by Caleb Carr
“Perhaps that’s the point,” the Doctor said. “Perhaps Mr. Vanderbilt senses that there may be something untoward about this case, and doesn’t want his name connected to it in any New York circles.”
Mr. Picton considered that, then nodded. “I suspect you’re right, Doctor—I suspect you’re absolutely right! Doubtless Marcus can confirm the theory for us when he gets back. But for now”—Mr. Picton clamped his pipe between his teeth and put his hands on his hips—“I vote that we go home and have ourselves a pleasant dinner. Things are starting to look up, I daresay!”
Feeling much relieved by this turn of events, as well as by Mr. Picton’s confidence, we all started to head for the office door, hungry and more than ready to take his advice regarding a relaxing evening at home. True, we had the grand jury to wrangle with in the morning; but with Clara Hatch now talking, there seemed little reason to think that we wouldn’t proceed easily past that obstacle to the criminal trial what lay beyond, where, we happily assured ourselves, we’d be faced by a lawyer inexperienced in such cases, who wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against two men as seasoned in these sorts of contests as the Doctor and Mr. Picton.
It was one of the worst errors of judgment we made during the entire case.
CHAPTER 40
Mr. Moore arrived that night, looking bedraggled and persecuted, and rightfully so: he’d had a pretty devilish week in the city, and had barely gotten back out with all of his organs and limbs intact. And even when he and Marcus hadn’t been in situations where their lives were in immediate danger—like when they’d gone to interview the Reverend Clayton Parker—violence had been a topic of conversation: apparently the reverend had been set on about six months earlier by several men who we could reasonably assume to’ve been Hudson Dusters, and’d had both of his knee caps shattered with baseball bats, along with one of his ears cut off. Even as he retold the story to us, Mr. Moore got so jittery that he needed a couple of stiff belts of Mr. Picton’s best whiskey to calm his nerves. But the news that we were ready to face the grand jury the next morning cheered him up considerably, as did the leftovers from our dinner, with which he stuffed himself ’til fairly late in Mr. Picton’s kitchen. By the time he retired, he’d taken in enough encouraging intelligence—along with enough whiskey—to be able to sleep as soundly as the rest of us.
Before I could let him go to the rest he so richly deserved, though, I had to find out whether he’d actually been in touch with Kat and, if he had, what the outcome’d been. As he was unsteadily scrubbing his teeth in his bathroom after pouring half a tin of Sozodont powder over his brush and into the sink, I snuck on in and put the questions. His mouth foaming like a mad dog’s, Mr. Moore told me that yes, he’d met up with Kat outside Duster territory and informed her about our predicament, then asked if she’d be willing to keep a watchful eye on Ana Linares. Kat’d demanded money for her services, making it seem certain to me that all we’d given her, and probably the train ticket too, had gone to Ding Dong; but Mr. Moore said that such wasn’t the case, that Kat’d shown him the ticket and told him that she was just waiting for word from her aunt before setting out for California. When I asked Mr. Moore if he thought Kat was still blowing the burny, he answered that he hadn’t been able to tell, in a nervous way what made it plain he was lying; but I decided that all I had time or energy to do was take heart from the fact that Kat still had the train ticket and was still willing to work for us. The rest I’d have to cope with when we got back to New York.
Mr. Picton had prepared us for the possibility that some of the townsfolk of Ballston Spa would take an interest in the activities of the deliberative body what was slated to convene on Friday morning at eleven in the smaller wing chamber of the county court house; but we weren’t at all ready (and I don’t think he was, either) for the sight that greeted us when we rolled up to the building in the surrey. There must’ve been a hundred people of every age, size, and description on the steps and lawn of the place, milling around like so many hungry chickens. The guard Henry was at the top of the steps barring the entrance, being as the activities of grand juries are not open to the public (a fact what many of those would-be spectators were obviously unaware of). But the big, horse-faced Henry seemed to be talking sympathetically with the crowd as much as holding them at bay. And the closer we got, the clearer it became that the general mood among all of them—Henry included—was not a happy one.
