She didn’t argue. If they were willing to break the law for her, risk imprisonment, she would not increase the danger by hesitating. Mr. Clark climbed onto the wagon seat.
Andrew gripped the canvas. “I’m going home for the rest of the night. Blackburn might get suspicious if he sees me in town.”
“I know you’ve suffered because he’s been here. I am so sorry for that.”
He shook his head. “He’s nasty, but I learned something from his being here. I have my troubles, but I know who I am, and I know what I’m capable of. Wretches like him don’t get to decide that for me.”
He’d found strength in the face of misery. Her heart swelled for him. With that newfound determination, he would conquer his demons in time.
“Tuck down, Miriam,” Andrew said. “You’ve a bit of a ride ahead of you.”
She all but held her breath as the wagon rolled along the road. Returning to town was a risk, but she understood the wisdom of it. Everyone was looking for her on the outskirts and along the stage route. Hiding directly under the noses of those who were hunting her might just be the key.
After a long stretch of rough and bumpy roads, the wagon came to a halt. Miriam held still, waiting. She wouldn’t move until Mr. Clark told her it was safe.
“Oh, Mr. Clark,” Mrs. Carol called out. “Have you come with my feathers? I’m running terribly low.”
“I have,” he answered. “In a crate in the wagon bed. Where do you want them?”
“I’ll walk with you around front. We can take them in there.”
A moment later, the canvas inched back. Mr. Clark didn’t look in her direction but spoke in a whisper. “We’ll make a show of taking this around front to explain my wagon being here in case anyone saw me pull up. Wait just a minute, then climb out. You’re behind the millinery. Mrs. Wilhite is watching for you.”
He climbed back down, carrying a crate. “Lead the way, Mrs. Carol.”
A moment later, Miriam carefully climbed out of the wagon bed. As promised, Mrs. Wilhite stood nearby.
“Quickly, dear,” she said.
They rushed inside the back door and up a narrow stairwell. At the top was the older ladies’ living quarters.
“This room here is empty,” Mrs. Wilhite motioned to a door at the far end of the parlor. “We’ve put up thick drapes. You’ll not be seen, but you will have to go without a candle or lantern in the evening.”
“I understand.” She met the woman’s eye. “Thank you.”
“You have an entire town determined to keep you safe. You simply need to let us.”
She received a hug so maternal, so comforting, that she felt tears spring to her eyes. Thank the heavens for this town and for the twists in her path that had brought her here.
Gideon watched out his front window, waiting for the predetermined signal that Miriam was safe with Mrs. Carol and Mrs. Wilhite. He’d seen Mr. Clark step inside the millinery, but knew it was no guarantee Miriam had arrived as well. Any number of things could have gone wrong.
But then it appeared: a candle in an upper window. He pushed out a sigh of relief.
“She’s arrived,” he said to his father, who sat in the parlor.
“Resist the urge to go check on her, son. Blackburn’s away from town, but her father is not. Don’t risk it.”
He stepped away from the window. “Keep reminding me of that.”
“Your mother should be back soon. She’ll remind you as well.”
Gideon dropped into an empty chair by the fireplace, eyeing the low-burning embers. The night had been chilly. “At least I know Miriam’s not cold or hungry.”
“You can count on those dear ladies to see to her every need and comfort.”
Gideon rubbed at his face. How long could they keep this up, moving her from place to place, risking discovery every time?
His gaze shifted to the end table beside his chair and Miriam’s sketchbook lying on top of it. He hadn’t convinced himself to open it. It was so personal to her. She guarded it closely. The simple act of untying the leather strap felt like admitting she wasn’t coming back.
But she was nearby again. She was close. And he was not alone in his efforts to protect her.
“She wanted you to see what was in it,” Rupert had said. The recollection of a six-year-old was not always entirely reliable, but he didn’t doubt Miriam had told the boy to give Gideon the book. Why would she insist it be given to him if she didn’t want him to open it?
He pulled the sketchbook onto his lap and carefully pulled at the leather strap. Some loose sheets sat inside. He was careful not to allow any of them to fall out as he turned to the very first page.
He didn’t recognize the people there, young people who bore a resemblance to one another. Siblings, perhaps. Maybe her siblings. The next page must have been her parents; Gideon recognized a younger, happier version of Mr. Bricks.
A few more pleasant and idyllic scenes gave way suddenly to rougher, darker sketches. A barren room with a barred window. A surgical room with edged instruments. Pale and languid figures with worried expressions and heavy eyes. This was the asylum; he knew it.
The next sketch was of Miriam. He recognized her in an instant, though he could not at first identify what was different about her. She was younger, that was clear. But the drawing was labeled “1874,” only two years earlier. She looked more than two years younger than she was now. There was a rosiness to her cheeks, a roundedness to her face that spoke of youth and health. Miriam didn’t exactly look sickly now, but there was an extra measure of health in this depiction.
He paused on the image for a long time before turning the page.
