The Last Nightingale

by Anthony Flacco

  The moment did not last.

  Blackburn was a light sleeper under most circumstances, and he could not help but hear the knocking at his front door. But since he was only a couple of hours into sleeping and had a full shift coming that night, he lay still in hopes that the noise would stop.

  It did not. A light, rapid set of knocks came, then a slight pause, then another burst. Incessant, like a woodpecker. Who could it be? The idea of a visitor never crossed his mind. Most likely a neighbor, he groused. Some little difficulty that they wanted him to sort out, having heard that a policeman lived there.

  “Oh, what the hell.” He sat up, climbed out of bed and picked up his robe, which he donned on his way to the door. As soon as he had it tied, he reached forward and pulled the door open. A girl stood there, panting hard. Choppy red hair, dressed like a boy.

  “Hi.” She smoothed out the front of her shirt.

  “Oh, I remember you. Shane’s sister. Um—”

  “Vignette.”

  “Vignette. Are you all right? Because I was sleeping, and—”

  “Shane is in trouble.”

  She shot him a look so earnest that he snapped out of the remaining fog of sleep. “All right, Vignette. Try to keep it simple and just tell me what’s going on.”

  “This woman came to the cemetery. We never saw her before.

  For a long time she just stood by a grave, praying. We thought she was praying. But when Shane took the brooms back inside, I was in the toolshed because we wanted to go to sleep, but she sneaked up behind me and grabbed me around by the back of the neck.”

  Blackburn was taking in every word now, and it struck him that Vignette was describing all this in a strange voice. Her calmness had an eerie feel.

  “She wasn’t that much bigger than me, but she was strong. Her arm around my neck was thin, but she could grip like a man.”

  “A man?” Blackburn felt his pulse step up a few beats. “What makes you say that? Just because she had strong arms?”

  “Not just that. She was strong all over. She leaned back and lifted me up off of the ground so that even my toes couldn’t touch it, and I was—my throat was squeezed in her arm and so I had to turn my head just to be able to breathe and she held me up in the air like nothing.”

  “Do you have any idea why she would—”

  “She thought that I was Shane! See? Because she just sneaked up behind me and all my hair got chopped off last month and I have the clothes on so that, you know, she actually thought I was him. And she said she was going to turn me into a girl and then throw me out in the ocean up at the Golden Gate. She said that she liked to turn boys into girls.”

  “Turn boys into girls? What do you think she meant by that?”

  “She said she used to do it after they were dead, but that now she was going to do it while I was still alive, except that I told her I was a girl and that’s when she realized that I wasn’t Shane, which is when Shane showed up and scared her off. You should have seen it! Then he yelled at me and he said to run and get out of there. So I did. And he didn’t say anything else, you know, like where I was supposed to go or what he wanted me to do or anything. So I came here. Actually, it’s more like my feet came here and just took me along.”

  “This woman thought that you were Shane. And she wants to turn Shane into a girl. Did you see a knife? A really large one?”

  “No, but still. You see why I came here.”

  “Wait right there,” Blackburn replied, with the dread already working its way through him. He darted back inside and threw on civilian clothing, strapped on his service revolver and tucked a pair of cuffs into his back pocket. Then he hurried back outside. “Let’s go,” he told her while he walked out into the street.

  He sensed her following along behind him while he waved down a passing two-seater buggy and showed them his badge. “This is an emergency. Can you drive us to the Mission Dolores?”

  The policeman’s badge was enough for the driver to instantly agree. Blackburn lifted Vignette into the cab and jumped in after her. In less than five minutes, they were at the Mission and the two-seater was clattering away into the distance. Blackburn insisted that Vignette wait outside the main gate, then hurried through it, across the graveyard and all the way back to the tool-shed. No one was around, and he strained his ears for any sounds. The silence was near perfect, tinged only by the scraping of crickets and light rushes of breeze through the upper branches. Was she still here?

  There was every reason to believe that this woman could be The Surgeon. The small frame, the reference to castration. But here? So far away from the waterfront where she had always struck before. And striking out at children?

