The Daemoniac

by Kat Ross

  We pulled into Twenty-Third Street and the gates opened. John’s head nodded sleepily at the far end of the car, Connor across from him. Only three people boarded.

  Two young men whose unsteady gaits and flashy clothes signalled a long night of carousing in the Tenderloin. And a man of roughly the same age with dark, wavy hair and a mustache. A handsome man once, but whose sagging features revealed a dissolute life filled with bitterness and heartbreak.

  I had seen that face many times. In a photograph taken a thousand miles away, white-capped mountains in the background

  Robert Aaron Straker.

  Brady started like he’d been goosed and went to rise, but I quickly laid a hand on his arm and shook my head. Not yet.

  I turned my face down and studied my feet, silently urging Brady to follow suit. After a moment, he did, but I could see the vein pounding at his temple.

  Straker looked around and took a seat midway down the car. He wore the navy uniform of a federal soldier. The third button down on the left was missing.

  I tried desperately to catch Connor’s eye. He finally turned and I mouthed the word wait, then pointed to John. Bless Connor, he understood immediately. He sauntered over to John and casually sat down next to him, whispering in his ear. John’s eyes popped open in almost comical surprise.

  We exchanged a long look. Then John shut his eyes and pretended to go back to sleep.

  My heart pounded. I wasn’t entirely sure what would happen next. There had been too many variables to foresee them all.

  We stopped at Twenty-Third Street, then Fourteenth Street. Straker stayed on the train. He kept looking around, his hands writhing in his lap like snakes.

  At Canal Street, a girl got on. Alone. She was just a slip of a thing, still in her teens. Auburn hair, high cheekbones, wide mouth. She looked a bit like a younger Elizabeth Brady. Her delicate face was painted, and her dress exposed an expanse of pale bosom. A working girl.

  She clutched her purse and studiously avoided Straker’s gaze. Something about him disturbed her. But I could see he was watching this girl. Not obviously. Not in a crude, leering fashion. But his eyes kept flicking in her direction and then away, like he couldn’t help himself.

  The line ended at Chatham Square. The cars emptied. The girl boarded the spur line that continued to South Ferry. Straker followed, and so did we.

  Just before the gate opened, John came up behind me.

  “I say we take him now,” he whispered in my ear. “Between Brady and myself, I doubt he’ll give us much trouble.”

  “Just wait,” I whispered back.

  “Fine, but I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, and then the doors hissed shut and the train started to move.

  I hadn’t seen any of Moran’s boys for a while. We were spread too thin. I just prayed they’d be waiting at the next stop.

  Because despite John’s innate confidence, I wasn’t sure that ten men would be enough for what we had to do.

  Chapter 17

  The girl got off at City Hall. She was eager to leave the train and the odd soldier who seemed to be watching her out of the corner of his eye. She may not have noticed how deathly pale his hands were, how the nails were caked with dirt or some other dark substance. How his eyes never stayed still. The dark circles beneath them, like half-moons carved into the gaunt flesh of his face.

  She may not have noticed all those things, but she glanced back over her shoulder as she hurried down the platform stairs, and it was the look of a hare as it senses the passing shadow of a hawk. Some instinct that a predator is near.

  Straker walked towards the stairs, staring straight ahead. And then a figure moved to block his way.

  One of Moran’s.

  “Where ya goin’, boy-o?” the kid asked softly, a menacing grin on his face. He had blonde hair and a pug nose, and looked like an older, much scarier Billy Flynn.

  Straker didn’t respond, but his fingers gave a nervous twitch.

  “You like pretty little doxies, huh? Like to cut ‘em up? See ‘em bleed?”

  Straker tried to dart around the boy, but another moved in, armed with a crowbar. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the stairs to the street. The platform had emptied. I heard a clock tower chime three.

  Straker whirled around. When he saw the four of us arrayed in a line behind him, his face froze.

  Brady pulled off his hat. “Please Robert, don’t do anything foolish,” he implored. “Let me help you!”

