Ax & Spade: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 1)

by Kurt B. Dowdle

  “Not everyone’s walking the narrow path.”

  “More like no one is.”

  Kamp said, “Well, there are some things you have to put a stop to.”

  “Why, sure. You got your troublemakers and deviants. This one’s schtupping that one’s wife. This other one over here is stealing chickens. They all drink too much. People want to believe there are lowlifes we should be rid of. Lowlifes, lowlifes. Ach, look around. That’s all of us. Life is low.”

  “Thanks for cheering me up.”

  Druckenmiller became animated. “They tell me everything’s changing for the worse. But there’s nothing different going on. Nothing different from five years ago. Probably nothing’s ever changed. See? Right there, for instance.”

  Druckenmiller pointed his staff in the direction of a man with one arm propped against the side of a saloon, taking a piss.

  “Every day in every city since the beginning of time, there’s been a souse, brunsing against the side of a building.”

  They walked over to the man and Druckenmiller tapped him on the shoulder with his crook.

  “Hey, Obie. Knock it off.” No reply.

  “Hey, Obie! Not here.”

  The man mumbled, “Lemme finish.”

  Druckenmiller pressed the crook against the man’s neck, applying pressure evenly and pinning him to the side of the building.

  “It’s not a request, Obie.”

  “Christ almighty, Druck.”

  The man buttoned his pants and stumbled back into the saloon. Kamp and Druckenmiller started walking again side by side.

  Druckenmiller said, “See, if I walk around here with a gun, it only makes things worse. Scares people. Makes them feel threatened. Makes me an enemy. Hostile. That’s why I didn’t want to wear no uniform. Reminds folks of the military. There’s no need. Shooting begets shooting. War’s over.”

  Kamp said, “What about these wrongdoers and malefactors I keep hearing about? The criminal element that’s moving in?”

  Druckenmiller shook his head with disgust. “Ach, what I see around every day here is the same. If there’s a criminal element, it’s these guys in gray wool suits. These iron and railroad guys. And them that run the coal fields. Those assholes want to kill everything and everyone, including each other and especially them that work for ’em. That’s where the wrongdoing is.”

  “Well, there’s laws to keep them and anyone else from doing that. Right?”

  Druckenmiller held up and turned to face him. “Law hasn’t caught up with ’em yet or more likely can’t reach ’em. Ach, Kamp, I know you’re just trying to get me worked up. Don’t bother.”

  Kamp said, “I want to know why I was hired. Why would the Judge or anyone else want me to do this if all I’m supposed to do is help you catch drunks and chicken thieves? What is it I’m supposed to detect?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  “You must’ve thought about it.”

  Druckenmiller said, “The only thing I can figure is that they want you to make sure that you investigate crimes in such a way that you can prove that the laws don’t apply to them. Make sure you detect that it’s someone else’s fault, or better yet you should detect that there wasn’t no crime committed in the first place.”

  “Doesn’t say much for me.”

  “Well, don’t worry. You’re just a lowlife. Same as me. Same as them. Cheers.”

  He pulled his silver flask from his pocket and took a sip, then strolled down the street away, laughing and whistling a happy tune.

  Kamp used the walk home to sort out the bits and pieces of his trip to town and discern whether he’d actually learned anything new. He reflected on Druckenmiller’s point about what his job would really entail, protecting the powerful from the law. He hoped it wasn’t true but assumed it was. He wondered whether Druckenmiller was right about the fact that there weren’t more criminals and more crimes now than in the past. It seemed impossible that human nature could have changed so that people could have become more nefarious somehow. And yet, maybe the conditions and circumstances had changed in such a way to make wrongdoing more necessary, or at least more profitable to some. No way to know. Kamp also thought back on his chat with Philander Crow. The Judge had told him he had the perfect qualifications for the job, and Crow told him the opposite. Based on his experience in the army, Kamp knew a man’s actual skills were never the main reason he got the job, except in the case of snipers. He didn’t know how long he had to figure it all out. The visions and the voices, the nightmares and the headaches and the excursions outside his body. All of it had intensified and seemed to be getting its own head of steam. He wondered how long he had left. One year, he told himself. Just make it one year.

