Paradise Park

by L Mad Hildebrandt

  “It’s not safe for you here. Not without Kelly. They might come back, or send somebody else next time. And nobody would be here to protect you. I want you to come with me.”

  Meg shook her head. “That’s good of you, William, but I can’t let you do that. You don’t want to be saddled with an old woman… and one who isn’t really your own mother.”

  Muldoon ran a hand through his hair, shoving a curl back from where it tickled his temple. “I can’t leave you here, Ma. If you don’t come with me, then I have to stay here.” He dreaded that more than anything.

  She shook her head, mumbling something he couldn’t hear.

  “You took care of me after the war, when I was sick. Nobody else would have.” He paced across the small room and back again. He worried about her. She was ill, and had some sort of a fit. She clutched the picture close to her bosom, and he reached out to take her hand. She looked up at him, tears glimmering in her eyes.

  “It won’t be charity, Ma. I have more than I need now, and I’d like to share it with you, at least until Kelly gets home. It’s safer for you that way. And you can keep working at the factory, or else… ” he thought quickly. Keep my old rooms for her, and take the front place for me. At least for a while. Then, when Kelly’s out of the Tombs, Mrs. Dunn can charge them a lesser rate, and I can pay the difference. But not charity. She’d never go for that. “… You can take care of my place. It’s more than I can do myself.” He didn’t tell her that Mrs. Dunn, or her maid, came in to clean. If she thought he cleaned up the place himself, then maybe she’d think he could use the extra help.

  “Like a maid?” She raised her head, sudden hope glimmering in her eyes.

  “Yes. A live-in maid.”

  She gazed at him, then around her squalid apartment. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll come. But you don’t lift a single finger. I’ll do all the work around your place.”

  “Aye, Ma.” He almost smiled with satisfaction, but sobered quickly. He’d got her out of Paradise Park, but he wasn’t sure if he could get Kelly out of the Tombs.

  CHAPTER 14

  April 18

  Muldoon

  awoke with a start. He wasn’t sure what disturbed his sleep. Not a dream, this time. It was dark. Still deep night. And then it came again. Not the popping of guns, but a sharp rap at the door that drew him from his slumber. The knocking came again, hard on the building’s front door. He sat up in bed. It was probably for him… it always was. Glancing at the shadowed clock face, he read 3:42.

  Within moments, a light knock sounded on his door. He slipped into a heavy robe and opened the door. Betsy, the maid, stood in the hall, her eyes large on a pale face. She’d only been at the house a few weeks and hadn’t yet got used to his odd hours.

  “It’s a policeman… at the door for you, sir. Should I show him in?” The little Irish maid bobbed an awkward attempt at a curtsy. She pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders.

  “Aye, show him in here and tell him to wait. I’ll be out in a moment.”

  He left the outer door slightly ajar and slipped back into his bedroom to change. He kept four rooms now. The two front rooms for him, the back two for Meg McAllister. He crossed his new “front room” toward the bedroom. The place was oddly divided. The large sitting room occupied the center of the building. Its windows opened onto the side of the house, a thin walkway between buildings the only view. The bedroom was in the original parlor, at the front of the house. Big windows looked out on the wide front porch and gave him a view of the door. He pulled aside the curtain. The shadowy figure of a policeman waited there, then followed Betsy through the door. He couldn’t tell who it was.

  Muldoon dressed in his rumpled uniform of the previous day. He rubbed the stubbly growth on his chin as he headed back through his apartment toward his visitor, a young patrolman he didn’t know. The man turned his hat round and round in his hands, and rocked onto his toes, then back on his heels, and began the incessant motions all over again.

  “Hello, Mr. Muldoon, er… Champ, er… sir,” he said.

  “I’m just a sergeant, there’s no ‘mister’ here,” Muldoon said, trying to set the man at ease.

  “Yes, sir, uh, there’s another one, sir… and I was sent to get you.”

  “Another one?”

  “Another murder, sir. At Paradise Park.”

