The biggest surprise thus far—and she must believe there were more to come—was that Bambina and Celestina went to temple once a month or so. Every other Italian Elise had ever known or heard about was Catholic—as Catholic as the pope—but half the Mezzanottes were Jewish, while others seemed to be nothing at all.
She should have been shocked and worried about her own immortal soul in this hotbed of cheerful heretics; a year ago she likely would have had just that reaction. Now nothing seemed so simple. She had no basis on which to make judgments about the Mezzanottes. She hoped they would do as much for her.
? ? ?
AT HALF PAST five Jack slipped out of bed, grabbed his clothes, and dressed in the hall, determined to let Anna sleep on. Despite a long day of traveling in damp clothes while dealing with distraught children, she had had a restless night. It was after three when she finally slipped into a deep sleep. He knew, because he hadn’t slept well himself, aware of every chime of the mantel clock from the parlor.
John McKinnawae had robbed them both of a peaceful night’s sleep, and Jack was sure there would be more such nights. Then at six in the morning a runner from Mulberry Street had knocked on the door with a message. The chief was calling a meeting at seven about the Campbell and associated cases. Associated cases. They were in for it now.
? ? ?
FOUR DETECTIVES AND two patrolmen were gathered in Chief Baker’s office, including Oscar and himself. Jack counted four case files spread out on the table and knew the names on the labels without looking: Janine Campbell, Abigail Liljestr?m, Eula Schmitt, and Irina Svetlova. More folders sat in a pile front of Oscar, the looks of which filled Jack with dread.
“I’ve got three more likelies and one possible,” Oscar was saying.
One by one he went over the cases that fit the profile, all of them ferreted out of death certificates going back six months. Mariella Luna, Esther Fromm, Jenny House, and the one uncertain case, a Jane Doe. All of them had died of peritonitis following an illegal abortion, and all of them had died hard.
The three who had been identified were married to successful men with substantial incomes; they had well-appointed homes, servants, abundant and expensive wardrobes, and somewhere between two and six healthy, well cared-for children. They were all between twenty-five and thirty-five years old. Jenny House had died at her home on Gramercy Park; Esther Fromm and Mariella Luna, both from out of town, had died in rooms at the Astor and Grand Union hotels. Jane Doe had been dead on arrival at Women’s Hospital.
Baker said, “We’ll need new postmortems on all of them. Sainsbury, get going on the exhumations. I want shovels in the ground no later than noon. Maroney, do you have a forensic specialist in mind?”
“Nicholas Lambert at Bellevue, if he’s willing. That will save some time, as he did the Liljestr?m autopsy and we won’t have to bring the remains back from Buffalo. And he’s good.”
“Go talk to him today. We have to get moving on this before the newspapers pick it up. Larkin, what about the letter?”
Michael Larkin was the youngest detective in the room, but he was not looking his age. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his skin mottled and doughy. The thing was, he might be fighting a hangover complete with sour stomach and a headache, but his voice and hands were steady. It was nearly impossible to knock a Larkin down; even harder to keep him there.
“I’ve got a draft.” He slid a piece of paper down the table toward Baker, who took it up and held it at arm’s length to read. In ten seconds flat he was scowling at the man who had written it.
“Christ on the bloody cross, Larkin, do you know any lady who talks like this?” He cleared his throat and read. “‘I write to you in utter despair, a foolish girl taken in by the promises of a rake.’ Reading penny dreadfuls in your time off, Larkin?”
Oscar handed Baker another piece of paper. “Maybe this will work.”
This time the captain read aloud from the start. “. . . regard to your advertisement . . . if your medical practice . . . hygienic, modern . . . prepared to pay a premium . . . respond with particulars.”
He grunted. “That’s more like it. Larkin, get it postmarked first thing tomorrow and into the right post office box. Then set up a rotation to stake out the lobby. I want to hear from you every couple hours.”
? ? ?
TURNING THE RIG north on Second Avenue toward Bellevue, Jack said, “I could have used you yesterday, talking to that priest.”
Oscar had been brought up Catholic and still went to mass when he was sober enough on a Sunday morning. He had no illusions about priests and was generally hard to shock, but he frowned when Jack told him about the Mullens and McKinnawae.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Jack said. “But it didn’t occur to me that he could make the whole family disappear, like a magician’s rabbit into a hat.”