"I'd rather not." Epstein replaced the target and they began walking back to the shooting line.
"What about Essex?" asked Pitt.
"What can I tell you that you don't already know?"
"How he died, for starters."
"A train wreck," answered Epstein. "Bridge collapsed over the Hudson River. A hundred dead. Essex was one of them."
Pitt thought a moment. "Somewhere, buried in old records in the county where the accident occurred, there must be a report listing the effects found on the body."
"Not likely."
"Why do you say that?"
"Now we've touched on an intriguing parallel between Essex and Shields." He paused and looked at Pitt. "Both men were killed on the same day, May twenty-eighth, nineteen fourteen, and neither of their bodies were ever recovered."
"Great," Pitt sighed. "It never rains . . . but then I didn't expect it to be cut-and-dried."
"Investigations into the past never are."
"The coincidence between the deaths of Essex and Shields seems unreal. Could there have been a conspiracy?"
Epstein shook his head. "I doubt it. Stranger things happen. Besides, why sink a ship and murder a thousand souls when Shields could have simply been tossed over the side somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic?"
"You're right, of course."
"You mind telling me what this is all about?"
"I'm not sure where any of this is leading, myself."
"If it's newsworthy, I hope you'll let me in on it."
"Too early to throw in the open. It may be nothing."
"I've known you too long, Dirk. You don't involve yourself with nothing."
"Let's just say I'm a sucker for historical mysteries."
"In that case I've got another one for you."
"Okay, lay it on me."
"The river under the bridge was dragged for over a month. Not a single body of a passenger or crewman ever turned up."
Pitt stopped and stared evenly at Epstein. "I don't buy that. It doesn't figure that a few bodies wouldn't have drifted downriver and beached on the shoreline."
"That's only the half of it," Epstein said with a cagey look. "The train wasn't found either."
"Jesus!"
"Out of professional curiosity I read up on the Manhattan Limited, as it was called. Divers went down for weeks after the tragedy, but turned up zero. The locomotive and all the coaches were written off as having sunk in quicksand. Directors of the New York & Quebec Northern Railroad spent a fortune trying to recover a trace of their crack train. They failed, and finally threw in the towel. A short time later, the line was absorbed by the New York Central."
"And that was the end of it."
"Not quite," Epstein said. "It's claimed that the Manhattan Limited still makes its ghostly run."
"You're kidding."