by C. S. Poe
“Winter is retired Army,” Neil countered. “Does that mean he’s also mentally and emotionally capable of killing a teenager?”
“Do you not see how all these clues connect? Neil, come on! Calvin won’t look any further into it, not until he gets Casey’s school transcript.”
“He’s right to do that,” Neil said.
“For fuck’s sake!”
“I have to go,” Neil said. “I’m on my way to a crime scene.”
“Is it a brownstone on the Upper East Side with a red door?”
“Do you have a police scanner?”
“Yeah. About six foot three, dark suit, lots of freckles—”
“I get it.”
“How long are you going to be?” I asked.
“Why’s it matter?”
I moved to the front door of the building. “It doesn’t matter. Call me when you’re out of there, will you?”
Neil let out a breath. “Don’t do anything illegal until then, okay?”
“I’ll try my best.” I ended the call and stepped inside.
Being in a college atmosphere after nearly a decade was… odd. Especially being surrounded by a lot of young-somethings, who were far more hip-looking and put-together than I was now, let alone when I’d been their age. Memories resurfaced as I peered around the lobby. I’d met my second boyfriend—Brian—in this building. On the stairs, actually. I’d tripped and done the classic flail-and-fall, dropping all my books and a take-out container of chicken fingers. He’d helped me collect everything and bought me a new lunch. It was one of the only nice acts he’d done for me in the year and a half we dated. But that was neither here nor there.
I went to the security desk and set my stack of books on the counter. “Sebastian Snow for Dr. Bill Freidman.”
The guard, sitting in front of a few security monitors and a computer screen, began clicking as he searched the daily visitor log. “May I see your ID, please?”
“Sure.” I took out my nondriver’s license from my wallet and handed it over.
He did the look at me, look at the bad-hair-day photo, back to me, then the photo one last time for good measure before returning it. “Sign in here,” he said, passing me a clipboard.
I did as instructed, stuck a visitor sticker to my shirt, and collected my books.
“Do you need directions?” he asked.
“Ah, no—he’s still on the fourth floor, right?”
“419B, that’s right.”
“Thanks,” I answered, then went to the elevator. There was a sleepy-looking, summer-classes crowd waiting outside the doors—earphones in, coffees in hand, and some texting one-handed quicker than I could while utilizing both thumbs.
Not worth the wait. I could do with the walk anyway.
I turned around, went across the lobby, and hoofed it up the stairs. At the second floor, I remembered how steep the steps were and why I’d always had a tendency to trip. By the third, I was out of breath. Upon reaching the landing of the fourth floor, I just hated myself entirely. I walked through a small sitting area, went down a tight hallway, passed the office in question, then walked backward a few steps. The books felt like boat anchors in my arms. I shifted them and knocked on the door.
“Come in” was the muffled response.
I turned the knob and poked my head inside. “Dr. Freidman?”
I took a few steps into the tiny office. It was stacked to the gills with movies. The walls from floor to ceiling housed a collection of films on both DVD and VHS that was more impressive than the school’s own film library. And in precarious piles here, there, and nearly everywhere were canisters of footage on 16- and 35mm, media players, and projector parts. Near the window was a desk cluttered with stacks of paperwork and a hunched-over professor who didn’t appear to have aged a single day since my last encounter with him. And behind his chair were shelves so heavily loaded with books, they were leaning ever so slightly to the right.
Dr. Bill Freidman glanced up from his computer. He still wore the little rounded spectacles I remembered from school, and had the same salt-and-pepper beard. “Mr. Snow.” He smiled a little and leaned back in his chair. “Film History. Theory and Criticism. First row, sunglasses, magnifying glass, and a know-it-all attitude.”
I sat down across from him.
“Now I remember you,” Freidman concluded.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” I answered. “How’re your summer courses?”
“The same as every year. Fresh young minds eager to learn, argue, and sleep during lectures. You said you had footage in connection to William Dickson?”
Straight to the point, as always.
“I—did, yeah.”
Freidman picked up a pen and rolled it between his fingers. “Past tense?”
“It’s a long story that involves a break-in, murder, and being robbed on the subway.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Are you writing a crime thriller or something?”
“No, just trying to get through life one day at a time.”
Freidman never did find me very funny.
I retrieved my phone, brought up the photo of who might possibly be John McCormack, and offered it. “Does this man look familiar to you?”
Freidman took the phone, held it at a distance, and studied the screen. “Yes.”
My pulse leaped to my throat. “Is he John McCormack?”
Freidman set the cell down and eyed my books. “You brought From Edison to Hollywood with you?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” I held it out.
He took the book and flipped through the pages. “If you’d done a bit of research first, you wouldn’t have needed to come here at all.” He stopped and turned the hefty textbook around. “The original Kinetoscope crew, 1892.”
I leaned over the desktop and squinted, studying the small photo and the faces of men who I’d have probably never recognized on my own. “Which is him?”
“Second to the right.”
