Lake of Darkness

by Scott Kenemore

  Flip swallowed hard and waited.

  “I talked to the police already.”

  It was an automaton’s voice. The voice of a recorded machine, something that no longer knew or cared what words were. A memory of an echo.

  “I understand that,” Flip said. “But if you could see your way to letting me come inside-”

  “Why?” she suddenly cried, her features coming alive. “Why on earth should I do that?”

  Her voice was still a patient on a table—but now it was one who had come out from the ether prematurely . . . and begged for the amputation to cease.

  “Because there are clues I may be able to find,” Flip explained. “Things the other policemen missed. If you let me look into these clues, it may help me catch the guilty party.”

  “All they did was tell me to be quiet! They ain’t even look around. They just said ‘Be quiet. Don’t tell nobody how it happened.’ Like they didn’t even care. Even my pastor-”

  “I’ve just come from his office,” Flip said. “He is concerned for you. So am I. We only wish to help.”

  Gladys Whitcomb became stock still. Her eyes did not move. To Flip, it seemed as if time itself might have frozen for a moment. She stared at where his face had been positioned two seconds before, and not where it was now.

  Flip realized, gradually, that this was capitulation.

  He brushed past her and into the home. It was a modest apartment, with wooden floors and stark brick walls. It still smelled like a home where boys played and lived. Where they tracked in mud and asphalt and grass and horse manure. Flip saw that the floors were well scuffed, albeit recently, probably by police who had come and gone the prior week. In the kitchen was a simple stove. Room-temperature coffee rested in a metal pan.

  Flip knew that if she survived until winter—which seemed doubtful—Gladys Whitcomb would almost certainly die at the first cold snap.

  He found the room from the photograph—the room where the Whitcomb triplets had been discovered with their heads chopped, rotated, and sewn back on. Blood still stained the floorboard grooves in a few places. According to the notes from the responding officers, the murderer had been careful about his work. There had been little spilled. There was also no surplus of the twine that had been used to reattach the heads. Nothing left behind. The investigators had deduced that the boys’ throats must have been drained over the sink, or else their blood captured in a bowl or dish. The other possibility was that the mutilations had been done somewhere else entirely, and the bodies then returned to the apartment. But to Flip, that seemed unlikely.

  “Pastor tells me you walk at night,” Flip said loudly. “Your legs pain you.”

  Gladys Whitcomb remained in the half-open doorway. She raised her head like an ancient dragon. She seemed to sniff the air.

  “Pastor also says on the night it happened, you were out the house from maybe one until five. That sound right?”

  The woman gave a shrug, eyes unfocused.

  That gave the killer four hours, thought Flip. Four hours to kill these boys, do this thing, and position the bodies just so—all while spilling very little blood, and making very little noise. Flip had a hard time imagining the bodies being moved from another location. Yet that meant an almost unthinkable meticulousness on the butcher’s part. Forgetting the rotation of the heads and reattachment—the mere slitting of the throats should have created more gore and chaos than anyone might have reasonably controlled. Flip tried composing scenarios in his mind in which all the blood went down into the sink. Perhaps if the boys had been drugged. Or if the boys had been willing participants.

  Yet for that to be true. . .

  Flip did not allow himself to pursue this line of thinking. He walked to the space in the center of the floor where the boys’ heads had rested. He squatted and ran his gloved hands over the floorboard. A little dried blood. A little mud from policemen’s shoes. And little else.

  A long, thick splinter coated with blood had found its way into a small crevasse between two floorboards. Flip took off his glove and picked it out with his fingernails. He carefully placed it into the envelope with the photographs.

  Flip returned to the front door.

  “There anything you ain’t tell the other police?” Flip asked the living dead woman. “Who the boys were friendly with? Where they spent their free time?”

  Gladys Whitcomb said nothing. A single tear welled in her left eye. It slid down her cheek and fell to the floor.

  At that moment, Flip determined he would reanimate this corpse no longer. Not simply because it was cruel, but because he saw he would get nothing for it.