  For a moment, Straker’s mouth worked but no sound came out. The blood drained from his face. He raised a shaking hand and then one of Moran’s thugs bowled into him, grabbing him by the arms. He did scream then, an inhuman howl that made my hackles rise. It went on and on, only stopping when the other kid slapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Dear God,” my client said faintly.

  I kept my eyes on Straker. He’d gone limp, like an exhausted animal caught in a leg-trap.

  “What do you want to do with ‘im?” one of them asked me.

  “We’ll summon a police officer,” I said. “It’s City Hall. There must be one nearby.”

  Brady took a step forward. “You should have come to me,” he said sadly. “Before this all got…out of hand. You were always too proud, Robert.” His voice broke. “We were like brothers. I could have helped.” He took another tentative step.

  It was as though some invisible force existed between them, one that repelled rather than attracted. Because at that moment, Straker suddenly came back to life. With a wild cry, he wrenched free of his captors. It all happened very fast. I saw one of them try to seize his collar, and get swatted away as if he weighed nothing at all. Something small and white dropped from Straker’s hand to the ground. In a flash, he vanished down the platform steps and into the night, Moran’s boys on his heels.

  Brady and John made to follow them, as Connor cursed a blue streak under his breath.

  “Wait!” I cried.

  They turned back impatiently.

  “Let Moran’s boys catch him,” I said.

  “But they’ll beat him senseless, or worse!” Brady exclaimed. “I vowed to be there at the end, and by God, you won’t stop me, Miss Pell!”

  John looked at us in confusion. I took a deep breath.

  “You look unwell, Mr. Brady,” I said. “Have you been suffering from headaches?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Bishop’s Effervescing Citrate of Caffeine. It’s for severe headaches. I smelled it on you earlier.”

  Brady frowned. “We don’t have time for your little games—”

  “And those half-healed abrasions on your right palm. Where did you get those, if I might ask?”

  “What?”

  “I think you got those when you choked Anne Marlowe with the chain. Am I right, Mr. Brady?”

  His cheeks reddened. “This is preposterous!”

  “Alright. Let’s talk about the earth caked on your boots then. I noted a petal from a Virginia rose when you crossed your legs. They only grow in the Ramble.”

  John looked from Brady to me, then back to Brady, and rushed over to stand at my side.

  “But all that was just icing on the cake. I realized something last night. George Kane made me think of it. You’ve been so clever, but you made a mistake. A mistake I’m ashamed to admit I should have seen right away.”

  Brady just looked at me, his features utterly impassive.

  “You said that you went to Straker’s flat the day after the murder. You stood behind him as he gazed into his shaving mirror and ranted about being possessed. And yet you failed to notice the bowl of bloody water directly in front of you. It would have to have been there. If Straker killed Becky Rickard, he would have gone straight home to wash the blood from his hands. And yet you acted as though you’d never seen it before when we all went to the flat. That got me thinking, Mr. Brady, that you’ve not been entirely truthful.”

  I bent down and picked up the cr
umpled piece of paper that had fallen from Straker’s hand.

  “So I cabled your wife earlier this evening at her parents’ house in Connecticut. She confirmed that you’ve started suffering from recurrent nightmares. Very bad ones. That you wake up, screaming in the night. And that the night before she left, she found you standing in the garden like an automaton with no recollection of how you got there.”

  A shadow passed over Brady’s eyes, so quick I might have imagined it.

  “Then there’s your position. You’re a real estate agent. And what is it real estate agents do?”

  “They spend most of their time travelling around the city,” John said slowly.

  “Exactly.” I thought of the map I’d seen on his office wall. “The trains are your domain, aren’t they, Mr. Brady? Here’s what I think happened. I think you left Mr. Straker and returned to Becky’s flat. She let you in. Why wouldn’t she? I’m sure you had some excuse. Some final detail to settle. Then you stabbed her. Thirty-one times. But that wasn’t enough, so you bit her. You chewed her to a pulp, Mr. Brady.”

