Girl Waits with Gun (30 page)

I slept all afternoon on the divan in my coat and boots. It wasn't until I roused myself to go to bed that I realized we had missed Christmas entirely.

THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS
, a worker at a paper mill beat the night watchman and stole his pay. Sheriff Heath arrested five men and had to take into custody the eight-month-old infant belonging to one of them. I read the story to Fleurette on the first day she was able to sit up and talk.

“I wonder what Mrs. Heath thought of having a baby brought into the jail,” she said.

“I can't imagine she would've liked it. She has her own children to look after.”

“Some people like babies.”

“I know. Only I wonder where its mother was.”

An image of Lucy rose suddenly before me and I flinched. The fever had left me with the distinct impression that I was being haunted. Lucy was one of the ghosts, Henry Kaufman was another, along with this new man, George Ewing. I was not yet in my right mind.

And now there was the poor night watchman at the paper mill, beaten to death for his weekly pay. The stories in the papers were like the old Austrian fairy tales my mother used to whisper to us at night, populated by ogres and trolls and the weak-limbed mortals who could not fight them off.

WE HADN'T REALIZED IT AT FIRST
, but Norma had been the sickest of all of us. She was left with a barking cough she could not shake. Fleurette kept a pot of water on the stove and carried it to her every few hours so she could breathe the steam. She could not be left alone. I didn't dare go to see Sheriff Heath until I knew Fleurette was well enough to look after Norma for the day.

Finally on New Year's Eve, I thought the two of them would be fine on their own. The road had been cleared by then and Dolley had an easy time of it. I think she was as eager to get outside and breathe the clean air as I was. The pastures along our lane were blanketed in white, punctuated only by a few bare tree trunks reaching out of the snow as if they were gasping for breath. Black cows hunkered down between them, as cold and unmoving as rocks.

When I arrived at the jail I went directly to the door of the sheriff's residence and rang the bell. There was no answer. I rang again and gave a sharp knock. I heard no sound from within. Finally the door swung open to reveal Sheriff Heath in trousers, bare feet, his shirt untucked, and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His chin was ridden with stubble and his hair hung in strands from his forehead. I recognized the glassy look in his eyes.

“You're ill,” I said.

He coughed and stepped aside to let me in. There were dolls and toys scattered about, and a plate with what looked like last night's dinner. It was not a sight intended for company to see. I didn't know where to look. I kept my eyes on my feet.

“We've been sick, too.”

Sheriff Heath coughed and nodded in response. “Everyone has.”

“We got another letter.” I offered him the envelope.

He raised his eyebrows at me and took it, then stumbled backward into a chair. I sat across from him and watched him read it twice. He dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.

Finally he put it back into the envelope and handed it to me. He tried to speak but lapsed into another coughing fit. I waited while he pushed himself out of his chair and went into the kitchen. I heard the sound of water running. He returned with a glass of water and struggled to get it down. Why wasn't his wife looking after him?

“Do you have any help? Are the children unwell too? What about Mrs. Heath?”

“All sick.”

“Won't you let me look in on them?”

He waved my questions away and pointed to the letter. “Arrange a meeting.”

“Are you sure? After what happened last time?”

“Different man,” he croaked. “We can get this one.”

I WROTE TO GEORGE EWING
and a week later, I had my response. He asked to meet at the train station in Somerville. Sheriff Heath didn't like it. “A train station,” he muttered when he stopped by to see the letter. “Too many escape routes. He's done this before.”

“Should I ask him for another meeting place?”

“No, it's fine,” he said. “I'll have men on both platforms. Just come prepared, as you did before. Don't bring any valuables, and wear something you can run in if you have to. Oh, and I need to be able to spot you in a crowd. Wear that hat with the veil across it. You're tall enough, it'll stand out even among the men's hats.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

“Forgive me,” he said, stifling a ragged cough. “Mrs. Heath is always reminding me that I should never comment upon a lady's appearance. It's a hazard of the job. I'm trained to notice details.”

