The Crack in the Lens (13 page)

“Well. I’ll leave you to it.”

Krieger backed out of the room and was gone.

“Alright—now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” Old Red said.

“We are?”

“
We are
,” Gustav said. “The killers and thieves Mr. Holmes rounded up always did things for a reason. If you could put your finger on their purpose, you could put the finger on them. But the Ripper, or anyone tryin’ to act like him, ain’t got no reason I can see other than…
fun
, I guess you’d call it. And that don’t leave no trail to backtrack. There ain’t no
why
to nothing.”

I gave the book a little waggle. “You think we’ll find a why in here?”

“We’d better.”

Old Red stomped off and plopped into one of the room’s overstuffed armchairs.

I sighed and took a seat myself and commenced to reading.

It didn’t take long to know that the why Gustav wanted so bad wasn’t there.

The
who
, though—that seemed plain as day.

Or, Our First Stab at “Psychology” Just About Drives Us Nuts

It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say there was no why to be found in
The Whitechapel Mystery: A Psychological Problem
. True, I couldn’t find the why we were looking for—the one that might explain a man turning mad dog—but there were plenty of others. They started cropping up from the first sentence, and all were aimed at the author, Dr. N. T. Oliver.

“Why can’t you use words a fellow can understand?” came first. Followed by “Why don’t you just say what you mean?” Then on to “Why would anyone read this tripe?”

After that it was all one big what: namely, “What the hell is this SOB talking about?”

“While alienists would attribute the horrific Whitechapel murders of recent months to the specific, exclusive ‘psychoses’ or ‘mania’ of a single dement,” the book began (more or less), “psychology, as a natural science devoted to the phenomenological study of, as James put it, ‘finite individual mind
s
’ (plural) must take a broader view, and the treatise which follows will, I hope, serve as contraindication to conclusions that discard empiricism in favor of quasi-metaphysical tenets that…”

Oh, I give up. Even faking this much required the borrowing of a thesaurus, and it
still
doesn’t get across how deep the hogwash was we had to wade through.

I would provide some actual quotes from the book itself, but I have neither a copy at hand nor a mind equipped to memorize long stretches of what was, to me, not just Greek but Greek as babbled by Athens’s resident village idiot. Certain phrases I have retained, though: “transcendental ego,” “elementary units of consciousness,” “deterministic assumptions,” and, most puzzling of all, “the Spatial Quale.”

To describe the book as highfalutin doesn’t do it justice—the falutin was so high-flown it left earth altogether, outward bound for parts unknown. If Dr. Oliver in any way explained the “psychology” of the Whitechapel killer I can’t even say, for I’m in need of a separate book entirely to explain the psychology of Dr. Oliver.

In fact, the only parts I could understand at all were the letters reproduced in the book—the ones written by Jack himself and sent to the police. That I had an easier time following the thoughts of a “Ripper” posting letters “from hell” than a (one assumes) qualified doctor/scientist is something I prefer not to dwell upon.

Gustav did his best to ride it all out with me, but his best didn’t get him far. Four turgid, interminable pages into it and he was rolling his eyes and telling me to “skip to the parts in English.”

Such parts I never found, aside from Saucy Jack’s contributions.

“
That
they call scientific?” my brother finally spat. “It ain’t nothin’ but a buncha two-dollar words glued together with horseshit.”

“You’re bein’ overcharitable. It’s
all
horseshit. I mean, my God…I feel like I know less now than I did before we started.”

This set me up for an easy jab of the “You can’t take nothing from nothing” variety, but Old Red was too incensed to notice the opening.

“Psycho logical,” he fumed. “Ain’t nothing logical about it I can see. If that’s the best science can do, I may as well try hoodoo.”

“Now, now. Don’t go speakin’ blasphemy. Holmes’s method’s plenty scientific.”

“Yeah,” Gustav said bitterly, sinking deep into his plush seat, “and just look how far that’s got us.”