  Blackburn felt his own anxiety slow everything down so that the time it took him to cross the width of the cemetery felt longer than the ride to the Mission. All along the footpath, he listened for any sound that might give something away, until he was nearly at the closed door of the shed. Still there were no sounds of struggle from inside. No voices.

  He reached forward with his left hand while resting the right hand on his gun, then grasped the door handle in a firm grip and yanked the door open.

  Nothing. He peered in, his eyes adjusted a bit—still nothing. The shed and its contents appeared undisturbed. The sleeping blankets were still stacked on the wall shelf. The tools were not in disarray.

  He was thankful to also see that there was no blood anywhere and no sign of physical struggle. But that left him with nothing. After scanning around in all directions, he stepped back onto the walkway and headed toward the front gate. He needed to find out what else Vignette remembered. And for now, he planned to keep her with him as much as possible. Despite circumstances, she was still safer with him than on her own, knocking about in the city.

  It was time to head for the station house. This mad killer could no longer be dismissed. Whatever drove The Surgeon to her grisly work had now turned its hunger onto innocent citizens, wandering inland far from the waterfront dives, even going after children. Blackburn had seen far too much of this monster’s handiwork to be able to tolerate the idea of Shane being captive in her company.

  He had to convince Lieutenant Moses that the station must issue enough resources to hunt this killer down, and to get The Surgeon off of San Francisco’s streets before the day was out.

  He knew there was no chance that Shane would live any longer than that.

  Lieutenant Moses had lost so much weight that he was wearing brand-new uniform pants and a retailored shirt for the first time. Unhappily, now that he was a few hours into his long shift, he had to accept the possibility that he had been optimistic in donning the new pants. From the waist down, he felt like he was trapped in a pipe. Even when he stood as straight as possible, the crotch seam dug into him with a persistence that made him mildly nauseous. When he tried to bend over to pick up anything, his own trousers gave him a silent kick to the scrotum.

  Moses felt all the more foolish for it, knowing that he brought all of it on himself. Events of the night before saturated his judgment. He had simply felt so relieved and confident while he was getting dressed for work that morning when he pulled out the new outfit— which he had not planned to wear for another two to three weeks— that sheer euphoria had clouded his judgment. But still, still, his first sexual experience in many years had been an overwhelming personal event, just short of spiritual ecstasy. And with that glow fresh upon him when he arose, it had felt natural to commemorate the occasion with the new outfit.

  The night before, he had taken a quiet, predawn stroll through the prisoners’ cells on both the male and female sides, just to personally see to it that everything was shipshape. The men were either all asleep or smart enough to fake sleeping until he passed through. Then he headed for the women’s side.

  There was just the one woman in custody.

  Her section was sealed off, as was the men’s, so that no night guard was needed at the entry. He stepped inside, and out of professional cons
ideration for the prisoner, very quietly pulled the door closed and locked it for proper security.

  He had to stop at the door for a moment. His breathing was fast and shallow and he felt mildly dizzy. The sensations swimming through him felt better than anything he had ever experienced. He drank them up, and absorbed the wonderful swirls of pleasure cascading through him.

  Before he knew it, and certainly before he had taken a moment to think it over and perhaps ask himself if he had a plan, he was standing at the cell of prisoner Elsie Sullivan, who awaited trial for murder without bail. She had spent most of her stay huddling with her bevy of attorneys and uptown sympathizers. Moses felt nothing against the woman personally, but her presence in his jail did make things politically difficult for him. All the investigators knew she was guilty, but she had certain civic bigwigs in her personal circle who did not want to accept that.

  In the darkness, Moses could only hope that he was not staring down at the sleeping form of his own destruction: a proud woman who might be inclined to punish him for her stay in his jail after she was cleared. Nevertheless, he was captivated by the sheer sexual pleasure of being so close to her. She lay helpless before him, trapped behind thick iron bars.

