The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Read online

  “And that’s why we’re gonna hand it over and not say a word about where it was or how we got it.” Trace slung his bedroll across the saddle skirt and turned to face his friend, keeping a hand on the horse’s flank. “If we don’t, how long you think we got before one of them comes lookin for it?”

  * * *

  “YE GODS, YOU found it,” Miss Fairweather said, almost before she had entered the library. “Show me. Is that it?”

  Trace rolled the wooden egg out of the sacking and put it into her hands. She seemed to flinch at the touch of it, her mouth tightening with the same repellence he had felt, but she looked it over carefully, inspected the wax seal with her fingertips. “You didn’t try to open it.”

  “Not my business what’s in it,” Trace said. “Just my job to fetch it back.”

  “My goodness. A paragon.” Her brows lifted slightly, as if he were something rare and intriguing. “May I ask how you were able to locate this?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” He could not quite keep the hostility out of his voice, and he guessed she heard it, because her cool blue gaze flicked up to his, lips curling cynically.

  “You will forgive me if I doubt that claim, Mr. Tracy.” She tossed the box on the map table with such alarming disregard that Trace had to stop himself from diving after it. “I spent months trying to be certain you possessed the necessary talents, before I ever learnt your name or how to find you. I am quite certain your methods were no less deliberate.”

  Trace stared at her for a moment while her words sank in. He had not expected her to lay down her hand like that. She eyed him right back, with interest and a certain covetousness, as if he were a prize thoroughbred.

  “How did you know?” he demanded.

  “The spirits, of course. I’ve been watching them cluster about you for months.” She cocked her head. “You’re afraid of them, are you not? I suppose you take the Christian view that all spirits are evil. I expect you believe your power comes from the devil.”

  Her matter-of-fact dismissal of his entire creed was as shocking as a slap.

  “Everyone I told is dead because of it,” Trace said sharply.

  “Due to your negligence?”

  “Negligence?”

  “Did you perhaps summon some malevolent spirit beyond your control?”

  “I don’t summon them. They come to me. I tell them to go away.”

  “And do they obey?” Her slight smile implied she knew the answer.

  And Trace knew, completely and without doubt, that she had all the answers. Her eyes fairly gleamed with eagerness to educate him, just as Eve had Adam, and all he had to do was take that first bite.

  He was more tempted than he would have believed. In the early years he’d sought out Spiritualists and faith healers and even a Voudou queen down in New Orleans, but all of them had been frauds or fools. This woman was neither.

  But he didn’t like being driven like a mule. And clearly Miss Fairweather was messing with some very dark forces. Whatever her purpose in seeking him out, he doubted it was wholesome.

  “If you can see them,” he said at last, “why didn’t you go yourself?”

  “I cannot see them. Not as you do, at any rate—my gifts are of a different persuasion. Besides, I could hardly visit an establishment of that ilk, now could I?”

  If she had been a man, he might well have taken a swing at that damned smug smirk. “So this whole job—had you any claim to that box at all? Or was this just a ruse to flush me out?”

  “I have as much claim as the man who held it, as you must realize. And I needed to be sure of your qualifications.”

  “Qualifications.” He laughed, harshly. “And just what else were you plannin to have me do for you, lady?”

  For the first time her expression sobered. And even as she opened her mouth again, Trace knew there’d be no truth coming out of it. “As I mentioned, my health prevents me from traveling. I have a rare condition—not contagious, but debilitating. Most days I cannot safely leave this house.”

  He looked her up and down. Pale and thin she might be, but she was no wilting flower. “Consumption?” he said dubiously.

  She made an ironic sound behind her nose. “Nothing so plebian.”

  “Somethin darker,” Trace guessed. “Havin to do with the spirits. Somethin you summoned, beyond your control.”

  She didn’t like that. Her nostrils flared in annoyance. “In any case, I need someone of your talents to aid me in my search for a cure.” She turned a step away, indicating dismissal with a wave of her hand. “Your payment is on the table beside the door.”

