American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  That was the night Mary first discovered opium.

  That was the night she sold her soul to hell.

  26

  UNDONE BY A FALLEN WOMAN

  A pity beyond all telling

  Is hid in the heart of love.

  W. B. YEATS

  Frank found Mary Lambert huddled under the overhang at Doc’s office.

  His eyes never left her as he dismounted Attila and tethered him. She was soaked through and shivering with every breath, for she didn’t have so much as a sweater around her thin shoulders.

  And she was crying. Crying like a lost child.

  Frank was unprepared entirely for the effect the woman had on him. The sight of her hit him like a blow to the stomach, shocking him out of his resolve to stay detached and throwing every bolt that held in place his deepest feelings. He would never have admitted it to a living soul, but the force of his reaction almost frightened him.

  He knelt beside her, rainwater streaming off his hat and face, and for an instant he had the oddest feeling that he was weeping with her.

  He shook his head to dispel the foolish notion, then put a gentle hand to her shoulder.

  “Mary,” he said, his voice raw with the swelling in his throat. “It’s all right now, Mary.”

  Her head came up, her eyes wide and frightened as she flinched and shrank from him.

  The idea that she was afraid of him turned in Frank like a jagged blade. “Don’t be afraid, Mary. I mean only to help you.”

  She was all in a tremble, shaking fiercely and hugging her arms to herself as if to keep from falling apart.

  Frank shrugged out of his raincoat and pulled it around her. It was heavy with rainwater, but it would at least keep the worst of the wind off her.

  She tried to say something but was shaking so hard the words wouldn’t come.

  “We need to get you inside. Doc’s door is locked, is it?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I know where he keeps the key.”

  Frank straightened and went to the door, running his hand over the lintel until he found the extra key to the office. He unlocked the door, then helped Mary to her feet and took her inside, tossing his hat behind him on the floor of the entryway.

  After settling her on a chair near the iron stove in the waiting room, he went to start a fire, working it and punching it up until he had a good, vigorous blaze going.

  One glance back at Mary, wrapped in his wet coat and still shaking, sent him in search of a towel and a blanket. He found both in the linen closet between the examining rooms and, after easing his wet coat from around her shoulders, did his best to dry her hair before wrapping her snugly in the blanket.

  This would help some, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from getting pneumonia. She needed a thorough change of clothes and something warm to drink.

  The entire time he was working with her, she said nothing, but merely watched him through those deep-set, sorrowful eyes. Finally, he stood back and tried to think. He didn’t know quite what to do with her. He could keep her here for a while, but sooner or later he’d have to report in, or the captain would set him to cleaning up horse droppings in the Bowery for the next week. She needed somewhere to go, somewhere she could stay.

  For now, he sat down in the chair next to her. “Is the fire helping?” he said.

  She nodded. Frank reached for her hands, and she jerked at his touch until he shook his head, saying, “You’re too cold, Mary. I mean only to warm you.”

  She relented, and Frank managed to keep his expression impassive as he took in the smallness of her hands, the fragility of her bones. He could have crushed them with his own big paws with no effort at all. No wonder she was afraid of him.

  He looked up to find her watching him, and when their eyes met she didn’t glance away but continued to search his gaze. Her eyes were filled with questions, and Frank realized then she wasn’t accustomed to having someone fuss over her or take care of her. The realization caused his heart to wrench, and he was surprised at the strength of his desire to protect her.

  She glanced away, but not before he saw that she was weeping again, large tears that tracked slowly down her face. This silent evidence of the depth of her despair nearly undid Frank. Overcome by a fierce desire to gather her into his arms and provide a fortress of protection for her, he shuddered.

  He had to stop this. The woman who was turning his mind to mush was an opium addict. A kept woman, a woman who had allowed herself to be used by the same man who meant to destroy Andrew Carmichael. And Frank’s one purpose where she was concerned was to elicit any information she could give him about Robert Warburton.

