The Case of the Petrified Man (17 page)

I knew it was well past 8:00 p.m. and that I was going to be sorely late for my dinner appointment with Poker Face Jace, but there was no helping it.

It was lively up on B Street with music spilling out of saloons & people crowding the boardwalk. I went into my office & lit a lamp & locked the door behind me. I did not pull down the blind so that if someone was spying they would see me take the lamp into my back room & think I had retired for the night.

But I did not retire for the night. I peeled off my still-damp coat & changed into a disguise.

I have four disguises, viz:

1. Blanket Indian Disguise—old Paiute blanket, dusty slouch hat & tin begging cup
   
2. Chinese Boy Disguise—blue pajamas, clogs & flat straw hat with false pigtail
   
3. Prim Girl Disguise—pink calico dress, bonnet & white button-up boots
   
4. Rich Boy Disguise—coat, waistcoat, black brogans & plug hat
   

Nos. 2, 3 & 4 were next door in the clothing cupboard of Mr. Isaiah Coffin’s Ambrotype & Photographic Gallery.

However, Disguise No. 1 was hanging from one of the pegs on the wall.

I pulled it down & wrapped the Paiute blanket around me. Then I tugged the shapeless felt hat down low & grabbed my tin coffee cup.

I could not risk going out the front door of my office dressed as a Paiute, so I offered up a prayer, put the tin cup inside my shirt, slid out of my window & descended by means of that rickety ladder. My foot almost went through the fifth rung.

I thought, “I must buy a new ladder.”

And also, “I better remember not to empty my chamber pot out here anymore.”

When I reached the bottom, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then I picked my way through tin cans and other worse things to the Coroner’s alley. Emerging onto C Street, I turned left onto the busy boardwalk & made my way to a nondescript entrance of the International Hotel. This plain white door is used by tradesmen and delivery boys. You may have walked past it a thousand times without realizing that it is another way into the International Hotel. Bare wooden stairs carry you up to a plush carpeted hallway that leads to luxury rooms.

When I got to the door with the brass No. 3 on it, I looked up and down the hall to make sure nobody saw a grubby Blanket Indian going into Jace’s Rooms. I gave the secret knock on the door and when I heard Stonewall’s grunt I went in.

“Where you been?” said Jace. He was standing by the fireplace near Stonewall, who was seated.

“It is almost nine,” said Jace. “We been waiting for you.”

Jace is good at hiding his emotions, but I could tell he was riled because he blew his cigar smoke strongly down. That was something he himself had taught me.

I said, “Sorry I am late. I got delayed by that fire over at the Flora Temple Livery Stable.”

“You got to allow extra time for traffic,” said Jace. “Virginia is getting busier every day.”

“It was not just the traffic,” I said. “The proprietor and two stable hands accused me of setting that fire. I nearly got burned alive and also lynched.”

Jace asked me to tell what happened & I did so over dinner. They had already eaten, but there was a kind of tin hat over my plate and the food was almost warm. They sat drinking coffee while I ate a hearty meal of pork chops, greens and corn on the cob. I was hungry and it was good.

Through mouthfuls of food I told them everything that had happened so far that day from the rock baby in the parcel to finding Martha in the stables and getting her to safety.

Finally Jace said, “So you think the man you saw in the stables—the hatless man in the cloak—was Short Sally’s Killer?”

“It might have been the Rev. C.V. Anthony,” I replied. “And I am also suspicious of Mr. Isaiah Coffin. But my number one suspect is the fireman I was telling you about: the barkeeper over at the Young America Saloon, Mr. Ludwig Hamm.”

“What makes you think Hamm is the killer?”

I said, “He was crazy in love with Short Sally. She had a sharp tongue and had already rejected him more than once. Also, he has a fiery temper.”

Jace finished his coffee and took a Mascara brand cigar from his breast pocket. “A fiery temper don’t make someone a killer,” he said, striking a match on the bottom of the table. “Though Sally’s manner of death does suggest a crime of passion.”

“What do you mean?”

Jace held the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed, turning it to get it burning even. “Like I told you,” he said, “when Short Sally was murdered last week, the first rumor was that she’d had her throat cut. Cutting someone’s throat is messy, but more importantly it is coldhearted. The killer usually does it because it is quick and silent and he needs something.”

I nodded.

Jace puffed some more. “Strangling, on the other hand, is usually a hot-blooded crime.”

I thought about my main suspect in the murder of Miss Sally Sampson, the hot-tempered Mr. Ludwig Hamm, and I rubbed my ear, still sore from his boxing it.

“To strangle someone,” continued Jace, “you have to get
your hands directly on that person’s throat and squeeze. It takes a while to get the job done,” he added. “It requires a different frame of mind from the other.”

His voice sounded kind of thick & I looked at him hard. He was blowing smoke slowly down, a thing people do when they are sad.

“Have you ever strangled a man or cut his throat?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Poker Face Jace, without meeting my gaze. “I have done both those things.”

YOU STRANGLED A MAN
and
cut a throat?” I asked Jace.

Jace nodded. “It was wartime.”

“The war back east?” I said.

He shook his head. “The Mexican War. Fifteen years ago.”

I waited in case he had anything more to add.

He examined his cigar.

“I had to cut a sentry’s throat once,” he said, “in order to keep him quiet. A few weeks later I found myself in a pitched battle. I was out of ammunition and my rifle was gone. We were fighting hand to hand. A man went for me. It was either me
or him…” Jace trailed off & looked down at the table. “The first method is cold-blooded. The second is hot-blooded.” He glanced over at Stonewall, who had been sitting silently throughout the meal. “Neither is pleasant. It is an awful thing to kill a man.”

