It was a hastily scribbled note from a slave girl in need of rescue. It was rare for the girls themselves to write a note. Pleas for help were usually written and delivered by a sympathetic client, with instructions on how to find the den.
“I left at once,” Donaldina said.
“Without an escort?”
“There wasn’t time.” There rarely was. She waved off his concern. “The door to the room was open, and when I rushed inside, I found it empty. Very nearly. An effigy of me was hanging from a beam. There was a dagger in its heart.”
Riot frowned. “Miss Culbertson has been rescuing women and girls for years. Why now?”
Miss Culberston cleared her throat. There was a twinkle in her eyes. “It’s the first time they’ve encountered a fearless Scotswoman, with a stubborn streak as hard as steel and the vigor of youth.”
“I think the steel runs through her spine,” Riot said.
Donaldina made an exasperated noise. “If the dynamite they planted outside the building when I first arrived didn’t deter me, a straw woman dressed in doll’s clothes won’t either. But Margaret has the right of it. We’ve been pressing the slave dens hard of late. The newspapers are even starting to take notice.”
“There may be another reason for the trap,” he mused.
Both women waited, expectantly.
“The newspapers are pointing fingers at the tongs for the murders. But barring an obscure ritual, it doesn’t seem likely that the tongs are to blame. Why draw attention to themselves? It’d be a simpler task to dispose of a corpse in a less public place.”
“What are you implying?” Miss Culberston asked.
“Maybe the tongs have started believing their own rumors. Maybe the tong threat had to do with these murders.”
“You think the tongs might actually believe that we’re slaughtering girls?” Donaldina asked. Indignation warred with repulsion in her eyes.
Riot waited, and slowly the idea took shape in their minds.
“There is a lot of superstition in the Quarter,” Miss Culberston said. “Hatchet men eat the meat of a wild cat before an assassination or a fight. They think it will imbue them with the cat’s powers.”
Riot nodded. “And they pay well for that meat. Have your informants turned up anything?”
“Not a whisper,” Miss Culberston said.
“Do you find that unusual?”
Donaldina took a sip of her tea. “Last month a hatchet man charged up a stairwell and shot a slave girl in the mouth for accidentally tossing water on him from an upstairs window. I heard of that through the police. The tongs are a blight on Chinatown, and death is a constant here. What is another nameless girl without family or clan?”
“The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm,” he recited.
“Eloquent as always, Mr. Riot,” Miss Culberston said with a smile. “It’s the philosophy of survival for a populace that live in constant fear of tongs, white hoodlums, and police. What I do find odd is the lack of skirmishes. The shooting of that slave girl last month triggered a cascade of fighting between tongs, but these murders haven’t caused a ripple.”
A piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “These murders aren’t the only thing that doesn’t cause a stir,” he realized.
Donaldina’s eyes widened a fraction. “A war is never triggered when a girl runs to a mission.”
Riot nodded. And Miss Culberston looked across her desk at him. “Do you really think the missions are involved in some way?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do you keep a list of your contributors and mission workers?”
“I do, but these are good Christian people, Mr. Riot,” Miss Culberston said. “I can’t imagine any of them doing something like this. Besides, it would require a knowledge of Chinatown that most don’t possess.”
“There’s a mind—as twisted as it may be—behind this, that’s for certain. These murders are precise, ritualistic in nature. We have to explore all avenues.”
Zephaniah Ravenwood sat in his consultation room. His customary chair was aimed at the fireplace. His long fingers were steepled, and the embers gave his white hair a fiendish glow. He looked like a gargoyle ready to spring on some hapless victim.
Riot hung up his hat and coat, and stopped to study a map that was spread on the desk. Red dots marked where each girl had been found floating in the bay. Small, neat notations accompanied each mark, along with dates, tide tables, and currents. How many others had been swept out the Golden Gate?
He tried not to think of that. But then maybe that was the killer’s (or killers’) intent. The killer wanted the children found.
The police assumed that the girls were wrapped in an oilskin tarp for transportation—for ease of disposal. But maybe the reason was twofold. The tarp could also serve as a barrier between scavengers and the killer’s gruesome work, a way for him to preserve his masterpiece.
Riot lowered himself into the second chair, and let his head fall back. He felt drained, not only physically, but mentally. An endless stream of hopeless eyes and young faces looked at him from the darkness behind his lids.
He opened his eyes, and squinted towards the window. Sunlight shone through a gap in the curtains. Riot blinked, and stirred. Pain shot up his neck. He grimaced as he adjusted his spectacles. He thought he had only closed his eyes for a moment, but he must have fallen asleep.
The feeling of being watched brought him around. Ravenwood’s eyes glittered from across the small table. Waiting.
“Productive night?” asked the man.
Riot rubbed at the kink in his neck. “Not especially.”
“There was something.” Ravenwood’s eyes missed nothing.
“Most of the girls I question are either fearful, silent, or full of anger. But last night a girl told me that the white women in the missions eat their shame.” Riot pulled out his deck of cards and began squaring their edges. “So I paid a visit to a madam by the name of Siu Lui—White Blossom—a woman who runs a brothel in the Quarter.”