  Trace figured that was the right direction for him to be heading. There was a paper envelope on the small reception table. He picked it up, thumbed through the bills inside, and tucked it into his vest pocket. And he looked back at her.

  She was watching him. Dainty and refined at first glance, but with something … hungry in her expression and in the clenching of her hands at her waist. Immediately she relaxed her posture and resumed her cool poise.

  “I guess you know about this Mereck fella the Irishman was so afraid of,” Trace said.

  “Do you?” she countered.

  “No,” Trace said. “Can’t say I’d welcome the acquaintance.”

  “No, I don’t expect you would. The Russian Mesmerist, as he bills himself of late, makes a practice of trapping useful spirits in small vessels, and caching them with his dogsbodies until he has need of them again.” She waved a hand over the box, resting in the open pages of a large atlas. “Would you like to see who or what is in this one?”

  “Thanks, no,” Trace said. “What’re you gonna do if he comes lookin for it?”

  “Please don’t concern yourself about me, Mr. Tracy.” The corners of her mouth curled in a frosty smile. “I shall send word via Mr. Jameson when I have need of you again.”

  Trace let out an explosive gust of humor. “Ma’am,” he touched his hat sardonically, “it’ll be a cold day in hell.”

  He let himself out of her house. The sun was out, melting the last patches of snow in the low places. Tufts of green stood up and waved from the mud.

  Trace patted the envelope in his breast pocket and went to find Boz.

  MARCH 1880

  PRINTER’S DEVIL

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Temptation, like guilt and grief, was an emotion that never really went away. He could tamp it down and cover it over and try not to think about it, but like a campfire buried too shallowly, it could flare up and singe a man’s boots if he wasn’t careful.

  So naturally, Trace spent several days after Sikeston in a smoldering snit.

  It was bad enough Miss Fairweather had tricked him into revealing himself. But far worse that she had fanned the flames of that old hope—the childish, arrogant hope that God had laid this curse on him for a good reason.

  In the early years he’d supposed it was divine retribution, for defying his father and leaving seminary to enlist. Aloysius Tracy had been a staunch abolitionist, and while the nineteen-year-old Jacob had had no love for slavery, he’d subscribed to the more moderate view that the institution would die out on its own. He’d felt much more strongly on the issues of State’s Rights and Throwing Off the Yoke of Oppression.

  It had taken him a few years to realize whose heavy hand he’d been looking to throw off.

  By the time he left the hospital he’d acquired a certain stoicism toward the curse. Plenty of men had lost their limbs or nerves or minds on the battlefield. He was better off than most. Plus he was on his own in the world for the first time, working ranches with the type of rough men he had never been allowed to associate with in his youth, men who drank and swore and fornicated and got along just fine without God, thank you very much. It was impossible not to notice that good and bad fortune were distributed among the ungodly in the same portions as the righteous, but on a cattle ranch folks didn’t spend as much time wringing their hands and wondering why.

  He read the Bi
ble cover to cover in those years, then moved on to St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and even delved into some real heterodoxy—Martin Luther and Maimonides and Aristotle. Gradually he’d admitted to himself that he’d never wanted to be a priest. He’d even come close to declaring himself apostate, but only in his own mind. He wasn’t given to dramatic gestures, and anyway he and his father were still estranged at that point so the rejection of his faith only gave him an uneasy feeling of anticlimax. But then he’d met Dorothea, and he’d begun to believe, again, that God still loved him and had a plan for him.

  Which just showed he had not been as old or wise as he’d supposed.

  He couldn’t afford to start thinking that way again. Eighteen years now, he’d been carrying this curse around, and all it did was accumulate more carnage, every time he indulged it. Trace could not stop seeing McGillicuddy’s fat florid face, blood bubbling between his lips, knowing it could have been Boz.

