After the girl had eaten the cake and was on her second cup of tea, Kate said, “Now what can I do for you?”
“I have questions to ask,” Annie said. “It’s some of those questions that isn’t real.” She frowned, thinking. “Now what do you call them?”
“Winifred?” Kate said.
“Hypothetical questions,” the parlor maid supplied.
“Yeah, that’s it, Winifred,” Annie said. “How did you know?”
“Winifred was once a librarian,” Kate said. “She’s just a mine of information.”
“Well, like I said, they’re . . . hypothetical questions,” Annie said.
“And hopefully I’ll be able to give you hypothetical answers,” Kate said.
Annie sat back in her chair, lifted a leg, and clasped her knee in both hands, a most unladylike posture Kate thought.
“Suppose there were two young sisters living with their father on a farm in Kansas, the younger of them very pretty,” Annie said. “Now suppose that one fine day four drovers, all of them drunk, were riding back to Texas on the Chisholm trail from Abilene and stopped by the farm to water their horses. Are you with me so far, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
“Yes, Mrs. Butler, I believe I am,” Kate said.
“This is all hypothetical, you understand,” Annie said.
“Yes, of course it is,” Kate said.
Annie said, “Let’s say that the drunk cowboys decided to have some fun and began to molest the sisters, and their father came to their rescue, unarmed. One of the cowboys, a big man who acted as their leader, shot the farmer dead and then all four of them repeatedly raped the sisters.”
“How awful,” Kate said.
“Yes, wasn’t it,” Annie said. “But worse was to come. Suppose that after the punchers left the younger sister found her father’s shotgun, placed the muzzles under her chin, and managed to pull both triggers with her toes. She was a sensitive girl and couldn’t bear the shame,” Annie said.
“The shame was with the cowboys, not the girl,” Kate said. “I would have hanged all four of them if I’d been there.”
“You would, hypothetically of course?” Annie said.
“I would have strung them up without hesitation,” Kate said.
“No trial.”
“The testimony and physical state of the surviving sister would have been enough for me,” Kate said. She remembered her own sister and a different time and place and all the hurt came back, like sharp thorns thrust into her heart. She managed a smile. “That is, had all this really happened.”
“Now I ask you this, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Annie said. “Would the surviving sister be justified in seeking revenge on the rapists?”
“Had it been my sister on that Kansas farm I would have hounded her rapists to the ends of the earth if need be,” Kate said.
“And you would have hanged them?”
Kate smiled. “Yes, I would. After I gelded them.”
Annie, in that olden time I did not geld the rapists I killed, but I did seek revenge, and I found it in a stinking New York slum.
Annie opened her mouth to speak again, but Kate said, “Let me finish this for you, Mrs. Butler. We’ll suppose that the older sister could not bear to stay on at the farm, so she sold it and then somehow she learned how to use a knife—”
“And suppose her teacher was Armand Pierre de Polignac the famous Baton Rouge knife fighter, who’d taken a fatherly interest in the girl,” Annie said.
“And then she got employment throwing knives in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and discovered that three of the four rapists she sought also worked with the show,” Kate said. “She killed all three and scalped them to throw suspicion on one of Bill’s Indian performers.” Kate smiled. “That’s how it could have happened.”
Annie helped herself to another piece of cake and said, “Vanilla flavor. This is a welcome change from Random Clark’s bear sign.” She chewed for a few moments and then said, “How would you judge such a girl, Mrs. Kerrigan?”
“I would not judge her,” Kate said. “I am in no position to cast the first stone. But I would advise her to turn herself in to the Rangers and stand trial for murder. I’d tell the girl that I would do everything I can for her and that I doubt there’s a jury in Texas that would convict her. More tea?”
Annie shook her head and said, “It’s thin,” she said. “Standing trial is always a gamble.”
“Let’s cut right to the chase,” Kate said. “There’s something I must know . . . did Ingrid Hult kill the three cowboys and Slide McKenzie?”
