Joe was still there from the night before, trousers torn, a bullet hole in his shirt. He didn't meet her eyes. Everyone else, however, gave her their full attention. Wolf had reappeared, having just finished questioning the male victim. Matron Clemens had just left the bedside of the female victim, who was recuperating in the receiving hospital.
Mr. Melvin was clicking away, typing up Joe's preliminary report, and while he didn't seem to be paying her any attention, she knew he was. Captain Wells was there, and Snow, and the coroner. A roundsman and several patrolmen were loitering about, both the night shift and the day shift that had arrived to replace them. They should have been home or on the streets already.
Though the station was crowded, it was under a disquieting hush. She saw the men pressing their lips together, holding in laughter that was pushing to get out.
When Captain Wells saw Anna, he spoke, raising his voice so all his men could hear. “Last night, our Matron Holmes chatted with, but didn't apprehend the Boyle Heights Rape Fiend…. But she did manage to shoot Officer Singer in the shoe.” He held up Anna's wounded François Pinet shoe with the vomit stain and a bullet lodged in the silver buckle.
The men were overcome with laughter, except for Mr. Melvin, who never showed emotion, and Joe, who found nothing about the previous night at all funny. Anna's color changed from the pasty green of the sleepless to the Princess Pat pink of the mocked.
“There is a reason they don't give guns to ladies,” Wolf called above the chortles and guffaws.
Snow sneered. “I wonder why he didn't take you, Matron Holmes.” She knew he said it to wound her, but the question was one she had asked herself.
Joe winced as he lowered his backside into a chair. “I guess she's not his cup of tea.”
Wolf winked. “Don't worry Matron Holmes, you're my cup of tea!”
Anna's blush deepened, but she cleared her throat and raised her voice. “He won't attack single women. Don't you see? He doesn't care about the women. He wants to humiliate the men.”
The laughter waned as the men puzzled over this.
Wolf strolled up to Anna and said, by way of explanation, “Matron Holmes can read minds. Can't you, honeybun? So, what am I thinking?” He leered at her and the station roared again.
Anna put a desk between herself and Wolf. She set her jaw and persisted. “He complimented my shoes…”
This was met with a new surge of laughter. The men doubled over, gasping for air. Anna pressed on as if under compulsion, practically shouting now to make herself heard above the din.
“He knew ladies’ fashion. He could be a cobbler or a milliner—but a successful one. He wore…”
Captain Wells interrupted her with a voice that transcended the crowd without shouting. “That's quite enough, Matron Holmes. You have work to do.”
Anna's mouth was open and ready, but something in Captain Wells's tone made her shut it. With her chin lifted, she wove her way back to her desk and sat.
She had not been congratulated on saving the woman from dishonor. She was not acknowledged for discovering clues. She was teased for being unwomanly in her career aspirations and womanly in her incompetency. She reinforced everyone's expectations of her—that she would cock things up. She made their victory even sweeter by presuming to handle a gun and shooting Officer Singer.
The officers ambled off to their duties yuck-yucking and complimenting each other's shoes, returning to beats that they had abandoned to witness Matron Holmes's ignominy.
Joe Singer fled for the door like the place was on fire. He grabbed his helmet from the rack. Captain Wells's Scottish brogue stopped him in his tracks. “Officer Singer, there's a big pile of manure that needs shoveling.”
Joe turned and threw his palms up. “It wasn't my fault.”
“Go! Before I ask Matron Holmes how she got your gun.”
Joe tossed his helmet back on the hook. “She'll tell you anyway.”
He slunk out the back door to the stables, striding right past Anna without looking at her. Her stomach flipped like an acrobat on a very high trapeze. Although he was fresh, she didn't want him to hate her. He had told her she was beautiful, clever, interesting, and honey sweet. She reminded herself that he had also said she was a conceited, useless, deceitful tattletale. She closed her eyes and tried to sort it out, but couldn't.
Joe had said that Peaches Payton's death was not being investigated. Was the father lying, or the son? She should find out for certain. Wolf would know if the investigation had been re-opened.