I had no ready reply. Griping about detectiving’s always been
my
job.

While Old Red slumped there silently, I skipped to the index at the back of the book hoping to find entries for “Holmes, Sherlock” or “Prostitutes, Explanation for Murders of” or even “Sense, Common.” There was nada on anything of use…while “the Spatial Quale” got its very own chapter.

I flipped to the front to see who’d put out such an unreadable brick of BS as this. I could only hope it wasn’t Smythe & Associates Publishing of New York. My pride wouldn’t survive the blow.

As I flicked past the first page, I noticed something I’d overlooked before: a little yellow sleeve glued to the paper. Sticking out of it was a small, stiff card.

“What’s that?” Gustav asked.

“Index card.” I slipped the paper from the sleeve. “I’m guessin’ Krieger uses…whoa.”

Old Red sat up straight.

“What?”

“Looks like these are for trackin’ who’s borrowed which books. Only this one’s just been out to one member…and he’s had it three different times.”

I held up the card and pointed at the name printed neatly on line after line.

“Milford Bales…Milford Bales…Milford Bales.”

Gustav snatched the card from my hand. Sure, he can’t read a word, but he still likes to see things with his own eyes.

“Might just be another coincidence,” I said, not even half believing it myself.

“Like Adeline dyin’ forty feet from Bales’s barbershop? Then Bales doin’ us like he did last night?”

Gustav gazed hollow-eyed out one of the room’s high-arched windows. Outside, the bright shine of the clear-skied afternoon was giving ground to twilight.

“Pile up enough coincidences,” my brother said, “they make a fact.”

“That don’t sound like something Mr. Holmes would say.”

I thought I heard a “fff”—the beginnings of an emphatic “Feh!”—but the door opened before Old Red could finish.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Krieger said. “How goes your research?”

“Can’t say we think much of the book,” Gustav said, “but
this
makes for mighty interestin’ readin’.”

He gave the index card a wave.

“Oh,” Krieger groaned with a rueful shake of the head. “I really must change that system. Not everyone would want their reading habits to be public knowledge.”

“Oh, I’m sure the marshal wouldn’t mind,” Old Red said. “Readin’ up on murders and such would just be part of the job for him. Why, I bet he’s in here all the time lookin’ over all kinds of gruesome whatnot.”

Krieger spread out his hands helplessly, lips pressed together in a prim pledge of silence.

“Protectin’ folks’ privacy, huh?” my brother said. “I understand. So let me ask you something you
can
talk about: When did Milford Bales become town marshal?”

“He was first elected in the fall of 1890, and he was reelected last year.” Krieger turned to me. “I thought you said you were doing research related to Horace Cuff.”

I shrugged. “We got sidetracked.”

“Did you now? If I may ask, Mr. Amlingmeyer—what kind of writing do you do again? These questions, your interest in Jack the Ripper…it doesn’t seem to fit.”

As will sometimes happen when I’m stuck for a fast answer, I reluctantly resorted to the truth. Of a sort.

“To be honest, sir, we haven’t been entirely forthcomin’ with you. It’s not an article about the town or Mr. Cuff we’re here for. I write what I guess you’d call ‘low entertainments.’ ‘Detective yarns’ others might call ’em. True-to-life stuff, such as Dr. John Watson has in
Harper’s Weekly
. We’re here in San Marcos to look into an old case.”

Krieger didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t rush to show us the door, either.

“What kind of case?” he said.

“Murder, I’m afraid.”

“A murder? In San Marcos?”

“It was five years ago,” I said.

“You wouldn’t have known her,” Old Red added, voice flat. “Just a poor farmgirl. They didn’t even write it up in the paper.”

“I see,” Krieger said, nodding gravely. “I must say…Kriegers have been in San Marcos from the very beginning. I suppose you could call us one of the town’s first families. So you can imagine how displeased I’d be to see the community painted in an unflattering light.”

I smiled reassuringly…which can be tricky to pull off when lying through one’s teeth.

