The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (11 page)

*   *   *

J
AMESON’S STORE WAS
on their way north, so they stopped by to check for messages. The place was busy, and Jameson was occupied with a customer, so Boz headed to the back to help load wagons.

There were several copies of the
Citizen
on the front counter, and Trace helped himself, wanting reassurance in his own mind that he had read the story there. But the first copy he picked up only had Herschel’s want ad in it. As did the next. And the next. Trace went through the whole stack of them, astonished, excited, frustrated. He’d had that other copy—he’d left it with Miss Fairweather yesterday—but other than that he had no proof that the Herschel story had appeared in the
Carondelet Citizen
at all.

By contrast, all the daily papers made screaming mention of the murder, and several of the smaller papers had issued specials. Some of the stories appeared to be copied verbatim from the
Citizen
’s original story; others had lifted the basic facts, but rearranged the words.

The
Times,
at least, showed evidence of firsthand reporting, and the reporter had not shied from making his own analysis of the case:

An examination of the scene of the crime, and the grounds surrounding the house, does not suggest the presence of anyone other than the family, and indeed Miss Herschel makes no claim of an invader. But the question remains, could a sixteen-year-old girl, of slight stature and gentle disposition, assault her grown father and two adult female relatives with murderous intent?

The answer may lie in intimations made by one Jacob Tracy, a local day laborer who was employed by Mr. Herschel. Upon entering the crime scene, Mr. Tracy appeared overcome by the ghastly sight, and when questioned he professed to be disturbed by the psychic malevolence of the place. “Great evil took place here,” he said, and then withdrew into reticence when pressed for details.

“Son of a bitch!” Trace breathed, and then looked up to see Jameson and his lady customer staring with raised eyebrows. He felt his neck getting hot. “Sorry, ma’am.” He took himself and the paper out through the back room, to the loading dock.

Boz came after him. “What’s the matter?”

Trace read him the offending part of the article, and what followed:

The police admit to being baffled, and it would not be without precedent for detectives to resort to consulting with psychics in such a case. Although Mr. Tracy denies association with the Spiritualists, he was adamant in his assertions of Miss Herschel’s innocence. Could some otherworldly knowledge be the source of his certainty?

“Could it be that reporter buggers goats?” Boz murmured.

“Or was fathered by one.” Trace wondered whether Miss Fairweather took the paper, and whether her fascination with him was stronger than her apparent need to keep hidden.

“Now, now,” said a nasal voice. “No need to get personal.”

Trace and Boz looked up. Rex Reynolds stood in the back doorway of the shop, hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels as if he had not a care in the world.

“You got plenty of nerve,” Trace said.

“
I
got nerve?” Reynolds retorted. “How’s Miss Anna’s case coming along, Counselor?”

“What?”

“I hear you and that hoity-toity Englishwoman from Quality Hill swanned into Four Courts yesterday on false pretenses. You pass the bar when I wasn’t looking?” Trace stared at him, and Reynolds grinned. “Son, you’ll find there’s little newsworthy in this town that I don’t know about. I got sources in every police station, at every saloon and barbershop—hell, I got half the laundresses uptown willing to slip me a dirty word about the missus’ sheets, if it’s a slow news day. And I know you spent
your
morning, you and your pal here, down at the
Carondelet Citizen,
trying to find out how they scooped every other paper in town. And I’d give a pony to know that myself.” Reynolds opened back his jacket lapel and pulled out a sheaf of folded news pages. “Take a gander at those.”

They were five issues of the
Carondelet Citizen,
spread out over the past nine months or so. Each one had a headline screaming bloody murder in the third column, where the want ads should have been.

“The Herschels weren’t the first to get advance coverage in the
Citizen,
” Reynolds said. “Back in January, a woman drowned her baby in the laundry tub. Husband said she’d been melancholy ever since the birth. November, an old man fell down the stairs and broke his neck in the middle of the night. Family claimed the daughter-in-law pushed him, cause she was tired of takin him to the necessary. Five other deaths in the last year, all inside homes on a Monday night, all reported by the
Citizen
on Tuesday morning, sometimes before the police got to the scene.”