  Never in all the years he’d been on the force had Frank Donovan allowed personal feelings to interfere with his work. And he wasn’t about to start now.

  But he couldn’t ignore the rasp he heard in her breathing or the bluish tinge to her lips or the hard shaking that still wracked her small frame. He couldn’t question—or bully—a sick, shivering woman, could he?

  There was no help for it at present. He had to do what he could for her until she was up to another round of questions. So he disregarded the instinct hammering at him that he should release her hands now and go sit across the room from her. Indeed, he was still warming her hands between his own when Doc and Bethany Cole walked in.

  They stopped just inside the doorway and stood staring with bewilderment and disbelief.

  Frank had no doubt that the last thing the two doctors expected to find was himself and the miserable-looking Mary Lambert sitting by the fire in their office waiting room.

  He realized then that he was still holding Mary’s hands, and he dropped them as if her skin had suddenly scalded his own.

  “Frank?” Doc said, looking altogether baffled.

  Frank stood. “Doc,” he said, then inclined his head to Bethany Cole. “Dr. Cole.”

  Doc had already come across the room and was now standing over Mary, taking in her wretched appearance. “Mary? What’s happened? What are you doing here?”

  She sat staring at him but made no reply, instead looking to Frank.

  “The clinic turned her out,” Frank said. “Sent her packin’ in the rain, with no coat and nowhere else to go.”

  “What!” Dr. Cole now came to stand on the other side of Mary. “Oh, Mary, you’re absolutely drenched!”

  “Do you think you could find something dry for her to put on, Dr. Cole?” said Frank. “She’s chilled bad.”

  Doc took over then. “Bethany, please take her in back and get her as dry as you can. I’ll go upstairs and find a clean nightshirt for her.”

  “Can I do anything, Doc?” Frank asked, watching Bethany Cole help Mary from the waiting room.

  Doc turned and eyed him with a dark look. “You can tell me what’s going on! I’ll be surprised if the woman doesn’t have pneumonia. And look at you—you’re as soaked as she is! Where have you been, Frank?” He paused. “Tell me you’re not still harassing Mary about this Warburton matter.”

  Frank ignored the bit about his “harassing” Mary. “Well, it’s like this, Doc. As I said, that terror of a woman at the clinic—Miss Savage is her name, and a fitting one it is—set your Mary Lambert out today with nothing but the clothes on her back. And since I figured she had no business wanderin’ about in the rain, I’ve spent a good part of the day trying to find her. And where I found her was here—sittin’ out there by your door, as drenched as a sewer rat and pretty much undone.”

  He saw his friend wince. “This is my fault. I knew they wouldn’t keep her much longer, and I’ve been so—involved with my own affairs I neglected to find another place for her. This is my fault,” he repeated.

  “Seems to me it’s the fault of the clinic, Doc,” Frank pointed out. “And I’d say you’ve had enough to handle lately that you can’t be expected to remember everything. Will she be all right, do you think?”

  “Well, I need to examine her before I can answer that. But you can see
for yourself that her condition is anything but good.”

  Frank nodded. “I’ll just wait out here while you check her over.”

  Doc looked at him as if he’d lost his wits entirely. “You surely don’t mean to bother her yet tonight? I’ll not hear of it.”

  Frank hitched his thumbs in his belt loops and met Doc’s look straight on. “Beggin’ your pardon, Doc, but it’s not up to you to tell me when I can question her.”

  “Now see here, Frank. Mary Lambert is my patient, and I will tell you when you can see her. Besides,” he added, “you don’t intend to just talk with her. You mean to ply a sick woman with questions about something she had nothing to do with.”

  “I mean to question Warburton’s sick mistress,” Frank growled. “Now I’ll wait just as long as I need to. But I will wait.” He paused and let out a long breath. “Look, Doc, this woman has already told me plenty about the good Reverend. But I know in my gut she’s holdin’ back more than what she’s told me—and I intend to get it all. I’m convinced this woman is the best chance we’ve got of stopping Warburton and his dirty tricks.”

