American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century (14 page)

Today at 7:30
A.M.
, in company with Investigator H.J.L., we proceeded to acquaint ourselves with conditions surrounding Home Colony and its residents.

Our pretext as surveyors permitted us to move around without attracting attention. We found that a number of the community occupy residences in places isolated in the timber and not easy of access. We located the residence of Jay Fox, who is supposed to be connecting with Caplan . . . we found numerous places where Caplan could remain in safe hiding.

Assistant Manager C.J.S. reported:

Today at 7:30
A.M.
, in company with Investigator H.J.L., I took up a surveillance on the residence of Jay Fox . . .

Assistant Manager C.J.S. reported:

Today at 7:00
A.M.
, having learned that the Anarchists were to hold a meeting in Tacoma to commemorate the Hay-market Riot in Chicago . . . I watched the departure of the Home Colony contingent on the 8:00
A.M.
boat . . . It was decided that I proceed by launch . . . I then proceeded to where the Anarchists’ meeting was being held . . . I did not see Fox. Neither did I see anyone answering the description of Caplan depart from the hall. At 11:45
P.M.
I discontinued.

H.J.L. reported:

I resumed investigation here today at 7:00
A.M.
covering the outgoing boat to Tacoma to ascertain whether Fox sent out any mail . . .

The lady who handled the letters for Fox on the steamer Monday was Mrs. B, an English woman, who lives on a remittance and also writes for the magazines. She has a husband here. They are divorced. She rents a house here, and stays two or three days out of the week here, and while here, she and others of the “free love” faith hold a drunken carnival.

The Jewish tailor, F., is pretty sore at the Fox family and might have some information.

Investigator H.J.L. reported:

We are getting acquainted very nicely, going along very slowly and feeling our way and the cover is first class. We have created no suspicion . . . I have become acquainted with the three store keepers, all friendly and will talk.

For weeks the undercover investigation dragged on. And each day, or so it seemed to a restless Billy, he received another telegram from the Chicago office reporting a new bombing. There had been explosions in Springfield, Illinois; French Lick, Indiana; Omaha, Nebraska; and Columbus, Indiana. Billy wanted to believe he was on the trail of the masterminds and that his men in the colony would at any moment inform him of the arrests of the two anarchists. But the string of new bombings frayed his confidence. He grew impatient. And scared. What have I missed? he asked himself. Is this a fruitless diversion, or am I still on the right trail? There were nights when he could not sleep. If new explosions caused more deaths, he knew, they would be his responsibility, the results of his mistakes. And the nation would curse his name.

TWENTY

______________________

I
N TACOMA, BILLY
was growing tired of waiting in his hotel room. He needed to keep busy. When the local police chief told him there had been labor troubles up in Seattle the previous summer and that a building had been blown up in August, Billy decided to investigate. He had no reason to believe the Seattle explosion was tied in any way to the ones in Los Angeles and Peoria. “Not even a hunch,” he would later admit. It was just that his men were in the Home Colony while he sat indolently in his room reading their reports. This inactivity gnawed at his sense of his own importance. This was the greatest case of his career, a mystery the entire nation was waiting for him to solve. He wanted to be the detective who uncovered the telltale clue and broke the case. He had to play an active role.

He arrived in Seattle without a predetermined course of action, but one quickly developed. His first stop was at police headquarters, and of course, the chief was only to happy to meet with William J. Burns. Without delay, Billy was escorted to the chief’s office.

We don’t have a lead on the bombing, the chief told him as the two men shared a drink. And, truth is, Mr. Burns, I doubt we’ll ever solve this case.

Did you try finding the source of the dynamite? Billy suggested casually. He did not want to seem as if he were telling the Seattle authorities how to manage their investigation. He simply explained that approach had moved the Los Angeles case forward.

That’s the problem, the chief complained. It’s as easy to buy dynamite in this city as it is to buy a beer. Seattle, he explained, was the West Coast teaching center for the construction trade. We got maybe a dozen trade schools that’ll sell you dynamite and then show you how to use it. Whoever planted the bomb could’ve been enrolled in any of them. But there’s no way of knowing. It’s not that we have a name, someone to look for, the chief complained to his famous visitor.

