Fallen Women (17 page)

“Nothing’s sure till Mick catches whoever did this. But I’d say the chances are pretty good the same man done both of them.”

Just then, the coroner’s wagon arrived, and Mick and Beret went outside while Dr. Death and his assistant wrapped Sadie’s body in a sheet and prepared to take it away. A crowd had gathered, mostly prostitutes, here and there a man who Beret thought might have been a pimp or a dope dealer or even an early-morning john. Mick looked over the bystanders and asked, “Anybody see or hear anything last night?” When no one answered, Mick said, “You there, Little Bit, your crib’s next door. Didn’t you hear Sadie scream?”

“Not me, Mick. I moved on down the street. You ain’t been down here for a long time or you’d know.”

There were a few snickers at that. Mick ignored them as he searched the crowd. “Pretty Boy,” he called to a man who was dressed like a dandy. “Was Sadie on your string?”

The man raised his chin in disdain. “Now, Mick, you know I don’t take these girls’ money. I’m a gambler, not a mac.”

“Since when?” a girl called.

Pretty Boy pointed his walking stick at her as if it were a gun, then told Mick, “You don’t think I’d keep someone like Sadie anyway, do you? I got standards.”

“You kept her once.”

“That’s when she had teeth.”

“Where were you last night?” Mick asked, taking a step forward.

The man threw up his arms. “At the Arcade. All night. I won a pretty penny off a new fellow.”

Beret mulled over the alibi. Was that new fellow Teddy? And if he wasn’t, where was Teddy when Sadie was killed? Another poker game? Beret shook her head. She might hate Teddy, but she could not believe he was responsible for Sadie’s death. Teddy might have killed Lillie in a fit of rage, but he wasn’t so depraved that he would murder a crib girl just for the excitement of it. Of course, anything was possible. Beret wondered if she should tell the detective about her encounter with her former husband outside the Arcade. Why was she protecting him? Was it because, deep inside, she still cared for him? Beret frowned at the thought. No, of course not.

The coroner and his assistant carried Sadie’s body outside, and the crowd parted to give them a path to the wagon. The onlookers were silent then, except for the sniveling of some of the prostitutes. “Good-bye, Sadie dear,” one called, while another crossed herself. When the wagon started down the street, the crowd broke into knots of people, who watched until the vehicle disappeared. Then they began to drift away.

“That man, Pretty Boy, could he—” Beret began, but Mick shook his head.

“Unlikely. He wouldn’t want to get his hands dirty.”

“I suppose we must go back inside and search the place now.” Beret suddenly felt dirty herself.

“You don’t have to do it, Miss Osmundsen. The officers can help.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Mr. McCauley. A woman might see something a man would miss.” She turned and led the way back into the crib. But once inside, she stopped, wishing she did not have to proceed. She wasn’t sure about the protocol of examining the room or even if there was one, but that wasn’t the reason. She didn’t want to go through Sadie’s belongings as the police had pawed through Lillie’s.

“We might as well start with the bed,” Mick said. He went to the mattress, still wet with blood, and leaned down.

Beret stooped down on the other side of the bed until she was at eye level with the detective. “You don’t see an earring, do you?” she asked.

“Maybe on the floor.” They both looked under the bed, which was covered with dust and rodent droppings. Beret was still clutching the detective’s handkerchief, and now she put it over her nose, because the chamber pot was on her side of the bed and had not been emptied. She held her breath as long as she could, then stood and gasped. “I don’t see anything.”

“Me, neither.”

Mick ran his hand over the mattress, feeling for anything that might have been caught in the fabric, but found nothing and wiped the blood from his hands on the ticking. He picked up the knife and laid it carefully on the mattress. They began to examine the room then, looking into the pots, opening the drawer in the washstand. Beret found a
carte de visite
of a little boy, hidden behind the picture of the Virgin Mary, and handed it to the detective. “It could be her brother. Or her son,” Mick said. “Or it could have been left there ten years ago.”

“Was Sadie Hops her real name?”

“Was Lillie Brown your sister’s name?”

“In fact, it was to have been Lillie Brown Osmundsen, only my parents decided against a middle name.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to be.” Beret was not offended as she might have been had another officer made the retort.

