On Secret Service (48 page)

Ever afterward, Lon remembered it as the black Easter. Huge swags of crepe appeared on government buildings and office blocks, theaters and music halls, residences rich and humble. Women donned mourning weeds. Men wore black armbands or lapel ribbons.

Sunday brought glorious sunshine ill suited to the capital's mood. Baker called his men together at the War Department. Secretary Stanton spoke to them in a meeting room thick with smoke and speculation. Every man wore a bit of black.

Stanton's pug-dog face had a strange lividity. He marched back and forth in front of the detectives like Napoleon before his troops. “I take a large measure of responsibility for the tragedy which has occurred. I opposed the President's attendance at the theater, but not forcefully enough. I did not prevail. Now I will not rest, and you will not rest, till the arch-conspirators who planned this outrage are brought to justice. We know the principal perpetrators. A boarder at the Surratt house, a school chum of John Surratt's named Louis Weichmann, came forward yesterday. He identified Surratt's gang and confirmed that Booth met with them frequently. I have authorized a reward of $25,000 each for the apprehension of David Herold and George Atzerodt, in addition to $50,000 for Booth. Baltimore police will locate and arrest men named Arnold and O'Laughlin. However, I call all of these persons mere pawns and hirelings. The murder of our beloved President was planned and approved at the highest level in Richmond. Booth and his cohorts were maneuvered by the cold-blooded gamesman who laid out the work. I refer to the unscrupulous Jefferson Davis. He will hang. So will they all.”

Squeezed between Sandstrom and another detective, Everton Conger, recently released from the First D.C. Cavalry, Lon was plagued with doubt. Cicero Miller said the plan was entirely his. Did Stanton know that? If so, was he purposely shifting blame to the Confederate president?

“Colonel Baker will supervise pursuit and apprehension of the suspects. Arrests will begin immediately, with a presumption of guilt in all cases. Show them no mercy, gentlemen. They showed none to our slain leader.”

 

Lon said, “Use the ax.”

Sandstrom swung it into the door of the Ohio Street sporting house. The result was predictable: feminine squeals and shrieks, an odd counterpoint to the church bells calling the faithful to worship.

Lon led the charge into the downstairs hall. “Secure the back door. Throw the women in the wagon. Ella Turner?” he shouted. “Where's Ella Turner?”

That night, locked in Old Capitol with the other whores, Booth's mistress somehow obtained chloroform and attempted suicide. When they heard about it next morning, Sandstrom said, “Too bad she failed.”

 

With the suspect roundup under way, Baker's men were far removed from preparations for the state funeral. On Monday, the moronic Lewis Paine returned to Mrs. Surratt's boardinghouse. Waiting detectives arrested him along with Mary Surratt and her daughter Anna. Lon at the time was busy on Tenth Street.

“Keep moving, all the way to the front of the wagon.” He jabbed the suspect, John Ford, with his gun barrel.

“This is outrageous,” the theater manager said. Members of Ford's cast, including Mr. Hawk, Mr. Emerson, and Miss Keene, loudly seconded the protest.

“You're lucky we don't torch the place,” Lon said. “Eugene, once they're all out, padlock it.”

The cowed actors, stagehands, and box-office cashiers squeezed and pushed until they packed the police wagon like tinned herring. One old fellow pleaded with Lon.

“Sir, I'm Buckingham, the doorkeeper. I only work here part-time. Been a carpenter at the Navy Yard for years. I'm loyal. Ask my bosses.”

“In the wagon,” Lon said.

 

On Tuesday, Abraham Lincoln lay in state on a black catafalque in the East Room. The commander of the Military Department of Washington posted an additional $10,000 reward for Booth. The city council added $20,000. Cavalry, mounted Washington police, and independent searchers charged off to Maryland in pursuit of the conspirators still at large. That evening, after two days spent hauling suspects to the Old Capitol, Lon went to Baker's office.

“Sir, I ask to be relieved from duty here in the District. I want to join the chase.”