  My client’s features looked frozen, like the wax figures they posed in the windows of the city’s finer department stores. But his pupils had contracted into empty black pinpricks.

  “And then remorse struck,” I said. “You covered her face so you wouldn’t have to look at it. Afterwards, you went to Straker’s flat, where you washed up and took his uniform. I don’t know why he ran. Perhaps he suspected something. He certainly seemed terrified of you just now. You got the key from the landlord then, not four days later as you claimed. I should have checked that, but I didn’t. You smoked a cigarette and destroyed Straker’s rooms in a rage that he wasn’t there. Then you returned to your office and became Dr. Jekyll again.”

  Brady’s pale blue eyes glittered in the dim light of the station. “But why would I do such a thing, Miss Pell?”

  It was the one question I had no answer for.

  “And Straker?” John asked, plainly struggling to keep up. “Why was he here?”

  I held up the paper I’d retrieved from the platform. “I expect this is a note to him, supposedly from Elizabeth Brady, saying she’s afraid of her husband and asking Robert to meet her here in the uniform she had delivered this morning. It would be no great feat for a man to imitate his wife’s handwriting. I imagine Straker was eyeing that girl simply because she bore such a strong resemblance to Elizabeth.”

  I handed the letter to John. He read it and looked at me with a satisfying degree of awe.

  “That’s exactly what it says,” he muttered. “More or less.”

  “You didn’t like the way things were going, so you decided it was time that Straker took the fall,” I said to Brady, whose hands had clenched into tight fists. “You never wanted to hire me in the first place. It was Elizabeth who insisted. But you were relieved when you saw how young I am, and a woman no less. You must have thought I wouldn’t get very far.”

  “And you was sadly mistaken,” Connor chimed in.

  The faint rattle of a southbound train broke the silence.

  “All I want from you now is Billy Finn,” I said. “You have him, or someone would have found the body. You don’t seem to care much about hiding your victims. I think you used him to get to Straker. If you tell us where Billy is, there’s a chance you’ll escape the noose.”

  I felt a vibration through the soles of my boots. The headlights of the train suddenly broke around a corner and lit the platform in a blinding wash.

  “Billy,” my client said. Then he grinned and the frozen mask slid away. For the first time, I saw clearly the monster that lurked beneath. “Billy was…delicious.”

  I heard the screech of brakes as Brady leapt onto the tracks. He crouched for a split second, the wind of the train tearing at his blonde hair. In the harsh glare of the headlamps, the man who’d reminded me of an overgrown schoolboy when we first met now looked bestial, like some primitive ancestor of homo sapiens better left extinct.

  Several hundred tons of metal bore down, the wheels sending a shower of sparks into the darkness. I had the brief thought that such an end was fitting, although I was sorry that he would evade punishment for his crimes.

  At the last moment, Brady rolled out of the way, toward the opposite platform.

  We looked at each other, John, Connor and I. The train was still grinding to a stop as we ran to the stairs leading down to the street. Straker seemed to have gotten away, for we didn’t see him or his pursuers in the ornate station waiting room.

  Connor was faster than either of us.

  “Wait!” I cried, as he pelted to the nearest exit.

  We burst out onto Park Row. John and Connor had stopped under the shadow of the elevated.

  “These robes are not made for running,” John panted.

  “Where’d he go?” Connor panted.

  “Over there!” I pointed.

  It was a bizarre sight. Brady dangled by one hand from the track above, about a block down from where we stood. I was sure he’d fall, but then he swung around somehow and grabbed onto one of the latticed steel support columns. He began shimmying down it with shocking speed, like some horrible hairless ape.

  I heard Elizabeth Brady’s cool voice as she sat in my parlor that afternoon.

  “You can just cross him off your list… the window looks down on a sheer drop and our dog has taken to sleeping directly in front of the bedroom door…She’s a husky…”

  The dog that didn’t bark in the night.

