The Edge of Dreams (Molly Murphy Mysteries, #14)

“Maybe you should give me the details,” I said. “If I’m to lie here and recuperate, I’ll have time to ponder. Perhaps I’d come up with some kind of connection you’d overlooked.”


“Oh, no, Molly,” he began. “You know how I feel about involving you in my cases.”

“You’re not involving me. You’re just adding the perspective of a woman—a woman detective, and though I say so myself, a darned good one.”

He looked at me long and hard. “Very well,” he said. “You should rest tonight, but I’ll come and see you tomorrow and have one of the clerks write out a list of the various murders for you. That way you can take notes.”

“Speaking of notes,” I said. “What do you know about the notes that he sent? Any telltale features?”

“None at all. They were typewritten by an ordinary Remington typewriter on the sort of onionskin paper you’d find in any office.”

“No damaged keys on the typewriting machine?”

“Nothing unusual.”

“Have your men asked who might have purchased a typewriting machine recently? I shouldn’t imagine too many people buy such things.”

“It’s fairly easy to get your hands on a typewriter these days,” Daniel said. “Our murderer could work in an office or bank.”

“How about fingerprints on the paper?”

“None. Which is interesting in itself, isn’t it? He’s meticulous. Not making any errors. Of course there were several on the envelopes, but one would expect that—sorters at the post officer, delivery men, even the constable manning the front desk.”

“So they were mailed? Not hand-delivered?”

“Only today’s was hand-delivered.”

“And nobody remembers what the person who delivered it looked like?”

“It was a small boy. That’s all they could tell me. One of the street urchins given a coin to run an errand. He handed it to a woman coming into police headquarters to make a complaint and ran off. She couldn’t remember what he looked like. We’ve little chance of finding the right one again.”

“So your man was close by—close enough to engage the services of a street urchin.”

Daniel sighed. “Who knows? He may have been following my every move.”

“Then he may know you are here right now.”

“Hardly likely. I took a cab from City Hall. We went at a hell of a lick too, and I could swear there was no one following us.”

“So what about the postmark on the letters? Were they all mailed from the same place?”

“The first few were mailed from Grand Central Terminal,” he said. “There is a mail drop in the main station area. As you can imagine thousands of people pass it all the time. But we set a man to keep watch there day and night and the next note was posted at the main post office.”

“He’s one step ahead of you all the time,” I said.

“It certainly seems that way.”

“When did these notes start coming, Daniel?”

“The first one came in May, right after you’d sailed for Europe. Right before the first murder.”

“And what did it say?”

“It said ‘When I was alive I was unjustly accused of a crime I didn’t commit. Now I am dead I can exact retribution with impunity.’”

“Holy Mother of God!” I exclaimed. “We’re dealing with a ghost.”

I stared at Daniel not knowing what to say.

“Now you see why this is complicated.” Daniel said. “I can’t help feeling that someone is having a good laugh at our expense. Obviously I don’t believe in ghosts and I certainly don’t think that they can mail letters from Grand Central Depot. Or use typewriting machines, for that matter.”

“So it has to be a living person claiming to be someone else, someone who has died,” I said slowly, considering each word as it came out. “Maybe someone who feels a relative or friend was punished unjustly and wants revenge on his behalf?”

“That’s possible, I suppose,” Daniel said.

I was warming to this idea. “And he feels you were responsible for the wrongful conviction and death of this person. That should be easy enough to trace, Daniel. You need to come up with a list of people who were executed based on your investigation and evidence. There can’t be that many.”

“I’ve been in the police department for fifteen years, Molly. I’ve been involved in quite a few murder investigations.”

“But not hundreds, surely. How many murder trials are there each year, for the love of Mike? And how many result in a death sentence?”

He nodded. “Yes, I suppose it’s not an overwhelming number. But it may not necessarily have been a murder trial followed by an execution. It may have been as simple as someone dying as a result of a disease he caught while in prison, or being murdered by another inmate. Or even someone who died of shock or grief after a trial. How could I ever check on those?”