The Shattered Raven (13 page)

“Maybe just a week of fun that she wanted to remember. Maybe it was the most exciting week of her life. Maybe it was the only week she ever had a man who loved her.”

“Oh, come on, Barney! Now you’re really reaching for it!”

“Am I? She opened her apartment door to someone. She let that person get near enough to strangle her with a telephone cord. What does that tell us? That it was someone she knew, someone she could trust, or thought she could trust. Even after Ross Craigthorn’s murder.”

“You believe that, don’t you?”

“Let’s go back and read these interviews with her. Dig out anything we can.”

They read for another twenty minutes, side by side in the library. It wasn’t until the very last paragraph of one of the interviews that their search was rewarded.

“She said they called each other by nicknames,” Susan pointed. “It’s right here in the story, but it doesn’t say what the nicknames were.”

“Well, we’ll get that quickly enough. I think I know what they were.”

They talked, next, to the district attorney’s office. The transcripts of the investigation were buried in files twenty-two years old, and they waited on a hard wooden bench for the better part of an afternoon until at last a little man came out, blowing dust from a file folder. “The Irma Black kidnapping. Is that what you wanted? And the bank robbery?”

“That’s right,” Barney said.

“Well, of course, I can only show you the things that are a matter of public record. You have no official capacity.”

“I just want you to answer one question for me. The news stories mention nicknames. I want to know what those nicknames were.”

“Nicknames? Nicknames of the Clancy brothers?”

“No. Nicknames of the two men who kidnapped Irma Black.”

“Let’s see here. Nicknames … Here it is, in her statement :
They kept me blindfolded all of the time, and tied me to a chair. I never really saw them at all, except in the beginning, when they first got me into the car. They didn’t talk much to each other, and when they did, they used nicknames. One was Caesar and the other was Raven. They were funny names.
That help you mister?”

“That helps me,” Barney said. “Caesar and Raven. Does she say which was which?”

“No, it don’t … yeah … wait a second. Here. Here’s something.
Caesar was the one waiting in the car at the robbery scene.
I guess that means Raven was the guy who held up the bank.”

“Yeah. It figures,” Barney said. “Thanks a lot, mister.”

They went back to the motel near June, where they were spending the night, and Barney slumped down on the bed. “Well, that gives it to us, doesn’t it?”

“Gives what to us?” she asked him.

“Motive. It’s a funny case. Usually in books, the motive is one of the last things to be discovered, but we’ve got it right here.”

“You’re implying that Ross Craigthorn was this Caesar?”

“Of course. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? A couple of fellows, maybe just out of college, or out of the army, looking for thrills. And one of them decides to rob a bank. The other one stays in the car. Maybe he knows what’s going on, or maybe he doesn’t. But anyway, he’s in it pretty deep. And when they bring a girl along as hostage, he knows that it’s big trouble for them both. So then, a couple of guys that didn’t have anything to do with the robbery are killed, and the thing is blamed on them. Caesar and Raven go off to start new lives somewhere. It was just one fling. Something, I suppose, like Loeb and Leopold. They didn’t kill the girl, though heaven knows what they did do to her. And she kept their secret—however much she knew. She knew enough to recognise Ross Craigthorn on television as one of them. He must have been the one driving the car. I don’t think that even Craigthorn could have hoped to cop a plea to his great American public if he’d walked into a bank with a sawed-off shotgun. But with the statute of limitations long ago run out, he probably could have made it sound like a youthful prank. Especially if he was waiting outside all that time. It gives our other man, the mysterious Mr. Raven, a nice motive. With Craigthorn telling the story, revealing that the Clancy brothers were innocent, he’d have to reveal that Raven was still around too. Even if he didn’t tell anything else, even if he passed over Raven’s present identity, don’t you think the reporters would be digging? Raven couldn’t plead that he was sitting in a car. He was actually in there with that shotgun, scooping up the money, kidnapping the girl. And he could probably still be arrested on the kidnapping charge.”

“I can see that, Barney, but does it tell us who he is?”

“No, but we’re only starting. The next move is to find out all we can about Craigthorn’s boyhood. Someone’s going to know who he hung out with, who his chums were. Maybe an army record, if they were in the army together. Or we can check and see who his college roommates were.”

