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

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  Wyles called, “Shaw! Shaw! Are you there?” She heard nothing in reply, and there was silence in the house.

  A loud voice boomed outside. “It’s all right! We saw the guys who done it. Everything is under control. Just stay right where you are.”

  Wyles heaved a sigh. Then she smelled kerosene. She thought it may have come from the smashed lantern until she saw the glow of flames outside the kitchen window. She dropped the rifle and clambered up the stairs. Wyles burst into the upstairs bedroom and found Shaw crouched in the corner, holding the baby.

  “Let’s go.”

  By the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, fire had engulfed the kitchen, and flames poured through the windows.

  Wyles retrieved the rifle and bullets and said, “The cellar.”

  Shaw went to the kitchen instead and picked up a large knife that she held in her free hand. She went down the stairs and into the darkness with Wyles following.

  They breathed the cool air in gulps. Shaw had held the baby so that her mouth was pressed to Shaw’s chest, and now she let the little girl breathe. The baby let out a loud wail.

  Shaw said, “How bad are you hurt?”

  “We need to wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For them to think we’re dead.” Wyles loaded the rifle again.

  The heat began to pulse in waves above them, and smoke started to seep through the ceiling. Wyles felt her way across the cellar to the bulkhead doors. She pressed against the doors with her shoulder.

  “Something heavy up there. They must’ve blocked the doors.”

  Still holding the baby, Shaw got beside Wyles, and the two put their backs against the doors and pushed with all their strength. The ceiling of the cellar started creaking and sagging, and the women began choking on the smoke. Shaw and Wyles gave it one last surge, and the large stone that had been holding the doors shut tumbled to the ground. The bulkhead doors burst open. Wyles crawled out first, carrying the rifle and staying low to the ground. Clutching the kitchen knife, Shaw hauled herself and the baby out of the cellar.

  Wyles grabbed Shaw under the arm and pulled her to her feet, as the baby began crying again. With Wyles in the lead, the two women hurried toward the tree line at the back of the property. The walls of the house collapsed with a massive thwump that sent out an intense ripple of heat.

  Shaw said to the baby, “Shh, shh, a little farther.” She heard footsteps coming fast behind her. Without looking, Shaw wheeled and in a single motion slashed the neck of her attacker, who grabbed her by the back of her dress. Wyles heard the commotion and spun around, rifle raised. She shot the man in the chest and reloaded. A second pursuer drew within a yard of Shaw.

  Wyles yelled, “Get down!” Shaw dropped low, and Wyles shot the second man in the chest. He crumpled, as Shaw scrambled to her feet.

  “There’s more of them. Keep going.”

  KAMP WOKE UP FACEDOWN, still clutching the sawed-off to his chest. There was blood caked in his nostrils, so he figured he’d been there for a while. He pushed up to his hands and knees, shook his head slowly and felt a bolt of pain at the back of his head where he’d been bludgeoned. When he was able to focus, he saw Philander Crow lying next to him. Crow’s skin was blue, eyes open and expression serene. Apart from a few spatters of blood, there was nothing about Crow’s face to suggest how he’d been killed. Crow’s torso, however, had been shredded by the buckshot. He scanned the floor for the pistol Crow had been carrying and didn’t see it. He checked under Crow’s body. Not there. Kamp strained to hear over the loud buzzing in both ears. There seemed to be no sound coming from the apartment, or from outside. Where were the police? Where was Druckenmiller?

  Kamp stood up and inspected the door of the apartment. It had large holes blown through it, consistent with the blasts he’d seen the man fire. The door also had a brass key sticking out of the lock, which Kamp pocketed. He walked back into the apartment. It was empty. Bare floors, no curtains. He left the building and walked into the cold, still night. He looked up the street toward South Mountain and back down at the glow from Native Iron and saw no one. He pulled out his watch and by the moonlight saw that it was two seventeen. He knew the police station would normally be locked up for the night but decided to check anyway. When he got to the front steps, there were no lights in the police station and none in the courthouse. No one reported what had happened, or if they did, the police weren’t investigating it. He thought about Crow lying in the hallway. At a minimum, he thought he should tell the coroner A.J. Oehler to retrieve the body. More than anything, though, he wanted to make sure Shaw and the baby were all right. He wanted to get home.