“All those rewards enticing you, Mr. Price?”

“Colonel, I don't give a damn for the money. I have an account to settle with Davis and his crowd.” Especially one of them. Lon hadn't breathed Cicero Miller's name to anyone. Whenever he was tempted, he pulled back because of Miller's statements that persons high up in Washington were implicated. Lafayette Baker was only one step removed from Edwin Stanton.

“Do you have any special knowledge of where the suspects might be?”

Lon remembered Miller mentioning Surrattsville and Port Tobacco. He hated to lie, but he did. “No, sir.”

“Well, in consideration of what you suffered in Richmond, I'll let you go.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“Like everyone else under my command who has ridden off to Maryland, you'll keep me informed. That isn't a request, it's an order.”

For which Baker might have a private and urgent reason. Miller could hold the answer.

 

Wednesday, April 19, church bells and cannon fire announced the noon funeral in the White House, to be followed by a procession on the Avenue. Lon heard the tolling and cannonading as he cantered over the East Branch bridge into Prince Georges County. An hour before, as he had left headquarters, Baker told him that the German conspirator, Atzerodt, had been caught near the hamlet of Surrattsville.

Riding there, Lon passed large parties of mounted soldiers, and other, smaller groups of armed civilians. Lon neither stopped nor spoke to them. He reached Surrattsville in mid-afternoon. There he found Army pickets guarding the Surratt tavern, and a crudely lettered notice nailed to the door.

CLOSED
Order U.S. Govt

He rested his lathered horse in the shade of a huge oak just beginning to leaf out. People imagined police work to be romantic, but as he'd learned long ago from Pinkerton, results were mostly gotten by plodding. He fed his horse from a nosebag, watered him at a trough, and set out southward in search of Miller.

He rode into lanes leading to farmhouses and cabins, showing his badge each time. “I'd like to describe a man and ask if you've seen him.”

“One of Lincoln's killers?” the farmer or householder usually asked.

“Yes, and if you've seen him, you'll remember.”

But no one had.

Dusty and saddle-sore, he made camp in the woods that night. Fighting off gnats, he dined on a hard biscuit from his saddlebag, washing it down with creek water. Throughout Thursday and Friday he continued the search, getting mud and manure on his boots, getting chased by roosters and pigs, but getting no clue to Miller's whereabouts. Perhaps Margaret's brother had already slipped across the Potomac to Virginia, with or without Booth.

Friday night, bedeviled by a mounting sense of failure, he settled down with his head resting on his saddle and his horse tethered nearby. Lincoln's funeral train would have left Washington by now, bearing the President's casket along with that of his son Willie, exhumed for the sad journey home to Springfield. Lon wished he'd been at the depot to pay last respects.

On Saturday morning he rode into Port Tobacco. The place smelled of the leaf it was named for. He found a tavern and drank a pint of beer with his hard-cooked eggs and hominy grits. When he paid his bill, he asked about Miller. The publican, a wisp of a man, brightened noticeably.

“Oh, I seen him. His horse went lame. He bought a new one at Fuller's stable. Fuller couldn't get over what a queer sort he was. Bad limp. Awful scars on his neck and hand. Myself, I didn't like his looks much. Struck me as kind of crazed. He ate supper here before he bedded down at Fuller's.”

Fuller, the stable owner, said, “I sold him an old bay. His clothes was all-over dirt, like he'd slept out a lot.”

“Where was he headed?”

“He asked the best way down to Riverside. That's on the west shore of the inlet.”

“Close to Virginia?”

“Pretty close, yes.”

“Boatmen work out of there? Ferrying people over to secesh territory?”

Guarded all at once, Fuller said, “Don't know nothing about that.”

Lon was already in the saddle, turning his horse's head out of the stable yard.

 

Saturday night at dusk, he rode into Riverside, little more than a way station on the water. A streak of sulfurous yellow daylight lay above the trees. He passed Negro shanties and heard the pleasing sound of a mouth organ playing “Aura Lee.” His back ached. The insides of his thighs burned from hours of riding.

