The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

“They told me you stood up for him.”

“As bullies will, they found his worst fear and used it against him. Do you remember what that was?”

“What do you mean?” Matters asked warily.

“The crew boys were throwing him in the river. Billy was rigid with fear. Absolutely petrified—he looked like his skull was popping through his skin—screaming he couldn’t swim. They’d have pulled him out in a second, but he was so terrified of water, he couldn’t see it was just college hijinks. There is no way on God’s earth that boy would have killed himself by drowning . . .”

But even as he spoke, Bell remembered Billy’s courageous attempt to conquer his fear by asking the crew to let him train to be coxswain. Could he have tried again and triumphed in a final deranged act?

Isaac Bell found himself staring intently at the Shakespeare gravestone.

“Did you say that Billy didn’t like the theater?”

“Hated it.”

—

Bell could hear old Brigadier Mills thundering in his mind. Ticket stubs from an opera house . . . Shakespeare shows . . . We traced them to Oil City, Pennsylvania. The thunder shaped a bolt of lightning. Why would the boy keep ticket stubs to plays he hated?

“I asked why you didn’t report Billy’s death.”

“I told you. To protect the girls.”

“Which one?”

39

Which one?” Bill Matters echoed Isaac Bell.

“You’re protecting one of your daughters. Which one?”

“What do you mean, which one?”

“Edna? Or Nellie? The one who killed Billy.”

“Killed him? You’re insane.”

Not insane, thought Bell. Not even surprised, looking back. He himself had remarked on the New York Limited, Strange how the three of us keep turning up together where crimes have occurred. And when he engineered Edna’s job covering Baku for the Evening Sun and the editor asked Mind me asking which sister you’re sweet on? some sixth or seventh sense had already made him a sharper detective than he knew: Let’s just say that with this arrangement, I can keep my eye on both of them.

Not insane. Not surprised. Only sad. Deeply, deeply sad.

Bill Matters was shouting, “They loved him. Why would one of them kill Billy?”

“Because she’s a ‘natural,’ to use your word.”

“Natural what?”

“Assassin.”

—

“She snapped,” Matters said quietly. “That was the first thought in my mind when I saw them. She snapped.”

“Who?” Isaac Bell asked. “Was it Nellie? Or Edna?”

Matters shifted his eyes from Bell’s burning gaze and stared at the pond.

“Who?” Bell asked, again. “Nellie? Or Edna?”