A Barricade in Hell (30 page)

“As much as I could. Being a reporter means most people don't think twice about me asking questions. Sometimes she'd give me the slip for weeks, then I'd catch word of her again. The pattern's always the same. People disappear when Fontaine's in town. People die.” He toyed with his hat, one long finger smoothing the brown and tan ribbon around the straw crown. “She never stays in small towns more than a couple of weeks. Big cities like Chicago and San Francisco have more people and it's easier to avoid being noticed. She was in Chicago five months, Seattle for three. Fontaine's been in San Francisco close to four months now.”

“And if she holds to the pattern, Miss Fontaine won't be here much longer.” They needed to act soon, before she left his jurisdiction. Gabe sat up, leaning across the desk toward Samuel Butler. “Explain something, Mr. Butler. You've been following Effie Fontaine and collecting information for two years. Why haven't you gone to the police before now?”

Butler's laugh was harsh and bitter sounding. “What makes you think I haven't? The head constable of a little town in Georgia threw me out for spreading slander about her. Another chief of police in Iowa put me in jail for two nights. I looked like a better suspect for murder than a well-dressed woman preaching peace from the town pulpit.” He tossed his hat onto Gabe's desk. “You're the first police officer I've come across who didn't think Effie Fontaine was destined for sainthood. I figured I stood a reasonable chance of you believing me, Captain Ryan.”

“Call me Gabe. And I have reason to believe you.” He rooted around in his desk, hunting for paper and a pencil, and doing his best to ignore the imagined sensation of cold fingers caressing his cheek. He found the tablet he'd been hunting for and passed it to Jack. “What I need is for you to tell me everything you can remember from the last two years. Names, dates, places, anything I can use to build a case. I mean to put Miss Fontaine in a cell and keep her there.”

“And both of you can call me Sam.” He pulled a thick sheaf of papers out of an inside jacket pocket and smiled. “I was hoping you'd feel that way, so I came prepared. A good reporter takes lots of notes. The rest I can fill in from memory.”

Jack tugged the second spare chair from the corner to the side of the desk. He sat and flipped the tablet to an empty page, pencil poised to write. “I have a question before we get started. Did Miss Fontaine ever come after you directly, Sam?”

“No, she never did. That used to keep me up nights, but then I figured it out.” Sam stretched out his long legs and crossed his arms, papers gripped tight in one hand. “Or I think I did, anyway. All those people who went to Fontaine's lectures and disappeared believed in her, and in every word of her message. My aunt told me that Rosie believed. But I don't. I see right through Effie Fontaine to the lies. For some reason, that keeps her from coming after me. That probably sounds pretty strange, but it's the best explanation I can come up with.”

“Not so strange, Sam.” Gabe could understand and even see how that worked. He'd had long conversations with Dee and Isadora about belief and the power that brought. Even a flicker of belief could wedge open pathways best left sealed shut. “I'd even wager you're right. Now, let's get to work. We've got a lot of ground to cover and not much time.”

*   *   *

Gabe hadn't lied. Two years was a lot of ground to cover. Samuel Clemens Butler talked for almost three hours, outlining a zigzag course of murder and mysterious disappearances all across the country, and filling in the details his notes missed. The list of names Jack wrote down grew longer: men who'd signed on for casual labor, mothers who believed Effie Fontaine would keep their sons out of battle, grandmothers, young women, and men looking for a cause.

Children's names were included on the list of victims as well: sons and daughters of well-to-do merchants who vanished from front yards, working-class children who never arrived at school, and street urchins scrambling to find enough to eat. Butler had stumbled upon the name of the first missing child by accident, but once Sam started looking, he found more in each city and town Fontaine visited. He'd never been able to discover why.

None of what they knew made any sense to Gabe. Sticking pins in a map didn't reveal a pattern for her travels nor give them a possible motive. Everything she did, each town she visited and the people who fell victim to her, might have been chosen by tossing a coin. Effie Fontaine was the one constant in their laundry list of small towns and big cities.

That and the fact that Miss Fontaine returned to New York City for one or two weeks every few months.