He reached the sketch of George she had shown him so many weeks earlier. Empty eyes and languid mouth. He flipped back a few pages, certain he’d seen a sketch of George before. Sure enough, there he was, but different. His expression, though worried, was lucid in a way it wasn’t in the second sketch. There had been life in him once, life that was utterly missing in the later portrayal.
She had said Blackburn plied his patients with concoctions that rendered them essentially empty. Seeing it for himself pierced his conscience. He reluctantly turned the pages, bracing himself for what he would see.
More empty eyes. More sagging features. He found sketches of what looked like prison cells, filth and squalor apparent in every image. She had drawn in tremendous detail shelves of tinctures, powders, and tisanes. She also included a sketch of a graveyard. Headstones overlapped bushes, an indication that the stones had been added after the sketch was first finished. Several more scenes depicted appalling conditions: patients crowded into small spaces, their clothing dirty and ragged. No one had shoes or stockings. Their features were pulled and gaunt.
He reached another drawing of Miriam, herself. In the bottom corner of this one she had noted the year “1876.” Her face was too thin for health, with dark circles beneath hopeless eyes. She had aged. She was desperate. The difference between this image and the first was jarring. Horrifying. She had documented the impact of her imprisonment.
Gideon swallowed back the emotion that surged inside. Blackburn Asylum had been slowly killing her. It had eaten away at her as surely as it had changed George, only more gradually. How long had she been away from the asylum before coming to Savage Wells? Had she arrived looking like this, Gideon would have been genuinely worried for her very life.
“Is something the matter, Gideon?”
He glanced at his father, but returned his attention almost immediately to the book. “Miriam’s sketches. She has drawn in detail the conditions at Blackburn’s asylum. It’s horrifying.”
Father crossed to him, looking over his shoulder. Gideon flipped to a few different depictions. He showed him the change in Miriam during her two years there, and the heartbreaking transformation in George. He showed him the squalor, the cemetery.
“Mercy,” Father whispered. “How has this been so well hidden? I don’t know a soul who would condone this.”
“Nebraska is a bit far from the beaten path, easily overlooked. And people are often institutionalized specifically so they can be forgotten.”
Father motioned to the notepad. “These sketches, if run with a well-written, meticulously accurate article, would raise a tremendous ruckus in Washington.”
People would likely disapprove of the inhumanity of the arrangement, but who was to say it would be enough to close down the asylum altogether? It certainly wouldn’t happen fast enough to save Miriam.
“Have you shown these to Mr. Bricks?” Father asked.
Gideon met his eye. “Does he care enough to be moved by them?”
“He is not the monster Blackburn is, though that is faint praise.”
It was worth considering.
Gideon flipped back to the shelves of medicines. It was an odd thing for her to draw. Every other sketch was of people or entire rooms. Only these shelves and the cemetery fell outside of those two categories. The graveyard was, no doubt, meant to be an accounting of the people who hadn’t survived their time at the asylum. There had to be a similar reason for the shelves.
“I don’t recognize any of those bottles,” Father said.
“We used a few at St. Elizabeth’s, but others I can’t immediately give a purpose to.”
Father leaned a bit closer, eyeing the sketch. “Is that a bottle of strychnine?” He pointed at the bottom-most shelf.
Heavens, it was.
“What medicinal use does strychnine have?”
“None,” Gideon said. “It’s poison.”
Yet Blackburn kept it on his shelves of medicines he gave his patients. This was the reason Miriam had included it.
“Blackburn is poisoning his patients,” Gideon said quietly.
“Have you any proof beyond this sketchbook?” Father pressed.
Gideon shook his head. “But it’s a direction to take.” Anxious, hopeful, horrified, he flipped quickly ahead in the book. Doing so knocked a loose paper free. It floated down to his feet. He picked it up, and curiosity led him to unfold it.
A hand-drawn chart filled the page. The first column contained names. The second was labeled “Private Funding” and the third “Public Funding.” Tick marks sat next to the names, nearly all of which were followed by two checks.
“Is he receiving payments from both families and the state?” Father asked, even as his eyes darted over the page.
“It certainly seems that way.”
“This is very specific information,” Father said. “It would have to be verified, of course. This is not the original ledger, and she is not a disinterested party.”
The fourth column was labeled “Passed.” Perhaps a quarter of the rows had a check.
Passed. Passed what?
Father pointed to a line. “That name was on one of the headstones in her cemetery sketch.” He pointed to another. “That one, as well.”
Passed away. She had documented their deaths.
Column five was labeled “Death Reported.” Not a single check.
“Blackburn isn’t reporting their passing. Their families likely don’t know, and neither does the state. He is still being paid double for all of them, even the ones who have died. The ones he has killed.”
Father met his eye. “Fraud, on this large scale, must certainly warrant jail time. And if you can prove poisoning, he would likely face charges of murder as well.”
“Proof is the issue, though.” Gideon felt painfully close to the answers they needed to pry open Blackburn’s grip, yet so far away at the same time. “Her word alone, even coupled with these images and information, isn’t likely to be enough.”
Father nodded. “Especially since Blackburn has worked so hard to discredit her.”
