The Last Nightingale (14 page)

Shane "Nightingale." She wasn't used to thinking of him that way. At St. Adrian's, neither of them had a last name. It was supposed to make it easier for people to picture having you in their family. Then they could stick their last name on you without feeling guilty, since you didn't have one in the first place. If the Nightingale family was all dead, though, she wondered if he still wanted to use their stupid last name. Was he really Shane "Nightingale" anymore?

When Sergeant Blackburn finally emerged from the front gate, she was delighted to see that he wasn't climbing onto a horse or buggy. He just stretched his legs and headed off at a fast walk. She went after him, following from behind and moving at a brisk trot to keep up with his stride. The chase quickly took a toll on her. Mary Kathleen could bound like a rabbit, but she usually only needed to for a block or two, enough to evade a pursuer. For the past couple of years, anytime she sneaked out there were always a few older boys or grown men who pawed at her from shadows, pulled at her from doorways, or tried to follow her into secluded places. Then, a brief explosion of speed was the only power necessary. Now it took everything she had to keep up with the big policeman on this endurance test, block after block.

But she had clearly heard the cop tell Friar John that he just finished his night shift. Surely that meant that he would be on his way home now, didn't it? And before he went home for the day, he would stop and see Shane, wouldn't he? If the cop was all so interested in him, why wouldn't he go visit him? She kept telling herself that, while she labored to keep up with the sergeant's long strides. Her overall plan was good enough that she felt inspired.

She was a hunter and a spy, a spy disguised as a silly tomboy girl. She needed a name for herself, and therefore, something that fit the adventure. "Mary Kathleen" was unacceptable. It was the false name that St. Adrian's gave her, back when she was too young to remember. And since "Mary Kathleen" was a disguise that she had to wear at St. Adrian's in order to get from day to day, it made perfect sense for her to cast it aside and choose a special name for herself, now.

She sorted through her best words for one that might capture the feeling. A spy and a hunter were both dramatic roles, so why not use a dramatic word? Her little field trip today was a scene from a magical play, a sneak-away adventure inserted into a plain, old, ordinary day. The adventure itself, she realized, was a vignette: a
separate scene in a larger play. She was in a vignette all her own. And so "Vignette" was perfect as a new name for her, a name so special that nobody else even knew it.

Vignette willed herself to be an invisible and unimportant little girl whom nobody would particularly notice or remember. In that fashion, she kept from being detected by the sergeant while she tracked him. Luckily, he apparently felt no concerns at all that there could be a small female hunter on his tail, following him up and down all these fragmented city streets.

It only took around two hours for her faith to manifest, but by then her legs were getting wobbly. During that time, the big sergeant walked all the way to the office of a newspaper called the
California Star,
and while she spied from outside the building's brand-new picture window, he stood there inside for a long time talking with a couple of other men. The men seemed to listen carefully to him, and one of them even brought out a notebook and wrote down what the cop was saying.

After that, Sergeant Blackburn left and walked a few more blocks to a ruined restaurant that was trying to get back into business. He bought a thick sandwich of some kind and walked away with it wrapped up and tucked under his arm. It looked like such a good idea that she spent the few coins in her pocket for one of her own before hurrying off to catch up with him.

The only reason she had anything at all to spend was because Friar John was careless about loose change. She would never have any money if she didn't keep making trouble and getting herself assigned the extra work duty. She had yet to come across anything outside of the orphanage that a ten-year-old girl could do to make money, except for things that made her skin crawl. The creepy Helper was bad enough. And so her cleaning duties brought a host of small opportunities to put a little jingle in her pockets.

It consumed all Vignette's energy to take the two steps necessary for every one of the sergeant's long strides, since she not only had to keep pace with his speed, she also had to dart from the cover of
one object to the next. Fortunately for her, there was always something handy. All of the makeshift structures that people were putting up to live and work in made the streets look like campgrounds.

When Sergeant Blackburn eventually turned into a big adobe church called Mission Dolores and walked out two minutes later without the big sandwich, she knew that the day's hunt was successful. This time when the sergeant walked away, she remained behind.

