Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) (3 page)

“But in 1910, Junior is purported to have broken through the
brick wall in Clara’s bedroom. Convinced the dress had haunted his family long
enough, he retrieved the bloody dress and burned it, thus destroying the curse.
But to this day, like so many other aspects of the legend, no evidence of the
burned remnants have ever been confirmed, leaving some to speculate that the
dress still exists. There are also rumors that the Derringer and fighting knife
housed in the Ford’s Theater Museum in Washington are fakes, indicating that
Junior never did relinquish the true artifacts after the death of his
parents…that the real McCoys are still out there somewhere waiting to be
discovered. Perhaps they were both wrapped in Clara’s bloody dress. Now,
wouldn’t that be the find of the century, Mr. Baker?”

He puts his hand on my leg again. I shake it away
again
.

“This all sounds like folklore, if you ask me,” I say.

Balkis gives Miller a look like they’re communicating
without speaking.

“So what do you want with me?” I go on. “Why am I here and
not back in New York City, Detective Miller?”

He says, “The couple who lived in this house up until a few
weeks ago, have gone missing. Been missing for almost a week now.”

“So isn’t it your job to find them? You or the FBI?”

“Sure it is, Baker,” he says. “It’s just that we’ve reached
a bit of a brick wall, if you’ll pardon the pun, and we just don’t have the
personnel or the resources right now to break it down. I’m hesitant to involve
the Feds at this stage of the game.”

“Sorry, Detective. Still not sure how I can help.”

“I was hoping you might give the case a try. See what you
can come up with. Like I said, I can do three hundred per day plus expenses. I
might even toss in some donuts.”

“Really?” I say. “Dunkin Donuts. Not store bought. I’m
partial to blueberry cakes.”

“Absolutely, Chase. Dunkin Donut blueberry cakes. You sure
drive a hard bargain.”

“I didn’t go into business with my dad, but some of his
smarts wore off on me.” Then, “My guess is the couple who lived here left the
country. That is, they didn’t want to be found. Were they wanted for something
in particular?”

“I’m not sure they’re capable of leaving the country much
less the city, Baker,” he says. “And I’m not entirely sure they’re wanted for
anything. Don’t let the crime scene tape fool you. That’s why I haven’t called
the Feds in.”

“Can you be any more cryptic, Miller?”

He shoots the professor another look.

“I’m gonna tell him, Ted,” he says. “I’m gonna spill the
damn beans.”

“Can’t hurt,” Ted says.

Miller’s eyes back on me.

“The couple who’ve lived here for nearly sixty years were
the first people to occupy the place since Henry, Jr. They recently entered
into a sale of the historic home to Albany State University—”

“—which is where I come in.”

“Yes, which is where Ted comes in.”

“Excuse me, Detective. But that would be Dr. Balkis if you
don’t mind.” He says it using his faux Southern accent again.

Miller goes stone-faced. “Yes, that would be Herr Dr.
Balkis.” He says Balkis, like Ball Kiss. It gets a snicker out of the driver.
“In any case, Baker, the present owners, a Mr. and Mrs. Bill Girvin, are
pushing ninety. Eccentric couple in that they lived in the house exactly as
Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone and their family would have lived in it in the
mid-eighteen hundreds. No running water, no electricity. Fires to heat the
place…You get my drift. At one time, back in the forties and fifties, they even
used a horse and buggy to get around town. He can barely walk, and his wife is
said to be stricken with Alzheimer’s. So I’m not entirely sure they’re capable
of boarding a plane to Europe much less making it out the front door without
collapsing onto the front lawn.”

“Maybe they were kidnaped,” I say.

Miller nods.

“Excellent,” he says. “Except for one thing, there’s no sign
of a break-in. No sign of a struggle. No notes passed on to us asking for a
ransom from Girvin’s estate which is sizable. More than sizeable, his
inheritance money older than Lincoln himself. No strange prints anywhere in the
house.”

