“Real people, real events and the still-charged reverberations of the Civil War provide a provocative framework for a 1920s-era mystery neatly told with meticulous historical detail and enjoyable twists.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“One of those few books you literally cannot put down; this Civil War buff devoured the whole book in 3 days. As I read Tim’s book, it occurred to me that this is the historical novel I wish I’d written. Devil’s Den: a tour de force of historical fiction ...”
— John Eipper, World Association of International Studies
“The writing is sharp, the plot is excellent and moves forward in a manner that carries the reader late into the night ...”
— A Novel Source
“An exciting and entertaining book ... and I highly recommend that you get a copy and enjoy. I am looking forward to a sequel.”
— Civil War News
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner unless otherwise noted. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and not for re-sale to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Also, all rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. If you would like permission to reprint a larger portion of the book, or to review the work, please contact author Timothy Ashby through his website: www.timashby.com
Copyright © 2013 by Timothy Ashby
eISBN- 9781939990129
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Contents
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Preview: In Shadowland
Time Fall by Timothy Ashby
PROLOGUE
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Sunday, June 17, 923
It was a place of ghosts.
Thomas Gahagan could almost hear the battlefield cries, sixty years after the war’s end, as he trudged along the uneven ground outside the little town of Gettysburg. Self-doubt began to edge out the curiosity that had brought him to this old charnel house in the depths of a sweltering summer night.
The elderly man supposed he could have ignored the letter; his passion for the cause had evaporated more than half a century ago—it was 1923 for God’s sake. Most people today, himself included, were more interested in moving pictures, aeroplanes and radio shows than in dredging up what may as well be ancient history, he thought. But the note had contained a code he hadn’t seen in six decades. Which of his former comrades had asked to meet him here with such urgency, such secrecy? Intrigued again, he soldiered on through the maze of boulders and twisted trees that had become a national landmark, reminder of an earthly Hell.
The Devil’s Den. Good name for it, Gahagan thought.
Even with his cane, he now found walking difficult. Several times he stumbled and nearly fell, cursing his age and infirmities. He paused and looked over his shoulder, but saw only shades of darkness. A half-moon provided enough light to continue down the path laid out for the tourists but not enough for him to read the dial of his pocket watch.
Wheezing, he stopped again in a clearing and leaned against a boulder that reflected the moonlight like a giant’s skull. Being back in Devil’s Den unsettled him mightily, and his heart thumped like the first time he had gone into battle against the Rebs as a fresh-off-the-boat bog-trotter all those years ago. Annoyed with himself, he fretted while waiting for his breathing to slow, wondering if he was late for the midnight rendezvous.
A noise—real, not imagined, he decided. He cupped a hand around his better ear and listened carefully, thinking maybe it was a distant locomotive. Then the gentle breeze shifted and he knew it for the sound of a person whistling. When Gahagan recognized the tune he grinned. “Begorra,” he said softly. It was the once popular song “We Are Coming Father Abraham,” used in grim irony by the members of his group as a recognition signal. He tried to pucker up a few answering bars but his withered lips would not respond. Giving up, he called out, “Over here, friend.”
A cloud covered the moon as a human form detached itself from a narrow passage between two huge rocks and shuffled towards him. Another more agile person followed the first, keeping a few paces behind and carrying a shielded kerosene lantern.
Gahagan stepped forward, meeting the leading figure in the middle of the clearing. They stopped about a yard apart. The man with the lantern hung back, although Tom could discern that he was wearing a peaked cap and dark uniform.
The newcomer’s voice was gravelly with age. “Hello, Gahagan.”
Despite the heat, the slightly stooped speaker wore an overcoat and a homburg. Gahagan squinted, trying to make out the man’s features. The moon reappeared and he saw the face, dominated by a handlebar mustache of the type favored by soldiers in the last century. Now Gahagan recognized him, and unconsciously straightened to the closest stance of attention his aged body could achieve.
“How are you, Captain?” he asked.
The one called Captain ignored the courtesy, searching Gahagan’s face with an intensity some had described as fanatical.
“So Gahagan, I see you are still among the living.”
“So I am, so I am. And it’s pleased I am to see that you can be counted among that number too, sir.”
The Captain fumbled in his coat pockets for something. His companion hovered in the background, swiveling his head to watch the woods and the monolithic stones surrounding the meeting place.
“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello when we all got together here back in ’thirteen,” Gahagan continued. “Saw you up there by the speech monument with all them other bigwigs. I was thinking how, well, strange it all was.”
The other elderly man scowled. “What do you mean by that?” he snapped.
Gahagan was surprised at the former officer’s vehemence. “Didn’t mean nothin’, Captain. At the time I just wondered what all them others would think if they knew.”
The Captain found the paper he was searching for in his pockets. He unfolded a letter and thrust it towards Gahagan.
“What’s this, then?” Gahagan squinted at it.
The man in the peaked cap - a much younger man, Gahagan noticed - stepped forward and exposed the lantern, illuminating the paper.
“Don’t you know?” the Captain demanded.