Minutes later she was at the front gate to the cemetery, peering through the vines growing over it. There was a skinny boy sitting under a tree near the back, hungrily polishing off the sandwich that the sergeant had left for him. A breeze shifted the nearby tree branches, and sunlight through the branches lit up the boy's face so clearly that she recognized him. It was Shane, all right.

Whether Shane remembered her or not, she recalled him well enough. But for the moment, Vignette also realized that she had taken her endeavor as far as she could. Because even after the spying, the hunting, the adventure, Vignette still had no skills for confronting a boy who felt important to her for reasons that it frustrated her to try to understand.

Before she knew it, she was Mary Kathleen again. She had been gone for too long; her absence would soon be noticed. She backed away from the gate and turned toward home. If she wanted to continue having adventures, she could hardly start turning up missing at roll call, drawing concern about her whereabouts. No. Let the friars go on thinking that her only form of rebellion was to talk out loud in class.

She needed the work details to collect coins for moving around the city.

Blackburn sat in the living room of his new little basement apartment, located in one of the standing areas of town. Evening was
just settling in. The restored gaslights along that particular street were already burning, so that their yellow and gold illumination played in through his ground-level windows. It was an odd view, and he had not yet gotten used to it. Tonight was his first night off since the week before the Great Earthquake struck. Even as he could feel his body automatically gearing up for a long night shift, he tried to let himself melt into the only comfortable chair he had obtained so far.

His stomach gnawed with hunger pangs. He wished that he had thought to get a sandwich for himself along with the one for Shane. But back then it had been close enough to breakfast that he didn't think about it. Now he was too tired to even bother opening a can, so he let himself sink deeper into the chair. Sleep came to claim him, sweeping his hunger aside. The boy, he thought, while warm relaxation enveloped him, was far more interesting than food anyway. Blackburn closed his eyes and let the mental notes play through his thickening thoughts.

So Shane more or less grows up in an orphanage, lives with the Nightingale family for a year, until they all die in the quake somehow. He takes refuge in a live-in job at Mission Dolores. While reading the paper aloud one day and trying to cure his stutter, he comes across an article about Captain Sullivan's murder—and right then he just "knows" that Elsie Sullivan is not the innocent widow but the perpetrator. The boy then sends a note so bizarre that Blackburn would never have considered it, if he were not already desperate for some break in the challenge that Lieutenant Moses threw down to him.

Then when Blackburn uses the information to break her and get a full confession, the boy explains his knowledge with a story that would have been long even if he could speak clearly. Something about a married woman's combination of insecurity and vanity about her appearance, when she is of an age where many other women are more attractive than she is, everywhere she goes. Something about realizing that the detail about the scale was a clear clue
regarding subtle mental torture in the Sullivan household. Something about seeing the body sprawled across the scale as more than a mean coincidence, but as a staged comment, a work of sculpture made of flesh and blood.

At the age of twelve, this Shane Nightingale fellow told Blackburn about the human capacity for levels of pain and rage that most civilized people know nothing about, no matter how old they are. It made for a good story, and the boy deserved a little recognition. That day, the boys at the
California Star
had agreed. They wrote down everything Blackburn told them. The next afternoon's paper was going to run a human interest article about how Shane Nightingale, the sole survivor of his family, offered insights that solved the Sullivan case.

So far, Blackburn regarded Shane as a young fellow with a unique combination of confidence in his vision and an utter lack of confidence in himself. And so maybe this newspaper's acknowledgment would go some distance toward giving the kid back some spirit. Just watching him try to get a sentence out was painful. If a boost in self-confidence could smooth out his speech, then that would make a pretty fine reward for the kid's act as a good citizen. Once the article was out, maybe somebody at City Hall would even want to grab onto the story for political reasons and give the boy some kind of city award. Although the way Shane's eyes lit up at the sight of that big sandwich today, a decent lunch might as well have been made of gold.

