BUSH STREET
APRIL 16, 1906. 7:00 A.M.
I had retreated to Fremont Older's glass-enclosed inner sanctum to answer the ever-ringing telephone. Across the editorial room, Older tried his best to fend off a mounting stream of people desperate for information.
I had just hung up after explaining our lack of information to Mrs. Older for the third time. The phone rang instantly.
"This is Mr. Feeney. Is Mr. Older in?"
"This is Annalisa Passarelli."
"Annalisa. Lieutenant Fallon's sons have found his body near Angel Island. They should be bringing him to the Ferry Building within the half-hour. They're aboard the Alcatrice, a small fishing steamer."
I replaced the receiver and slipped from the room, past Mr. Older who was surrounded by a dozen people, all asking the same questions they had been asking all night. I feared that announcing the news about Byron would send a stampede toward Mission Wharf.
Once I reached Bush Street, I broke into a dead run, weaving through the morning traffic. I ran eight blocks or so to the wharf.
I arrived, breathless, at the cable car turnaround in the Ferry Plaza. In front of me was a crowd of perhaps three hundred people who had assembled to protest the arrival of the Chinese girls. Standing before them were the protest's leaders, Donaldina Cameron, from the Presbyterian Mission, and Father Peter Yorke.
I took my opera glasses from my bag, struggled with the ill-working adjustment and scanned the piers for signs of the Alcatrice. I spotted it offshore, jockeying in the still-rough seas with the ferries and schooners waiting for a place to dock.
A hundred yards away, in the hold of the Falmouth, Ting Leo jostled at a porthole with the other girls as the Ferry Building loomed. She caught a glimpse of the boat she had seen upon entering the harbor, straining to see the young man with light in his hand.
Aboard the Alcatrice, Hunter and Christian stood with their father's blanket-covered body, the Falmouth inching a few yards ahead of them toward the Jackson Street Pier just north of the Ferry Building. The dual tragedy was not lost on Hunter. The man who might have saved the girls from their terrible plight lay cold at his feet.
The Falmouth docked. A foul-looking crewman secured the gangplank and a Chinese girl, her head barely above his waist, took her first wobbly steps forward. When she recoiled, fearful of the crowd below, the sailor shoved her.
A howl went up from the demonstrators. Several girls appeared on deck, tears streaming down their dirty faces.
"Excuse me, can you tell me what's going on here?" a female voice inquired from behind me.
I turned and looked up into sky blue eyes and a sunny face beneath a broad-brimmed hat.
"Chinese slave girls," I replied.
"What?"
"They bring these girls from China, pretending they are going to find work as domestic servants or marry Chinese men. Then they sell them to brothels and businessmen who like them as young as they can get them."
"How can they do that? That's what the whole Civil War was about. You can't just sell human beings."
"My thoughts precisely." I pulled out a notebook and hastily scribbled notes, my hand barely able to function.
"You're a reporter?"
"From the Bulletin. Annalisa Passarelli."
"Oh, my gosh. Annalisa Passarelli! The opera writer! Sometimes they print your stories in the Kansas City Star! I don't believe it!"
I smiled politely, in no mood for chatter.
"I'm Kaitlin Staley. I just arrived on the train."
"Enjoy your stay, Kaitlin, and be careful," I muttered, moving toward the protestors, who had begun sitting at the foot of the gangplank to block the path of the Chinese girls.
Several paddy wagons stopped at the edge of the crowd, disgorging forty men in blue uniforms.
With his men in tow, Police Chief Donen strode forward. "All right, ladies. I'm gonna say this one time only. You can all avoid a trip to the pokey by coming to your senses and clearin' a path."
Father Yorke and Donaldina Cameron stepped into Donen's path.
"Mornin' Peter. Miss Cameron," the burly Chief said. "Perhaps you two ought to confine your meddlin' to matters of the soul and leave police matters where they belong."
"You surprise me, Jessie," Father Yorke seethed. "You talk about matters of the soul as though you had one."
"You've been warned, Father." Donen stepped back and blew a shrill blast from his whistle.