  He looked away. It was over. She was over. The sight of her. Some things, not even Joe Flippity could bear.

  He thanked Gladys Whitcomb for her time—as one might communicate ceremonially with the granite statue of an ancestor—and departed.

  On his way out, Flip stopped to inquire at the first floor apartment of the two-flat. A wheezing retired millworker and his wife lived there. Had either of them heard anything the night of the murder?

  The ancient man said it had been silent as the grave.

  THREE

  Later that same morning, Flip made his way along 47th Street—a Negro neighborhood of private homes, small stores, and even smaller honky tonks. He reached a large brownfield left undeveloped. Empty land in the middle of a city block—several acres—strewn through with trash and animal droppings. The droppings were days old, but some still smelled fresh in the summer heat. A tall green and white sign stood at the edge of the field. Flip saw that it had been recently updated.

  “Property of Singling Brothers All-Negro Circus and Shows. No Trespassing. Jos. J. Singling, Proprietor.”

  A week ago, “Singling” had read—in both cases—“Singer.”

  Beside the field lingered a boy of ten or eleven, entirely naked except for a pair of dirty brown overalls. Flip had seen him work as a kind of freelance helper for the circus when it was home. His employment arrangement was certainly unofficial, if it existed at all.

  Flip tried to remember the child’s name.

  “Roscoe? Ralph?” Flip called, ambling over to where the boy sat.

  “Rufus, sir,” he replied brightly, snapping to attention.

  “What happened to your sign? Who is Singling?”

  “Mister Joseph changed the name,” Rufus explained. “It sounds more like Ringling Brothers now.”

  “But it’s not the Ringling Brothers,” Flip said. “This outfit has got nothing to do with the Ringling Brothers.”

  “People don’t know that,” the boy said defensively. “Mister Joseph says so. Mister Joseph says people are dupes.”

  Flip nodded.

  “Where is the circus today?” Flip asked.

  “Indianapolis,” said the boy. “Due back this morning. They late. Gonna show up . . . afternoon, I expect. What Mister Joseph done?”

  “Nothing,” said Flip. “I’m just looking to ask some questions.”

  “Try this afternoon,” Rufus said, sitting back down on the empty curb. “Trains from Naptown always late. Then they gotta move everything from the rail yard to here. Be after lunch, at least.”

  “I’ll check back,” Flip told him, already walking away.

  Deeper into the South Side, down along 71st Street, Flip found the alley where the twin brother and sister had been discovered—the first murder in the series shown him by the mayor. It was a pleasant enough neighborhood, and the day around him was becoming pleasant too. The sky was clear and blue, and a welcome breeze now cut through the growing heat.

  This part of the city had become a chessboard of Negro, Irish, and Jewish pockets—with the pieces moving around every time you turned your head. Negroes moved in. Irish moved around. Jews often stayed put—and looked as though they would remain forever—then suddenly vanished without a trace for the suburbs, abandoning their country clubs and temples wholesale. It was very clear to Flip as he strolled block to block that cert
ain businesses were designed to welcome one—and only one—sort of customer. Landlords rented to a single kind of tenant alone. In their meeting, Big Bill Thompson had characterized the spot of the murder as being where Jew gave way to Negro. As he reached his destination, Flip realized the mayor had been extremely precise.

  On one side of the street there were only white faces, and mezuzahs beside nearly every door. Businesses sold clothing, baked goods, and hardware supplies, with signs partly in Yiddish, which Flip could not read. More than one passerby on this side of the street eyed him suspiciously. Whenever this happened, Flip allowed his jacket to hang open to reveal his gun and badge. This did not stop the looking, but he was not hassled or questioned.

  On the other side of the street, it was entirely Negro. Not just Negro, but recent arrivals from the South. These people had the look of outsiders. It was a kind of nervous astonishment, and a resolution to make good. Some still looked up as they walked, taking in the tall apartment buildings as though they had never seen such things.