Beret went through the clothes on the pegs, felt the pockets and hems for items that might have been secreted there. The two examined the woodwork to see if it had been loosened to provide a hiding place and found four gold coins behind the door frame. “They can go toward her funeral,” Mick said. “The girls are good about pitching in, the boys at the station, too, even the gentlemen of the press sometimes. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a prostitute’s funeral, Miss Osmundsen, but it’s the one time a street girl can be proud of herself—maybe the only time. The girls’ll all turn out for Sadie and sing ‘Going Home’ and cry as if they’ve lost their best friend.”

“They are really crying for themselves.”

“Could be.” He studied her a moment. “You really do know these girls, don’t you?”

Beret shrugged and thought of her sister. “Not so well as I wish I did.”

They finished inspecting the front room. Mick lit the kerosene lamp that had been beside the window and carried it with him into the back room, which was no bigger than a closet. The room was empty, except for a few rags. Beret saw movement, and a rat slid out from under them and disappeared through a hole in the wall. They examined the room quickly, both anxious to be away from it, and found nothing. Then Beret went to the pile of rags, and using Mick’s handkerchief, she picked them up one by one, dropping them onto the floor. One seemed heavier than the others and Beret took it into the front room to examine it. The cloth was folded and stitched shut. She broke the thread and discovered some cheap pieces of jewelry—a gilt brooch, a bracelet with a red stone that Beret knew was not a ruby but glass, two gold hairpins, and a child’s ring with a sapphire in it. The items were tucked inside a piece of paper folded into an envelope, and on the outside was written, “Mrs. Anson Strunk, Fort Madison, Iowa.”

“Do you suppose that’s her mother?” Beret asked.

Mick shook his head. “Who knows—her mother, sister, grandmother?”

“Will you write to her about Sadie?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it. Wouldn’t it be better to let her worry that the worst might have happened to her daughter than to tell her outright that it did? If you were her mother, would you want to know your daughter died a whore, murdered in a crib in the tenderloin?”

“Yes,” Beret said, and Mick, realizing what he’d asked, shook his head in a sort of apology.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he told her.

“I’m glad I know what happened to my sister. It would be terrible to lose track of her and never know what became of her. The not knowing would be worse. But then”—she gave a wry smile—“I’m a criminologist.”

Mick smiled.

“Exactly what is a criminologist, Detective McCauley?”

“An expert in crime. I think you qualify.”

“An empty word, then.”

“But useful.” He tucked the envelope and jewelry into his pocket, then wiped the knife and wrapped it in a rag. “I wonder if Sadie was Mrs. Anson Strunk.”

Beret thought that over. “Perhaps you should write to Anson Strunk, then.”

He nodded.

“Will you tell him her profession?”

“Not in the first letter. I’ll just say she died.”

“Then you’ve done this before, written to families of dead prostitutes.”

He nodded. “Nobody else in the department wants to do it. Sometimes it’s enough to say the woman’s dead. They may suspect the truth and don’t want it confirmed. Others—like you—need the details. I wait until they ask. Most of them don’t. Most of them don’t reply at all. But I still write. They’re human beings, after all.” He paused, then called to Officer Thrasher and told him to find a piece of wood to nail across the outside door to keep out the vags and the curious.

“Will it work?” Beret asked.

“Not likely. It won’t be an hour before some of the girls come in and take Sadie’s things. Tattered as they are, her clothes will be worn by somebody, or maybe sold to the ragpicker.” He looked around the room. “I believe we’re finished.”

With a sigh of relief, Beret went outside. The storm of the day before was gone. Holladay Street was bathed in sunlight that already had melted the snow. A spring breeze blew from the west carrying the scent of grass, covering up the manure smell of the street. A white cat, its back arched, walked slowly past Beret, then put its paws against the side of the small building and stretched. As she warmed herself in the sun’s rays Beret found it hard to believe that a woman had just been murdered a few feet from where she stood. It was too perfect a day for that. She looked across the street and saw a tulip blooming in a vacant lot. She loved tulips. They meant spring to her. She remembered how Lillie and Teddy had vied with each other to find the first tulips and bring them to her. Once Lillie had spotted a clump of them in the park and picked every one.

“Shall we start for City Hall, Detective? I’d prefer the fresh air to a streetcar, and the distance isn’t far,” Beret said, pushing the memory of Lillie and the flowers from her mind.

