fifteen

 

 

“OPAL SKINNER,” CRASH announced. “Fourteen years old. Born in Rockford, Illinois.”

The girl was tucked into the Professor’s warm bed, snoozing away the sleep of the righteous while Haus regaled us with the news. McGann sat on an overturned bucket, head in his hands, eyes rimmed red.

“Her parents died when she was just a babe in arms. Her sister Camilla raised her.”

“How did she end up on the street?” I asked.

“Camilla was murdered by her husband on the night of their wedding. Opal was thought dead as well, though they never found her body in the burned ruin of the house she shared with the couple.”

McGann’s attention shot up to Crash. “Fire? Murdered? Did she...?”

Crash retrieved a letter from his pocket. I recognized Agent Trenet’s handwriting on the envelope. “My sources say that the neighbors heard Camilla and her husband arguing. There was a struggle. Someone probably knocked over a lamp in the process, and the whole thing went up. The newlyweds were found in the ashes, both with knife wounds.”

“Oh... oh, God Almighty, that poor girl,” I said.

Crash nodded. “You have reached the same conclusion I have, Dandy.”

“Maeve killed them? Murdered her own sister?” McGann asked, appalled.

“Not her sister. Hearing the struggle, Opal likely went to her sister’s aid, whereupon she found Camilla dead, or close enough to it. Her brother-in-law... shall we just say he fell on his own blade? Leave it at that, chaps?”

I shook my head with weary understanding and empathy. “That girl’s been carrying that with her. in such a tiny heart.”

“So, she ran? And took up with me? Never bothered to tell me this rather important bit of history?”

“She forgot,” Crash corrected. “She blotted it from her mind, wiped everything including her true name. The roadmen called her ‘Maeve,’ their slang for a young girl. So she took that on as her name. And you found her, as you said, living rough.”

Denholm McGann dragged his hands through his hair. “But why? Why start up with the carvings and such? Why kill our horse?”

“Tell me, Professor, while you were on your travels, did you happen upon any weddings?”

“No, we did... wait, there was that one in Lexington. And come to think on it, we invited ourselves to a fine reception just outside of Evansville the night before the horse was dirked.”

Crash snapped his fingers. “Trigger events, Denholm. Triggers.”

I knew all too well what he meant. “Hearing about the weddings. And the sight of our campfire dredged it up in her mind, and when she went to sleep...”

“Her dreams took over the rest,” Crash concluded. “She was trying to tell someone. Screaming for help, writing messages in her sleep. You said yourself, Denholm, the first time you were vandalized you found her screaming and sobbing. It wasn’t because she was attacked that night, but because she was remembering the attack that made her homeless.”

McGann pressed his fingers to his lips, and stared at the girl in his bed like she was an alien creature from the depths of the sea.

“So what do I do now? Eh? What the bloody hell do I do?”

Crash squatted in front of the Professor. “I have a thought on the matter, if you’d be keen to hear it.”

“I’m all ears.”

“She needs more than you can give her.”

I nodded. “She’s gonna need people around her who will listen to her, hold her when she cries and accept that she’s done deeds she’d rather take back.”

McGann regarded me with a sad smirk. “Know where a lot like that can be found, do you, gaucho?”

“As a matter of fact.”

Crash smiled. “She needs to stay here with us, Denholm. I hear she’s been chummy with clan Tynker over the past few days. They love her like one of their own already. Don’t think it would be too farfetched to say they’d give her a bed.”

As he stared at his ward, McGann’s feelings rose to the surface, stark and raw. He had cared for Maeve in his own way. What was it Crash had said about the Professor being lonely? Bitterness tinged his words. “So you’ll keep her here and send me off? Is that it?”

“If that’s what you want. Your wind takes you where it will, McGann. If you want to stay here and keep an eye on her, throw in your lot with us again, you can. Assuming you can work for a gaucho like me.”

The Professor didn’t answer. Just stared up at Crash, weighing his words.

“With or without you, though,” Haus added, “Opal stays here with us. If you do decide to leave, you don’t do it like a coward in the night. You tell her. Explain it however you like, but the girl’s lost enough folk in her days without you going and adding another to the list.”

McGann hung his head. “Can I have some time to think about it? The staying or going part, I mean. First thing tomorrow, once I’ve slept off this hangover, we’ll check with the Tynkers about Mae—Opal,” he corrected himself, “taking up with them. As to myself, though... I might like to stay. Then again, I might not. I still don’t like you, Haus.”

Crash smiled. “Of course you don’t. And I despise you right back, you serpent-tongued shitbag.”

“Now get the hell out of my home, you’ve darkened my doorstep enough tonight,” McGann said with a smile. “Oh, and when you do set her up with the Tynkers, tell Elijah and them to keep her away from sharp objects.” He held up his slashed sleeve as evidence.

I grinned. “Keep her away? Hell, they’ll just teach her to juggle ’em.”

 

 

THE SUNRISE WAS a grey line on the horizon when Crash and I left McGann’s vardo. As we shambled around the back end of the wagon, Haus pulled up short. I looked to see what caught his attention, and frankly it stopped my steps, too.

A pair of headlights blazed across the lot, casting twin beams on 221b. A tall, thin figure stood in the light, waiting at the foot of the stairs.

“What do you suppose that’s about?” I asked.

Crash evidently already had ideas, and his mouth hung open wide as a barn door. His eyes were haunted.

“Why?” he said, the word barely a puff of air in the chilly dawn. “Why are you here?”

Like a man walking to the gallows, Haus lurched silently toward his ramshackle home. Something quickened his pace until I found myself lagging behind my running roommate once again.

“Why are you here?” Crash shouted.

As we closed in, I could see the man waiting for us. Tall as Crash, with the same auburn hair, although unlike my friend’s unruly curls, he kept his close-cropped and smoothed with grease. His moustache was combed and clipped to precision. He wore a suit beneath the winter coat—the cost of which I didn’t even want to ponder. He held one hand behind his back. The other gripped the handle of a black umbrella.

“Director Haus?” I puffed.

Crash skidded to a stop, nearly losing his footing in the mud. “Leland. Why are you...?”

The elder Haus was dour and stern as a nun, and his jaw was rigid. He glared at his wayward sibling with a mixture of contempt and the same haunted anguish I’d seen in Maeve only an hour ago.

“Leland,” Crash pleaded. “What has happened?”

“Moira,” Leland croaked. “Sanford, my daughter is dead.”

Crash’s face wrinkled with confusion, a child’s lack of understanding. “What? No, that’s... I was just writing to her. She was...” He choked on a sob, brought a hand to his mouth as if he might vomit.

“How?” I asked.

Leland said nothing. Didn’t take his eyes off of his brother’s as he swung his hidden arm around and dropped something at Crash’s feet. The coffee can hit the ground with a clang, too loud in the pastoral morning.

It took me a moment too long to recognize the coffee can. Yellow, rusty.

Just like the others.

Crash staggered back and I caught him, held him upright. “Steady. Steady now.”

“No,” he sobbed. “No! Not my niece!”

Sanford Haus swiped at me, shoved me away and fell to his knees in front of his brother. He took up the coffee can, opened it. I couldn’t see, his body blocked my view. But I heard paper. I heard something rattling about in the old tin cylinder.

I heard shaking breaths as he wept. One word soon became audible.

Moriarty.