“Specs, need me specs.” Gahagan hooked a pair of glasses over his ears. He took the paper and read slowly, mouth forming the letters. Finishing, he looked at the Captain.
“Powerful words, ain’t they,” he said, handing the paper back.
“Whose words are they, Gahagan?”
Gahagan was irritated by the Captain’s imperious tone. It had been many years since he had been the man’s subordinate and he saw no reason to endure the old codger’s blather again. “They sure as hell ain’t mine, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
A twig snapped behind him. He looked around, noticing that another man had entered the clearing from the same path he had taken. The Captain took a step closer. Gahagan caught a whiff of the man’s cologne, the same scent that had caused derision among the enlisted men when he wore it during the War.
“If not you then who, Gahagan? Are any of the others left? You’re the only one I was able to locate.”
It began to dawn on Thomas Gahagan that he may have made a bad mistake coming here this night. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the third man edging closer.
“Could be we’re the last ones, Captain,” he answered warily, thinking to protect his friends. “It don’t really matter no more, anyway.”
The Captain looked at the other elderly man searchingly.
“You’re wrong, Gahagan,” he said finally. “It does still matter.”
He turned in awkward parody of a military about-face and shuffled back the way he had come, preceded by the man with the lantern. Gahagan watched as the pair disappeared into the night with only the lantern’s glow marking their passage like a lost soul wandering the battlefield. Then it too was gone and Gahagan was left alone with the silently watching man who had trailed him into the clearing.
The last time Thomas Gahagan had experienced mortal fear had been in the spring of 1865, during a desperate Confederate cavalry raid on his regiment’s camp outside Richmond when a Rebel’s saber had missed skewering him by inches. Now, as the stranger drew something long and metallic from a sack, Tom felt again a cold terror surge up from his belly.
Gahagan’s throat constricted, and his voice emerged as a harsh whisper. “Friend, leave an old soldier to go in peace. I beg you!”
Almost nonchalantly, the man walked up to Gahagan, who dropped his cane and tottered backwards until his back jarred against a boulder. The stranger stopped in front of him, features expressionless under a derby.
Gahagan could not look at the man’s hands but he knew what they held. He tried to make a sign of the cross but his arms felt paralyzed.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered, “pray for?”
The blow slammed the old man against the rock. He tried to draw a breath but it wouldn’t come. In the last moments of his life, as he lay on the battlefield of Gettysburg, he thought the sky turned bright as day and saw around him his old messmates, as young and fresh as on the day they had perished more than half a century before.
CHAPTER 1
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, June 19, 1923
The shots woke Seth Armitage from his dream of poppies. Blood-red poppies sprouting from... scattered corpses? What battlefield was this?
More bangs. Another Hun trench raid? He grabbed for the Colt .45 on his bedside table, finally recognized the noise was just a Tin Lizzie backfiring in the street outside.
He closed his eyes and focused on the familiar sounds of an awakening city to quiet his pounding heart -- the clip-clop of the milkman’s horse, a newsboy hawking The Washington Star , the distinctive honk of a Model T horn hurrying the old horse aside as if eager to consign it to the unmechanized past. But his unease remained even as the nightmare’s images faded.
Snores from Mrs. Treadwell’s other boarders drifted in through doors left open in vain hope of a breeze. The summer heat and humidity had begun early; perhaps that’s what had triggered the nightmares. Seth’s own airless chamber felt too much like the boiler room of the troop ship on which he had returned home four years earlier. He had slept little despite a couple swigs of Glenfiddich, tossing and turning on his sweat-soaked sheet. Oh well. He dragged himself out of bed.
Seth shocked himself awake with a cold wash in the communal bathroom. No, he admitted as he absently stared at his reflection, it wasn’t the heat. The dream’s setting was different, sure, but his flask of Glenfiddich was nearly empty, and that hadn’t happened in one night. The past few months he’d taken at least a few belts a night to stop his mind from racing, clear out the apparitions.
So what. He’d get past it.
Time to get a move on. He dressed in an Irish linen suit. He had filled out since he had the suit made back in ’20, so the shoulder holster left a bulge under his arm when he tucked the semiautomatic into it. He crept down the stairs, plucked his straw boater off the hat tree on his way out the door, turned onto E Street and strolled towards the White House. Ten minutes later he entered the eightstory building on the corner of Vermont Avenue and K Street that housed the U.S. Justice Department.
After the Red bombings of ’19 the Justice Department had authorized the hiring of a dozen additional uniformed agents to stand guard at the entrance to its K Street headquarters. As usual, Armitage saw nobody there.
He shook his head, remembered his dream. Was this what he had fought for?
Those highly trained invisible bulls must have been on the same payroll as the 30 phantom workers responsible for cleaning the filthy lobby along with the rest of the building. Seth couldn’t secure the building himself and he sure couldn’t do anything about the lobby, but he had personally hired a woman to clean his office. Partly because he couldn’t help it – he’d been fastidious about cleanliness long before he became a Marine officer - but probably mostly from some vague idea that helping an elderly negress earn a few extra bucks made up in some way for the salaries of the neverhired cleaners that lined the pockets of the political highbinders.