“You have nothing to worry about. I have been charmed—absolutely
charmed
, sir—by the beauty of San Marcos and the warmth of its people. In fact, I’m thinkin’ of callin’ this case ‘Death Comes to Paradise.’”

“Where would this ‘case’ appear?”

“In a special issue of
Smythe’s New Detective Library
. That’s where all my other yarns have been published.”

Or
will be published
, I should have said—but why muddy the waters with wearisome details?

Krieger closed his eyes, his already colorless, characterless face going slack. “Amlingmeyer…Amlingmeyer…,” he said slowly, chewing on each letter like he was trying to taste the sound of it.

His eyes popped open and met mine. “‘On the Wrong Track’?” he said.

I blinked at him, stunned. “Yessir. That’s one of mine.”

“We got in a copy on Wednesday,” Krieger said. “It’s already been checked out.”

My fingers took to tingling, then my face, and a lightheadedness came over me it usually takes half a bottle to bring on. It was a good thing I was already sitting or my knees would’ve buckled.

At last, it was real. Something I’d written had been published—printed out in something other than my shoddy chickenscratch. If Gustav and I hadn’t been making our way to Texas the past week, I might have had copies of my own already.

I looked over at my brother, an idiot grin glued to my face. Old Red scowled it right off.

Something was stuck in his craw. Something uncommonly bothersome even for a craw as sticky as his.

He jerked his head at the nearest window—and the graying sky beyond—then flicked the index card back to me and got to his feet.

It was time to meet up with Bob and Lottie.

“Well, thank you for your help, Mr. Krieger,” I said. “We best be goin’ now.”

I walked
The Whitechapel Mystery
over to Krieger, and the two of us shook hands again.

Gustav was already halfway to the door.

“That’s really all you need?” Krieger asked. He actually looked disappointed by our departure—a first for us in San Marcos. Whatever his misgivings, meeting a bona fide (dime) novelist seemed to have put them to rest. “There’s nothing more I can do to be of service?”

Old Red paused in the doorway.

“Mr. Krieger, what we need now ain’t in no book.”

Then he looked at me again—looked at me hard, in a way that made a promise.

“
Any
book.”

He was through with research and data and talking and thinking. Maybe even through with Mr. Holmes.

As of this moment, my brother was ready for
action
…and he was going to see that we got it.

Or, Old Red Hatches a Plot to Net a Soiled Dove

It would take ten minutes of fast walking to get to the meeting spot: the San Marcos Springs, headwaters of the San Marcos River. I proposed to pass the time discussing my brother’s plan of action—his response being, “There ain’t no plan yet…but there will be if you shut up and let me think.” After that, we made the trip in silence, aside from some huffing and puffing on my part.

By the time we got out to our rendezvous, it was dusky-dark. I was a little disappointed to have lost the light, for I’d pictured the springs as bubbling, roiling, geysery things, clear-pure and alive.

As it turned out, I wasn’t missing much, sightseeing-wise. The springs were hidden beneath a swampy, brackish lagoon, and if not for the name of the place—Spring Lake—you’d have had no idea it was anything other than an overgrown pond. Down at the bottom, seething-hot streams gurgled up through invisible cracks in the earth, but the surface was as smooth as black glass.

Bob and Lottie were waiting for us in a beat-up buckboard at the southern end of the lake, near where the river snakes off into the hills. I waved and smiled, but my heart didn’t know whether to soar or sink.

We had allies at last. Faithful friends.

Faithful, generous
goat-ranching
friends in the market for a partner. “Really, now. A cowboy travelin’ on foot?” Bob chided my brother as we came up close. “What would the boys in the bunkhouse say?”

“They’d say we were smart not to waste money on rented mounts when we ain’t left town all day,” I said.

Bob gave my suit and lace-up shoes a scornful squint. “Oh, I ain’t listenin’ to you. You look like a damned banker today. What’s the matter with you, Gus—lettin’ your brother strut about in public kitted out like that? It’s positively shameful.”