  He stopped, then put a hand to the other man’s shoulder. “In case you haven’t noticed, Doc,” he said, lowering his voice, “things are getting worse for you by the day. I don’t see too many patients in your office anymore, and I hear plenty of talk around the streets that isn’t exactly favorable to your reputation, if you take my point. And so you see why I need to know everything Mary Lambert knows about Warburton. If I’m right, I can fix him so he won’t be doin’ you any more damage.”

  Frank could see the other man fighting with the urge to tell him to get out—and he also knew the instant Doc’s common sense won the battle.

  “All right,” Doc said, clenching his swollen knuckles into fists. “If I decide that Mary’s up to speaking with you, you can talk with her. Briefly. But if she’s simply too weak—or, worse, yet, if I find evidence of pneumonia—you’re leaving, Frank. I mean it. I won’t let you badger her if she’s as ill as I think she might be.”

  Frank had no intention of “badgering” the frail Mary Lambert. All his better instincts clamored for him to protect her, not mistreat her. But he merely grinned and said, “I get the picture, Doc. For the time being, you’re the boss.”

  Doc made a small sound of disgust, and on the way out the door muttered something about a “hardheaded Irishman.”

  “Sour-tempered Scot,” Frank fired at his back.

  Doc kept on going, as if he hadn’t heard, but Frank knew he had.

  More than an hour later, Doc having given his reluctant consent, Frank again found himself in the role of Mary Lambert’s merciless interrogator. He had all he could do not to back off entirely from the woman. He found the whole process loathsome, and the longer he went at her with his questions, the more he disgusted himself. But he sensed that he finally had her where he wanted her, ready to spill everything she knew about that snake, Warburton, and so he would continue his unrelenting drive for the truth.

  After examining Mary, Doc had taken her upstairs to the sofa in his apartment, where he’d wrapped her snugly in blankets. A fire was crackling and hissing in the grate. Indeed, the room was so warm that Frank longed to stick his head out the window and cool himself off in the rain.

  The woman was weeping again, and Frank thought he would strangle on the sight of her misery and humiliation. Instead, he bent over her, swallowing down his own shame and self-disgust as he repeated his last question, the one that had triggered this fresh bout of tears.

  “You told me he was a terrible man, Mary, but you haven’t told me why. I need to know more than that. There’s an entire host of terrible men walking about town, but without evidence as to what they’ve done, there’s no stopping their mischief. What is it about a man of the cloth that would make you say such a thing?”

  She stared up at him, the blankets tucked all the way up to her chin, looking more like a girl than a grown woman.

  He yanked himself back to reality by remembering where she had been and what she had done. Mary Lambert was no innocent child.

  “Mary?” he prompted her.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s not a man of the cloth,” she said in little more than a whisper.

  Frank didn’t move. “What?”

  Mary opened her eyes and looked at him. Frank bent lower.

  “I said he isn’t really a man of the cloth. He…a long time ago, he was a kind of…salesman. Then, later he took up with a…with one of those…tent healers. The ones that travel around the country holding revivals. Robert used to laugh about it, how he got his preacher training in the back of a wagon and the front of a tent.”

  Frank straightened, his mind racing. “He’s a charlatan, then? A confidence trickster,” he said quietly, more to himself than to Mary.

  She nodded.

  Frank imagined he felt like a man might feel who’d been holding his breath under water and suddenly came up for a lifesaving gulp of air.

  “You’re sure of this?”

  Again she nodded. “He seemed…proud of the fact. He swore me to secrecy, of course, warned me not to tell even the children. But I believe he liked to think he’d pulled off something clever.”

  “All these years,” Frank said, his mind scrambling to take in what he’d just heard.

  He stood looking down at Mary Lambert, who had turned her face away from him. “How could he pull it off as slick as he did? The man is famous—practically a saint in this town. How’d he fool so many for so long?”

