From This Moment (33 page)

A pair of herring gulls bobbed in the harbor, making her seasick just looking at them. It would be easier to cross the street and avoid the sight, but was she really going to go through the rest of her life at the mercy of this pathetic fear of water? She lowered her chin and glowered at the water, determined to overcome this ridiculous fear. As soon as she solved the mystery of Gwendolyn’s death, she was going to learn how to swim.

An hour later, one of the photographers returned. He looked tired and bedraggled, but he gestured her inside. The interior smelled of sawdust and ammonium chemicals, but she was lucky he was the photographer who regularly manned the morning shift, for he had been the man on duty when Gwendolyn’s body had been discovered.

“I remember the lady,” he confirmed. “Someone came down early, before the sun was even full up. I went straight over to Cooperman’s Bridge and took a few pictures. I developed them that day.”

Stella’s hands clenched, and she could barely breathe. “Do you remember anything about her? Anything that might suggest foul play?”

He thought for a moment but shook his head. “I take a lot of pictures, ma’am. Hundreds every year. After I develop the photographs, I turn it all over to the police. It isn’t my job to think too much about what I see. To tell the truth, I don’t want to think too much about it. Those things haunt a man, you know?”

“Do you still have the plates? Can I get a copy?”

He shook his head. “It’s too expensive to keep the negatives.
After I develop the photographs, I scrape off the emulsion and reuse the glass plates.”

“So it’s gone?”

“Afraid so, ma’am. I turned the photographs over to the police, but most things usually end up getting filed in the city archives. Maybe they’ve still got them?”

Her heart thudded so loudly it could probably be heard in this barren room. She’d had no idea the archives contained old photographs, for it was a cavernous space she’d never fully explored. She’d already seen Gwendolyn’s file at the police department, but what if the photographs had been sent elsewhere for storage? It was a long shot, but if pictures still existed, the only surviving copy of what Gwendolyn looked like immediately after being pulled from the river was in the archives at City Hall.

The streetcar ride to City Hall was maddeningly slow. It was nearing the end of the day, and Ernest Palmer locked the archives promptly at five o’clock. She wouldn’t be able to sleep if she had to wait until tomorrow to get her hands on those photographs—if they even still existed. Looking at Gwendolyn’s dead body was the last thing she wanted polluting her mind, but it had to be done.

It was four o’clock by the time she raced up the staircase to City Hall. She couldn’t tell Ernest what she’d come for. If Gwendolyn’s troubles stemmed from her work at City Hall, it was important to keep a tight lid on what she was seeking. Stella didn’t like lying to Ernest, but she needed to get back into the stacks, where boxes of documents from the police department were filed.

As usual, Ernest was hunched over a vintage letterpress tray at the front counter, using a pair of tweezers to poke amid the hundreds of tiny compartments that held individual slugs of type. Normally she’d spend a few minutes chatting about
whatever typeface or memorabilia had caught his fancy, but she had only an hour before closing and no idea how many boxes she’d need to plow through.

“Can I borrow the key to the stacks?” she asked. “Romulus White is still looking at that old lawsuit about the labor union. I’d like to poke around some more.”

It wasn’t technically a lie. They’d made very little progress last week because Romulus had distracted her with that volume of Audubon prints. Ernest said nothing as he reached for the key. His attention had already returned to the letterpress tray as he extended the key toward her.

The key made a scraping sound as she twisted it in the heavy metal door. It clanged shut behind her. How cold and ominous this space seemed compared with the last time she was here. She walked down the center aisle, scanning the books and boxes towering to the ceiling in imposing walls of information. She had an hour to find those police photographs.

At least she knew where to begin. The old police reports were kept in two aisles near the back of the stacks. She jerked out the boxes and quickly poked into them to see if they contained photographs. It didn’t take long for her fingers to become dry and coated with dust, but she kept moving through dozens of boxes. Dust swirled in the air as she lifted the lids. Her nose twitched and she could taste the air, but time was growing short and she couldn’t wait for the dust to settle.

The first box of photographs was on the bottom shelf. Crouching down on the cold concrete floor, she jerked out the first file. They were booking photographs, for the first one she grabbed featured the ugly mug of a tough-looking man staring angrily at the camera. It didn’t take long to flip through the remaining files in the first box.

She moved on to the next box. More booking photographs,
but when she flipped open the third box, she blanched at the sight of three bodies sprawled in the street. The title printed on the tab of the file was
Irish Street Riot, May 21, 1896
. All the photographs in the file seemed to be from the same incident. One of them showed a close-up shot of a dead boy who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, his face contorted in a grimace.

She’d never seen a dead body, either in person or a photograph, and it was chilling. She swallowed hard. This had to be done, no matter how distasteful.

Fortunately, each file had an identifying tag, and she made quick progress as she ignored the files marked
Milk Street Bank Robbery
,
Fourth Street Arson
, and
Samuelson Murder
. Most of the files had names on them and most were murder victims, but she didn’t see Gwendolyn’s name anywhere.

She moved on to the next box.

Well, this was strange. Most of the files were labeled
John Doe
, and a dozen others
Jane Doe.
It was a common term dating back centuries for unidentified people. She was about to return the box and move on to the next, for the police had identified Gwendolyn fairly quickly, but something made her grab the first
Jane Doe
file.

A middle-aged woman sprawled in a filthy alley with a liquor bottle by her side. Stella was able to dismiss the next three just as easily.

But the fourth file contained a photograph of Gwendolyn.

