You’ve never seen a whore look so scrubbed and clean and pristine.
They talked, all right. They talked for hours. Not that the talking came to much of anything.
How had she come to be out in the night? She had offered to help Connie with the rubbish, sir. How had she come to find the dead woman? “Well, she was laid right by the trash, sir.” Had she seen who might of done it? “No sir.” Did she know how long the woman had been there? “No sir, not that, either.” What had she done when she found the woman? “Touched her, felt her cold, and cried for help, sir.” Had she ever seen the woman before? “No sir.” Then she’d never been employed at the Hôtel Mon Cherie? “No sir, never.”
And on and on. Occasionally, a constable would poke his head in from outside and whisper to one of the men by the door. Even more occasionally, one of the men by the door would walk over and whisper to Waterson behind his hand. Once he passed the sergeant a note, which Waterson read twice, scowling.
Finally, the Marshal intervened — half a beat, I thought, before Madame had been planning on it. He said, “Sergeant Waterson, I think you’ll find — if you search in the mud along the top of the well — that there are footprints there that demonstrate that this victim was lowered on a rope from above. And that someone spent some time up there, smoking cigarettes and waiting to enjoy the spectacle of his work discovered.”
Waterson was a slight man with transparent hair combed over the beginnings of a bald spot. He had a high, freckled forehead and his brass star was pinned to a gray wool waistcoat over a sharply pressed shirt. It only flashed when his movements disturbed the hang of his jacket. He wore a string tie and a frustrated expression. I didn’t know if the sharp look he shot the Marshal was because he didn’t like being told by a black man or because he thought he knowed something the black man didn’t.
I wouldn’t of wagered on him being right about that second one, personally.
“We found the cigarette ends,” he allowed. His voice was rich with suspicion. “How did you know?”
“I checked the top of the wall before I climbed down. I have reason to believe the guilty party is someone I’ve chased here from Indian Territory.”
He pulled a creased slip of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Waterson. “I’ve a writ for his arrest.”
Waterson perused it. “This says ‘person or persons unknown.’”
“That’s how I swore it,” Reeves agreed. “I trust that’s how it’s written.”
“You haven’t read it?”
“Can’t read,” said Reeves. “They don’t teach slaves that.” He touched his forehead. “I’ve got a hell of a memory, though.”
I liked Waterson better when he tapped his fingers on the rustling paper, handed it back, and said, “I can respect that.”
Madame set her coffee on the saucer with a disciplined small click. She pinned the Marshal on a look and said, “How’d you know to come to Rapid City, if you don’t know who you’re chasing?”
Beside me, Beatrice looked delighted. We all want to be Madame, should we be lucky enough to achieve that certain age. And here was Madame echoing just what Bea’d asked previous.
Again, the oilcloth packet made an appearance. Reeves picked at the knot with a thick, split thumbnail and had it worried open in a moment or two. I thought he probably could have even done it faster, but he was enjoying the suspense. He balanced it on his knee and extracted two objects, though I didn’t think the packet was empty yet. One of the things he handed over was a greasy, grime-rubbed ticket stub with a part of a boot print still visible on it. The other was a cuff link, mother-of-pearl in sterling. I reckoned, though I didn’t touch the thing.
“The man I’m looking for killed at least two women in the Indian Territory. One in Frogville and one in Wauhillau. The same way: flogged, left to die, and dumped. I know he would have stayed to watch because he stayed to watch before. And I came here looking for him because of these. As I told these ladies earlier”—his gesture took in Beatrice and me—“I wasn’t sure until tonight that I was even in the right territory.”
No one else made a move for the ticket and the cuff link, so after a glance around I did. Waterson looked like he might of intercepted me, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Marshal Reeves raise a big hand — his hands belonged on a man even bigger than he was, and that were saying something — and Waterson slumped back on his chair.
The ticket stub was a rail ticket from Rapid City to Sherman, Texas, dated May 25, 1878. The cuff link was stamped on the back of one link 925, and on the back of the other was a hallmark: HB&S RC.
I handed both to Waterson, who frowned over them.
“Harney Brothers and Sons,” Reeves said, without being prompted. “Rapid City, Washington Territory. They’re on Burnside.”
“You’ve been to talk with them, I suppose?”
“They sell these by the dozen.” Reeves accepted the cuff link and stub back from Waterson. He rewrapped both carefully. “But they might be a little more forthcoming with the local law, if you know what I mean. And if I can find a man who visited the Indian Territory this year—”
“With a gold rush on? You’ll find a thousand.”
Reeves nodded without looking up from his meticulous fingertip job of knotting. “There’s a reward in it for those as helps me. And I figure, well, this scoundrel’s different from the general run of rogues blown in on the Klondike wind.”
“He’s been here before,” said Waterson. Then, a little crestfallen: “So he knows his way around.”
Reeves gave a tight smile, and the first glance he’d offered Waterson that didn’t seem to imply that the sergeant was studying up to become a half-wit. “And somebody knows him. And if he’s killing … soiled doves, begging your pardon … then he’s got to be patronizing them, hasn’t he? And not crib whores, and not ladies like you, who work a parlor. He needs privacy and time for what he’s doing. Also, all his victims have been white so far. Which ain’t no accident, not in the Indian Territory and not in Rapid City.”
“They’re streetwalkers,” Madame said slowly. “Women who’ll go with him without asking any fucking questions. Without a struggle.”
I don’t know if Reeves or Waterson could read the lines of her face, but I knowed from experience that her insides were casting up like poured steel. Maybe they felt it, because no one said anything until Madame gathered herself and continued, “I’ll make sure the word gets out. And I’ll make sure our sisters on rounds know to be careful.”
Reeves sucked his teeth. “Make sure they know who to come to if they meet anybody who makes ’em feel … odd or unsafe, too, if you please?”
Miss Lizzie barked laughter. “In our line of work, sir, men who seem odd or unsafe are two-thirds of the custom.”
Reeves tipped his invisible hat to her again. “Ladies, you have my solemn vow. I came nigh on two thousand miles by nag and rail, without a cook or a wagon and trailing only one posseman, leaving my seven children and my pregnant Jennie back in Oklahoma. When I leave Rapid City you have my word as a Christian that I intend to do it wearing that bastard for a hat.”
Considering how polite he was to whores, I admit I wondered a bit just how Christian Marshal Reeves was. Which ain’t no aspersion; I’m not so much for churching my own self. And you’d think them as follows Jesus, who befriended a stargazer, might be kinder to robins and crows.