FORTY-ONE

August 2, 1872

So how did Hayes die?” Hanley asked. He stood a few feet from Will Rushton, breathing shallowly through his mouth. Never a pleasant place, the morgue in early August was extra ripe with corpse stink.

The adjoining deadhouse held its typical summertime share—folk who’d succumbed to heat stroke or this year’s cholera outbreak, hotheads killed by gunfire in the Hairtrigger Block, drunkards who went lake diving off a dock or the partly built breakwater and discovered too late that whiskey didn’t magically enable them to swim. How did Will stand it day after day? The man must have a stomach and nerves of iron.

Will leaned against the table where he’d been working when Hanley walked in. The body of a young woman lay atop it, most of her decently shrouded in a plain white sheet. “Someone knifed him,” Will said. “A small blade, about two inches, a single clean slice across the neck. I’d guess a pocketknife, but it could be a shorter fixed-blade. He was struck from behind first, with a rock or a chunk of brick, judging from the lump on his head. Only one blow. Fresh bruising on his face, and defensive wounds on his hands. He fought back before his killer slit his throat.”

“A clean slice,” Hanley murmured. “Someone used to handling a knife, then.”

“Or any kind of blade. Knife, dagger, bayonet. Strong, too.”

“Was the killer right- or left-handed?”

“Left-handed, from the angle and depth of the cut. That alone should help narrow your list of suspects.” Will pursed his lips. “A bullyboy might carry a small blade, similar to a push knife. It’d be interesting to know if Hayes gambled, and if he won money off the wrong person. Maybe more than once. He had a lot of bruising, several hours older than the fresh marks and the slit throat. Someone gave him a real working over earlier on the day he died.” He tilted his head. “He spent part of Tuesday in the Armory jail, you said?”

“Yes.” Hanley described Hayes’s appearance at Lake Street Station Tuesday afternoon, drunk and apparently the victim of Irish toughs from Jacky O’Toole’s tavern. For the moment, he left out the man’s connection to Ada, though he knew he’d have to get to it soon. He needed Will’s unvarnished assessment of how Hayes died, and of Chamberlain’s investigation thus far, but he couldn’t conceal the truth for long. Will had a right to know. He’d be devastated, and furious, and desperate to help his sister. Let him be spared that for a few more minutes. “Schmidt booked him for disorderly conduct and vagrancy and sent him over. His employer must’ve paid his bail. He wrote to John Jones while at Lake Street and made sure the message went out before he’d let Schmidt put him in a holding cell.”

“John Jones,” Will said, with a cynical twist to his lips. “So that’s why the detective squad cares about a poor darky getting knifed in an alley…because a county commissioner does. I’m not used to seeing your lot down here on a dead Negro’s behalf. Certainly not Chamberlain, of all people.”

The phrase your lot gave Hanley pause. He’d never heard Will use it before, never heard him separate himself from the rest of the police department that way. “There’s something else,” he said, choosing his words with care. “Ezra Hayes was…acquainted with your sister. He’s Nat’s natural father.”

Will gaped. “Good God. Does Ada know he’s dead? Does she even know he was in Chicago? She never mentioned…I mean, we don’t meet much, I’ve gone to see her a few times since…” He stopped, and Hanley watched the blood drain from his face. “Don’t tell me she’s involved. Don’t tell me Chamberlain thinks so.”

Hanley reached out, then checked himself. Time was, he’d have bucked Will up with a clap on the arm and not given it a second thought. Regret for that loss, as well as for what he had to say, colored his tone. “I’m afraid he does. She’s been at the Armory since sometime yesterday. Apparently, Chamberlain thinks she can handle a knife, and a fistfight, well enough to make a plausible suspect. When did he come here, and what did he ask you? What did you tell him?”

Will looked like he might sick up his breakfast. He gripped the edge of the work table. “It’s not your case. What’s your interest?”

“Miss Kelmansky asked for my help. I don’t like rushes to judgment.” His friend’s pallor worried him. Will was taking it worse than Hanley’d expected, which was saying something. “Can I get you some water? Have you whiskey about?”