Armitage scowled at the cigar butts on the floor and stabbed the elevator button. No, make that 42 invented names on the payroll; he forgot to include the non-existent guards with the phantasm cleaners.
He got off on the fifth floor and walked around the corner to his office, glanced towards the desk of his former partner. The desk, though empty for the past few months, now held a pile of racing forms, magazines, a box of cheap cigars and other personal effects. Armitage vaguely wondered who his new office mate was.
He hung up his hat and jacket and was just opening a window when he heard someone come into the office. Armitage didn’t have to see him to recognize the distinctive odor of Archie Coleman’s hair pomade. He unhurriedly turned to the young assistant to William J. Brooks, Director of the Bureau of Investigation.
Coleman pointed his index finger toward the fly-specked ceiling. “He wants to see you.”
“Who?”
“The Director. Hurry up, he’s waiting.”
CHAPTER 2
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, June 19, 1923
Armitage gave Coleman a hard stare, waiting for an explanation. Even though the Bureau was small, in his three years there he had never met privately with Brooks, his boss. But the smaller man’s sour face gave nothing away. Coleman turned and marched out into the corridor as Seth slipped back into his jacket and followed him into the sweltering stairwell.
When they entered Brooks’ office on the top floor, Coleman disappeared into the Director’s inner sanctum. Seth eyed Brooks’ secretary, Mamie, who was watering the potted palms in the outer office and humming “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Seth covertly admired the girl’s legs, which were exposed by one of the shortest skirts yet seen publicly in the District of Columbia. Mamie turned and grinned at him.
“Hey, how ya doin’ today, handsome?” she said.
“Better now,” he replied, smiling slightly.
He sat beneath a large oil portrait of President Harding on the opposite wall while Mamie prattled about the honeymoon of Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis. She was telling him that she preferred Fairbanks’ looks to Valentino’s when Coleman reappeared in the doorway and motioned Armitage inside.
The BoI Director’s office was like a gentlemen’s club, filled with leather-upholstered furniture, dark paneling, and the aroma of fine Havanas. Armitage took in the credenza arrayed with silverframed photographs of a burly, grey-mustached man posing with President Harding, Attorney General Daugherty, Henry Ford, and the movie star Mary Pickford. At the far end of the office, the same man sat behind an enormous desk.
William Brooks rose and shook hands. “Armitage, my boy,” he boomed like a genial uncle.
The Director told Armitage to sit, then flapped his hand at Coleman like a man shooing away flies. “See you later, Archie. We’ve got detective business to discuss.”
Brooks chuckled implausibly and mopped his face with a big handkerchief as Coleman departed. Still smiling, he opened a file with Armitage’s name hand-lettered on the cover.
“Well, Armitage, that was fine work you did on that Louisiana Klan case. You know, the Attorney General himself followed that one closely. Yes, sir. Commendation in your file here. Fine work.”
Seth’s eyes narrowed.
“Thank you, sir, but that verdict was a travesty. The Attorney General should order a new trial in a Federal Cour--.”
The BoI Director flapped his hand imperiously.
“Forget about it. Too bad about your partner but the Bureau never should have got involved.
Armitage said nothing, fighting back a familiar rage as Brooks continued leafing through the file.
“Let’s see. You’re a Southern boy, aren’t you? Well, we’re all friends now, aren’t we?” He chuckled again. “Good service record in the Great War. Boy, I bet you had some fun with them little Mademoiselles. Let’s see, rank of first lieutenant, D-S-C, Purple Heart. Fine background, Armitage. Just first class.”
What was this all about?
The Director mopped his face again. He was sweating heavily, though he wore no jacket over the shirt and waistcoat strained by his stomach. Closing the file, Brooks looked at notes scrawled on a sheet of BoI letterhead paper. He cleared his throat.
“I understand you’re working as our liaison to the Prohibition Bureau on one of those bootlegger cases. Well, I’ve got an assignment that needs taking care of right away, so I’m sure the bootleggers will keep ’til you’re finished. Because of your experience on those Klan murders, I want you to take on a new homicide case in Pennsylvania.”
Seth drew a deep breath but held Brooks’ curious gaze.
“Think you can handle it, Armitage?”
He nodded and pulled a notebook and pencil from his pocket.
“Do you have the details, sir?”
He saw a look of relief suffuse Brooks’ face, quickly replaced by smugness.
“Yup, not many though. The body of an old man was found yesterday with a bayonet through his heart. Pretty unlikely he put it there himself, so it’s homicide, sure enough.”
“Why is the Bureau involved?”
Brooks hesitated. Seth read deception in the Director’s expression.
“Well, “Brooks answered,” it’s, uh, because the body was found on federal property – a national military park – and he may have been a Civil War veteran. So we’re going to take over the investigation from the local sheriff’s department.”
Armitage knew better. Considering the Bureau’s limited personnel and budget, such a routine murder case would normally never come to the attention of the Justice Department, much less result in the assignment of a BoI agent to its investigation. Besides, Seth was fairly certain that in its short history the Bureau had never been involved in homicide cases in government owned parks unless federal officials had been involved.
“Which federal property was the body found on, sir?”