Where, where—ah-ha! Okay, he definitely wasn’t pencil-thin like Kid John from the mugshot, but he didn’t appear to have those glorious muttonchops yet either. This photo would have been seven years after his escape from Sing Sing, and three years before murdering the man on film—
“His name is Johnathan Cormack,” Freidman said. “The first written account of him working for Edison is in November of 1891.”
“When did he quit?”
“1896.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Edison’s general manager ousted him.”
I tapped my chin absently. “Johnathan Cormack is awfully similar to John McCormack.”
Freidman shrugged.
I opened Calvin’s tablet and showed him the mugshot. “I think this is him. I think he changed his name before working for Edison.”
Freidman stared at the photo for a long moment. He eventually sighed. “I suppose that could be him. By 1896, there were some unsavory rumors about Cormack’s past—that he’d done time for thievery and such. That’s why he was given the boot.”
“Bad for Edison’s reputation,” I concluded.
“That’s right.”
I shut the tablet case. “I need help identifying two more men on the team. One who may have been named Tom. And another who was killed—murdered—in 1894.”
“There was a Tom,” Freidman agreed. “No known photos, though. He was only on the crew for about a year and a half.”
“Are you sure?”
He gave me a long, hard stare, then raised the textbook. “I wrote this book, Mr. Snow. What do you think?”
“Sorry.”
Freidman slowly leaned back in his chair once more. “Tom Howard quit in late 1894 to open a Kinetoscope parlor here in the city. But after buying the machine and collecting various films, he went bankrupt and never saw his business to fruition.”
That… explained why an “assistant named Tom” had a Kinetoscope and all these rare films in his possession, before they were eventually sold to the now-murder
ed collector, James Robert. So perhaps, when Tom quit to cash in on the latest entertainment craze sweeping the nation, he took the compromising movie footage with him. He was the one who passed on the story that it had to stay hidden to protect Dickson…. But if that were the case, Tom would have to have known about the murder too.
Because that’s what this all had to be about. The man who’d been murdered was somehow a threat to Dickson. Perhaps John McCormack here, already guilty of killing the servant in the case that sent him to prison, murdered not because he and the other man had a beef with each other, but because doing so was meant to… protect Dickson? And in an attempt to help cover up the death, Assistant Tom took the test reels with compromising footage on them, and left Edison’s company permanently.
“Is that A Study in Silence you have?” Freidman asked. He leaned over the desk a bit to stare at my pile.
“Yes, sir.”
“Which edition?”
I opened the book and held it close to my face as I scanned the copyright and publisher information. “Second edition.”
Freidman tutted under his breath. His chair creaked as he spun around in order to study his bookshelf. “We use the third edition in class now.”
“Have there been significant additions to the content?”
“Enough that I don’t want students missing out.” He plucked the massive book from a lower shelf, then set it on his desk and sifted through the pages. “There was a death on the crew,” he said after a long bout of silence. “Unfortunately so many details were swept under the rug that I fear we might never know the truth of the matter.”
I leaned forward in my chair.
“Ah, here.” Freidman tapped a page. “It’s suspected the man was one Albert Martin.”
I patted my pockets, swore, and grabbed a sticky note and spare pen from Freidman’s desk without asking permission. I jotted the name down as he ignored me and kept speaking.
“I suspect the identity is correct, but scholars have never been able to confirm his name beyond a shadow of a doubt. As for murder—yes, that might have been his unfortunate fate. Personal documents from a few of the original Kinetoscope crew members suggest this man—Albert—was highly suspicious of Dickson. There was attempted sabotage at one point in the inventing process as well. By the accounts we’ve unearthed, this fellow, if it is indeed Albert Martin, did not get along well with his teammates.”
I stopped writing. The story Greta had told me over beers and pretzels came to mind. About something—or someone—putting Edison’s general manager on the scent of Dickson. He’d been removed by 1895 because he’d been moonlighting for other companies. Could the rat have been Albert, and he’d gotten evidence of Dickson’s betrayal to the company before being silenced in the most horrific way possible? If so, the wheels would have been put into motion, and even his death couldn’t have kept Dickson’s job safe.
I looked at Freidman. “I had a piece of test footage that shows John McCormack killing another man in 1894.”
Freidman’s eyes grew a little.
“Could Albert Martin be that man?”
“P-perhaps so,” he stuttered in a sort of astonished tone.
“Could Albert have snitched to the general manager about Dickson’s moonlighting, just before his death?”
“It’s highly probable snitching is what got Albert killed. But moonlighting wasn’t the only factor in Dickson’s removal from the company,” Freidman replied.
“Then, what? Did Albert ever make a threat against Dickson’s life? Something that would have provoked the other teammates into protecting him?”
Freidman’s expression grew more serious as he shook his head. “No, no. It wasn’t Dickson’s life that’d been threatened. There are personal accounts that indicate a dispute over the ownership of now long-lost prototype drafts. Dickson designed a number of inventions that would have put Edison’s fledging film company out of business. He drafted these new machines while employed for Edison. So Gilmore, the general manager, threatened Dickson to hand them over under the claim that the inventions belonged to the company.”
“But he didn’t?” I asked.