“Which is doubly frustrating. Insisting she cannot be believed before she has a chance to speak the truth about him means that once she does, she is far less likely to be listened to.”
Father paced away. “This must be why she hasn’t told anyone about this yet. She knew if she revealed his perfidy, he would simply cry ‘false accusation from a madwoman,’ and she wouldn’t be heard.”
“I would have heard her,” Gideon insisted.
“But you haven’t the authority to do anything about it,” Father countered.
There was truth in that. “Surely this is enough to at least delay Blackburn.”
“I think it could be.”
Gideon slipped the paper back inside the sketchbook. He took it carefully to his desk and set it in a drawer where it would be safe. “I will talk to Mr. Larsen in the morning.”
“I’ll wire a few of my associates in Washington, as well. We can start the process of an investigation.”
The brief bit of hope he felt ebbed. “Miriam said she helped tend patients, that her nursing abilities were put to use.”
“Yes?”
“Blackburn has to know that she is aware that he intentionally poisoned his patients. He knows she can incriminate him.” Gideon rubbed at his face. “I’m certain this is why he was so eager to see her diagnosis stand. He would be far safer if she were back at the asylum where he could silence her without drawing attention.”
“I very much fear you are correct, son.”
“If we can’t stop him,” Gideon said, “Miriam and I will run for Canada. I don’t mean to make that common knowledge, but I need you to know, you and Mother.”
He nodded. “If fleeing proves necessary, we’ll help you in any way we can, but don’t give up hope. She has given us enough to turn the tables. Blackburn will soon be the one being hunted, and we will have more powerful weapons than he.”
Chapter 38
“Judge Irwin is set to arrive today.” Paisley stood in the storage room of the millinery, where Miriam had been brought. “It is imperative that you have a chance to speak to him without Blackburn there. We’re going to sneak you around to the jailhouse. Blackburn is in town, though, so it’ll be tricky.”
“Can we manage it?” Evading capture had been far easier while she’d been hiding at Tansy’s. Being so close to the man searching for her was riskier.
“Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Abbott, and Mrs. Clark are going to undertake a distraction by the hotel, where Blackburn and your father are. That should grant us enough cover to sneak you across the street and behind the buildings. Taking the back way to the jailhouse will be a simple enough thing after that.”
Miriam took a fortifying breath and nodded. “How soon do we need to leave?”
Paisley peeked out of the room for a moment. “Only a minute more. Are you ready?”
“As ready as I can be.”
Paisley motioned her out into the shop. Miriam followed close on her heels. Her heart pounded hard in her throat.
We have only to get across the street. Only that far. Surely they could manage that.
Paisley held a hand up to stop her a step away from door. Miriam held her breath as Paisley checked the street outside. With one hand hovering over her gun, Paisley waved her forward. The group of women stood outside the hotel, chattering loudly and animatedly. It wasn’t much cover, but it would help.
Miriam and Paisley stepped off the boardwalk. Someone was running down the road toward them, waving his arms.
“Behind me,” Paisley barked.
Miriam obeyed without hesitation.
The man proved to be Mr. Cooper. “He’s not in there,” he called out. “He’s not there.”
“What does—?” Miriam started.
Paisley cut off her question. “Blackburn. He isn’t in the hotel.”
Panic gripped Miriam as she searched every window, every front overhang. “Then where—?”
“Quick,” Paisley sa
id. “We need to get you out of sight.”
They rushed off the road and behind Gideon’s house, making their way toward the jailhouse. They were nearly there, nearly clear.
Dr. Blackburn stepped away from the back wall of the jailhouse. “Abetting a fugitive. You’ll lose your badge for that.”
“How do you know I haven’t just apprehended her?” Paisley answered coolly.
“If that’s true, then turn her over.” Dr. Blackburn moved closer.
“You aren’t the law,” Paisley said. “I don’t turn prisoners over to civilians.”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “I have authority over all the inmates of my asylum, especially this one.”
“I am a US deputy marshal,” Paisley said. “You have no authority over me.”
“Hand her over, or I will force you to.”
Paisley actually smiled. “Try.”
Quick as lightning, Dr. Blackburn pulled a gun and pointed it directly at Miriam. “Hold your hands up, deputy, or I’ll drop her. I’ve the right to.”
“Behind me, Miriam,” Paisley said as she raised her arms.
“I won’t make you my shield,” Miriam said. “Your life is not worth mine.”
“Come with me, Miss Bricks,” Dr. Blackburn said. “We’ll return you where you belong, without bloodshed—if you are cooperative.”
“You cannot shoot an officer of the law,” Miriam said. “You would never get away with it.”
Dr. Blackburn shook his head in a show of pity. “There are no witnesses here but you and me, and only one of us is known to be mad. Afraid of being turned over, you shot Deputy O’Brien. I managed to apprehend you. A neat bow tied around an unfortunate package.”
“She’s not the only witness.” Mr. Cooper had followed them off the road. “I’ll speak for her.”
“I have bullets enough for you, too,” Dr. Blackburn spat.
“For me, too?” Mrs. Fletcher stepped up, surrounded by the other women who’d been outside the hotel.
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