Gustav let all this hot air blow right by. “Thanks for comin’.” He turned to Lottie. “I’m gonna need both of you before the night’s through.”

“Good. I didn’t come all this way just to keep Bob company,”

Lottie said. “What are you thinkin’?”

“Well, I got some notions as to who it is we’re huntin’ for, but I ain’t ready to take that head-on just yet.”

My brother’s gaze flicked my way, and I nodded my agreement…not that Old Red would need it to do as he saw fit. Still, it was a relief to know he wasn’t simply taking us gunning for Milford Bales. Go after a town marshal, you’d best have more backing you up than a couple former cowboys and a reformed harlot. You’d better have you some
proof
.

“So we’re gonna go about it roundabout,” Gustav went on. “Like this.”

It wasn’t a bad plan, really. In fact, the only part I objected to was Step One: Old Red and I were to sneak back into town unseen—by lying in the back of Bob and Lottie’s wagon under a tarp fished from the jockey box.

If you don’t understand what I disliked about this, I can only assume you’ve never stretched out in the bed of a buckboard under canvas that’s normally used to cover loads of fresh-shorn goat wool. Needless to say, by the time we pulled around behind the Star, my suit stank of Angora so bad I could have taken shears to it and sold it as fleece. I would’ve changed into something less goaty the second we got to our room, only Gustav and I sneaked up the back stairs with company—Lottie was sticking with us while Bob got Step Two rolling solo.

We let our guest have the room’s one chair, and she perched upon it stiffly, face grim. When her gaze fell upon our unmade bed, she looked like she wanted to spit on it. It took me a moment to realize why, oaf that I am.

This room was nothing new to Lottie. For all I knew, she’d spent time in that very bed, staring up at the cracked ceiling, praying for escape that came only after her best friend was hacked to death not fifty paces away.

Old Red, of course, couldn’t be counted on to lighten a mood—if anything, he dependably darkened them, and this night was no different. He just hovered by the window, staring down into the black alley below, looking sour and saying nothing.

We’d been waiting maybe half an hour when the knock finally came: four light raps on the door, just as we’d agreed out by the springs. Bob was back.

“It’s all set,” he whispered when I opened the door a crack. “Come on.”

We followed him down the hall into another room—the one he’d just rented posing as a rancher in town on business. A
lonely
rancher.

“Didn’t take much wink-winkin’ to get the clerk to talk turkey,” Bob told us. “I laid out what I wanted, slipped him a couple greenbacks, and he said he’d ‘ring for room service.’ It shouldn’t be long now.”

“You sure he didn’t suspect nothing?” Gustav asked.

“Hey, who spreads bullshit better than your ol’ pal Bob?”

My brother looked at me.

“Let’s just hope it didn’t get spread too thick,” I said.

After that, we were on to Step Three: waiting again. Old Red resumed his watch by a window, and it wasn’t twenty minutes before he spotted someone moving around down in the alley. It was time to see if his plan was going to pay off.

Just in case it didn’t, Gustav and I drew our guns.

Soon we heard footsteps out in the hall. They sounded slow, hesitant—not like the brisk, businesslike gait of a good-time gal anxious to get another unpleasant job over and done with.

The steps came closer, drew even with the door, stopped.

Then…nothing. No steps, no knock, no “Anyone home?” Just silence.

Someone was out there, though. Doing what we were.

Standing.

Listening.

Perhaps, as in my case, sweating. A lot.

At last, there was a knock.

Bob looked over at my brother. Gustav and I were side by side, pressed against the wall so as to be out of sight when the door swung open. Lottie was in the far corner, well out of the way should Ragsdale and Bock have sent us Stonewall in lieu of the strumpet we wanted.

Bob had asked for a skinny gal, preferably a blonde. Like a chippie he used to do at the Golden Eagle years before. That one, she was an animal—in all the right ways, ho ho. Squirrel Tooth Annie, they called her.

