“You ask a homicide dick like me,” Miller interjects, “It’s a made up bedtime story…that the truth behind their deaths isn’t nearly as dramatic.”
The car goes silent again while once more I stare through the glass at the house. Regardless of the truth, it’s hard to believe such a peaceful, if not quaint, cottage-looking residence could have sheltered such a dysfunctional family. A historical dysfunctional family.
“It’s been said that as soon as Henry and Clara were buried, Henry Riggs Rathbone Jr. handed over the Derringer and the knife to the authorities who, in turn, delivered them to the Ford’s Theater Museum. As for the dress, however, he wanted to retain it, as if there was a special power that went with it. A curse even. In the ensuing years, he stored in the back of Clara’s closet, a solid brick wall constructed before it, to hide it away forever.
“But in 1910, Junior is purported to have broken through the brick wall in Clara’s bedroom. Convinced the dress had haunted his family long enough, he retrieved the bloody dress and burned it, thus destroying the curse. But to this day, like so many other aspects of the legend, no evidence of the burned remnants have ever been confirmed, leaving some to speculate that the dress still exists. There are also rumors that the Derringer and fighting knife housed in the Ford’s Theater Museum in Washington are fakes, indicating that Junior never did relinquish the true artifacts after the death of his parents…that the real McCoys are still out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. Perhaps they were both wrapped in Clara’s bloody dress. Now, wouldn’t that be the find of the century, Mr. Baker?”
He puts his hand on my leg again. I shake it away again.
“This all sounds like folklore, if you ask me,” I say.
Balkis gives Miller a look like they’re communicating without speaking.
“So what do you want with me?” I go on. “Why am I here and not back in New York City, Detective Miller?”
He says, “The couple who lived in this house up until a few weeks ago, have gone missing. Been missing for almost a week now.”
“So isn’t it your job to find them? You or the FBI?”
“Sure it is, Baker,” he says. “It’s just that we’ve reached a bit of a brick wall, if you’ll pardon the pun, and we just don’t have the personnel or the resources right now to break it down. I’m hesitant to involve the Feds at this stage of the game.”
“Sorry, Detective. Still not sure how I can help.”
“I was hoping you might give the case a try. See what you can come up with. Like I said, I can do three hundred per day plus expenses. I might even toss in some donuts.”
“Really?” I say. “Dunkin Donuts. Not store bought. I’m partial to blueberry cakes.”
“Absolutely, Chase. Dunkin Donut blueberry cakes. You sure drive a hard bargain.”
“I didn’t go into business with my dad, but some of his smarts wore off on me.” Then, “My guess is the couple who lived here left the country. That is, they didn’t want to be found. Were they wanted for something in particular?”
“I’m not sure they’re capable of leaving the country much less the city, Baker,” he says. “And I’m not entirely sure they’re wanted for anything. Don’t let the crime scene tape fool you. That’s why I haven’t called the Feds in.”
“Can you be any more cryptic, Miller?”
He shoots the professor another look.
“I’m gonna tell him, Ted,” he says. “I’m gonna spill the damn beans.”
“Can’t hurt,” Ted says.
5
Miller’s eyes back on me.
“The couple who’ve lived here for nearly sixty years were the first people to occupy the place since Henry, Jr. They recently entered into a sale of the historic home to Albany State University—”
“—which is where I come in.”
“Yes, which is where Ted comes in.”
“Excuse me, Detective. But that would be Dr. Balkis if you don’t mind.” He says it using his faux Southern accent again.
Miller goes stone-faced. “Yes, that would be Herr Dr. Balkis.” He says Balkis, like Ball Kiss. It gets a snicker out of the driver. “In any case, Baker, the present owners, a Mr. and Mrs. Bill Girvin, are pushing ninety. Eccentric couple in that they lived in the house exactly as Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone and their family would have lived in it in the mid-eighteen hundreds. No running water, no electricity. Fires to heat the place…You get my drift. At one time, back in the forties and fifties, they even used a horse and buggy to get around town. He can barely walk, and his wife is said to be stricken with Alzheimer’s. So I’m not entirely sure they’re capable of boarding a plane to Europe much less making it out the front door without collapsing onto the front lawn.”
