Metropolis Pt. 2, page 23
“Edward, what are we doing?”
“Come,” he says.
He laughs and pulls her along; they step over a spilled spittoon into the dim, stinking bail desk vestibule. Cigarette smoke hangs thick over men lined up on benches. Officer Perkins is there, too, but Tommy the desk clerk is not. Sitting where he sat is a younger fella with a cleft palate and a twitchy eye.
Perkins recognizes her and strolls over. “I thought we might see you again. How’ve you been, miss?”
“Officer Perkins, do I detect the scent of cloves on your collar?”
“You’re a tease, too, then,” Perkins says with a chuckle.
“Edward, this is Officer Perkins. He’s a credit to the force. When you’re mayor, this man should be assigned to your private detail.”
Perkins’s eyes go wide. “You’re the senator what’s runnin’ for mayor.” He smooths down his hair. “It’s a pleasure to have you here, such as it is.”
“Victoria,” Edward says with a smile, “do I want to know how you seem so well acquainted with the bail receiving desk?”
“Probably not.” She winks, then turns to Officer Perkins. “Where’s Tommy? The bail clerk?”
Perkins folds his arms. “Well, after you filled his head with a lot of wild ideas, that lug went back to school. Studying law, he is.”
“Wonderful.”
“Well,” Edward says, “can we get some help from the new man, then? I’ve come to collect my brother, Julian Baynes.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Perkins says, looking from Edward to Victoria and back. “He’s due in court tomorrow morning, and we’re almost closed up for the night. Besides, from what I hear, the trial’s a formality. Rigged, some say. They need a head to roll on this one.”
Edward clears his throat. “Because they suspect the derailment wasn’t an accident.”
Perkins nods. “And Express Chief Peters, who was on the train, is pointing the finger at your brother. He’s testifying tomorrow.”
“Then we still have time.” Edward dashes to the bail desk, picks up the phone, and dials. He waits, tapping his fingers. “Yes, hello? Please ring me through to Judge Crawford. Tell him it’s the future mayor, Edward Baynes.”
A moment passes.
“Yes, Abe, it’s me, Edward. Listen, I’m calling in that favor you owe me.” Pause. “What favor? Tell me you don’t remember that lovely blonde at Tobacco Road. Maybe your wife might like to meet her.” Short pause. “Now, Abe, that’s an ugly word. Let’s call this a horse trade. You get my brother off—and I mean now, I’m at the bail desk as we speak—and not only will I forget the name of your blonde friend, I’ll give you a chit to cash in when I take the mayor’s seat.” Short pause. “Ah, perfect, thanks, Abe. What’s that? Well, dip it in vinegar. I hear that works. Goodbye.”
Edward gets off the phone and claps his hands.
Five minutes later, they walk Julian into the receiving lobby. He’s thin and has a scraggly beard. He smells worse than the spilled spittoon. He’s trembling. “Victoria?”
“No, Julian. This was Edward’s doing.”
Edward steps forward and extends his hand. “You’ve heard about Victoria and me, I imagine. We didn’t really plan it this way—it just . . . happened. But it’s on the level, I assure you.”
Julian glares at Edward.
Edward continues, “You have no reason to trust me, Brother. I’ve been jealous of you all my life, and I’ve acted the part. But today, even in the face of losing what I thought I wanted most, the only thought I had was to get you out of here—so Victoria could make her own choices and not have a prison cell make them for her.”
She steps forward and takes Julian’s trembling hand. “You’re still using cocaine.”
“Didn’t seem much of a point to stopping in here.” Julian smiles, but his eyes are ringed with dark circles. “You look beautiful.”
She puts her hand on his chest. “There’s a team of horses inside you, Julian, but they’re running in different directions. I hope you find a way to bring them in stride. That’ll be a very good day.”
She kisses his bearded cheek, lets go of his hand, backs up to Edward, and takes his.
Julian’s head drops. “Goodbye, then, Victoria. I wish you well.” He shuffles past them, out onto Twenty-Fourth Street, and disappears.
