It was unmistakably the same man, photographed in a studio, with a painted landscape of trees and cliffs in the background. He was wearing a slouch hat, but without the rags, and a neatly buttoned tunic. He was thickly bearded, but his beard was much trimmer than it was in the photograph taken during the Battle of the Wilderness.
Underneath, the caption read CAPTAIN JOSEPH SHROUD,
OF KERSHAW'S DIVISION OF THE FIRST ARMY CORPS, OCTOBER
17, 1863.
Decker opened his drawer and took out a copy of Sandra's drawing. "Look at this. Sandra's So-Scary Man. No doubt about it. It's the same guy."
Novick leaned over his shoulder and pointed to Shroud's hat. "You see these . . . they're not rags at all, even though
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they look like them. I blew them up even more and they're feathers."
"So the So-Scary Man was one of the Devil's Brigade," Hicks said. "And it looks like Maitland's great-greatgrandfather was too."
Decker said, "We need to know more about this. Something happened during the Battle of the Wilderness—something so bad that it refuses to go away. I think I need to go back down to Fort Monroe—see if I can't dig something out of the archives."
Cab came into the office, with his necktie loose, looking sweaty and harassed, and holding up a dispatch note. "Hi, Captain. How was Charlottesville?"
"Forget Charlottesville. Uniform just called in another homicide, 1881 May Street."
"Can't you give it to Rudisill? I think we've got ourselves a hook on the Maitland case."
"This could be connected to the Maitland case. The apartment was locked on the inside. Nobody saw nobody enter and nobody saw nobody leave. Besides that, the method of killing was bizarre, to say the least. The guy had his eyes poked out, and apparently he was scalded."
Decker stood up and put on his coat. "In that case, I think we'd better go take a look. Hicks?"
Erin Malkman was already there when they arrived, snapping on her latex gloves.
"We can't go on meeting like this," Decker said.
Erin gave him a humorless grimace. "You're going to have fun with this one."
Decker and Hicks went through to the bathroom. John Mason was still floating in the bathtub, facedown. His skin was lobster red and he was grossly swollen. Erin rolled him over so that Decker could see his bloodied eye sockets.
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"What's that smell?"
Erin stirred the bathwater. "Meat stock, to put it bluntly. This man was boiled for at least twenty minutes."
"Boiled? How could he be boiled?"
"Whoever did this to him found a way to raise the water temperature to one hundred degrees Celsius and keep it there."
"How is that possible?"
"1 have no idea. Maybe he had some kind of portable heating element with him, like an immersion heater." "This gets crazier."
A uniform came in with a notebook. "Victim's name is John Ledger Mason, aged thirty. Single, domiciled here with his widowed mother, Ivy Mason."
"His mother didn't see anything?"
"She takes sleeping pills. In fact she couldn't sleep too well during the night so she took two more than usual, which totally knocked her out."
"When did she last see her son?"
"Late yesterday evening. He works as a chef at Appleby's Family Restaurant on East Main Street. He told her good night and went to take a bath. As I say, she woke up at about three in the morning and took more sleeping pills, and she eventually woke up well past eleven o'clock.
"She called the victim and when he didn't answer she looked into his bedroom. His bed was made and the drapes were open, so she assumed that he had gone out. She didn't go into the bathroom until nearly one o'clock, because she wanted to change the towels."
"Where is she now?"
"One of the neighbors is taking care of her. Apartment eight."
"Anybody else see anything?"
"Nope. No sign of forced entry, either. The victim's bed‑
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room window was open a couple of inches, but there's no possible access from outside."
Erin said, "You notice the bruising on his shoulders? It looks as if somebody was holding him down."
Decker and Hicks went across to apartment 8, where John's mother was sitting at her neighbor's kitchen table, looking even more pallid than usual, especially since she was wearing a bright red dress. Her neighbor was a fat woman with greasy gray hair and slippers that made a flapping noise as she walked around the kitchen.
Decker showed his badge. "The officer downstairs tells me you didn't see anything or hear anything?"
"That's right," she whispered.
"Well, maybe God was taking care of you, ma'am. Whoever killed your son was a very ruthless individual indeed. Who knows what he might have done to you?"
"John was always such a gentle boy. Why would anybody want to kill anyone so gentle?"
"We're going to do our best to find that out. You can't think of anybody who might have harbored a grudge against him? Anybody who might have wanted to do him harm?"
"He always kept to himself. He never argued with anyone, even if they upset him. He always used to say 'grin and bear it.' "
"Mrs. Mason . . . I gather you're a widow. What did your late husband do?"
"He was a printer. He used to work for CadmusMack." "His family didn't have any military connections?"
She frowned at him, and then she shook her head. "Not
that I know of. Why?"
"You don't happen to have a Mason family tree, do you?" "What would that have to do with somebody killing John?"
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"I'm not sure. But it would help me if I knew something about your late husband's antecedents. Especially his great-great-grandfather."
"I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you. Bill didn't get on with his family at all well, especially his father."
"Was he a Richmond man?"
"Born in Petersburg. But his family moved to Richmond when he was very young."
"All right, then. Thanks anyhow."
On the way downstairs, Decker said to Hicks, "We need to check the Mason family history, right back to the Civil War. I want to know if any of John Mason's forefathers was assigned to the Devil's Brigade."
Hicks said, "Okay, Lieutenant, but—"
"But what? But you have a better idea? A guy just got poached to death back there and you have some procedural explanation?"
"I just think that we shouldn't lose sight of the possibility that there could be a logical, nonsupernatural solution to this."
"Don't try to get all Sherlock Holmesy on me, Hicks. Sherlock Holmes wasn't always right. All those things that happened to Jerry Maitland and George Drewry and this poor bastard weren't just improbable, they were impossible, but the only way we're going to crack this case is if we start believing that sometimes impossible things can actually happen. Things that seem to be impossible, anyhow."
"Like a Santeria god, taking his revenge?"
"Why not? Millions of people all over the world believe in Santeria. People in Africa and Haiti and Cuba and all across America. Maybe they believe in it because their gods really exist, and their gods answer their prayers, and reward them when they're good, and punish them when they're bad."
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"I don't know," Hicks said. "It all sounds so ethnic." "You're not ashamed of who you are, are you? You're not ashamed of being colored?"
Hicks looked away. When he turned back, there was an expression on his face that Decker had never seen before.
They were nearly back at Madison and Grace when Decker's cell phone played the opening bars of "The House of the Rising Sun."
"You changed it," Hicks said.
"Didn't want you to think that I wasn't responsive to criticism. Yes? Martin here, who is this?"
"Hi, Decker. Dan Carvey, from the fire department." "How are you doing, Dan? Haven't seen you since you burned all those burgers at the charity cookout."