Hellfire (8 page)

Mrs. Kemp hummed a little. “You’re rather well read, Mr. Blake. Not too often you hear someone familiar with the Word.”

Blake shook his head. “As a kid, I remember a church on every street corner. These days, it’s hard to find one around these parts that isn’t a social club or boarded up.”

“What happened to us all?”

“I suppose we just got too busy,” Blake said.

A bell rang. Ann jumped up from her place by the fire where she shuffled coals to keep the pot boiling.

“Good girl, Ann,” Mrs. Kemp called as her daughter clomped down the stairs. She turned back to Blake. “I try to raise my children right, but it seems all they want to do is get out of the house.”

Blake nodded.

“Do you have children?”

Blake shook his head. “No, ma’am. Never married. I suppose I’ve always been married to my work with the law.”

“That’s too bad,” Mrs. Kemp said. “Children are a joy. Oh, though I do worry about them.”

“Why’s that?”

“We’re a sinful nation in dire need of revival. Every day the papers are filled with more fights and rapes and theft and shootings. Worse of all, we go on our days without doing a thing about it! All in pursuit of our material pleasures!”

Blake shrugged. “I never thought of it being so bad.”

“Precisely! It’s not so bad!” Mrs. Kemp paused to throw up her hands into the air. “If things were worse, we’d see the errors of our ways. Instead, we see them as so good with our machines and—”

Ann returned to the room with a wiry man in a black long coat and black hat. A long, thin mustache draped around his lips.

“Ticks!” Blake burst out. He dropped his hat to the floor.

The marshal raised a sharp eyebrow. “Sheriff Blake, what a surprise to see you here.”

Mrs. Kemp looked from one to the next. “You know one another?”

Before Blake could speak, Ticks took several steps forward. His boots banged on the floorboards. “Indeed we do, ma’am. I’m sure Sheriff Blake has already introduced himself, but allow me. I am Railroad Marshal William Ticks.”

“From the Rail Agency?” Mrs. Kemp asked.

“Indeed I am.”

“Did you find Mr. Jones?” Ann asked from beside the fire.

Ticks took off his black hat slowly. “Oh, we did, and it was a sad affair. His body had been chopped to pieces by a violent act before being thrown overboard the train.”

Ann gasped. She clamped her hands over her mouth and closed her eyes, squeezing out tears.

Blake frowned deeply. “Ticks…”

“Oh, I must finish,” Ticks said. He reached into the deep pocket of his black coat and pulled out a letter. He held it out to Mrs. Kemp in a gloved hand.

“What is it?” she asked as she took it.

“I’m afraid it is a letter of regret from the Rail Agency,” Ticks told her. He cleared his throat.

Blake blinked. Did he just smile?

Before he could answer himself, Ticks said flatly, “Your son has died.”

Ann screamed. She ran stomping into the back rooms.

Blake heard springs screech. She must have thrown herself down onto a bed. He stood up. “Marshal Ticks, I think you and I should step…”

Ticks held up a hand to stop him. “In a moment, Sheriff. It is my duty to deliver this terrible news.” The marshal flashed him a smirk.

Blake’s jaw fell open. He clamped it shut and ground his teeth.

Mrs. Kemp sat with twin streams of tears rolling gently down her round cheeks. She held the paper in front of her, but her eyes seemed dead. “H-how did this happen? The sheriff said that Nathan was all right… just a little cut…”

“We secured a confession from your son about his murder of the train’s engineer before driving it off the rail to cover his action,” Ticks explained. “As we were transporting him, he began a struggle that resulted in him breaking free from our agents while aboard our airship. He fell…”

Mrs. Kemp crushed the paper in her hand and pressed it to her quivering lips.

Blake watched her for a moment and then turned to Ticks. The marshal’s face twitched into a brief smirk again.

Blake squeezed his hand into a fist and raised to bury it into Tick’s nose so deep he’d never breathe again. As he raised it, he stopped. This was the Kemps’ home. He couldn’t do that here.