  Another sexual thrill fired through him. At the same instant, he caught a faint whiff of Mrs. Sullivan’s aroma, and the two sensations combined to buckle his knees. In moments, Moses was kneeling right next to the bars, and then the bars were all that separated him from her sleeping form. Her face was only a few inches from his.

  Moses knew how dangerous it was to risk having one of his own men walk in, discovering the lieutenant on his knees next to her. But the simple scent of her skin held him in chains. He closed his eyes to the danger of discovery and concentrated on separating out the smells of her hair, her skin, her breath. He leaned his ample cheek into the cool iron bars to get as close as possible.

  Over recent days, Moses had stolen glances at her on more than one occasion, whenever he could find business that would pass him close to her cell. He felt like he could willingly chop off his own legs for the chance to rub his face over every square inch of her body, just one time.

  He flinched when Elsie Sullivan turned in her sleep until she was flat on her back, but her eyes remained closed. He relaxed, then studied her breasts beneath the fabric of her gown for a moment, before he glanced at her face and realized that her eyes were now open. And that she was staring straight up at him.

  He froze. A moment passed. Then another. When finally she spoke, her voice was soft, conspiratorial.

  “Well, you’re going to have a hard time explaining why you’re on your knees, there, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”

  He leaped to his feet with all of the speed that his newer and slimmer form could display. “No! No, I—I was just checking—just looking around for that damned thing. Where is it?”

  “Psst!” she hissed to him with a coy little smile.

  It was magical, Moses thought, the way that she metamorphosed into a playful kitten right before his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “It’s all right with me. I’m glad for the company.” She smiled and sat up, leaning against the bars so that she was close enough to touch. Moses realized that if he still had his cheek pressed to the bars, he would feel her skin against his own.

  For the next whirlwind hour, it was all so easy. Gregory Moses had never known that he could be so witty, so entertaining. And when things got a bit quiet, he impressed both of them with his deeper, philosophical side. Elsie Sullivan was utterly captivated, and she even lowered herself before him and confessed that if she had ever been lucky enough to find such a man as Gregory Moses in her own life, things would surely have gone much differently for her.

  Moses could see her point. It broke his heart to think of how a ravishing creature like this—who, it turned out, was not at all like the stuffy and removed person that he would have guessed her to be—had been unfairly driven into this dungeon.

  When she reached through the bars to work her magic with her hands, Moses fell into a trance unlike anything he had ever known. She guided him through every movement with the delightful nasti-ness of a secret best friend. It only took a few moments for a lifetime of sexual repression to explode out of him. Lieutenant Moses cried out without meaning to. He was so lost in ecstasy that he could not have stopped it if the entire Committee of Fifty had walked into the cell block.

  Everything that happened afterward seemed only natural, to him. After all, why on earth would he let this delightful woman rot away inside that dingy jail cell? Did Moses obtain his current position in order to gain power that he did not bother to use? Not that he could recall.

  Within hours, he found a sympathetic judge who wrote up a bail order, in an amount just high enough to sound harsh if word got out. Within two hours of that, the attorney for the lovely Widow Sullivan had posted bond and escorted his client back to her large and tastefully beautified home.

  Gregory Moses was transformed. He experienced levels of confidence in his manhood such as he had never known. He felt them when he woke up that morning, and throughout the early part of the day, up until the new pants began to get the best of him. He had yet to solve the new pants problem when the two new detectives Gibbon and Mummery came stomping into the station with such an annoying display of laughter and brash confidence that he made a mental note to punish them later.

  The two detectives were also accompanied by two uniformed officers, men Moses recognized. He was just about to point out to them that this was precisely the sort of casual attitude that he did not tolerate under his watch, when Detective Gibbon loudly announced that Lieutenant Moses was under arrest. Moses was charged with committing an assault of a sexual manner upon the Widow Elsie Sullivan while she was under police custody. Moses noticed that Detective Mummery just stood by, giggling into his uniform glove.