Gabe tapped the map pins clustered around New York City. “Sam, did you ever find a reason for why Fontaine goes back to New York so often? She said something while she was in my office about having a benefactor who funds her work, but refused to name him. Could she be going back to report to him?”

“That makes as much sense as anything she does. She has family there too.” Sam dug through his stack of papers, finding what he wanted scribbled in the corner of a faded sheet of newsprint. “An uncle, Henry Mertz, who runs a secondhand shop on Second Avenue. I went to his shop more than a year ago. He has some news clippings with Miss Fontaine's picture hanging up behind his counter. He's a nice-enough old man, close to eighty if he's a day. I doubt he knows much more about his niece than what he reads in the paper.”

Jack set down his pencil and loosened his tie. “He might know more than you think. Any chance the uncle could be her benefactor?”

“Not if that shop is all he's got. I poked around in there almost an hour, trying to get him to talk.” Sam shrugged. “People came in, but they didn't buy anything. Mr. Mertz seemed to be doing all the buying.”

“I know a precinct captain in New York, Theo Watson. If there's any information we should know about Henry Mertz, Theo will find it for us. I'll ask him to see what he can find out about Fontaine's visits when he questions Mr. Mertz.” Gabe rubbed a hand over his face and turned away from the map. He glanced at the clock, surprised to find it was after four. “It's already after seven in New York. I'll send Theo a telegram first thing in the morning.”

Butler tidied up his stack of papers and stuffed them into the deep, inside pocket of his jacket. He stood and picked up his hat. “I have to get back to the office and file my story for tomorrow's paper. You know where to find me.”

Gabe offered his hand. “You've been a big help, Sam. Jack and I appreciate it.”

“Just don't let her get away, Gabe.” Sam clapped him on the arm. “And the two of you take care. Fontaine is dangerous, and so are the thugs who work for her.”

“You be careful too, Sam. She hasn't come after you yet, but that could change.”

He stood looking at the door after it closed behind Sam Butler. Thinking. Trying to devise a way to stay a step ahead of Effie Fontaine and keep her from leaving town.

Gabe turned back to find Jack flipping through the notes he'd made. “There must be seventy or eighty names here, Gabe. We should arrest Fontaine now. Tonight.”

“A lawyer would have her out before morning, and she'd be on a train an hour later. You know that just as well as I do. We have to be smarter than that.” Gabe stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets, pacing because he couldn't sit still. He glanced at the clock again, vaguely bothered by the lateness of the hour. Sal hadn't called about the autopsy report, and he wasn't sure how long to wait before giving up and going home. The deputy coroner was a busy man. Too busy. “All we have so far is a list of names from other cities and other states, and Sam's word. Proving our case here in San Francisco is what's going to put Fontaine behind bars. We have to catch her here.”

Jack tapped his pencil against the table edge, a slow fast, slow fast rhythm. “Which case do we concentrate on? We can't link Fontaine to the bodies that washed up under the pier, not unless we can identify them and prove she had contact with those women. Mandy and Archie attended her lectures, but we haven't uncovered an eyewitness who saw them there. Hell, we haven't found Amanda's body or Thad Harper's. And if anyone asked me what Miss Fontaine's motive is for killing people, I couldn't say.”

“Dora has a theory or two.”

“All her theories give me the willies. Even if I wanted to believe Dora's ideas of rituals to raise power, do we want to take that in front of a judge?” Jack's pencil tapped faster. “I wish I didn't feel like time is running out. Fontaine could leave town tonight, and we'd be no closer to making an arrest stick.”

“We can prove that Bradley Wells rented the church hall to her staff. That's solid at least and something Miss Fontaine can't deny.” Gabe stopped in front of the map again, staring at the small knot of pins representing San Francisco. He didn't want the number of pins to increase. “I'll charge her as an accessory to Wells's murder if she makes a move to leave town. That will buy us time. As much press as the Wells case received, her lawyer would have a tough time with bail. If need be, I'm sure Commissioner Lindsey would hold a news conference.”

“That sounds reasonable. What else do you have in mind?” Jack tipped his head to the side, studying Gabe, and stopped tapping the pencil. “I know you too well, Captain Ryan. You're plotting something.”

