Double Jeopardy

Three

ThreeAlycia’s killer was a wretched scrap of humanity. Seb looked at the gaunt, empty face staring up from the heavy-plank floored cell and recognized the glazed-eyed vacuum of a man who has been asked to endure more than he can bear. He’d seen it at Gettysburg, where his regiment had suffered the heaviest losses of the war.

Polk sat in a collapsed squat, long arms dangling over knees on a rawboned and scraggy frame, as though he no longer had any use for them. A lock of lank blond hair fell over a face hollowed out by starvation. Apart from the incongruous well-cut dark suit, he was like so many of the veterans dawdling on street corners throughout the land.

I could have been one of them.

So far the police captain had got very little information from him: a single name, “Polk”, and rank, “Private, 1st Confederate Regiment, Army of Tennessee.” It was four years since the war ended, but Polk didn’t seem to register it. He’d become agitated when questioned, his eyes doing a frenetic jig around him as if he was expecting a bombardment, mouth opening and closing like a fish, with no words bubbling out.

The Sacramento County Prison was located in the basement of the Sacramento City Water Works building on I Street, very close to the river. Murky, stagnant-water smells permeated the air, but there was no hint of daylight in the massive gloomy underground cell, shut off from all hopes of escape.

Faint train noises filtered through the thick brick walls — the Central Pacific Railroad was next door — but inside, life stopped.

Seb felt that strange dislocation he’d known before. The disruption of death. A choking outrage closed his throat, disbelief that the sun was rising on a normal day when life could never be normal again.

He shivered, suddenly cold although his armpits were sticky. Basil stood beside him, hunched over and gray with fatigue, both of them still in evening suits that smelt stale from being worn too long. It had been a very long night.

Once he’d restrained Polk, the man had lapsed into a vacant acquiescence, making no further attempt to escape. Seb handed him over after giving the sergeant a brief statement and returned to the box to coax Basil into releasing Alycia into the care of one of the city’s undertakers, called in by the police.

Mabel and Joseph Reeves — a mother and son team who’d carried on the business after Joseph senior, the county coroner, had died — had handled the situation with quiet understanding, but Basil still insisted on accompanying his wife to their premises in J Street. He’d left reluctantly only after Mabel had reassured him of her tender touch and satisfied him that Alycia would be well looked after.

“What’s going on, Reb?” As a temporarily sworn deputy in a neighboring district, Seb had some standing with the local cops, and the police captain had agreed to him and Basil being given access to the prisoner.

The prisoner’s head jerked up, and a glimmer of intelligence flared in his brown eyes. “Reb? You’d be one of those Yankee blues, I wager.” He glared at Seb for a few seconds then his eyes skittered away.

Seb stepped closer to him. “I was one of those Yankee blues. You’re right there. But the war’s been over for years. You know that, don’t you?”

Soft brown eyes engaged Seb’s. “Some people’s, maybe. Not mine.”

Seb sighed. “That lady you shot tonight. She had nothing to do with the war. You know that, don’t you?”

Polk’s head dropped to his chest, and tears trickled down the haggard trenches in his lined face.

“Do you even know who she is?”

Silence. Then Polk shook his head slowly from side to side. “It doesn’t matter. She was a spy. They’re all spies. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all over now.”

Seb shot a hopeless glance at Basil, who’d covered his mouth and turned away, as if recognizing conversation was pointless.

“No, Polk. You’re wrong. She wasn’t a spy. But you’re right about one thing. It is all over now.”

He stepped towards Basil, casting his arm lightly around the older man’s shoulders. “Don’t think we’re going to learn anything useful here, my friend. I think we need to get you home to rest.”

Ten minutes later Basil stumbled wearily into his hotel room, Seb’s arm still protectively across his shoulders. A fur stole hung over the back of an armchair, and Alycia’s familiar lily of the valley fragrance hung in the air. Basil turned and gripped his hand. “Seb, you’ve done a great job, you really have. And I don’t feel it’s fair to ask you for more.” He gestured to one of two armchairs set up in the sitting room that opened into the bedroom. “I don’t want to do it, but I’ve got no choice.”

He collapsed into one of the chairs and glanced around him, as if looking for answers. “That man Polk. He’s just a crazy. A madman, the poor devil. Still fighting the war. It doesn’t make sense that he came after Alycia. Just no sense.”

Seb sank slowly into the chair beside him and nodded. “I agree. It doesn’t make sense.”

Basil tapped his fist lightly against his closed lips, and his gaze clouded for a few seconds before snapping back. “And I can’t live with that Sebastian. I have to understand what’s happened here. It will be hard enough living without her …” He trailed off and swallowed rapidly several times. “Hard enough. But I have to know why. That man. The suit. The gun. He looks like he’s barely able to put food on his table.”

Seb nodded again.

“And the police — they’re competent enough. But I want my own man on it, Sebastian. I want you.”

“Me?” Seb raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, Sebastian, you. I need to know who’s behind this. Who organized it. And why. It doesn’t feel like a random act. It was planned. And that man in the cell has no rhyme or reason to be doing it.”

He let out a long sigh. “Spies.” The word was a drawn-out, sibilant sigh. “It’s nonsense.”

Seb slumped forward in his chair, elbows on knees, chin resting in his hands, overcome by a feeling of light-headedness. Deal with Johnny Reb and his craziness? He’d seen the last of Johnny Reb in 1865 and he’d been trying to forget him, in sickness and in health, day and night, ever since.

He’d been twelve when he was sent back to his Boston uncle — his mother had died at his birth — after the death of his father in Hong Kong. He’d grown from a callow teen to a seasoned soldier on American soil — become a Yankee — but he barely lasted a month in Boston after his return from the front, his uncle and so many of his old friends dead. He didn’t want to stay and be reminded of all the loss.

He’d drifted aimlessly West, gradually healing during solitary days in the saddle in the emptiness of big open spaces, until one day it dawned on him to seek out his first family. Reuniting with his two half-brothers, John and Nathan, last year was the best thing he’d done since the peace was signed. He’d enjoyed the feeling of being with people who genuinely cared for him, and the work Basil offered was just what he’d been craving to get himself established again.

And now Basil was asking him to willingly return to the snake pit of his fears, the dread that he would be forever pursued by death and loss, never able to make a good life with a good woman. Even the smell of the cordite in that confined space of the theater box, the reek in the prison … He’d felt his world closing in around him again, like a tomb. He didn’t want to have anything more to do with conflict and death. He was trying to find his way back into the light.

“Seb, are you okay? You’re not sick?”

Basil sat erect in his chair and regarded him with a grave expression.

Sebastian took a deep breath and straightened up. “Sorry. I’m fine. Just a little tired. We both need to try and sleep.” He looked full into Basil’s weary face and smiled, willing himself to be strong. “I quite understand your case, Basil. Anyone would. And, of course, I will do my utmost to find who killed Alycia. It’s the most natural wish in the world, to see she gets justice.”

His mind flashed back to Polk, a madman bound for execution who seemed to have no comprehension of what he’d done. God help me if I ever slip that far. Am I already just a little bit crazy?

“I’ll get onto it first thing in the morning.”

Basil gave him a hard look. “Yup. I suppose like it or not, there will be one. For us, at any rate.”