“About women's heights or their hats?” I asked. I didn't like the idea of him noticing either.

“You wore it on Broadway that night,” he said. “Don't you remember? I promised I wouldn't take my eyes off you. What else was there to do but study your hat?”

I smiled. “That must have been very dull for you.”

He slid his overcoat on and opened the front door, letting in a blast of arctic air. He pulled the brim of his hat down low over his eyes.

“None of my dealings with the Kopp sisters have been dull.”

ON THE MORNING OF MY MEETING
with George Ewing, I paced and fretted and watched the clock. I had on the very same get-up I'd worn before, except for the work boots. No one saw them in the dark on Broadway, but they'd be spotted in a train station. So I wore a sensible old pair of leather shoes with buttons across the top. I carried the same handbag, but now it held fifty dollars in marked bills supplied to me by Sheriff Heath. There would be no revolver this time, he'd instructed me, on the grounds that a train station was no place for a gun fight.

Fleurette was so intent upon coming along that I made Norma promise to keep her under constant watch after I left. “Sit on her if you have to,” I told Norma. “I don't want her sneaking off to the train station.”

“In this weather? You think she would walk to town?” Norma's voice had only just returned. She still spoke in a croak.

“Just watch her.”

At last the sheriff's wagon arrived. He brought along Deputy Morris, whom we all missed seeing in our foyer in the afternoons, as well as his man English, who had shadowed me that night on Broadway, and another deputy, Richards. They were to take me to the train station and drive on from there. I would have a bit of a wait for the train, but they needed to get a good start for Somerville so they would be in place before I arrived. If all went as expected, they would arrest George Ewing and take him back in the wagon, and I would return by train to Ridgewood. The sheriff didn't want me to ride alongside the man who had been threatening me, even after he was under arrest, and I assured him I could make my way home on my own.

The station was surprisingly crowded that afternoon. It was the first clear day in some time. People who had been confined to their homes were getting out at last. Children raced around the platform as if it were a summer's day, and their mothers stood by indulgently, relieved to see them wearing themselves out in the fresh air. Groups of men stood about in their long black coats, stamping their feet in the cold and exhaling a mixture of steam and cigarette smoke.

Seeing all of this, Sheriff Heath turned down a side street and drove me two blocks away. He stopped in front of a newsstand.

“I don't want anyone to see you with us,” he said. “Buy yourself a newspaper and circle around a few times. We'll be waiting for you in Somerville.”

I stepped out and did as he asked. With a newspaper tucked under my arm, I paced the streets closest to the station and pretended to browse the shop windows. There was a hairdresser showcasing wigs she'd made from her customers' hair, and a locksmith's window with brass and iron locks gleaming like jewelry. At the pharmacy, someone had made a snowman out of rolled white bandages.

I glanced into the shop and there was Lucy Blake, standing in the doorway, staring at me. She wore a smock meant for housekeeping and a knobby red scarf of the sort an elderly aunt might knit for Christmas. When she saw me, she tried to dart out the door, but I took her elbow and pulled her back.

“Lucy? What happened to you?”

In a low voice she said, “We shouldn't talk here. I can't be seen with you.”

“But you're all right,” I said. “We've been looking for you. No one could find you after the fire.”

“I'm fine.”

“But the fire. Was it aimed at you?”

She bit her lip and blinked. Strands of hair flew about her face and she tucked them inside her hat. “I think so,” she said. “He kept asking me why I'd been talking to you. And one night he just let himself in, very late, and stumbled across my mother's bed. I broke a plate over his head and he ran out. Later that night the fire started. It had to have been him.”

“And everyone got out?”

“I think so. I'm fine, really. I'm taking care of some ladies now.”

“What ladies?”

“Sisters. Both shut-ins. They share a house and I live downstairs and do for them. We live just up Dover Street.” She pointed up the hill behind her. The homes had once been quite stately, with fish-scale shingles and widow's walks on the roof that probably gave a view all the way to New York on a clear day. Now most of them were boarding houses.