“I told you this was all hypothetical,” Annie said. “I never mentioned Ingrid’s name.”
“Did she kill them?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Annie rose to her feet. “I must go.”
“Was it Jim Benson? Are he and Ingrid lovers?”
“How did—”
“I know? I don’t. But Benson is closer to Ingrid than anyone else. She throws knives at him, for heaven’s sake. It makes sense he’d help her, and if he loves her, that he’d kill for her.”
Annie collapsed into the chair. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t hypothetical, it’s the truth, Mrs. Kerrigan,” she said. “Ingrid was barely out of childhood herself when she tracked one of the rapists to the Cimarron River. His name was Dooly Baker, and she caught up with him at a saloon in a town called Post Oak. She killed Baker at the bar and Slide McKenzie, who was bartending, saw her do it. He threatened to tell Mr. Cody about the killing, and Ingrid was afraid Bill would hand her over to the Rangers, who would have sent her to Kansas to stand trial for murder.”
“More likely the Rangers would investigate the deaths of the three cowboys,” Kate said. “Miss Hult could face trial in Texas. Either way, Slide McKenzie had to die. Miss Hult did kill the cowboys, did she not?”
“Yes. And Jim Benson shot McKenzie. It was a justified killing.”
“Murder is murder, justified or not,” Kate said.
“That’s exactly what McKenzie told Ingrid, Mrs. Kerrigan,” Annie said, her eyes accusing. “Strange, that.”
Kate accepted the barb without comment. What would her killing of the rapists in the Five Points be called? Justified? Of course it was.
Then Annie said, “What will you do?”
“Mrs. Butler, I’m not a officer of the law. The actions of Ingrid Hult have not harmed me or mine and therefore my answer is that I’ll do nothing. Unless . . .”
“Unless what?” Annie said, suspicion clouding her face.
“Unless the Indian Cloud Passing is in danger of being blamed for crimes he did not commit,” Kate said. “If he faces a mustang court and a certain lynching, then I will do everything I can to stop it. Is my meaning clear?”
“Very clear,” Annie said. “Ingrid will not let the Indian hang.”
“Then I’m glad to hear that,” Kate said. “I strongly advise her to confess to the murders of the four rapists and take her chances in court. And Jim Benson should do the same.”
Annie nodded and then stood. “I’ll tell her what you said.”
“Mrs. Butler, why have you taken such an interest in all this?” Kate said.
“Two reasons, Mrs. Kerrigan. The first is because I am Ingrid’s friend. And the second is because I’m a woman, and rape is every woman’s concern.”
Kate rose and extended her hand. “You must come for tea again soon. Next time we’ll have sponge cake.”
* * *
After Annie Oakley left, Kate realized she could not condemn Ingrid Hult for doing something she herself had done . . . all those years ago in New York in that murderous, disease-ridden, crime-infested hell on earth they called the Five Points. It was the place where she’d spent the early years of her life and where she’d killed three men when she was just sixteen years old.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Shannon Cotter, Kate’s fourteen-year-old sister, was a willful, intelligent girl with a love of the fiddle music she often heard spilling
from the saloons and the works of Sir Walter Scott, represented by a couple of volumes her father had not as yet consigned to a pawnbroker. Not as beautiful as Kate, she was pretty nonetheless with the bright blue eyes and blond hair of a Nordic ancestor somewhere back in the mists of Irish history.
But what drew the ogling attention of young men was her fully developed body, especially her bust that was large and high, and the lovely straight line of her slender back.
Shannon, eager to escape the gloomy confines of the tenements, often strolled the streets alone, trusting to daylight and the constant crowds jostling for space on the sidewalks.
But then came that fateful afternoon when a brewers’ dray, drawn by two shire horses, accidentally mounted the sidewalk in front of her, and Shannon had to jump into an open doorway to avoid getting crushed.
“Watch where you’re going!” the driver yelled at her. “Damned daydreamer!”