“What’s forensics have to say?”

“They did their best to check the joint out. But it’s so old
and who knows the origins of the oddball prints they picked up.”

“So how do you know something criminal went down here?”

“What we did find is blood. Small, but still significant
traces up inside the bedroom where Clara hid the white dress.”

“Blood,” I repeat. “Who’s blood?”

“Blood from both Girvins,” Miller says. “Or so the lab
reports confirm. We also found a .44 caliber pocket cannon on the bed, beside a
fighting knife, the blade painted red with both Girvin’s DNA.”

“So let me get this straight,” I say after a beat. “The owners
of this home are missing. They’re almost as old as Lincoln himself, and they
disappeared without a trace after a Derringer and a fighting knife just like
the ones used in the Lincoln assassination are discovered up in Clara’s old
bedroom.”

“The pistol had been discharged, by the way,” Miller adds.
“We’ve taken both items into custody, bagged and tagged them as evidence.
They’re not the original pieces that killed Lincoln and cut Rathbone, but some
skillfully forged knockoffs. Or so I’m told.”

Balkis nods.

“What the hell happened here?” I ask.

“Something violent causing blood to be spilled. That’s all I
can conclude until I locate the Girvins, dead or alive.”

“Are you asking me to find the Girvins or find the dress?”

“You’re an expert in finding missing people, especially when
they’re connected to some kind of antiquity or relic or treasure.”

“You want me to find a pair of old people who are likely to
be dead. You should dredge the river, Detective Miller.”

“Maybe,” he says.

“What if the Lincoln curse somehow got to Girvin? Maybe he,
too, lost his mind and tried to mimic Rathbone and Clara and their
murder-suicide?”

“Always a possibility,” Miller says. “But people tend not to
run very far after a murder-suicide. Again, I need to find them in order to
prove anything.”

“Uh, I’m not saying the curse is anything but legend, but
wouldn’t it have died along with the burned dress?”

Balkis clears his throat.

“Or perhaps,” he says, “Clara’s white dress wasn’t burned in
the first place, and still resides in the house somewhere in some secret
chamber or ante-chamber just waiting to be found. That would mean for certain
the curse still exists. Who knows what might be discovered inside that house if
only the police would let us back inside.”

“Listen, Professor,” Miller, barks, “If I told you once, I
told you a thousand times, no one goes into that house until this investigation
is finished, you got me?”

Balkis turns to me.

“Unfortunately, the good detective here feels the need to
treat me like a little child. He won’t allow me access to the house all on my
own. Calls it a breach of forensic procedural protocol or some such legalese nonsense.”

“You and the university will have your shot, Professor, when
all this is over,” Miller adds.

“Sure,” Balkis says, opening the door. “When an entire team
of university scholars and their camera crews descend upon the place. No, thank
you. I prefer to work on my own.”

He gets out, slams the door shut, wobbles over to his car,
gets in. Firing up the engine, he makes an abrupt three-point turn and heads in
the opposite direction, back towards the Kings Highway, not bothering to give
us a second look.

“He’s uptight, that one,” I say. “A little weird, too.”

“You have no idea,” Miller says. Then, “So, will you give
the job some thought?”

“You really think I’ll be able to do a better job of finding
the old couple than you and your staff will?” I ask.

“Can’t hurt to try.”

I take another look at the house. At the boarded up door.

“Can I get into the joint?”

Miller reaches into his pocket, comes out with a set of
keys, tosses them to me.

“Those are for you and you
only
. Balkis manages to
get inside, there’s no telling what he’ll pocket. Guy knows his history, but
he’s a bit off kilter, you ask me.” He extends his index finger, makes a
twirling motion with it around his temple. “Key works on the back door off the
kitchen. Remember, Balkis finds out you have a set and he doesn’t, he’ll go all
ballistic on me like a three-year-old denied a lollipop.”

“Why even bother to work with the guy?”