  KAMP SMELLED THE FIRE long before he reached the house in the hours before dawn, and he broke into a run. In the last quarter mile, he saw a faint glow over the last small rise, and when the house finally came into view, he saw the brick chimney standing and everything else lost. The fire was still hot and sending up great black clouds of smoke, and he could make out the figures of people standing at a distance from what had been his home. As he approached, he saw George Richter and his hired man, Hugh Arndt, and ran to them.

  Kamp said, “Where are they?”

  Richter said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “Where are they!”

  “Ach, we don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we got here, the house was all in flames, already tzommag' folia. No way in. We searched the property and didn’t find anyone.”

  “How’d it start?”

  “No way to know. Probably started around midnight.”

  “So they could’ve gotten out of the house.”

  Richter said, “Could have, though she didn’t go to a neighbor. Not that we know.”

  “What about Emma Wyles? She was supposed to be here.”

  Richter took off his hat and rubbed his forehead. “Don’t know about that, either. Though there’s this.” He pointed to the body of the horse on the ground. “All shot up.”

  The buzzing in Kamp’s ears grew until he couldn’t hear anything else. He felt his body go numb and began to lose his balance. He said, “I think I’ll just wait here,” and he sat down hard, cross-legged on the ground.

  ALL THE SPECTATORS who came to look at the aftermath of the fire once the sun came up that morning noticed Kamp sitting there, staring straight ahead, and some tried to rouse him. They soon realized, though, that what had happened couldn’t be helped and that pulling him back from wherever he’d gone would make matters worse. By midmorning, the last of the curious had come and gone and, to a person, they wondered how a part of the world so small could have undergone yet another calamity. First the Bauers, now this. But then again, they thought, seems like maybe he brought it on himself. The way he tried to help that fiend Knecht, the questions he was asking after the hanging. The fact that he shacked up with that Indian in the first place. Come to think of it, he rubbed everybody wrong, one way or the other. The conversations took place mostly in people’s own minds and sometimes out loud after a drink. Kamp is a good man. He is. It’s just he come back different. Hell, he was different before he left. War just made it worse. Not his fault. And not that he deserved what he got. But still. And as Kamp and his misfortunes, the ones he suffered and the ones he created, slipped from their minds, the last thing they said to themselves was, I pray to god that the hex on him ain’t on me, too.

  Kamp didn’t hear anything that went said or unsaid. He didn’t feel the hand on his shoulder. He’d receded so far back that nothing reached him. He’d slipped down into a void he’d long suspected was there but that he’d never had to travel to before. He felt nothing and knew nothing. He could not have known how long he’d been on the ground, how much time had passed, until he heard a voice that pulled him slowly back out.

  “Mr. Kamp, Mr. Kamp.”

  Kamp shut his eyes hard and opened them again.

  “Wake up.”

  “Kamp.”

 
“What?”

  “Just Kamp.” He still stared straight ahead, but the world was coming back into focus. The person talking to him wore a blue dress, and she bent down so she was at eye level with him.

  “Okay then, Kamp, get up. You have to get up.” He recognized her. The girl, Nyx Bauer.

  He mumbled, “You shouldn’t be here.”

  With both hands, Nyx grabbed him firmly under the arm.

  She said, “You have to get up.”

  “You need to go home.”

  “Move!” As she said it, Nyx pulled him to his feet. Pain shot through his body, bringing him further to his senses. He surveyed the scene anew. The house was smoldering, and the dead horse had been hauled away. Both the slaughterhouse and the hen house were standing, though the slaughterhouse looked a little charred.

