The Sapphire Brooch by Katherine Logan (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

There are more than forty-six hundred pages of testimony. We have the entire record with us.”

Cullen stared at the bags on the floor next to David’s chair. “Forty-six hundred pages won’t fit in the bags ye’re carrying.”

“I have the rest in another format and it’s easily accessible,” David said.

“When you read through the transcript, you’ll notice Braham’s name is never mentioned. We don’t know why. We thought he might have been killed before the trial, but since he sent you a telegram, we know he’s alive. But we don’t know what part, if any, he played in the trial,” Charlotte said.

“Is my name there?” Cullen asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

Cullen thumbed through some of the pages. “Who represented him?”

David flipped through a few pages then pointed. “A Mr. Patterson. We don’t know anything about him, and he did a lousy job.”

Charlotte frowned. “Quite an understatement.”

“I’ll start reading immediately. Anything else I should know before I begin?” Cullen asked.

Charlotte put her hands on her knees and leaned forward. “We don’t know if I’ve been implicated, too. It’s why I intend to arrive wearing a disguise.”

Cullen picked up the papers and fanned them. “Are ye mentioned in any of these pages?”

She shook her head. “I’m worried I might…”

“…be considered guilty by association,” Cullen said.

“That could be what happened to Mary Surratt. Her son, John, had well-known ties to Booth, but the police were unable to find John. So Stanton went after Mary, hoping John would surface to protect his mother. He didn’t.”

Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out the brooch. “Since ye don’t have the sapphire, ye best keep this. Ye may need to make a quick escape.” He returned the stone to Charlotte. “When ye find the sapphire, give the ruby to Cullen. He can bring it back when he makes his return to trip to California.”

Charlotte pinned the brooch to the inside of her jacket’s lapel. “Let’s pray we find it, or we might have bigger troubles than changing the outcome of the trial.”

“Don’t worry, lass. Ye’ll find the stone, or the stone will find ye. It’s not finished with ye yet,” Sean said.

Cullen nodded as if he agreed completely. “Ye can be sure of it.”

80

Washington City, 1865

Three days later Charlotte, Cullen, and David arrived in Washington, dirty and tired. Delays in Cincinnati, Parkersburg, and Baltimore had tacked an additional day onto their two-day journey. While Cullen and David had remained calm throughout, Charlotte had been pissy with conductors, snappy with fellow travelers, and downright rude to anyone who mentioned the conspirators. The food on the train was barely edible, the accommodations were atrocious, and the overcrowded cars had made it impossible for them to discuss Jack’s situation. Thank goodness Sean had insisted they bring a basket of food with them, or she would have starved.

When they disembarked in Washington, she was so thrilled to be off the train with its never-ending clacking, she almost knelt down and kissed the ground. She didn’t, but she did squint against the glaring overcast sky. Ragged clouds streamed in from the south, and the scent of ozone heralded stormy weather ahead. Nothing new.

She wondered why she was irritable and caustic. David even asked what happened to the woman he’d met at MacKlenna Farm. He’d been joking, of course, but there was underlying seriousness in his tone. She was extremely worried, which kept her from sleeping, which made her crotchety. Fatigue she could handle. Fatigue combined with worry and stress she couldn’t, at least not for long.

How was Jack handling the daily rations of soft bread and salt meat? He had a healthy appetite, but he also worked out daily. He’d lose weight for sure, and without exercise he’d have no outlet for his frustration and fear. She’d seen creepy pictures of the torture hoods the prisoners were forced to wear and imagined Jack suffering from wearing the heavy canvas tied tightly around his head with cotton pads placed over eyes and ears. He could withstand some sensory deprivation, but not seven weeks of it. He could lose touch with reality and start hallucinating.

Was Stanton a sadist, devising such an instrument of cruelty? Was it his purpose? To induce mental and physical suffering? Or was it to keep the conspirators incommunicado? What in God’s name could they say to each other which would make any difference in the outcome of the trial? The men were outcasts, beyond the pale of human sympathy, but one of them was innocent.

No wonder she couldn’t sleep.

While Cullen went to hire a carriage to take them to Braham’s townhouse, she and David sat on a bench and looked out over the city.

“I’ve been all around the world. Seen the worst parts of it, but this”—he gestured with his arm to emphasize his point—“is not an undeveloped country. It’s not contaminated by twenty-first-century noise and pollution.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what it resembles. A movie set, maybe.”

Charlotte gripped the edge of the bench and fell into a slow, comforting rock. “I thought so, too, until I saw the suffering. When men are bleeding all around you, it quickly becomes very real.”

“Ye jumped into a situation most people would run away from.”

She stopped rocking, and her knuckles turned white from gripping the bench, but she couldn’t loosen her grip. “I’ve been critical of Civil War surgeons for years. Now I know firsthand they did the best they could with limited resources. In modern warfare, you normally don’t have hundreds of injuries to deal with at the same time. In this war, the surgeons saved the ones they could and later wept over the ones they couldn’t.”

David placed his warm, strong hand over hers and lightly squeezed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. He’d lost buddies in Afghanistan, and from what she’d read on the back jacket of his book, he’d almost lost his life saving the wounded while under heavy fire.

“There’s Cullen.” David patted her hand, stood, and hefted the bags onto