The Cutthroat (Isaac Bell 10)

Bell was aware that laudanum addicts were prey to hallucinations. As hallucinations went, her handsome callboy was a doozy.

“Emily, would you like to keep his picture?”

“Yes, please.”

Bell helped her work it inside the envelope. She hid it in the folds of her shawl.

“Where do you live?” he asked.

“They give me a cot at the Salvation Army. I help in the kitchen.”

“I’ll walk you home,” said Bell.

“Why?”

“Because I am going to give this sack of half crowns to the Army commander to be sure you’re taken care of.”

Emily got a crafty look in her eye. “If you give it to me, I can take care of myself.”

“I would rather give it to someone I can trust to keep you safe.”

“You think I might spend it on laudanum.”

“No ‘might’ about it,” said Bell so firmly that she dropped the subject with an abject nod.

At the door of the soup kitchen, she blurted, “Don’t tell nobody what I said.”

“I won’t.”

“He’ll come for me.”

“Don’t worry,” said Isaac Bell, hearing his own words ring hollow, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t . . . Emily? What was the callboy’s name?”

“Jack.”

“Jack? Do you remember his last name?”

“Spelvin.”

“Jack Spelvin?”

“Handsome Jack.”

20

“Here’s a strange one,” said Harry Warren, reading from the Research Department report that Isaac Bell had ordered sent every morning to the Cutthroat Squad.

Helen Mills, James Dashwood, Archie Abbott, and several other detectives in the New York field office bull pen not of the Cutthroat Squad looked up from their work.

“What’s strange?”

“Woman throat slashed and carved up in Cleveland.”

“Sounds like our man.”

“Except she was a six-foot-tall brunette.”

“Prostitute?”