by Night Probe!
She gave Pitt a wary look and pointed behind the car. "You missed the Essex gate about a half mile back. The one with the iron lions."
"Yes, I recall seeing it."
Before Pitt could begin a U-turn, the woman bent down to the open window. "Won't find him home. Mr. Essex left four, maybe five weeks ago."
"Do you know when he'll return?" Pitt asked.
"Who's to say?" She shrugged. "He often closes down his house and goes to Palm Springs this time of year. Lets my son tend his oyster ponds. Mr. Essex just comes and goes; easy for him, being alone and all. Only way to tell he's gone to the desert is when his mailbox overflows."
Of all people to ask directions, Pitt thought, he had to pick the neighborhood busybody. "Thank you," he said. "You've been most helpful."
The woman's lined face suddenly became a mask of friendliness and her voice turned to molasses. "If you have a message for him, you can give it to me. I'll see that he gets it. I pick up all his mail and newspapers anyway."
Pitt looked at her. "He didn't stop his newspaper?"
She shook her head. "The man is as absentminded as they come. When my boy was working the ponds the other day he said he saw steam coming from the Essex house heating vents. Imagine going away and leaving the heat in the house on. Pure waste, considering the energy shortage."
"You said Mr. Essex lives alone?"
"Lost his wife ten years ago," answered busybody. "His three children are scattered all over. Hardly ever write the poor man."
Pitt thanked her again and rolled up the window before the woman could prattle on. He didn't have to look in the rearview mirror to know she had kept her eye on the car as he turned into the Essex drive.
He rolled through the trees, parked the Cobra in front of the house and switched off the ignition, but left the headlights on. He sat there a few moments, listening to the engine crackle from its heat, hearing a siren on the other side of the river in Maryland. It was a beautiful night. Clear and brisk. Lights sparkled on the river like Christmas ornaments.
The house stood dark and silent.
Pitt climbed out of the sports car and walked around the garage. He lifted the main door on its well-oiled hinges and peered at the two cars facing frontward, the bright work on their grills and bumpers gleaming under the Cobra's lights. One was a compact, a tiny, gas-saving, front-engined Ford. The other was an older Cadillac Brougham, one of the last of the big cars. They were both covered with a light layer of dust.
The interior of the Cadillac was immaculate and the odometer only showed 6400 miles. Both cars looked showroom new; even the underside of the fenders had been kept free of road grime. Pitt had begun to penetrate Essex's world. Judging from the loving care the former ambassador lavished on his automobiles, he was a meticulous and orderly man.
He eased the garage door back down and turned to face the house. The woman's son had been right. Wisps of whitish vapor drifted out of the vents on the roof and faded into the blackened sky. He stepped onto the front porch, found the chime button and pushed it. There was no reply, no movement on the other side of the picture windows whose drapes were tied open. Purely because it seemed the thing to do, he tried the door.
It opened.
Pitt stood there in momentary surprise. An unlocked front door was not in the script; neither was the rank stink of putrefaction that wafted over the threshold and invaded his nostrils.
He stepped inside, leaving the door open behind him. Then he groped for the light switch and flicked it on. The foyer was empty, as was the adjoining dining room. He moved swiftly through the house, beginning with the upstairs bedrooms. The terrible odor seemed everywhere. There was no pinning it down to a particular area. He returned downstairs and checked the living room and kitchen, quickly scanning their interiors before moving on. He almost missed the study, thinking the closed door merely opened to a closet.
John Essex sat in the overstuffed chair, his mouth agape, head twisted over and to the side in agony, a pair of glasses hanging grotesquely from a leathered ear. His once twinkling blue eyes had collapsed and depressed into the skull. Decomposition had been rapid because the thermostat in the room was set at 75F. He had been sitting there, strangely undiscovered for a month, struck dead, so the coroner would state, by a blood clot in the coronary artery.
Pitt could read the signs. During the first two weeks the body had turned green and bloated, popping the buttons from Essex's shirt. Then after the internal fluids had expelled and evaporated, the corpse began to shrivel and dry out, the skin stiffening to the consistency of tanned hide.
