THE DEVILS DIME (24 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Jess and Addie sat at a small table near the east window in Ford Magee’s apartment. Jess had gone early to the bank and returned with a bundle of papers wrapped in newsprint, eager to explain their meaning to her.

Addie watched him slide the strings off the bundle and reached a hand up to draw it across the stubble on his chin. He stopped and caught her hand, turned it over, and planted a kiss in her palm.

“Now
that
tastes like breakfast,” he said with a wicked glance. There was a beat of silence, and Jess relished the trance that began to fall across Addie’s eyes. But then she twitched.

“Oh!” Addie jumped up from the table and brought two coffee cups and a plate of warm muffins from the little kitchen. She’d not wasted any time while Jess was off on his errand. Warm muffins. Straight from the oven. The first made just for him in this high stepping city.

Jess took a huge bite and chewed while he laid the pages out in an order that seemed logical. Addie watched him and noted with some surprise the change that fell over him. He became cool, detached, methodical, totally absorbed in the detail of the documents before him.

His sentences became short, clipped snatches of intelligence. She had not yet shaken off the peaceful cloak that had descended on her in the night, and at first she found him impossible to follow.

“So what Trumbull has to go on, so far,” he said, looking up at her for the first time in five minutes, “is a deformed right hand, dates in a diary, and some other piece he won’t spill yet. Follow?”

Addie nodded. The police reports of the Samaritan crimes had been very consistent in describing the assailant with a deformed right hand. Although how they could leap to the conclusion that her father’s compass finger qualified as a deformed hand seemed like an awfully big stretch. But that and the dates in the diary were the two things they knew for sure had incriminated her father. Just two things, if they didn’t count Jess’s article. Addie squirmed a bit and nodded again.

“Here’s the most recent list of addresses on the victims.” Jess plucked a page from the table and handed it to Addie. “You try to find some of these women. Ask if there was anything unusual about the attacker’s hands. Don’t give any more than that. Let them tell
you
. Not the other way around. And if they do, ask them if they told that to the police.”

Addie took the page and swallowed. These were all women who would be just a little younger than her mother would be if she were still living. Addie would not have wanted to broach such a painful subject with her own mother. How would she manage it with these?

“I...I don’t know, Jess.” She took the paper, not wanting to disappoint him, but feeling totally out of her element.

Jess opened his mouth to explain his next move when some delayed recall in his brain replayed her words. He looked up at her, startled at her hesitation.

“Well, Jess, I mean, what do I do? Just knock on their door and say ‘excuse me, but would you mind if I interrogate you about a man who almost killed you twenty years ago’?”

Jess laughed as if she were making a joke and turned back to his papers.

“I mean it, Jess. I can’t imagine anyone will even let me in the door.”

Now Jess stopped shuffling papers and really looked at her. In seconds his prowling eyes softened and he covered her hand with his. “Addie, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You don’t have to do this if it worries you. I’ll take care of it.”

Addie realized she’d been holding her breath and exhaled. She must have imagined it. He hadn’t changed altogether. This was her Jess. That other must be a mode he fell into when an investigation grabbed hold of him. No wonder he’d been able to save all those children in Denver. Such focus, such intensity of purpose couldn’t help but achieve great things. Now if he could just do the same for her father...

If Jess had confidence that she could do this, then she would do her best to get the answers he needed. She latched onto the page he was about to slip out of her hand and gave him her most challenging look.

“Not so fast, Mr. Investigative Reporter. If I can talk the Warwick Hotel into hiring an all-girl orchestra, I think I can get some information out of a few matronly ladies.”

She arched her eyebrows and looked down her nose at him until he laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Now that’s my girl,” he said, and Addie felt the compliment all the way to her toes.

“Meanwhile, I’ll post my article and poke around the morgue a bit.”

“The morgue!” Addie’s eyes flew wide at the word. “Whatever for?”

Jess stood and collected his papers. “The newspaper morgue, O innocent one. The place where we keep past issues and research and so on. I promise not to use anything sharper than a pair of shears. Feel better now?”

Addie tried to laugh at her own ignorance. Why couldn’t they just call it the library, or the archives? Naming a place ‘the morgue’ was just downright creepy.

“I suppose,” she muttered sheepishly, “but you
will
be here for dinner, won’t you? I’ll stop at the market on my way home from...from these.” She waved her sheet of addresses in the air between them.

Addie stood and pushed her chair up to the table. Jess secured his bundle of documents, tied the newspaper around them once again, and plunked them on the table.

“Do you think you could hide these? Just until I can get them to a new bank box?”

Addie looked at the bundle wrapped in newsprint, just like fresh fish from the market only not soaked with oil. She snatched it up and sashayed into the kitchen, and made one full turn before deciding her first instinct was the best.

With a great dramatic flare, Addie pulled open the door of the small ice box and dropped the bundle onto a cool rack. She was just straightening up when she felt Jess’s hands on her waist. She closed the door and caught her breath when he spoke close to her ear.

