alt.sherlock.holmes

by Gini Koch

  He proceeded to lurch through a tent flap hidden behind a map of the human skull. I followed, watching as he once again unfolded that beanpole frame. I drew in a breath of clean, fresh air. The night was cool and breezy: a welcome change from the musky tent.

  Stretching out those long legs of his, Sanford took off at a brisk walk, leading us through a maze of tents, ropes and canvas stalls. Soon, the music and hustle of the carnival fell away to background noise and I found myself in a small shantytown. Trucks, wagons, tractors, even a couple of repurposed box cars. Few people lingered here, but those who did were obviously carnies. Here a woman in a sequined costume shared a cigarette with a dwarf. There, a man broad as an elephant scraped the last of his dinner from a tin plate.

  Haus brushed off the occasional call of, “Hey, Crash!” without acknowledgement. As we passed a chuck wagon, Sanford piped up, “Mrs. Hudson!”

  A dwarf with wild copper hair and an ample bottom raised her head. “What’ll it be, boss?”

  “Three coffees as black as my soul, if you please.”

  “Don’t know that I’ve got anything that dark, Crash, but I’ll see what I can rustle up. And will there be anything for your guests?” she joked.

  Sanford gave Mrs. Hudson a wry grin. “Where’s Arty?”

  “Last I saw he was tagging along with a couple of bally broads and a butcher. He should be at the kiddie show by now, though.”

  “If you’d be so kind as to send Mars on over to the kiddie show, then. I need to have a word with Arty tout suite.”

  “Aye, Crash,” Mrs. Hudson said as she waddled away from her cart.

  Sanford hadn’t broken stride. I struggled to keep up, my prosthetic leg wobbling and chafing.

  With a leap, he took three stairs up to the door at the back of a gypsy wagon. The thing had been cobbled together with various pieces of other things. I recognized the eaves of a farmhouse, a wall built of aluminum, a couple of railroad ties. The door had come from some apartment or other. The numbers 221 clung to the peeling paint, as defiant as Sanford ‘Crash’ Haus himself.

  He pulled a key from a chain around his neck and unlocked the door. “Good sir, gentle lady, I welcome you to my home.” With a wide, sweeping gesture, he indicated we should enter.

  As the door shut behind us, I dropped Madame Yvonde to the floor and hobbled to the nearest chair. The ache in my leg had become a tight vice, a hot brand of pain settling around the joint where my knee had once been. If the bone-deep throbbing was any indication, we might get rain soon.

  Sanford rooted around and produced a cigar box. Opening it, he offered it to me. “Would you like some?”

  I blinked at the papers and mossy green herb therein. “I’m sorry?”

  “For the pain, obviously. If you’ve need of something stronger I can provide that as well.”

  I waved him off. “No, thank you. Not while I’m working.”

  He snapped the box closed. “Talk to me, Adele. What do you know?”

  “The vagrant was Enoch Drebber. Before the Crash, he was an accountant in Salt Lake City. He and his family lost quite a lot, though. They became Lizzie tramps, traveling, looking for work. Then the family car busted and they took up with a Hooverville outside of Omaha, just in time for that mammoth dust storm to plow through this month.”

  Two quick knocks on the door interrupted Agent Trenet’s story. Haus opened the door where Mrs. Hudson stood with three tin cups on a wooden platter. She gave a bow and exaggerated flourish. “Your service, dear sir!”

  Haus moved lithely through the cramped space of his wagon, fetching the cups and doling them out to Trenet and myself. “Excellent, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you.”

  “Johnny is on his way to take Arty’s place. When I see the kid I’ll send him your way.”

  “Fantastic.”

  The dwarf’s eyes landed on me and sparkled with lascivious delight. “Crash, do call if there’s anything your guests need. And I do mean anything.”

  Mrs. Hudson gave an impolite wiggle of her rounder virtues and rolled back into the night.

  Trenet smiled into her cup of coffee. “Well, well.”

  Haus shut the door. “You were saying. Mr. Drebber found himself outside of Omaha, destitute and most dead.”