“Maybe they were kidnaped,” I say.
Miller nods.
“Excellent,” he says. “Except for one thing, there’s no sign of a break-in. No sign of a struggle. No notes passed on to us asking for a ransom from Girvin’s estate which is sizable. More than sizeable, his inheritance money older than Lincoln himself. No strange prints anywhere in the house.”
“What’s forensics have to say?”
“They did their best to check the joint out. But it’s so old and who knows the origins of the oddball prints they picked up.”
“So how do you know something criminal went down here?”
“What we did find is blood. Small, but still significant traces up inside the bedroom where Clara hid the white dress.”
“Blood,” I repeat. “Who’s blood?”
“Blood from both Girvins,” Miller says. “Or so the lab reports confirm. We also found a .44 caliber pocket cannon on the bed, beside a fighting knife, the blade painted red with both Girvin’s DNA.”
6
“So let me get this straight,” I say after a beat. “The owners of this home are missing. They’re almost as old as Lincoln himself, and they disappeared without a trace after a Derringer and a fighting knife just like the ones used in the Lincoln assassination are discovered up in Clara’s old bedroom.”
“The pistol had been discharged, by the way,” Miller adds. “We’ve taken both items into custody, bagged and tagged them as evidence. They’re not the original pieces that killed Lincoln and cut Rathbone, but some skillfully forged knockoffs. Or so I’m told.”
Balkis nods.
“What the hell happened here?” I ask.
“Something violent causing blood to be spilled. That’s all I can conclude until I locate the Girvins, dead or alive.”
“Are you asking me to find the Girvins or find the dress?”
“You’re an expert in finding missing people, especially when they’re connected to some kind of antiquity or relic or treasure.”
“You want me to find a pair of old people who are likely to be dead. You should dredge the river, Detective Miller.”
“Maybe,” he says.
“What if the Lincoln curse somehow got to Girvin? Maybe he, too, lost his mind and tried to mimic Rathbone and Clara and their murder-suicide?”
“Always a possibility,” Miller says. “But people tend not to run very far after a murder-suicide. Again, I need to find them in order to prove anything.”
“Uh, I’m not saying the curse is anything but legend, but wouldn’t it have died along with the burned dress?”
Balkis clears his throat.
“Or perhaps,” he says, “Clara’s white dress wasn’t burned in the first place, and still resides in the house somewhere in some secret chamber or ante-chamber just waiting to be found. That would mean for certain the curse still exists. Who knows what might be discovered inside that house if only the police would let us back inside.”
“Listen, Professor,” Miller, barks, “If I told you once, I told you a thousand times, no one goes into that house until this investigation is finished, you got me?”
Balkis turns to me.
“Unfortunately, the good detective here feels the need to treat me like a little chi
ld. He won’t allow me access to the house all on my own. Calls it a breach of forensic procedural protocol or some such legalese nonsense.”
“You and the university will have your shot, Professor, when all this is over,” Miller adds.
“Sure,” Balkis says, opening the door. “When an entire team of university scholars and their camera crews descend upon the place. No, thank you. I prefer to work on my own.”
He gets out, slams the door shut, wobbles over to his car, gets in. Firing up the engine, he makes an abrupt three-point turn and heads in the opposite direction, back towards the Kings Highway, not bothering to give us a second look.
“He’s uptight, that one,” I say. “A little weird, too.”
“You have no idea,” Miller says. Then, “So, will you give the job some thought?”
“You really think I’ll be able to do a better job of finding the old couple than you and your staff will?” I ask.
“Can’t hurt to try.”
I take another look at the house. At the boarded up door.
“Can I get into the joint?”
Miller reaches into his pocket, comes out with a set of keys, tosses them to me.
