by Libba Bray
Evie’s eyes focused first on the grandeur of the room: the high, wood-beamed ceilings and large chandeliers. At one end was a pipe organ; at the other was the letter G placed inside a sun. In the center of the room, a phalanx of cops and a coroner surrounded a small altar. They moved aside and Evie gasped. On the altar was the badly burned body of the Pentacle Killer’s latest victim.
“One of our Brotherhood found the body this morning around ten o’clock,” the blinking man said. He stumbled over the word body and his mustache crinkled in distaste. “The Most Worshipful Grand Master has been notified by cable. He is away with his family.”
“The deceased is Brother Eugene Meriwether—” Malloy said.
“He is a Junior Warden,” the owlish man interrupted.
“Was,” Malloy said, letting the little man know just who was in charge here. “He was working late in the office last night. Left around eight to have dinner with a coupla Masons at a restaurant over on Eighth Ave. They said good-bye at about ten or so, and Mr. Meriwether came back here alone. The killer took the feet this time.”
Evie’s eyes reflexively glanced at the rounded nubs of the man’s legs, and she felt a wave of light-headedness roll over her. She grabbed the edge of a chair to steady herself and shut her eyes, but the afterimage remained.
“He left the victim with the same pentacle brand. It’s the only part of his body not burned.” He pointed to a spared circle of flesh on the man’s torso.
“May the Great Architect watch over us all,” the owlish man said solemnly.
“Doors were locked from the inside.” Malloy pinched the bridge of his nose. He squinted at the owlish man. “You got anyone in the Brotherhood who’s got a score to settle? Or maybe somebody who’s a little over the edge?”
“Certainly not.” The man’s giant eyes did not blink behind his spectacles. “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jacob Astor, Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Francis Bellamy—the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, the very pledge, sir!—these are our Brothers, great men all. This country could not have been founded, nor would it continue to flourish, without the Masonic influence.”
The man and Detective Malloy began to argue, their voices rising in the defiled room.
“We are all a long way from home and weary,” Will said at last.
The owlish man stopped his indignant lecture and smiled. “I didn’t know you were a fellow traveler, sir. Forgive me, Mr…. ?” He moved in for a handshake, which Will avoided, keeping his focus on the body.
“Did the deceased have any enemies?”
“Mr. Meriwether? No. He was highly regarded.”
“Well, somebody didn’t like him,” Malloy grumbled.
“He might have been Most Worshipful Grand Master one day. His speech to the Kiwanis Club last year was very well received. Very well received.”
“We’ve got nothing, Will. Christ.” Malloy kicked at a chair in frustration.
Despite their work, they were no closer to catching this madman. A sense of despair lingered in the room, along with the cloying smoke. Evie began inching closer to the dead man. The body had been burned to a blue-black color, with peeks of raw, weeping red flesh beneath. His hands were contorted and his head was arched back, as if to let loose an agonized scream. The fear and pain he must have experienced were unimaginable. And if Evie did what she was thinking of doing, she might very well learn just how awful it was. Her heart raced as she felt the idea hardening into resolve. Eugene Meriwether’s Mason’s ring had molded to his blackened finger, but it might still give her a reading.
Uncle Will stood talking to the owlish man and Officer Malloy. The other officers canvassed the room, taking notes. No one was paying a bit of attention to her. It was now or never. Evie breathed through her mouth and closed her hand around Meriwether’s. As her fingers brushed the Mason’s finger, the skin crumbled slightly under her touch, and she bit down on the scream clawing its way up her throat. Tears pricked at her eyes and her breath caught in her chest.
She couldn’t do this; it was too awful. She lifted her hand from the victim’s and sought the comfort of her coin pendant, and a memory came to her.
“Why do you have to go?” she’d asked James through tears that day in the garden.
“Because, old girl,” he’d said, wiping her tears away, “you’ve got to stand up for what’s right. You can’t let the bullies win.”