  Kamp said, “They’re gone.” He looked at Nyx. “They’re gone.”

  “Well, yes, they’re gone as in, they’re not here. But some men went through what’s left of the house.”

  “What men?”

  “They went through as much as they could, and they didn’t find anyone. Not Shaw, not the baby, not Emma Wyles.”

  “What about the cellar?”

  Nyx said, “I don’t think they could get there. But right now it looks like they got out is what I’m saying.”

  “Then where did they go?”

  Nyx shrugged her shoulders.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to talk to you. I have to talk to you.”

  He refocused back on Nyx. “It’s not safe here.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Kamp said, “No, I mean, you’re not safe. Your sisters aren’t safe. You need to go home.”

  “I can’t stay with the Fogels anymore. I don’t want to.”

  “What about your sisters?”

  “They’re fine there.”

  “Where are you going to go, Kamp?”

  His gaze settled on the charred house. “Nowhere. I have to stay here.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “Well, I still have to—”

  Nyx said, “You’re coming with me.”

  He walked to the hen house and opened the door. He held up two eggs and said, “Want one?” Nyx shook her head. He cracked one, then the other and ate them both. “Okay, let’s go.”

  The two of them walked the road, and he expected they’d turn off on the path to the Fogels’ house. When they got to it, though, Nyx kept walking.

  He said, “I thought you were staying with them.”

  “I was before. I don’t want to now.”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason.”

  “So where are we headed?”

  Nyx didn’t answer until they’d rounded the curve that brought the house where the Bauer family had lived came into view.

  “Back,” she said.

  THE FENCE that Jonas Bauer and Daniel Knecht had completed only a few months before was gone. The posts and rails that hadn’t been carted off lay broken on the frozen ground. Someone, possibly the police, had put boards where the front door used to be and painted “Keep Out” in black on the front of the house. All the downstairs windows had been boarded over as well.

  Nyx said, “We can go in through the cellar.” A rusted, heavy chain was looped around the handles of the bulkhead doors and fixed in place with a brass boxcar padlock bearing the insignia of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.

  When he saw the padlock, Kamp said, “I’ll get a sledgehammer.”

  “Never mind.” Nyx pulled the charm bracelet off her wrist. One of the charms was a small brass key. She put it in the keyhole, and the padlock popped open. He swung open the doors and climbed down into the cellar with Nyx following. It seemed unlikely that anyone would be in the house, but they listened intently for noises upstairs all the same.

  He turned to face Nyx. “We don’t have to be here. There are other places to stay.”

  “Really? Like where?”

  She walked past him, through the darkness and up the stairs. The first floor of the house had been ransacked. Most of the furniture was gone, including the dining room table and three chairs. Framed pictures either hung askew on their nails or lay broken on the floor. More than one liquor bottle had been smashed in the fireplace, and shards of bottle and window glass covered the floor along with a few old newspaper pages. In a corner on the floor by one of the front windows, there was a wood block that read in painted letters, “Room for Rent.”

  Kamp threw a broken chair and a picture frame into the fire. He crumpled the newspaper pages and stuffed them under the wood. Nyx struck a match on the mantle and set the paper on fire. He went out the back door and retrieved firewood from the stack behind the house, while Nyx went to the well with a pot from the kitchen. She came back in and set the full pot of water next to the fireplace. Soon, the fire was blazing, the room had been swept and the water neared a boil. Nyx took off her coat and wrapped it around the top of the pot so she wouldn’t burn her hands.

  Kamp said, “What’s the water for?”

  “First things first.”

  Nyx gently carried the pot down the hallway. When he found her, Nyx was in her parents’ bedroom, cleaning the walls with a scrub brush and soap powder. Slowly, and with considerable effort, the bloodstains faded. He started another fire in the backyard and threw Jonas and Rachel’s mattress on top of it. It went up in a flash, and by the time they were finished, the bedroom, the site of the horror, had been washed and swept as clean as it would ever be. And though the memory of the cataclysm had left its mark on them both, indelible and deep, the physical facts of the worst of it, at least, were gone. Nyx left the bedroom, locking the door behind her and sealing off that part of her memory as best she could.