  “Yes,” Agent Trenet continued. “Well, it so happens that his death coincides with the date your particular mud show slunk out of town.”

  “Coincidence.”

  “Perhaps, Sanford—”

  “Crash.”

  “—but it’s not the first crime to turn up on your route. Three weeks before that, Mary Watson was kidnapped less than a quarter mile from your tent. Pinkerton agents are still looking for her.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “Two weeks before that, Calvin Bailey was found dead.”

  “Calvin Bailey? We oil-spotted him in Duluth!”

  “Oil-spotted?” I asked.

  Haus rolled his eyes. “Oil-spotted. Red-lighted. Means we left him behind and all he saw was the oil spot where the truck had been.”

  “He worked for you?” Trenet asked.

  “Until I found out he was using his job as a balloon vendor to find little girls, yes. As I say, we left him behind.”

  “Well, he was found dead on the Kansas-Missouri state line.”

  “Serves him right,” Crash said, rolling a cigarette. “Wasn’t me or mine, I’ll tell you that. We’re no Sunday School, but we generally keep clean.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “We haven’t pulled close to Missouri this trip.”

  Trenet’s pretty face scrunched up with confusion. “But your posters...”

  “We had to take a detour due to bad weather, Adele. We missed that stop entirely. Planned on hitting St. Louis on our way back to Peru.”

  “But you recognize the knife,” she said pointedly.

  Haus took a long drag of his roller, staring at me. Studying me. Without taking those cool eyes off my form, he exhaled a plume of blue smoke from both nostrils like a lanky dragon. “Is it wooden?”

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “The leg. Is it wooden?”

  I nodded. “Hollow. Iron foot, though. Why?”

  “Dammit, Crash!” Agent Trenet was on her feet. “Have you been listening to a damn thing I’ve said?”

  Haus gaped at her, but mischief danced in his gaze. “Why, Pinky, you called me Crash.”

  She let out a frustrated growl and kicked at his shins.

  “Yes,” Haus said through his laughter. “I recognize the knife. It’s identical to the ones Arty uses in his act.”

  She yanked the cig from his lips and raised it to her own. “Tell me about him.”

  “Barely old enough to shave. Born into circus tradition to a burlesque dancer and an inside talker. His dad got red-lighted before I bought the show, but his mother—Baker Street Baby—will be onstage in an hour or so.” He nodded to me. “You’d like her. Has a penchant for peacock feathers and parasols.”

  “How do you figure I’d—”

  Trenet cut me off. “What about the kid?”

  “Arty’s a sword-swallower and knife thrower. Goes by Arthur on stage, plays up the Excalibur legend.”

  “Do you think he could have killed Drebber?”

  “Adele, my dear, given proper motivation, anyone could kill.”

  “I suppose that’s true. Just talking with you makes me homicidal most of the time.”

  “You flatter me. What else? Any other evidence found with Bailey or this Watson dame? You must have more than just my tour schedule and a knife.”

  “Coffee cans.”

  Haus’s face scrunched in genuine concern. “Come again?”

  “Coffee cans,” I said. “Found at every crime scene. Each of them contained a letter and a handful of objects.”

  “Objects such as?”

  “The can found with Calvin Bailey’s body had a taxidermied dog’s paw. Drebber’s held the knife. A third can turned up at Mary Watson’s home
. Inside was a necklace fashioned after a snake.”

  Haus launched himself out of his chair, and in two long strides he was out the door.

  “Crash!” Trenet called after him. To me she muttered, “Come on.”

  We followed him at his blistering pace—well, I hobbled as quickly as I could all things considered—as Haus led us back toward the siren song of the carousel and hawkers. He swept the folds of a tent apart with his long hands and barked to the assembled crowd.

  “Everyone out.”

  Though there were murmurs and complaints, no one dared argue with the glare Crash passed. Of course, his painted face was rather ghoulish, which might have had something to do with their compliance.

  Haus had led us into the sideshow tent. Tables and ramshackle shelves were covered in little curiosities. Jars of amber fluids and specimens—two-headed lizards and the like, as well as fetuses—were caked with dust. One such jar contained only a thumb. A wooden box on a table nearby held a bit of rock. The card in front of it heralded the item as the Mazarin Stone. There were other such relics; a beryl coronet, a tree branch from Tunguska, the stake used to kill a vampire.

