The Double Vice: The 1st Hidden Gotham Novel by Chris Holcombe (ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📗

Her voice took on a dreamlike quality, as if she weren’t talking to anyone other than herself. “I told him he couldn’t be such a thing. It would jeopardize Walter at the Committee. He would bring shame to our family.”

Her voice changed. It became sharp and mean.

“He said he didn’t care. What he wanted was sin. Perversion. Just like his father. My son would not live a life like that. He would not! I wouldn’t allow it.”

A flash of lightning, a boom of thunder.

Her hands continued to pick at the woolen threads in her lap, wrapping them around her fingers. Dash visualized them wrapped around Karl’s neck. Mother holding them there until the boy was subdued. Had she meant to kill him? Or was it an accident?

The time lapse. McElroy had said it, but it didn’t register with Dash at the time. Karl’s body was found Tuesday morning. Yet Monday night, Walter was at Dash’s tailor shop, drunk, claiming he’d caused Karl to be dead.

“Mrs. Müller.”

“Walter came home and helped me take Karl to the Park. Karl loved the Park. He could spend hours upon hours there, never getting bored.”

Dash watched her in horror. A mother who killed her own son.

No wonder she gets blotto every day. She can’t face what she’s done.

She shook herself out of her alcohol-infused trance. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, untangling the threads from her fingers. “I’m not feeling very well. I need to lie down.”

She stood up, the knitting pile falling to the floor. She turned and slowly shuffled her way out of the room and down the hall to the master bedroom. The door closed behind her.

Dash felt the apartment start to spin. He would’ve broken down and cried over the horror right then had he not seen familiar stationary on the writing desk.

He set the cup and saucer down on the nightstand next to Karl’s wristwatch. He walked over to the desk, his head pounding like the rain outside. Illuminated by the strobe of lightning was the letter Z. For Zora Mae. And underneath it was Paul Avery’s address. The same note she had given Dash last week at the Hot Cha. How on earth had Walter gotten this?

The figure in Dash’s room. He had thought it was a dream. What if it was Walter?

Walter had run out of patience. He must’ve followed Dash from somewhere or found out where he lived from that backstabbing rat McElroy. Then he broke into Dash’s apartment, searching the place while Dash was out cold. Walter would’ve found the addresses of Paul Avery and Prudence Meyers stored in his dresser.

“Oh no,” he said aloud.

Dash turned and ran out of the apartment and down the stairs. Outside in the rain, he ran until he found an available cab. Paul’s address came out in a rush.

“And step on it!” he told the cabbie.

The rain slowed traffic to a crawl and it took almost an hour to get back down to the Village to Christopher and Waverly. Dash tossed money at the driver and ran to the building. He pressed the buzzer to Paul’s apartment. No answer. He pressed again.

He then pressed Marjorie Norton’s. No answer either. He was about to press all of the tenant buttons until someone let him in when he saw the front door was slightly ajar. He wrenched it open and raced up the stairs. At the top, he knocked on Paul’s closed door. No response. He knocked again. Something told him to try the doorknob. He turned it, finding it unlocked, and the door swung open.

He entered the apartment, saying, “Paul! Paul, are you—”

He stopped. At first, there was incomprehension. Confusion about the scene before him. Then slowly, like floodwater creeping up his ankles to his shoulders, dread filled every inch of Dash’s tall, trim frame.

For that’s when he saw the dead body lying in the center of the floor.

30

Dash had only been face-to-face with death a handful of times, usually those of family members. And it occurred to him, as he stared at the lifeless corpse of poor, innocent Marjorie Norton, that a room has an odd quiet when it hosts death, as if all the sound is taken away along with the person’s soul. The air in this musty, cramped space was certainly still, almost reverent. The electric current, normally humming in the tableside lamps, quieted itself for the first time. Even the shadows seemed to retreat far into the dusty, webbed corners. Death demands such respect. More so than God. God can be praised and cursed in the same breath with the cocky certainty He will forgive the blasphemous words escaping your lips. Death did not forgive. Nor did it forget.

A pool of blood surrounded Marjorie, who lay on her stomach. Her head was a pulpy mess of bone and hair. The smell of copper mixed with the pungent smell of gunpowder. Whatever had happened here, it hadn’t occurred that long ago.

She must’ve heard Walter barging in. She went upstairs to investigate. Maybe he even forced her to open the door. And then he . . .

Dash turned away from the body, bile rising in his throat. He thought he was going to vomit, but thankfully he didn’t. He waited for the spasms in his throat and stomach to stop. Then he turned his attention to the rest of the apartment. The front room was a mess. Furniture toppled over, books and papers scattered across the floor. There had been an immense struggle.

A horrible thought occurred to Dash. Walter could still be in the apartment. Dash wished he had taken Atty’s gun when offered. Now here he was, standing next to a dead body, and her killer was armed while he had nothing with which to defend himself.

He backed away and closed the door. Poor Marjorie. Her only sin was curiosity. Damn that evil Walter.

As Dash walked down the hallway, he thought about where Walter would go next. If Paul didn’t have what he