  Detective Gibbon called for the two uniformed officers to handcuff Lieutenant Moses—right there inside of his own station—and prepared to lead him away while the rank and file drifted in to watch. Moses was so stunned that he could only gasp for air. Speech had not come back to him yet. His head swam. He was so traumatized that he barely noticed when Sergeant Randall Blackburn stepped to the front of the crowd of onlookers. The sergeant also had some kid with him, a boy, it looked like. Maybe a girl.

  “Lieutenant Moses—?” Blackburn began, but Detective Mummery stepped forward with a sneer and raised his hand. “The lieutenant is under arrest, Sergeant Blackburn. Have to ask you to step back.”

  Moses watched Blackburn comply, but the sergeant looked con- fused and stared at Moses. As soon as Moses saw the surprise on his face, he knew that Blackburn had no part in this.

  But of course, Moses realized; it made sense that Blackburn was no part of any plot. The man was a sergeant. No, this variation on hell came from somebody much higher up in the structure, somebody who could order the arrest of a Station Chief.

  In the next instant, the answer leaped up before him.

  Tommie Kimbrough. The son of a bitch must have betrayed him! He used his fancy contacts to get some sort of false confession from the Widow Sullivan. The little fellow had thumbed his nose at Moses, and even dared to ignore the fact that Moses knew all about the foreclosure notice. Kimbrough was daring Moses to move against him.

  A rush of anger filled him until there was no room left for fear. Every muscle cell in his body twitched for the chance to spring, but bound up as he was, the only weapon left to him was verbal. So while the officers escorted him across the station floor and toward the stairs leading down to the jail, he craned his head around until he could see Sergeant Blackburn, who stood aghast.

  “Sergeant!” Moses hollered. “I found a foreclosure notice on Tommie Kimbrough. It fell out of the file on the Nightingale family!” The officers kept pulling Moses along. He was nearly at the door. There was only time to get out one last line.

  “Nightingale foreclosed on Kimbrough’s house, and a
few days later they were all dead!”

  The stairway door slammed at that point, cutting off the sight of Sergeant Blackburn’s astonished face, staring helplessly. He had to assume that Blackburn heard enough. If the fellow was worth half of what people estimated, he was going to drop everything and make sure to find out anything he could about Tommie Kimbrough.

  Moses felt some measure of satisfaction in knowing that Kimbrough would never walk away from his betrayal with a smile on his face, but he also realized with dawning dismay that he had just committed his final act as the Acting Station Chief. The wild ride that began with the collapse of City Hall on the morning of the Great Earthquake was over, just as his fears had always projected. All that sacrificed sleep, never a day off. For nothing. New thin clothes. For nothing.

  The ability to look at himself in a mirror without feeling his heart sink was gone.

  Blackburn stood amid the chaos on the station house floor and saw that everyone was captivated with the hot gossip about Lieutenant Moses. He glanced down at the girl Vignette, and as soon as their eyes met, they both shared the obvious question. How, amid a broken command structure, was he supposed to get clearance to round up a group of beat cops and detectives and spread them out in an organized manhunt for Tommie Kimbrough and Shane Nightingale?

  Vignette tapped him on the arm and motioned for him to bend close to her. When he did, she put her mouth next to his ear and whispered, “I know where Mr. Kimbrough lives. I followed Friar John there when Mr. Kimbrough sent for him. It was late at night.”

  Blackburn considered that. The headmaster of St. Adrian’s had been summoned in the middle of the night to the home of Tommie Kimbrough?

  He took Vignette’s hand, turned around and walked out of the station house.

  The early afternoon streets were busy up on fabulous Russian Hill. Ice wagons, coal wagons, fish wagons, meat wagons, commerce makers, and pleasure seekers passed their horse-drawn carriages within inches of one another and gave resentful room to the rare automobile banging and smoking its way up the hills. Blackburn’s street sense told him that at this hour on a busy day, a policeman and a little girl could walk up to a lovely three-story Victorian resi- dence and appear to be making a simple house call. Charity work, perhaps.