“Those are for you and you only. Balkis manages to get inside, there’s no telling what he’ll pocket. Guy knows his history, but he’s a bit off kilter, you ask me.” He extends his index finger, makes a twirling motion with it around his temple. “Key works on the back door off the kitchen. Remember, Balkis finds out you have a set and he doesn’t, he’ll go all ballistic on me like a three-year-old denied a lollipop.”
“Why even bother to work with the guy?”
“Like I said. He knows too much.”
“About the Girvin’s?”
“No. About Lincoln and that creepy house’s history. In his mind, he’s not reenacting the Civil War. He is in the Civil War.”
I smile. “Don’t tell me you believe in curses, ghosts, and a whole lot of hocus pocus campfire stories, Detective Miller?”
He cocks his head, grins like he’s on the fence about believing versus not believing.
“Who really knows what spirits lurk behind those old walls,” he whispers, biting down on his lip.
The way he says it makes the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “Can you take me back to my truck?”
Miller turns back to the front.
“Daylight’s wasting,” he says, like John Wayne.
We drive.
7
I sit in the pickup watching the cemetery crew load Dad onto a casket truck flatbed with the help of a chain and winch. Sure, he can’t feel anything anymore. Scratch that…What I mean is, it’s possible if not entirely probable, that he ceases to exist in any form imaginable. That is, if you don’t believe in a soul being an entirely separate energy source from blood, flesh, and bone.
Maybe you believe in ghosts. Or maybe you don’t. But as I sit here, watching the old, water-stained coffin (so much for supposedly waterproof concrete coffin chambers) now making its way from the open grave to its new home, I can’t help believe that somehow my dad is, at present, watching my every move, watching his own physical body…what’s left of it…being transported to yet another resting place. Maybe, like I discovered not too long ago while searching for an Indian God Boy with six arms, it’s possible the dead don’t sleep the sleep of the dead after all. It’s possible they are instead reborn into something else entirely, be it a kind of living spirit or even another human being.
Maybe the same can be said of Abraham Lincoln and the curse that surrounds him. Did he, in fact, haunt Henry Rathbone to the point of madness? To the point of homicide? To the point of suicide? Or was Henry Rathbone just a nutcase, plain and simple?
What about the Girvins? What drives a seemingly normal man to attack his wife and himself, if that is indeed what happened upstairs in their old home? Maybe the ghost of Henry Rathbone made him do it? Maybe the ghost of Lincoln made him do it, or all of the above? Or, maybe I’m letting my imagination get to me.
Did I really believe in curses? Maybe the old coot and the wife simply walked away from the house in a haze of derangement exacerbated by old age and senility.
It’s been known to happen from time to time, especially at homes for the elderly. An old woman is found on the street corner, bags in hand, her face awkwardly made up with lipstick and rouge, while still dressed in her pajamas. “I’m moving back home,” she’ll inevitably announce when the white coats finally get hold of her.
Or maybe an old couple manages to book tickets on a Greyhound Bus to Florida. Once there, they check into a cheap seaside motel and swallow cyanide capsules. Who knows what the brain is capable of once it reaches a certain age? Once it begins to be shadowed by its own death every minute of every day.
But how did that Lincoln assassination Derringer knockoff get inside the bedroom? How did that fighting knife get up there? If the knife was covered in old man and old lady Girvin’s blood, then surely they are dead by now. But where do they rest?
That’s the question Miller is paying me to find out, isn’t it?
First things first.
If indeed the Girvin’s are dead, then what’s to prevent me from making a search for Clara Harris’ bloodied white dress? After all, it’s quite possible that the story of her son burning it 1910 is a fabrication, and I have a key to the joint.
Chase the inquisitive…Chase the explorer.
I start the truck, throw her into drive.
“Take care, Dad,” I say, tossing one more glance at the casket truck.
“Take care of yourself, Son,” I hear him say. “Thanks for stopping by and digging me up. The personal touch means a lot. And for God’s sakes, watch your back with this Clara-Harris-bloody-dress-Lincoln-curse thing. I know the money’s good and a gig is a gig, but remember, not everything is what it seems.”
