“Slit his throat. I was afraid to tell-they’d pin that on me, too.”
“Slit his throat?” Bell demanded. “Or stabbed?”
Jake ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Stabbed, I guess.”
“Did you see a knife?”
“No.”
“Was he run through? Did the wound exit the back of his neck?”
“I didn’t stick around to examine him close, Mr. Bell. Like I said, I knew they’d blame me.”
“Get over there,” Bell told Kisley and Fulton. “Sheriff, would you send a doctor? See if he can reckon what killed him and how long he’s been dead.”
“Where will you be, Isaac?”
Another dead end, thought Bell. The Wrecker wasn’t just lucky, he made his own luck. “Railroad station,” he answered without a lot of hope. “See if any ticket clerks recall selling him a ticket out of here.”
He took copies of the lumberjack’s drawing to Union Depot, a multigabled, two-story building with a tall clock tower, and queried the clerks. Then, driven in a Ford by a railway police official through tree-lined neighborhoods of cottages with jigsaw woodwork, he visited the homes of clerks and supervisors who were off work that day. Bell showed the drawing to each man, and when the man did not recognize the face, Bell showed him an altered version with a beard. No one recognized either face.
How did the Wrecker get out of Ogden? Bell wondered.
The answer was easy. The city was served by nine different railroads. Hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers passed through it every day. By now, the Wrecker had to know that the Van Dorn Agency was hunting him. Which meant he would choose his targets more carefully when it came to preparing his escapes.
Bell enlisted Van Dorn agents from the Ogden office to canvass hotels, on the odd chance that the Wrecker had stayed in the junction city. No front-desk clerk recognized either drawing. At the Broom, an expensive, three-story brick hotel, the proprietor of the cigar store thought he might have served a customer who looked like the picture with the beard. A waitress in the ice-cream parlor remembered a man who looked like the clean-shaven version. He had stuck in her mind because he was so handsome. But she had seen him only once, and that was three days ago.
Kisley and Fulton caught up with Bell in the spartan Van Dorn office, one large room on the wrong side of Twenty-fifth Street, which was a wide boulevard divided by electric-streetcar tracks. The side of the street that served the legitimate needs of railroad passengers using the station was lined with restaurants, tailors, barbers, soda fountains, ice-cream parlors, and a Chinese laundry, each shaded by a colorful awning. Van Dorn’s side housed saloons, rooming houses, gambling casinos, and hotels fronting for brothels.
The office had a bare floor, ancient furniture, and a single window. Decoration consisted of wanted posters, the newest being th
e two freshly printed versions of the lumberjack’s drawing of the Wrecker, with and without the beard, noted by the sharp-eyed Southern Pacific ticket clerk in Sacramento.
Kisley and Fulton had regained their spirits, though Fulton appeared exhausted.
“Clearly,” Wally remarked, “the boss doesn’t waste money on office space in Ogden.”
“Or furnishings,” Mack added. “That desk looks like it arrived by wagon train.”
“Perhaps it’s the neighborhood that appeals, located within spitting distance of Union Depot.”
“And spitting they are, on our sidewalk.”
Continuing in Weber-and-Fields mode, they went to the window and pointed down at the crowded sidewalk. “Perceive Mr. Van Dorn’s genius. The view from this window can be used to instruct apprentice detectives in the nature of crime in all its varieties.”
“Come here, young Isaac, gaze down upon our neighboring saloons, brothels, and opium dens. Observe potential customers down on their luck earning the price of a drink or a woman by panhandling. Or, failing to kindle charity, sticking up citizens in that alley.”
“Note there, a mustachioed fop luring the gullible with shell games on a folding table.”
“And look at those out-of-work hard-rock miners dressed in rags, pretending to sleep on the pavement outside that saloon while actually laying in wait for drunks to roll.”
“How long was the man dead?” Bell asked.
“Better part of a day, Doc thinks. You were right about the stabbing. A narrow blade straight through his neck. Just like Wish and the Glendale yard bull.”
“So if the Wrecker killed him, he could not have left Ogden before last night. But no one saw him buy a ticket.”
“Plenty of freights in and out,” ventured Wally.