“Oh, good,” Mr. Picton said, as he reined his horse to a halt. Then he huffed in an irritated manner, causing his pipe to shoot sparks upward. “I was so hoping that my fellow citizens would take an interest in the proceedings—nothing like the public getting involved in the affairs of government, especially when they’re too ignorant to know at what point they’re not allowed to be involved!” He brought the surrey to a halt and, picking up one of the several big stacks of books and files what were sitting on the floor under the driver’s bench, jumped down to the street. “I’d advise you not to fetch Clara alone, Dr. Kreizler,” he said, as the Doctor moved up from the back to the front seat. “God knows how many more of these people have come out to offer their opinions in other parts of town.”
“It’s all very well to joke,” Lucius said, wiping his forehead, which was shining bright in the hot morning sun. “But you will be careful, Doctor? The girl is the key to our case, after all.”
“Yes, Detective Sergeant,” the Doctor answered. “And a good deal more than that. No harm will come to her or to anyone else, I pledge you that.”
“And so does EI Niño!” declared the aborigine, at which I smiled to the detective sergeant.
“And so does El Niño,” I said, clicking my tongue at Mr. Picton’s horse and starting us slowly on our way.
As we drove, we turned to keep an eye on the other four as they made their way through the crowd in front of the court house, Mr. Picton’s pipe still blazing like the smokestack of a forge as he greeted faces he recognized with a cheeriness what couldn’t have been more phony. “Ah, Mr. Grose, I am relieved to see a representative of our Weekly Journal—and the editor himself! This is truly gratifying! A man in my line of work rarely experiences such an exhibition of support!”
We began to drift out of earshot just as an irritated voice replied to Mr. Picton, “The Ballston Weekly Journal most definitely does not intend to support you, sir, if you are truly seeking an indictment against the unfortunate Mrs. Hatch!”
The last piece of this conversation we heard was Mr. Picton’s reply: “Ah! What a pity! Sheriff Dunning, you will remind these people—including friend Grose, here—that these proceedings are closed to the public, won’t you? Good man …”
A heavy sigh came out of the Doctor, and I turned to him. “Bloody hell,” he whispered, turning away from the scene in front of the court house and then rubbing his bad arm with his right hand. “It begins already …”
When we reached the Westons’ farm, we found the whole family out in front of the house and gathered around their carriage, a simple but dignified rig what bore a shiny new coat of black paint. They looked like they were ready for church, scrubbed and dressed in the kind of somber, formal clothing what they most likely only brought out for Sundays, weddings, and funerals. The Doctor boarded the carriage with them, sitting next to Clara on one seat while Mr. and Mrs. Weston took the other and Kate climbed onto the driver’s bench with Peter, who had the reins.
Clara was a picture of nervousness and confusion, of course, her golden eyes as round and skittish as a spooked Thoroughbred’s. Almost as soon as the Doctor was in the carriage, he got her to open her sketch pad and start working with her pencils: the best way, he obviously figured, to keep her mind off where she was going and why. As Peter started down the drive, I pulled the surrey in behind him, and all the way back to town Cyrus, El Niño, and I kept a careful lookout for any curious or hostile faces what might appear by the road.
We didn’t catch sight of any ’til we were back on the edge of Ballston Spa; bu
t the cold stares we started to receive at that point indicated that word about what was going on at the court house had spread all through the village. The general reaction seemed to be the same as the one exhibited by those brave souls who’d marched up to the court house steps in a pack. It wasn’t exactly a mob mentality—I’d seen mobs at work, and this was something different. The citizens of Ballston Spa seemed mostly bewildered: their faces were disturbed and furrowed and plainly displayed the wish that we would disappear back to the evil city what had disgorged us.
“It is strange, Señorito Stevie,” El Niño remarked at one point. “These people—they do not wish for baby Ana to be found?”
“They don’t really get the connection,” I answered, as we rolled by the Eagle Hotel and netted a whole slew of new glares. “And we can’t tell them, because the señor says so. It’s a secret, if you get my meaning.”
“So,” El Niño answered with a nod, “that is why they look this way. If they know the story of baby Ana, they feel different. Sure.”
I hoped like hell that the aborigine was right.
