Miss Howard gave Cyrus a grim look what indicated she agreed with him; the Doctor, too, nodded. “Yes,” he said, still studying the telegram, “but a more permanent solution was apparently necessary for Micah Hunter. That, too, is understandable. He probably never knew anything about what happened up here before he married Libby-but when Marcus brought the news about the grand jury, Hunter doubtless began to suspect the truth. And it wouldn’t have been much work, even for his drug-ridden brain, to draw the obvious inferences about the ill-fated children his wife had been ‘attending to’ in New York.”
Mr. Picton cocked his head, with something that almost looked like respect in his face. “Killing him’s a clever tactic for the trial, too. Libby’ll now arrive in the clothing of a recent widow who spent years nursing a Civil War veteran.” His look of strange admiration suddenly turned into a wince. “My God, what a depressing thought. Judges, juries, and the public are prone enough to side with a woman during a trial-but the grieving widow of a Union soldier… nothing like a black dress and the flag to bring out sympathy. But tell me, Doctor-what does Moore mean when he says he’s ‘trying to arrange for eyes on the inside’?”
“It relates to yet another clever move on our antagonist’s part, I’m afraid,” the Doctor replied. “I had hoped that, if summoned to Ballston Spa, she would arrange for some temporary caretaker to look after Ana in her house.”
“And why would that have helped our cause?” Mr. Picton asked.
“It wouldn’t,” the Doctor answered. “Not in terms of the trial, at any rate. But in the event that we fail, and she’s acquitted-”
“Then she’d have to get rid of that caretaker on returning to New York,” Lucius finished for him with a nod, grabbing hold of the idea. “And with any luck, we could’ve been there to catch her in the act and prevent it.”
“Or if we failed in that attempt, we would at least have had-and I do not mean to sound excessively callous, here-another murder which we might have attempted to lay at her door,” the Doctor said. “Now, however, knowing that the police are not in fact investigating her, she can be far bolder-Moore says that they actually saw her transferring the child to the Dusters’ headquarters, a place the police do not frequent without the strongest of motivations.” Pausing, the Doctor focused his eyes more sharply on the telegram. “I’d say that John is endeavoring to find someone within, or at least close to, the Dusters who will be willing to keep watch over Ana-for if we should succeed in convicting Libby, the child’s fate will be sealed unless we have inside help.”
“But-who could he possibly contact?” Lucius said. “I mean, even approaching anybody who’s known to frequent that place would get him a broken skull.”
At that point I became aware of a pair of eyes fixing on mine, and looked over to see Cyrus staring at me. “Not necessarily,” he said gently; and as he did, my own heart sank with the realization of what-or who-he was talking about.
“What do you mean, Cyrus?” Miss Howard asked. “Who could he possibly-” Following Cyrus’s gaze and looking at me, Miss Howard suddenly caught on. The Doctor and Lucius also glanced my way, knowingly and uncomfortably.
All of this attention caused me to start shifting my feet. “But-” I said quietly. “But-she’s gone.” My heart beating faster by the second, I soon found it impossible to keep my voice down. “She’s gone!She went to California-”
“We don’t know that, Stevie,” the Doctor said evenly. “And there doesn’t seem to be anyone else that Moore could possibly be referring to.”
I’d started to shake my head even before he’d finished talking. “No,” I said, in an effort to convince myself, as much as anyone else. “She left, she’s gone!” But then I remembered the glimpse of Ding Dong I’d caught on the Twenty-second Street pier before our departure from the city, and my voice died away as I realized that my argument wasn’t worth the air it took to voice it.
“I’m afraid I’m a bit behind, here,” Mr. Picton said, puffing on his pipe and seeming to sense that the moment was a tricky one. “It may, of course, be none of my business, but-who are you all talking about?”
The Doctor-once he saw that, though I was still upset, I was starting to get myself under some kind of control-turned to Mr. Picton. “It is the friend of Stevie’s of whom you’ve heard us speak-Miss Devlin. We had thought that she’d left the city for California.” He glanced my way once more. “It would appear that we were mistaken.”
“But that’s splendid!” Mr. Picton’s warm, loud words threw me and everybody else in the room off kilter for a second; I looked up to give him a very puzzled stare. “Well, I mean,” he went on, with warmhearted sincerity, “the girl’s been a great help with the case so far, Stevie. If she’s still in New York, what better person to continue to ask for assistance?”
The thought, one what none of us who actually knew Kat would have come up with, was strangely comforting, and I found that it had the effect of calming the pounding in my head and my chest, to the extent that I could even nod a bit.
“That’s true, Stevie,” Miss Howard said, in her most encouraging tone. “We don’t have any reason to believe that Kat won’t do what’s right. She has so far, after all. Whatever her flashes of temper.”
Even Cyrus, who knew best of all of them how open to question Kat’s participation would probably be, tried to be positive about the notion: “They’ve got a point, Stevie-she’s a tough girl, and Lord knows she’s unpredictable. But she’s done right by us at every turn.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I guess that’s so…” But I wasn’t going to buy into the thing fully until I saw a look of certainty in the Doctor’s face.
I turned-but the look wasn’t there. “We have to hope, Stevie,” he said, one of his eyebrows arched. He’d never lied to me in the past, and I think he knew I wouldn’t’ve wanted him to start at that point. “It’s all we can do. But it won’t be blind hope-that much, at least, is the truth. She has truly been a help to us in this business.”
I just nodded again, swallowing hard and ready to move on to some other subject, being as I wouldn’t be able to begin to come to real terms with the question of Kat ’til later, when I could have a few smokes on my own.
Thankfully, the Doctor moved everyone’s attention on to other matters by going back to the telegram. “The final question, then-and I fear the most perplexing-is who the devil this ‘Chicago lawyer’ Moore mentions may be.”
“Perplexing, indeed!” Mr. Picton said, standing up and heading over to his window. He glanced out it and started to tug at the bristly ginger hair on his head so hard I thought the stuff might start coming out in clumps. “Chicago… why in God’s name Chicago? New York has the best criminal trial attorneys in the country-and with Vanderbilt behind her Libby could have any one of them!”
“Maybe Vanderbilt’s got some special contact in Chicago,” Lucius said. “He must have some reason for going that far afield for help. After all, he’s no fool.”
“No,” Mr. Picton agreed, kicking at a pile of papers on the floor. “But he is a railroad man. The only people he’d have any reason to be well acquainted with in Chicago would be corporation lawyers. I can’t see where one of them would-”
At that moment we all turned at the sound of a knock on the outer office door. It was quickly followed by the voice of the guard from downstairs: “Mr. Picton? Mr. Picton, sir?”
“It’s all right, Henry!” Mr. Picton shouted. “Come in!”
The big guard opened the outer door slowly, then cautiously made his way inside, slouching over slightly in what looked to me like some kind of automatic deference at being in one of the offices. He was holding an envelope.
“This just came for you, sir,” he said, handing the item over as Mr. Picton crossed the room to receive it. “From the Western Union office. I told ’em to bill the D.A.’s account.”