“Gettysburg.” Brooks’ face held the glimmer of a smirk. “Ever hear of it?”
Seth remained expressionless, but his mind raced. He needed to pick up a real case again; he had about as much enthusiasm for pursuing bootleggers as he did for watching whitewash dry on a barn. But Gettysburg? Sure would have been nice to go somewhere less personal, so soon after Louisiana. He knew he hadn’t let that one go yet. He wasn’t sure he ever would.
“You with me Armitage?” Brooks broke into his thoughts.
“Yes, Mr. Director. I’ve never been there, though.”
“Well, it’s easy to find.” Brooks handed him the sheet of paper with his handwritten notes. “Here’re the particulars and the name of the sheriff up there.”
As Seth scanned the paper, the Director drummed his fingers on the desktop. He seemed to be searching for words.
“Now, Armitage,” he said after clearing his throat loudly. “I have reason to believe that this case may turn out to be ...um, broader than appearances might suggest. So I want you to report only to me on your investigation and not discuss it with anyone else. All the evidence is to be taken into custody by you and brought back here. Understand me?”
Armitage paused before answering, studying Brooks’ blinking eyes. Something really didn’t smell right here, even if he couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Seth was amply familiar with the Bureau’s seamier side -- politically motivated spying, blackmail, the deliberate cover-up of crimes committed by wealthy businessmen and elected officials. He knew, too that the situation had grown worse under Brooks’ stewardship.
But he had kept his own nose clean, maybe helped by the fact that during his three-year BI career, he had not yet been overtly ordered to take part in anything unethical. Was he being asked to do so now? Hard to tell. He’d let it play out, for the time being.
He nodded.
Beaming again, the Director pressed a button under his desk. Coleman was instantly at his door, resentfully staring at Armitage over his high celluloid collar.
“Archie, I want you to make sure that Special Agent Armitage here gets everything he needs to help with his investigation. All our resources are at his disposal, understood?”
With a last amiable wave, Brooks watched Coleman usher Armitage out.
As his office door closed, the Director’s smile vanished. He fished a cigar out of a humidor on his desk and went through the comforting ritual of cutting and lighting it. He walked across the office and slumped on a leather sofa, blowing rings of fine Cuban smoke as he thought about this latest in a long series of special favors powerful men had asked of him.
Stubbing out his cigar, Brooks sighed, rose unsteadily to his feet, and returned to his desk. He found the telephone number in his diary and asked Mamie to connect him, tensing as he waited.
The telephone conversation was brief. Brooks was cut off mid-sentence and the phone went dead. The BoI Director sighed and buried his sweaty face in his hands.
Senator Matthew Tichenor savored the act of terminating the telephone connection with Brooks. He enjoyed humiliating the arrogant political appointees who came and went in Washington DC, reminding them of his power as a member of Congress for longer than most of them had even been alive.
One call to the Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, had been all that was needed to ensure that the BoI Director would do his bidding without hesitation. The Special Agent that Tichenor had chosen could have been problematical given his reputation as a straight arrow, but Brooks had just confirmed that Seth Armitage agreed to conduct the murder investigation.
Tichenor had heard about the Bureau’s meddling with the Klan from the senior Senator from Louisiana, an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK. The Louisiana congressman had found it especially galling that the surviving BoI undercover agent who had taken it on himself to testify against the Klan was a Southerner.
“Boy’s a traitor,” he had drawled. “A disgrace to good Christians and his nation. Needs to be taught a lesson like the Knights did to his partner.”
Like his colleague, Tichenor was incensed by the Justice Department’s interference in a state’s local affairs, especially when it came to maintaining the supremacy of the white race. Despite his service in the Union Army during the Civil War, he – like many Federal officers – had been vehemently opposed to the emancipation of slaves. Senator Tichenor liked to recall the words of his personal hero, General McClellan: “I confess to a prejudice in favor of my own race, and can’t learn to like the odor of either Billy goats or niggers.”
Tichenor had also heard rumors that Armitage had not emerged from his encounters with the Klan unscathed. “Shell-shocked,” “volatile,” were the words his sources had used. But the BoI agent had also been described as a “helluva a detective” and “a good soldier” (whatever that meant).
Tichenor had no idea whether any of it was true, but if the man was unstable, so much the better. Armitage was expendable, another small pawn in the arcane chess game of Washington politics.
And Senator Matthew Tichenor was that game’s Grandmaster.
CHAPTER 3
Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, June 19, 1923
“Hey, watch it!”
Exiting Brooks’ office, Armitage nearly bumped into J. Edgar Hoover. Seth apologized while Hoover looked him up and down appraisingly. For a moment, the two men locked eyes, then Hoover nodded and continued down the corridor.
Is Hoover involved in this?
The Bureau’s assistant director was 28, two years older than him, but Seth had heard that even BoI Director Brooks was afraid of the secretive little man. Armitage knew that despite his youth Hoover had amassed considerable power during his previous position as head of the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division. Hoover’s collection of files - originally developed to track suspected subversives - was now rumored to include senior administration officials, members of Congress and even Bureau employees.