“Raven and Caesar—what odd names! They don’t really have anything in common, do they?”

Barney grunted. “What did you want them to have in common?”

“Well, Caesar is like Roman Empire. Did they have ravens back in Rome? Was that a raven on those staffs that the Roman legions used to carry?”

“I think it was probably an eagle. I don’t know of any ravens before Poe.” He hesitated. “Poe. Where did Poe get the idea for that raven?”

“What?”

“A thought just struck me. What time would it be back in New York now?”

She glanced at her watch. “Around four o’clock.”

“Get on the phone and call New York, See if we can reach Harry Fox. If anybody knows where Poe got the idea for the raven, it’s Harry Fox.”

They sent out for sandwiches, and sat around for a while. Harry was out of his office, but his answering service promised he would return the call as soon as he could. They waited another hour before it finally came in. “Yeah, this is Harry. That you, Barney? What are you doing out there, spending all of MWA’s money?”

“Harry, we’re in a place called June, Nebraska. Ever hear of it?”

“There’s no such place!”

“Look at a map sometime, Harry. Listen, I need to know something, and you’re the one who can tell me. So get the computer memory going. Edgar Allan Poe.
The Raven.
Okay?”

“Gotchya.”

“Where did Poe get the idea for
The Raven?
Was there any raven in past literature? Anything at all?”

“I’ll bet you think you’re stumping me,” Harry said. “You should know Poe is my field.”

“That’s why we called you halfway across the country. Give out with the information.”

“Well, Poe got the idea from Dickens. From the raven in Dickens’ novel,
Barnaby Rudge.
Poe reviewed
Barnaby Rudge
and said that more should have been done with the raven. Then a few years later, in the New York
Evening Mirror
for January 29, 1845, Poe published his own poem,
The Raven.
How’s that, huh?”

“Great! Thanks a lot, Harry.”

“When will you two be back?”

“A day or two, depending on how it goes.” Barney hung up and conveyed Harry Fox’s information to Susan.

“Well,” she said, “what does that give you? A raven from Charles Dickens. That’s no better than the raven from Poe, is it?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a list of the people who were at the dinner?”

“It just so happens,” she began, digging into the attaché case she’d brought along. It was a flowery sort of thing that no man would have been caught dead with. He hadn’t seen her with it before the trip, and he supposed that she usually left it in the office, settling for the notebook in her purse. “Here’s the mimeographed list they passed out at the dinner.”

He started running down the names. “Take a couple of pages. Look for the names of anybody at the dinner who might have any connection with a Dickens character.”

“Isn’t that going a little too far? You mean that Craigthorn, in his dying breath, smashed that Raven so that you’d get the connection between the raven and Poe, and Dickens and Barnaby Rudge and another raven, and some other characters in Dickens? I can’t imagine even a dying man going to such lengths.”

“I’ll agree it’s far-fetched, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Ross Craigthorn smashed that Raven because it was the only thing handy. He wasn’t telling us exactly who killed him. He was just giving us a steer in the right direction. If Craigthorn was Caesar, and his killer was Raven…” His voice trailed off as he scanned the list. He recognised a lady lawyer who could have reminded him of Shakespeare’s Portia—but that wasn’t exactly Dickens. There were no Scrooges on the list. Not even a Tiny Tim. There were lots of Davids. A few Olivers, but no Twist. It was another blank wall.

“Okay,” she said. “What now?”

“Now try and find out where Ross Craigthorn grew up and went to school. We’ll start checking all the schools in this area. You take some, and I’ll take the rest.” He remembered Irma Black’s letter. “You might check the name Craig, too.”

The project occupied most of the next day, and it was Susan who finally came up with a possibility. She phoned Barney at the district high school where he was checking, talking excitedly. “Barney, I think I’ve got something! There was a boy here called Ross Craig.”

“What year did he graduate?”

“Just before the war. He went in the army then, and people lost sight of him. He could be the one we want.”

“Okay,” Barney said. “Look, put in a call to Amalgamated Broadcasting, and see what they’ve got on Craigthorn’s biography. Or better still, call the
New York Times
, and have them read you the obit they ran on him last week. It seems to me they spoke of his coming from the mid-west, but it was nowhere near June, Nebraska.”

