The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

“Chloroform?” asked Harry Warren. The grizzled Gang Squad chief was one of Bell’s closest confidants.

“The assistant coroner told me that the odor would have dissipated by the time her body was discovered. I certainly didn’t smell it. But the autopsy revealed something unusual. Her neck was broken. Which takes a mighty strong hand. Anna was petite, but it does suggest we are looking for a big bruiser who doesn’t know his own strength. Nonetheless, the main point is this, gents: it is imperative that we establish whether she went there voluntarily, vital that we confirm whether she was acquainted with her killer or was attacked by a stranger. If it was personal, we will discover his name. If it wasn’t personal, then a vicious cutthroat is prowling the city and may kill again. Either way, I want him in the electric chair.”

“Why would she go with the man if he wasn’t a boyfriend?” asked a young detective still on probation.

“Hope,” answered Bell.

“Hope for what? That he’ll become a boyfriend?”

That drew some smiles, which faded when Isaac Bell said in an icy voice, “Anna wanted to be an actress. She hoped for a role in a play.”

Lucy Balant walked home to her shabby hotel, exhausted. She had never been so tired in her life. She hadn’t spoken a word of Alias Jimmy Valentine yet, hadn’t set a foot onstage except to rehearse lines with the stage manager for the roles she stood by for. But that didn’t mean she didn’t work. They paid her, fed her, and housed her, and in return the company required her to do any job needed. Skilled with a needle, she assisted the wardrobe mistress. Long days started very early in the morning, repairing costumes and washing them in the theater’s old-fashioned laundry, cranking them through the wringer, then racing up six flights of stairs to the roof to pin them on clotheslines, and ironing them when half dry.

She plodded up the stairs and into her room, shut the door, and leaned against it for a moment of peace and quiet in the dark. This was their last night in Philadelphia, then on to Boston, where maybe one of the regular actresses would get sick, or quit, or fall off the stage and break her neck.

“Lucy?”

She jumped, her heart leaping into her throat. A tall figure was in her room, standing in the shadow between the bed and the wardrobe.

“Don’t be afraid.” A woman’s voice, thankfully.

A raven-haired woman in her twenties stepped into the light spilling through the window. “I have to talk to you.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I let myself in.”

Lucy’s heart was still pounding. “I locked the door when I left.”

“I picked the lock. Lucy, my name is Helen—”

“Picked the lock? You forced your way into my room. What are you talking—why are you here?”

“I must talk to you. My name is Helen Mills. I am a Van Dorn detective. There is no reason to be afraid.”

“I am afraid. What are you doing in my room?”

Mills had recently been promoted to full detective—the first woman for the Van Dorn Agency—after graduating college. Quick to see opportunity and quicker to act, it only occurred to her belatedly to put herself in Lucy’s shoes. How would she or any woman alone feel if the door to her hotel room turned out not to be the protection she thought it was?

“I am sorry. This case is so important, I forgot my manners.”

“If you ever had any to start with— Case? What case? Why didn’t you just wait in the lobby? Or you could have found me at the theater.”

“I am sorry,” Helen apologized again. “But I wanted your full attention.”

“You have it. So what do you want?”

Helen Mills said, “I have terrible news and I need your help. Your roommate Anna is dead.”

“What? No! She was fine when I left New York.”

“Anna was murdered.”

Lucy staggered back a step and struck the bed, which nearly buckled her knees. “No, she . . .”

“I have to ask you some questions. Your answers could help us find the man who murdered her. I’m sure you’re upset.”

“How would you feel?”