“No,” Freidman answered. “And Dickson left in 1895.” He shut the book with enough force to make me jump. “Had Dickson built those inventions and sold them, there’s little doubt Edison would have gone after him legally in order to protect his own interests.”
“It would have destroyed Dickson,” I said, piecing my thoughts together out loud. “He wouldn’t have stood a chance against someone like Thomas Edison. His finances and reputation would have been ruined.”
Freidman nodded. “Dickson left America. The drafts never resurfaced in Europe.”
As long as the Kinetoscope and footage were kept hidden, Dickson would be okay.
“One of the teammates hid the documents, then,” I concluded. “Dickson would never be celebrated for the genius that he was while alive—”
Freidman smiled a little. “But Edison would never get the credit for those inventions.”
Chapter Fifteen
LEE WAS after the drafts.
Obsolete now they might be, but early schematics of countless inventions that would have otherwise altered the course of the entertainment industry as we know it today would be worth an unprecedented amount at auction. Especially when presented in front of the right audience… like the elite of Hollywood.
And Lee taught at a film academy. While he certainly was no doctor of cinema history, who could say he hadn’t learned of the Dickson stories on his own? And if the murdered Casey Robert had been one of Lee’s students, Casey could have easily told his teacher that his grandfather owned a mysterious Kinetoscope and footage.
The relentless attempts at procuring the three reels made me believe Lee felt they were necessary clues that would lead him to the location of the lost drafts. And maybe he would have figured out where they were hidden after watching the test movies.
But while Lee Straus might have been more handsome than me and stronger than me… he was not smarter than me.
The Emporium was still shuttered after having lost the front window for the second time in the same year. I bent down, set my books carefully on the sidewalk, then unlocked the metal gate. I hoisted it up and eyed the exceptionally classy plywood that my new landlord had put up while the police had been investigating yesterday.
He’d thought to spray paint “Snow’s” across it in big blocky letters.
Real charming, but I’d have to deal with it later.
One crisis at a time.
“Yoo-hoo!”
I turned to my left. Beth was waving from where she stood at the rear of an open delivery truck.
“Morning,” I called, waving in return.
“What’re you doing here?” Beth asked before signing the electronic scanner our mutual delivery woman, Jamie, held out to her.
“I work here,” I answered.
“Smart-ass. Isn’t it Calvin’s birthday?”
“He’s working too,” I called.
“It’s your fault, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not technically.”
Jamie jumped off the back of her Citywide Delivery truck and walked down the sidewalk toward me. “Are you open?”
“No.”
“I’ve got a package for you. Want me to scan it as recipient not available—come back tomorrow?”
“Who’s it from?” I countered.
“You think I’ve got that entire truck memorized?” she asked in a falsely annoyed tone, jutting a thumb over her shoulder.
“I know you do,” I replied. “This entire block would go to hell in a handbasket if they put you on a different route.”
Jamie smiled at that. “You’re such a sweetheart, Sebastian. Last name on the package is Robert.”
I dropped my keys. “James Robert?”
“Yeah, I think that was it.”
“I’ll sign for it,” I quickly answered. I bent down and retrieved my keys as Ja
mie returned to the truck.
What could he have sent me? Mr. Robert would have had to get the package prepared and dropped off sometime between 2:00 p.m., when I left his house, and 6:00 p.m., when Citywide’s overnight delivery cutoff was. I supposed he’d given up on Barnes Brothers Shipping after the Kinetoscope snafu. Anyway, now I knew there had been a window of roughly fifteen hours in which to kill him. Good thing he’d mailed this package after I left, and I had multiple alibis to account for my whereabouts the rest of the afternoon and into the night. Otherwise the NYPD would be breathing down my neck about now.
I unlocked the front door and punched in the security code. I grabbed the books and tablet from the sidewalk and stepped into the dim shop. The place was a mess. Forget going to the fair before it ended that afternoon—I was going to be busy sprucing up after the shooting and police investigation. I set my things down on the nearest display table and returned to the doorway to meet Jamie.
I signed for the package, then exchanged her scanner for the box. “Thanks a lot.”
“No problem. Tell your boyfriend I said happy birthday.”
“Oh. Thanks, I will.”
Jamie clipped the scanner to her belt and left the threshold.
I shut and locked the door, walked across the shop, and put the box on the counter. I stood there for a good minute eyeing it, before I got up the nerve to grab a pair of scissors. Halfway through slicing the packing tape, my cell rang and I jumped.
I grabbed it from my pocket and answered. “I almost stabbed myself with scissors!”
“I’ll try harder next time,” Neil said with a serious tone.
“You know,” I began, finishing with the tape before putting the deadly weapon to one side, “I almost like this new ‘fuck it’ relationship we seem to be nurturing.”
“Yeah. Me too. Clearly I need to make some friends.”
“Have you finished at Mr. Robert’s house already?” I pushed the flaps of the box back and hesitantly dug into the packing peanuts. I pulled out— “An egg beater?”
“What?” Neil asked.
I stared at the rotary kitchen tool before setting it aside. “Huh? No, nothing.”
“I left early.”