A girl with clementine hair loitered in the public seating area near Mr. Melvin's desk. She fluttered and mooned at Wolf, who threw her encouraging smiles from the back of the station. Anna thought she looked desperate. As Wolf sauntered past Anna's desk, she stopped him. “Detective Wolf, did Chief Singer speak to you about the diphthongs?”
He grinned. “No, honeybun. Have they been stolen?”
Anna tried again. “But, you are re-investigating Peaches Payton's death?”
Wolf's smile vanished. “I told you to drop that, Matron Holmes.”
He turned and walked off toward the lovesick red-haired girl. Anna sank into her chair and ground her teeth. Chief Singer had not ordered a new investigation. No one at the station believed in the killings. Regardless of what Joe Singer or any of them thought of her abilities, at least she didn't turn her back on murdered girls. It was a sin.
Matron Clemens sidled over to Anna's desk, her worn face arranged in a professional mask, as cool and efficient as a typewriter. “Matron Holmes, how is your filing project proceeding?”
“Very well,” Anna lied.
“Good. The patrolmen can't do this work. Half of them can barely read.”
Matron Clemens almost smiled for the first time. Anna wondered if this was a backhanded affirmation.
The older woman put two new files down on Anna's desk. “I hope you'll be finished by the end of next week, Matron Holmes. I have other things for you to do.”
Anna swallowed. In the last two weeks, she had reviewed 170 juvenile files. Two thirds contained reports naming more than one child and required her to cross-check files and, when necessary, create new files with duplicate reports. With two fingers she could duplicate three files per night on Theo's Remington, if she didn't sleep. There were one hundred juvenile files yet to be reviewed. Of one thing she was certain; she would never finish by the end of next week. She wouldn't finish by the end of next month. And Anna was grouchy, had dark circles under her eyes, and was losing her bloom. If she wanted to cultivate Edgar Wright's love, she would need to sleep at night.
Anna picked up a file from the top of her stack and opened it. Maria Rodriguez. At age nine, her father had broken her arm with a shovel. Seven years later, the girl had been fined for vagrancy outside the Bucket of Blood saloon. Later that year, she was run over by a truck.
Anna's chest felt tight. Another dead brothel girl. She rubbed her forehead with the palms of both hands. No one was investigating. She didn't have time to investigate. She needed every moment to type so she could finish her own work. Except she couldn't. Even if she did nothing but type, she still wouldn't finish the work in time. She was going to fail Matron Clemens and be fired, no matter how hard she tried.
Anna sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. If failure was inevitable, trying was illogical. Therefore, Anna wouldn't try. Why should she? She wouldn't kill herself typing, only to fail. She would spend her time doing the men's work for them. She would investigate murder.
She brought out the list of dead brothel girls, closed her eyes, and reviewed the cases in her mind. She thought about how she would commit suicide if, for example, Edgar Wright refused to marry her. First choice, she would blow out her pilot light, turn up the gas, arrange herself in her best clothes, and simply go to sleep. Opium might be nice, except people sometimes drowned in their own vomit. In a pinch, she might fall on her lover's sword like Juliet, but she would definitely not mar her neck with a big bloody gas
h and leave her body to be pecked apart by vultures. She wouldn't attend her own wake mutilated.
Anna knew that Peaches Payton had not committed suicide, even if Chief Singer didn't trust her evidence. There had to be another clue, something that would verify Madam Lulu's conviction that brothel girls were being murdered, so that the men would finally believe her, catch the villain, and stop the brutal killings. Otherwise, there would be more blood. She closed her eyes and concentrated.
If brothel girls were being murdered by some deranged killer, and the deaths were being disguised as suicides, etc., wouldn't there be more deaths attributed to suicides, etc., than usual? Anna may not have bodies or crime scenes to examine, but she could count.
Madam Lulu said that the murders began six months ago in January. Anna started a new list, grouping deaths and disappearances by date in six-month increments. She started five years back and worked forward.