I nodded. “Even in self-defense,” I said.

I remembered the face of the man I had killed. I also remembered how easy it had been to pull out my seven-shooter and point it at Belle Donne when she startled me over at Topliffe’s.

“What about a gun?” I asked. “What frame of mind do you have to be in to shoot someone?”

Jace shrugged. “Scared, angry, butterfingered,” he said. “But I’ll wager most shootings in this town are done by men in the grip of alcohol.” He rubbed his forehead, then looked up at me. “What I am trying to say is that it appears Sally’s murder was a crime of passion or anger. If someone had been planning to rob her, I reckon he would have used a quicker method. She either said something or did something to make a man crazy with rage.”

I nodded. “That is what I think. I think Mr. Ludwig Hamm proposed marriage and she laughed at him and maybe said something hurtful. So he strangled her. Then he saw Martha and he knew he had to kill her, too, because she had witnessed the crime and might tell. He chanced to see her this morning when she came to me for help. I reckon he has been shadowing me ever since. That is why he set the stable on fire. To make it seem accidental.”

“You think he followed you to the stable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought you said he tended bar.”

“I did.”

“Then how could he loiter for hours in the street shadowing you?”

I had no answer for that. But Jace had planted a Seed of Doubt in my mind.

Jace examined his cigar. “Were you followed here?”

“No, sir. I snuck out my back window and kept to the darkest shadows. Plus I am in Disguise.”

“What about after the fire? Could the killer have followed you and the Reverend down to Doc Pinkerton’s?”

“I thought he might try,” I said, “so I followed the Reverend back to his house. I made sure nobody else was shadowing him. And then I got another person to take Martha from Doc Pinkerton’s to a Safe Haven. Just in case it was the Reverend and not Ludwig Hamm who killed her.”

“Good thinking,” said Jace. “Where will you go from here? With the Investigation, I mean?”

“As soon as Martha is better,” I said, “I am going to ask her what accent the Killer spoke with. If he spoke with a German accent, then the Killer is probably Ludwig Hamm.”

“Unless it’s someone not on your list,” said Jace.

Jace had just planted another Seed of Doubt in my mind.

Stonewall pushed his chair back & stood up & went into his bedchamber. He had not spoken a word & his coffee sat cold & untouched. I heard him peeing into the chamber pot.

“What is wrong with Stonewall?” I said in a low voice.

“He is in a brown study,” said Jace.

I said, “You have a study in there? I thought it was another bedchamber.”

“It is a figure of speech,” said Jace. “It means he is low in his spirits.”

“Why is Stonewall low in his spirits?” I asked.

“The news from Maryland,” said Jace. “That terrible battle at Sharpsburg, which the newspapers call Antietam.”

“That was last week.”

“There are reports coming in of terrible losses. Every day the number goes higher. The latest estimate is twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand men killed?” I said.

Jace nodded. “They say the bodies are all piled up in bloated heaps and not even buried. There are photographs in New York showing corpses with blackened faces, distorted features, and expressions most agonizing. Some people say that battle will end the war.”

“Jace?” I said. “Why are they fighting?”

Jace sighed. “There are a lot of reasons,” he said. “But the main dispute is about the right to own slaves. The North wants to make the South set their slaves free. The Confederates—that is, the Southerners—reckon they will not survive without slave labor. Plus we don’t like being told what to do.”

“You’re a Reb?” I said.

He sighed again. “I am a Southerner who has seen too much death and killing.”

Stonewall’s bedchamber door opened & he came back into the room.

“We don’t have time for a full lesson this evening,” Jace told me in a businesslike tone of voice, “but in light of this recent spate of shootings I am going to give you a useful piece of advice.”

Stonewall had pulled a chair up by the fire & was fingering a narrow felt pouch.

“Here is my tip,” said Jace. “Just before a person is about to do something big or dangerous, they usually take a deep breath in.”

I nodded. That made sense.

“Sometimes,” he said, “you will see their whole chest swell up, but that don’t always happen. What
does
always happen is that their nostrils get a little wider a split second before they mean to act. This will often tip you off that they are about to throw a punch or draw their piece.”

“Nostrils,” I said, to show I was paying close attention.

“Correct,” said Jace, tapping some ash onto his empty dinner plate. “Of course, you have got to look at the whole picture, but train yourself to notice that flaring of the nostrils.”

I remembered how Ludwig Hamm had taken a deep breath right before he hauled out & struck me. I rubbed my sore ear and wished I had known that useful tip before.

“Stonewall taught me that,” said Jace. “Didn’t you?”

We both looked at Stonewall.

He was still sitting by the fire, staring down at a piece of thread in one hand and a needle in the other.

“I cannot seem to do this,” he said in a low voice. I reckoned it was hard for him as his eyes pointed in two different directions.

“Here,” I said. “Let me. My eyesight is sharp.”

I threaded the needle & handed it back.

Stonewall took the threaded needle and regarded it for a few moments as if it was something he did not recognize.

Then the man who had once pressed a Le Mat revolver to my forehead began to weep.

WATCHING STONEWALL CRY
made me feel mighty strange. Like the time Ma Evangeline banged her head on the table when she was coming up from cleaning the floor. When someone as brave and fearless as Ma Evangeline or Stonewall starts to cry, you feel your world is collapsing into crumbs.