  He hated not knowing what triggered the destruction surrounding his curse. He hated lying awake at night and puzzling over that dead priest’s words—to some men are given the gift of discerning spirits—First Corinthians, chapter twelve, where Paul was describing the different spiritual gifts that were allotted to the faithful. What did that mean, to discern spirits? Did it mean merely being able to see them, or did it mean telling the good ones from the bad? Because he’d never seemed to have much success with that … But that train of thought led him inexorably to Miss Fairweather’s smirking observation: I suppose you take the Christian view that ALL spirits are evil?

  What was the distinction? What did she know that he didn’t? What was God trying to do to him, bringing all these disturbing events and questions into his life just now, when he had enough trouble trying to keep himself and Boz in room and board?

  “What’re you stewin about over there?” Boz said, pacing along on his own horse at the other side of the road.

  Trace pulled his mind out of its grim spiral and into a beautiful spring morning—birds singing, air rich with moisture and freshly turned earth. Damp green-and-black fields lay out on either side of the road.

  They were riding south to Judd Herschel’s farmstead in Carondelet. This was the fifth day of their contract to cut and cord the timber from Herschel’s woodlot. It was make-work, but at least it was something.

  “Nothin,” Trace said. “Work. Did Jameson say if he’d heard back from the Baptist?”

  “You ast me that already, and no he didn’t. You sent him a note, right?”

  “I wrote to him.” Kingsley was the Baptist’s name: leader of a group of missionaries who had the idea to move to Butte, Montana, and straighten out all the godless folk in the wilderness, because apparently there weren’t enough around here to merit the effort. Montana was about the last of the Promised Lands not yet accessible by rail, though those who could afford it rode out to St. Joseph or Ogden, and outfitted there. The Baptists must be very poor or very devout to be undertaking the whole trip by wagon, and Jameson estimated it was both; Kingsley had been keen to hear that Jacob Tracy, trail guide, was a former seminarian.

  “He told Jameson he’d get back to me this week.” Trace hated when people dangled a lure for work and then never followed through on it.

  “Well, we’re gonna be another week clearin this lot, in any case,” Boz said. “And we still got that money from what’s-her-name. That’s enough to pull up for the season and head out to Wyoming. You oughtta wire that horse-breeder you keep talkin about—”

  “Miller.”

  “Yeah. See if he’ll have you back.”

  Trace grunted. “I’m too old to be playin cowboy.”

  “Speak for yourself, young’un.” Boz had a good five years on Trace. “Sides, you start askin around, you’d get on as foreman somewhere, easy.”

  That was probably true, and Trace knew it. But he found himself dragging his feet, just the same. He’d been working for Miller nine years ago when he’d met Dorothea, and he didn’t relish the idea of going back to Wyoming and seeing how much things had changed … or not.

  The limestone wall along the road gave way to split-rail fence at the edge of Judd Herschel’s property. It was a prosperous-looking spread: two-story clapboard house, a wide wrap-around porch, and a fashionable turret at one corner. Herschel owned and rented out several properties in this part of town; he had been instrumental in getting Carondelet annexed to St. Louis and was now well poised to take advantage of the new city services. He’d already sold off one parcel of land to be used for the new Jewish cemetery.

  For the past five days, Trace and Boz had arrived to find Herschel already at work in the barn, usually with one of his daughters, Anna or Leah, helping with the milking or feeding the chickens. But this morning they could hear the cow lowing to be milked, and the chickens were still shut up in their coop.

  With a worried exchange of glances, the men hastened their horses’ pace, rounding the side of the house to the yard. It was hard to say what caught the eye first—the kitchen door standing open, or the trampled and roughed-up look of the yard, which Mrs. Herschel always kept so neat and swept. There were dark splotches on the stone steps leading into the house.

  Boz didn’t say a word, just dismounted and marched over to the door. Trace followed, pausing to loop the horses’ reins around the post. They were already huffing and laying their ears back, disturbed by the smell of death. Trace could feel it, too, an afterimage of violence permeating the air like swamp gas, and though he steeled himself before he stepped up on the back stoop, a vicious miasma rolled out of the house and grabbed him by the throat, almost knocking him down.