“How come nobody’s noticed this?” Boz asked.

“Cause there ain’t that many copies with the murder story in it,” Trace guessed, looking at Reynolds to see if he was right. “I just went through that whole stack in there, and none of them have it.”

Reynolds laid a finger alongside his nose. “Give the man a cigar … I been able to find plenty o’ folks who claim they read the story in the
Citizen,
but precious few who can produce a copy with the text.”

“Then how’d you know?” Boz said.

“When it comes to print, not much happens that I don’t know about.” Reynolds fetched out a second set of papers. “Once I wised up to that Levy kid beating me to all the murder scenes, I started buying off a patrolman on the south beat. He makes sure to save me any newspapers he finds on the premises. And when a, uh …
precognitive
issue does turn up, I go down to the
Citizen
office and get me a copy of the official edition.”

Reynolds handed over five new pages, all folded open to the third-page classifieds. “See the connection?”

Trace could already guess, but he glanced through the pages, to be sure. “Every time there was a murder, there was an ad placed by the person who was murdered. Or kin to ’em.”

“Big winner here, folks.”

“You think that’s how they were chosen? The victims went into the
Citizen
office to place an ad, and the killer picked them out, then and there?”

“Seems to be the pattern, huh?”

“But that Levy kid said there wasn’t
time
to run a second edition,” Boz pointed out.

“I don’t think they’re bein printed at all,” Trace said, and described how he’d seen the ink change on the page. “Somethin’s alterin the pages after they’re printed.”

“Awright, so how come nobody’s noticed
that
? The Levy kid, or the old man—”

Reynolds snorted. “I’m fair sure you could march Sherman’s army through that place most nights, and old man Avery wouldn’t notice. As to Danny Levy’s involvement…” The reporter spread his hands.

“So what’re you sayin, the kid is committing murders to sell more papers?” Trace said.

“Or take his photographs,” Boz suggested, and Reynolds cocked an approving eyebrow at him.

“I couldn’t say who’s doing it, or why they’d want to.” Reynolds checked his watch, and dance-stepped down the stairs to the yard. “My advice is, take those up to Miss Clever-puss and see what she makes of it.”

“You know Miss Fairweather?” Trace said.

Reynolds touched a finger to his hat in a mockery of good manners, all the while backing toward the edge of the yard and the sidewalk. “The gray space is smaller than you think, son.” He winked, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

“Gray space?” Boz repeated.

“Don’t look at me.” Trace tapped the papers thoughtfully against his hand. “Guess I’m goin up to Hyde Park though.”

“What, cuz
he
said so?”

“Well, no,” Trace said. “I told Miss Fairweather I’d report back after we talked to the printer. And she’s gonna want to know about this.” He brandished the stack of papers again.

“Hrmph,” Boz said. “Well, don’t forget to ask about the money.” He mounted the stairs to the back door, and added before he turned into the shop, “Don’t forget to come back.”

It put a sour taste in his mouth, that remark. Why should Boz suppose he
wouldn’t
come back? He hadn’t forgotten how she’d thrown him into that hornets’ nest down in Sikeston, but at the moment, it seemed more important to find the Herschels’ killer than to nurse a grudge.

But it made him uneasy, in the next breath, to realize he was looking forward to meeting with her again. He was caught up in the hunt, now, eager to pour this latest news into her willing ear and hear what she had to say.

He grimaced. To hear her approval, more like. Just like a damned bird-dog.

He made for the street, tracing Reynolds’s footsteps, then turned the corner toward the front of the building where he’d left his horse. At the mouth of the alley he skirted a small pack of children who were gathered around a makeshift puppet stage. A gangly youth was manipulating the strings above the backdrop.

Trace glanced at the roughly built stage … and then looked harder, disbelieving what he saw. A red-faced male puppet was beating on two flaxen-haired girl puppets with a stick—no, it was an ax, with a realistic-looking blade that glinted in the sun. The puppeteer was clever; he voiced the high-pitched shrieks of both girls without pausing for breath, and little shots of red fluid squirted from the curtains to flick the children and make them squeal.

