father’s nickname is Joe. And my nickname is Shaw. It’s not my real name.”

  “It’s not?”

  Shaw laughed. “No.”

  “How come you never told me?”

  “My father said around the time I was born, for some reason people thought we were Shawnee. So my parents just started calling me Shaw. Just a nickname. Not real. And then everyone else started calling me that. My father is a name giver. He gave me my real name.”

  “What is it?”

  Shaw took a breath, looked into his eyes and told him her real name and what it meant.

  He said, “It’s beautiful.” He felt a stab of grief in his chest.

  Shaw said, “Now that you know, don’t say it to anyone but me,” and she stood up and put her arms around him and the baby. My father will give her a real name too.”

  “When?”

  “When it comes to him. The Creator must speak it to him first.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  “I don’t know. I went to sleep before lunch, and when I woke up he was gone.”

  “Why’d he go? I thought he’d be here.”

  “Kamp, I don’t know.”

  “What did Wyles have to say?”

  “She was concerned about me, angry at you. The usual. She said I can start moving around more. Whatever I can do.”

  “What about the Judge? Anything interesting?”

  “No, although he did leave a couple gifts. There’s one with your name on it. He handed the baby back to Shaw and headed down the stairs. He went to the kitchen, fixed himself a sandwich and saw that, yet again, E. Wyles had left more food, this time several jars of dried beans and sliced apples and apricots. After that, he went into the front room to see what the Judge had left. One of the two bandboxes had already been opened. Inside, he found an embroidered white baptismal gown. The other box was wrapped in paper printed with a pattern of monkeys frolicking in trees. He hefted the box in his hand. Heavier than he expected. He unwrapped the band box and found another box inside it. The top of the box read, “5 CARTRIDGES MANUFACTURED EXPERTLY for SHARPS RIFLES.” A box of bullets. The box had a small label affixed to it that read, “Wendell, welcome to fatherhood.”

  SEVENTEEN

  NONE DOUBTED that among the living, Nyx Bauer suffered most from the tragedy. That is, if they thought about it at all. Once the thrill and the shock of the murders of Jonas and Rachel Bauer had passed, a kind of amnesia, sudden and profound, settled in. Perhaps the destruction of those two godly souls was too much to bear in mind. And even more quickly than the people wanted to forget the killings of Jonas and Rachel, if not the precious souls themselves, they wanted to banish forever the fact of the hanging of the fiend Daniel Knecht. At least in public. To remember the events of that day and perhaps even to relive them in the collective memory of the community would lead to a kind of reflection and perhaps scrutiny that was grossly unappealing. In private, in the woozy time between the outing of the candle and the sweet release of sleep, those who were there caught glimpses in their mind’s eye of blood on bedroom walls and taut noose coils. They heard echoes of calls for execution, some from their own mouths. But these fragments of memory were nothing that couldn’t be remedied with a few short glasses of liquor or the recitation of Psalm Twenty-three.

  But for Nyx Bauer, in the time since that day, the torment had intensified so that she didn’t know from one moment to the next whether she was asleep or awake, living or dead. The memories of that night, beginning with the realization that Danny Knecht was in her bed and ending with seeing him through the stovepipe hole in the floor, burning the blood-soaked clothing, assailed her. Sometimes, the memories unspooled in the order they happened, like a horror tale. More often, pieces of memory flew at her like jagged shards of glass. She remembered the sounds she heard through the floor. She could not stop remembering that she never heard her parents cry for help. Nyx didn’t feel as if she were recalling memories. She perceived that she had crossed over into a nightmare existence where the murders were actually happening without end.

  The fact that Danny Knecht had been killed in retribution brought Nyx Bauer no solace, either. The notion that anyone else’s death could put right her parents’ death sickened her. She’d always known Danny Knecht was doomed anyway.
She just didn’t know how, why, or what his end would be. And it was that thought that tormented Nyx the most. When the demons stopped plaguing her long enough for her to think, her first thought was invariably, it was my fault. And the first question she always asked herself was, why couldn’t I protect them?