“Marshal Ticks, I need to speak to you outside,” Blake said. He was surprised at how icy his voice was.

Ticks turned to him. “You’re outside of your jurisdiction, Sheriff. You should go home.”

“I…” Blake stopped. It was a federal crime to assault a rail agent. Still, he some time in the state penitentiary might be worth putting Ticks in his place. Blake took a step toward the marshal, and then he paused.

There was something bigger happening. The Rail Agency had all morning to deliver the letter to Mrs. Kemp, but Ticks had appeared only a few minutes after Blake.

“Did you know I would be here?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Ticks said flatly. “It’s quite a coincidence.”

It seemed like an awful coincidence to Blake. He glared at the marshal. Blake had taken the first train through to Lake Providence once the railroad had repaired the bridge. To ensure he’d be there as soon as possible to keep his word to Nate Kemp, he had slept on the eastbound train that waited on the tracks while workers hammered away by lantern-light to fix the rails.

The Rail Agency would have been the first to know the train had arrived, and they could have checked a passenger list. Ticks must have been waiting for him.

Blake looked out the windows in the front of the room, but he couldn’t see the street below. He imagined it full of hunchbacks. If they were willing to make sure Kemp was dead to cover up the crash, what would they do to a sheriff outside of his jurisdiction?

The bell rang again.

Ticks looked up. Mrs. Kemp sat with her eyes closed, tears fell from her cheeks and dotted the letter about her son’s death.

Blake took a step toward the door. It was a narrow staircase, and even if Ticks had a gang of hunchbacks coming up after him, Blake could take them one at a time. With gravity on his side, he might even bowl them over to make an escape.

He glanced at Ticks. The marshal’s dark eyes were narrowed.

“Expecting someone else?” Blake asked.

“No,” Ticks said in a grunt. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’ll go see who that is.”

The marshal brushed past Blake and went out the living room door. Blake glanced back at Mrs. Kemp, who still hadn’t moved. He gritted his teeth and ran after the marshal.

He caught him on the stairs by the collar of his black silk suit. Blake squeezed the fabric tight in his calloused hand, twisting it up to catch Ticks’s arms around the pits. Ticks was three steps down from him and turned the wrong way, immobilized in the awkward hold. He squirmed with his gloved hands groping at his lapels, unable to find a good grip.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Blake demanded

“You let go of me or I’ll—”

Blake wrenched the coat up higher. Several fibers snapped around the seams. “Who’s out there?”

Ticks growled. “If it’s one of those idiots disturbing me while I—”

“While you’re what? Have a laugh at a woman and girl getting their lives destroyed?”

Ticks struggled again. More strings popped. “I am doing the work of the Rail Agency!”

“You don’t have an ounce of feeling in your whole body, you disgusting rat! If you say one more rotten word to her, I’ll make sure it’s your last.”

Ticks threw his head around. “I will say whatever I please to whomever I please! And if you get in my way, I’ll—”

“Do to me what you did to Nate Kemp?”

Ticks narrowed his eyes. “He fell.”

“Was it you who pushed him, or did you order one of your lackeys, because you don’t have the guts?”

“I…” Ticks clamped his mouth shut.

Blake’s hand ached from the strain of holding Ticks’s coat. He almost had a confession.

The bell rang again, followed by a knock. A voice called, “Telegram for Martha Kemp.”

Ticks turned around. “Telegram?”

Blake blinked. It wasn’t one of Ticks’s men.

The black suit slipped out of his grip. Ticks stumbled down the last few steps to the door. Blake hurried after him.

It was a young freedman messenger in a snappy blue suit. He grinned and said, “Telegram for Mrs. Martha Kemp.”

“I’ll take it,” Ticks said, snapping it out of his hand.

“No, you don’t,” Blake told him.

Ticks made a twisted smiling sneer. “Tip the boy for his hard work, will you?”

The marshal pushed his way up the stairs. Blake gritted his teeth again. The messenger looked up with eager eyes.