Sweat began to seep from Pitt's forehead. The stuffiness of the room, together with the stench, spun him to the verge of sickness. Holding a handkerchief over his nose, he struggled against the urge to vomit, and knelt in front of John Essex's corpse.
A book lay in the lap; one clawlike hand was clamped on the engraved cover. The cold finger of dread etched a path down Pitt's neck. He had seen death close up before, and his reaction was always the same: a feeling of repugnance that slowly gave way to a frightening realization that he too would someday look like the rotting thing in the chair.
Hesitantly, as though he half expected Essex to awake, he pried the book loose. Then he switched on a desk lamp and flipped through the pages. It looked to be some sort of diary or personal journal. He turned to the front heading. The words seemed to rise up from the yellowed paper.
PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
By
RICHARD C. ESSEX
FOR
APRIL OF 1914
Pitt sat down behind the desk and began reading. After about an hour he stopped and looked at the remains of John Essex, his expression of revulsion replaced with one that was filled with pity. "You poor old fool," he said with sadness in his eyes.
Then he turned off the light and left, leaving the former ambassador to England alone once again in a darkened room.
The air was heavy with the smell of gunpowder as Pitt moved behind a row of muzzle-loading gun enthusiasts at a shooting range outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. He stopped at a baldheaded man who sat hunched over a bench, peering intently down the iron sights of a rifle barrel that was fully forty-six inches in length.
Joe Epstein, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun during working hours and an avid black powder rifleman on weekends, gently squeezed the trigger. The report came like a sharp thump, followed by a small whiff of dark smoke. Epstein checked his hit through a telescope and then began pouring another powder charge down the long barrel.
"The Indians will be all over you before you've reloaded that antique," Pitt said with a grin.
Epstein's eyes brightened in recognition. "I'll have you know I can get off four shots a minute if I hurry." Using pillow ticking as wadding, he rammed a lead ball past the muzzle. "I tried to call you."
"I've been on the go," Pitt said briefly. He nodded at the gun. "What is it?"
"A flintlock. Seventy-five-caliber Brown Bess. Carried by British soldiers during the Revolutionary War." He handed the gun to Pitt. "Care to try it?"
Pitt sat down at the bench and sighted on a target two hundred yards away. "Were you able to dig up anything?"
"The newspaper morgue had bits and pieces on microfilm." Epstein placed a small amount of powder in the flintlock's priming pan. "The trick is not to flinch when the flint ignites the powder in the pan."
Pitt pulled the lock mechanism back. Then he aimed and eased the trigger. The primer flashed almost in his eyes and carried down the touchhole. The charge in the barrel exploded an instant later and his shoulder felt as if it had been rammed by a pile driver.
Epstein stared through the telescope. "Eight inches, two o'clock of dead center. Not bad for a city dude." A voice over a loudspeaker announced a cease-fire and the shooters laid down their pieces and began walking across the range to replace their targets. "Come along and I'll tell you what I found."
Pitt nodded silently and followed Epstein down a slope toward the target area.<
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"You gave me two names, Richard Essex and Harvey Shields. Essex was undersecretary of state. Shields was his British counterpart, deputy secretary of the Foreign Office. Both career men, the workhorse type. Very little publicity on either man. Carried out their work behind the scenes. Apparently they were rather shadowy figures."
"You're only icing the cake, Joe. There has to be more."
"Not much. As near as I can tell, they never met, at least in their official roles."
"I have a photograph showing them coming out of the White House together."
Epstein shrugged. "My four hundredth mistaken conclusion for the year."
"What became of Shields?"
"He drowned on the Empress of Ireland."
"I know about the Empress. A passenger liner that sank in the St. Lawrence River after colliding with a Norwegian coal collier. Over a thousand lives were lost."
Epstein nodded. "I'd never heard of her until I read Shields' obituary. The sinking was one of the worst maritime disasters of the age."
"Strange. The Empress, the Titanic and the Lusitania all went under within three years of one another."