Two mustachioed officers stepped forward to grab the ankles of a seated female demonstrator, her dress flying above her waist as they dragged her, screaming, toward the paddy wagons. A roar of laughter swept through Donen's men.
"All right, lads," he bellowed, "let's haul 'em off!"
Donen's men waded into the crowd, jabbing their billy clubs at several demonstrators, whose screams mingled with the shrieks of the Chinese girls.
Enraged, I had to fight the urge to join the demonstrators. Instead, I raised the battered opera glasses and gazed toward the Alcatrice, which had veered off to dock south of the Ferry piers, where a blanket-covered body was being passed to Hunter and Christian. My insides churning, I cast one last look at the demonstrators, raised the hem of my dress, and sprinted toward the piers.
Hunter and Christian loaded the body of their father into the coroner's wagon. Hunter produced his Buck knife and sliced through the rope Anthony had used to secure his father to the rail of the launch. "You see this, Christian?"
"A piece of wet rope?"
"Do you see the nice clean cut at the end of it?"
"Maybe dad cut it himself, he carries a knife."
"Sever his own lifeline? Why would he do that?"
"It was just him and Anthony on board, remember? Finish your first week on the job before you promote yourself to detective."
Herb Szymanski, the coroner's driver, poked his head around the wagon. "Christian, you both riding with your father?"
"Give us a damn minute here, will you Herbie?"
Herb meekly retreated.
"You believe what you want, Christian. It makes you feel better. Just don't let his body out of your sight. I'll see you at the morgue."
From behind a pile of cargo pallets a hundred feet away, I could see the pain in Hunter's face. I watched him sling a leather bag over his shoulder, unchain his motorcycle from a dock piling, and speed away.
Christian climbed in next to Szymanski, who snapped the reins. The bony gray mare reared her head and lumbered off, the wagon wobbling from side to side as the cries of the demonstrators and the sobs of the Chinese girls drifted through the morning air.
After a breakneck ride along the waterfront, Hunter arrived at Meigg's Wharf. He jumped aboard his father's launch and hurried aft.
He fitted the five-foot length of rope he had removed from Byron's body to the foot-long piece still hanging from the rail. Even if Byron had wanted to cut his own rope, Hunter surmised, he could not have been dangling at the end of it and reached the point where it was cut.
Hunter climbed to the pilot's roost and surveyed the deck below. In the thick fog and rolling seas, he reasoned, it was more than likely Anthony could not see what transpired behind and below him.
Hunter climbed back to the deck and made his way to the boiler room. He struck a match and lit a candle taken from his shoulder bag. On the jagged iron cage surrounding the boiler, he spotted a sticky, reddish-brown substance. Producing two clean glass slides, he collected the blood on one slide, covered it with the other and tied them together with a string.
On the sharp corner of the angle iron, he noticed a rubbery black substance, apparently soaked with blood. He scraped it into a test tube and corked it firmly.
A trail of blood drops led him back to the passageway. On the smooth brass handle of the door were two bloody fingerprints and a bloody thumbprint. Below them, a bloody hand and palm print. Carefully, he pressed a white paper onto the handprint, repeating the effort with the finger and thumbprint on the brass handle.
He tensed as footsteps approached the passageway. He blew out the candle, unsure whether to hide or accost his visitor.
The door creaked open and a figure entered the dark compartment. I screamed when he grabbed my shoulder.
"Annalisa? What are you doing here?" He stowed his revolver. "You can't keep sneaking up on me like this."
"I was merely being cautious."
"Look. Annalisa. I want to know what is going on. Everything."
The pale light streaming through the half-opened door illuminated his anguished face.
I stopped, my mouth half open, struck by the familiarity of the gaze: the inquisitive cock of the head, the disarming blue eyes, the steady tone of the voice. They were not the characteristics of the impetuous young man I had encountered the previous day.
They were his father's eyes, his father's mannerisms, Byron's measured and resolute tone.
"Annalisa?"
The fear and horror I felt over his father's death was replaced by an eerie sensation, simultaneously warm and disconcerting: the unearthly feeling that Byron's spirit had passed to his son.