The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  She folded over, sobbing. Miss Fairweather stood and went to the table where she had left her satchel. She withdrew a small packet of paper and picked up the tin cup of water from the supper tray.

  “Miss Herschel, I’m going to give you a preparation.” She handed the cup to Trace, wedged a hand under the girl’s chin, and forced her head back. “It will taste bitter, but it will help you sleep. You won’t dream, and nothing will be able to harm you in your sleep. Do you understand?”

  Anna didn’t answer, but she didn’t fight, either. Miss Fairweather poured a small measure of powder onto her tongue, and then followed it with a generous drink of water. Anna made a terrible face and swallowed as if it hurt her, but afterward she blinked back tears and gave her thanks.

  “Do you have a Seal of Solomon—that is, a Star of David pendant?” Miss Fairweather asked. “No? Well, I want you to wear this one.” Again she rummaged in the satchel, then draped a silver chain over the girl’s neck. “It will keep evil spirits away. Never take it off while you are in here. Do you understand?”

  Anna nodded.

  “Good girl. Now go to sleep.”

  Anna lay down obediently. Miss Fairweather pinned her hat on her head, gathered up the satchel, and indicated Trace should follow her.

  She took Trace’s arm as they left the building, and not merely for form’s sake; she was staggering with fatigue. He supported her as they descended the steps to the sidewalk, feeling through the heavy cashmere dress how frail her arm and shoulder were. Min Chan met them at the curb and helped her into the rickshaw. Once underneath its roof she revived enough to flare her nostrils and inform Trace that she had a theory, and if he would call on her tomorrow morning, she would discuss it with him.

  “I must return home,” she said, “and I have research to do. I do, however, have a question for you: Was the newspaper you brought to my house this morning recovered from the Herschels’ house?”

  “No, I got it from Jameson’s store this morning.”

  “And it was today’s edition? Not an extra?”

  “No, it was today’s regular weekly, as best I could tell. And there’s more—when I first saw that story in the paper this mornin, the letters turned to blood and started to run down the page.”

  “Ye gods!” Miss Fairweather’s voice cracked in indignation. “And you did not think to mention it?”

  Trace’s brows snapped down. “Lady, if I told you every strange thing I see in a day, you’d never get me out of your library!”

  The thought seemed to arrest her for a moment, but then she shook it away. “Never mind. Tomorrow, I think it would be well if you looked into Judd Herschel’s business of the past few days. Especially find out if he paid a visit to the Carondelet Citizen newspaper office.”

  * * *

  “BUT THAT’S WHERE I ran into him last week,” Boz said, breaking into Trace’s recounting.

  “It was?”

  “Yeah, I was comin out of the barber shop there, and he came out of the printer’s. I said hello, asked what he was up to, and he said he was puttin an ad in the paper for somebody to cut his timber. That’s when I said we’d do it.”

  Trace pulled his suspenders over his shoulders.

  “You think somebody at the printer’s did this?” Boz asked.

  “Well, I don’t know anything about printing, but you gotta admit it looks funny that the story was on the street before the bodies were found. Hell, it had to have been printed the night before, if Jameson was to have a copy of it in his store this morning.”

  “What does she think did it?”

  “She ain’t told me yet.”

  “She tell you anything useful, or just parade you round town like a prize rooster?”

  Trace cocked an eyebrow at him. “You got somethin to get off your chest?”

  “I dunno … You spent two weeks tellin me you weren’t ever havin nothin more to do with that woman, and now you come back in a new suit squawkin bout women’s rights and Miz Fairweather said this, that, and t’other—”

  “Uh, you’re the one said she might know something about these deaths, and I’m tellin you what she said.”

  “She say anything about payin you for this job? Cuz you might recall we lost out on two weeks’ pay, now that Herschel’s dead.”

