Chapter 56
She was on the New Haven Green, standing in front of one of its three churches. Not just one of the three churches, Stern. Surely I’ve done better by you than that.
Gothic, Alex remembered, different from the other churches on the Green, with a stained glass window they’d lit from behind so that it shone out onto the city instead of just sparkling for the people in the pews.
Lee Lawrie, the sculptor of Harkness and Sterling, had been a parishioner.
So had James Fenimore Cooper—whom Lawrie had wrought in stone and placed atop the tower.
He got kicked out. Darlington’s voice in her head like a tether, just as strong as hellfire.
He never graduated, but Yale still claimed him.
The perks of success. I think you would have liked him.
Why?
A bully beat him up. So he blew up the door to his dorm room. Quite an escalation.
Alex had been pleased. An eye for an eye only goes so far. What happened to the bully?
He was fine. And he graduated with a Yale degree.
That was all before her time. Before this time too.
She saw carriages on the street in the early-morning light, ladies corseted and bustled.
But when she turned away from Temple Street, she saw the grand building before her was burning.
It was four—no, five—stories high and despite the horses and hoses of the fire brigade, the flames were winning.
A man in a fine suit stood watching it all, shaking his head, his soot-stained face streaked with tears, his white hands gripping his hat. “Please,” he begged the fire fighter beside him. “It’s all I have. You must fight on!”
“Started with nothing,” said a man beside her. “Selling dry goods in his aunt’s shop. To build something so noble and watch it vanish before your eyes? A tragedy.”
Alex covered her mouth and nose with her shirt, squinting as the smoke stung her eyes.
“We need you, sir!” a uniformed man cried and she saw that she was wearing a uniform too, a stiff blue jacket with shining brass buttons, trousers, a club at her hip.
The second trial. This time the scene wasn’t from her own life. Was that some kind of clue?
She followed the policeman to a tailor’s shop lined with shelves, bolts of fabric, a counter with a sturdy old cash register.
“We’ve reserved this place as our headquarters, sir. These are the three suspects.”
Another test, another choice, another demon game. Time to play.
“What do we know?” she asked.
“The fire started in the back of the building, just after dawn. The brigade arrived shortly after, alerted by the night watchman who sounded the alarm.” He gestured to a young man with dark eyes and curly hair.
“Name?”
“Frank Bianchi. He’s a guinea, but the owner says he’s honest.”
The young man stayed silent, twisting the woolen cap in his hands.
“Now, this other fellow, Dunston Cregg, says he saw someone flee the back of the building and head down Church Street. He was making his morning deliveries.”
“Deliveries I should be allowed to finish!” the milkman shouted. “I did nothing but my duty by the city, and here I am being treated like a criminal.”
“Why is he a suspect?” Alex asked.
“Far from your route, aren’t you this morning, Cregg?” inquired the policeman.
Cregg’s face flushed. “Horse was favoring his right foreleg, wasn’t he? I had to see to that first, didn’t I?”
“That’s what he says, at least.”
“And the third?” Alex asked.
The boy was scrawny, wide-eyed, his clothes threadbare and his boots held together with twine. “Works at the clock factory. No reason for him to be about these parts if he wasn’t up to mischief. What say you, lad?”
“Didn’t do nothing. I heard they was looking for able bodies to carry goods and things up the stairs.”
“That’s why you were lurking around the back?” asked the policeman, jabbing the boy with his club.
The boy jerked back and stared at him with frightened eyes. “That’s right.”
“Except the owner says they’re not hiring and haven’t been for months. So maybe someone put you up to lighting a fire. Or maybe you just did it for a lark.”
The boy shook his head.
Watchman, milkman, factory boy. Those were Alex’s choices.
“Did you search the alley and uh … surrounds?” she asked.
The policeman presented an empty flask. “Belongs to the watchman. Smells of rye and so does he, but…”
But alcohol could also be used as an accelerant.
“Anything in the milkman’s wagon?”
“You got no right!” Cregg blustered. “I’m a citizen, a voter, a taxpayer!”
“Crowbar,” said the policeman. “Good for smashing windows. Plenty of rags in the back too.”
“That means nothing and you know it.”
“Anything else?” she asked.
“The boy stinks of kerosene, and why might that be?”
“We use it for rusty bits in the clockwork,” the boy pleaded, his lip wobbling. “Can’t never get the smell off.”
“There should be a proper investigation,” Alex said. She knew none of it was real, but she couldn’t help feeling she held the fate of these men in her hands.