From January 1902 up until July 1902 there were two incidents among brothel girls, one death due to drug overdose, and one girl committed suicide. From July 1902 up until January 1903, there were two deaths, both suicides, and one girl reported missing. Anna continued counting in this manner, ending with the death of Peaches Payton that July.
1907 had the highest number of incidents by far. Four girls had disappeared in the past six months, while only one went missing over the previous four and a half years. Six girls had died since January, yet only eight had died in all the other years put together.
Prior to 1907, on average, two brothel girls committed suicide or overdosed each year. Since January, the number of deaths and disappearances had increased tenfold. Anna could think of no reason that the numbers would jump so precipitously, except for murder. But Anna didn't know about prostitutes, except that they were young, pretty, and sometimes did it to feed babies. She knew that Peaches was murdered, but not about the other girls.
She looked over at Snow, who struggled to write something, his forehead wrinkled like a cabbage. He had been the investigating officer in Peaches Payton's death. If she told him about the increase in deaths, he might re-open the investigation. More likely, he would take insult, bark at her, and then tattle to Wolf.
Anna had already asked Captain Wells and Police Chief Singer to take the investigation deeper. Despite her perfectly apodictic logic, they patronized her, lied to her. Now, with the Boyle Heights debacle, her credibility had reached an all-time low.
The captain needed to hear the evidence from someone other than herself. Someone who had his ear. Someone related to him, who ate enchiladas at his house. Someone who looked like the Arrow Collar Man and who wasn't speaking to her at present.
Anna found Joe Singer in the stables, a long, low building where six of the dozen or so police mounts were loitering in their stalls. There was a loft, and it had that lovely stable smell of hay, leather tack, and horses. She heard a shovel scraping on pavement and his familiar tenor. “I wonder if she's got a boy? The girl who once filled me with joy. I wonder if she ever tells him of me? I wonder who's kissing her now?”
Anna's heart beat a little faster and she wondered who Officer Singer had been kissing before last night, because it seemed like he had practiced. She wondered if it was Eve McBride.
She found him in a stall with a steaming pile of horse manure balanced on his shovel. He tossed it in a wheelbarrow and winced at the motion. She unlatched the rusty gate and pushed it open. It creaked. She put on a tentative smile. “Hello.”
He ignored her. That wasn't such a bad sign. If this were to be a one-sided conversation, at least she'd have ample opportunity to make her point. She cleared her throat. “You must think this is all a game to me, that it means nothing. That I'm just going to cock things up and go back to my money and my…”
“I wouldn't talk so loud if I were you,” he said. “I'm pretty sure Wolf is in the hay loft.”
“In the hay loft?” Anna looked up and saw the hay shifting curiously above her, but no sign of Wolf. She looked to Joe for an explanation. None was forthcoming.
“Go on.” He leaned on his shovel and looked impatient. He had dark circles under his eyes and his hair was damp around the edges from the heat.
She frowned. She had lost her train of thought. She cleared her throat again and whispered. “I want to capture the rape fiend just as much as you do. And I want to find out who killed Peaches Payton.”
“It was a suicide.” He started shoveling again, scraping the cement, heaving the manure, wincing.
“No woman slits her own throat. It's ugly and violent.”
“On occasion, Sherlock, life is ugly and violent. Why don't you speak to Wolf? He's the lead detective.”
“I did,” she whispered. “He told me to drop it. You can't tell Wolf that I'm investigating. If he finds out, he'll probably fire me. So, you have to do it.”
Joe laughed. Anna lifted her skirts and picked her way into the stall, looking for little patches of clean among the filthy. She moved closer so that she wouldn't have to speak so loud. “Listen to me. It isn't just Peaches Payton. Four brothel girls have disappeared in the past six months.”
Joe stopped and scraped dung off his shoe with the edge of the shovel. “That doesn't mean anything. Girls move around, go to new brothels in other cities so they can be the new face in town. It's good business. It doesn't always make the papers.”
Her brow arched up. She wondered how he knew that. She certainly had not. “That may be true, but why then had only one brothel girl been reported missing in the previous four and a half years put together?”