Mick pointed behind her with his chin. “Your driver’s waiting.”

“What!” Beret whirled around and found herself staring at Jonas, who stood by the carriage a half block away. “I told him to go back to my uncle’s house. I won’t have him following me,” she muttered.

“Like you said before, he’s trying to protect you. Don’t be too hard on the fellow. I checked on him at the station. Do you want to know who he is? It’s not a pretty story.”

“I have not heard a pretty story since I arrived in Denver.”

“I remembered the case when you told me his name. I’d just started out as a copper. It was before I had the Holladay Street beat, and one of the reasons I wanted it was to keep such things from happening. I was idealistic back then.” Mick curled his lip as if to say such feelings had passed, but Beret knew they hadn’t.

“His mother was a prostitute, worked out of a crib somewhere around here. Cock-eyed Lizzie, she was called, because one eye was off. She used to keep the boy with her, lock him in the back room when she was entertaining. Sometimes she’d go on a bender and forget about him. Lizzie had a fight with another whore. They were arguing about a john right there in her front room, and the other girl hit her and Lizzie fell against the bed. The boy must have heard it. Lizzie wasn’t found for two days, and the poor kid was in the back room all that time, locked in, nothing to eat or drink and maybe knowing his mother was dead. Can you imagine what he must have gone through, a boy like that, not more than five or six? There wasn’t anybody to take him in, so he went to an orphanage, and later on, he became a newsboy. He used to hang around City Hall. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

“I wonder if my aunt knows all that about him. My uncle told me only that Aunt Varina had rescued him from some bullies.”

“Maybe they thought the story was too sordid to tell you.” Mick glanced down at the sidewalk where the snow from the day before was melting and kicked aside a chunk of ice. “But I imagine you know plenty of sordid stories. This one isn’t so unusual.”

“No, that’s the pity of it. I wonder if he thinks of my aunt as a substitute mother. That would explain his devotion to her.”

“Could be. You’ll hurt Jonas’s feelings if we don’t let him drive us to City Hall. And you’ll hurt mine if you make me walk.” Mick chuckled. “Now don’t berate him.”

“Why, Detective, I believe you have a soft spot.”

“That’s why I let you come along to Sadie’s crib.”

“I thought it was because I am a criminologist.” For an instant, the sun and the banter made Beret forget Sadie’s murder.

She took Mick’s arm, and they walked toward the carriage, where she gave Jonas a long look but said nothing. The young man shouldn’t be caught between her annoyance and her aunt’s anger, for surely her aunt would not have been pleased if Jonas had returned to the house. Now that she knew the boy’s background, Beret resolved to be more understanding.

As Mick helped Beret into the carriage, a man approached and said, “I got a tip that your whore killer got another’n, Mick.”

“So it seems,” Mick told him.

“You want to tell me what it looks like in there?”

“You can imagine the scene for yourself.”

“My readers don’t want my imagination. They want to know what happened.”

“Since when?”

The man ignored the retort as he took note of Beret and lifted his hat. “Miss.”

Clearly annoyed, Mick said, “Miss Beret, may I present Eugene Latham. Gene, Miss Beret.” The man doffed his hat as Mick added, “Latham is a reporter for the
Denver Tribune
. Crime is his specialty, the more sensational, the better.”

Latham looked at Beret curiously, but as Mick divulged nothing about her, he turned back to the detective. “Like I say, I heard another whore was done in, a crib girl this time. Is that right?”

“Sadie Hops,” Mick said.

The reporter shook his head. “Didn’t know her. Now if it’d been a parlor girl…” The smirk on the reporter’s face disappeared when he caught Beret looking at him. “Was it the same man?”

“We don’t know.”

The reporter had taken out a pad of paper and a pencil, and he paused. “Stabbed, I heard, just like Lillie Osmundsen, the judge’s niece? You afraid if you say the murders are connected, you’ll start a riot? The girls’ll stampede out of here like scared deer if they think there’s an insane killer on the loose.”

“We don’t know enough to make any conclusions.”

Mick looked at the carriage as if to suggest that Beret get inside, but she stayed where she was, glancing at Jonas, who was transfixed by the conversation. She wished she could take him out of earshot, as she wondered if he had listened to talk like this when his mother died. Perhaps he was remembering conversations he had heard when he was locked in the back room while his mother was working.