The policeman turned to her, and she was looking at Len—narrow face, scraggly blond hair, pretty blue eyes. They’d always been his best feature.
“Did I get a fair trial, Alex? You like to play judge, jury, and executioner. My mother couldn’t even identify my body when you were done with me.
So choose. What difference does it make?
Get it done and move on to the next thing.
Or maybe we can gather some more evidence.
” He grabbed the boy by the collar. “How about I slice his eyelids off?” The boy began to scream.
“How about I chop off his little hairless balls and serve them up in a martini glass?”
It’s not real, she told herself. That boy never lived.
But how did she know that? What if this was a child’s soul being tortured in hell? What if the pain he felt was real?
“Hey,” said Cregg. “You can’t do that. That’s not the law.”
“What the actual fuck are you going to do about it, milkman? Are you and the wop going to join up for justice?”
He shoved Cregg back and suddenly there was a razor in his hand.
“Hold him,” he shouted at the night watchman. “Hold him or I’ll cut you too.”
His hand flashed out and blood bloomed across Cregg’s gray jacket, the fabric gaping. The milkman’s hairy belly jutted out, the flesh parting in two pink folds, blood spilling over his white pants. “There you go, piggy. Cry wee, wee, wee.”
“Stop—”
“Just pick one. It doesn’t make any difference. That’s the real answer. None of them matter, so stop pretending.”
Alex couldn’t think. There was a puzzle here, a trick, but she didn’t know how to solve it. She needed a real detective like Turner, the priest with clean hands, the man who turned to truth like a compass needle, sought it, believed in it.
Look again, Alex. You’d be a great detective if you weren’t such a complete degenerate.
“You don’t care,” said Len, slashing out with his razor. “No one is real to you, so choose!”
What had she seen when she looked at the fire?
Five stories. The fire burning in the back.
The boy had believed a job was on offer and her gut—Turner’s gut—said he was telling the truth.
They all were. So why would the owner of the building keep on a night watchman he knew was a drinker?
Why would he spread word of jobs to be had if they weren’t hiring? To create suspects.
“Who owns the building, Len?”
“Why do you care? You couldn’t wait to leave us all behind. You scraped us off your shoes like so much shit, hoping our stink wouldn’t stick to you. But it always will. So pick one.”
Was it all about insurance money? Could it be that pat?
Look again. See what matters, not the flames but what they consume. She couldn’t read the name of the business, but she could remember the street corner.
Another slash. X marks the spot. The milkman was shrieking trying to hold his guts in.
“She’s not going to save you. She doesn’t care about broke trash. She didn’t bother to fight for any of us, just hit reset and traded up. Pull down your pants,” he told the boy. “I need some cocktail olives.”
Malley’s. Malley’s department store. It stood on the corner of Temple and Chapel.
It was Malley who had been standing across the street, covered in soot. Except for his hands. They’d been clean and white as if he’d stopped to wash them. Why would a man stop to wash his hands when he was trying to save his livelihood?
Alex stepped in front of Len.
“They’re all innocent,” she said, her voice rough from the smoke. His bloody razor slashed downward, but now it pinged off her armor. “Edward Malley set the fire. He did it to gain public sympathy because his son and his nephew were rotting in prison, awaiting trial in Jennie Cramer’s murder.”
They didn’t just go free. They thrived. They threw a party when the verdict came in. Walter Malley sold the sheet music he wrote in prison. Edward Malley rebuilt his store and the family business flourished for a hundred years. All it required was a sacrifice. A girl found floating with the tide.
Len’s face split in a happy grin, his long, dirty teeth spilling over his lips. “You’re going to lose,” he said, “and I’ll be waiting for you. Your old friends remember.”
The tavern vanished, the street outside, all gone instantly.
She was back in the stairwell and that awful bell was still tolling, that single tone vibrating on and on. Alex leaned against the railing. She was shaking, covered in cold sweat.
She looked up at the twisting staircase. The spiral seemed to float between the bells, impossibly steep.
Fifty-four bells, Darlington had told her, some original, all inscribed with For God, for country, and for Yale. Her muscles felt weak and loose.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re okay.”
No, she was better than okay. Everything touched the number four, the number of death. Four doors to wake the Gauntlet. Four artifacts to build the soldier’s armor. That meant she was halfway to the top.
There was fresh air waiting up there, maybe relief from the dull, relentless thunder of the bell.
“Two down,” she said, frightened by how thready her voice sounded, how very small. “Two to go.”