Evie took three deep breaths, closed her eyes, and clamped her hand firmly around the partially melted ring and the Mason’s crumbling flesh. She was vaguely aware of grinding her teeth as the images came down across her closed eyelids like a spotty rain getting heavier:
Eugene Meriwether polishing the ring with a cloth. His pride in it. A day at the beach with a friend. Sun glinting on sand. A lemonade—Evie could feel its refreshment. But none of these memories would catch a killer. Evie pressed harder, willing the ring to give up more, but the images remained faint and flickering, photographs shown too quickly for the viewer to hold on to anything meaningful in them.
Breathe, Evie told herself. Slow down. See everything. But she was distracted both by the horrible condition of the body and by her own nerves. She lost the connection and had to fight to get it back. And then she heard it: whistling. It was the same tune she’d heard when she’d touched Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle. Evie was conscious of her heart rate picking up. In her dreamlike state, she was suddenly with Eugene Meriwether as he made his way down the darkened corridor toward the golden light spilling out from the Gothic Room. His hand reaching. The shining brass of the knob. The door opening…
“What are you doing?” One of the officers took firm hold of Evie’s hand, breaking the connection. He stared at her in disgust.
“I… I…” Evie whispered. “I was praying,” she managed to say. She’d been so close—one more moment and she might have seen the face of the killer. Tears of frustration streamed down her cheeks, and the cop softened.
He patted her shoulder. “Come away from there, now, sweetheart.”
She let herself be led. She’d definitely heard something. Was it important? Had the whistling come from the killer, or from somewhere else? Was it the same tune? It was. She was certain of it.
A crew of cleaning ladies in starched aprons arrived with mops and pails of soapy water. “Don’t touch anything!” Malloy and Will yelled at the same time. The owlish man shooed them away with a flick of his soft fingers and they retreated into the gray of the antechamber to await further instruction.
“We got ourselves a bad one, Will,” Malloy said.
They came out blinking into the hazy light of Twenty-third Street and were rushed by a wave of reporters shouting over one another. A flashlamp went off and Evie blinked away the bright dots dancing in the air.
“Vultures!” Malloy grumbled. “Get away from here!”
T. S. Woodhouse ran forward, notebook and pencil in hand. His unruly brown hair had clearly been oiled back that morning, but now a long chunk of it hung over his left eye like a veil. Evie hoped he wouldn’t blow her cover.
“Excuse me! Gentlemen, T. S. Woodhouse, with the Daily News. I hear you’ve got another stiff in there. And this one isn’t some marathon dancer from Brooklyn or a kid from the West Side.”
“Get lost, Woody,” Malloy growled.
The insult didn’t seem to make a dent in Mr. Woodhouse. He glanced at Evie, then turned to Will. “What’s your bead on this, Professor? Must be pretty bad for them to pull in a civilian. Is it a gangland war? A mob beef? Anarchists? Reds? The Wobblies?” Woodhouse smiled. “The bogeyman?”
“It might be a reporter!” Malloy taunted. “Why don’t ya write that down, Woody. Give us a reason to ship you boys out to Russia.”
“Freedom of the press, Detective.”
“Freedom of the jackals, more like. The way you boys play fast and loose with the facts, we’ll all be reading stories that are as reliable as my grandfather’s fish tales.”
“Anarchists mean t
o abolish the state,” Will said, as if still taking part in the previous conversation. “They want to cause the most chaos, to upend order. This is methodical. Planned out.”
The reporter’s pencil scratched across the page. “So the bogeyman, then?”
“Pal, aren’t you a little young to be on this beat?” Malloy again.
“Time to get rid of some of these old windbags writing careful little stories, Detective. Bring in the new blood, I say. It’s a modern world. People need some excitement in their news. A little zip. Wouldn’t you agree, Miss O’Neill?”
Evie didn’t answer.
“Best of luck,” Malloy said.
“I don’t believe in luck. I believe in opportunity. You and me, Professor, we could work together on this one. Put the killer on the ropes. Whaddya say?”
Uncle Will squared his hat and marched toward Sixth Avenue. T.S. sidled up to Evie and tipped his hat. “That must’ve been some awful scene in there. You poor thing, you’re trembling. Let me help you. Excuse me, excuse me, folks, coming through.”