  “What’s this about, Sanford?” Trenet asked.

  He led us to an empty bell jar and plucked the card from its display. “The Devil’s foot is missing. Tell me, did the paw you found look anything like this?”

  I eyed the photograph. “To a tee.”

  Haus tossed the card and hissed another black curse. Flipping his hand toward an ornate jewelry box, he snarled, “And the Borgias’ torque is missing as well.”

  I padded to the box and read the card. Apparently, the necklace usually kept there was the property of that most notorious family. The card said that Lucretia used it to deliver poison to her rivals. And it was modeled after a scarlet snake.

  “Matches the one found at Watson’s scene,” I muttered. “Right down to the speckles on the snake’s head.”

  “What did they say?” Haus snapped at me.

  “The snake?”

  “The letters, damn you! The letters found with my stolen property?”

  “Just the same two words, every time: memento mori.”

  Haus seethed with palpable rage. The tendons in his fists popped as he clenched. “Arty.”

  A grizzled old bearded lady joined us. “Boss? There a reason no one been by my stall in five minutes?”

  “Where’s Arty?” he bellowed.

  Agent Trenet took Crash’s temper in stride, but the bearded lady jumped back, startled. “Ain’t seen ’im tonight. He never showed up for call. He’s probably drunk behind the wheel.”

  Crash growled and spun on his heel. Over his shoulder he called, “Tell the talkers to let the towners back in. Business as usual.”

  He was a hound on the hunt, leading Trenet and me back into the strange back alleys of the circus. The equipment housed here had seen better days. Trunks of props were open. I saw a few performers grab what they needed, then dash back into tents. Though my thigh ached with the fire of Hell itself, I felt the old rush of excitement that came with having a mission; a goal. Hadn’t felt that surge since a time when I had both legs, but that night—stomping through the carnival’s backlot—I felt more whole than I had in damn near twenty years. This might have been my first case for Pinkerton, but I was hardly a greenhorn.

  That swell of confidence helped to mask the pain and lit a fire that let me keep up with Crash and his spidery legs.

  “Where are we going?” Trenet called.

  Crash had no time for explanations as we came up on a looming disc. Small metallic triangles glinted from its surface—the points of knives. We were looking at the back of a knife wheel. And one of the exposed blades—this one exceptionally long—was red with blood.

  Crash was the first to round the wheel. He spat a few salty words, then kicked up a cloud of dust.

  Arty sat in a reeking puddle. The sword—Excalibur, I presumed—had been thrust through his mouth, pinning his head to the rotting wood of the wheel. His face was fixed with a terrified expression. I raced forward and knelt, the prosthetic protesting as I did. I checked the boy for a pulse, but it was a futile effort.

  “Marks on his wrists,” I said. “He was bound.”

  Haus paced with mounting anger. “What else?”

  I leaned in close to sniff the boy’s waxy face. “Chloroform.”

  “Someone drugged him, tied him up and did this,” Trenet surmised. “When did you last see him, Sanford?”

  “Just before the gates opened,” he answered. “Sometime after two in the afternoon.”

  I stood up, took out my handkerchief and spoke from behind it. “The blood has been clotting for a while. Flies are on him, too. A few hours. Six at the most.”

  “And everyone’s been working the show since then. Not a soul to find him.”

  “Jim,” Trenet said, her voice nasal as she pinched her nostrils shut, “you stay here with the body and Haus. I have to call the local police.”

  “No!” Crash barked. “No police.”

  “Sanford, I have to.”

  “You can’t.”

  “It’s my job!”

  “Locals get sight of coppers on my lot, they’ll assume the worst.”

  “They’d be right!”

  “They’ll stop coming and my people will lose money. If word carries too far, we could lose the rest of the season.”

  “You can’t seriously think I’ll just let a murder—the latest in a string of them, I might add—go unnoticed.”

  “He’s not a towner, Adele. He’s not even a gaucho like me. Arty was born in the circus. Let the circus deal with it.”