“Why her? Why now?” Ravenwood demanded.
Riot shuffled his deck, considering how best to answer.
“Pray tell me it wasn’t simply due to the inclusion of ‘white’ in her name?” Ravenwood drawled.
Riot smirked, and shot half his cards to the other hand, making a perfect fluttering bridge of cards. “Maybe so.”
Ravenwood’s eyes narrowed. “She’s an acquaintance of yours.” It was not a question, but an observation.
“Something like that.”
Ravenwood grunted, and sat back. Riot was sure his partner had his own opinion of their relationship. But correcting the man’s assumption would only lead to questions that Riot wasn’t willing to answer. They might be partners, but that didn’t mean Ravenwood needed to be privy to every intimate detail of his past.
“She has her fingers everywhere in the city.”
“Why did you wait so long?” Ravenwood demanded.
“Because she has strong ties with the tongs.”
“Ah, you were worried she’d inform them of your search, and the tongs would bar you from their dens.”
Riot nodded. “And truth be told, she’s a woman to be avoided.”
“I find that true of most members of the gentler sex.” He twisted the word into a sardonic bite. “What made you go to her now?”
“I’m at a loss,” Riot admitted. “Call it the act of a desperate man. I’m not sure there’s any use in questioning more slave girls. It’s gotten us nowhere.”
“We’re dredging deep waters, my boy. It will be muddy, but our efforts will eventually turn up something.” Ravenwood waved a languid hand in dismissal. “Was this risk of yours worth the reward?”
“When I mentioned the rumor, she neither confirmed nor denied it.”
“Is that suggestive?”
Riot frowned at his deck of cards. “She said the most convincing lies are rooted in truth.”
“Ah, I see.” Ravenwood scowled at the fireplace. “What did you make of her words?”
“She could have been trying to throw me off track. It’s an old rumor, and as enemies of the tongs, the missions are a convenient scapegoat.”
“Then you think she was protecting the tongs?”
“It occurred to me that a sacrifice of a few might keep the majority cowed.”
“An accusation of the newspapers,” Ravenwood reminded. “That one of the tongs is killing a few select girls to keep the others in line. Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Riot. “Handlers have been known to beat a slave girl to death in front of her crib mates after an attempted escape—an example to the others of what will happen if they run.”
“The key being ‘in front of the other girls’.”
Riot acknowledged the observation with a dip of the chin and a neat shuffle of cards. “I’m not even sure the girls I questioned were aware of the murders. None of them recognized the sketches I showed them.”
“That they admitted,” Ravenwood reminded. “But I think you’d know.”
Riot spun a card on his finger. “I think you put too much faith in my intuition.”
“You’re a gambler, my boy. You wager gold on that very same intuition; I wager lives.”
Riot frowned at the man. Ravenwood valued Riot’s uncanny ability to read people. He had seen something in a young cocky gambler twenty years ago, and had been convinced a wild, unrestrained gunfighter would make a fine detective. After twenty years, Riot still wasn’t convinced.
Ravenwood sat back. “I’ve been pondering the significance of thighs.”
“I enjoy a more hands-on approach.”
Ravenwood scowled. “I’m sure you will appreciate the subject, then. In biblical terms the upper thighs often refer to the sexual organs due to close proximity. The cuts on the victims—the precision of the wounds, the hollowing out of the female organs—all point to an obsession.”
“It’s also perfect tinder for the ‘white women’ rumor.”
“Which leaves a question that begs answering: which came first?”
“According to Miss Culberston that rumor has been around for a long while.”
“Why assume that the murderer hasn’t been butchering girls for an equal amount of time?” Ravenwood asked.
Riot frowned. “That’s a long time, and a lot of bodies. I can’t believe that none of them would have been discovered before now.” It made him sick to say it out loud.
Ravenwood clucked his tongue. “Perhaps our killer—or killers—have tired of secrecy, and desire infamy. Or something may have changed in the murderer’s life—a change of environment, a death, an illness.”
“We’re back to our needle in a haystack.”
“Do you think the missions are involved in this?” Ravenwood asked.
“I hadn’t considered the possibility before the girl mentioned it.” Riot idly began rearranging his cards, following the edges with sensitive fingertips, memorizing, counting—an old pastime of a near-sighted boy. “But now that the idea is there, I can’t get it out of my head. That’s why I paid a visit to the missions before coming here.” He squared his deck, and handed over a neat slip of paper. “Miss Culberston supplied a list of backers for various missions and charities in San Francisco.”
Ravenwood accepted the offer, and perused it with a quick eye. “Did anything at the missions strike you as odd?”
“Aside from the fact that the missions even need to be there—no. The superintendents I questioned mentioned that there seemed to be fewer girls seeking refuge of late.”
Ravenwood absorbed this information silently. After committing the names to memory, he set the list aside. “I spoke with the Consul General yesterday evening. There hasn’t been a tong assassination in connection with any of these murders. I believe we can discount this being the work of rival tongs. If these girls were being abducted by a resident of the Quarter, the tongs would handle it themselves or turn it over to their attorneys.”