  Anne Marlowe was probably enjoying her big scene at the finale of Mathias Sandorf while Brady was scaling down the gutters of their house like a foul spider. Anne’s friend Mary said she was so happy to finally have a speaking part.

  “Harry, come on!” John grabbed my arm and we started running toward Brady. He saw us coming and dropped the last few feet to the street. Then he loped into City Hall Park.

  The path Brady took cut straight between City Hall itself on the left, and the Italianate façade of the Tweed Courthouse on the right. Boss Tweed had embezzled millions of dollars from that construction project, though in a twist of poetic justice ended up on trial in the very building he’d used to enrich himself.

  Brady was fast, but we were faster. I think he’d hurt something in the fall, for he was limping. We started closing in near the far edge of the park. The area was a lively shopping district during the day, but now the streets were deserted.

  We’ve got you, I thought, as Brady veered south toward the post office and was momentarily hidden in the trees. His right foot looked twisted, hitting the ground at an odd angle. There was no way, even charged with adrenaline, that he could run much further.

  We tore around the bend in the path into an open, grassy area bordering Broadway. I expected to find him fallen, or at best crawling.

  Brady had vanished. Quite literally. The storefronts were dark and shuttered. We had a clear view of the park and both sides of the street for several blocks. He was gone.

  Connor skidded to a stop and I nearly knocked him down.

  “It’s impossible,” John muttered. “He wasn’t thirty feet ahead of us!”

  We spun in circles like a bunch of fools.

  “Are you sure he came this way?” I asked, since I’d been lagging behind them both.

  John gave me a level look. “Yes, I’m sure. He must have climbed one of the trees.” John peered up at the high branches with his hands on hips. “There’s no other explanation.” He turned to me with some exasperation. “And you could have told us, by the way. That it was Brady.”

  “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t take the chance that he’d suspect something,” I said. “I had no proof. The only way was to find Straker, and only Brady knew where he was.”

  “And now Brady’s gone,” John pointed out. “So where has that gotten us?”

  I was opening my mouth to argue the point when I felt a faint gust of air. Just a whisper across my bare legs. It was coming from beneath my feet. />
  I looked down. I was standing on a rusty grate. Not a large one. Perhaps eighteen inches wide.

  A memory tickled, something Myrtle had told me.

  “What building is that?” I asked, pointing across the street at the corner of Warren and Broadway.

  Connor trotted over and returned moments later.

  “The sign says it’s Devlin’s clothing store,” he said.

  I felt mounting excitement, leavened with a healthy measure of dread as I realized the implications.

  “Brady’s gone under the street.” I moved onto the grass. “And I think he’s cornered. That’s the good news.”

  “What’s the bad news?” John asked.

  “I’m willing to bet Billy Finn’s down there too. Which means he doesn’t have much longer. Minutes maybe.”

  I bent down and examined the grate. The screws had been removed and I could see fresh tool marks.

  “Brady’s been here before. I’d guess he’s been using it as a lair,” I said, as a chill shot down my spine and made its way into my stomach.

  It wasn’t even Brady that scared me the most, although the thought of facing him again—even injured—made me weak. No, it was the idea of going down into the grate. I’ve always had severe claustrophobia. Perhaps as a result of one of Myrtle’s “experiments,” or perhaps I was just born with it.

  But I loathed small spaces. Dark ones were even worse.

  I turned to Connor. “The Tombs aren’t that far from here. I need you to run there as fast as you can and bring as many patrolmen and guards as possible. Tell them a boy’s being held hostage by Mr. Hyde in the old Beach tunnel. That should do it.”

  “But—” he opened his mouth to object.

  “She’s right,” John cut in. “We need help. And you’d beat any of us in a race, hands down.”

  He didn’t say we won’t let you go down there, Connor, because you’re eleven years old and there’s a good chance none of us will come out of that hole alive. John knew that would just make Connor dig his heels in.

  “Go now,” I urged. “We’ll wait here. Hurry!”