Unholy Fire (35 page)

“She was very good at hiding things,” said Amelie. “Sometimes the men she slept with gave her jewelry or other small gifts. Anya would always find a safe place to put them until she left.”

In part to take my mind off the lurid images that kept tormenting me, I began a thorough search of the room, first examining the floor on my hands and knees to see if a loose board might conceal a hiding place. There wasn't one. A Franklin stove sat against the far wall, and I carefully sifted the ashes in its firebox, as well as the tin vent pipe that connected it to the chimney. I covered every inch of the plaster walls looking for cracks or fissures.

There was a small closet in the corner. It was the last place left to search.

Again starting at the floorboards, I slowly worked my way up the plaster walls. In the shadowy light, I could see that the height of the ceiling in the closet appeared to be the same as that of the bedroom. But when I fully extended my right arm up into the darkness, I was surprised to discover that there was no ceiling at all. The narrow opening was apparently a crawl space up into the attic.

It was inconceivable that the diminutive Anya could have reached the opening above me. However, there was a side chair with a broken back in the bedroom, and I went to get it. Standing on the chair, I was able to easily extend my hand into the space above the wall. A few inches beyond the nearest edge, my fingertips came into contact with a soft mass resting on top of the loose plaster.

Bringing it into the light, I saw that it was a cheesecloth sack, tied at the neck with string. I handed the sack to Amelie, who looked at it without a hint of recognition before untying the string and reaching inside. When she withdrew her hand, it held a sheaf of currency and a three-inch-thick stack of cartes de visites wrapped in a red silk ribbon.

“Mon Dieu,” she murmured.

There was a side table in the hallway where we were able to examine the cards out of the wind. Amelie untied the ribbon, and we went through them one at a time. There were fifty-three photographs in all, among them many of the most famous men in the country. I recognized five senators, several members of the president's cabinet, a publisher, and twelve members of Congress.

The generals had their own section, consisting of fourteen cards. Three of them commanded departments in the Quartermaster Corps. Another was General Patrick's deputy in the Provost Marshal's Office. One of them presided over the military court system.

“Were all of these men guests at the Birds of Paradise?” I asked, without looking at her.

“Most of them, yes,” was her swift reply.

It was one of the last cards that produced the biggest surprise. The photograph was of a young man in an ill-fitting suit. I didn't recognize him at first and put it down on the table with the others.

“Don't you know who that is?” asked Amelie.

I picked up the card again, and looked at it more closely. It must have been taken at the start of the war. He looked no more than eighteen. Of course, combat had aged him, as it had all of us. His hair was longer in the photograph, and he wasn't in uniform.

“Billy,” I said, as Amelie smiled down at his image.

“Yes. He is the only one Anya said she ever loved.”

“Billy Osceola,” I said, still amazed to find his card there.

“I never knew his last name,” she said.

“Do you know how she met him?”

“I believe they met in Washington.”

“Did he know her occupation?”

“She tried to keep it a secret for a few months, but I know she told him at some point. It did not seem to matter to him.”

“Do you remember seeing us together at General Hooker's party?”

“Yes,” she said.

The trace of a smile came to her lips.

“I was hoping that you would come over and introduce yourself,” she said.

We rewrapped the cards, and left the house for the last time. On the way back to Sam's headquarters, I tried to discern what it all meant. Certainly, a number of the generals and senior officers could have easily become blackmail targets for Hawkinshield. Unlike General Hooker, most of them did purport to ride with God's cavalry. If he was blackmailing them, it might explain the influence he had over so many branches of the War Department. I was sure that Val could put the information to good use.

At the same time, I found myself wondering why Billy had not been honest with me on the night of General Hooker's party. Right after my first glimpse of Amelie and Anya, I remembered him saying that the girls appeared to recognize me, when it was actually him they both knew. Why hadn't he told me the truth?

