“My goddaughter.” His tender smile revealed a fatherly love, but it dipped into grief a moment later. “She passed just under a year ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He waved away the condolence. “I keep that picture there to remind me why I do this job. It’s a hard one, Hall. It’s best you find your reason for choosing this career, so when the days get long and you get discouraged, you can keep moving forward.”
It was good advice, and something Abraham would have to think on. Up till now, his reasons for becoming an officer had to do with protecting the innocent and upholding justice. They weren’t bad reasons, but they were rather generic. He studied the picture of the young woman. Who would serve as his reminder of why he did this job? Lydia’s distraught face came to mind, and he shifted uncomfortably. Shouldn’t someone closer to him, like Clara or Mother, cross his mind first? This attraction to Lydia was growing unwieldy.
He purposely redirected the conversation and his thoughts. “Is it necessary to have an office in your home? Shouldn’t you leave your work at the station?”
Not that Abraham could throw stones. Since starting this case, he’d gone home every night and continued working the puzzle on his own time. But that wasn’t sustainable. Was this to be his life as a detective?
“Not much else to keep me busy in the evenings, but I do a lot of reading and have weekly card nights. You just missed the last one, but you ought to come next week.” Lawson collected the empty glasses and dumped ashes into the trash on his way to the sink. “Have a seat. I’ve got some ham in the icebox and a bottle of bourbon calling our names.”
Abraham declined and chose a hard wooden table chair rather than a plush one, where the risk of falling asleep was too great. A half-read copy ofShadow in the Nightsat splayed open.
Abraham picked it up and frowned. “I thought you lent me this.”
Lawson rattled around in the icebox, stacking thick ham, a hard-boiled egg, and an apple onto a plate. “I have several sets of the books. I’ve been studying Dupin since before these murders. Even tried my hand at writing my own dime novel once, but it was flatly refused.”
“You wrote a dime novel?”
“O’Dell should have burned the awful thing instead of sending it back.” He settled at the table with the odd assortment of food and a double portion of bourbon. “It’s locked away in my desk drawer until I finally get up the nerve to do the job myself. Any luck tracking down your two potential targets?”
“Sullivan’s been warned, and I arrested Xavier for disorderly conduct. You?”
“Noah Grant was diagnosed with consumption last week and has traveled to Colorado for treatment. He’s out of Poe’s reach for now. Samuel Ross hasn’t been home for over a week, but his neighbor says he frequently disappears without warning. She wouldn’t know or care except that he leaves his dog in the house. She’s been tossing scraps through a broken window just to stop his howling.”
Scraps weren’t likely enough with as long as Ross had been gone. Still, Abraham could do nothing about it tonight. “Did she know where Ross went?”
“No. We’ll just have to wait for him to come home or for his body to show up.”
“Which book was he from? We should watch the area where he died in the story.”
“Not a bad idea, Boy Detective. You’ll have me beating out Carlisle yet.” Lawson abandoned his plate, examined a row of dime novels, and pulled one out to flip through. “Ross’s character was beaten, bound, and gagged, then shoved into an attic with a plate of food and glass of water out of reach. It fits Ross’s crime. Officers found his children locked in the attic, living in their own feces, starved, and half clothed in the middle of winter. One was barely three and almost died. Ross was convicted and sentenced to Longview Insane Asylum, but his government friends bought him a pardon from the governor. The children were returned to him until family found them locked in the attic again. They won custody, but he didn’t get charged again.”
“Ross is a special breed of scourge.”
“Makes you want to drag your feet in rescuing him from Poe’s hands, doesn’t it?”
Abraham refrained from responding. It wasn’t his place to execute vengeance, but it made him sick to think of how the children had suffered under Ross’s hands and how the justice system had failed them. They deserved better. The heinousness of both acts were enough to make a man jaded.
No matter how hard Abraham worked to rid the streets of evil, evil won more often than not. Dime novels couldn’t even begin to touch the horrors. Newspapers provided glimpses that were quickly lost to claims of sensationalism. The public walked in blissful ignorance of the fathomless darkness and corruption that surrounded them. The sort of corruption that allowed a man like Ross to not only go free but to have another opportunity to slowly kill his children.
As much as Abraham wanted to deny it, he understood why Lydia wrote her stories and even why Poe chose to take matters into his own hands. Abraham was tempted to take matters into his own hands too, if only by delaying his inquiry into Ross’s whereabouts.
Lawson broke the lingering silence. “I’ve been thinking about Clemens being the one to rescue Miss Pelton at the church. I hadn’t considered that he has a connection to each of the cases,andhe has a very personal association with the first murder victim. Otis Wakefield was the man exonerated for violating Clemens’s fiancée. She eventually took her own life.”
Abraham sat up in his chair. “What? How did we miss that?”
“It’s easy to miss when reporting on the murders is part of his job. His personal association didn’t cross my mind, because he had no connection to any of the other murders at that time.”
That shed new light on Clemens’s interest in Lydia and the Billy Poe case as a whole. Clemens was the reason behind Cincinnati’s push to expose Dupin’s pseudonym. If that article hadn’t been published, much of Cincinnati would still be oblivious to the murders. Had he seen Dupin as his partner but was now no longer satisfied by the distance Dupin’s pseudonym created? Stooping to incite citywide upheaval was just the type of unethical strategy Clemens would employ to uncover Dupin’s identity.
Now that Clemens knew Dupin was a woman, he’d convinced himself that they were a perfect match for serving justice. A love match. The thought disgusted Abraham almost as much as Ross’s treatment of the children. Clemens’s attachment to Lydia would explain why he had been nearby at the church, especially given what his fiancée had suffered at the hands of a man. If the love of Abraham’s life were violated, he was pretty sure murder would cross his own mind.
“We need to question Clemens.”
Lawson waved the statement away. “Not yet. Everything we have is circumstantial. At this moment, he doesn’t know we suspect him. If we try to question him, he’ll walk free and with the advantage of knowing we’re on the hunt. He’s not our only suspect either. Monroe has just as much potential to be Poe. Both men need our attention, and Miss Pelton needs our protection. The department won’t cover the cost of an officer’s staying with her or the family, but we can take turns with our off shifts. I’ll take tonight. You resemble a busted punching bag. Get some ice on your face and then some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