“What about your mother?”

“She took a position nearby. She does washing and mending, mostly.”

I heard the rumble of the train in the distance. “I have to go,” I said quickly. “Let me come back and talk to you. I've been wanting to show you some photographs I found of Regina Doyle's building. Can I bring them to you?”

She grabbed my arm. “Pictures of Bobby?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “But maybe someone who was involved.”

Now she was eager to see me. “When can you come?”

“Soon. And let me bring the sheriff, too. He's arrested Mr. Kaufman. I think he'd be able to help.”

She shook her head. “I don't know.”

The train had almost reached the station. “Think about it. Tell me, which house is yours?”

She gave me the number. The train whistled and screeched as it approached.

“I'll come and see you as soon as I can.” She nodded and scurried down the street.

The train to Somerville was crowded, but the ride was blessedly brief. I squeezed into a seat and pulled out the newspaper, grateful for a distraction. As the train jerked and rocked along the tracks, I pretended to read the front page, but my thoughts were on Lucy. She'd been nearby all along. Maybe it wasn't too late to do something for her.

I put the paper down and looked out the window at the gray snow along the tracks. The telegraph wires wobbled and wove as the train rushed past. The landscape beyond them rolled by like a panorama in a theater: rows of houses turned away from the tracks, with only their laundry lines and burn barrels showing, then a stand of warehouses clad in rusted tin, then the open fields of brown stubble under snow.

I realized with a start that the next stop was Somerville and I'd hardly given George Ewing a single thought. A vein leapt up and throbbed against my collarbone and I had to put a hand over it to quiet it. I reminded myself that Sheriff Heath and his men would be waiting and watching. The station would be filled with people. I didn't know what sort of man I was looking for, but I only hoped I could outrun him or fight him if I had to.

Soon the brakes screamed, the engine exhaled a head of steam, and the conductor barked out the name of the Somerville station. I got off with a crowd of passengers and walked toward the ticket counter as if I had business to attend to, then stood around waiting for everyone to disperse.

The platform was entirely exposed to the north and the wind whistled as it went past the posts and the tin roof above me. It was nearly dark and a man was walking around lighting the old gas lamps. A few people gathered around them as if they were hoping for warmth, but the flames flickered behind glass and gave out only a thin pool of light.

I sat on a bench with my ankles crossed and my handbag in my lap. A few solitary men approached the bench, but each walked right past it. The clock in the station had just struck five. I tried not to watch it as I didn't want to look nervous. My feet bounced against the brick and I willed them to stay still.

I was staring at the ties on the tracks when a hand gripped my shoulder roughly from behind.

“Not here, Miss Kopp,” a man muttered in my ear, his tobacco-stained breath on my neck. I jerked my shoulder away and rose to face him, but just as I did, a station agent blew his whistle and yelled.

“Leave the lady alone!”

I barely got a glimpse of him before he ran down the platform and out of the station, a tall, skinny figure in a baggy gray overcoat who propelled himself along with a distinctive off-center gait. It was Kaufman's friend, the one with the wooden leg.

Sheriff Heath and his deputies materialized from their posts inside the station, around the corner, and on the platform opposite. All of them ran after Ewing, leaving the station in utter silence. I was left to play the part of the astonished lady victim.

The girl running the sandwich stand rushed over with a cup of tea and a hot bun, which I saw no reason to refuse. An older gentleman came to sit with me and offered to call a doctor if I needed one. I declined, explaining that I was just taking the train to Ridgewood and would have family waiting for me there.

I finished my tea and rode the train back, then hired a cab to take me home. By the time I stood in my own drive again, it was eight o'clock. A single light burned in the kitchen. There would be a plate set aside for me, and Norma and Fleurette would be standing around anxiously. I wished I could tell them with certainty that Ewing was under arrest. I already knew what Norma would say: If Sheriff Heath couldn't catch up with a one-legged man, we were in worse trouble than we'd imagined.