What was that line Seth had heard from a comedian at the Gayety Theater on Ninth Street a few weeks ago? “Why are politicians like bananas? When they come here they’re green, then they turn yellow, then they’re rotten.” The joke got a big laugh, but Seth couldn’t help thinking at the time that the audience might have it found it less funny if they knew just how true it was.
When Armitage returned to his office, a man in shirtsleeves was sitting at the other desk, reading a copy of The Racing Times with his feet resting on the desktop. The man put down his newspaper and stood with outstretched hand.
“Gus Bassan.” He bared tobacco-stained teeth in a smile. “Guess we’re gonna be cellmates.” He shook Seth’s hand with a bone-crunching grip. Bassan was a big man, standing a good four inches taller than Seth’s six feet, with massive shoulders and a sallow face under black, heavily oiled hair.
The Bureau was small, so Seth had seen Bassan a few times. He had heard the man was an expoliceman from Newark, New Jersey. Like many other agents, Bassan apparently answered to no one at the Bureau and could be relied upon only to show up on alternate Fridays to collect his paycheck. Rumor had it that Bassan owed his job to a government bigwig, but then more than half of the BoI’s employees could be best described as hired guns rather than professional federal agents.
Armitage was in no mood to make small talk with amiable fools. He checked one of the railway timetables in his desk and left.
En Route – Washington to Baltimore
Seth thought that If Dante had been a passenger on the Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad in mid-summer, he would have used the experience to depict one of the circles of Hell.
The old wooden coach was an inferno, packed with humanity of all descriptions and reeking of unwashed bodies, tobacco smoke, and discarded food – smells that the 95 degree heat melded into a miasma. Sweating passengers vainly fluttered cardboard fans sold by the porter for a nickel. Seth reckoned that the same phantom cleaners responsible for the Justice Department were employed by the PB&WR. Nonetheless, he felt lucky to have found even a second class seat; first class was full and his carriage was standing room only.
He gazed wistfully through the open window at a sun-gilded landscape where summer-liberated boys waved at the passengers and shy women in bonnets sold tomatoes to dusty travelers. The bucolic scene reminded Armitage of his birthplace less than a hundred miles away.
His haven.
The suddenly loud voices of the two elderly women in the seat across from him disturbed Seth’s reverie. He realized they had unconsciously raised the volume of their conversation to a near shout to be heard over a commotion they couldn’t see, behind them.
He craned his neck toward the source of the noise. Near the front of the coach a pair of roughly dressed white men stood in the aisle haranguing a seated Negro family. Seth listened for a few seconds, calmly took off his straw boater, rose and set it on the wooden bench to hold his seat.
“What’s this about?”
The two white men broke off their threats and looked at him with red-rimmed eyes in unshaven faces. His glance swept the cringing black family – three little girls in pink-ribboned pigtails, mother in Sunday hat and ankle-length dress, father in bowler and preacher’s dog collar.
“We want them niggers’ seats,” one of the men growled. He leaned in close and Seth smelled the cheap hooch on his breath.
“This isn’t a Jim Crow train!” the preacher snapped. “We got a right to be here!”
“Fucking jigaboos got no right to sit when a white man’s standing,” the other man said venomously, then turned a cock-eyed gaze to Seth. “What’s it to you, buster, you some kinda coon lover?”
Seth drew a deep breath to control his rising anger. He took out his Federal Agent badge and flashed it at the men. Although he had no police authority here, he hoped it would defuse the situation.
“Back off and let ’em be.”
The men looked at the badge, then at him contemptuously.
“Fucking prohi,” the scrawnier one said, using the bootleggers term for a Prohibition agent. “Take yer little badge and shove it up yer ass.”
His companion pulled a pint bottle from his threadbare jacket. He displayed it challengingly to Seth, sloshing the brown liquid. Then he pulled out the cork with rotting teeth, spat it on the floor, and took a belt. He handed the flask to his friend. The second man drank deeply, hairy Adam’s apple bobbing. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve then casually tossed the bottle at the black family, spraying the youngest child and striking the mother on her arm. The little girl began to cry; her father started to rise from his seat with clenched fists.
Seth stared at the men, slack-jawed in their arrogance. His gaze flicked to the Negroes, then back to the sneering wretches. Their faces had been replaced by others’ –- faces he had last seen in a Louisiana courtroom. Rage and guilt burst the dam of the characteristic self-control that had, since Louisiana, too frequently abandoned him.
Seth’s hands lashed out, gripped their ears and smashed their heads together. As they wobbled, stunned, his fists slammed first into the scrawny guy’s gut, and then, when he doubled over, his jaw--a vicious left-right. Hairy Adam’s apple guy got the same treatment, and both ended up crumpled on the stinking, sticky car floor, feet and arms splayed between the shoes of the standing passengers trying to maneuver as far away as possible, which, in that crowded, oppressive car, was not very far at all.
Seth stepped back, panting, and rubbed his bruised knuckles, grateful, and not for the first time, to the friends who thought he might be the next “Great White Hope,” and had dragged him, at first reluctant, and then eagerly, to boxing classes. (He was even more grateful, though he wouldn’t have said it in his adolescence, to the great Jack Johnson, who he had secretly pretended to be during those intense youthful sessions.)