“I thought the same,” Riot admitted. “One thing that strikes me is that the tongs are accustomed to girls running to the missions.”
“Yes?”
“It’s the perfect cover for an enterprising murderer.”
Ravenwood’s eyes glittered with pride. “It is, isn’t it?”
Riot slipped his deck into his pocket. “You know those cuts…”
Ravenwood arched a sharp brow.
“They remind me of a bagua.”
His partner stared at him blankly.
“The little red octagons that the Chinese hang over doorways. They usually have mirrors in the center. They’re connected to Taosim.”
“The slanted cuts and the hollowed out abdomen,” Ravenwood realized. “Is there a significance to the position of the cuts and the bagua?”
“I intend to ask the Consul.” San Francisco boiled with anti-Chinese sentiment, and the Consul General had heard too many cries of ‘The Chinese Must Go!’ to think the newspapers’ habit of lumping tong criminal activities with the Six Companies wouldn’t stir up trouble. Since the police could hardly be trusted where slave girls were concerned, he had hired Ravenwood Agency to investigate the murders quietly.
“I’ll speak with him again tonight, and inquire after the bagua for you,” Ravenwood said. “I’d like you to sniff around the customs house and quarantine station on Angel Island.”
“Why?” asked Riot.
“I’m not convinced the murdered girls ever set foot on American soil.”
“What do you mean?”
“The custom agents are accepting bribes.”
Riot looked at the man. “Do you have proof?”
“No,” said Ravenwood. “It’s a logical assumption.”
“Logic tells me that the majority of politicians in San Francisco are corrupt, but it doesn’t do me a lick of good.”
Ravenwood looked at him over the tips of his fingers. “It’s a starting point.”
“A very wide starting point.”
“It’s far more focused than you imagine.” Cryptic as ever.
“Have you narrowed down the selection?” Riot asked.
“Of course.” Ravenwood’s gaze flicked to the ceiling. It wasn’t quite an eye roll, but it was close. “One agent is deep in his drink; another has betrayed signs of an opium addiction; and a third sports a pocket watch that you would envy.”
Riot smirked. “But not you.”
“Never.” Ravenwood took out his own watch, and checked the time. “I do admire a timepiece that performs its function, however.” He wound it methodically and clicked it shut. Riot knew, even before he spoke, that his partner had come to a decision. “I’d like you to see if you can find a connection between the missions, the customs office, and steamer ships.”
“Before or after I sleep?”
Ravenwood looked sharply at him. “You’ve slept, my boy. I was here.”
“Of course,” he muttered. Ravenwood did not believe in sleep… or food.
Ravenwood stood, and reached for his silver-knobbed walking stick. He rarely carried a revolver, but he was never without the heavy stick.
“Where are you off to?” Riot asked.
“There may be another possibility.”
“I’d say there’s a whole city full of possibilities,” Riot said dryly.
“I’ll tell you when I know more.”
Waves of carbolic acid assaulted Riot’s senses, sharp and searing. He grimaced, and pressed on, walking down the narrow steamer ship passageway.
Tim inhaled the fumes, and beamed. “This brings back memories.”
Riot glanced at the impish man with the eternal spring in his step. He wondered how long he had worked as a quarantine officer.
A middle-aged man backed out of a cabin. His blue uniform was crisp, and he held a bucket of disinfectant. Riot doubted the mask over his nose and mouth softened the overpowering smell.
�
��Mr. Cook?” The man paused at the entrance to the cabin. His eyes held a questioning look. “I’m Atticus Riot. Here on behalf of Ravenwood Agency.” He produced a card.
Cook set down his supplies, but not his mask. With his mouth covered, it’d be difficult to read him. But there were so many ‘tells’ to a person. The tilt of the shoulders, the arch of a brow, the flicker of a lash, or the stillness of fingers.
“What can I do for you gentleman?” Cook asked.
“Do you recognize this girl?” Riot showed him a post-mortem photograph. In death, her face was serene. She looked nearly alive—only asleep. The man studied the photograph for a good many seconds, but in the end he shook his head.
“I may have seen her in passing. There’s hundreds of Chinese coming in on every steamer. They all look rather the same, don’t they?”
Riot did not answer. He tucked the photograph into his pocket. “What is it that you do here?”
“I disinfect.” He nodded to his bucket as if the sharp, noxious fumes billowing around the trio weren’t answer enough.
“The cabins?”
“Anywhere I’m needed, but mostly the lower cabins.”
“Do you ever come across people still inside their cabins?”
“On occasion,” Cook said with a nod. “They’ll be asleep—drunk. And some people just don’t like crowds, so they wait until most have disembarked. Sometimes they’re sick.”
“What do you do if they’re sick?”
“I report it to my superior officer, and we cart them straight to the quarantine physician.”
“Were there any sick on the S.S. Australia?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Seems like it’s a yes or a no type of answer.”
Cook sighed, and started to run a hand over his face, but stopped himself. “The ships run together—like the faces. Am I under investigation?” Concern shone in his eyes. Open and honest. A little too honest for Riot’s taste.
“No, not all. We’re trying to find out more about the girl in the photograph.”
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