He jogged past ramshackle piers where dinghies and rowboats and a shrimping skiff were moored. An elderly black man sat on one pier repairing a crab trap. Lon repeated his description.

“No, I don't believe I seen anybody like that, sir.” The man's nervous eyes gave him away.

Instead of threats, Lon offered a gold dollar. “The man is one of the rebs who conspired to kill Mr. Lincoln.”

The old man bit the dollar, then pocketed it. “I'll take the money 'cause I got nine head of children to feed, but I'll tell you the truth because of what Mr. Lincoln done for my people. Go 'bout a half mile along the south shore. Turn off on a sandy track marked by a round stone, big as this.” With upraised arms, he described a two-foot arc.

“Travel down to the river 'bout a quarter mile. You'll find a cabin belonging to my cousin Wilf. Wilf's a high yella who knows the Potomac like he knows his own hand. I sent the white man to Wilf this morning. Seemed a pale and sickly sort. Said he felt poorly. You say he's a bad man?”

“He's a killer,” Lon said, mounting up. “Much obliged.” He tossed the man another gold dollar; his last. “Take care of those children.”

 

He missed the stone and the sandy road in the dark. When he realized he'd gone too far, he turned back. He waited until moonrise, munching his one remaining biscuit. As soon as white moonlight flooded the woodland, he found the sandy track with no trouble.

He tied his horse, checked the Deane & Adams to make sure it had shells in all five chambers, hooked his flat-crowned hat over the saddle horn, and walked toward the murmuring river. He smelled chimney smoke.

The cabin appeared when he rounded a bend in the track. Lamplight glowed in a window with no glass. Creeping closer, he failed to see a horse tied in the darkness. The horse whinnied. Someone in the cabin threw down a metal utensil. “What's that?” Miller's voice.

“Don' know, suh. Don't get many callers out this way.”

“Damn it, we should have crossed an hour ago.”

“You said you wanted to eat, suh.”

“Not this slop.”

Crouched below the windowsill, Lon silently counted three, jumped up, and pointed the revolver into the room. There sat Margaret's brother, feverishly sweaty in the light of a kerosene lantern. A spindly young man, yellow as a butternut squash, stood with his arm around his ebony wife.

“Miller, sit still or you're dead.”

A confusion of emotions sped over Miller's face, ending with a curiously smug smile. He raised his scarred left hand. “Guess you've caught me.”

Lon's eyes were blurring from tiredness. “Both hands,” he said, just as Miller's right hand crossed over his left with a revolver. The barrel spouted flame. The bullet whispered by Lon's ear.

Miller overturned the table. The wife screamed. Miller wheeled and shot her in the stomach. He snatched the lantern and threw it down. Rushes on the floor ignited instantly into a carpet of flame. Miller ran out the door on the river side.

“Oh, Dee, oh, Dee, he done killed you,” Wilf moaned as he tried to lift his inert wife away from the spreading fire. Lon ran around the corner of the cabin, saw a shadow shape moving down the moonlit bank to a rowboat. Miller heard him coming. He fired twice. Both shots missed.

Miller struggled into the rowboat and untied the painter from an iron stake. Lon dropped his gun and waded in. He threw himself over the gunwale, dragging Miller by the shoulders. Both of them tumbled backward, into the river.

Miller was no weakling. He kicked Lon savagely as they floundered, then slashed his cheek with fingernails. Lon seized Miller's throat; the two submerged. Lon held his prey tightly, choking him, wanting to stop his breathing, end his life…

He remembered Margaret. He remembered that Miller had secrets. Panting and spitting, he dragged Miller up from the shallows, spun him around, and bashed his jaw. Miller fell on the bank.

“Kill me, get it over.”

Lon picked a bit of river weed off his forehead. He spotted his revolver on the ground. Miller spied it too, rolled toward it. Lon ran up the bank and stepped on Miller's groping hand.

“Oh, no. You have questions to answer. Where's Booth?”