Perhaps it was because he was embarrassed to find himself in love with a whore, I thought. I knew the feeling myself, and could fully understand it. But I also remembered that he had not shown the slightest emotion when Val had given Sam his brutally candid report after examining Anya's body.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

I told the teamster to take us directly to the stables behind the mansion house. If there was even a remote possibility that Billy was the murderer, there was no point in taking the chance of endangering Amelie's life by letting him know she was there. I needed to find Val and tell him what we had learned at the house.

A handful of grooms were lounging on straw bales in front of the stable block. Otherwise, it was deserted. I took her back to Phil's stall and asked her to stay there again until I returned.

“Johnny,” she said softly as I started to leave.

“Yes?”

Her lovely face tilted up toward mine. I felt her breath on my cheek.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I know what you must think of me. And it is true.”

Her eyes contained secrets I would never know.

“I'm not sure what to think anymore.”

“Will you … just hold me?” she said.

Part of me was outside myself again. As my arms circled her back, I stood as rigidly as a statue. It was only when I began to unconsciously stroke her hair that she pressed closer to me, and my heart was flooded with both sadness and joy.

I guess it was the realization that although she had known more degradation in her eighteen years than I would ever know in my lifetime, she was still only a girl. How and why it had happened to her, I did not know. Perhaps, I never would. But all the physical debasement she had endured had not broken her spirit. Somehow she had surmounted it all and survived. I kissed her, and she returned it with a gentle sweetness that for a few moments took me far away from that place.

The foyer of the mansion house was swarming with staff officers just arrived from Washington, all of them enjoying the excited humor of a great lark. From the bravado of their words, it was obvious that none of them had seen active service in the field. Their uniforms were newly pressed and immaculate.

The rest of the mansion was practically empty. When I reached the library, the only person there was a provost clerk who was copying dispatches into the master order book. A crystal chandelier gently tinkled above his head in company with our long-range siege guns on Stafford Heights. I asked for Colonel Burdette, and the clerk told me that he thought both Val and Sam had gone across the river to view the outcome of the battle from the courthouse bell tower.

Not sure whether to wait for his return, I went out onto the porch overlooking the river. Most of the staff officers I had seen in the foyer had drifted out there, too. They were passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth, and laughing over the plight of a fellow officer who had suffered the misfortune of having his presentation sword stolen on the boat coming down from Washington.

“What's the score?” demanded another new arrival, strolling out of the house. Like the others, he seemed to treat what was happening across the river as an exciting spectator event.

“They say we're still going after those heights across there,” said the officer holding the bottle. “But I don't think our boys are showing very much fight.”

“Hey, fellas,” came another voice from the lawn beyond the porch.

A captain was hunched over an astronomer's telescope that was trained across the river. He lifted his head away from the eyepiece and shouted, “I can see some Rebel gals over there!”

Their mindless stupidity was enough to convince me to head across the river to find Val, and I walked down through the terraced gardens to the pontoon bridge. The cannons that had been deployed there in the morning were now silent. None of them was powerful enough to reach the Confederate positions on the heights beyond the city without endangering our own troops. The exhausted artillerymen were sleeping next to their guns.

On the bridge a steady stream of walking wounded was slowly making its way back across the river from the besieged city. As their smoke-blackened faces passed by, I heard one of them say, “We're licked again, boys … sure as hell, we're licked again.”

Shells were still dropping randomly in and around the ancient center, exploding with billowing clouds of smoke and flame. Fires had broken out in most of the city's streets. Driven by the raw December wind, the acrid smoke stung my eyes and nose.

Everywhere I looked there were signs of chaos and disorganization. Upwards of forty thousand men had gone across by then, and most of them seemed to be waiting for someone to tell them what to do. On each corner bewildered groups of soldiers milled about trying to find their units. Down one street I saw an entire train of untended pack mules wandering through the debris of a burned-out building, braying mournfully as they searched for fodder and water.

