But she had clearly heard the cop tell Friar John that he just finished his night shift. Surely that meant that he would be on his way home now, didn't it? And before he went home for the day, he would stop and see Shane, wouldn't he? If the cop was all so interested in him, why wouldn't he go visit him? She kept telling herself that, while she labored to keep up with the sergeant's long strides. Her overall plan was good enough that she felt inspired.
She was a hunter and a spy, a spy disguised as a silly tomboy girl. She needed a name for herself, and therefore, something that fit the adventure. "Mary Kathleen" was unacceptable. It was the false name that St. Adrian's gave her, back when she was too young to remember. And since "Mary Kathleen" was a disguise that she had to wear at St. Adrian's in order to get from day to day, it made perfect sense for her to cast it aside and choose a special name for herself, now.
She sorted through her best words for one that might capture the feeling. A spy and a hunter were both dramatic roles, so why not use a dramatic word? Her little field trip today was a scene from a magical play, a sneak-away adventure inserted into a plain, old, ordinary day. The adventure itself, she realized, was a vignette: a separate scene in a larger play. She was in a vignette all her own. And so "Vignette" was perfect as a new name for her, a name so special that nobody else even knew it.
Vignette willed herself to be an invisible and unimportant little girl whom nobody would particularly notice or remember. In that fashion, she kept from being detected by the sergeant while she tracked him. Luckily, he apparently felt no concerns at all that there could be a small female hunter on his tail, following him up and down all these fragmented city streets.
It only took around two hours for her faith to manifest, but by then her legs were getting wobbly. During that time, the big sergeant walked all the way to the office of a newspaper called the California Star, and while she spied from outside the building's brand-new picture window, he stood there inside for a long time talking with a couple of other men. The men seemed to listen carefully to him, and one of them even brought out a notebook and wrote down what the cop was saying.
After that, Sergeant Blackburn left and walked a few more blocks to a ruined restaurant that was trying to get back into business. He bought a thick sandwich of some kind and walked away with it wrapped up and tucked under his arm. It looked like such a good idea that she spent the few coins in her pocket for one of her own before hurrying off to catch up with him.
The only reason she had anything at all to spend was because Friar John was careless about loose change. She would never have any money if she didn't keep making trouble and getting herself assigned the extra work duty. She had yet to come across anything outside of the orphanage that a ten-year-old girl could do to make money, except for things that made her skin crawl. The creepy Helper was bad enough. And so her cleaning duties brought a host of small opportunities to put a little jingle in her pockets.
It consumed all Vignette's energy to take the two steps necessary for every one of the sergeant's long strides, since she not only had to keep pace with his speed, she also had to dart from the cover of one object to the next. Fortunately for her, there was always something handy. All of the makeshift structures that people were putting up to live and work in made the streets look like campgrounds.
When Sergeant Blackburn eventually turned into a big adobe church called Mission Dolores and walked out two minutes later without the big sandwich, she knew that the day's hunt was successful. This time when the sergeant walked away, she remained behind.
Minutes later she was at the front gate to the cemetery, peering through the vines growing over it. There was a skinny boy sitting under a tree near the back, hungrily polishing off the sandwich that the sergeant had left for him. A breeze shifted the nearby tree branches, and sunlight through the branches lit up the boy's face so clearly that she recognized him. It was Shane, all right.
Whether Shane remembered her or not, she recalled him well enough. But for the moment, Vignette also realized that she had taken her endeavor as far as she could. Because even after the spying, the hunting, the adventure, Vignette still had no skills for confronting a boy who felt important to her for reasons that it frustrated her to try to understand.
Before she knew it, she was Mary Kathleen again. She had been gone for too long; her absence would soon be noticed. She backed away from the gate and turned toward home. If she wanted to continue having adventures, she could hardly start turning up missing at roll call, drawing concern about her whereabouts. No. Let the friars go on thinking that her only form of rebellion was to talk out loud in class.
She needed the work details to collect coins for moving around the city.
Blackburn sat in the living room of his new little basement apartment, located in one of the standing areas of town. Evening was just settling in. The restored gaslights along that particular street were already burning, so that their yellow and gold illumination played in through his ground-level windows. It was an odd view, and he had not yet gotten used to it. Tonight was his first night off since the week before the Great Earthquake struck. Even as he could feel his body automatically gearing up for a long night shift, he tried to let himself melt into the only comfortable chair he had obtained so far.
His stomach gnawed with hunger pangs. He wished that he had thought to get a sandwich for himself along with the one for Shane. But back then it had been close enough to breakfast that he didn't think about it. Now he was too tired to even bother opening a can, so he let himself sink deeper into the chair. Sleep came to claim him, sweeping his hunger aside. The boy, he thought, while warm relaxation enveloped him, was far more interesting than food anyway. Blackburn closed his eyes and let the mental notes play through his thickening thoughts.
So Shane more or less grows up in an orphanage, lives with the Nightingale family for a year, until they all die in the quake somehow. He takes refuge in a live-in job at Mission Dolores. While reading the paper aloud one day and trying to cure his stutter, he comes across an article about Captain Sullivan's murder—and right then he just "knows" that Elsie Sullivan is not the innocent widow but the perpetrator. The boy then sends a note so bizarre that Blackburn would never have considered it, if he were not already desperate for some break in the challenge that Lieutenant Moses threw down to him.