Old Red gave Bob a nod.

Bob put on a smile and stepped over to the door.

I kept my eyes on that grin of his. It was my canary in the coal mine. It died, I knew there was trouble.

Bob opened the door.

“Well well,” he said, smile holding steady. “Come on in.”

He stepped back, and a tall woman moved past him into the room. She had her back to me as Bob closed the door, but it was plain she was a bony-thin thing—sure as heck not Stonewall in a dress and shawl.

I lowered my Bulldog and let out a sigh of relief…which was what spun the woman around and set her to screaming.

“No!” she shrieked when she saw me and Gustav. “Stonewall!
Stonewall!
”

Bob got an arm around her as she dashed for the door, but she opened wide and sank big buck teeth into his wrist. He let go with a howl.

I tried next, jumping over to block the door, and took a kick to the giblets for my trouble. I spent the next few seconds so blinded with pain I was only barely aware that the screeching nutcracker who’d sent me to my knees was now clawing at my brother’s eyes.

As Old Red hopped back out of scratching range, another shape swooped into the fray, wrapping itself around our wildcat from behind, pressing close to one ear.

“Annie, stop. Annie, it’s alright. Annie, it’s
me
.”

The woman twisted to look over her shoulder. Then the whole of her was spinning around, pressing into Lottie, sobbing.

I started to get to my feet, then thought better of it on the advice of my stomach, which was threatening to evict my last meal if I didn’t hold still a little longer. Next to me, Gustav was tenderly testing the red-raw flesh of his face, apparently worried there wasn’t enough left on the bone to hold his eyeballs in place.

“Good God,” Bob croaked as he plopped himself onto a chair and checked his wrist for blood. Somehow, Squirrel Tooth Annie’s bite hadn’t broken the skin. “If Custer’d had her at the Little Big Horn, it’s Crazy Horse would’ve got scalped.”

“It ain’t her I’m worried about now,” my brother said. He’d holstered his Colt for the fracas, but now he drew it again and leaned in close to the door.

The three of us listened for a moment, but there was nothing to hear beyond Squirrel Tooth Annie’s weeping and Lottie’s quiet words of comfort.

“Neighbors ain’t complainin’,” I said.

Bob grunted out a gruff chuckle.

“That’s the Star for you. A ruckus like that’d be a soothin’ lullaby compared to some things you might hear.” Bob’s blubbery face reddened, and he glanced over at my brother. “No disrespect intended.”

“Don’t bother apologizin’. It’s true.” Old Red turned to the women. “Ain’t Stonewall supposed to hang around in case there’s trouble?”

“He doesn’t wait in the hall,” Lottie said. “Even for this place, that’d be too obvious.”

“Especially these days,” Squirrel Tooth Annie added, her voice breathy and tremulous.

“Whadaya mean?” Gustav asked her.

She wiped a sleeve over her thin, sniffling nose. There was nothing even vaguely squirrelish about her until she talked: Her two front teeth were huge. One was slightly crooked. Both were gray. Taken together, they looked like a couple gravestones side by side in the boneyard.

“Things ain’t been the same since Milford Bales became marshal,” she said. Her voice gained strength—or perhaps just hardened—with each word. “Used to be the law didn’t give a shit what we did, but Bales…can you believe he actually arrested me once? For ‘soliciting,’ he said.”

“Arrested you?” My brother’s eyes narrowed. “What’d he do?”

Squirrel Tooth put her hands on her hips, shooting for spunky-sassy even with puffy red eyes and tear tracks on her gaunt cheeks.

“What do you think he did? The son of a bitch put me in jail! Ragsdale and Bock had to send Stonewall over with fifty bucks bail to get me out. They said it was more than my scrawny old ass was worth, but I worked it off quick.” The woman cocked her head to one side. “You’re Gloomy Gus, ain’t you?”

“Yup.”

She looked over at Bob.