Blake glanced over the messenger’s shoulder. A newfangled steambuggy sat across the street, empty and tied to a post. The furnace at the back with the boiler on top steamed nervously as if it were raring to go. Behind it, two hunchbacks stood in their long coats and masks. The dark lenses stared back at him.

As far as Blake knew, this apartment only had one way in and out. He dug his wallet out of his pocket and found a few coins. “Do you have a minute, son?”

“What can I do for you, sir?” the messenger asked, still grinning.

“See those men behind you? There’s an extra dime in it for you if you keep an eye on them and holler up at me if they come toward the house.”

The messenger peeked over his shoulder. His grin faltered. “I don’t like to hang around when hunchbacks could be watching. They—”

“A dollar.”

The messenger’s smile reappeared. “Yes, sir!”

Blake slipped him the money, and the messenger nodded. He hurried down the sidewalk.

Blake bit his lip. The hunchbacks didn’t seem to pay the messenger any attention after he slipped away. If they did make a move on the house, he’d at least have a head’s up.

He took a deep breath and charged back upstairs. Ticks wrestled with the envelope. Mrs. Kemp was still in her chair, looking up at him. The girl, Ann, stood in the doorway to the bedroom.

“Ticks,” Blake called.

The marshal didn’t reply.

“Who’s it from?” Ann asked.

The envelope gave with a loud rip of paper. Ticks fumbled with the note inside. He scanned it, his lips moving as he went. Then his eyes widened. “Damnation!”

“Well?” Ann asked.

Ticks looked up at her. His face then turned to Mrs. Kemp and Blake. Without a word, he crushed the paper in his gloved hand. He dropped it to the floor and dashed out the door. His boots made light claps on the steps.

“What’s going on?” Ann asked.

Blake scooped up the paper. The first line read, “Sender: Gloriana State Mental Hospital, Oak Grove.”

“Mental hospital!” Ann shouted.

“To Mrs. Martha Kemp of…,” Blake read aloud, skipping down to the meat of the telegram. “From Nurse Ozera Jacey. Your son, Nathan, has come into our care after being discovered in a dazed state by local farmers. If you wish to collect him or come for visitation, you may meet with Dr. Isaiah Sims between the hours of…”

“He’s alive!” Mrs. Kemp screamed.

She jumped from her chair and ran across the room to hug Blake. The sheriff seized up and didn’t know quite what to do. When she let him go, she ran to hug Ann, who was hopping in place in the doorway.

Blake didn’t know whether they were screaming or laughing. He smiled at them. It wasn’t every day someone came back from the dead.

He turned back to the telegram. The train had driven through Oak Grove on the way to Lake Providence this morning. Colonel Burr had set up the insane asylum there thirty-odd years ago as a way to deal with the host of people babbling in Stoker’s Madness. Blake had to escort a few men there himself after the judge deemed them unfit in the head for a reasonable trial. The doctors there were able enough folks, and if Kemp had ended up there after somehow surviving his fall, he would be taken care of until someone came to get him.

Blake looked up. “Ticks.”

He dashed across the room and threw open the curtains. Yellow-gray sunlight poured into the room. In the street below, Ticks was leaping into the seat in the front of the steambuggy and pulling its several levers to disengage brakes and open valves. The hunchbacks were behind the buggy, pushing to get it going. As it began to move, they hopped onto the footman’s rack at the back.

“They had no idea,” Blake said to himself. The rail agents were claiming deaths without any signs of a body. He wondered about Jones, the engineer.

Blake blinked his eyes to clear his mind. There would be time for that later. If Ticks was in that much of a hurry to find Kemp, he could only imagine what they would do to him. He tore himself away from the window and headed for the stairs.

Blake stopped when he saw the Kemp women holding one another across the room. He tipped his hat as he put it on. “Ma’am, Miss.”

“He’s alive,” Mrs. Kemp said softly.

“I’m going to find him,” Blake told her.