Another door to be opened. Another threshold to cross, and what lay within?
She had dreaded doors and thresholds since Lawson had returned with her to her father’s mansion just outside Shreveport after the events of July. Under a scythe of a moon they had found the barn’s doors open and David Kingsley’s prized horses gone. The nightblack house was empty, though its front door was also wide open. The servants were not to be found. Kingsley did not answer his elder daughter’s calls. The flare of the oil lamp that Lawson had bought in the swamp town of St. Benedicta on the return trip revealed evidence of violence. Firstly, a painting of Ann’s cherished mother, dead from consumption these last ten years, had been torn from the wall and ripped apart. Shredded would be the word.
And secondly, in the library where Ann’s father in brighter days liked to take his repast by smoking his cigars and reading the classics, if horse-racing news might be called such…
Lawson had heard the hideous humming of the flies at work beyond the closed door before Ann had. Without horses to nip upon in barn or pasture, the flies had come in through a broken window and surely filled the room like roiling clouds. They worked by night as well as by day, and like the vampires they were voracious and greedy in their feasting.
“Enter,” said a rough voice beyond the frosted glass of this new door before Lawson could turn the knob. Of course the man in there could see their shapes illuminated by the gas lamps. The personage who had summoned Trevor Lawson from New Orleans sat nearly in complete darkness save for the double candles. Lawson understood; the letter had said this was a very personal matter. Sometimes those were best left to the mercies of the dark.
He opened the door and went in first, with Ann right behind him. He had the feeling she wanted very much to draw her own Remington Army pistol from beneath her violet-colored coat, if just as a precaution, but she did not and he thought that was good: though their worlds of existence were both far apart and by necessity like joined shadows thrown by the same light, she trusted him.
“Two of you,” said the man who sat behind a desk that seemed as broad as a Nebraska cornfield. “I expected only yourself, Mr. Lawson.”
“My associate travels with me,” was the response. “Pardon my not telling you that in the return letter.”
“Is she good with a gun?”
“I am,” Ann said, and the note in her voice told him he ought to believe it.
Lawson said, “I hope that gunplay will not be the first requirement for this job. I prefer it to be the last.”
“As do I,” answered R. Robertson Cavanaugh, “but where I will ask you to go, you’ll need bullets, a steady aim and a cool head.”
“Ah.” Lawson offered a thin smile. “A destination I’ve already visited.”
A silence stretched. Lawson might have thrown his Eye into the head of R. Robertson Cavanaugh to learn everything in a few seconds, but the silence itself spoke. The heaviness of it said that this was a man who was careful in his dealings with people, that he probably did not trust people very much nor necessarily like them, and that he had secrets he wished to keep close to his chest. He was a gambler also, for he had gambled that Trevor Lawson would come all this way by train from New Orleans simply from a letter that already had Lawson’s business card in it.
It was a plain white card, this one a little smudged around the edges revealing that it was no youngster. Beneath Lawson’s name and the address of the Hotel Sanctuaire was the line All Matters Handled. And below that: I Travel By Night.
The letter itself had been brief, written in blue ink by a strong hand: A very personal matter. See me in Omaha, 8 p.m. 10th December. R. Robertson Cavanaugh Mining And Investments office, 1220 3rd Street. Discretion of course.
Signed, Cavanaugh.
The gambler’s hand had been aided by the inclusion of a banker’s check for one thousand dollars and a series of railroad tickets for sleeping car service on connecting lines that would get Lawson to Omaha on the appointed day. Lawson had not failed to note that the tickets were all for night trains.
It had been a small matter to pay for Ann’s tickets for her own berths in the sleeping cars, and then a slightly larger matter to gird himself for a long trip that might yet put him within reach of one of his most furious enemies, the sun.
“There’s a key in the lock,” Cavanaugh said. “Turn it.”
Ann did. “Sit.” It was spoken like a command. There was only one chair before the desk. “Another chair in the corner. Drag it over. I wasn’t expecting a woman.”
“And here you have a lady,” Ann said. She lifted her chin slightly in a little display of fire. Lawson thought she’d earned the right, as she’d seen sights that would drive R. Robertson Cavanaugh gobbling mad and cause him to cast what appeared to be a barrel-chested bulk diving out the canvas-shaded window behind him. Lawson started for the extra chair, but Ann said, “I’ll get it,” and was already tending to the task.
He couldn’t help but admire her. She had followed him from the swamp and been with him on several jobs for clients. Hers were the eyes that could bear the steely heat of the sun. They were as black as charcoal and fixed with an intense purpose that could frighten even a vampire. For the month of October she’d gone back to her name of Annie Remington and done a stretch of trick-shot shows for the Remington Company. But, alas, though her aim was ever true her heart was no longer in such displays, and as Lawson worried They could attack and take her at any time, and They would either tear her to pieces or turn her or use her in some hideous way best not dwelled upon, he was glad she’d moved into a room in the Sanctuaire on the floor just above his.
After all, she had no home to go back to. She would never go back to that house, where the flies made so merry.
Ann was twenty-four years old, she was tall and lithe and had light brown hair that fell about her shoulders. She was wearing a dark purple jockey’s cap, a style she favored. Her chin was firm and square and her nose was sharp and tilted up at the tip. She was a very attractive woman, if one was attracted to a female who could blow a bullet hole through the eye of the King of Diamonds while it was on the fly. She was good and she knew it, and therefore of immense value to Trevor Lawson.
When the two visitors from New Orleans had removed their coats and settled in their chairs, R. Robertson Cavanaugh folded a pair of big-knuckled hands on the green blotter that sat like a small island upon a golden sea of wheat-toned wood. He wore a black suit and a black stringtie over a plain white shirt. His large head was bald, his ears prominent as if pushed forward to gather every whisper in the finest parlors and lowest dives of Omaha. He had a black beard shot through with gray, his eyebrows being all gray set as thickets above a pair of deep-set brown eyes that held no warmth nor charity, but rather only chill and caution. His nose and mouth were small for such a large face, adding to the impression of a human battering-ram.
He was not one to waste time on pleasantries or small talk. “Do you have any idea who I am?” The question was directed to Lawson.
“I would’ve made inquiries, but as you made a point of discretion I did not.”
“That’s good. Two years ago you helped the brother of a friend of mine. A preacher in Oklahoma kidnapped a fourteen-year-old girl from his congregation. He went raving-mad and thought she was the rebirth of the Virgin Mary. He was trying to get her to Mexico to start a new religion with her as his bride. My friend’s brother is the one who paid you, he was—still is—the town’s bank president. It was more self-promotion than civic duty, but it’s seemed to solidify his position there. Do you recall?”