THE DEVILS DIME (35 page)

Addie and Tad froze.

“Tad,” Addie whispered. “Get out of here now. Hide quickly. Then get out of the building. You hear me? Out of the building!”

Tad was already scrambling across the piles of fabric. But before he pulled the cover over his head, the man in black stepped through the curtain. His big hand flashed past Addie’s face as he grabbed Tad by the scruff of his collar.

Tad hollered, squirmed, flailed at the man, until the man cuffed him. Hard. Addie saw the whites of his eyes as the brave boy lost consciousness. She screamed, lurching about in her ropes to take a swipe at him, anything to draw his attention away from Tad.

But she failed. The man threw Tad across the floor, then turned on her, and in two menacing strides he reached her with a backhand that sent her into a whirling, sinking world of black.

. . .

A man never pays much attention to his shadow, until it’s the only friend walking ahead of him into the unknown. Tonight, his long shadow that stretched across the floor and up the wall, taking every step with him, was a comfort to Ford. He could not even comprehend what this would feel like if he hadn’t been warned.

It seemed an insult to require his shadow to shuffle along with him, keeping the chains just far enough apart that he wouldn’t trip. And as if his shadow felt the same way, it left him when Ford stepped awkwardly down into the chamber of horrors.

“Ah, there you are.”

Deacon Trumbull stepped out of the darkness and watched Ford from the other side of the room. The noose hung between them, threatening in its stillness.

One of the two guards that had brought him this far gave him a shove and Ford stumbled onto the planked deck. The trapdoor was clearly visible just a yard away, and Ford felt his knees tremble at the thought of what lay ahead.

“Get going, boys,” Trumbull called to the guards. They wasted no time heading back where they had come from.

Trumbull strutted slowly around the stone perimeter. “I’ve waited a long time for this, Magee. A long time.”

“Get it over with.”

Trumbull laughed, and his taunting jeers seemed to do battle with his own echo.

“All in good time, Magee.”

Sergeant Coombs climbed up from the pit below the deck and moved behind his victim, as if to hurry things along.

He took Ford’s arm and looked at Trumbull for the signal to continue. It was the same way every time. Trumbull taunted the victim, pulled the lever, then left Coombs to do the rest. He hoped tonight would follow the same ritual.

“So be it.” Ford’s voice was husky from a week in the damp cell, but his presence was strong.

“Nothin’ like watchin’ a brave man die. Ain’t that right, Coombs?”

Sergeant Coombs let his face churn into a ghoulish expression he knew Trumbull would appreciate.

“Right as usual, boss.”

Suddenly, Trumbull’s face fell and he paced the perimeter behind them. “What the hell is that?”

“What?”

“That...thing down there?” He was pointing with his unlit cigar into the pit below the trapdoor.

“Oh, that! My new improvement, boss. See, the casket sits down there, and then the poor bugger drops right in when I flip this thing here.” He pointed to a release lever on a pulley mechanism. “Casket close by makes it easier on this old back. These here pulleys lift it right outta the pit and I’m on my way home. Slick as a whistle.”

Trumbull cackled once, then howled with delight. “Coombs, you never stop thinkin’, do ya?”

“Reckon I will some day, boss.” Coombs looked back over his shoulder and lifted his eyebrows, asking for a signal to proceed. Trumbull took a few more steps until he was next to the lever that would drop the trapdoor.

“Let’s get to it, Coombs.”

Ford’s world seemed to move in slowed motion as Coombs set about readying the device. Somehow, the knowledge that Coombs had fixed things was supposed to make this easier. But as Ford stepped onto the trapdoor and felt the noose slip around his neck, fear overtook his reasoning.

Coombs might be playing with him. Making him think he’d walk away. Just a way of making him cooperate. And here he stood. Letting the scrawny henchman slip the knot down behind his neck.

This isn’t right. This isn’t right.
There were things he needed to tell Addie. He needed to give her time with a father. He needed to tell Addie he’d had to let her go. Telling her mother the horrors her twin brother had committed out of simple hate for her would have killed her. She was the only person in the world who loved that boy. Part of her would have died with him.

Trumbull stepped close enough that Ford could smell his cigar. Sweet, earthy. He drew a deep breath, savoring the unexpected smell. His lungs felt full, strong, he felt a power in his shoulders and a peace down his spine, and for a moment he knew he would make it.

And then Trumbull spoke, right into his ear.

“We have her, you know.”

Addie? He’d taken Addie? The air flew from Ford’s lungs and panic closed his throat from taking another full, deep breath. Addie—

The sharp snick of a flipped lever seemed suspended in the air for a moment, and then the trapdoor went out from under his feet and he went down, down, and gasped a horrid, wrenching breath as his weight snapped at the end of the rope.

Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds.

His eyes began to bulge and his chest felt like it would burst before he heard someone scrambling down into the pit. The world began to roar and he let his mind hide in it.