He looked surprised. “You went through the files and counted them?”
“I stopped at the letter S.”
“So you don't really know how many girls went missing.”
Anna made an impatient sound. “Not yet. But I don't believe alphabetical order has anything to do with missing prostitutes. You can't possibly think all the Fs would run away and all the Ys would stay home!”
He swiped a handkerchief across his forehead. “I hadn't thought about it at all.”
“I'm asking you to! In addition to the missing girls, six brothel girls committed suicide or overdosed in the past six months.”
“I'm telling you, Sherlock. That's life in the low lands. You don't know it because you live on the hill.”
“I understand that brothel girls are miserable and they sometimes kill themselves, accidentally or on purpose, but that's six times the six month average over the previous four and a half years.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sherlock finished high school.”
She made a sound of exasperation. “You're not taking this seriously! Just like you didn't take Douglas Doogan seriously. I saw him in Boyle Heights last night with a big, long knife. The ladies of Los Angeles thank you for your protection, Office Singer!”
Joe blinked. His face flushed ruby red. “I'll take care of Doogan, all right? How did the girls commit suicide?”
Anna's heart beat faster. He still glowered at her, but he was listening. “Every way you can think of, throwing themselves off cliffs and in front of trains, poison, hanging. Some girls cut themselves. One girl weighted herself down with rocks and went swimming.”
“So, every girl died differently?”
“Since January? There were six girls and six different ways.”
“Did they all leave notes?”
“Some did and some didn't. But they weren't addressed to us, so we don't have them.”
Joe shrugged and spun the shovel like a top. Anna stopped it with her hand. “Maybe there's something else that can explain the suicides and disappearances, but I don't know what it would be because I don't know about brothel girls and apparently you do!”
He laughed cynically. Anna frowned. “Your father is the police chief. You could convince him to have someone else besides Snow look into it.”
He shoveled another load of green manure. “I could, but I won't.”
Anna snatched the shovel from his hands and t
he manure fell back into the stall with a splat, spattering his shoes. She glared. “Why won't you help me?”
Joe snatched the shovel back. “Because coroners know a whole lot more about murder and dead people than you do, and I'm not going to accuse ours of incompetence just because you have a hunch!”
Anna stomped her foot. “No! I don't think that's the reason. I think it's because I embarrassed you. Shot you with your own gun. Well, I'm very sorry, Officer Singer. But it takes two to do the tango and you should be sorry too!”
He threw his hands in the air. “Sorry for what?”
“Your impropriety! The real reason we didn't capture the rape fiend. If you hadn't gotten fresh…”
“You said you wanted to spoon!”
Anna let out a cry of indignation. “No. I said lovers would be crooning and spooning. I didn't intend…”
“Oh come on, Sherlock. You were batting your eyelashes so fast, I was afraid you'd fly away.”
Anna's cheeks went candy apple red, a deeper shade than the whole crowd of mocking policemen could inspire. With a shriek of exasperation, she turned and stomped toward the stable door.
A pair of ladies’ drawers sailed down from the hayloft and snagged on her bun, covering her face as she tried to open the gate. Anna screamed and swiped at them like they were wasps on attack. She knocked them to the ground, flung the gate open, and fled.
Joe called after her, laughing. “I'm not sorry!”
Truth be told, Anna wasn't either.
That evening, Anna met with her seamstress to be fitted for the best—no, the only—formal equestrian dinner gown in Los Angeles. She and Edgar had been invited to a dinner on horseback at the Raymond Hotel. Anna straddled a sawhorse brought into her bedroom for that purpose. Its four legs, balanced on towers of concrete block, raised Anna to horse height while her seamstress swathed her in a white satin that shimmered like starlight and would be the perfect contrast against her midnight-black Arabian. When mounted, the fabric spilled and rippled almost to the ground. If Anna should ever try to walk in it, it would drag behind her like a deflated hot air balloon.
The Secret Life of Anna Blanc Page 17