  She shook her head. “To hear him tell it, it wasn’t all that difficult. And I told you, he’d been a salesman. He has…a way with people. He could make you believe anything he wanted you to…”

  Her voice broke, and Frank felt a pang of sympathy. This might be good news for him, but Robert Warburton had been nothing but bad news for her.

  She drew in a breath. “Robert’s a smart man. Educated. He used to read the newspapers, and he could read the entire paper in the time it would take me to read one page. And he remembers everything.” She paused, her voice quaking when she repeated, “He’s very smart.”

  The bitterness in her voice caught Frank’s attention. Looking at the woman on the sofa, her eyes again glazed with tears, her body so slight as to almost disappear inside the blankets, Frank saw something more than the humiliation of a woman taken in and used by a consummate deceiver. Something more dreadful had happened to her than falling victim to a corrupt man and an addictive narcotic. It was as if something had snuffed the light from Mary Lambert, had battered her and bruised her until there was nothing left in her except shadows. She was…fading. Draining away.

  “What else, Mary?” he said, dropping down to his knees beside the couch.

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

  Frank touched her hair. Something like pity, but stronger, more personal, gripped him, and he had to fight the impulse to gather her to himself and try to dispel her shadows with his own life force.

  Deliberately, he softened his voice. “Mary,” he said. “You must tell me.”

  She turned to look at him. “You said before…you said that Robert is making bad trouble for Dr. Carmichael.”

  Frank nodded. “I know he is, but I have to prove it. If there’s anything else you can tell me—anything—I need to know what it is, Mary.”

  She closed her eyes. “I can’t.” Her voice was hoarse.

  “Please, Mary. Doc—Dr. Carmichael has been good to you, hasn’t he?”

  She nodded, the tears now spilling from her eyes.

  “He’s a good man, Mary,” said Frank, reaching to stroke her hair away from her face. “You know that. He’s…more a man of God than most preachers, I’m thinking. I’m proud to call him my friend. And Warburton is close to ruining him.”

  He told her everything that had happened, from the vandalism of Doc’s office to the letters in the papers, the rumors, the scandal, the outright shunning of Doc by some of
his colleagues and many of his patients.

  Her expression was stricken. “No.” The word caught like a sob.

  “Oh, I mean to stop him, Mary. I will stop him. And I can with your help. But you have to tell me everything. Everything you know about him. Anything I can use.”

  “I can’t.” She sounded as if she were choking on the words. “I can’t!”

  She looked up. Frank followed the direction of her gaze to the doorway, where Doc and Dr. Cole had come to stand like silent sentinels.

  Mary looked at them for a long time, then turned back to Frank. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “But…I’ll tell Dr. Cole.”

  Frank held her gaze, then slowly nodded and got to his feet and crossed the room. “She has something she won’t tell me,” he said to Bethany Cole, who glanced toward Mary. “She says she can’t tell me. But she’ll tell you.”

  Dr. Cole looked at him, then back at Mary. She seemed uncertain, hesitant.

  Frank put a hand to her arm. “Whatever she means to tell you, it’s almost sure to be…ugly. But I have to know what it is. No matter what she tells you, you’ll have to tell me. For Doc’s sake.”

  Bethany Cole searched his eyes, and for the first time since he’d met the woman, Frank saw something besides dislike or irritation at him. Finally she nodded, and Frank dropped his hand away from her arm. She started toward the couch, then turned back.

  “Andrew,” she said evenly, “you and Sergeant Donovan will have to leave the room now. I want to speak with Mary.”

  27

  THE MANY FACES OF STRENGTH

  There is no healing for one who has known no pain.

  There is no darkness for one who chooses to in the light remain.

  ANONYMOUS

  More than an hour later, Andrew Carmichael was still sitting in the kitchen of his flat with Frank Donovan.

  Darkness had drawn in on the night, and a kerosene lamp flickered on the table between them. Frank was clearly growing more and more impatient with the waiting. He would sit for a while, then get up and pace the room. Andrew had lost count of how many cups of tea they’d consumed between them.