"Anyway, the body was never found. His family held a memorial service in some unpronounceable little village in Wales. That's all I can tell you about Harvey Shields."
They reached the target and Epstein studied the hits. "A six-inch grouping," he said. "Pretty good for an old smoothbore muzzle-loader."
"A seventy-five-caliber ball makes a nasty hole," said Pitt, eyeing the shredded target. "Think what it would do on flesh."
"I'd rather not." Epstein replaced the target and they began walking back to the shooting line.
"What about Essex?" asked Pitt.
"What can I tell you that you don't already know?"
"How he died, for starters."
"A train wreck," answered Epstein. "Bridge collapsed over the Hudson River. A hundred dead. Essex was one of them."
Pitt thought a moment. "Somewhere, buried in old records in the county where the accident occurred, there must be a report listing the effects found on the body."
"Not likely."
"Why do you say that?"
"Now we've touched on an intriguing parallel between Essex and Shields." He paused and looked at Pitt. "Both men were killed on the same day, May twenty-eighth, nineteen fourteen, and neither of their bodies were ever recovered."
"Great," Pitt sighed. "It never rains…... but then I didn't expect it to be cut-and-dried."
"Investigations into the past never are."
"The coincidence between the deaths of Essex and Shields seems unreal. Could there have been a conspiracy?"
Epstein shook his head. "I doubt it. Stranger things happen. Besides, why sink a ship and murder a thousand souls when Shields could have simply been tossed over the side somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic?"
"You're right, of course."
"You mind telling me what this is all about?"
"I'm not sure where any of this is leading, myself."
"If it's newsworthy, I hope you'll let me in on it."
"Too early to throw in the open. It may be nothing."
"I've known you too long, Dirk. You don't involve yourself with nothing."
"Let's just say I'm a sucker for historical mysteries."
"In that case I've got another one for you."
"Okay, lay it on me."
"The river under the bridge was dragged for over a month. Not a single body of a passenger or crewman ever turned up."
Pitt stopped and stared evenly at Epstein. "I don't buy that. It doesn't figure that a few bodies wouldn't have drifted downriver and beached on the shoreline."
"That's only the half of it," Epstein said with a cagey look. "The train wasn't found either."
"Jesus!"
"Out of professional curiosity I read up on the Manhattan Limited, as it was called. Divers went down for weeks after the tragedy, but turned up zero. The locomotive and all the coaches were written off as having sunk in quicksand. Directors of the New York Quebec Northern Railroad spent a fortune trying to recover a trace of their crack train. They failed, and finally threw in the towel. A short time later, the line was absorbed by the New York Central."
"And that was the end of it."
"Not quite," Epstein said. "It's claimed that the Manhattan Limited still makes its ghostly run."
"You're kidding."
"Scout's honor. Local residents in the Hudson River valley swear to seeing a phantom train as it turns from the shore and heads up the grade of the old bridge before it vanishes. Naturally, the apparition only appears after dark."
"Naturally," Pitt replied sarcastically. "You forgot the full moon and the howling of banshees."
Epstein shrugged and then laughed. "I thought you'd appreciate a touch of the macabre."
"You have copies of all this?"
"Sure. I figured you'd want them. There's five pounds of material on the sinking of the Empress and the investigation following the Hudson River bridge failure. I also scrounged up the names and addresses of a few people who make a hobby out of researching old ship and train disasters. It's all neatly packaged in an envelope out in the car." Epstein motioned toward the parking lot of the shooting range. "I'll get it for you."
"I appreciate your time and effort," said Pitt.
Epstein stared at him steadily. "One question, Dirk, you owe me that."
"Yes, I owe you that," Pitt acquiesced.
"Is this a NUMA project or are you on your own?"
"Strictly a personal show."
"I see." Epstein looked down on the ground and idly kicked a loose rock. "Did you know that a descendant of Richard Essex was recently found dead?"
"John Essex. Yes, I know."