A squadron of mounted soldiers was clustered in front of the courthouse. One of the officers wore the insignia of a major general on his shoulders. When his horse shied toward me, I saw that it was Dan Sickles. He was gazing down at a map on the pommel of his saddle and calling out orders to the aides alongside him.

The reeking black smoke was causing several of the horses to plunge and rear. A dismounted soldier had their reins in his hands and was making an attempt to calm them. General Sickles was putting a long cigar in his mouth when I suddenly heard the familiar whine of a shell coming over. From the pitch of its thin, wailing scream, I knew that it was close and dove to the pavement.

A moment later it exploded above the cobblestoned street about fifty feet away from us, and the earth seemed to rupture under my body. The stink of gunpowder filled my nose as pebbled dust and stone fragments came raining down in its wake. The cloud was just beginning to clear when a crazed horse raced past me, its belly trailing a blue rope of entrails as it disappeared down the street.

The soldier who had been holding the reins of the horses was lying next to me on the cobblestones, his chest pierced by a foot-long wooden splinter. A greasy pack of obscene photographs had fallen out of his pants and lay face up on the paving stones. Oblivious to it all, General Sickles calmly sat his horse as if the explosion had no more lethal force than a gnat. He calmly lit his cigar and took a contented puff before turning to the nervous aide sitting on the horse next to him.

“The shell hasn't been made, son,” he said, with a wolfish grin.

Inside the courthouse a young officer told me that only General Couch was in the bell tower, along with most of his staff.

“I think there is another general up in that Episcopal Church on the next corner,” he said. I thanked him and headed over there. A sergeant was sitting at the foot of the staircase leading up to the steeple.

“I don't know Colonel Burdette,” he said, when I asked for Val, “but General Hathaway is up in the clock tower with a couple of other officers.”

“How did he get up there?” I asked.

“That Indian sergeant carried him up.”

The staircase was narrow and steep. It had to be at least 120 feet to the top. With each step I was reminded of what Val had said about the killer having the strength of an acrobat.

There was a small circular landing at the top of the staircase. Open to the elements, it was enclosed with a three-foot-high wooden railing. The interior works of a huge clock were suspended from the steeple housing that rose another ten feet above the landing. A cruel, buffeting wind was raging through the spaces around the clock.

Four men were crowded onto the opposite side of the platform, which faced the heights beyond the city. General Hathaway was seated on a plain wooden bench, his hips strapped to the top of it with a wide canvas belt. His elbows rested on the edge of the railing, and he was staring through his binoculars at the battle taking place in the distance. Billy Osceola was standing to his right. Two other officers were on his left. One was a major, and the other a lieutenant.

They hadn't noticed my arrival, and I took the opportunity to observe Billy's guileless face. At that moment he was gazing down at Sam with such evident devotion that it was hard for me to believe he was capable of murdering a defenseless young woman in cold blood. But he had lied to me about knowing her, and I needed to find out why.

As I stepped onto the landing, he glanced up and gave me a welcoming nod. If he was guilty of murder, it didn't appear that he suspected I knew anything about it. He nudged Sam's shoulder, and the general turned to face me along with the other two officers.

I recognized the lieutenant immediately. The last time I had seen him, he was being engulfed by the mob intent on murdering the Beechams at the overseer's cottage. His corn-colored hair and striking blue eyes were seared into my memory.

“I believe you've met Lieutenant Hanks,” said Sam.

“I was hoping you had made it,” I said.

He gave me the familiar cocky grin.

“We both survived to fight another day,” he replied.

“And this is Major Frank Donovan,” said Sam. “Frank was my best company commander, all the way from Manassas to the Seven Days.”

“And still alive to boast about it,” said Donovan. The major's face was horribly disfigured. A shell or bullet had turned his nose into a scarred pulp and left his mouth permanently curled into a grotesque parody of a smile. The clarion call of a trumpet caused us all to look back toward the plain beyond the city.