CHAPTER

32

 

The noon Mass at Cathedral of the Assumption, across Fifth Street, had just let out, and Dallas Four Gold stopped to take a few photographs of the gorgeous 1852 church with its tall white spire. He nodded to a few of the parishioners as they exited the cathedral, and he took a few more pictures with his small digital camera.

Then he turned and walked back to the corner, facing the dirt- and grease-streaked window of the Association of Minor League Enthusiasts. He had watched Journey and the woman go in, had seen them talking to the heavyset man with the mustache and ponytail. He was growing impatient and tired.

Hands on his camera, pretending to look at the image of a photo he’d just taken, Gold glanced again at the building across the way. The man behind the desk had just brought out several cardboard boxes and placed them in front of Journey and the woman. His pulse quickened, and he reported to Bronze, who talked with Chicago base, who had jurisdiction over the Louisville area.

Gold fiddled with his camera a little more and walked back toward the cathedral. He had to stay alert now.

*   *   *

“Oh, he was obsessed with it,” Lovell said as he pulled the lid off a cardboard box labeled WILLIAMS 1958–1963. “And to be fair to the old man, it was sort of a famous unsolved mystery around here way back when. My dad was really into Louisville history, and he thought he was going to solve it and write a bestseller and make a lot of money and go on the Today Show. You know, that kind of crap. He got lots of stuff the first few years, mainly old newspaper clippings, but there were even some police reports from the early twentieth century when it was still technically an open case. It kind of fell off after that, but he’d get two or three new things a year. Then finally, not too long before he died, the bank released a bunch of papers. Turns out they’d been in the vault for a long time and no one ever did anything with them. The bank’s new CEO wanted all that crap out of there. Can’t say that I blame him. So it all came back here.”

“What do you mean, back here?” Tolman said.

“This place,” Lovell said. “It was the old man’s real estate office. He left it to me. I live upstairs. Don’t ever have to leave if I don’t want to.”

Journey laid his hand over a bulging envelope. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead. I’ve got stuff to do. But you promised to sign cards before you leave.”

“I will.”

He unfolded a yellowed newspaper clipping dated October 1, 1914. HALF CENTURY MYSTERY, the headline read, with the subhead, SCION OF LOUISVILLE FAMILY WAS MISSING DURING CIVIL WAR.

It was a short piece marking fifty years since prominent banker Samuel Benjamin Williams disappeared from his Louisville home, never to be heard from again. There were tantalizing tidbits: Williams was reputed to have been a member of Major McCulloch’s renowned company of army “scouts”—a euphemism for spies, Journey knew—in the Mexican War of 1846–1848 before returning to Louisville high society. Further intrigue: a longtime employee of the bank swore he’d seen Williams walking out of the bank late one night “about six months after he went away.” The man, in his eighties in 1914, was not believed to be credible, and was rumored to have “imbibed generously in spirits.” Journey smiled at the language of the period journalism.

Paper-clipped three pages down was a smudged photocopy. Journey stopped cold when he saw the handwriting.

I wear no uniform, but I am no less a warrior, a warrior to reclaim the glory of this American land. I leave all to my younger brother, John, who has crossed the river to join the Federals.

“This is his writing,” Journey said.

Both Tolman and Lovell looked up, Tolman from her own box, Lovell from his computer monitor and a small assortment of Nick Journey baseball cards he’d scavenged from a filing cabinet.

Journey dug in his backpack and withdrew his copy of the page from Fort Washita. He placed it on one knee, the page he’d just found on the other knee. Tolman looked at both, smoothing the pages on Journey’s knees. Lovell looked at them with mild interest, then went back to clicking his mouse.

“Look at the shapes of the letters,” Journey said.

“Are you really that much of a handwriting expert?” Tolman said.

“No, no, but when you read a lot of original documents from a period, you get used to analyzing them. It’s the same.”

Tolman ran her finger along the top of the page that had just come out of the box. In the same script was written the date, 1 Oct 1864.

“You know what it reminds me of?” she said. “A suicide note. Like he was telling the world he was leaving.”

“But a suicide without a body. Aside from one admittedly dubious sighting, no one ever saw him again after this. According to the 1914 newspaper story, he simply didn’t go to the bank that day. His house was neat and orderly, all his clothes were in the closets, even his watch was on his dresser. His housekeeper said everything looked exactly as it should look, except for the note—this note—on the dresser. He was just … gone.” Journey shook his head.

“Where was he between October first and the end of the war?” Tolman asked.

“Maybe getting close to the generals. Maybe putting the Glory Warriors apparatus into place. Here’s something to think about: This newspaper story says he was one of McCulloch’s ‘scouts’ during the Mexican War. Lee and Grant were both in Mexico—most Regular Army officers were. It’s not inconceivable that Williams could have met both Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee nearly twenty years earlier.”

Tolman looked at the newspaper clipping. “And he was from an influential family.”

Journey nodded. “Not just an influential family, but one from a strategic city in a border state. That, plus the fact that they would consider him a ‘brother officer,’ a Mexico veteran, might have made them willing to meet with him. If he’d been just some obscure civilian Kentucky banker, they probably wouldn’t give him the time of day.” He shook the note Williams had written. “He even mentions being a ‘warrior to reclaim the glory.’ And maybe the dubious sighting wasn’t so dubious after all.” He picked up the 1914 clipping again. “This bank employee, supposedly after locking the bank one night a few months after Williams disappeared, said he saw him coming out a side door. Maybe this really was Williams after all, on his way from Appomattox to Indian Territory.…”

“And he locked the page in the vault of his own bank.”

They looked at each other.

Lovell stared over his computer at them. “So you guys think you really know what happened to Williams? I mean, my old man never solved it, in all those years. He let his real estate business fall off, he pissed off his whole family … and you really think you know?”

“I’m not sure,” Journey said. “It’s a lot of maybes. But the time frame is right. Just like I told Sandra, he could have ridden here from Virginia, placed the page in the bank—right under everyone’s noses—then taken boats from here to Fort Smith, bought a horse there, and ridden to Washita.”

“And where else would be more secure than a bank vault?”

“His bank vault, no less. And that was what he was trying to tell us with The Poet’s Penn. He was telling us who he was, telling us that he came home to Louisville before heading to the frontier for the last phase of the plan.”

They were silent a moment; then Tolman picked up the note. “What about his brother? John?”

“I can answer that one,” Lovell said. “My old man mentioned him a few times. He was a lot younger than Sam, and he joined one of the Indiana regiments. He was killed in the war. That’s no mystery. He didn’t work in the bank and didn’t want anything to do with it. He was a blacksmith, but he got killed in the war.”

“So he left the bank to his brother,” Tolman said, “but his brother was killed in the war. That’s when the cousin took over, and the strange disappearance of Samuel Williams just faded out of everyone’s consciousness after a while.”

Journey looked at Lovell. “Evan, did you say that the bank donated a lot of papers to your father just before he died?”

Lovell nodded. “Yeah. They cleaned out their old vault.”

Journey and Tolman looked at each other again. Neither one spoke for half a minute.

“Then more than likely,” Tolman finally said, “the pages we’re looking for are somewhere right here.”