"One of our reporters covered the story." Epstein paused and nodded in the direction of Pitt's Cobra. "A man matching your description, driving a red sports car, and asking directions to Essex's house was seen by a neighbor an hour before an anonymous phone call to the police tipped them off about his death."
"Coincidence," Pitt shrugged.
"Coincidence your ass," said Epstein. "What in hell are you up to?"
Pitt took a few steps in silence, his face set in a grim expression. Then he smiled slightly, and Epstein could have sworn the smile was tinged with foreboding.
"Believe me, my friend, when I say you don't want to know."
Graham Humberly's house sprawled over the top of a hill in Palos Verdes, a posh bedroom community of Los Angeles. The architecture was a blend of contemporary and California Spanish with rough coated plaster walls and ceilings, laced with massive weathered beams covered by a roof of curved red tile.
A large fountain splashed on the main terrace and spilled into a circular swimming pool. A spectacular panoramic view overlooked a vast carpet of city lights to the east, while the rear faced down on the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island to the west.
Music from a mariachi band and the tidal current of babble from a hundred voices greeted Shaw as he entered Humberty's home. Bartenders were feverishly mixing gallons of tequila margaritas while the caterers busily replenished spicy Mexican dishes on a buffet table that seemed to stretch into infinity.
A small man with a head too large for his shoulders approached. He was wearing a black dinner jacket with an oriental dragon embroidered on the back.
"Hello, I'm Graham Humberly," he said with a glossy smile. "Welcome to the party."
"Brian Shaw."
The smile remained glossy. "Ah, yes, Mr. Shaw. Sorry for not recognizing you, but our mutual friends didn't send me a photograph."
"You have a most impressive home. Nothing quite like it in England."
"Thank you. But the credit belongs to my wife. I preferred something more provincial. Fortunately, her taste surpassed mine."
Humberly's accent, Shaw guessed, hinted of Cornwall. "Is Commander Milligan present?"
Humberly took his arm and led him away from the crowd. "Yes, she's he
re," he said softly. "I had to invite every officer of the ship to make sure she'd come. Come along, I'll introduce you around."
"I'm not much for social dribble," said Shaw. "Suppose you point her out and I'll handle things on my own."
"As you wish." Humberly studied the mass of bodies milling around the terrace. Then his gaze stopped and he -nodded toward the bar. "The tall, rather attractive woman with blond hair in the blue dress."
Shaw easily picked her out in an admiring circle of white uniformed naval officers. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and radiated a warmth that escaped most women. She seemed to accept the attention naturally without any sign of caprice. Shaw liked what he saw at first glance.
"Perhaps I can smooth the way by separating her from the horde," said Humberly.
"Don't bother," replied Shaw. "By the way, do you have a car I might borrow?"
"I have a fleet. What have you got in mind, a chauffeured limousine?"
"Something with more spirit."
Humberly thought a moment. "Will a Rolls-Royce Corniche convertible be appropriate?"
"It should do nicely."
"You'll find it in the drive. A red one, The keys will be in the ignition."
"Thank you."
"Not at all. Good hunting."
Humberly returned to his duties as host. Shaw moved toward the bar and shouldered his way up to Heidi Milligan. A blond young lieutenant gave him an indignant stare. "A bit pushy, aren't you, dad?"
Shaw ignored him and smiled at Heidi. "Commander Milligan, I'm Admiral Brian Shaw. May I have a word with you…... alone."
Heidi studied his face a moment, trying to place him. She gave up and nodded. "Of course, Admiral."
The blond lieutenant looked as if he'd discovered his fly was open. "My apologies, sir. But I thought…..."
Shaw flashed him a benevolent smile. "Always remember, lad, it pays to know the enemy."
"I like your style, Admiral," Heidi shouted over the roar of the wind.
Shaw's foot pressed the accelerator another half inch, and the Rolls surged north along the San Diego freeway. He'd had no specific destination in mind when he left the party with Heidi. Thirty years had passed since he last saw Los Angeles. He drove aimlessly, depending only on the direction signs, not at all sure where they would take him.