  These two sides of the street seldom interacted. They did not see each other—would not see each other, Flip understood—until the day when they would. . .

  And then all hell would break loose. Flip knew this if he knew anything.

  This neighborhood—and the others like it—were unexploded bombs waiting to go off. What would finally trigger them? A misunderstanding between neighbors? A false—or accurate—accusation of shoplifting by a small businessman? A fistfight between teenagers that got out of hand?

  It would be something, Flip knew. All around him was brittle, parched forest. The lighting strike was just a matter of time. This fact was known to the mayor, the aldermen, and the police force. Flip understood it was one reason why the police had concealed the murders that had occurred in this alley. Negroes saw Jews as full of strange rituals, and it would be the tiniest of steps for a film-flam journalist to insinuate their rites extended to decapitation. The Jews, in turn, viewed the Negroes as outsiders and rubes who did not understand the city, and who brought the wild conventions and proclivities of the South up with them.

  These were two flints. One day, they were going to spark.

  Yet on this day, it was peaceful in the alley. The blood had been carefully washed away from the flagstones. Nothing indicated that a double decapitation murder had occurred here. Or, at least—thought Flip—that bodies had been found here. He reminded himself that where the heads had been severed was still technically a matter of speculation.

  Flip opened the envelope in his jacket and looked at the photograph of the two dead ten year olds. The girl—or rather, the body beneath the boy’s head—wore a white dress. It was hardly smudged at all, and those marks were likely from mud and city grime, acquired in the course of play.

  The other twins who had been killed in the photos—all had been identical. But the twins found in this alley had not been identical precisely. One had been male, and one female. Yet their faces looked very similar to Joe Flippity. Similar enough, he thought, to fool somebody who was looking to kill identical twins.

  To the side of the alley, near to where the bodies had fallen, a stunted evergreen shrub grew from a flat strip of land that had somehow missed being paved. Flip tore off a few inches and put them into his pocket.

  It would have to do.

  Then he squatted on his haunches and looked again at the spot on the flagstones where the bodies had once lain. Flip looked hard. The mayor’s dossier said the call had come in at 11pm, but there was no telling at what hour the act might have been committed. This alley would be a very dark place when the sun went down. The kind of place that kept its secrets.

  Across the street, a Jewish woman carrying groceries paused to regard Flip cautiously.

  And there, he thought, the eternal riddle. There, the thing that could not be known—could never be known—ahead of time. By Flip, by the city, or even by God himself.

  Were these groups right to have a little distrust for each other? Were these two sides going to kill each other one day, just a little bit? And did they perhaps have an inkling of that? Some foreknowledge of it? A feeling for what was coming?

  Those in charge of Chicago’s wards seemed content simply to hope it did not happen on their watch. It would be somebody else’s problem then.

  Flip felt again, acutely, that all around him stood a forest of dried tinder.

  Flip stood to his full height and nodded once at the Jewish woman, in a way he hoped seemed friendly.

  He did not let his gaze linger to see if she nodded back, but sauntered off immediately down the block.

  He’d gotten what he’d come for.

  A few blocks north, Flip had lunch at a neighborhood stand that sold meat stew. It was operated by a woman whose husband worked in the stockyards. Flip knew the stew meat was likely extra trimmings that had found their way home in the man’s shirt or trousers.

  After lunch, he headed back to 47th Street and discovered that the circus had indeed returned. He smelled it before he saw it. It was a primal scent of animals and sweat. Singer—or was it Singling now?—kept an entire stable of horses, three manacled bears, and a tired old beast that might once have been some sort of jungle cat. (It was matted and lean, and mostly sat in its cage waiting to die. Flip believed that Singer administered a stimulant to the cat before each performance, giving the beast at least the appearance of half-life for the paying customers.)