  The war between Crash’s reason and Adele’s conscience played out on her face, and I understood both sides. All of the consequences weighed against one another and Trenet simmered.

  “I let you clean this up, Sanford, there’s gonna be some conditions.”

  “Name them,” he said.

  “You let me in on any evidence found, so I can keep this on record as part of our case.”

  “Done.”

  “Second, I get alone time with every one of your people. If someone is stealing from you and leaving the items at crime scenes, following your route, now killing one of your performers, I want to know if it’s someone in your show.”

  “It’s not—”

  “That’s how it’s going to go down, Sanford, or so help me God, I will shut this show down myself and feed you to the local cops with a side of cotton fucking candy.”

  I jumped at the lady’s language, but it didn’t stop me from smiling. The other Pinks had told me Adele Trenet was a firecracker, but it was another thing to see her in action. Crash seemed to appreciate her as well. The slightest of dimples formed on one cheek as he stuffed his hands into his deep pockets.

  “Fine, Adele,” he said. “We’ll play it your way. You can start talking to Mrs. Hudson back at the crumb car while Dandy, here, helps me deal with Arty’s remains.”

  “Shouldn’t I go with her?” I asked. “Your people don’t much care for outsiders.”

  “Adele’s not a stranger to my crew. They might not care for the badge, but no one will give her too hard of a time.”

  “I can handle them,” she agreed.

  “You can handle me,” he added with a provocative waggle of his eyebrows. My partner glared at him, and he held up his palms in surrender. “Fine. Work first.”

  She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her own smile as she started for Mrs. Hudson’s crumb car. As we watched her jog along the back lot, Crash let out a pleased sigh and rumble of approval.

  Haus and I quietly extricated Arty from the wheel, and I tried not to think about all the things my partner wasn’t telling me. She wasn’t crooked or a bully, like some of the other Pinks, but something didn’t jive. For starters, her connection to Leland Haus. The Secret Service and our agency didn’t play nice together. But she had some connection to the Haus brothers. I assumed her dealings with
Leland involved money and investigations on the sly. But with Crash? Well, I didn’t much want to think on that.

  Not that a woman so snowy would be seen with a man dark as cinders such as myself.

  We were filling the boy’s grave when Crash spoke up. “So tell me, doctor, how long have you been with Pinkerton?”

  “How did you...?” I stopped asking the question when Crash just gave me an incredulous look over the handle of his shovel. “Right. This is my first case.”

  “Doesn’t seem to suit you.”

  “Maybe not,” I answered truthfully. “Can’t keep soldiering. Tried to put down roots and be a good doctor, but, well, that didn’t work out any better. Thought I could put both those skills to use with the Agency, though. Not sure it’s not another bust.” I piled more dirt on top of the grave and patted it down with the blade of my shovel. “Now you tell me something: do you reckon this is one of your folks doing all this?”

  Crash shook his head. “Whoever the character is, he’s not job.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “One of the deaths occurred in a town we skipped. He couldn’t have known we would wildcat around the weather, any more than we did. And being fifty miles to the south is a pretty good alibi for me and mine, don’t you think?”

  I nodded grimly. We were no closer to finding the Devil than I’d been when I walked into Madame Yvonde’s tent.

  The dirty work done, Crash and I shambled to his wagon wrung out as old cloths. As he went to open the door, it jerked.

  “Locked,” he said, tone dark. “I didn’t have time to lock it, Dandy. We ran out in a hurry.”

  I leveled the shovel in front of me and gave Crash a nod. “Let’s see who’s inside, shall we?”

  Gingerly, he slipped the key in the door and turned the lock. We burst in to find his wagon unoccupied. It was precisely as we’d left it earlier—Madame Yvonde’s rags still strewn about the floor and our joe gone cold in the tin cups. One thing, however, was different. On Crash’s bunk was a yellow, rusty coffee can.

  Crash picked it up and cradled it in one arm while opening it. His fingers snatched the paper out and he let the can fall to the floor.

  “‘How good it is,’” he read, “‘to have a real opponent for my game.’ That’s all it says?”