“I’ll be fine. I—” Will gave a sharp headshake. “You’ve talked to Ada? Seen her? How is she? Has she said anything to anyone?”

“Don’t know yet. I’m going to the Armory next. When did Ezra Hayes die? Where was he found?”

“I’ll come with you.” Will pushed away from the table, then went still with a bewildered look. “She’ll need things…food, clean linen…what else?”

“Best wait till after I’ve talked with her. I can ask what she needs, then tell you. All right?” Something was eating at Will beyond the stark fact of his sister’s plight. No time to tease it out now. Hanley waited for Will’s reluctant nod. “Now tell me more about Hayes. Who found him, where, and when?”

Will drew in a breath. “Commissioner Jones. He came here with the body about half past ten Wednesday morning. He looked shaken up. Said he’d been to Hayes’s boardinghouse to check on him, was looking for him when he saw what he took for a drunkard sleeping near the mouth of an alley. He went over, and…” Will ran a hand through his hair. “I got the sense he cared about Hayes. Beyond employer and employee, I mean. There was a friendship there, I’ll wager. I don’t know if that helps you.”

Hanley nodded. He needed to talk to Jones, the sooner the better. “And Chamberlain?”

“He came here Wednesday afternoon. Asked the usual questions—how the man was killed, time of death, whether he died where he fell.” Will let out another breath. “Which was in an alley off Thirteenth Street by State, about half a mile from the Armory. Not far from where he lived, I gather. Jones said he grew concerned when Hayes didn’t turn up for work two days in a row. On Tuesday Hayes sent a note, claiming illness—but if Jones paid his bail that night, he’d have known that was a lie. Then, when Hayes didn’t turn up on Wednesday…”

“What about time of death? And did anyone find the knife, or whatever he got hit with?”

Will shook his head. “No weapons nearby, from what Jones said. Rigor was leaving by the time I saw Hayes’s body. Given the heat, even after dark…I’d guess he was dead for twelve hours at least, maybe as much as fourteen, when Jones ran across him. Jones couldn’t give me an exact time, but nine a.m. is a good guess. Which puts Ezra’s death sometime between seven and nine on Tuesday night, nine thirty at the outside. No later than that.”

“And after he left the Armory, whenever that was.” A question for the jailhouse sergeant when Hanley got there. He looked at Will again, and the thanks he’d meant to say died on his lips. Will stood with his hands clenched, anguish so raw in his face that Hanley felt it like a gut punch.

“Ada didn’t do this,” Will said. “A blow to the head hard enough to stagger a man, then a brawl ending in a slashed throat? The father of her child, killed so brutally…it makes no sense. Why does Chamberlain think she did it? Maybe it’s those Irish toughs you should be looking for, the ones that beat Hayes up.”

The same question—why Ada?—was bothering Hanley. Some quarrel over the boy, despite Aaron’s denial, or something else from her and Hayes’s past—but how did Chamberlain know of those things, let alone leap from them to murder? Presumably he’d gone from the morgue to Hayes’s lodgings. Hanley would have. Had Chamberlain found something there? As to the rest, he didn’t point out how far away Thirteenth Street was from Jacky O’Toole’s saloon, or how conspicuous a gang of white men was likely to be in the Negro part of town, especially after nightfall. “I’ll find out what happened.”

Will swallowed. “Be careful. Please.”

“Chamberlain’s on his way out. Retirement. I can handle him.” Hanley wasn’t at all sure of that, but he wanted to sound confident for Will’s sake.

“That’s not what I meant. If Ada’s investigated…other things might come out.”

It took a moment before realization dawned. Hanley drew breath to offer reassurance, then shut his mouth. Who knew what Chamberlain would uncover, let alone what the man might do with it? “Bloody hell. I’m sorry, Will.”

They looked at each other in silence. “I want my sister safe,” Will said finally. “That matters most. But if you can keep me out of it?”

This time, Hanley obeyed the instinct of friendship and gripped Will’s shoulder. “I’ll do my best. I promise.”