The carriage had fallen silent. Then the little girl with tears on her cheeks spread her lips in a glorious gap-toothed smile. Seth blinked at her and nodded, embarrassed--but satisfied, too.
A white conductor who had been watching warily now approached. Seth nudged the unconscious ruffians with his toe.
“Bootleggers. Resisting arrest.”
“None of my business,” the conductor whined. “Police in Baltimore won’t give a shit. Guess they’re your responsibility.”
Seth thoughtfully glanced out the open windows. The train was rolling slowly as it entered Bowie station. He bent down, grabbed the Adam’s Apple guy by the collar and dragged him up the aisle while passengers clambered out of the way, some glancing first at Seth with sweaty smiles, more glaring.
“Get his feet,” Seth snapped at the conductor. When the train stopped, Seth reached backward to shove open the door, then with minimal help from the conductor, deposited the limp body onto the station platform. He repeated the entire exercise with the scrawny guy, then wiped his brow and looked at the agitated conductor.
Seth straightened his tie.
“You really need to clean these carriages more often,” he said. “Too much trash.”
Seth went back to his seat, nodding to the old women across from him. He tipped his boater’s brim over his eyes and leaned back. As the adrenaline dissipated, he felt a strength-sapping exhaustion and the memory of hated faces in a Louisiana courtroom finally faded. He slipped into a welcome sleep. But he dreamed of another, older, battlefield, one he had never seen but felt he knew as well as those on the Western Front.
“Change here for Gettysburg!” announced the conductor.
CHAPTER 4
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, June 19, 1923
Bell clanging, the Western Maryland Railroad express rolled into the small town. The steam locomotive hissed to a stop at a station that had changed little since President Lincoln’s visit – nearly 60 years ago, Seth figured. He retrieved his small suitcase and alighted onto the platform.
Parked outside the station was a pair of canvas-topped Ford Model Ts displaying hand-lettered rates on their doors for battlefield excursions by the hour or by the day. Armitage climbed into the nearest and instructed the driver to take him to the Adams County Sheriff’s Department.
The taxi passed a group of Union army veterans - some wearing their original kepis and uniform blouses - standing outside the Iron Brigade Diner. The elderly men seemed in a holiday mood, eyes twinkling and mustachioed faces flushed as they shouted to overcome each other’s deafness.
Seth found the Sheriff’s Office in an annex behind the courthouse. The Sheriff was out to lunch, but a deputy gave him the murder case file. Armitage sat at an empty desk and opened it.
The victim had been identified as Thomas Gahagan of Boston. Gahagan’s body had been found the previous day by a troop of Boy Scouts touring the battlefield. Exposed to the sun, the corpse had been rapidly putrefying, and three more hours elapsed while the Sheriff, the county medical examiner, and a photographer from a local portrait studio finished their work. As a result, the enlarged photographs in the file showed little except a badly bloated cadaver straining the seams of a dark suit. The corpse had been found lying face down; there were pictures showing its original position and others taken with the murder weapon exposed after the victim was turned over onto his back. The photographer had managed a good close-up of what appeared to be a short-bladed sword embedded in the cadaver’s chest.
Besides the Sheriff’s handwritten three-page report, the file contained the written statements of a taxi driver and a clerk at the Gettysburg Hotel. The report ended by stating that the victim’s body had been taken to the morgue at the town’s hospital to await an autopsy. There was also a list of the deceased’s personal effects, including $26.18 in cash. Seth wrote “robbery probably not motive” in his black leather notebook and scribbled a few more lines before turning to the deputy.
“Has the autopsy been performed yet?”
Zerfing looked at the clock before answering.
“Doc Keyes is the medical examiner. He was going to wait ’til he finished his morning rounds, so he’s probably cutting up the body now if he ain’t already finished.”
Seth handed him the file.
“I want mimeograph copies of everything in there and duplicates of the pictures. When the Sheriff returns tell him that I would like to interview him later this afternoon.”
Seth ordered the waiting taxi to take him to the Gettysburg Hospital. He entered the building and asked an attendant to direct him to the morgue. Finding his way to the basement, he wandered along corridors until the unforgettable smell of death led him to his destination.
Armitage had experienced the sickly sweet stench of putrefying flesh many times on the battlefields of France yet still had to suppress a wave of nausea. A large man in a stained butcher’s apron was bent over a cadaver on a marble slab sewing together the purplish flaps of abdominal skin. Another aproned man used a pair of hay tongs to pick up a pile of dark blue clothing from the floor. Both men stopped their work as Armitage came in.
“Mister, you’ve either lost your sense of smell or you have a damn good reason for being here,” the large man said cheerfully.
“Doctor Keyes?” Seth asked.
The Doctor nodded, smiling under the walrus mustache that completed his resemblance to a neighborhood butcher.
“At your service.” He waved his gore-encrusted bare hands. “Be happy to shake your hand but that might spoil your appetite for a few days. And who might you be, sir?”