No sooner had he gone than Edward drops to one knee. “Victoria Page, will you be my wife?”
She doesn’t love him the way she once loved Julian, but she does care for him, and he has been so good to her. “Yes.”
He puts the ring on her finger right there in the dingy jail. Perkins whoops and hollers. They all laugh, and Edward hails them a cab back to his home on Echo’s Hill, where Victoria has been staying with him these last few months.
Together they pass through the fence gate, stroll up the walk, climb the front steps, and step inside the big house. They head up to the second floor and down the long hall to the master bedroom.
“Close your eyes,” she tells him.
He does and she leads him to the bed. He sits and she takes her paintbox from beneath the bed and puts it in his lap.
“All right, open your eyes,” she says. “And open the box.”
Inside Edward finds the bust of him she’s spent weeks carefully molding to capture the strength of his jaw and the firmness in his eyes. “Oh, Victoria. It’s . . . I have no words. You have such a gift.” He stands and kisses her. “Come to bed.”
“Let me get ready,” she says. She hangs her coat and walks to the vanity Edward has bought her. She sits and combs her hair, touches up her lipstick.
Then the sunlight fades, and moonbeams fall across the floor. Morning sun comes too fast. Shadows stretch across the room, until dusk, and evening, and moonlight again.
The days pass like seconds. In the mirror, her face loses its smile. The light in her eyes dims. Still safe, far away from cashcarts and tea rooms and cattle cars, she feels an emptiness growing inside her that she cannot fill, like a windup doll that can no longer be wound.
The face in the mirror changes.
She is staring back at a man. She knows him. She is him.
Nicholas.
I am Nicholas. I am Victoria.
They begin to weep.
They weep for days.
The shifting light slows to night and the grey shadows seen by moonlight. As they stare into the mirror, there is a voice in the darkness behind them.
They cry out.
CHAPTER 33
JULY 12, 1999
“OPEN YOUR eyes, Nicholas.”
Nick jolted out of regression, screaming. He’d known the woman in his dreams was Victoria for days. Known she was murdered in that room. Now he knew he was her.
He dug his hands into the couch and grabbed fistfuls of slashed-up stuffing. Memories cascaded inside him with new meaning.
“Nicholas, Nicholas,” Beadys said. “What is it, my boy? Talk to me.”
The salon cabin danced in his eyes, a twist of lights and shattered glass and broken furniture. He could smell the seawater and the scent of linseed oil from the vanity he’d just been sitting at.
“Nicholas,” Beadys said again, lightly slapping his face. “Where are you, Nicholas?”
So many sounds were rattling around inside his head . . . Victoria screaming.
He shot to his feet and bolted from the yacht and down the gangplank toward his Bronco.
“Nicholas!” Beadys called behind him. “Please talk to me. What did you see? We need to talk, Nicholas! This is dangerous for you!”
Nick slammed the gas pedal to the floor, raced down Frontage Drive, shot into the tunnel, weaving in and out of traffic, and headed into Metropolis. Help me, Victoria. He cut across the south side of the city toward the East River and took the Darrow Bridge onto Farbridge Island, careened past the turn to Murphy’s place into the rural district. Long tracts of woodlands and fields gone fallow blurred by as he drove deeper into the night.
At last, he screeched to a halt in front of a churchyard gate—an old pastoral church, long out of use, its grass overgrown and dry from summer sun.
He jumped out of his Bronco, squeezed between the gates, and strode down the moonlit path toward the church graveyard. The moonlight cast the inscriptions on the cemetery stones in dark relief.
He stopped at a flat, overgrown grave marker, dropped to his knees, and gently brushed back the grass. The simple epitaph read: In loving memory of our child. So innocent, eyes open wide.
He started to weep.
At the far end of Farbridge Island, in a churchyard long gone to seed, at the very back of a broad forgotten cemetery was this tiny marker hidden beneath tall, dead grass. Victoria Page.
This was her grave.
This was his grave.
He could hardly breathe.