  He hit the road for home, focusing on the sensation of the sole of each foot striking the ground and falling into the rhythm of a long walk. He felt the heat rising in his lungs and chest and noticed the way they pushed back against gathering autumn cold. Step by step Kamp allowed his nerves to calm. He crunched through the dry leaves on the side of the road and for an instant let the sound carry him back to the fragments of a thousand splendid days from his boyhood when escaping from turmoil and pain, alone or with his brothers, he’d surrender to the cool air, the orange leaves, the cold water in the creek, the radiant sun.

  When the moment passed, he brought himself back to the present and looked around. He breathed the same cool air, saw the same colors of the leaves, the same cold creek and the same sun. Nothing had changed from when he was a boy. Nothing was the same.

  KAMP MADE IT TO THE PATH to his house by late afternoon and saw a man on the front porch. The front door was open, too, and Shaw was talking to the man. As he got closer, he recognized the visitor. Even from behind, he could make out the black, wavy hair, the lean frame and the broad shoulders. It was unmistakably Daniel Knecht.

  When Shaw saw Kamp, she called out, “Welcome back.”

  Knecht spun around, and it seemed to him as if Knecht had been surprised by his arrival.

  Knecht smiled at him. “Afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon. What brings you out this way?” Kamp walked up the front steps and stood face to face with Knecht.

  “Ach, we’re neighbors!” Knecht was beaming.

  Shaw said, “Mr. Knecht was just telling me that he’s rented a room in the home of Jonas Bauer. You know Jonas Bauer.”

  “Not personally, no.”

  Knecht said, “And it’s all thanks to you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, if you hadn’t taken me to the police in Bethlehem, I wouldn’t have had to go before the Judge, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell him my story. And if the Judge hadn’t brought me out here to help me find a place to live, I wouldn’t have seen that there was a room for rent at Mr. Bauer’s house. So, it’s all thanks to you. See?”

  Shaw saw Kamp’s face harden and said, “I need to check on supper.” She turned and went back in the house, closing the front door.

  “Anyway, I just wanted to come by and say thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I also wanted to see if Mrs. Kamp is all right. Seems like she is.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  Knecht said, “I mean, last time I was here, Judge was worried about her, an’ you was away. That’s how come he sent me over to Mr. Bauer to get help, to Mr. Bauer’s house, where I seen the sign in the window.”

  “I understand.” He felt the last few grains of his patience slipping away.

  “Say, I hear you work for the Judge now. Or, no, no, the police. That’s what I heard. I heard you work for the police now. City detective. Officially. Is that right?”

  “Something like that. Who’d you hear it from?”

  Knecht rolled his eyes. “Pshoo, well, I’ll make extra certain not to cause no trouble then.”

  “Do that.” He gestured politely for Knecht to step off the porch.

  “Yah, well, I better get going now. You probably ha
ve a lot to do around here what with the baby on the way and this farm to take care of and your job in town. You’re blessed, Mr. Kamp. You sure are.”

  “Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Knecht.”

  “Danny.”

  “Thank you, Danny.”

  Knecht stepped lightly down the stairs, and they watched him go. When he got halfway across the yard, Knecht turned around.

  “My sister told me how you come by with the medicine and how you wanted to make sure they was okay. That was a kind thing to do. Real kind. Makes me kinda sorry I bullshitted you about the whole thing in the first place. Hope you don’t hold nothing against me.”

  “I don’t, Danny.”

  He watched him until he got to the road, then went back in the house to the kitchen, where Shaw was indeed making supper. She met him with raised eyebrows.

  Kamp raised his hands. “Long day. Strange.”