Back up at the court house the scene hadn’t changed much; and as our two rigs moved along High Street, one heavyset man with a thick gray mustache, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and a badge on the lapel of his jacket, approached us.
“Josiah,” he said in a polite but serious tone of voice, signaling to Mr. Weston.
“Sheriff Dunning,” Mr. Weston answered with a nod, his voice betraying no emotion. “A few folks here.”
“Yessir,” Sheriff Dunning answered, looking a little uneasily at the crowd. “Nothing serious—but you’ll want to take your rig around back, maybe. Come in through the ground floor. Be easier on everybody.” He glanced once at Clara. “Hello, there, little miss,” he said with a smile. “Come to visit the court house, have you?” As an answer Clara hid herself behind the Doctor’s arm, at which point the sheriff turned his gaze up to meet the Doctor’s. The man’s smile vanished in the process. “Anyway, Josiah,” Sheriff Dunning said. “I just figure that’ll be the easier way to go about it.”
Mr. Weston nodded, then turned his rig onto Bath Street and rolled down the hill toward the back entrance to the court house. I made a move to follow with the surrey, but Cyrus reached up to grab my arm.
“No, Stevie,” he said. “The front door. Let’s make sure those folks don’t follow them down.”
I knew what he meant: between Cyrus and El Niño the focus of the crowd’s attention was likely to stay on our carriage, wherever it went; and if we just pulled up in front of the court house and brassed it out by heading in at the main entrance, we were likely to make certain that Clara and the Westons would get inside without any trouble.
So I slapped Mr. Picton’s horse into a nice high step and made as much of a deal as I could out of the half block that we had left to cover. True to Cyrus’s reasoning, every eye in the crowd turned on us as we got down off the surrey and made our way toward the steps. There were a few laughs, but more clicks of the tongue and mild curses; and of course, the occasional mumbling of “damned niggers” and the like were heard, all of them designed to get some kind of a reaction out of Cyrus and El Niño. But those bright souls what gave voice to the slurs didn’t know who they were dealing with; for El Niño, if he heard them, didn’t register any awareness of what they meant, while Cyrus had long since learned to hold his emotions down when such labels were flung at him.
At the front door we came face to face with the guard Henry, who, seeming to care quite a bit about what the crowd would think of his next move, took to biting at the nails of one hand.
“What’s this, Henry?” said one pompous-looking man in a suit, whose voice I recognized as belonging to the editor of the Ballston Weekly Journal, Mr. Grose. “Are respected citizens of this community and members of the press to be denied entry to these proceedings, while children and—well”—Mr. Grose’s eyes went from Cyrus to El Niño—“savages are to be allowed in?”
Plainly not knowing what to do, Henry obeyed the instincts of the true follower: he crossed his arms, widened his stance, and then looked Cyrus in the eye. “Sorry,” he said, “the grand jury’s de—the de—”
“‘Deliberations,’” Cyrus supplied with a straight face.
The guard’s eyes filled with resentment. “The deliberations are closed to the public.”
“Sir,” Cyrus answered quietly. “You know that we’re investigators in the employ of Assistant District Attorney Picton. And we know you know it. So you can either let us through now—or you can play up to this crowd and explain your decision to Mr. Picton later. He’s your superior.” Cyrus nodded toward the general area behind him. “These people aren’t.”
Somebody behind me mumbled “Smart-ass nigger,” and then I saw a hand appear from out of the closing swarm of bodies to grab Cyrus’s shoulder. The arm connected to the hand tried to pull my friend backward, and the face on the owner of the arm was filled with a resentment obviously fortified by a few morning drinks. But whoever the fellow was, he’d let liquor lead him to a bad decision: Cyrus just grabbed the fingers what were fixed on his shoulder in his own hand, and then held them up an inch or so. Keeping his eyes fixed on the guard Henry’s face, Cyrus began to squeeze—and as beads of sweat appeared on Henry’s face, Cyrus started to squeeze very hard.
Now, Cyrus has always had a grip that’s got a lot in common with your average steel vise; and after about twenty seconds or so you could hear the man who’d grabbed him starting to whimper. Then came the sound of bones crunching, at which the man started to plain howl.