The life he’d lived before had come to a bitter, tragic end. She’d been so caring. So willing to see the good in others. And for all her goodness, for every sacrifice she’d so willingly made for the people who came into her life, she was killed and forgotten.
He raised his head and pled with heaven—like he had when he lost Emily—that it might not be so. That God would somehow take it back. Make things right. Innocence and goodness shouldn’t perish like this. It should be protected. When someone as loving and selfless as Victoria, as Emily, could be taken so carelessly, so thoughtlessly, then what use had he for this world?
Looking back at Victoria’s stone, he huddled close, whispering, “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. I lost my daughter. I loved her so much I didn’t want to go on. The silence was too deep. I couldn’t hear the sounds anymore. The music was gone. Even simple things like the wind in autumn, or the water splashing against the ferry hull. And when I lost that, Victoria, I lost a part of myself.”
He placed his forehead on her cold stone. “And now, I feel like I’ve lost you, too. Lost another part of who I am.”
He wept for a few moments, his tears dropping onto her grave. “Your life got cut short, same as Emily’s. You both missed the chance to be with the ones you loved. But I’m still here. So is my wife and son. And I still have time to be with them. It’s a lesson I won’t forget, Victoria. Thank you.” He smiled. “I’m learning all about my life by looking through your eyes.”
Then he sat back. “But you and Emily weren’t given a choice, were you?” And that was a goddamn shame. He looked up at the night sky again, with its bright moon and stars. “Can you hear me,” he said to whoever was up there. “You going to help me this time? Just help me to put it right. For Victoria. Please.”
As soon as he’d said it, the image of Murphy came into his head. That whiskey-drinking, navy-cussing, shotgun-wielding, stubborn old mule . . . was about as perfect an answer to prayer as Nick could have hoped for.
He wiped his eyes, stood, and gave her gravestone a long last look. “Murph and I are going to do everything we can to find the bastard who did this to you. To us. We owe you that much.”
He walked back toward the gates, knowing one thing for sure. He wasn’t afraid of the memories anymore. Instead, he would embrace them, try to find peace in them. And maybe they would lead him to her killer, which would be worth every night of misery they’d brought him.
By the time he got back to Murphy’s it was almost two a.m. The old detective was still awake. He looked up at Nick over the top of a book, whose bold title read, PAST LIVES. Nick went in and sat across from him and recounted both his regression and visiting Victoria’s grave before falling silent. Murphy didn’t ask any questions and pointed him down the hall to the spare bedroom.
Nick fell onto the bed, the images of Victoria in the vanity wandering through his head, and slowly drifted to sleep without a drink for the first time in weeks. Turned out, Dr. Beadys had been right about one thing—the PTSD was real.
As he faded, he kept thinking that although she may have been a victim of her circumstance, she’d almost certainly been betrayed by someone she trusted. And that thought put a little fire in Nick’s heart. He hadn’t been there for Emily the way he wished he had, but maybe, in a way, he could still be there for Victoria. That lent his heart some fire, too.
CHAPTER 34
SEPTEMBER 29, 1928
EDWARD ROARED past the main house of his father’s Westbrook estate in his Falcon-Knight Roadster. He cut north onto a rutted road, angling for the hunting cabin at the far north end of the property. Morning sunlight dappled the dirt and grass. The scent of burning leaves drifted on the chill autumn air. Cardinals and sparrows took flight as he rumbled down the long north road. He checked the glove box to be sure the papers were still there, then closed and locked it.
Box elders and black walnut trees gave way to balsam fir and eastern hemlock as he pulled up next to his father’s 1922 International truck and cut the engine. He hiked up a short trail to a clearing, where a roaring bonfire licked up at the bright morning sky. A table sat on each side of the fire—one laid out with a selection of rifles and ammunition, the other with an assortment of breakfast meats.
His father stepped out of the cabin and pulled on gloves as he descended the steps toward the fire. “You’re late. We’ve missed getting into good blinds before sunup.”
“The property is teeming with game, Father. We’ve never come up short.”
“Put some food in you. I don’t want you grumbling about your empty belly when we get up the mountain.”
