The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“I have read it.”

“Then you know that Reed Riggs was mangled beyond recognition after falling off a railroad platform under a locomotive.”

“Yes. But—”

“But what?”

“Nothing in your written report indicates that you did any more than write down what the railroad police told you—that Mr. Riggs fell under the locomotive that rolled over him.”

“What are you implying?”

“I am not implying,” said Isaac Bell, “I am saying forthrightly and clearly—to your face, Doctor—that you did not examine Mr. Riggs’ body.”

“It was a mutilated heap of flesh and bone. He fell under a locomotive. What do you expect?”

“I expect a public official who is paid to determine the cause of a citizen’s death to look beyond the obvious.”

“Now, listen to me, Mr. Private Detective.”

“No, Doctor, you listen to me! I want you to look at that body again.”

“It’s been buried two weeks.”

“Dig it up!”

The coroner rose to his feet. He was nearly as tall as Isaac Bell and forty pounds heavier. “I’ll give you fair warning, mister, get lost while you still can. I paid my way through medical school with money I won in the prize ring.”

Isaac shrugged out of his coat and removed his hat. “As we have no gloves, I presume you’ll accommodate me with bare knuckles?”

—

“What did you do to your hand?” asked Archie Abbott.

“Cut it shaving,” said Bell. “What do you think of that water tank?”

They were pacing Fort Scott’s St. Louis–San Francisco Railway station platform where refiner Reed Riggs had fallen to his death. “Possible,” said Archie, imagining a rifle shot from the top of a tank in the Frisco train yard to where they stood on the platform. “I also like that signal tower. In fact, I like it better. Good angle from the roof.”

“Except how did he climb up there without the dispatchers noticing?”

“Climbed up in the dark while a train rumbled by.”

“How’d he get down?”

“Waited for night.”

“But what if he missed his shot and someone noticed him? He would be trapped with no escape.”

“You’re sure that Riggs was shot?”

“No,” said Bell, “not positive. There’s definitely a hole in his skull. In a piece of the temporal bone, which wasn’t shattered. But it could have been pierced by something other than a bullet. Banged against a railroad spike or a chunk of gravel.”

“What did the coroner think?”

“He was inclined to agree with my assessment.”

—

Bell and Archie took the train down to Coffeyville, a booming refinery town just above the Kansas–Indian Territory border. They located Albert Hill’s refinery and the tank in which Hill had died while repairing the agitator.