Outside in the warm night, the summer air does little to clear his head. He swings his leg over his horse and lowers himself into the saddle inch by inch, angry that he has to be careful about it. The alcohol has dulled the pain enough that he can almost forget it, but not quite. It still gnaws. He’s sore from the doctor’s poking and prodding, as if the wound itself weren’t bad enough. At least he can put this place and this day behind him now. He turns the horse’s head toward Janesville.
Fifteen miles down the road, still five miles from home, he slows at the crossroads. The night is silent and warm. For a moment, he pictures himself turning right. Continuing east toward Chicago and Ohio and New York City and the Atlantic Ocean, none of which he’s ever seen. Throwing caution to the wind and spurring the horse as fast as he can go, galloping across the open flat land till they’re both gasping. Hunger is what makes up his mind in the moment. The lighted window of a restaurant just before the bend, perched here for travelers at all hours, draws him. The road will be there afterward either way.
He ties his horse out front, goes inside, takes a seat. Late as it is, just past midnight, the only other customer is a gentleman in the corner with his head down on the table like he’s asleep. Reading the menu, Holt wipes his face with a handkerchief and feels the alcohol sweating out of his pores. He asks for coffee, but this time of night, they don’t have a pot ready, and the waitress disappears to put one on fresh. Every single thing on the bill of fare sounds delicious. Fried ham and creamed hominy, roly-poly pudding, and blueberry pie. He could hardly go wrong, whatever he chooses. As Iris says, hunger is the best sauce. He loses himself for a moment, thinking of her. She doesn’t yet know the news he heard today. He isn’t sure what to tell her. Or what to tell anyone. No doubt they’ll force him to resign, give up his position as the town’s only police officer. Who will he be then? Would Iris still love a nobody, if that’s who he becomes?
The bell atop the door frame jingles. He glances up from the menu for just a moment, and when he does, the whole world shifts.
In the doorway is a young woman in a long cloak, gripping a valise. Since he last saw her, she has wiped the fake blood from her cheek.
He wastes no time, standing from his chair and meeting her in the doorway, before she can step farther inside. He reaches for her elbow and says, “Ma’am?”
She seems much smaller now than she did onstage. She stares up at him with those odd, mismatched eyes. One blue eye, like a regular eye, the left one. The right one, half brown, half blue. Divided right down the middle, straight as a plumb line. Even if her sparkling black gown weren’t peeking out from under her cloak, which it is, the eyes would have given her away.
He says in a clear, firm voice, “I’m Officer Virgil Holt of the Janesville Police Department. I’m placing you under arrest, ma’am. On suspicion of murder.”
“Murder!” she exclaims, blinking, her hand flying to cover her lips. “Sir?”
“Don’t be alarmed, ma’am. Just come with me and we’ll discuss it,” he says, reaching for her elbow, which he almost manages to hold for a moment before she bolts.
They struggle in the doorway, and the bell jingles madly as he maneuvers her outside. As they jostle and his shoulder slams into the door frame, the thought strikes him—he shouldn’t be doing this, it’s dangerous—and he relaxes his grip just a little.
She breaks free and runs as he stumbles, righting himself quickly, but not quickly enough to hold her. When he looks up, he sees her untying his horse and neatly balancing on the rail to hop up onto its back. He lets her. Because when he whistles for his horse, it brings her over to him, and he smoothly mounts up into the saddle behind her while she’s still figuring out whether to jump. The horse knows him well enough that he doesn’t even need the reins. He locks both arms around the magician.
“Don’t fight,” he says. “We both fall off and get trampled, that helps no one.”
She still struggles for a moment but seems too afraid of falling off the horse to put her whole self into it. She seems even smaller to him now. The top of her head is just under his chin, and her hair is twisted into ropes and knotted together. A clove hitch, like a hunter would use.
“I didn’t murder anyone,” she says, her voice hoarse and uncertain. “Who’s murdered?”
He doesn’t answer. Back in the restaurant doorway, he can see a shadow. Either the waitress coming out to see what’s happened, or that other patron, if the noise woke him. Best to go before anyone sees. He can’t stay here and conduct an interrogation on the back of a horse. He needs to find out what she knows, what she did.
North then…or south? If she’s guilty, he should take her back to the theater in Waterloo immediately and hand her over. Mose is probably still there. But the horse, eager for his hay bed, starts moving in the direction of Janesville, and Holt lets himself—lets both of them—be carried. He’ll sober up on the way. He can always bring her back. He’s an officer of the law and bound to do the right thing, except he’s not sure what the right thing is just now.
If she’s guilty, she’ll be the most famous criminal in the state in years. And he’ll be the one who brought her in. They won’t be able to force him out then, wounded or not. He needs all this to go his way. She could change everything.
Holt’s head is buzzing and clouded, but the horse knows the way home.
Janesville, Iowa
Half past eleven o’clock in the evening
The station is a single room, not much more than a wooden box with a door on it. There’s a chair and a desk and a window. Only the gas lamp on the street outside gives any light to see by. He drops her into the plain wood chair like a heavy bag of feed, a solid dead weight. She sags forward. Her reddish hair, now escaped from its intricate knot, is a nest. He pulls away her cloak and valise and throws them near the door, which he locks, then grabs his uniform belt from the nearby hook and buckles it on in haste. Wearing his gun helps clear his head a little. He turns back toward her and sees she isn’t moving. As he steps closer to examine her in the dim light, his foot slips on loose sequins. He loses his footing a moment, unsteady.
She is up out of the chair on her feet, a blur of motion. Instinct kicks in. He throws himself at her, arms around her knees, and brings them both crashing to the floor. Again he tells himself these exertions are dangerous. It’s exactly what the doctor said not to do. But the doctor couldn’t have foreseen this circumstance, and anyway, now he’s in it.
He hears the air go out of her lungs. He’s breathless too but recovers faster. A second chance. This time, he’ll do better. He hauls her body up onto the chair again, shoves her against its back, and secures her wrists to the chair with the pair of handcuffs from his belt.
Will it be enough?
Officer Holt goes to his desk, feeling his way in the dark and shoving his own chair out of the way, and retrieves four more pairs of handcuffs. He’d use more if he had them. He affixes all four pairs to her slim wrists, one after another after another, to total five. He loops the chains through the chair back’s straight wooden slats as he goes.
She’s breathing. He can see her shoulders rising and falling. Mose told him all about her on the way to the theater. That half-brown eye is believed to be the source of her power. She uses it to hypnotize the audience into swallowing her illusions. He should avoid looking into it, just to be safe.
Just as the last cuff clicks into place, her voice ragged, she says, “I am not an escape artist. Perhaps you’ve mistaken me.”
“I know what you are,” he tells the magician.
“You have the advantage of me then,” she replies.
“I told you, I’m a police officer.”
“And yet you wear no uniform and you smell like a wet dog drowned in gin.”
It stings that she’s right. Now that his hands are free, he lights the lamp. “I’m a police officer, and you’re a suspect in my custody. Those are the facts.”
“Are they? And what am I suspected of?”
“As I told you when I arrested you, ma’am, you are suspected of murder.”
“Whose?”
“Your husband’s.”