  Trace started to argue he wasn’t working for Miss Fairweather, this time, but then she had asked him to consult with her, and she was taking up his time to escort her places. And he had been so caught up in the novelty of being able to talk to someone about his curse he had forgotten about practical matters like paying the rent and eating occasionally. “I’ll make mention of it next time I go up there. After we go to the printer’s tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Like many small papers, the Citizen was kept afloat by its proprietors taking in job printing: calling cards, handbills, and other small items the public might require. Upon entering the shop, Trace and Boz were confronted with a long wooden counter and a rail, separating the reception area from the pressroom. Beyond the rail squatted a number of heavy, sinister-looking machines, long low tables, and rough-edged clutter. Everything had a coating of black over it.

  At the back of the room, a young man labored over a job press the size of a small bison. He pumped a treadle with one foot, driving a large iron wheel, which in turn drove the cast-iron elbows to flex and straighten. Rollers licked red ink across a wide circular platen, then darted back inside before the jaws closed with a clang. The pressman’s hands swiped in and out of the machine with casual daring, left hand snatching a freshly printed handbill from the gaping maw while the right laid a blank sheet of paper on its tongue. His movements were easy and unhurried, despite the apparent danger of losing an arm in the thing.

  “C’n I help you?” A tall, balding man in spectacles got up from the bench at the corner, wiping his hands on a rag already black with ink.

  “You the owner?” Trace asked.

  The man jerked a nod. “Bob Avery, owner and editor.”

  “I’m Jacob Tracy, this is my partner. We were hopin to get some information about Judd Herschel, who I hear came in your shop last week.”

  “Is that right? Herschel, you say?”

  “Yessir. The one who was murdered yesterday.”

  “Murdered! Well, I don’t know anything about that.”

  Trace stared at the man for a moment, trying to gauge whether this was genuine denial or a poor joke. “Er … there was a story about it in your paper yesterday, if I recall correctly.”

  The editor gave him an odd look over his spectacles, and reached under the counter, to come up with a copy of the paper. “Tuesday, March twenty-third,” he read, looking at the masthead. He scanned the front page carefully, turned to the second page and scanned some more. “Nope. Doesn’t look as though we did…”

  “May I?” Trace said, and the editor handed over the paper. Trace thought he remembered where it was, but in that space was merely a column of advertisements. One caught his eye:

  Two or three able-bodied fellows wanted to clear timber lot. Daily wages plus dinner. Contact news office or see Judd Herschel, Seminole Lane, Carondelet.

  As Trace read it, the ink began to blur and turn rusty. The paper buzzed in his hands, like a wasp’s nest that wasn’t quite empty.

  He dropped it on the counter. “Must be my mistake. Though I see here, Herschel did put in this ad for work.”

  The editor peered at the page. “That’s right.”

  “Did anyone contact the office here about the job?”

  “Not that I talked to—Danny!” the editor hollered over the clanking of the press. “You talk to anybody about the Herschel ad?”

  The press operator turned, and did a sharp double-take when he saw them. As well he might, Trace thought, hearing Boz suck his teeth meaningfully. The black-haired printer’s devil was the same young fellow who’d been photographing the Herschel crime scene.

  He threw a lever at the side of the press and came ove
r to them, warily. “What about the Herschel ad?”

  The newspaper editor repeated his question. The pressman claimed not to recall anyone asking about the ad. He looked Trace in the eye and said, “I’ll take care of them, Mr. Avery, you go on back to the type.”

  When the editor had turned the corner and sat down, the young man said in an undertone, “You here to make trouble?”

  “Just want to ask you a few questions,” Trace said.

  The pressman hesitated, then nodded. “Wait for me around back.” Then, louder, he added, “Sorry I couldn’t help you, sir.”

  A few minutes later, Trace and Boz were standing in the alley behind the newspaper office, watching the streetcars go by. The printer’s devil came out the back door with a freshly rolled cigarette in his hand and a box of safety matches. He held his free hand out to Trace and then to Boz. “I’m Danny,” he said. “Danny Lewis, he calls me.” He jerked his head toward the interior of the building, and his boss. “My real name’s Daniel Levy.”

  “The old man don’t take to Jews?” Trace said.