Then when Blackburn uses the information to break her and get a full confession, the boy explains his knowledge with a story that would have been long even if he could speak clearly. Something about a married woman's combination of insecurity and vanity about her appearance, when she is of an age where many other women are more attractive than she is, everywhere she goes. Something about realizing that the detail about the scale was a clear clue regarding subtle mental torture in the Sullivan household. Something about seeing the body sprawled across the scale as more than a mean coincidence, but as a staged comment, a work of sculpture made of flesh and blood.
At the age of twelve, this Shane Nightingale fellow told Blackburn about the human capacity for levels of pain and rage that most civilized people know nothing about, no matter how old they are. It made for a good story, and the boy deserved a little recognition. That day, the boys at the California Star had agreed. They wrote down everything Blackburn told them. The next afternoon's paper was going to run a human interest article about how Shane Nightingale, the sole survivor of his family, offered insights that solved the Sullivan case.
So far, Blackburn regarded Shane as a young fellow with a unique combination of confidence in his vision and an utter lack of confidence in himself. And so maybe this newspaper's acknowledgment would go some distance toward giving the kid back some spirit. Just watching him try to get a sentence out was painful. If a boost in self-confidence could smooth out his speech, then that would make a pretty fine reward for the kid's act as a good citizen. Once the article was out, maybe somebody at City Hall would even want to grab onto the story for political reasons and give the boy some kind of cit
y award. Although the way Shane's eyes lit up at the sight of that big sandwich today, a decent lunch might as well have been made of gold.
The last thing Blackburn did before falling into a deep sleep was to make a mental note to take a copy of the next day's paper over to the Mission, as soon as it came out. It would be great to see some pride on the kid's face.
CHAPTER TEN
MEANWHILE
“T-O-M-M-Y . . .” Lieutenant Moses carefully printed the name.
“No, Lieutenant, it's spelled with an i-e," Tommie corrected from his place on the other side of the giant Police Roll Call Book.
Lieutenant Moses exhaled and focused a hooded glare. "You could have told me that before I started writing." He muttered while he reached for his big gum eraser and stroked the end of the line clean. Then he chanted along with himself while he formed each letter: "T-O-M-M-I-E . . .”
“Good." Tommie smiled.
Moses observed how closely Tommie Kimbrough was leaning in over the book. It made the much bigger man feel a passing desire to squash the bony upstart, just to get a spot of amusement going in an otherwise stressful day. As if it were not bad enough that he was already having to guard his own backside from every political angle, Moses had to struggle with attempting to form key relationships with arrogant mucus bags like this: one of the city's trust fund babies, buying his way onto the force so he could play copper. Probably to impress some female.
After donating enough to cover the cost of completely rebuilding the city's primary morgue, this civic-minded little fellow asked for nothing more than to be allowed to volunteer his time at the temporary morgue facility, where they were strapped for labor anyway. In this benefactor's free time at the morgue, he planned to draw medical sketches of anatomical parts for use in textbooks. The eager fellow had appeared wearing several thin layers of clothing, as recommended for sloppy body work, clutching a generously sized lunch pail with a tight-fitting lid to keep odors out of the food. Clearly, thought Moses, Mr. Kimbrough had done a little body work in the past.
“Have you brought any eucalyptus oil?" Moses asked. "Peppermint oil or like that?”
Mr. Kimbrough offered a modest smile and pulled out a small vial. "Eucalyptus.”
“Good enough, then." All right, so maybe the guy wouldn't fall down and faint over the first mushy body. With a city broken into a million pieces, who was going to refuse his offer?
“And it's K-I-M-B-R-O-U-G-H, yes?”
“Correct. Excellent, Lieutenant." Tommie smiled again.
Excellent? Like he's doing me a favor. For an instant, he felt a flash of concern that Kimbrough might be planted there, perhaps to secretly evaluate Moses on the job. Moses knew that he would use a spy himself to keep this position, if he could. Countless other men wanted this job. So why wouldn't someone higher up, maybe someone with a friend who needs work, use a spy to watch Moses and to look for dirt? For weeks, there had been rumors all over the city about various plots to take over the government amid the chaos of the city's long recovery.
Moses wrote in "K-I-M-B-R-O-U-G-H," then noted the time and date. He closed the book. That was it, then. He would just have to see to it that little Mr. Kimbrough never got the chance to observe anything that could be used against him. "Before you go . . .”
“Yes?" Kimbrough turned back with a pleasant expression.
“Whenever you come in, you are to go only to the morgue. There's too much traffic here in the station house, so don't dally around the place. I signed you in here, today, but from now on there will be a sign-in book for you over there. No offense, but my time is pulled in other directions.”
“Yes, that's fine, Lieutenant. Just as well. No need to trouble you.”
“Right. And while we're talking about not troubling me, you'll make sure to keep your head down and don't bring me back any sort of difficulties in here. Agreed?”