Seth explained his business as the surgeon finished his suturing. Out of the corner of his eye Seth saw the attendant head for a back door with the pile of clothing.
“Where are you going with that?” he asked.
“Incinerator. They stink like hell.”
“I’d be obliged if you’d leave ’em for a few more minutes until I can have a closer look at them.”
The attendant shrugged and dropped the clothes onto the floor. Seth turned back to the doctor, who was now scrubbing his hands at a sink.
“Anything out of the ordinary, doctor?”
“Well, aside from a twenty-four-inch blade that entered the chest cavity under the sternum, penetrated the left ventricle and exited under the left scapula, nothing out of the ordinary showed up.”
Seth couldn’t quite suppress his grin.
The doctor blew out a long sigh while drying his hands on a clean towel.
“As far as I can tell, given the state of decomposition, the victim appears to be in his late seventies with all the usual geriatric ailments one would expect at that age. There was no sign of a struggle and death was undoubtedly caused by that weapon over there.” He pointed to a metal tray on a table. “The fatal wound could not have been self-inflicted.”
Seth crossed the floor and peered at a long, brass-handled knife with a hole drilled in the upper guard. He was relieved to see that the weapon had not been cleaned of its coating of dried blood.
“That there’s a sword-bayonet,” the attendant told him. “Probably a relic from the Civil War.”
“Who has touched this?” Seth asked.
At that moment a squat man in his fifties wearing a rumpled suit and a straw hat came into the room. He greeted the doctor and introduced himself to Armitage as Isaac Hartzell, Sheriff of Adams County.
“Hope you’ve had a good look at our friend here,” he said in an unfriendly tone, nodding towards the body. “Still don’t see what this has got to do with you government boys down in Washington City.”
Seth bit back a retort.
“We believe this homicide warrants the involvement of the federal government,” he said stiffly. “I’m not at liberty to say more at this time. I’m only here to help with your investigation, and when the case is solved you’ll share the credit.”
Brusquely, the sheriff ordered the attendant to cover Gahagan’s body and place it in the cold storage compartment. Armitage intervened before the man could comply.
“Excuse me, Sheriff, I didn’t see any reference to fingerprints in your report on the case. Have you had a chance to take the victim’s prints yet?”
Sheriff Hartzell scowled at Armitage. “I’ve heard that you fancy boys in Washington are in the habit of collecting fingerprints. Well, I’ll tell you, sonny, in my opinion, fingerprints are about as much use to police work as a pint of bourbon and a five dollar whore would be to that old stiff lying on the slab there!”
Patience, Seth admonished himself. I need this guy’s cooperation.
“You’re entitled to your opinion, Sheriff,” Seth replied evenly. “And of course you’re welcome to carry out your investigation using your own techniques. But I have to do my job using the Bureau’s methods. If you’ll excuse me for a minute.”
Armitage went outside to the taxi; the fresh air settling him as he walked. He opened his suitcase and removed a leather kit. Both Doctor Keyes and the attendant looked embarrassed when he returned. He surmised that during his absence they had endured a diatribe from Sheriff Hartzell against Seth and the whole federal government. Ignoring them, he opened the kit, placing an inkpad and printed cards on a side table. He picked up Gahagan’s right hand. Its fingers resembled fat sausages swollen to the point of bursting. Seth expertly inked each finger and rolled it onto the card, then quickly completed the process with the corpse’s left hand. He wrote the dead man’s name, race, and sex in the printed spaces, then dated the card.
“You can put him away, now,” Armitage told the attendant. He stooped to examine Gahagan’s reeking clothes. The medical examiner had cut the dead man’s apparel from the cadaver, leaving it in tatters. The once-white shirt, dark blue waistcoat and jacket were stiff with dried blood. Restraining his urge to gag, Seth quickly went through the pockets and the slit lining of the jacket and trousers, finding nothing that had been overlooked by the sheriff or morgue staff. He noticed that the suit was tailored like a quasi-military uniform, the jacket’s brass buttons embossed with the GAR insignia of the Grand Army of the Republic, a national organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. After he wrenched off one of the buttons he thankfully went to wash his hands in the sink, trying to scrub away the stench. Armitage turned to the Sheriff and Doctor Keyes while drying his hands.
“I’m going to take the murder weapon back to Washington to have it tested for fingerprints. Right now, though, I need to know who touched it.”
“What the goddamn difference does it make who touched the fucking weapon!” the sheriff exploded. “The only one who matters is the killer, and I sure as hell can’t tell you yet who he is!”
“It’s a process of elimination,” Armitage snapped. “By matching the prints on the murder weapon to those whom we know didn’t commit the crime, we can narrow the number of suspects.”
Hartzell glared, hawked and spat a glob of saliva into the foul-smelling drain in the center of the floor. “Well, you ain’t getting near my fingers, Mister Revenooer,” he growled. “I’ll be waiting outside when you’ve finished with your damned hocus pocus.”
As Seth watched Hartzell storm out, the absurdity of the Sheriff’s over reaction washed over him. He’s just an old dog protecting his turf, Seth realized, suddenly relieved he hadn’t bitten the guy’s head off.