The last thing Blackburn did before falling into a deep sleep was to make a mental note to take a copy of the next day's paper over to the Mission, as soon as it came out. It would be great to see some pride on the kid's face.

“T-O-M-M-Y . . .” Lieutenant Moses carefully printed the name.

“No, Lieutenant, it's spelled with an i-e," Tommie corrected from his place on the other side of the giant Police Roll Call Book.

Lieutenant Moses exhaled and focused a hooded glare. "You could have told me that before I started writing." He muttered while he reached for his big gum eraser and stroked the end of the line clean. Then he chanted along with himself while he formed each letter: "T-O-M-M-I-E . . .”

“Good." Tommie smiled.

Moses observed how closely Tommie Kimbrough was leaning in over the book. It made the much bigger man feel a passing desire to squash the bony upstart, just to get a spot of amusement going in an otherwise stressful day. As if it were not bad enough that he was already having to guard his own backside from every political angle, Moses had to struggle with attempting to form key relationships with arrogant mucus bags like this: one of the city's trust fund babies,
buying
his way onto the force so he could play copper. Probably to impress some female.

After donating enough to cover the cost of completely rebuilding the city's primary morgue, this civic-minded little fellow asked for nothing more than to be allowed to volunteer his time at the
temporary morgue facility, where they were strapped for labor anyway. In this benefactor's free time at the morgue, he planned to draw medical sketches of anatomical parts for use in textbooks. The eager fellow had appeared wearing several thin layers of clothing, as recommended for sloppy body work, clutching a generously sized lunch pail with a tight-fitting lid to keep odors out of the food. Clearly, thought Moses, Mr. Kimbrough had done a little body work in the past.

“Have you brought any eucalyptus oil?" Moses asked. "Peppermint oil or like that?”

Mr. Kimbrough offered a modest smile and pulled out a small vial. "Eucalyptus.”

“Good enough, then." All right, so maybe the guy wouldn't fall down and faint over the first mushy body. With a city broken into a million pieces, who was going to refuse his offer?

“And it's K-I-M-B-R-O-U-G-H, yes?”

“Correct. Excellent, Lieutenant." Tommie smiled again.

Excellent? Like he's doing me a favor.
For an instant, he felt a flash of concern that Kimbrough might be planted there, perhaps to secretly evaluate Moses on the job. Moses knew that he would use a spy himself to keep this position, if he could. Countless other men wanted this job. So why wouldn't someone higher up, maybe someone with a friend who needs work, use a spy to watch Moses and to look for dirt? For weeks, there had been rumors all over the city about various plots to take over the government amid the chaos of the city's long recovery.

Moses wrote in "K-I-M-B-R-O-U-G-H," then noted the time and date. He closed the book. That was it, then. He would just have to see to it that little Mr. Kimbrough never got the chance to observe anything that could be used against him. "Before you go . . .”

“Yes?" Kimbrough turned back with a pleasant expression.

“Whenever you come in, you are to go only to the morgue. There's too much traffic here in the station house, so don't dally
around the place. I signed you in here, today, but from now on there will be a sign-in book for you over there. No offense, but my time is pulled in other directions.”

“Yes, that's fine, Lieutenant. Just as well. No need to trouble you.”

“Right. And while we're talking about not troubling me, you'll make sure to keep your head down and don't bring me back any sort of difficulties in here. Agreed?”

“My presence in the morgue will be self-recorded every time I go in, sir!" Kimbrough said, like a recruit in a drill. "My head will be down at all times. Because neither of us wants any trouble. Sir." He grinned and saluted, clever as hell.

Moses studied Tommie Kimbrough's face for sarcasm and felt sure it was in there somewhere, but decided to let it pass, this time. The size of Kimbrough's donation made him practically bulletproof, as long as he didn't rob anybody important.

Like a well-trained physician, Moses considered his first obligation as Acting Station Chief as that of first doing no harm. Therefore, the safest thing to do about this Tommie Kimbrough was to push him out the door and make it plain that the fellow could only keep Lieutenant Moses out of his way and off of his back by staying out of the station. Let him make all the strange drawings that he wanted.