“Like I said. He knows too much.”

“About the Girvin’s?”

“No. About Lincoln and that creepy house’s history. In his
mind, he’s not reenacting the Civil War. He is
in
the Civil War.”

I smile. “Don’t tell me you believe in curses, ghosts, and a
whole lot of hocus pocus campfire stories, Detective Miller?”

He cocks his head, grins like he’s on the fence about
believing versus not believing.

“Who really knows what spirits lurk behind those old walls,”
he whispers, biting down on his lip.

The way he says it makes the fine hairs on the back of my
neck stand up. “Can you take me back to my truck?”

Miller turns back to the front.

“Daylight’s wasting,” he says, like John Wayne.

We drive.

I sit in the pickup watching the cemetery crew load Dad onto a
casket truck flatbed with the help of a chain and winch. Sure, he can’t feel
anything anymore. Scratch that…What I mean is, it’s possible if not entirely
probable, that he ceases to exist in any form imaginable. That is, if you don’t
believe in a soul being an entirely separate energy source from blood, flesh,
and bone.

Maybe you believe in ghosts. Or maybe you don’t. But as I
sit here, watching the old, water-stained coffin (so much for supposedly
waterproof concrete coffin chambers) now making its way from the open grave to
its new home, I can’t help believe that somehow my dad is, at present, watching
my every move, watching his own physical body…what’s left of it…being
transported to yet another resting place. Maybe, like I discovered not too long
ago while searching for an Indian God Boy with six arms, it’s possible the dead
don’t sleep the sleep of the dead after all. It’s possible they are instead
reborn into something else entirely, be it a kind of living spirit or even
another human being.

Maybe the same can be said of Abraham Lincoln and the curse
that surrounds him. Did he, in fact, haunt Henry Rathbone to the point of
madness? To the point of homicide? To the point of suicide? Or was Henry
Rathbone just a nutcase, plain and simple?

What about the Girvins? What drives a seemingly normal man
to attack his wife and himself, if that is indeed what happened upstairs in
their old home? Maybe the ghost of Henry Rathbone made him do it? Maybe the
ghost of Lincoln made him do it, or all of the above? Or, maybe I’m letting my
imagination get to me.

Did I really believe in curses? Maybe the old coot and the
wife simply walked away from the house in a haze of derangement exacerbated by
old age and senility.

It’s been known to happen from time to time, especially at
homes for the elderly. An old woman is found on the street corner, bags in
hand, her face awkwardly made up with lipstick and rouge, while still dressed
in her pajamas. “I’m moving back home,” she’ll inevitably announce when the
white coats finally get hold of her.

Or maybe an old couple manages to book tickets on a
Greyhound Bus to Florida. Once there, they check into a cheap seaside motel and
swallow cyanide capsules. Who knows what the brain is capable of once it
reaches a certain age? Once it begins to be shadowed by its own death every
minute of every day.

But how did that Lincoln assassination Derringer knockoff
get inside the bedroom? How did that fighting knife get up there? If the knife
was covered in old man and old lady Girvin’s blood, then surely they are dead
by now. But where do they rest?

That’s the question Miller is paying me to find out, isn’t
it?

First things first.

If indeed the Girvin’s are dead, then what’s to prevent me
from making a search for Clara Harris’ bloodied white dress? After all, it’s
quite possible that the story of her son burning it 1910 is a fabrication, and
I have a key to the joint.

Chase the inquisitive…Chase the explorer.

I start the truck, throw her into drive.

“Take care, Dad,” I say, tossing one more glance at the
casket truck.

“Take care of yourself, Son,” I hear him say. “Thanks for
stopping by and digging me up. The personal touch means a lot. And for God’s
sakes, watch your back with this Clara-Harris-bloody-dress-Lincoln-curse thing.
I know the money’s good and a gig is a gig, but remember, not everything is
what it seems.”

Dad’s advice in mind, I head back to the King’s Highway.