“Plotting is what the villains in Henderson's nickel weeklies do, Lieutenant Fitzgerald.” He touched the pin representing the murders in Chinatown before going back to his desk. “First I want to talk to Sung Wing again. Having a hunch that Effie Fontaine was somehow involved in his brother's murder isn't the same as proving it. Then I want to find out where she's staying in town. What Sam said about her avoiding hotels explains why we haven't tracked her down yet. Fontaine might be living with a supporter.”

“Or she could be holed up in a rooming house. All right.” The long, weary breath Jack let out wasn't quite a sigh. “Where do we start?”

“You start by going home to your wife and daughter. I'm sure Sadie would love to have you home in time for supper.” He nodded toward the perpetually slow clock hanging over the door. “If you leave now, you'll make it on time. I'm going to Chinatown alone.”

“What about going home to your own wife?” Jack tucked away his pencil and closed up the tablet containing his notes, frowning. “And I'm not wild about you going to Chinatown alone. Mr. Sung's every bit as dangerous as Effie Fontaine.”

“Dee is out shopping with Isadora and won't be home until later. I'll probably be home before she is.” Gabe unlocked his desk drawer and took out the pistol sitting inside. He didn't carry a sidearm inside the station, but he'd quickly gotten into the habit of having the gun with him each time he left the office. Too quickly. “I'll have a patrolman with me. Everything will be fine.”

“I'm holding you to that, Gabe. I'm too lazy to break in another partner.” Jack paused before opening the office door. “Do you really think that Sung Liang had a connection to Effie Fontaine?”

“I don't know.” Gabe slung his coat over his arm and grabbed his fedora. He pulled open the office door, waving Jack out. “But it won't hurt to ask.”

 

CHAPTER 19

Delia

I'd never understood Dora's obsession with fur coats. Her closets were full of mink jackets, fox stoles, and wraps trimmed in ermine. As sensitive as she was to the lingering pain of death, wearing the fur of dead animals struck me as oddly out of character. I'd told her so more than once. Each time she'd smile, pat my hand tolerantly, and mutter some nonsense about my not understanding the small sacrifices made to stay in fashion.

She was largely right about my not understanding the need to own the latest styles, especially in regard to furs. I'd borrowed one of Sadie's fox stoles for a special occasion years ago and felt enormously silly the entire night. The furrier had left the fox's head attached, and I couldn't get over the feeling that its glass eyes were leering at me. Perhaps they were.

We'd visited five furriers so far, not one of which had met Isadora's high standards. Each shop smelled slightly of mothballs, even though valiant attempts were made to cover the aroma with the scent of hothouse flowers in crystal vases and discretely placed saucers of potpourri. Dora was always unfailingly charming and polite to tradespeople, but she was also very firm about what she wanted. Watching shopkeepers scramble to find something in their stock that might catch her fancy had amused me at first, but that had lost its charm rather quickly.

Too many ghosts wandered these shops. Not the ghosts of small animals, unbearable as that might have been, but the spirits of stylish young women wearing mink stoles and older women in beaver coats. Scantily clad ladies from saloons along the Barbary Coast, a fox wrap draped over their shoulders, passed through the walls on a regular basis. The faded haunts of trappers and the traders who bought their pelts wandered through as well, each ghost following pathways they'd trod before passing into death.

Like called to like. A storefront full of dead animals attracted the restless dead, especially those who'd had an attachment to furs in life. Dora didn't appear to notice or, if she did, pretended otherwise. I found the parade of ghosts harder to ignore.

Gazing out the window didn't help. Dora had kept to her promise to take out Daniel's car more often and leave her car at home. Nathan, the hired driver, stood stiffly at the curb waiting on Dora's pleasure. He seldom blinked and never smiled, nor tipped his hat to passersby. Storefront mannequins displayed more expressions.

What troubled me was that every soldier's haunt on the street went out of its way to approach Nathan. Young men with bloody faces and horrendous wounds surrounded him, touching his cheek or his arm, or stared into his eyes. Their expressions were angry and accusing, offended by more than the fact he was still one of the living. I tried to imagine what Nathan might have done to draw the ire of so many dead men.