  Muldoon placed his hand on the young policeman’s back and steered him toward the door. A death or two in the Points was expected every night. “Call the coroner. The Captain will assign it to a detective in the morning, or the desk Sergeant will, if it’s not too important a case.”

  “I… uh… I think… ” The policeman cleared his throat and started again. “That is to say, me and Donny… uh… Patrolman Donovon, we think it’s got to do with the other one. That wrestler fella. Only, this time it’s not a man. It’s… ” He dropped his voice. “It’s a woman.”

  Muldoon frowned. If there were a second murder, then it should rule out Kelly McAllister. But it also meant that somebody was on a killing spree in the Points, or at least dumping their bodies there.

  “Okay,” Muldoon said. “Let’s get out there and you can show me what you’ve found.”

  “It’s pretty gruesome, Sergeant. You need to prepare yourself. We were mighty shocked.”

  They set off quickly. The maid shut the outer door tightly behind them. She wouldn’t know when to expect Muldoon back, but he had a key so he could get in when he wanted. He had the only such key. Mrs. Dunn expected all her other tenants to obey her rules, and she was very strict about her curfew. Ten-thirty, she’d said, unless other arrangements were made in advance, and even then, it had to be for an approved purpose. She might allow an opera or some musical event, but she was wary about the playhouse, and definitely against any other sort of entertainment. She seemed barely tolerant toward what she called Muldoon’s “habit” of wrestling in the poorer district. But he paid her, and she claimed it was comforting to have a large man, and a policeman at that, residing in her house. Not that policemen were particularly trustworthy themselves, she had told him, but she doubted the riffraff would try breaking down her door if they knew he lived there.

  Muldoon and the young patrolman set a brisk pace, collars turned up against the persistent drizzle. Half an hour later, they stood over a sheet-draped object on the ground. Not too many nights ago, he had stood in this very spot—Karl Schneider under that sheet.

  He glanced around, trying to get a solid picture in his mind. Was anything different tonight? Where were the people and landmarks? Who might have seen the crime from the safety of their window? Down here, he knew, folks were loath to tell what they’d seen. Partly it was because they didn’t want to help anyone in blue, they saw the law as their greatest enemy. But also, because they feared for their own safety. It could as easily be them, next time.

  At the end of the street, he could just make out Paradise Park in the dark where it opened into its triangular shaped “square.” The streetlamp shed only a sickly glow of light, the ground at its base barely illuminated. The next lamp stood far off at the other end of the block, back the way he’d come. He turned again to the body under the sheet and prepared himself for the sight that had shocked the patrolman. The young man turned his face away.

  “I sent for the coroner already,” said Patrolman Donovan. He bent to grasp the edge of the sheet.

  “This isn’t your regular beat,” Muldoon said. “You new?”

  The young man shifted under his gaze. “Aye. My Da used to be a copper. Before he passed.”

  Muldoon pursed his lips in thought. “Sergeant Donovan, over in German Town?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I didn’t know he passed. Not on duty?”

  “No sir. Hit by a wagon.”

  “Sad way to go. I’m sorry, son. Now,” He looked down at the sheet covered bundle nearly where Schneider had lain. “Detective Benson? He on the way?” He already knew the answer. That’s why he was here. Be
nson was sleeping off the effects of alcohol somewhere, if he wasn’t still on a binge. He shook his head, nearly imperceptibly. Nothing he could do for the detective. Benson had to want to leave the bottle.

  “No, sir. The detective wasn’t at home, so we got you. We haven’t moved her. She’s exactly as we found her.” Donovan pulled back the sheet.

  “What were you doing up here?” The two men should have been walking the park, not wandering up the side streets.

  “We seen a wagon stop, didn’t seem like it should have been here. When we got over here… well… we found her.”

  Muldoon squinted. If it was a woman, you couldn’t tell from her scalp. She’d been shaved bald. He shook his head in disbelief as the body was revealed. Her damp alabaster skin shimmered as the moon’s light momentarily broke through the overcast sky. Only a sick man could have done this, he thought. Like Karl Schneider, this woman was nude. She’d been shaved of every bit of hair on her body, the white flesh pearlescent, except for a deep purple star-shaped bruise on her abdomen. She hadn’t simply been dumped, as Schneider had been. Instead, her body had been set neatly on the ground, carefully arranged, knees bent obscenely.

