The Cutthroat by Clive Cussler (popular books to read txt) 📗

“How the heck did she end up here?” asked Edwards.

“Which car did she come out of?”

The detectives wrote down the car numbers they could see.

“Syracuse,” said Eddie Edwards, “is the Eastern Region Office.”

Two hours later the Van Dorns were poring through timetables and manifests with the chief dispatcher for the New York Central’s Eastern Region, which covered lines from New York City and Boston that converged at Albany, where the fast freight train had been made up.

“The New York Central & Hudson Railroad,” said the dispatcher, “serves half the people in the nation. Of that half, three-quarters are on lines that could have conveyed the poor girl’s body to Albany.”

He pointed at a map that covered an entire wall and shrugged apologetically. A legend on top listed thirty-six cities, towns, and regions to which the railroad took passengers on through cars. “Are you sure she was not inside some container?”

“We don’t know,” said Bell. “Her body fell on the riverbank. Whatever she was inside of smashed open and drifted away.”

“But with no address label, how are we to ascertain where she started her journey?”

“We will eliminate all places from which those five cars did not come.”

“They came from Albany. They were loaded in Albany. The contents could have come from anywhere served by our lines, as far south as New York, as far east as Boston, and from any of the express companies. No, I am terribly sorry, Mr. Bell. But without a proper address label, I cannot help you.”

“Find out whether any of the cars were shipped and sealed intact by an express company.”

“I will try.”

Bell fired off a telegram in Van Dorn cipher to Grady Forrer, who ran Research.

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NEW ENGLAND

NEW YORK

Isaac Bell learned from Eddie Edwards, whom he had instructed to stay with the New York Central dispatcher in Syracuse, that one of the smashed cars derailed into the Mohawk River belonged to the Adams Express Company. It had originated in Boston, hooked to the Boston section of the 20th Century Limited, and stopped in Worcester, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Chatham on its way across Massachusetts.

Van Dorn Research turned up a newspaper story about a Springfield girl who had not come home from choir practice. Her name was Mary Beth Winthrop.

The morning mail brought a photograph.

As had happened with Anna Waterbury, her attacker had not marked her face, and Bell recognized her instantly. He raced to Springfield. At the Adams Express office in the freight depot, he presented the credentials of an insurance investigator with Dagget, Staples & Hitchcock, a venerable Hartford, Connecticut, firm that was willing to legitimize masquerades by top Van Dorns in exchange for sound and very private detective work. Bell asked for a list of every item put aboard the express car that fell in the Mohawk River.

Ironically, the display window mannequins he and Eddie Edwards had seen floating in the river had been shipped by a Springfield factory. The mannequin crate could have had room for a body, but a telephone call to the factory eliminated the possibility.

“We pack ’em tight,” said the manager. “So they don’t bang into each other.”

The only other item shipped that day large enough to hold a body had been a steamer trunk bound for Scottsdale, in the Arizona Territory. The express company clerk looked puzzled.

“What is it?” asked Bell.

“I hadn’t noticed before. No reason to—the freight was prepaid. But the shipper was old Deacon Price.”

“I would like to meet Deacon Price.”

“You’ll have something of a wait. He was buried last week.”

Isaac Bell hurried back to New York and assembled the detectives he had recruited to hunt Anna Waterbury’s murderer. As was Van Dorn custom, they had adopted an informal moniker: the Anna Squad.

Bell said, “Not only did the killer assume an innocent man’s identity to ship the trunk, he also rented the room where he lured her in the deacon’s name. So any trail for the trunk has gone as cold as he intended. However, despite the effort he made to put time and distance between him and the body, we’ve been dealt something of an even break by finding this poor girl weeks or even months ahead of his schedule.”

“How will that help us, Mr. Bell?”

In what did not appear to be an answer at first, Bell said, “Similarly, Anna Waterbury was discovered by chance sooner than he had intended when the occupant of the apartment where he killed her returned home to New York earlier than expected.”

Detective Harry Warren, the Gang Squad chief, spoke up. “If it’s true that these killings in New York and Springfield are connected, if they were committed by the same man, then he’s had lousy luck twice—an actor fired and a train derailed. What are the odds of that kind of coincidence?”

Isaac Bell said, “You’ve put your finger on it, Harry. The question we must answer is, how many times has he had good luck?”

“Good luck?”

Warren and several others looked puzzled. Grady Forrer, chief of Research, nodded blankly. But Helen Mills, whom Bell had reassigned to New York after she managed to read Anna Waterbury’s diary, which put a stop to boyfriend talk, and young James Dashwood, whom he brought down from Boston, both raised tentative hands.

“That is a terrible thought, Mr. Bell,” said Mills.

“Yes,” said Isaac Bell. “How many of his victims do we not know about?”

Dashwood said, “You’re suggesting the possibility of many murders, Mr. Bell.”

Silence settled over the bull pen.

Isaac Bell broke it.

“I am not suggesting, I am asking how many. And I am asking every operator in our Anna Squad, how many more before we catch him?”

Isaac Bell got home to Archie and Lillian Abbott’s East 64th Street town house after midnight. Built only four years ago as a wedding gift from Lillian’s father, railroad baron Osgood Hennessy, it had included within its limestone walls a private apartment for Archie’s mother. She