  “Rather not take the chance,” Danny said. “And anyway, I got other reasons for changing my name. My brother was the assistant reporter and printer’s devil here three months ago—Isaac Levy. He said the old man was all right, never gave him any trouble. But then Isaac turns up dead. Hanged by the neck in the press room.”

  “Hanged himself?” Trace asked.

  The kid shrugged eloquently, hands cupped around his smoke.

  “And you don’t want the old man knowin there’s a family connection,” Boz guessed, “til you figure out why your brother died.”

  “Something like that.” Danny exhaled. “I also don’t want him knowing I was out at the Herschel farm yesterday. The Citizen doesn’t print pictures. We don’t have the money or manpower to make lithographs. So I moonlight. The photographic equipment’s my own—at least it was Isaac’s, and our father’s before that. I take pictures where there’s a story, and sell them to the big magazines when I can.”

  “How’d you know about the Herschel murders?” Boz asked.

  “I got a friend at the funeral home. He tips me off when they get called to a murder scene.” He cocked an ironic eyebrow at their expressions. “Hey, we all got to make a living.”

  “That’s all well and fine,” Trace said, “but it don’t explain how the story got in your paper before the bodies were even out of the well.”

  Danny’s eyes went wary. “A story in my paper? When was this?”

  “Yesterday morning. Saw the new edition less than an hour after we left the Herschel farm. Best I can figure it had to have been printed up the night before—”

  But Danny was shaking his head as the words were leaving Trace’s mouth. “I’m sorry, but you couldn’t have. I did the proofreading Sunday night. All we put in there about Herschel was his ad.”

  “There must’ve been another edition. A special.”

  Danny spread his hands. “Who would’ve run it? I sure didn’t. And anyway, there wasn’t time. Mr. Avery set the type, Friday and Saturday; I proofed it Sunday and printed it Monday. There was just time to wedge in Herschel’s ad at the last minute, and only space because Mr. Avery dropped a couple of ornaments. I’m telling you, a full-length article on a murder—what was it, six or seven inches long?”

  Trace measured with his fingers to show what he remembered, and Danny nodded. “Yeah, that’s about six hours of work.” He dropped his cigarette and scuffed it out. “I’m sorry, fellas, but you must’ve seen it in another paper.”

  “Must’ve,” Trace agreed. “Tell me somethin—you work here pretty late nights, sometimes?”

  Danny’s eyes were on his shoe, making sure his cigarette was all the way out. “All ink-slingers do.”

  “You ever see anything … weird after dark? Like your eyes are playin tricks on you?”

  “Only if I get too strong a whiff of Mr. Avery’s breath,” Danny said. “By nightfall he’s pretty well corned.”

  When he had gone back inside, Boz said, “He’s lyin.”

  Trace nodded. “Yup.”

  * * *

  JAMESON’S STORE WAS on their way north, so they stopped by to check for messages. The place was busy, and Jameson was occupied with a customer, so Boz headed to the back to help load wagons.

  There were several copies of the Citizen on the front counter, and Trace helped himself, wanting reassurance in his own mind that he had read the story there. But the first copy he picked up only had Herschel’s want ad in it. As did the next. And the next. Trace went through the whole stack of them, astonished, excited, frustrated. He’d had that other copy—he’d left it with Miss Fairweather yesterday—but other than that he had no proof that the Herschel story had appeared in the Carondelet Citizen at all.

  By contrast, all the daily papers made screaming mention of the murder, and several of the smaller papers had issued specials. Some of the stories appeared to be copied verbatim from the Citizen’s original story; others had lifted the basic facts, but rearranged the words.

  The Times, at least, showed evidence of firsthand reporting, and the reporter had not shied from making his own analysis of the case:

  An examination of the scene of the crime, and the grounds surrounding the house, does not suggest the presence of anyone other than the family, and indeed Miss Herschel makes no claim of an invader. But the question remains, could a sixteen-year-old girl, of slight stature and gentle disposition, assault her grown father and two adult female relatives with murderous intent?