“And Bob Harris. I’d just about forgot what you two looked like.”

“Well, now you got something to remember me by,” Bob said. “I’ll be the feller with the tooth marks in his arm.”

“Who’d you think we were, anyway?” Old Red asked.

Squirrel Tooth let her fists drop from her hips, her arms going slack. “I thought it was my time to go. Like Adeline.”

My brother was nodding along, understanding, unsurprised—until Squirrel Tooth went on, adding three words that changed everything.

“And the others.”

Gustav froze so solid it was actually Lottie who got in the obvious question first.

“There’ve been other murders?”

“I don’t know about
murders
,” Squirrel Tooth said. “Gals just…go. Disappear. And I’ve been thinkin’ for a long, long time that…that
I
was gonna be next.”

She started to sway as she spoke, knees going wobbly.

Lottie swooped to her side again.

“For Christ’s sake, Bob,” she hissed.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Bob hopped off his seat like a frog from a frying pan, and Lottie settled Squirrel Tooth in his place.

“Lay it all out for me, Annie.” Old Red pushed past Bob and knelt down before Squirrel Tooth. “Please. I need to know
everything
.”

Squirrel Tooth looked at Lottie.

Lottie nodded.

Squirrel Tooth talked.

“It happens in October…always October. Stonewall takes one of the gals out on a job, and she doesn’t come back. ‘She run off with a drummer,’ he’ll say. Or ‘She run off with a cowboy.’ Or just ‘She run off.’ You know how it is”—she looked up at Lottie and flashed a quick, quivery smile—“some of us really do get out clean. Others die of this or that. But there’s always fresh stock comin’ in to replace the ones that go. So by the time Stonewall’s sayin’ it again—‘She run off’—it’s mostly new gals he’s sayin’ it to. Kids, practically, and they ain’t got no idea. Me and Big Bess, though, we’ve been around since it all began, so we know the truth of it: October’s when they thin the herd.”

“Who’d they do it to, Annie?” Lottie asked. “Who ‘run off’?”

“The first was Belle, almost a year to the day after Adeline died. Then a year later it was Billie Jo, and Sunshine after that. Then last year, it was a gal you never knew—Sissy, her name was.”

“Sunshine?” Lottie whispered. “Even little Sunshine?”

Squirrel Tooth reached up and took Lottie’s hands in hers.

“So the last one was October of ’92,” Gustav cut in, flinty and cold. “Ain’t nobody disappeared this year?”

Squirrel Tooth shook her head. “Not yet—but we’re just barely into October, and I figure it’s gonna be me or Big Bess this time. We’re old and poxy and worthless, us two. It won’t be long ’fore Ragsdale and Bock rid themselves of us one way or another.”

“Why don’t you just get out?” I asked. “Run off for real?”

Squirrel Tooth scowled at me as if she wanted to sink in those big chompers and crack my thick skull like a walnut.

“Run off to where? No man wants me, and I don’t want no man.” She turned away, talking to Lottie now. “Besides, you know I’ve got the kinda habits you can’t feed out on some dirt farm. I tried savin’ up money, like Adeline done, but it’s no use. It all goes up my arm.”

Squirrel Tooth leaned into her old friend, fresh tears welling in her eyes.

“Oh, sweetie,” she moaned, “it’s a wonder I’m still alive at all.”

Lottie kissed the top of her head, looking like she was on the verge of sobbing herself. Then she looked over at my brother, and it wasn’t tears in her eyes but rage.

The two of them held the gaze a moment, Lottie fire, Gustav ice. Some understanding passed wordlessly between them, and my brother turned and marched stiffly toward the door.

“Wait here,” he said to no one in particular. “This won’t take a minute.”

He left, closing the door firmly behind him.

“Where’s he goin’?” Bob asked me.

“You’re askin’ the wrong person.”

We both turned to Lottie.

She just smiled—but, oh,
what
a smile—malicious and bitter and gleeful and wild.