  “Emma Wyles was here again today to check on me.”

  “Christ. What did I do wrong now?”

  “She says everything is fine, says I’m doing much better. She also said congratulations on your new job.”

  “Yah.”

  Shaw said, “What about him? Knecht?”

  “Our new neighbor? What about him? Jesus.”

  “Seems harmless to me.”

  “How could you tell?”

  She said, “Weren’t you the one who wanted to help him in the first place?”

  “That doesn’t mean I want him around here.”

  “He’s just a lost soul, Kamp. Once he gets settled in, he’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”

  “I’m not saying he’s a fiend, Shaw, but he’s ab im kopp. Know what I mean?”

  “Ab im kopp? That’s what you call it? Off in the head?” She was smiling now, teasing him.

  Kamp said, “That’s right.”

  “Well, so are you. Thank god.”

  She walked to him, put her arms around him and kissed him on the lips. He pulled her against him, and she kissed him harder.

  He said, “What about supper?”

  SEVEN

  WHEN KAMP WAS IN THE WAR, he often wandered into the forest during one of the countless lulls. This habit was strictly forbidden for a variety of reasons and, as he well knew, punishable by a number of exceedingly hash measures. But for him, not to perambulate of his own accord would have been far worse. His comrades in arms accepted his aberrant behavior, because they trusted him and because on some level, they realized that the machinery in his head had been assembled differently from theirs. They did worry that he never took a gun when he went on his nature walks. He never felt unsafe at these times, though, never considered that any harm could come to him. And none ever did. Alone in the woods, notions of the past and the future fell away so that all that was left and all that mattered was a blue sky, a puff white cloud, the scent of a pine tree, the sliver glimpse of a green valley. He didn’t imagine that a war could be going on, or that he could participate in such a thing. He didn’t yearn to go back to where he came from so that he could proceed with a life he had before. He never pictured a home or a beautiful woman waiting there for him or a family of his own. During these hours alone, he floated on the hum and buzz of the wilderness, lost to all but sensation.

  And so Kamp found it strange that now he had returned to something like the life he had before. He did know the love of a beautiful woman, and they would soon have a child. Stranger still was the fact that he fell into a routine of going to work, a job with a kind of framework and structure that placed limits on his freedom. But as he walked back and forth to Bethlehem each day, he reflected on this curious turn of events. He recalled what he’d learned during his first months as a detective.

  He thought about how everything that the Honorable Tate Cain, the High Constable Samuel Druckenmiller and the District Attorney Philander Crow had told him about himself and about the job had been mostly wrong. Kamp had learned, for example, that contrary to what Crow had said, he was able to handle the responsibilities of the role without having had any formal training. He quickly learned to conduct investigations, construct patterns of facts, draw sound conclusions and submit reports to Philander Crow, who prosecuted cases with ruthless efficiency. He had also learned that Druckenmiller’s assessment that the rate of crime in any given place has remained static since the beginning of time was hugely inaccurate. In particular, in his routine investigations of reports of wrongdoing, Kamp found that Bethlehem was seething with criminal activity of all kinds, growing in scale along with the rise of industry. Murder plots predominated. People freely volunteered information with him regarding the homicidal intentions of any number of individuals and groups in Bethlehem. It seemed to Kamp that a majority of Bethlemites, a fraternity united only by their murderous impulses, wanted to kill each other at any given moment. But wanting to kill someone didn’t constitute a crime. If it did, he thought every last soul would be guilty at some point, and often with sound and understandable reasons.