Shannon was about to yell back that it was his fault, not hers, when a large, hairy forearm clamped around her throat.
The man dragged her backward into a dark stairwell and said, “Shut your trap, girlie, and do as you’re told or I’ll rip your heart out.”
It was an Irish accent, but born of the Five Points, not the home country.
“She’s prime, Bill,” another man said. “Ain’t she prime?”
“A beauty, lay to that,” said a second, talking through a grin.
Both were Americans, and sounded like seamen.
“Get her upstairs, Bill,” the first speaker said. “And ye can have the first go.”
The man called Bill dragged Shannon up stone steps that led to the upper floors of what was an abandoned warehouse.
The stairwell smelled of piss and stale vomit and was so dark the girl couldn’t see her abductors.
But she knew what was in store for her, and she screamed.
Who in the Five Points ever paid heed to a woman’s screams, a sound as familiar as the wails of hungry children or the chirp of a house sparrow?
The men hauled the terrified girl into a top-floor room. Its windows were boarded, and the room was as black as ink.
One man lit a match and touched fire to a candle stub stuck onto a chipped blue plate that lay on the floor. A couple of rats scuttled from the light as Shannon was thrown onto a pile of rags in the corner.
By the feeble, guttering glow of the candle, Shannon Cotter was raped.
* * *
Later, as the three men snored, exhausted by whiskey and rape, Shannon hurriedly buttoned herself into what remained of her dress and ran into the street.
Her cries for help went unheeded.
What the passersby saw was just another whore beaten by her pimp.
It was no concern of theirs, or the law.
* * *
When Shannon got home she managed to contrive a story to explain the ruination of her dress and the bruising and abrasion of her body.
“A man tried to rob me,” she said. “I fought him off, but he tore my dress and threw me to the ground.”
Her father, Patrick Cotter, accepted the explanation, an everyday occurrence in the Five Points, but Kate looked into her sister’s wounded eyes and saw something much more serious.
She later took Shannon aside and said, “Now tell me the truth about what happened.”
It took a while before Shannon spoke again.
“Three men,” she said.
She threw herself into Kate’s arms.
“Two of them . . . they dragged me into a room and . . . and . . .”
Kate said nothing.
She hugged her sister close, her beautiful face like stone.
“Name them,” she said.
Shannon drew back and looked at her sister in surprise.
She’d never before heard ice in Kate’s voice or seen the green flame in her eyes.
“One was called Bill, I think he was Irish. Another was Tom and I didn’t hear the third man’s name.”
“Tell nothing of this to Father.” Kate said. “He’s a good man, but he’s not cut out for this kind of work.”
“Kate, what kind of work?” Shannon said.
“The work that now falls to me,” Kate said.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Two days later, walking through the rain, Kate sought out Sam Sullivan.
The big Irish cop wore a rain cape and stood in the doorway of Nathan Goldberg’s used clothing store on Swan Street.
“Have you come to fight me, then, Kate Cotter?” he said, smiling.
The girl did not smile back, but she stepped beside him.
“I need your help, Constable Sullivan,” Kate said.
“Oh, it’s Constable Sullivan, is it? You must need my help real bad.”
“Three men who run together, probably sailors at one time.”
“Now why would you be seeking out men like that, Kate?”
The girl ignored him. “One is called Bill, an Irishman, another is Tom. I don’t know the third one’s name,” she said.
“Why are you asking me this?” Sullivan said.
“It’s important it is that I find those three men,” Kate said.
“Under the awning here with you,” the big cop said.
For a few moments he stared at the rain making startled Vs all over the cobbled street, his face frowning in concentration.
Then he said, “The only three men I can think of are Bill Wooten, Tom Van Meter, and Chauncey Upsell. They were sailors on the same ship and now they run together, whore together, and, if the truth be known, roll drunks together.”
Sullivan turned his attention to Kate and said, “Come to think of it, I saw Chauncey and Bill Wooten yesterday, and they were scratched up some.”
