SIXTEEN

July 19, 1872

The odor from the deadhouse left a bitter taste at the back of Hanley’s tongue. The morgue examining room was empty except for a corpse, small and slender beneath its sheet. The sight made him flinch. He was no stranger to violence, but children always got to him. There was no right in such deaths, no decency. Useless though it was, he murmured an Our Father from habit on his way to Will’s cramped back office, where he found the police surgeon writing in a logbook.

“Got something to show you,” he said when Will glanced up. Ignoring the man’s guarded look, he held out his sketchbook, open to a drawing he’d made from memory the night before. “It’s a cotton scale. Long skinny thing, seven feet at least, with an iron weight as big as my two fists, on a chain that moves up and down. They use them at the Illinois, St. Louis and Grand Southern rail yard, where Lawrence O’Shea worked. The weight comes off, and the chain is a good foot long. Any chance this thing is what crushed the back of O’Shea’s skull?”

Curiosity glimmered in Will’s eyes. He took the sketchbook and studied the drawing. “Could be. The shape looks right, and the size surely is. What’s that number on it, sixteen? Sixteen pounds swung at you would have one hell of an impact. It’d crush a man’s skull for certain.” He caught Hanley’s gaze. “I don’t suppose you can bring me one? I could fit it to the head wound, see if it matches up.”

“O’Shea’s body is still here, then?”

Will nodded. “I’m releasing it later today. The funeral’s tomorrow, I’m told.”

Hanley suppressed the fresh sorrow he felt for O’Shea’s widow. “I can’t get a scale weight here, unless I steal it. Company property. I did get a close look at it, though. It’s made of iron. Black, like those flakes you found in O’Shea’s brain. It even looked corroded in a couple of spots, like you said it’d have to be to leave traces behind.”

Sympathy flitted across Will’s face. “At least the poor devil went quick. Probably dead at one blow.” He set the sketch down and eyed the logbook he’d been writing in. “I was just making additional notes on O’Shea. Found a few more interesting details. Care to see?”

Of course was on the tip of Hanley’s tongue. Then Will’s too-casual tone registered, and he recognized the blazing obviousness of the question as an olive branch he’d be a fool to miss. “Lead the way,” he said.

He followed Will to the deadhouse and over to the shelf that held O’Shea’s body. Will pulled the covering sheet back. “Those discolorations on the shoulder and neck are bruises, post mortem. The neck bruising looks almost like a ligature mark—I’m guessing his shirt got caught on something in the river that pulled the collar tight. There’s a scrape along his right arm that never bled. So it happened after death, too.”

“There’s plenty of junk in the Chicago River he could’ve bumped against or got stuck on. Or a bridge piling might have caught him.” It felt good to hash things over with Will, like they had before the Champion case came between them. “Did he have a wallet on him?”

Will nodded. “Still attached to his belt. There wasn’t much in it, though. Just a pair of soaked greenbacks.”

Hanley frowned. “He was murdered on a payday and never got to the saloon to spend his earnings. He should’ve had more on him. But I can’t see a thief leaving any money behind.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Anything else?”

Will pulled a glass jar down from a nearby shelf and extracted an organ from it. “I opened up his stomach and found that he’d eaten just before he died…not more than two hours before, by the look of things. Might have been bread and ham, something like that. Should help you pin down when he died, if you know when he last ate.”

Hanley gagged at the sight of the partially digested food. The junior clerk, Jamieson, had mentioned O’Shea was eating a sandwich in the office at the end of the workday on the Saturday he went missing. Two hours would definitely put his time of death no later than nine o’clock or so that night. Was he still at the rail yard then, or had he left? If the latter, where might he have gone, other than to Cleary’s Saloon like he’d planned?

Will leaned against the shelf and folded his arms. Hanley envied his ability to be so easy here, so apparently untroubled by the restless shades of the dead. “If O’Shea got stuck on debris or a bridge, that changes things,” Will said. “You remember I told you he probably went in around Erie Street? Given how long he was in the river, he must’ve gone in further downstream.”

“How much further?”

“More like Illinois Street or even Kinzie, I’d say.”

Hanley let out a breath. That meant O’Shea could have died—or been dumped—in the rail yard. “You’re sure?”

Will’s wary look came back. “I can’t be precise. But if you’re willing to trust my expertise—”

“Oh, for—” With effort, Hanley reined in his irritation. “I am,” he said, with an uncomfortable sense of guilt. “I always was. I just…forgot for a while.” He knew I’m sorry should come next and wondered why he couldn’t say it. Was he really that stiff necked, as his mother often claimed? Or was he still treating Will as if being mulatto made him lesser in Hanley’s eyes?

Will regarded him in silence, a look on his face as if Hanley’d disappointed him. “Well. Now you know everything I do. For what that’s worth to you.”

§

The conversation in the morgue replayed in Hanley’s head all the way back to Lake Street. Will had offered him an opening, and they’d edged closer to bridging the gap between them…until Hanley couldn’t manage a forthright acknowledgment of fault, and his failure pushed Will away again. How pig stubborn was he? He pushed through the stationhouse doors, relieved at the need to report to Sergeant Moore. At least he could spend the next little while focused on something besides his own shortcomings.

He was heading for the stairs when Jack Chamberlain wandered out of the squad room, stained coffee mug in hand. The sight of Hanley brought a sneer to Chamberlain’s face. “Where’s Rosie O’Grady, little old lady? Haven’t seen her since Monday. Her nothing case too tough for you?”