  It wasn’t until after nightfall that Kamp realized that he was hungry, and immediately after that, he remembered he had no food. Nyx, however, remembered and pulled sandwiches from her bag, giving one to him.

  She said, “I’ll go back to the Fogels tomorrow and get more.”

  They sat cross-legged by the fire, and for a long time, neither of them talked. Out of the silence, Nyx said, “I have to talk to you about something.”

  “Tomorrow. We can talk about it all tomorrow.”

  Another long silence followed, and then Nyx spoke again without looking at him.

  “This used to be our house. This used to be our room. We did everything here. Our family.” Nyx shifted so that she could survey the room. She looked at the corner of the room where the Christmas tree had been and down where Belsnickel’s candy had clattered to the wood floor. She stared out the front window, then said, “People are going to think there are ghosts living here.”

  He stared down at his boots and said, “There are.”

  TWENTY

  THE BLACK DIAMOND UNLIMITED roused him from a dream set in the future in which his daughter, perhaps ten years old, played on the shore of a lake. She turned to look at Kamp, and she was smiling, holding out something she’d found at the water’s edge. He thought it must have been a shell, but then he saw a radiant silver object with eight sides in the palm of her hand. It generated its own light. Before he could focus on the details of the object, the train whistle split the dream in half. He awoke staring at the wall just above the baseboard. He noticed that someone had carved the face of a small figure, wearing a cap in the Phrygian style and grinning. He sat up abruptly on the floor in front of the fireplace and then stood up and tried to shake off the cold and the hurt. He searched the house for Nyx and found her sleeping in her old bed. She must’ve brought blankets with her, or she’d found some in the cellar. Either way, she appeared to be sleeping fine.

  He hit the road before sun up, walking his usual route to Bethlehem, passing the place that used to be his home. He had no anxiety about what might happen to it while he was gone, because there was nothing to protect. No possessions, no people. He wanted to go looking for his family, but there was no way to know even where
to begin. And besides the kid Nyx, there was no one he trusted to help him look. He assumed that anyone else he talked to might, if armed with the knowledge of his family’s whereabouts, seek to finish the work they’d started or tell someone who would. Kamp knew he needed to go back to Bethlehem to begin untangling the string of events, beginning with the failed raid. Under normal circumstances, he would have begun by hashing out the details with the district attorney Philander Crow. Since that was no longer an option, he might have checked in with Druckenmiller. But he wasn’t giving his old friend the benefit of the doubt and would seek to learn more on his own first. That left the Judge.

  Kamp didn’t want to see anyone he knew on his way into the courthouse, and he hurried up the steps. He knocked on the door to the Judge’s chambers.

  He called through the door, “It’s Kamp.”

  “Enter.”

  He walked into the room to find the Big Judge Tate Cain sitting in his usual place, facing the window, pipe smoke curling toward the ceiling. At first, he thought the Judge was wearing his court robes, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was a black Victorian dress.

  Without turning to face him, the Judge said, “Pure silk, if you’re wondering.”

  “What’s the occasion?

  The Judge turned in his chair to look at him and said, “Isn’t it obvious?” The Judge studied him. He said, “I’ve seen you looking rough before, but Christ almighty, Wendell, you look awful.”

  “So gehts.”

  “You know I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I’m sure someone must’ve told you. Emma or Druckenmiller or somebody.”

  “Things have been happening.”

  “Indeed, a veritable Hericlitean fire, don’t you think?”

  “Fire?”

  “Change upon change upon change. Unceasing.”

  “Not sure today’s the day, Judge.”

  “Not that any of us has a choice, Wendell. ‘This world,’ Heraclitus was said to have said, ‘always was and will be an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.’”