Toward evening they met to assemble their bits and pieces of information. The calls to New York had proven little. The
Times
obituary had come from Amalgamated Broadcasting information and press releases over the years. There was an article in
TV Guide
to be consulted, too, but they all were vague about Craigthorn’s early years. A farm in Kansas seemed to be the best lead, but no specific town was mentioned. He’d gotten out of the army in nineteen forty-five, and here was where the trail grew warmer. He’d attended college at the University of Texas. There were more phone calls. Barney debated for a time flying down to Texas.

“That’s where the answer lies. I’m sure of it. Look, he was in college in late ’45 and ’46 and into ’47. He met his partner there. They headed north in the summer of ’47. Maybe with a car. Probably Craigthorn’s car, since he was driving at the bank. They headed north, and the other boy got the idea of robbing the bank. Of taking Irma Black with them. Exactly what happened that week, we’ll probably never know. But anyway, they were in the clear on it The Clancy brothers got blamed, and Caesar and Raven headed for New York.”

“Barney, do you really think Craigthorn would have admitted all this? To the nation? Admitted it, as apparently he was going to, at the Mystery Writers dinner?”

“Under the threat of blackmail? Yes. Irma Black wanted a hundred thousand dollars, and she obviously wouldn’t stand still for much less. How much was taken in the bank robbery? Around thirty thousand, wasn’t it? Craigthorn could have made a contrite speech, explained that he wasn’t directly involved in the bank robbery, and even sent back the thirty thousand dollars. They couldn’t indict him for anything at this late date, unless it was as an accessory to the kidnapping, and that would be hard to prove. His conscience would be clear, and he would have gotten out of it for less than a third of what Irma Black wanted. It’s exactly the sort of thing Craigthorn would have done. It would even have given him a good story, and loads of free publicity. Boyish escapade! A prank!”

“Maybe,” she said, not entirely convinced.

“We’ve still got to track him down. Someone here must know him. Let’s see if there are any Craigs in the phone book.”

There was only one Craig in the county telephone directory—Schuyler Craig. Though it was nearly dark, they drove over to his house.

He was a man of eighty or more years, and though he held himself well, the shadow of death was already creeping over his features. He sat on the darkened front porch and talked of the old days. Very little of the present. Nothing of the future. But luckily for them, he had a perfect memory. And luckily for them, he had been Ross Craig’s uncle.

“Sure,” he said. “Sure, I know he went to New York. Terrible thing about him getting killed.”

“You knew he was killed? You knew he was Ross Craigthorn?”

“Well, I see him on the television, don’t I? Of course I recognised him! Craigthorn was the family name way back. That’s probably why he reverted to it. Some of us just shortened it to Craig, that’s all.”

“You knew him. What can you tell us about him?”

The old man studied his gnarled knuckles. “Well, I can tell you anything you want to know! He was a good boy. He went in the army and was a regular hero during the war. It’s funny! Of all the things I’ve seen about him, he never talked much about his boyhood. Kept it like a big secret. One article even said he was brought up in Kansas, and I sure knew that wasn’t true! I used to bounce him on my knee when he was a baby! He got big—made all that money. But it didn’t do him much good, did it? He died anyway. Just like all of us.” He stared out beyond the trees, possibly at the sunset. Possibly at something neither of them could see. “Just like all of us.”

“Mr. Craig,” Susan urged, trying to lead the conversation, “we’re interested especially in his college days. He went to the University of Texas, didn’t he?”

“That’s right. The University of Texas. Star student there.”

“Did he ever come up to see you any of the times while he was in college?”

“Sure, during the summer he came. Every summer! He’d drive up here, sometimes with a friend.”

“Yes, a friend! That’s what we need to know. Mr. Craig, was it always the same friend?”

“No. Different boys.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Oh, I’ve got a good memory. But I don’t know if it’s that good or not.”

“Mr. Craig, he started college in the fall of nineteen forty-five. In the summer of forty-seven, he would have finished his sophomore year. With allowances for his army service, he would have been in his mid-twenties. The summer of forty-seven, he came up here with another boy. We need to know the name of that other boy.”