But Billy had a name. In fact, he had three—Bryce, Leonard, and Morris. And he had their descriptions, too.

He went from school to school. Then he discovered that “J. B. Bryce” had been enrolled last summer in the Seattle Trade School for a week-long blasting course. The teacher, J. D. Waggoner, gave Billy a description of his pupil that left no doubt: He was the same Bryce who had purchased the 80 percent dynamite from the Giant Powder company. The dynamite used in Los Angeles.

Bryce? Sure, I remember him well, the teacher told Billy.

Now why is that? You must have dozens of students going through here each week, the detective challenged. Instinct made him wary. The worst kind of witness was not the man who couldn’t remember, but the one who invented memories.

Waggoner wasn’t put off by the rebuke in Billy’s tone. Patiently he explained that in addition to teaching demolition, he also owned a shop that sold explosives to the construction trade. Bryce had come to him to buy a length of coil. He planned to blow some big rocks and needed the coil to set off a spark that would ignite the dynamite.

What’s so unusual about that? Billy wondered.

Nothing, Waggoner agreed. It was just that Bryce had shown him a small can containing two sticks of dynamite. The can was marked “Portland.” Now that surprised me, Waggoner said. I didn’t know they made dynamite down in Portland, and I told Bryce that.

Not Portland, Oregon, Bryce had corrected. Portland,
Indiana.

An instant connection was made in Billy’s mind. Bryce had purchased dynamite from the very place where J. W. McGraw had bought the explosives for the Peoria attack. Bryce and McGraw had to be two different men—their descriptions did not match at all. But somehow, Billy knew, they were connected. To the Peoria bombing. To Los Angeles. And now to Seattle. What was he up against? he wondered. What sort of conspiracy was this? What was the connection?

The mystery kept growing, expanding, but Billy felt he was making progress. It wasn’t clear to him yet, but he was confident he was getting closer. He just needed to understand how all the disparate elements fit together.

Anything else this Bryce happen to mention? Billy tried.

Well, Waggoner went on, I had asked him what was he doing in Portland, Indiana, buying dynamite. Long way from Seattle, you know. So he told me it was near where he was working at the time. In Indianapolis.

That night an excited Billy sent a telegram to his son Raymond in Chicago. He sent the message in the work code that he and his son had devised long ago. Caution was necessary; a detective could never tell who’d be intercepting his messages.

The telegram was delivered to the Chicago office the next day. Raymond made quick work of breaking it down. Its message:
LIKELY BRYCE IN INDIANAPOLIS
.

An exhilarated Billy returned to Tacoma. But his buoyant mood was short-lived. Bad news was waiting for him. The source was not the Home Colony but Los Angeles. His enemies were on the attack.

Leading the charge was Earl Rogers, the attorney whom he had first battled during the political corruption trials years earlier in San Francisco. Rogers now worked for Otis and the M&M, and he was making headlines accusing Burns of swindling the city of Los Angeles. Months had passed, Rogers told reporters, but what had the great detective to show for all the money he had been paid? There was no evidence, no leads. Burns had no idea who had blown up the
Times
Building. And no less infuriating, Burns wasn’t sharing what, if anything, he had so far uncovered. How do we know, an indignant Rogers ranted, that Burns has done anything? For all the citizens of this great city know, Burns has simply pocketed the taxpayers’ dollars.

Otis, too, was upset. He didn’t trust Burns, and the fact that the detective was working in secret only increased his suspicions. What was Burns up to? he fumed. Was the detective building a case against labor or against him? Anything was possible, Otis feared. On Otis’s instructions, Rogers urged that a grand jury be convened to investigate. The district attorney was too cowed to disagree.

Mayor Alexander was subpoenaed and told to produce Billy’s investigative reports. But he had none. Billy had sent him nothing.

Then Malcolm MacLaren, the manager of Los Angeles office of the Burns Detective Agency, was called to the stand. The district attorney again demanded that Billy’s reports be handed over. Mac truthfully testified that he had never received a single one.

