A Curtain Falls (26 page)

Though I could have afforded a nicer place, it seemed pointless to do so when my time here was limited . . . when there was no one with whom to enjoy it.

I reached over to my brown satchel and emptied its contents. There were several pages of notes that should probably be returned to Mulvaney, if only for his files. And an apple, now bruised, that I had meant to eat at lunchtime, but never had.

It was only after I tossed the limp leather bag aside that I noticed a dirty, crumpled white paper protruding from the side flap pocket. I pulled it out.

At first, I felt violated that someone had slipped it into my bag without my knowing it.

Then I took a long time to read it and thoroughly absorb its contents.

Detective Ziele,

I’m writing to you on the chance that I will see you again or find a sympathetic soul to deliver this message. You seem to be a fair-minded man who will listen to me, even though others believe I am lying.

I swear to you I am innocent. I’ve killed no one: I was not at the Aerial Gardens, and I’ve never touched those needles.

I’ve been framed— tricked in the worst way imaginable. On Saturday, a man stopped to ask me for directions. When I leaned down to examine his map, he covered my mouth with something to make me pass out. I can remember nothing else until the time of my arrest.

I can’t survive this for much longer. I’m sure to die if you cannot help.

Timothy Poe

Poe must have placed it in my bag when he reached toward me at the precinct house earlier today. It was an act of complete desperation.

Were the contents of the letter genuine?

I wasn’t sure. But after reading the letter over and over, I couldn’t put it aside, its claims forgotten and ignored.

My gut told me that Timothy Poe was innocent of these murders. He was an accomplished actor who had lied to me and hidden scandalous aspects of his life. Despite that, I couldn’t imagine him wining and dining these actresses as the killer had
done, buying them dresses and promising to make them stars, before coldly killing them.

And now in this letter before me, Poe’s words, rambling and disjointed as they were, seemed to strike a note of truth. I knew Alistair would agree. He had never felt that Poe fit the profile of this killer. The letter was just what I needed to turn my frustrated belief into the kind of action that might save the case.

After several telephone exchanges, Alistair and I made arrangements to meet downtown at the New York University offices of Dr. Vollman the next morning. I still had the film from the tattooed verse, and I agreed to have it processed and bring the photographs to the meeting for Alistair’s handwriting expert to examine.

I did not bother to telephone Mulvaney, who would have dismissed Poe’s letter as the posturing of a desperate, guilty man. We would be on our own.

Was I meddling in a case now best left alone? Maybe.

But, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believed what Poe had written. At worst, I would waste my efforts over the next several days while I chased a red herring. I could live with that. Besides, I was still on official leave from my job as a policeman in Dobson. And if Mulvaney had indeed imprisoned the wrong man, then I had a larger responsibility to an as-yet-unknown actress— one at risk of playing her final role.

Our position is altered; the right course is

no longer what it was before.

—George Eliot,
The Mill on the Floss

Tuesday
March 20, 1906

Dorrey’s Coffee Shop

After a night of unrelenting insomnia, I woke to a pounding headache the following morning. Dawn’s first light— as well as a cup of coffee and a dose of Bromo-Seltzer—finally brought me some mea sure of relief. I was distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of working behind Mulvaney’s back on a case he believed to be closed. We had been friends and colleagues for so long, it seemed almost a betrayal of trust— never mind that he no longer kept me within his own confidence.

To be fully at ease with my decision, I wanted to evaluate one discrepancy that continued to vex me. Specifically, it was the claim Timothy Poe had made in his letter that he had never been to the Aerial Gardens— and had never touched a hypodermic needle like those found in his flat on MacDougal Street.

Yet, Mulvaney had obtained the most solid evidence I could imagine to contradict that claim: Poe’s fingerprints.

Last night my father had said that fingerprints could be faked easily enough— and today I intended to find out how.

Based on a tip from the desk clerk at the hotel where I knew my father was staying, I found him at a small coffee shop on Greenwich Avenue called Dorrey’s, across the street from his hotel. It was a nondescript place with four tables and a grumpy matron servicing them.

He looked up in surprise when I came in. I noted the heavy lines on his face and dark circles under his eyes. He had not slept last night, either.

He coughed into his handkerchief. “Simon, why . . . I didn’t expect to see you before our dinner on Friday.”

He pushed aside a plate of half-burnt, buttered toast. He had eaten little, and I couldn’t tell whether the bread was simply inedible— or whether the tuberculosis had taken its toll on his appetite.

I took the seat across from his, glancing briefly at the empty coffee mug and crumbs in front of me.

“You just missed Molly,” he explained.

I pushed her leftover mug aside.

“I have a question and I need your help. Last night,” I said carefully, “you told me that fingerprints can be faked. It sounded to me as though you’d even done it yourself. I need to know more.”

He smiled broadly, revealing even teeth that were no longer as white and well cared for as I remembered. Then he tapped his head. “Nothing a smart man with a particular kind of education cannot master, if you get my drift.”

I nodded, but said nothing. It was encouragement enough for him.

“Back in the day when I needed some extra cash, I got a job from Bully Mike—”

“No details, please.” I cut him off with a quick smile and a note of warning.

“Oh, well— of course, of course.” He coughed again, hard, but if there was blood I saw no sign of it.

I remained silent for a moment until his coughing fit eased, and Mrs. Dorrey finished pouring me a cup of coffee. Though the brew wasn’t as strong as I normally preferred, it would do. After downing half the cup, I moved the saucer to my far left, positioning it on a small section of the tablecloth that was un-stained by some previous diner’s breakfast.

