“What is it?” asked Bell.
“I hadn’t noticed before. No reason to—the freight was prepaid. But the shipper was old Deacon Price.”
“I would like to meet Deacon Price.”
“You’ll have something of a wait. He was buried last week.”
Isaac Bell hurried back to New York and assembled the detectives he had recruited to hunt Anna Waterbury’s murderer. As was Van Dorn custom, they had adopted an informal moniker: the Anna Squad.
Bell said, “Not only did the killer assume an innocent man’s identity to ship the trunk, he also rented the room where he lured her in the deacon’s name. So any trail for the trunk has gone as cold as he intended. However, despite the effort he made to put time and distance between him and the body, we’ve been dealt something of an even break by finding this poor girl weeks or even months ahead of his schedule.”
“How will that help us, Mr. Bell?”
In what did not appear to be an answer at first, Bell said, “Similarly, Anna Waterbury was discovered by chance sooner than he had intended when the occupant of the apartment where he killed her returned home to New York earlier than expected.”
Detective Harry Warren, the Gang Squad chief, spoke up. “If it’s true that these killings in New York and Springfield are connected, if they were committed by the same man, then he’s had lousy luck twice—an actor fired and a train derailed. What are the odds of that kind of coincidence?”
Isaac Bell said, “You’ve put your finger on it, Harry. The question we must answer is, how many times has he had good luck?”
“Good luck?”
Warren and several others looked puzzled. Grady Forrer, chief of Research, nodded blankly. But Helen Mills, whom Bell had reassigned to New York after she managed to read Anna Waterbury’s diary, which put a stop to boyfriend talk, and young James Dashwood, whom he brought down from Boston, both raised tentative hands.
“That is a terrible thought, Mr. Bell,” said Mills.
“Yes,” said Isaac Bell. “How many of his victims do we not know about?”
Dashwood said, “You’re suggesting the possibility of many murders, Mr. Bell.”
Silence settled over the bull pen.
Isaac Bell broke it.
“I am not suggesting, I am asking how many. And I am asking every operator in our Anna Squad, how many more before we catch him?”
Isaac Bell got home to Archie and Lillian Abbott’s East 64th Street town house after midnight. Built only four years ago as a wedding gift from Lillian’s father, railroad baron Osgood Hennessy, it had included within its limestone walls a private apartment for Archie’s mother. She had lived there until she left to be with Archie’s younger sister, who had borne twins. Now it served as Isaac and Marion Morgan Bell’s home on the occasions they found themselves both in New York.
Marion had just gotten in herself, having worked late directing a two-reel comedy at the Biograph Studios. Her straw-blond hair was still pinned up high on her head so it didn’t get in the way when she looked through the camera. The effect was majestic, revealing her graceful neck and setting off her beautiful face like a golden crown.
They agreed each was starving and met in the kitchen. Bell mixed Manhattan cocktails, sliced bread and toasted it on the gas range, while Marion melted cheddar cheese with ale, Worcestershire, mustard, and an egg for a Welsh rarebit.
She was a well-educated woman, with a Stanford University
law degree, and with experience in business, before she began making moving pictures. Bell often relied on her incisive mind to talk out thorny cases, as she had unusual powers of observation and a way of approaching problems from unexpected angles.
“What about the girl in Boston?” she asked when he had filled her in on the grisly Mohawk River discovery.
“Lillian. The prostitute.”
“You’re sure your murderer didn’t kill her, too?”
“Dashwood looked her over at the morgue. She was not cut.”
“None of those strange crescents?”
“Not a mark on her.”
“Only strangled? . . . Was her neck broken?”