That night the L.A. office of the Burns Agency was broken into. Desks were rifled. The contents of filing cabinets were strewn about the floor. But if the thieves were looking for the reports detailing Billy’s search for the men responsible for the bombing of the
Los Angeles Times,
they did not find any. Anticipating trouble, Billy had sent all his files to Chicago. They were locked in a safe deposit box deep in the vault of the First National Bank.

Neither the grand jury nor Otis and the men in the M&M were able to learn anything about the progress of the investigation. But that did not prevent the city from taking action. Mayor Alexander needed Otis’s support in the upcoming election, and he caved to the publisher’s will. He announced that he would immediately stop all further payments to the Burns Agency. Burns would not get another penny from the city until he produced results.

Billy was devastated. How was he going to pay the dozen or so men he had working on the case? Over $100,000 was pledged in rewards for the apprehension of the person or persons responsible for the twenty-one murders, but before Billy could receive any reward money, he’d have to solve the case. After months spent following an inconclusive trail, Billy knew that wouldn’t be easy. He needed the monthly retainer from Los Angeles to finance what he suspected would be a long and expensive investigation. He had collected lots of leads, but he still was not sure where they were pointing. There was a likelihood, a strong one, that he might never catch the men responsible. If he borrowed the money to keep the investigation going and failed to solve the crime, he’d never be able to repay his creditors. He’d be bankrupt, penniless and ruined after a lifetime’s work. All because of his vanity. His refusal to concede that Billy Burns couldn’t solve every mystery. What about his responsibilities to his wife Annie? His four children?

But in the end Billy decided it was a gamble he had to take. “As long as there was a chance to get Caplan or break out a trail to him,” he said, “I was going to stick.” He couldn’t imagine failing. He was the greatest detective the world had ever known. He would get his man. It was humiliating. It made him anxious. But he borrowed $14,000 and stayed on the case.

Then all at once his faith seemed justified. He got his big break. His men in the colony sent an urgent report. Fox had a visitor. “He was a peddler of notions, women’s goods, etc. He was a loud-mouthed Jew and a strong Anarchist . . . he answers the description of Caplan, as to height, color, and age.”

Billy rushed to the colony. He did not even bother with his hunter’s disguise. He didn’t care if he was recognized. He was going to get Caplan, and no one was going to stop him. But when he cornered the man and started to question him, he realized “he was not the man I wanted.” The peddler was not Caplan.

On the ferry trip back to Tacoma, Billy was as low as he had ever been. Maybe he should give up. He’d have to learn to live with his failure, his embarrassment, but it would be better than dragging his family into bankruptcy. Every detective, he tried persuading himself, encounters a case he cannot solve. Perhaps this was his.

He entered the hotel and was heading sullenly to his room when the manager approached. Telegram, Mr. Burns, he announced as he handed Billy the yellow envelope.

What now? Billy wondered. More bad news?

He waited until he was in his room to open it. It was from his son Raymond, sent from Indianapolis, and it was in code. He began to decipher it, slowly at first and then with increasing excitement. Raymond had spotted someone in Indianapolis. Only it wasn’t Bryce. It was J. W. McGraw.

TWENTY-ONE

______________________

A
BOVE ALL ELSE
, twenty-five-year-old Raymond Burns wanted to please his father. Raymond knew he was a disappointment to the detective, but he felt it was not all his fault. True, Raymond deserved some blame. There was no doubt he had made a mistake three years ago in San Francisco. He had been given a great responsibility—a great opportunity—and had let his father down.

That unlucky Friday the thirteenth, in November 1908, had begun, Raymond recalled with remorse, with such promise. At breakfast his father had informed Sherman, Raymond’s younger brother, that he wouldn’t be able to attend his football game at Lowell High School as he had promised. Threats had been made against Frank Heney, the prosecutor who was trying the case against Abraham Rueff, the city’s former mayor and a leader of the corruption ring. Billy needed to be in the courtroom at Heney’s side.