  He took the lantern from the young patrolman and cast its light on the ground nearby. There were definite wagon tracks. He could see how the dirt rose where the wheels had stopped. And then the wagon turned, and left the street the way it had come. On further lay a pile of fresh manure, not much more than an hour old, corroborating the policeman's story.

  He walked back to the dead girl and began his examination. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, he noted. He took her hand. Soft. No calluses marred the clear flesh. At her neck, he thought he could see bruising. He’d have to wait until morning and another visit to the coroner to be sure. He suspected that, like Karl Schneider, she had been strangled.

  “Cover her back up,” he said. He pulled her ankles, straightened her legs, and laid her feet together. She was already beginning to stiffen. He figured she’d been dead a while before she’d been placed here. He could see purplish bruising on her left side, a clear indication that her position had been changed as well. She’d lain on her side for some time after her murder. He didn’t believe this was a rape, as it seemed to appear. No. It was a message. But to whom? And why?

  He stood and peered at the window nearest to the body. How could a man live inside and be oblivious to the horrors just outside his walls? He’d have to visit Kavanagh again, and ask what he’d seen. His gaze dropped. Something had touched the edge of his vision. Something white. Looking straight on, he could see only darkness below the window, but when he turned, softened his focus he could just see it again. He stepped around the body and moved deeper into the shadows. He held the lantern forward so its light pierced the gloom, and then he saw it where it lay in the muck close to the wall… a wooden stake, similar in size and shape to the one he’d found in Schneider’s front room. As he picked it up, he knew what he would find. The initials A.R. roughly scratched into one side. This piece was smoothly finished on one end and jagged on the other. The piece from Schneider’s had been broken at both ends, and he suspected this section would fit neatly into one end of the other. He’d noticed something else, too. A roughly drawn circle had been traced in the mud around the girl’s body. The star and the circle could be someone’s attempt at a hex, or put there to exploit the public’s mood. He was certain there hadn’t been a circle drawn around Schneider… or had he missed it?

  He looked around again. This time he peered into the darkness looking for the reflection of red eyes.

  Muldoon waited beside the body until someone from the coroner’s office came to pick her up. She seemed so sad, so lonely… but he knew she had no emotions left. He hitched a ride on the coroner’s wagon as it headed north, then leaped out as the cart rumbled past the corner of Elizabeth Street. He headed back to his cold, dark room. He knew he wouldn’t sleep much more this night.

  CHAPTER 15

  Who

  is the alabaster woman? If Muldoon were to hazard a guess, she wasn’t from the Points. She had the hands of a wealthy woman. She’d never done hard work in her life. He’d have to search for leads outside the Irish tenements. He had mixed emotions. At once, he felt sadness… for her and her family. But, he also felt excited. He could investigate Schneider’s death again. Not openly, of course, but in connection with the girl. Where her murder took him, Schneider’s would follow, and they would have to release Kelly McAllister.

  He stopped at the morgue on his way to Police Headquarters the next morning. He descended the short flight of stairs and entered the dark recesses for the second time in so few days.

  “Hullo, Danny,” Muldoon said. “I see you’ve been ‘washing the floor’ real good lately. You still washing the same one?”

  “No, I’ve got a new floor to clean.” The boy smiled and flashed the cover of a ‘penny dreadful’ at Muldoon. “You can go on back. If you don’t mind, I got some work to do. This new book is a real good job.”

  “Sounds like it, Boy-oh. Then, I’ll be letting you get to your work.”

  Muldoon walked quietly through the outer room and down the hall. At the far end, he entered the cold room filled with the dead. Bob Gamble was at work, carefully dissecting the organs of a rather fat man. Looking up, he smiled quickly.

  “Hello, Muldoon, I’ll be right with you. No doubt, you’re here for the woman from Five Points. It can’t be this one, he’s from uptown.”