Shannon had told Kate about her struggles as she tried to fight off her attackers and she knew she had found her men.
“Where do they drink?” she said.
“Always at the Cross Keys on Kelley Street.”
Without turning, he said, “What happened, Kate?”
The girl knew that now was the time for the truth.
“Two of them—I believe, Wooten and Upsell—raped my sister. Van Meter was drunk, but he tried.”
“Oh my God, that’s a terrible thing to hear,” the cop said. “I’ll see if I can get a detective interested in the case,” the cop said. “But I warn you now, a rape in the the Five Points usually goes without investigation. I’ll see what I can do myself, but that will be little enough. I don’t have the authority a detective has, and my orders are to walk the beat, keep the peace, and nothing else.”
Kate hesitated, fearing that Sullivan might suspect something, but she had another question to ask.
“Is Ben Hollister still in town?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and all the saints in Heaven, girl, what do you want with such a man?” Sullivan said. “Is this your day to speak of ruffians?”
“He’s a friend of my father’s,” Kate said, which was true.
Hollister was a gambler who’d worked the Mississippi steamboats, then fell on hard times. He used to visit Kate’s father regularly since they both had an interest in literature, but she hadn’t seen him in several months.
It was said that Hollister was a notorious dueler back in the old days and had killed eight men, but her pa said that number was probably exaggerated.
“Yes, he’s still in the Five Points,” Sullivan said. “He firmly believes he can outrun a losing streak that started years ago, but of course he can’t. The toughs and gangs around here leave him alone, though. He has a reputation as a bad man to tangle with.”
The cop stared hard at Kate. “And a bad man for you to tangle with,” he said.
“My pa wants me to return one of Mr. Hollister’s books,” Kate said. “That’s all.”
“He still lives in Birmingham Lane, but bring the book to me, and I’ll give it to him,” Sullivan said. “The lane isn’t a safe place for a young lady.”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” Kate sai
d. “And you’ll let me know . . .”
“If I can get a detective to take the case? Yes, I will.”
The girl whispered her thanks and stepped into the rain.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Birmingham Lane was a narrow alley between four-story tenements, the upper apartments accessed by outside, rickety wooden stairs. It was a foul, impoverished place where pigs still roamed and its people lived lives of poverty and desperation.
As Kate Kerrigan remembered, Ben Hollister lived on the ground floor, and his door was splintered by three bullet holes, now healing over thanks to time and weather.
Kate recalled her father telling her that Hollister had killed a man attempting to steal his brass doorknocker. The three holes made a clover shape that could be covered by a silver dollar and bore eloquent testimony to the gambler’s aim and temperament.
Her heart thudding in her chest, Kate used the polished knocker, and a moment later a man’s voice reached her from inside.
“Go away.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Kate said. “This is Kate Cotter, and I demand to speak with you.”
“Patrick’s daughter?”
“As ever was.”
“Hold on a minute.”
Locks clicked and chains rattled, then the door opened and a tall, slender man, somewhere on the far side of forty, stood smiling at her.
With considerable Southern charm he bowed Kate into a small parlor, sparsely furnished but swept and clean. A hand-tinted lithograph of a Mississippi steamboat hung over the fireplace.
“I apologize that my present circumstances do not allow me to properly welcome such an honored guest,” Hollister said. His clothes were much patched but had once been expensive and spoke of people and places beyond Kate’s imagining. “What can I do for you, Miss Cotter? Consider me your obedient servant.”
“I need to borrow a pistol, Mr. Hollister,” she said. “I know you have such a thing.”
“Good Lord, young lady, whatever for? What a most singular request.”
Kate recalled a phrase she’d once read in a newspaper, one that Hollister would understand. “It’s an affair of honor, sir,” she said.
Hollister was silent for few moments, then said, “I suspect that this is an affaire du coeur,” Hollister said. “But it is none of my concern and I will not pursue the matter.”
Hate Thy Neighbor Page 21