She dropped the file, doubled over, and looked away. Had Stella not already been crouched on the floor, she would have fallen down. Nothing could have prepared her for this. She didn’t want to look, but this was what she’d come for.

She waited for her stomach to settle, took a deep breath, and picked up the file. There was only a single photograph inside. Gwendolyn lay on the grass, her eyes wide open and staring
vacantly into space. Her hair was wet, plastered to her skull, and a few reeds were tangled in her clothing.

The worst thing was her throat. Her milky white skin still glistened with dampness, and the dark bruises tracking across her neck were stark and obvious.

Gwendolyn had been strangled.

Stella curled over the file, her breath coming so hard and fast she was dizzy, but for the life of her she couldn’t stop her lungs from this helpless gasping for air. In her hands, she held proof that Gwendolyn had been murdered.

And it was the only remaining photograph to prove it. The negative plates had been destroyed. She couldn’t ask Ernest’s permission to take it out of the archives, nor did she trust it with the police or any attorney affiliated with City Hall. Dr. Lentz had falsified his report when he’d claimed Gwendolyn had no injuries. He had looked Stella in the face and lied. And she had no explanation for why Gwendolyn’s case was filed as a
Jane Doe
, but that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was protecting this photograph. She couldn’t leave it here. It would have to be smuggled out, and she had no satchel or books in which to hide it.

She tried not to look at the photograph as she closed the file. Hiding it in her jacket would have to do. She’d worn the worst possible jacket for the task: her absurdly stylish black cutaway tailcoat. She’d have to hope the tightly cinched tailoring of her jacket would hold the file secure, although the satin lining was going to be a problem. As she stood and buttoned her coat, she felt the file slide with each step.

She was going to have to do this. Ernest Palmer was harmless, but even he would not be able to overlook the outright theft of
a document if it slipped free of her coat as she left the archives. She made sure all the police boxes were replaced, then darted to the aisle containing the labor union cases where she and Romulus had been working last week. She jostled the boxes from their positions, just in case Ernest might check where she had been working.

Before leaving the room, she adjusted the file inside her jacket one final time. She jammed it as high as possible until it was snug beneath her underarm, but if it sank even an inch, the white file would be visible beneath the black velvet hem of her coat.

“Okay, Gwendolyn, let’s go,” she whispered. She opened the door and headed into the reading room. From behind the service counter, Ernest watched her with unusual attention as she strode toward the front of the room. Those oversized eyes made her want to fidget, but she held her head high as she drew closer. She dared not release her breath for fear the file might begin to slip.

As she passed the front counter, she nodded to Ernest and flashed him a cordial smile, every muscle in her body tense as she glided toward the door. The file was starting to travel, snaking across the satin lining and moving toward her front. She reached for the door, the knob cold in her sweating palm.

“Miss West,” Ernest’s voice called out as she twisted the knob.

She froze, barely turning her head. “Yes?”

When he didn’t respond, she turned a bit more to see him walking from around the counter toward her.

“The key,” he said simply, and she almost fainted in relief. The key to the stacks was still in her front jacket pocket. Clamping one arm against her side to secure the file, she plucked the key from her pocket with her other hand and turned it over.

“Good day, Miss West,” Ernest said as he returned to the counter.

She had made her way down the hallway, up the stairs, and onto the public street before her heart resumed its normal rhythym.

17

E
rnest Palmer watched Stella as she left the archives. She was so obvious. Even with those flashy clothes, he could see that every nerve ending in her body was as uptight as a newly strung piano. She was on to something.

The urge to go back into the stacks and see what she’d been up to was tempting, but there were still two visitors in the reading room and the rules prohibited him from leaving the room unattended.
Lawyers
, he thought with a roll of his eyes. While he might be willing to bend the rules if the visitors were low-level civil servants, it was best to obey protocol when lawyers were in the room.

Besides, he wanted to finish loading up this compositor’s stick with the new typeface he’d bought in Philadelphia last month. He hadn’t had much time to experiment with the Caslon typeface, which was a shame. He plucked a capital M from the tray and slid it into place. Modern-day typesetters did this sort of work by machine, but Ernest did it by hand as a labor of love. Nothing was quite as satisfying as sliding the type and slugs into place, inking the final product, and then experiencing the
thrill of producing hand-set documents. His ability to forge stationery, legal documents, and official-looking telegrams had proven quite lucrative over the years. What a unique dovetail of craft and financial gain.

He wished the lawyers would leave. It was after five o’clock, and he’d told them the archives was closing, but apparently rules didn’t apply to people like them. City Hall was filled with people he didn’t particularly like, but lawyers were at the top of his list. Women weren’t much better. They laughed at him because of his thick glasses and the fact that most of them were taller than he. He liked Stella West, though. She was friendly and respected the diligence it took to master the challenging trade of typesetting. She always had interesting questions to ask, and he liked hearing her talk about the publishing industry in London. That was before he’d learned she was Gwendolyn’s sister.

He never would have realized they were sisters but for eavesdropping on the weekly telephone calls Stella placed to her parents from the archives. The two women looked a little bit alike, but Stella and Gwendolyn were as different as chalk and cheese. Gwendolyn had been a nuisance since the day she’d arrived, sniffing about and poking her nose into other people’s business. A real goody-goody. And now it seemed Stella was getting too curious about what had happened to Gwendolyn.

Which was a shame. He liked Stella, but business came first.

It was fifteen minutes after closing time before the lawyers put away their paperwork, stood, and left the room. They didn’t even thank him for staying late.