Edward actually loved this part of the ritual. For all his father’s faults, the man knew how to cook meat—ham, bacon, sausage, corned beef hash, livermush, scrapple, steak. There were eggs, too—boiled, mashed, and covered with butter, salt, pepper, and cayenne.
They filled their plates and ate in silence by the fire. The smoke drifted between them, warming Edward against the chill and stinging his eyes. That was all part of it. Julian had been part of it, too, in the beginning, but he’d stopped joining them for the whitetail hunt years ago—only because he couldn’t suffer Father, even on the man’s best days.
Joseph, father’s personal butler, bustled out of the cabin, gathered up their plates and the remainder of the food, and whisked back into the cabin, leaving Edward and Cornelius to the second part of the ritual—the selection of their rifles.
They rounded the bonfire to the weapons table. It was an impressive array of guns and only a drop in the bucket compared to Cornelius’s collection at the main house.
“What’ll it be today, son?”
Edward walked the length of the table, hefting the rifles, looking down the sights, checking the action of several weapons—1922 Bang rifle, Thompson Autorifle Model 1921, 1920 .300 Savage, several Winchesters, including a .30-30 he knew his father loved. Edward finally settled on the .300 Savage.
“Fine choice,” Cornelius said. He picked up the .30-30 Winchester, ran the lever back, dry-fired it, and hoisted it onto his shoulder. “Let’s head over toward the river. There’s a herd that likes to drink there in the morning.”
They each picked up a box of bullets—Cornelius also grabbed a pair of binoculars—and they headed north along the backside of Skybridge Mountain. Cornelius paused at a tall spruce tree, pulled a couple of nubs of sap off the bark, and handed one to Edward. They popped them in their mouths and chewed them like gum to cover the smell of their breath.
New World warblers and merlins sang in the trees above the crunch of the men’s boots on dried pine needles and twigs.
“How’s your campaign coming along?” his father asked.
“Not much of a campaign. I shut myself of the families, so I just don’t have the funding to make up the gap in the polls.”
“The way I hear it, it was the mob that shut themselves of you.” Cornelius stopped and raised a hand for silence. He scanned ahead with the binoculars and motioned for them to continue.
“Does it really matter who quit whom, Father?”
Cornelius grunted. “I told you from the beginning not to take their money. Comes with too many hooks. But you thought you knew better. And now, you’ve no time to raise the funds.”
“I wouldn’t have needed to if you weren’t financing Callahan.” Edward tapped his father’s shoulder and pointed down a gulch. His father put the binoculars on the spot.
“It’s a doe,” his father said, and got moving again. “You shouldn’t be surprised where I spend my money, son. You and I don’t share the same ideas. Why would I put a man in office who’s likely to restrict my trade? You’d better sharpen up if you want a career in politics beyond the state senate.”
“It doesn’t actually bother me, Father. I’ll still finish the campaign—you taught me to finish the things I start, no matter how unpleasant—but I think I’ve found something I care about more than holding office.”
“Is that so?” said Cornelius.
“I met a woman.”
His father chuckled. “Women are even more temporary than politics, Edward. My God, man, you’ll wind up in the poorhouse like your brother. Who is this skirt?”
They hiked another hundred yards or so while Edward tried to figure out how to say it. He didn’t find anything better than “It’s Victoria Page, Father.”
Cornelius whirled around, his gun nearly clipping Edward’s nose. “Are you insane? Have you not seen what she’s done to your brother?”
“You’re wrong about her, Father.”
“Julian said the same thing all the way to his airy suite at the Southside Jail, where I hope he rots for—”
“For what, Father? Saving your crew chief from a train car fire? For recovering the Federal Reserve plates, which probably saved you from federal investigation, if not prosecution?”
Cornelius glared at him. “You don’t know the whole of it, Edward. Your brother lost his way with all the poison he put in his body and all the gambling he did trying to dig himself out of a hole of his own making.”
Edward didn’t want to argue about Julian. “Look, Father, I’ve asked Victoria to marry me.”