  The gutter beside the circus grounds had already begun to run with animal piss. With the great tent disassembled and loaded onto the backs of horse-drawn democrat wagons, the outfit looked less like a troupe of performers, and more like an army of grim frontier settlers encamped for the afternoon. Every person looked dog tired. There would be no unloading or unpacking of anything for a few hours. Some of the men had already made beds on the backs of carts, on the tops of crates, or simply on the ground itself.

  Flip looked around for the boy, Rufus, and found him lingering at the side of a wagon. As Flip approached, Rufus suddenly took off sprinting down the street, wrinkled green bills clutched tight in his hand. Flip surmised he had been dispatched to buy the circus workers food.

  Flip picked through the maze of carts until he found a man sitting on a low, three-legged stool. The man wore a white sleeveless shirt and tuxedo pants. His shined shoes and immaculate top hat had been placed carefully on the ground beside him. He looked postprandial or possibly postcoital. A smile of deep satisfaction spread across his weathered face. His eyes were closed, but Flip was not surprised when he spoke.

  “Oh shit, it’s Officer Flip,” the man said in a jocular tone.

  “Mister Singer,” replied Flip. “Or should I say Singling?”

  The circus owner’s grin said Flip could call him anything he liked.

  “We done so good,” Singer said. “They love us down in Naptown. Shows full enough we had to stop selling tickets. Did a midnight performance we ain’t even planned on. Still got it full up. Madame Walker herself came. Pulled up in her long, tall motorcar just as you say. Hell of a sight.”

  “I need to have a word with one of your men,” Flip told him.

  “We tired,” the circus owner said. “My men need to sleep. My animals need to sleep, Flip.”

  “It won’t take but a moment,” Flip assured him.

  “My men-” Singer began.

  “Police business,” Flip said more aggressively. “I’m not here to jaw at you for nothing, Singer.”

  The smile fell away from the ringmaster’s face.

  “Fine,” he said. “It’s always something, ain’t it, with you damn po-lice? But tell me first. Who is it this time? Who done what?”

  “Nobody’s in trouble, if that’s what you mean,” Flip told him. “I just need a couple words with your magician fella.”

  The Amazing Drextel Tark had his own enclosed travelling caravan, an arrangement which gave him the extra space he required for his props and tricks, and also provided him with a private room for
sleeping. It was a rare luxury. Most circus employees slept two or three to a bed on the road, if they had beds at all.

  Tark’s caravan did not appear particularly magical to Flip. It was covered in grime and black soot, just like all the others. The caravan door was small and circular, almost like something a large dog would use. Yet Tark was diminutive, so there seemed to be no issue with this arrangement. (Flip had long ago guessed that the magician’s modest apportionment was the basis for more than a few of his tricks. Tark could conceal his small legs folded backwards as a blade seemed to shear him in half, or hunch his body into a compartment built into the stage floor to momentarily disappear. Tark was like a rat or cat that wanted to squeeze underneath a door. You’d swear the beast could never shrink itself to fit—until you watched it do exactly that.)

  Singer walked to the door of Tark’s grimy caravan and knocked, softly at first.

  “That the courtesy knock,” Singer explained. “He hit the bottle pretty hard on the way back up. That boy’s just skin and bones. It don’t take much to get him drunk.”

  A beat passed. There was no sound from within. Singer and Flip exchanged a glance.

  “Okay,” Singer said. “Enough with the courtesy, I s’pose.”

  Singer laid onto the trailer door so hard Flip thought it might break. After a good ten seconds of knocking, there was a just-audible: “What . . . what do you want?”

  Singer smiled at Flip. Then he did a showman’s flourish with his arm extended, indicating that the feat had been accomplished. Flip could take it from here.

  Singer ambled back to his top hat and sat down beside it.

  Flip leaned close to the grimy caravan door.

  “Chicago police,” Flip said.

  Another beat.

  Then a voice, hoarse and mysterious as a confiding ghost.

  “Flip? Is that you?”

  “Yeah, Tark. Open up.”

  “The demon gin. It bit me hard last night. And then again this morning. You come back in a day or two, all right?”