Dr. Keyes chuckled as if he could read Seth’s mind. “Isaac’s bark is worse than his bite,” he said. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure he didn’t touch the weapon, ’cause he’s got what you might call an aversion to dead bodies. I’d be willing to testify that the corpse hadn’t been moved before I got there yesterday.”
“What about the bayonet?”
“Sam and I handled it during the post mortem exam. We’d be glad to let you take our fingerprints.”
“Thanks.” Armitage returned the doctor’s smile and pulled out his notebook again. “Could anyone else have touched the weapon?”
The doctor shook his head. “You’ll see from my autopsy report that only about four inches of blade were protruding from the back through three layers of clothing. Most of the blade was inside the chest cavity, and he was lying on top of the hilt and about half a foot of blade.
“By the way, whoever killed him was unusually strong. That bayonet was driven right through him in one uninterrupted thrust.”
After taking the fingerprints, Armitage left the hospital, thankfully gulping the fresh air. His taxi and driver were gone, but Sheriff Hartzell was waiting for him under a shade tree.
“I sent the taxi back to town,” said Hartzell. “The driver was getting too nosy. I got your case in my car. By the way, you owe me three bucks for the cab fare.”
Seth silently cursed. Now he was dependent on the capricious sheriff for transportation as well as for local information on the case.
“I’d like to visit the crime scene".
The Sheriff shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 5
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Tuesday, June 19, 1923
Seth and the Sheriff were silent as Hartzell drove his Dodge Model 30 drove through the outskirts of Gettysburg. They left the town and passed into the open countryside, bordered by woodland on the right and the tree-crowned rise of Cemetery Ridge to the left.
A historic site marker appeared beside the road; Armitage caught the words “Pickett’s Charge.” He twisted in his seat to look out at the gently rolling landscape bordered by wooden fences and a low stone wall. His face tightened.
The sheriff noticed and cleared his throat. “Did you have kin here back then?” he asked, gruffly but with a hint of kindness.
His nod was barely perceptible.
“My mother lost two brothers in the war,” Hartzell commented. “One died of the camp fever outside Washington, and the other disappeared at Chickamauga. Just boys. I’ll bet neither one of ’em ever even had a woman. What a goddamn waste.” He looked at Seth.
Armitage figured that the sheriff was fishing for some information that would explain his strained expression, but he wasn’t about to oblige him. The memories his grandparents had related to him of his family’s losses in Pickett’s Charge were too personal to be shared with this stranger. And a Yankee at that, he thought, before chiding himself for such sentiment.
The sheriff drove down a side road with the boulder-studded Little Round Top hill looming on the left. He parked in the shade of an oak tree gnarled from the lead and iron missiles it had absorbed six decades earlier. Both men removed their jackets before they walked up a trail skirting a memorial to the 4th Maine Infantry.
“There,” Hartzell said, pausing to gesture towards a jumble of massive rocks on the edge of a wooded hollow. “That’s the Devil’s Den.”
Panting from the heat and exertion, Hartzell led Seth into the gorge. He halted in an open space bounded by boulders on three sides.
“This is the place. The body was found where that brown patch is on the ground.”
Armitage squatted by the stain of dried blood, noticing the impressions of numerous shoe soles on the ground. “Were all these foot prints here when he was found?”
Hartzell fanned himself with his hat. “Plenty here then and more since. Place is popular with the sightseers. It rained the evening before the body was found and the ground stays damp in here a long time. I doubt if even a Justice Department detective could get much in the way of evidence from them prints,” He added challengingly.
Seth ignored him, not wanting to start another Gettysburg battle. Being here stirred him up. He struggled to keep his voice calm, mien professional.
“I read your report, sheriff. It says a taxi driver told you that he dropped Gahagan off near here just before midnight on Sunday. Did he see anything suspicious?”
Hartzell shook his head.
“The night clerk at the hotel called Ed Smith, the taxi driver, at home around eleven on Sunday night to come over and pick up Gahagan. Ed told me Gahagan never spoke to him except to give directions. Old man seemed to know where he was going, had Ed drop him off down there where I left the car. Ed asked Gahagan if he wanted him to wait or come back, but the old fellow just paid him and said no thanks.”
Armitage walked the perimeter of the clearing, peering at the bases of the rocks that enclosed it. Not the first murder on this battlefield, he thought. “Didn’t the driver and the hotel clerk think Gahagan’s behavior was unusual?” he called out, unwilling to get too close to the Sheriff with his darn emotions so raw. Focus.
“They did,” Hartzell conceded. “Gettysburg is the kind of town that rolls up its sidewalks after dark, so taxis aren’t likely to do much business. The taxi driver had already turned in for the night when the hotel called him.”
Satisfied that the crime scene was unlikely to yield more clues, Armitage rejoined the sheriff and held his gaze. Time to try and bury the hatchet.
“So, what do you think happened here, Sheriff?”
Hartzell spat, clearly pleased that the government investigator was asking for his theory on the homicide. “Looks to me as if Gahagan was meeting someone out here. More than likely that person killed him.”
Seth nodded.