“Now you’re thinking like a criminal, darlin’.”

. . .

The smooth, cold bricks of the morgue floor sent their penetrating chill through Jess’s cotton shirt within seconds after he lay down. He rocked his head from side to side and then looked straight up at the maze of pipes that hung from the ceiling.

“So this is where you found him?”

Gus looked back and forth from Jess to the bookcases that formed the ‘walls’ of Ollie Twickenham’s office and shook his head.

“Close.”

Jess was grateful — for Gus’s sake — that someone had done a thorough job of scrubbing away the blood. But now there wasn’t even a trace to help him recreate the scene. He had to rely on Gus for that.

“That’s not good enough, Gus. I need to know exactly where he was.”

“Okay, okay. Umm. His right foot was caught right here and his knee was twisted back.”

“Like this?” Jess scooted down the cold floor and arranged his leg as Gus had described, with his foot caught in the corner of the lowest shelf next to the office entrance.

“Yes, yes, that’s it. Only his whole foot fit in there.”

“You casting aspersions about the size of my boots, pal?” Jess laughed as he sat up and pulled off his right boot. Even without the boot his foot barely fit into the space.

Gus was still uneasy returning to the scene and ignored Jess’s attempt at humor.

“It still doesn’t look right, though, I mean, something’s still different.” Gus was nervously stroking his bald spot again.

Jess closed his eyes and pictured what the scene might have looked like based on Gus’s description.

“Of course, his head would have ended right about here.” Jess put both his hands on the third button down from his collar.

“That’s it!” Gus snapped to attention, clarity suddenly descending on him with Jess’s observation. “And his arms weren’t clear up there. They were down here.” He pointed to a place just beyond the butted feet of the two bookcases facing Ollie’s cubbyhole.

Gus rubbed his forehead, feverish now as he recalled the scene. “His left hand was clear under the case.”

Jess bent his knees and slid his torso closer to his feet.

“Here?” he asked as he slipped his left hand beneath the bottom shelf of the bookcase.

“So then...” Jess was about to ask about the position of the right hand when he felt something beneath the back of his hand. Arranged as he was, it was physically impossible to turn his hand over, so he carefully pulled his left arm back and rolled over to reach under with his right.

What he withdrew was a scrap of paper that looked like it had been torn off a larger sheet. He brushed it off and looked for the traces of age he’d expect to see on paper that had sat for a while beneath the shelf. But while the scrap showed normal yellowing along its two straight sides, the torn side did not.

This was a fresh tear.

The word ‘bridge’, trailed onto the scrap from the torn edge, followed by a flowery company monogram.

“That’s probably been there for decades, Jess.”

Jess rocked himself up to one knee and held the scrap up to the dim light. “Nope. Don’t think so, Gus. Look here.”

On the bottom corner, printed lightly in pencil were the initials O.T.T. followed by a slash and a second set of initials.

J.S.P.

There was no mistaking it. Gus and Jess both recognized Ollie’s precise hand. And there was no doubt in either of their minds that Ollie had intended for Jess to see whatever was on the page this scrap belonged to. He’d branded it with both their initials.

Jess tore a clean page from the small notepad he carried in his pocket. He folded the page around the scrap and slipped it into the small pocket that held his pocket watch. He was just pulling on his boot when Gus pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

It was chilly here in the basement morgue, but Gus had broken a sweat. The whole ordeal of recreating the scene was getting to him.

“You know, Gus, I think we’ve done as much as we can here today. Shall we head on up?” He clapped a hand on Gus’s shoulder and turned him toward the door.

Gus pocketed his handkerchief and cast a grateful look to Jess and they headed for the staircase.

Walking two abreast, they filled the narrow aisle, and just as they emerged from the end of the aisle, Jess stepped on something hard that didn’t crumble, even under his heavy boot.

Jess bent to toss aside the offending lump and was surprised to find a shiny white cube peppered with black dots. Half of a pair of dice.

He chuckled. “Hope losin’ this didn’t break someone’s lucky streak.”

Gus started up the steps and said casually, “Old Ben and the boys were raising a ruckus down here on payday and Twick chased them out. They were hoppin’ mad.”

Jess caught the cube he’d been flipping and stopped on the bottom step. “Gus.”

Gus stopped and turned.

“Payday was yesterday.”

“Well, yeah, I guess it was.”

“Crap shooters were down here yesterday?”

“Right after paycall. Twick was fuming. Last thing I heard him say was—God, Jess, last thing he said was ‘over my dead body.’”

Gus turned and leaned on the stair wall. “You don’t think—”

“No, Gus, I don’t. It’s too easy to find a place to shoot craps. The morgue was close. But nothing to kill over. But—” Jess moved on up the stairs and Gus followed.

“But what, Jess?”

“It gives me an idea.”

. . .

Everyone knew Old Ben. He was seventy if he was a day, and still lugged heavier loads than half the young bucks that worked for him. Jess found him loading bundles of a special edition onto pallets in the bundling room.