  “Aye, Doc. It’ll be the woman.”

  The doctor consulted a large text he’d set on a rolling table, and then carefully drew a likeness of the man’s organs in a pad. Next to the picture, he wrote the details of his finding.

  “It’s amazing, all the things the body can tell us. Even after we’ve died, fingernails and hair seem to continue to grow. Different organs cool at different rates. Cancers blacken lungs. I think one day, the coroner’s office will be able to solve murders without policemen.” He laughed.

  “Ah, but we’ll still need policemen to catch the murderers,” Muldoon said.

  Some fifteen minutes later, Gamble finished his meticulous work and set his instruments on a tray. He wiped the blood from his hands and stepped out from behind the open body.

  “Over here,” he said, and moved toward a second, shroud-covered, figure.

  Muldoon pulled back the sheet and looked down at the murdered girl’s face.

  “Was she strangled?”

  “Mmhmm,” answered the coroner. “Exactly like the first victim.”

  “The Captain won’t like that.”

  “No, he won’t… if he’ll even listen. It seems as if he’s made up his mind about the Karl Schneider murder.”

  “Aye,” Muldoon said. “I’m not sure we should even mention Schneider, or else he might pull me off this case. You notice her hands?”

  “Yes. She’s not from the Points. She’s a lady.”

  “Aye, that’s what I gathered. Now to see if there’s anyone missing.”

  “There’s someone missing, all right,” Gamble said. “The question is whether anyone has realized it… or cares enough to report it.”

  “You’ll be noticing the bruising on her side?”

  The coroner nodded.

  “We found her on her back… knees up,” Muldoon said.

  “After she was killed, she lay on her side for a while,” Gamble said. “You can tell from the pooling, the bruising where the blood settled. So, she was moved, too. Just like Schneider.”

  Muldoon agreed. He stepped closer to the body and bent over her to see the marks on her throat.

  “The bruise around her neck… it’s an elbow again, isn’t it?”

  “It looks like it. There aren’t any finger marks, anyway. I suppose it might have been a thick cloth.”

  “I don’t think so,” Muldoon said. “See the way her skin seems to have been pinched, right at the center of her collarbone? I think that’s from an elbow.”

  “That’s
my thought, too. You’re looking for a man about your size? If you look at the bruising on her arm, you can see she was held tightly. The marks seem to be from a very large hand.”

  Muldoon nodded.

  Who was about his size? He wondered as he set off toward Headquarters. He stood head and shoulders above most. He thought of George Army. The African definitely fit the bill, but he couldn’t imagine what the black man had against these particular people. But it was worth looking into. Maybe he needed to hang out in the saloons for a while, as a patron instead of a wrestler. And he still needed to get back and question Kavanagh again. Something about him bothered Muldoon.

  As he entered Headquarters, Sergeant Foley looked up from his work. “Hello, Muldoon,” he said. “Detective Benson asked for you to go to his office when you got in. I expect it’s about the Points Woman.”

  The Points Woman. Muldoon shook his head almost imperceptibly. So, they had given her a name.

  “It’s in the paper.” Foley held up the Police Gazette. A huge headline screamed across the front page:

  Horrid Murder! Points Woman Strangled!

  Muldoon snorted. Anything exciting for that paper. Yellow journalism at its finest. Its editors filled the pages with murders, crime, and blood sport.

  He mumbled a reply as he crossed the room to the hallway. Halfway down the dark corridor, he stopped before Benson’s office. Nothing like the Captain’s a floor above, this room was tiny and cramped. The desk overflowed with files. Many were past cases long since solved. Muldoon grabbed the pile on the single visitor’s chair and set them on top of a stack by the wall. Someday, Benson always said, he’d go through them, keep only the open cases, and send the rest to storage.

  “So?” asked Benson between sips of coffee. “What was she like?”

  Muldoon reflected. This was one thing he hated about the loose arrangement between him and Benson. He did the footwork, and then reported to the Detective. Someday, he hoped, an office like this would be his…