§

The hot breeze outside the hospital brought Hanley the odor of horse manure from the surrounding traffic-choked streets. Not pleasant, but a welcome change from the morgue stinks of chemicals and death. The manure smell brought to mind his too-close encounter with Mike McDonald’s omnibus ten days earlier. Who had shoved him in front of it? Maybe no one. Maybe it was an accident after all. He remembered the moments just before—the harsh whisper, mind your business, then two flat palms striking the small of his back. No accident.

The end of the line for Young’s Omnibus Company wasn’t far from here. Though McDonald was probably already busy hauling well-heeled travelers from hotels to passenger depots and vice versa. Still, it might be worth a quick trip before heading back north to Harrison Street and the Armory. Maybe he’d be lucky, and the man hadn’t started his shift yet.

McDonald was there, harnessing his horse, when Hanley arrived at the drafty barn on Wabash off Twenty-Second Street. He glanced up at the sound of Hanley’s step and scowled. “I told you days ago, I didn’t see who shoved you into the street. And I’ve not magically recalled anything since. So you can take your cop self off and go to blazes.”

“Good afternoon to you, too.” Hanley fished a fifty-cent piece from his pocket and held it out. “I’ve come to settle up for that omnibus ride. I owe you forty cents. Here it is, plus the value of my ten-cent piece you left lying in the street.”

McDonald eyed the coin as if it stank of something worse than manure.

“Last chance,” Hanley said. “You don’t want it, that’s your lookout. Either way, I’ve paid my debt. I just wanted to make clear that some of us do.”

McDonald shifted his gaze to Hanley’s face. “‘Us’ meaning coppers?”

“That’s right.”

Silence stretched between them. It crossed Hanley’s mind to tell McDonald, I know who you are. Nagged by the pinprick of memory and the man’s abrupt change from friendliness to hostility after driving Hanley home, he’d asked around at Lake Street. McDonald was a gambling prince, small time but ambitious to rise. Police had raided his establishments more than once in the past several years, even when he paid protection money. At the moment, he was between gambling hells, reduced to working for a living to pile up cash for another go. No wonder he hated cops.

McDonald gave a short laugh and plucked the coin from Hanley’s palm. “No more’n what’s mine, isn’t it? Most folk wouldn’t’ve bothered. You’ve a nerve on you, boyo, I’ll give you that.”

“So I’m told. We’re square now. Pleasure doing business with you.” With a wry salute, Hanley turned to leave.

He was two steps shy of the big double doors when McDonald called out to him. Hanley turned to face the man, eyebrows raised in question.

“You said to tell you if I remembered anything. Happens I do recall a bit. What it’s worth to you, I don’t know. Something, I’d guess.”

Hanley moved closer. A little smile played around McDonald’s mouth, and Hanley realized the gambling prince was enjoying this. He’s tossing out a fresh marker, putting me back in his debt. Or so he thinks. “A description of whoever pushed me would be good. Though it would also mean you lied before about not seeing anything. You sure you want to confess to that?”

McDonald’s laugh this time was genuine. “You have got a nerve. Must be the Galway in you. Like I said, I didn’t see what happened. Mostly, my mind was on the fella my horse’d just kicked—that’d be yourself—and whether you were still breathing. But I did see something after.”

“Which was?”

“A fella…ducked out of the crowd around where you fell and went hurrying away soon’s you opened your eyes. Damned near running, like all the hounds of hell were after him.”

Coughlin? “What’d he look like?”

“Big fella, kind of square, like. Not so tall as you. Plain clothes. And red hair.”

Mahoney. Christ. Had Coughlin told him to…no, that didn’t make sense. Hanley’d been investigating O’Shea’s murder for what, a week, when Mahoney attacked him? He’d barely gotten past the first steps, hadn’t settled yet on any suspects. How in blazes had he posed enough of a threat then for Coughlin—or Mahoney on his own—to resort to attempted murder? He clenched his fists, wishing Mahoney was here for him to pound the truth out of. God knew where the fellow’d gotten to now, little chance of nabbing him any time soon.

Help Ada Kelmansky. Do something useful. He thanked McDonald and left for the Armory jail, feeling as stymied as ever.