  He choked, gagging, grabbing the doorframe for balance, and saw Boz stop a few paces into the kitchen and turn back. He’d been alert to Trace’s every twitch since Sikeston, and now he looked spooked. “What is it? You all right?”

  Trace nodded, breathing deeper as the stench loosened its grip on him. It was acrid and vile, like burning hair, but the aftertaste it left on his tongue was metallic.

  “Is there somethin in here?” Boz demanded.

  “No. I think there was, but it’s gone.” Trace edged past his partner in the narrow kitchen, walking lightly, feeling the house listening back at him. The stove was cold. A greasy pan containing a few popcorn hulls sat on top. A jar lay near the doorway into the living room, spilling paprika across the threshold and onto the rug. Small footprints tracked through the red powder.

  The living room looked like an abattoir. Boz swore softly as they stood in the doorway, eyeing the soaked and sticky rug, the slings and drips on the walls and ceiling. A fireplace poker, matted with blood and hair, lay beside the door to the yard, and it was clear by the marks on the floor that a body had been dragged that way.

  They followed the marks out the back, to Mrs. Herschel’s garden. The well was back there, and as they got closer Trace could see the cover was off and there were bloody streaks smeared over the old bricks. A long-handled ax lay dropped across the path like a warning sign.

  “Oh Jesus,” Trace said, quickening his step despite the fact that he had absolutely no desire to look down that hole. He said it again when he realized that the small turd-looking things scattered around the base of the well were a man’s amputated fingers.

  Boz looked first and then turned away with a low, almost ironic sound, the back of his hand rubbing hard across his mouth.

  The womens’ skirts had ballooned up in the bloody water, making it look as if Herschel himself lay on a feather bed dyed turkey-red. He might’ve been resting comfortably except for the gash that had bashed in his nose and cheek, obliterating one eye and leaving the other to gaze sightlessly up at the sky.

  * * *

  “AND WHY DID you call on the Herschels this morning?” the detective asked, for what Trace guessed to be the fifth time.

  “We were comin to cut timber,” Trace said yet again, rubbing a hand over his face. The shock had long since worn off and he just felt tired and queasy. “Hersch
el hired us to clear that woodlot.”

  It was almost noon. The clear morning had given way to a sullen, overcast day that seemed occasionally to spit from the clouds upon the scene below. A score or more of people roamed the yard—policemen, neighbors, sightseers. Trace had no idea how word had spread so far, so fast. The police had arrived before he and Boz could decide if one of them should stay while the other went for help.

  Apparently they had not been the first to discover the bodies. Anna Herschel, the younger daughter, had somehow escaped the slaughter, and stumbled a mile down the road to the Lombards’ door, where she’d been found, bloody and hysterical, at sunup. Lombard and his son had come to the farm and seen the carnage more than an hour before Trace and Boz were due to arrive.

  Nevertheless, it had looked bad that they were mounting up when the police arrived. They were detained and questioned several times over, but what was worse, in a way, was having to watch Mrs. Herschel’s yard and pretty house get trampled by bored, drunken patrolmen and smug sightseers in fine hats and morning suits, who began to arrive in buggies not long after the police.

  The detective in charge, whose name was Whistler, at least appeared to have a brain in his head. He was unassuming in appearance—medium-sized and balding, with sparse mutton-chops the same bleached color as his skin—but he had a dead-eye gaze that missed nothing. Trace had twice seen the detective snap his fingers at a patrolman and get him to run off some tourist who was trying to pocket a souvenir from the house or yard.

  “Had you any other dealings with Herschel?” Whistler said to Trace, as they stood in the living room, and the detective’s broad, blunt fingers glided over a half-played game of checkers, not quite touching anything, almost as if he were divining messages from the game board. “Did you rent property from him?”

  “No and no,” Trace said. “Me and my partner rent a room up on Bell Street.”