The senior detective stood within arm’s reach and, for a moment, Hanley imagined the sweet satisfaction of knocking the man’s teeth into his spine. Instead, he drew a slow breath. “Her name is O’Shea. And her husband is dead. Murdered. Which you’d know if you’d lifted a damn finger when she first came on Sunday to report him missing. You should try actually helping people who come to us, Jack. Earn your keep for…what is it, another month before you quit?”

Chamberlain snorted. “If you think you’re taking over my job, Paddy—”

“At least I’d do your job.” Hanley set a foot on the bottom step. “Ask any man on the squad. It’ll be a relief to stop carrying your dead weight.” He started up, conscious of Chamberlain staring daggers at him as he went, but not caring a damn.

Moore stood by an open window in his office, though there wasn’t much breeze to catch. “Sweat bath in here,” he said, mopping his neck with a handkerchief as he turned to face Hanley. “Not much better out there, from the look of you. What’ve you got on your murder case?”

“The weapon, maybe.” Hanley handed his sketchbook over, explaining about the cotton scale and its weight at the rail yard. “Will Rushton says the poor fellow likely went into the river around there. Based on the medical evidence, the most plausible time frame would be sometime between seven thirty and nine o’clock, nine thirty at the outside.”

“Anyone at the rail yard he had trouble with?”

“Not apparently…though there was trouble. I’m still working out how it could be worth killing over.” Swiftly, Hanley related what Mrs. O’Shea and Seamus Reilly had told him about Michael O’Shea’s letter and the rumors of slave labor. “I’m not sure how much credence to give those stories, and I doubt Sweetbay Sugar would breathe a word. Coughlin said as much when I asked, and he’s right. Still, O’Shea most likely being killed at the rail yard, plus that scale weight, points toward something to do with his workplace instead of a random street crime. Not one of his fellow workmen I’ve talked to knows of, or admits to, any grudge against him, but it only takes one liar. Or one of them jumped for his pay and hit him too hard. Will Rushton found two greenbacks in his wallet, when there should’ve been a week’s salary.”

“What about gambling debts? Or an angry husband whose wife O’Shea seduced?”

Hanley shook his head. “Gabe Cleary says he never played cards or dice at the saloon, and they didn’t know him at any gambling hells nearby. As to a mistress, so far everyone who knew O’Shea says he loved his wife to distraction.” Pity made his throat catch, but he shook it off. “Maybe everyone’s wrong. Or there’s a reason I haven’t uncovered yet.”

Moore nodded. “Keep me informed.”

§

Back on Kinzie Street by the rail yard, Hanley considered the place as a crime scene. O’Shea might have gone in anywhere along the stretch of river that bordered the yard on the east. Of course, it was always possible he’d gone in on the other side of the river. But Hanley didn’t think that was likely, given the man’s connection to the rail yard.

Hanley moved into the yard proper, keeping shy of tracks and freight cars and catching no one’s eye. He wasn’t here to ask questions.

O’Shea had been finishing paperwork in the yard office. Hanley called up a memory of the interior on his way toward the building, visualizing details as best he could. Had the blow that cracked O’Shea’s skull been a closed wound, or open? He thought of Will, narrow metal instrument in hand, pushing a torn flap of scalp aside. A lacerated scalp bled profusely. There’d be spatter. Hard to clean up. If he was struck inside the office, I’d have noticed something.

Lured out, then. Or the killer lay in wait for him to leave. Hanley halted just shy of his destination, gnawing his lip. Almost a week since the murder, rainstorms between, and gangs of railmen crisscrossing the ground nearby like busy ants storing food for winter. No chance of any footprints distinct enough to identify. He’d come here on a fool’s errand, most likely. But the riverbank lay so close—maybe ten feet away, a short distance to drag a man, and plenty of water to wash fresh blood from hands and arms, even clothing if necessary. So he kept going. Sometimes it paid to be stubborn. You never knew what you might find.

The outside wall of the office looked clean of week-old bloodstains, though nothing much would show on red brick. Discouragement overcame him. Sometimes being stubborn gets you nowhere. The square front windows on either side of the door were dingy and dust spotted. The left-hand window looked dirtier than its mate and sported a crack in the lower right corner. Old or new? He brushed a fingertip across the spot. Something on the glass, rough and dried and dark. Blood, mud, impossible to tell.

He fished for the handkerchief Mam always insisted he carry. The cotton square was clean and more than big enough. Prying the cracked glass loose took several seconds, but the laborers within eyeshot were intent on their work, and no one asked what he was doing. Finally, the little corner piece popped out. He wrapped it in the handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket.

He turned the corner of the building and found behind it a long, empty freight shed with a low, overhanging roof. The ground under the eaves was largely undisturbed and dry, prompting him to look more closely for evidence of a struggle.

His perseverance paid off. He found scuffled boot marks in the dirt, then spied what looked like a dent in the wall above them where something had splintered the wood. He brushed his fingers over the spot, getting a rough sense of its size and shape. Maybe where the scale weight landed after hitting O’Shea’s head? The shadows made it too dark to see if there were blood stains, but he searched further and finally found drag marks headed toward the riverbank. A swift glance around showed him that the yard office itself largely hid this area from prying eyes.

He got out his sketchbook, moved out from beneath the eaves into the late afternoon sunlight, and quickly sketched what was almost certainly the scene of O’Shea’s murder.