  People knew that she and her sisters were suffering and would continue to suffer, and they tried to help. John and Charlotte Fogel, the people who took them in and in whose house they now lived, had begun trying to restore normal aspects of the girls’ lives. And Nyx herself played that role of comforter as best she could whenever Anna woke up shrieking in the middle of the night or when Heidi began sobbing at the breakfast table. Nyx would put her arms around them, rock them gently, wipe away their tears. And yet, inside herself, she could not be consoled. The part of herself that knew love and trust, that could bask in joy and radiate it back out, that part was lost and gone. And Nyx could not fathom and would not allow herself to believe it could ever come back.

  KAMP THOUGHT if he got to town early, he could get back home by noon. Stepping out the back door, he saw the moon was gone, but Saturn was there, shining out until the dawn washed it away. When he was a boy, this road had been a narrow dirt path, and all the cornfields had been untouched trees and brambles. Civilization had forced its way out from the city, plot by plot, one right angle at a time. He had dreamt the previous night of the time before the road, before the rails and the law.

  Walking now and making good time, the final few fragments of his dreams from the night before slipped from his recollection. And by the time he reached the courthouse steps, Kamp was fully awake. The first person he saw there was the High Constable, Samuel Druckenmiller, toting his shepherd’s crook and hustling in the opposite direction from him.

  He yelled, “Hello, Sam!”

  “Oh, Kamp, wie bischt?” He tried to act surprised.

  “Good, good. Wie bischt du? A little early for you to be out, isn’t it?” He walked to where Druckenmiller had stopped.

  “It’s that goddamned Crow. He’s up to something.”

  “Now what?”

  “Well, he’s makin’ me—oh, nothing, nothing.” A silence followed, and he did not fill it. “Say, about the other day when I came by your house. I heard some guys went over there after I was there.”

  Kamp raised his eyebrows.

  Druckenmiller said, “Yah, well, just so you know, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. And when I found out they done it, I gave ’em hell. I told ’em—”

  “Who were they?”

  Druckenmiller waved his crook, reliving the moment. “I said, you goddamned louses. I should—”

  “Who were they?”

  “Some guys. I don’t know.”

  “Were they the same guys that ripped Knecht’s body out of the ground?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Where were they from?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. Easton? New Jersey, mebbe. Look, the point is, they shouldn’ta gone over to your house and hassled you, and when I found out, I done something about it.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “Ach, you don’t believe me.”

  “Seems a little strange.”

  Druckenmiller erupted, “Jesus Crackers, Kamp! I’m sticking up for you in all my g'shwetzes with the neighbors. You daresn’t forget. I might be the only friend you got left!”

  He watched Druckenmiller cross the street and disappear into the police station. When he turned to walk up the courthouse steps, he found Philander Crow standing directly in front of him.

  Crow said, “Now, now, what were you little boys squabbling about?”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “I could hear Druckenmiller, what’s the word–gretzing–all the way up in my office. You must have hurt his feelings.”

  “I need to talk to you about Knecht, what I was saying yesterday.”

  “Yes, well, I need you to walk with me. There’s something I have to show you.”

  The two men walked side-by-side down Fourth Street. Crow looked over each shoulder, and said, “All right, tell me.”

  “The first thing is, I spent enough time with Knecht before it happened to know he never killed anyone and didn’t intend to.”

  “You know this how?”

  Kamp said, “By the way he acted. The things he said.”

  “Irrelevant. What murderer ever says he’s going to kill someone, particularly to a police detective?”

  “After it happened, he came to me first.”

  “So what?”

  “He wanted to tell me the truth. He wanted to give me that coin.”

  “Then why didn’t he?”

  “He was too scared.”

  “Of what? Of whom? He was already a dead man when he came to your front door. What reason could he have had to keep his mouth shut?”

  “His sisters. Knecht said all along that all he wanted was to take care of his sisters.”

  “Seems he also wanted to take care of Nadine Bauer.”

  “The whole time he lived at Jonas Bauer’s house, he was sending money to his sisters. What I’m saying is that he never would have done anything that would hurt them.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  “The day after the hanging I went to their house in Easton. I was worried about them, what would happen to them. I thought for sure they’d already be in an orphanage, or worse. I thought they’d be distraught.”

  “And?”

  “They were fine, probably better off than when I saw them the time before.”

  “So?”

  “So, someone else is taking care of them now. Knecht made a deal.”