Suddenly, something hard and rough smashed past his feet, ripping off one shoe. Somewhere above, the taut rope was freed, and he felt himself fall stupidly into what he somehow knew was his coffin.

He tried to breathe, but the rope was still knotted tight. His ribs shrieked, begging for a way to release his bursting lungs.

Ford let his body fall as it wanted, and blocked the pain of his dead weight pressing on his hands that were still tied behind his back. The fringes of his mind went gray, and sound took on an echo, like hushed tones in a long tunnel.

“What’s takin’ so long, Coombs?” Through a red haze Ford understood the words that filtered down from above.

“Just about ready t’ hoist away.”

Ford felt frantic fingers around his neck and suddenly the rope slackened, and was pulled roughly over his head. He drew a ragged breath and tried desperately not to heave, but his body jolted wickedly.

Coombs began to whistle, covering the sound of his breathing.

The next moment, the thud of a plank falling across the opening interrupted Coombs’ whistling. He grunted as he shoved something in place.

Three whacks in four locations happened in quick succession, and Ford heard Coombs scuffle away. His breath was coming in noisy gasps now, and he was powerless to stop it.

Soon, the casket began to ascend, rocking a bit as it rose. With each sway he felt his breathing quiet a bit. Not enough, though, not enough for Trumbull not to hear him once the casket reached the top. And suddenly he was there. The pulleys stopped, and the box that carried him began to move horizontally.

He was jolted as the casket sat down roughly on the stone walkway, and it was heaven in hellish proportions for him. Every second in the pit had been a nightmare.

“Lemme see ’im, Coombs.”

Ford froze. Trumbull’s voice had come from directly above him.

“Aw, hell, Chief, I’d have to take it all apart and—oh, hell, I’ll do it.”

Ford heard Coombs pull one of the pulley ropes slowly from beneath the casket. He was going to do it. He was going to let Trumbull have a look. His quieted breathing began to escalate, and his eyelids fluttered like a two--penny doxy.

“Y’ do good work, Coombs.”

The sounds of rope scraping beneath his coffin stopped abruptly, and after a mumbled thank you, Coombs began to curse.

“C’mon, ya rusty son of a whore. Ack!”

Ford could hear Coombs struggling dramatically with something.

“Shit! Gonna have to redesign this thingamajiggy here,” he complained. “It’s...Sorry, Chief, sorry! Just a sec! Ow! Dang it!”

Trumbull huffed, irritated at the delay. “Never mind, Coombs. I gotta go.”

“But Chief, it works great, really! I tested it three times!”

“I’m sure it does, Coombs. Sure it does.”

A single shot rang out, and Coombs’ body fell onto the casket, then slid slowly to the floor.

The only word Ford heard as Trumbull’s footsteps receded down the passageway was from the man on the other side of the pine box who was about to die.

“Mariah...a..a...a..”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Jess kept looking over at the flowers while he shaved off two days’ worth of stubble. He was counting on them to smooth the way with Addie.

He still couldn’t get over his luck. If anyone had told him he’d visit a village just out of the city and sit at the wrong end of a sixty-year-old woman’s shotgun who just happened to have saved the one man with all the answers twenty years ago, why Jess would have laughed himself silly.

But then, stranger things had happened.

Jess yelped when he nicked his jaw. A sobering reminder, he decided, of the difficult things he would have to explain to Addie.

He checked his pocket watch and was relieved to see that right about now she’d be sailing into the last number. The girls always got at least one encore, so that would put him in front of the hotel at exactly the right time. If his blasted jaw would stop bleeding.

He looked around for something to blot it with, and tore a corner off the midweek newspaper that for some reason had been shoved under his door. He didn’t subscribe, and it wasn’t the
Times
. It was the
New York Mind
, a rather literary newspaper known for its academic bent. He flipped it over to see the date and his eye was drawn like a dagger to his own name, in large caps, in the headline of a story just above the fold.

Times Reporter JESS Pepper
Named in DENVER Scam

The lowest form of humankind is the one who turns on his own. But it seems that perhaps a new low has been reached, by one who has recently found fame in our own city. Once his history becomes known, his notoriety will surely turn to shameful infamy.

A source close to the investigation has revealed that Jess Pepper, known to our citizenry through his
Times
byline
From the Salt Mines
, did not discover by mere good sleuthing the perpetrators of the Denver scheme which he recently exposed. No, quite the contrary. He was one of the perpetrators, one of the despicable human beings who sold mere children into lives of obscene slavery. And when he saw discovery, and hence, prison, on the horizon, he used his pen to try and rewrite history, painting himself the hero.

This paper does not participate in rumor-mongoring, but feels the necessity to warn our readers who may also, on occasion, read the
Times
, that this man’s words are not to be believed. Further, we call upon the Times to disavow their relationship with such a vile individual.