  The answer may lie in intimations made by one Jacob Tracy, a local day laborer who was employed by Mr. Herschel. Upon entering the crime scene, Mr. Tracy appeared overcome by the ghastly sight, and when questioned he professed to be disturbed by the psychic malevolence of the place. “Great evil took place here,” he said, and then withdrew into reticence when pressed for details.

  “Son of a bitch!” Trace breathed, and then looked up to see Jameson and his lady customer staring with raised eyebrows. He felt his neck getting hot. “Sorry, ma’am.” He took himself and the paper out through the back room, to the loading dock.

  Boz came after him. “What’s the matter?”

  Trace read him the offending part of the article, and what followed:

  The police admit to being baffled, and it would not be without precedent for detectives to resort to consulting with psychics in such a case. Although Mr. Tracy denies association with the Spiritualists, he was adamant in his assertions of Miss Herschel’s innocence. Could some otherworldly knowledge be the source of his certainty?

  “Could it be that reporter buggers goats?” Boz murmured.

  “Or was fathered by one.” Trace wondered whether Miss Fairweather took the paper, and whether her fascination with him was stronger than her apparent need to keep hidden.

  “Now, now,” said a nasal voice. “No need to get personal.”

  Trace and Boz looked up. Rex Reynolds stood in the back doorway of the shop, hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels as if he had not a care in the world.

  “You got plenty of nerve,” Trace said.

  “I got nerve?” Reynolds retorted. “How’s Miss Anna’s case coming along, Counselor?”

  “What?”

  “I hear you and that hoity-toity Englishwoman from Quality Hill swanned into Four Courts yesterday on false pretenses. You pass the bar when I wasn’t looking?” Trace stared at him, and Reynolds grinned. “Son, you’ll find there’s little newsworthy in this town that I don’t know about. I got sources in every police station, at every saloon and barbershop—hell, I got half the laundresses uptown willing to slip me a dirty word about the missus’ sheets, if it’s a slow news day. And I know you spent your morning, you and your pal here, down at the Carondelet Citizen, trying to find out how they scooped every other paper in town. And I’d give a pony to know that myself.” Reynolds opened back his jacket lapel and pulled out a sheaf of folded news pages. “Take a gander at thos
e.”

  They were five issues of the Carondelet Citizen, spread out over the past nine months or so. Each one had a headline screaming bloody murder in the third column, where the want ads should have been.

  “The Herschels weren’t the first to get advance coverage in the Citizen,” Reynolds said. “Back in January, a woman drowned her baby in the laundry tub. Husband said she’d been melancholy ever since the birth. November, an old man fell down the stairs and broke his neck in the middle of the night. Family claimed the daughter-in-law pushed him, cause she was tired of takin him to the necessary. Five other deaths in the last year, all inside homes on a Monday night, all reported by the Citizen on Tuesday morning, sometimes before the police got to the scene.”

  “How come nobody’s noticed this?” Boz asked.

  “Cause there ain’t that many copies with the murder story in it,” Trace guessed, looking at Reynolds to see if he was right. “I just went through that whole stack in there, and none of them have it.”

  Reynolds laid a finger alongside his nose. “Give the man a cigar … I been able to find plenty o’ folks who claim they read the story in the Citizen, but precious few who can produce a copy with the text.”

  “Then how’d you know?” Boz said.

  “When it comes to print, not much happens that I don’t know about.” Reynolds fetched out a second set of papers. “Once I wised up to that Levy kid beating me to all the murder scenes, I started buying off a patrolman on the south beat. He makes sure to save me any newspapers he finds on the premises. And when a, uh … precognitive issue does turn up, I go down to the Citizen office and get me a copy of the official edition.”

  Reynolds handed over five new pages, all folded open to the third-page classifieds. “See the connection?”

  Trace could already guess, but he glanced through the pages, to be sure. “Every time there was a murder, there was an ad placed by the person who was murdered. Or kin to ’em.”