T. S. Woodhouse led Evie to a spot behind a police wagon. He opened his jacket to reveal a flask. “You, ah, need a little liquid courage?”
Evie took a swig, and then chased it with a second. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. What you can mention is what the scene was like in there.”
Evie filled him in on some of the details, purposely leaving out others.
“You ever need a favor, you just let T.S. know.”
“I’ll remember that, Mr. Woodhouse.”
Evie took one last drink from his flask, then adjusted her scarf. “How do I look?”
T. S. Woodhouse grinned. “Swell, Sheba.”
“Have your shutterbug get me from my left side. It’s my good one. Oh, and we should make this seem unfriendly. You understand.”
T. S. Woodhouse gave a thin-lipped smile. “Purely business.”
“There’s no worse class of human on earth than cold-blooded murderers. Except for reporters,” Evie said loudly as she walked past the human chain of policemen keeping the reporters back. She turned just slightly, holding the pose long enough for the photographer from the Daily News to snap her picture. Then, tossing her scarf over one shoulder, she ran toward Will and the waiting car on the corner.
The headache had started. Evie leaned back against the seat and watched Sixth Avenue fly by from the police car’s windows. Down a side street, several boys played stickball, blissfully unaware. She hoped they’d stay that way for a long time. In the front seat, Officer Malloy scribbled in his notebook. The scratching made her head hurt all the more. She closed her eyes. She wasn’t aware she was whistling the song she’d heard in the Temple until Malloy said, “I haven’t heard that one in a long time.”
Evie sat forward. “Do you know that song? What is it?”
“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on,” Malloy sang. “Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells ’em off for a coupla stones. They used to sing it on my block to scare us little ones into behaving. They’d say Naughty John would come and get you if you didn’t behave.”
“Who?”
“Naughty John. John Hobbes. A grave robber, con man, and killer. He kept people’s bones in his house, an old mansion uptown.”
“Do you think he could be behind these killings?”
Malloy’s smile was patronizing. “Not likely, Miss O’Neill.”
“Why not?”
Malloy stopped writing and looked her in the eyes. “Because John Hobbes is dead, and has been for nearly half a century.”
NAUGHTY JOHN
Evie followed Will into the museum, talking quickly despite the pounding in her head. “I heard that song with Ruta Badowski’s buckle, and again today with Eugene Meriwether’s ring.”
“Didn’t I specifically ask you not to do that very thing—”
“What if there’s some sort of connection we’ve missed? What if our killer has patterned himself after this Naughty John person?”
“You’re basing your assumption upon a song—”
“A song known to be associated with a murderer!”
“That’s rather a questionable hunch to go on….”
Jericho and Sam watched the scene unfold like a tennis match gone awry.
“What is this about?” Jericho said at the same time that Sam asked Evie, “Why would you touch a dead man’s ring?”
Will and Evie ignored them and continued arguing.
“Would you touch a dead man’s ring?” Sam asked Jericho, who shrugged.
“Unc, it’s the only lead we have,” Evie said.
“Very well,” Will said after a pause. “If you feel strongly about it—”
“I do.”
“Then you may do what scholars do when they feel passionately about a subject.”
“What’s that?”
“You may visit the library,” Will said. “The New York Public should have what you need to know about this John Hobbes fellow.”
“I will do just that, then.” Evie hung her hat and scarf on the stuffed bear’s giant paw.
“What we do know is that the killer is playing by the Book of the Brethren,” Will said. “The Temple of Solomon: The Freemasons also refer to their lodges as temples, and they consider themselves descendants of King Solomon.”
“We had the right idea, but the wrong joint,” Sam said.
“What’s the next offering?” Sam asked.
Jericho turned to the next page in the Book of the Brethren. “The eighth offering, the Veneration of the Angelic Herald,” Jericho said. He immediately began naming possibilities. “Angels… a church, a priest or nun, someone named Angel or Angelica. A herald—a messenger of some sort… postman, radio announcer, reporter, musician…”
“Reporter,” Evie repeated. She rubbed her temples.