“My presence in the morgue will be self-recorded every time I go in, sir!" Kimbrough said, like a recruit in a drill. "My head will be down at all times. Because neither of us wants any trouble. Sir." He grinned and saluted, clever as hell.
Moses studied Tommie Kimbrough's face for sarcasm and felt sure it was in there somewhere, but decided to let it pass, this time. The size of Kimbrough's donation made him practically bulletproof, as long as he didn't rob anybody important.
Like a well-trained physician, Moses considered his first obligation as Acting Station Chief as that of first doing no harm. Therefore, the safest thing to do about this Tommie Kimbrough was to push him out the door and make it plain that the fellow could only keep Lieutenant Moses out of his way and off of his back by staying out of the station. Let him make all the strange drawings that he wanted.
Moses waved the eager artist off toward the morgue area, adding a look meant to remind Kimbrough not to make any mistakes. He observed with satisfaction that the little guy was so intimidated that he not only hurried to obey, but he even made a point of looking like he was glad to agree that yes, he would keep himself scarce.
Satisfied, Moses lumbered off in uniformed pants that were now several sizes too large for his shrinking portage. He went to see what else his people were stepping into around his partially reclaimed station. "Acting, hell," he dared to grumble out loud. "I am the Station Chief.”
* * *
The temporary morgue was less than a block from the station, in a clearing that was formed after the collapsed building was scraped away. Workers had used rubble to construct a giant single room with a low roof and walls two feet thick. Tommie stopped just outside the morgue's large doorway. It was hung with thick canvas curtains that reached all the way to the ground. Nobody seemed to be around at the moment. He looked around and noted a worn set of wagon tracks in the ground just outside the door. The morgue team was probably out fetching more guests. He clutched his sealed lunch pail, pushed the thick curtain aside, and stepped in without bothering to look around to see if anyone was observing him.
The instant that the curtain closed behind him, the great room plunged into total darkness. The sound of thousands of buzzing flies filled his hearing, and a thick stench assaulted him. Tommie stood perfectly still for a few seconds, struggling to slow his breathing and his heart. In order to steady himself, he groped for his vial of eucalyptus oil and streaked a thick smear under his nose and into his nostrils. The room's smell did not disappear, but its power was dimmed just enough to be tolerable. He pulled several loose wooden matches from his pocket and struck one with his thumbnail.
A flare of yellow and red light filled the area around him, revealing just enough to show him that this place was perfect. Everything he needed. A series of crude stone body basins were lined up along the walls, like oversized bathtubs. Each one was large enough to place a body inside and still leave room to line the body with ice. The ice water was being efficiently drained away along thin troughs made of hastily thrown mortar, which ran down both sides of the body basin into another gutter that ran under the wall. Most of the basins were filled with bodies in various states of decomposition.
He cried out without meaning to when the flame burned him.
He lit another match with throbbing fingers. Moving along the wall, he checked each of the bodies, just in case. During his wanderings, he had heard the rumors of the plague turning up after the quake, but while most other people laughed it all off, he knew that the stories could be true. Every single day, Chinatown received crates unloaded from ships that brought their cargo and their stowaway rats. Sooner or later, a few of them were bound to carry plague. The city's Guiding Lights would be loath to allow it to affect business in their young port city, and unless a real contagion broke out that was too big to hide, the chaos of Chinatown could be used to conceal all sorts of bizarre death with the city's willing assistance.
If there weren't a plague victim in storage right now, Tommie was confident that there would be one very soon. He used up the rest of his wooden matches in trying to find any Chinese faces— even one
—but every body was either white, black, or one of the natives. The most decomposed and truly disfigured ones didn't look much like human beings at all, and it amazed him that in the midst of this citywide crisis, people were still expending time and effort on the likes of them. Let the flies have ‘em. He passed by the last body just as his last match burned low. There was nothing for him here, yet. By the time the flame went out he was on his way back outside.
Wait for it, some inner voice assured him. It's coming. Wait for it.
In every direction, the city was an anthill of activity and reconstruction, but the pall that hung over the morgue's grim presence kept a bubble of avoidance for a good twenty yards in all directions. It suited him to stand comfortably inside that dead zone, completely unnoticed by the scurrying creatures who swarmed the broken city.
Within a few minutes, the body wagon pulled back up to the morgue with another sad stack. Tommie introduced himself and showed his letter of permission from the Committee of Fifty, at which the corporal in charge threw up his hands and told Tommie to do whatever he wanted except to get in the way. Tommie made a show of helping them unload the bodies, enough to get a close look at each corpse. These were all white, as it turned out, probably a family. He was quickly aroused at the thought of the Nightingales, and of the time spent with them that was over all too soon.
Four more wagonloads came that morning, but with nothing more interesting than severely decayed and mostly unidentifiable remains. It was not until midafternoon when the corporal and his private drove up again, looking much different than the slumped, exhausted men they had been all morning. Tommie was passing the time by smoking a thin cigarillo and practicing his smoke rings when noises of fast thumping hooves and squeaky wagon springs caught his attention. He looked up in time to see the body wagon driving in hard and fast. The men pulled to a halt and jumped down, both looking tense. They immediately huddled in animated conversation.
The Last Nightingale Page 11