My father returned his handkerchief to his pocket, then shifted his position, trying to get comfortable again. He leaned in close to me. “A couple years ago, I was commissioned, shall we say, with the task of making someone’s fingerprint appear in a place it had never actually been. And your police department bought it hook, line, and sinker— though they weren’t the audience I intended to fool.” He paused and looked around before he said, “Private justice, you understand,” in a conspiratorial whisper.

It was all I could do not to groan aloud. My father was a con artist: his skills ran along the lines of trickery and deceit, not violence. But he also practiced what I considered willful blindness. Always desperate for money, he scrutinized neither the hand that paid him nor the consequences that inevitably followed the “tasks” he undertook.

“Walk me through the process, then, step-by-step.”

His eyes lit up. “Are you telling me that your training as a detective has taught you none of this?”

“Why would it?” I shrugged. “Until fingerprints have more value in court, there’s little point in fully understanding how they can be altered or outright forged.”

“You don’t say. I didn’t realize they were so unimportant. In fact, I learned my forgery trick from a fellow who spent time up at Sing Sing. Time in jail didn’t take him out of the game, but his fingerprints did, temporarily at least. At first, because the state had his prints on file, he had to be careful. Then he learned the art of forgery and was able to return to his old ways.”

I finished my coffee and ordered yet another. “You were about to tell me,” I reminded him, “exactly how you forged this print.”

“Ah.” He laced his fingers together. “Do you read detective fiction, son? Are you familiar with Arthur Conan Doyle’s story ‘The Adventure of the Norwood Builder’?”

“Frankly, I’m surprised that you are,” I said dryly. My father was not an educated man and had never been much of a reader. His active mind had favored other pursuits.

“Well, it interested me for reasons other than literary merit,” he said between coughs. “You see, in the story, a man uses his thumb to press down upon a soft wax seal— as is typical when sealing up a legal packet. The villain in the story then takes the wax impression from that seal, moistens it with his own blood, and transfers it to a wall at the scene of a murder.”

“But that’s fiction. Made up.”

“Is it?” He arched an eyebrow. “Don’t think it hasn’t been tried.”

“So if you generate a mold, you can fake a fingerprint?” I asked, my tone skeptical.

“Ah.” He touched a finger to his lips. “That way is often complicated. But it has inspired some of us to seek out other, more successful ways. . . .”

“Such as?”

“You can directly transfer the print without obtaining a mold. All you need is a decent surface to capture the original print, like a cup or glass,” he motioned to his empty water glass, “and a little candle wax.”

“Go on.” For once, I actually had the sense that he knew what he was talking about.

“Well, you take something that will pick up the fingerprint and its residue, like a thin veneer of candle wax. That’s what I used. The print is reversed, but that’s okay. Because when you then press the wax to the final surface— the one where you want the print to appear— it flips yet again and is perfect. Of course,” he smiled proudly, “very few people can do it correctly. It’s a difficult skill.”

“But when the police can’t use it . . .”

“It still can create suspicion, no? That was all I was hired to do when I planted a fingerprint on an object its owner had never touched. Not provide definitive proof, but to create suspicion. It’s a powerful emotion, son, suspicion. Once it catches hold of someone, all rational thought tends to disappear—”

I cut him off once again and thanked him for his time, promising to see him on Friday.

“One more thing.” I had almost reached the door when I turned around. “Molly Hansen had something to tell me last night. What was it?”

His eyes widened. “You’ll have to ask her. She never told me.”

“Do you at least know why she thought her information pertained to my case?” I asked, annoyed now that he didn’t know more.

He shrugged. “It was none of my business. She didn’t tell me, and I’d never ask. But if you want to find her later, she lives at Madame Pinoche’s, south of Washington Square Park. She should be there ’til about three o’clock.”

Not for the first time, I cursed the perverse mood I’d been in last night— the odd frame of mind that had led me to ignore what she’d wanted to share.

“How long have you known Molly?” I asked, trying to sound as though his answer wouldn’t be important to me.

He shrugged. “Two months? Maybe three?”

“You don’t even know?” As exasperating as it was to think of, I supposed that at least it was a sign that my father’s illness hadn’t prevented him from keeping up with some of his old ways. “So it’s nothing serious,” I said, finishing lamely.

He gave me a sad smile. “You know me, son. Nothing ever is.” He wrapped long, fragile fingers around his coffee mug. “She found me and decided, sick as I was, I could still show her a bit of the good life. If she wants to give me a bit of plea sure in my old age, well then . . . why not, I say.”

Why not, indeed? I thought of my mother, cold in her grave. I supposed he was right. It didn’t matter now.

I left and walked a few blocks east, toward the office building at New York University where I was to meet Alistair and his handwriting expert, Dr. Vollman. I kept thinking about something my father had just said about suspicion. He had been exactly right, I decided. The truth— even definitive proof of it— was not the most important thing in Poe’s case. Instead, it was all those terrible, nagging, awful suspicions about Poe that had grown, become insurmountable, and now threatened to seal his fate.

Greenwich Village

Washington Square Park buzzed with activity this morning, with throngs of people milling in all directions, vying for space with the newsboys and pushcart men who competed for the best locations from which to purvey their wares.

“Series murderer captured last night in opium den,” hollered one newsboy. “Read all about it! Full story in today’s
Times.
”