“What’s the matter?” Will asked.
“It’s just a headache.”
“A headache? When did it start?” Will asked.
“It’s nothing but a nuisance. Mother says it’s because I need cheaters—um, eyeglasses, but I’m too vain to wear them. I told her my eyesight’s just fine. Honestly, two aspirin and I’ll be right as rain.”
Jericho fetched Evie two aspirin and a glass of water.
“Unc, why are you looking at me like that?” Evie asked.
Will had been watching her, his brow furrowed. He busied himself with a pointless tidying of his desk. “Take your aspirin,” was all he said.
THE WRONG PERSON
Memphis was distracted. All day long he replayed his meeting with Theta, the excitement of their narrow escape from the police. The way she’d looked at him when it was clear they’d made it, with gratitude and a little shyness. Memphis had wanted nothing more at that moment than to sweep her up into a romantic kiss. In fact, it was thinking about that kiss that had nearly gotten him in trouble. That morning when he’d gone to Mrs. Jordan’s beauty shop to write their slips, he’d mixed up Mrs. Jordan’s regular gig with Mrs. Robinson’s washerwoman’s gig because his mind was elsewhere.
“Memphis, where is your head?” Mrs. Jordan had tutted good-naturedly, and Memphis had apologized and run their numbers to Floyd’s Barbershop just ahead of the clearinghouse posting.
Papa Charles had called a meeting at the Dee-Luxe Restaurant, one of his own, to discuss the previous night’s disastrous raid. He assured everyone that the situation was minor, a misunderstanding that was already on its way to being worked out, and that the padlock would be off the doors of the Hotsy Totsy very soon. But Memphis could tell that beneath Papa Charles’s elegant manners and calm speech, he was nervous. He had that tic in his jaw that Memphis had seen a few times before, when he’d had to deal with a drunken, belligerent customer or a hopped-up bootlegger. But still, Memphis’s thoughts were on Theta.
Theta, Theta, Theta. He’d met the girl of his dreams—a girl who had the same dream he did—only to lose her in the crowd. Just as it f
elt his destiny was shaping up, it was lost again. He didn’t know where she lived, where she was from—he didn’t even know her last name. And that crazy bird was back, dogging his every step.
“Shoo!” Memphis waved his hands at the crow. “Go on, Berenice! Git!”
Now Memphis was late to pick up Isaiah from school. He entered the classroom with apologies, but Isaiah wasn’t having any of it. On the street, his brother’s mood was stormy as he kicked a rock ahead, then chased it into the gutter so he could kick it again. “You were ’posed to be here at three o’clock!”
“I had some business to take care of, Ice Man.”
“What kind of business?”
“My business. Not yours.”
“Next time, I’ma walk myself home.”
“I won’t be late next time.”
“Prolly stepping out with that Creole Princess,” Isaiah grumbled.
Memphis stopped. “Where’d you hear that?”
Isaiah laughed. “Saw it written in your book from last night. Memphis got a gir-rl! Memphis got a gir-rl!”
Memphis grabbed Isaiah’s arm. “You listen here: That notebook is private. It belongs to me. You understand?”
Isaiah’s chin jutted forward. “Leggo my arm!”
“Promise me!”
“Let go!” Isaiah tore away, running ahead on the busy street. He was unpredictable when he was mad, and just as likely to tell Octavia everything as not.
Memphis softened. There was no need to take out his frustration on Isaiah, no matter how annoying he was. He hurried to catch up, saying, “Don’t be mad, Ice Man. Come on. Let’s go over to Mr. Reggie’s for a hamburger. You can sit at the counter, on the stools that turn around. Just don’t turn too much and vomit up your hamburger.”
Isaiah stopped. His nose was running. “I want chocolate.”
“Then you’ll have chocolate,” Memphis promised.
Memphis worried about Isaiah. It was by accident that Sister Walker had discovered Isaiah’s special talents. About six months ago, she’d moved to Harlem and come around to pay a call on Octavia. She said she was an old friend of their mother’s and was saddened to hear that she had passed.