  “Traded his life for their security. Something like that?”

  “I doubt they gave him a choice, but yes, something like that.

  “Can you prove it?”

  “Nope.”

  Crow said, “Then what else do you have?”

  “The coin.”

  “What about it?”

  “It got your attention when I showed it to you.”

  They reached the corner of Fourth and Iroquois. Crow stopped walking and faced him.

  Crow said, “Do not, under any circumstances, show that coin to anyone. And don’t talk about it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ex Fratrum Ordine, Et in Corvo. Fraternal Order of the Raven.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We don’t know, but it’s probably unrelated, in any case.”

  Kamp said, “Who’s we?”

  “We’re not discussing it further out here. I’ve listened to your argument regarding your speculation that someone other than Daniel Knecht killed the Bauers, and I find it unconvincing.

  “Unconvincing?”

  “There’s one glaring problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s an eyewitness. Nyx Bauer.”

  Kamp said, “No. She never said she saw Knecht do it. She said she saw him burning the clothing. We don’t know whose clothing it was. No one actually saw him do it. The girls were locked inside their room until I got there.”

  “Really, does any of this seem plausible, even to you?”

  Kamp surveyed the intersection where they stood. Carriage wheels had cut deep ruts, now frozen, into the road. Buildings with storefronts below on bottom and apartments on top lined the thoroughfare. A street vendor hawked sausages in a wheeled cart.

  Kamp said, “What are we doing here, anyway?”

  “See that building? The brick one, halfway up the block. Doesn’t look like much.”

  “I see it.”

  Crow said, “Whorehouse. Police are going to shut it down tonight.”

  “Good for them.”

  “Police, meaning you.”

  “I don’t follow.” A pushcart went rolling by, and Kamp gave it a long look. “Ponnekuche.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Pancakes. Dutch babies. Want some?” Crow sho
ok his head. Kamp held up two fingers to the vendor who wrapped the pancakes in paper and handed them to Kamp, who gave the man a nickel. Crow stared at Kamp, who’d begun eating. He chewed the pancake slowly, swallowed it, then said to Crow. “Not interested. Not doing it.”

  “I’m told by a reliable source that there will be significant activity there tonight.”

  “Well, that’s what whorehouses are known for. I investigate crimes, Crow. I write reports. You prosecute. That’s our deal. Sounds like this is work for the actual police. Have them do it.”

  “No one in the police department can know. In fact, no one else at all can know. If word gets out, it will go straight back to them. We’ll miss our chance.”

  “Chance for what?”

  “The Fraternal Order of the Raven. The coin. Some of their leaders will be there tonight. You will go in there, apprehend the wrongdoers and then interrogate them.”

  Kamp laughed. “You want me to march into a house of ill-repute, interrupt all the coitus, arrest the participants and then conduct interviews with the leaders of a murderous secret society. By myself. Mr. Crow, does this seem plausible, even to you?”

  “You won’t be by yourself. I’ll be with you.”

  “The two of us?”

  “You’re convinced the coin is the key to your little mystery. If you want to find out whether that coin has anything to do with the murders of Jonas and Rachel Bauer, this is your opportunity. You won’t get another one.”

  EIGHTEEN

  KAMP GAVE UP ON THE NOTION of getting home by noon as soon as he realized what raiding a brothel would entail. He needed to know as much about the building as he could. He hadn’t spent much time on the South Side, though he knew by looking at them that most of the structures were laid out the same, more or less. Some of the tenement houses had a slapped together look about them, though some, such as the building Crow pointed out to Kamp, appeared to be well-built. He wanted to get a detailed understanding of the place, and he knew he’d spend a good part of the day inspecting it from a number of vantage points, including the roof of a building across the street.

  He also wanted to plan the exercise with Philander Crow, scripting and rehearsing as best they could how they wanted the scenario to play out. It had occurred to him that Crow had to be lying about some part of this mission: the rationale, the purpose of it, the people involved. He assumed that even if Crow weren’t lying outright, he was surely withholding important details from him. Kamp endeavored to know more about Crow’s intentions prior to the raid. Lastly, he needed a weapon. He would go home to retrieve his Sharps if he had to, but in this case a rifle wouldn’t do.