Dad’s advice in mind, I head back to the King’s Highway.
8
So, here’s what I’m thinking as soon as I pull onto Cherry Tree Road. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to park right outside the house. For two reasons. First, if there’s a killer out there and he has his eye on the house, I’d rather not advertise the fact that I’m inside the place all alone.
Second, I don’t want the Cherry Tree residents to get suspicious. Last thing I need is nosy neighbors lobbing all sorts of questions about why I’m looking around the Girvin’s old house all by my lonesome, even if it is the sight of some wrongdoing.
So, instead of parking outside the house itself, I hang a right onto Cherry Tree, pull over to the side of the road by a stand of old pines, and cut the ignition.
I hoof it on foot from there.
Standing outside on the street, the yellow crime scene ribbon pressed up against my knees, I get my first panoramic glance of the two-story structure from outside the confines of a motor vehicle. I take a long look at it’s gabled roof, big French windows, second floor balcony off the garage (a new edition since the Civil War era), black shutters, and the old maple and pine trees that surround it. Digging my hand into my jacket pocket, I pull out the ring of keys Miller gave me, step over the ribbon, and swiftly make my way along the gravel driveway to the house.
I head around the back of the garage, find a wooded backyard, the landscaping unkempt and thick. It’s as if during the time it took me to cover the thirty or so feet from the driveway to the backyard, I went from a quiet suburban neighborhood of 2015 to an era back in time where it took an army of keepers to hold back the growth of the upstate New York forest.
Bushwhacking my way through the tall grass, I come to the back door off the kitchen. It’s an old, wood plank door that’s been painted black, the wood so thick and old I would not doubt that it dates back to the time of Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone.
I push the key into the twentieth-century era lock. It takes some monkey grease to release the latch. That’s when I pull the key back out and push the door open, the hinges creaking and squeaking. Stepping into
the kitchen, I don’t find the usual stainless steel paneled refrigerator or GE stove with computer programmable burners and glass countertop. No state-of-the-art microwave, no wine cooler, and no sign of a wet sink, to which might be attached a water-filtering spigot that can provide several varieties and intensity of sprays. No remote control retractable blinds over the windows. No dimmer switch for any LED track lighting. No digital, remotely programmable, local APD-connected security system.
There’s no overhead electric lighting at all.
There is, however, a chandelier that sports a dozen or more candles that have burnt down to almost nothing. In place of a wet sink is a wooden water bucket that hangs by a pole mounted to the floor by the iron stove. There’s also a working fireplace, the hearth of which is big enough for me to stand inside of. The floor is wood plank and warped in places. I breathe in the air. It smells of burnt candle wax, fire embers, and dust. It’s summer, but there’s a chill in the air as if the temperature inside the old house defies the seasons, surviving on its own timeline.
The chill gives me the willies to be perfectly honest. Spend enough time in creepy places like underground tombs and jungles that still contain the remnants of head-hunter tribesmen, and you learn to listen to your gut. And right now, my gut is telling me that this house which seems so cute and quaint from the outside is not a safe and happy place at all. A place where blood has not only been spilled but people have died. Violently.
I step through the door opening on the opposite side of the kitchen and enter into a small alcove. It’s dark, so I pull a small LED flashlight from my bush jacket pocket, thumb the latex-covered trigger, and splash the brilliant light onto the walls.
The wood paneling is covered in photos. Old, metal-framed photos of what I guess to be the Girvin family…the man and wife who purchased the old home from Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris’s son, Henry Jr. Probably somewhere around the early 1940s if I have to guess. It’s odd because the photos aren’t the color glossy you might expect. Rather, they’re old black and whites that were taken by an old fashioned tripod-mounted box camera that might have been used by Mathew Brady back in the day. But then, given the information Miller passed on about the couple dedicating themselves to living the life of a civil war era couple, I shouldn’t be all that taken aback.
Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) Page 3