  As he stared at the ceiling in the darkest hours night after night, Kamp reminded himself that his job wasn’t to ponder the motivations of men or simply bring to light their evil inclinations. He had to prove a criminal had committed the crime. In this regard, Druckenmiller’s words rang true. The easiest crimes to investigate were those that happened in the open and with no apparent forethought, such as fisticuffs in a saloon. Two men, three sheets to the wind, punch each other until one man gains the upper hand. If the fight stops there, most would argue that no crime has been committed. If the victor continues to pummel his opponent to the point of unconsciousness or worse, he has committed a crime. Someone in the saloon, one of the patrons or the proprietor himself will talk to the police, as long as the witnesses don’t think the guy deserved it. In the end it was all personal, anyway, and none of the city’s business. Whatever the case, Kamp realized, the so-called ironclad investigations, those that resulted in successful prosecutions were the ones with the simplest motives and the most eager witnesses. In his estimation that left a multitude of crimes undetectable.

  Most crimes Kamp heard about couldn’t be attributed to an identifiable human being. “Someone else” and “not me” were usually the prime suspects. Kamp noted as well that people’s most common definition of criminal was simply a person in a group different from one’s own. The Germans blamed the Hungarians for the increase in crime. The Hungarians blamed the Slovaks, and the Moravians blamed the Lutherans. The Lutherans blamed the devil, to their credit, though that fact didn’t much help Kamp in his pursuit of justice.

  If the criminal couldn’t somehow be situated among the local varieties of European, it surely had to have been the work of an “injun,” as in the Lenni Lenape. Their numbers were so small, owing to their near-extermination and expulsion during previous centuries, that they’d almost become useless as scapegoats and bogeymen. If neither evidence of Lenape could be found nor rumors of Lenape concocted, sometimes a freed slave could be drummed up to play the role of culprit. And if all else failed, the perpetrator was assumed to be a part of the most vague yet most reliable category–“outsiders.”

  He did his level best to cut through clannish prejudices, innuendos baseless and sinister, bald prevarications, and out and out bullshit that characterized nearly all of Kamp’s conversations with the citizenry. In order to see his way through it, he focused primarily on motive, what he understood to be a person’s need, that which the person had to do in order to survive. He tried to strip away the emotion and wear the light of reason as a head lamp. People wanted none of it. He detected a vein of malice and fear deeper and more powerful than rational thought process or any written law. He'd seen it his whole life and saw it ever more clearly now.

  And yet, Kamp thought as he trudged into Bethlehem City Hall with really nothing to show for his first three months on the job, as autumn tumbled headlong toward winter, if he could make it nine more months, just make it to the next summer, he could relegate it all to the past. In the meant
ime if anyone could be helped by his work, if he could in fact right a wrong, so be it. These were the thoughts that twirled in his mind as he turned the brass doorknob and stepped into Philander Crow’s office.

  AS BEFORE, CROW SAT behind his desk, a tidy stack of papers in front of him. He didn’t look up when Kamp entered the room, though he motioned for him to sit down.

  Crow said, “I appreciate the work you’ve been doing. Your reports are highly informative and professional.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It’s a significant improvement over what Druckenmiller was doing by himself.”

  Kamp said, “He’s doing the best he can.”

  “He’s a drunkard and a fool. The fact that he’s your friend is clouding your judgment.”

  “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

  Kamp surveyed the office. Still nothing on the walls, no personal effects on the desk. Crow looked up at him. The district attorney’s face showed a combination of hauteur and boredom.

  “You’ve done better work than I thought you would, but that doesn’t mean I was wrong about you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Sweeping drunks and pugilists off street corners is worthwhile as far as it goes, but you haven’t solved any substantive crimes.”

  “You mean I haven’t done anything that’s going to get you promoted back to Philadelphia or wherever the hell it is you’re trying to get to.”

  Crow arched his eyebrows slightly without otherwise changing his expression of disdain.

  “You were hired, against my wishes, to investigate significant crimes, the work of murderers and underground crime syndicates, actual detective work.”

  “If you don’t want me for this job, how come I have it?”

  Crow looked straight at Kamp. “The local cretins are always dug in deeper than one would prefer. But since I can’t get rid of you for the time being, I’ll use you as I see fit. You should also realize that the Judge is paying a heavy price politically for protecting you.”