“All right, all right!” Henry said, stepping away from the door. “Get inside, the three of you—but I’m telling Mr. Picton about this!”
Cyrus assured Henry that he’d also be letting Mr. Picton know exactly what had happened. Then we slipped through the door, slamming it closed as the crowd outside started to make louder and angrier noises.
Inside the main hall we saw Mr. Moore, Miss Howard, and Lucius anxiously pacing outside the doorway to the small hearing room, which was over on the left-hand side of the space.
“What the hell was all that about?” Mr. Moore said, as we moved quickly over to them.
“Seems like tempers are getting pretty hot already,” I answered. “One of those mugs tried to start something with Cyrus.”
“Are you all right?” Miss Howard said, looking up at Cyrus’s barely rattled features.
“He is all right—sure!” El Niño answered, staring up at Cyrus in awe. “He is el maestro—not all of those pigs outside can challenge Mr. Mont-rose!”
A little embarrassed, Cyrus just nodded to Miss Howard. “Nothing out of the ordinary, miss. Have they begun the proceedings?”
“I think so,” she answered. “They let the family go in with Clara, thank God—she was as pale as a sheet by the time she actually got up here.”
“Well,” I said, trying to sneak a peek through the crack between the sliding mahogany doors of the hearing room but unable to see anything. “Looks like it’s a waiting game for a while.” I held up my hands. “And yes, before anybody asks, I’ve got plenty of cigarettes …”
It was an anxious time, those next couple of hours, with nowhere to go (a walk outside being pretty effectively ruled out) and nothing to do but smoke and worry. Whoever’d built the doors in that court house had turned in some solid work, for along with being unable to spot anything through the cracks, we never heard any sound clearer than vague mumbling coming from inside—and precious little of that. Mr. Moore remarked that such was a good sign; but good or not, it was strange and not a little disturbing to be standing outside a courtroom without ever hearing the usual sounds of argument. We didn’t even get the occasional echo of a banging gavel, for a grand jury proceeding, like I’ve said, was and is the district attorney’s show (or, in this case, the assistant D.A.’s), and there was no judge inside that chamber to go messing with the way things were conducted. There was just Mr. Picton, his evid
ence and witnesses, and the jury itself. Given such an arrangement and the limited amount of noise what bled out through the door, there did seem to be good reason for us to believe that things were going pretty well; and as the time dragged on, each one of us tried harder and harder to accept that idea.
For once, our assumptions turned out to match the facts. At about one-thirty we heard the sounds of chairs and feet moving around inside the hearing room, and then the mahogany doors slid open, an officer of the court manning each slab. The Doctor and the Westons were the first ones out of the room, the Doctor speaking with some feeling to the still pale Clara; but as he passed by the rest of us, he managed a small, sure nod, saying in no uncertain terms that they’d gotten the indictment. There was a quick moment of mutual congratulation among the rest of us, but it was cut short by the sight of the Weston family coming out of the hearing room: old Josiah looked like he’d been through a battle, and his wife, Ruth, was very pale and wan—in fact, she would’ve collapsed to the floor, I think, if Peter and Kate hadn’t been holding her up by the arms. As they passed by, any joy we felt was doused by the cold realization both of what had just happened and what remained to be done—and of how much danger they all might be in once Libby Hatch was brought back to Ballston Spa.
The members of the grand jury stayed milling around inside the hearing room, as if they were afraid to come out; and when Mr. Picton eventually emerged with Sheriff Dunning, the lawman looked so rattled and confused that it was easy to tell that the town of Ballston Spa, which had spent the morning being so confused and hostile, was about to get a shake-up what would magnify those feelings many times over. Mr. Picton had his pipe out, and he was sticking it in the sheriff’s face like a pistol as he lectured him:
“… and I mean it, Dunning—whatever your personal opinions about this matter, due process has been served, and I expect you and every other officer of the court and the law in this county to respect and uphold the grand jury’s findings. That includes extending your protection to whatever persons my office may choose to work with, as well as anyone else I think may need it. District Attorney Pearson will be absent for the duration of this affair, so I’ll be in charge. I hope I’m not the only one who realizes that—and I hope I make myself clear.”