Appalled by this show of poor taste, Trace raised his gaze above the backdrop to the puppeteer, and it was Reynolds, wearing that shit-eating grin, but the flesh was worn away from the bones and the sack suit hung loose over a skeleton—

A hand clapped on Trace’s shoulder and he nearly screamed.

“Cripes,” Boz said. “Take it easy. Jameson said give this to you, since you were goin up there.”

He handed over a parcel with Miss Fairweather’s name on it—books, by the feel of them.

“Thanks,” Trace said, stealing another glance at the puppet show.

The puppeteer was an unfamiliar pimple-faced kid, and the play was a couple of darkies trying to catch a squealing pig.

Boz peered at him. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just…”

Boz’s mouth drew into a thin line. “What was it this time?”

*   *   *

M
ISS
F
AIRWEATHER SHOWED
signs of a restless night—bloodless lips and bruised-looking around the eyes—and she did not get up when Trace entered the library. She waved him into the chair beside hers and offered tea or coffee.

“Coffee,” Trace said, relieved that tea was not compulsory. “You feelin poorly?”

“Yes,” she said. “Tell me about your investigations.”

He told her about the trip to the
Carondelet Citizen
’s office, and Reynolds dropping by the store, and how the weasely reporter had poured kerosene on his suspicions about the
Citizen
.

“Rather conveniently, though, don’t you think?” Miss Fairweather said.

Trace had to agree. “Especially since … I saw somethin peculiar this morning.” He described his vision of Reynolds—a ghastly, ghoulish Reynolds—manipulating the Herschels like puppets. He heard Miss Fairweather suck in her breath, and glanced over to see she had sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, eyes bright on his face. “I guess you approve.”

“I am impressed, Mr. Tracy. Is this the first time you have had such a waking vision?”

It was hard to say. There had been plenty of times he’d gotten feelings about things—to steer wide of an outcropping because there was a rattlesnake nest behind it, or the odd dream that had come true. But everybody had those. These visions
were
like waking dreams—a glimpse through dirty mosquito netting into another layer of reality.

“I think it’s maybe the third or fourth in the last few days,” he said slowly. “Worst one I remember was at the Herschels’ farm, when I touched the body. I saw those black tadpoles coming out of his face, and then I
thought
a saw a vision of the family killin each other.”

“But you claimed you saw no spirits at the farm.”

“This wasn’t spirits. I was … it was as if I saw through the dead man’s eyes.”

He had not told her that particular detail the first time. He heard her breath hitch again.

“Another first?” she guessed.

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’s like this thing in my head is all riled up…”

“From your proximity to the spirit activity. That is very likely the case.”

Trace just managed not to swear out loud. “But that’s what I didn’t
want.
I was afraid if I started doin this work for you they’d start comin around more—”

“You said they had not.”

“No, but these new things—” He shook his head in despair. “I don’t
want
this power, lady. If you know any way to get rid of it—if I could
give
it to you, I would, believe me.”

Miss Fairweather’s face drew into harsh lines. “Do not say such things. Do you hear me?
Never
will your power away. It is a part of you, no different from your eyesight, and more precious because of its rarity. Anyone who succeeded in taking it would remove a piece of your soul with it, and leave you hobbled. Do you understand?”

He didn’t, but her vehemence was sincere enough. He nodded.

“No, I don’t think you do,” she said. “But believe me, your power is a shield, not only against the spirits but against your enemies, if you would learn to use it.”

“I don’t have enemies,” Trace said, spooked. “And anyway it don’t sound very Christian to smite them—”

“Did I say smite? I said
shield.
And telescope and microscope, for that matter. Let’s have those papers Mr. Reynolds gave you.”

He spread the pages on the table but Miss Fairweather would not touch them. She had the Chinese examine them closely, in pairs. They exchanged a few words, and then he bowed and went away.

“Min Chan is going to fetch some supplies.” She used the sugar-tongs to turn two of the newspapers around so Trace could read them. “In the meantime, please tell me what you see on these pages, Mr. Tracy.”