The Last Nightingale (16 page)

No worse than a public outhouse,
he cheerfully pointed out to himself. He hated those places.

Now, on Tommie’s second day in the morgue, he was even permitted to make himself at home in that grim place whether or not any of the other men were around. Just him and the quiet ones.

And since this was the first time that he had found himself alone, he immediately got down to the only thing that he was actually there to accomplish.

He stepped outside into the sunlight and carefully checked his clothing. He had on full body underwear beneath a light pair of pants that he had tied tightly at the cuffs to his cotton socks. His waistline was tied where his shirt met his belt. Over that, he wore another full outfit of long pants and long sleeves that looked normal.

Just as he stepped back into the darkness of the morgue, he pulled a rolled-up piece of fabric from his pocket and shook it out. It was a fine silk cloth stitched into the shape of a large cone. He pulled the cone over his head and down to his shoulders, and then tugged a pair of thin leather gloves onto his hands. When he pushed aside the heavy canvas curtains, he carried nothing else with him but the sealed lunch pail. He moved quickly to complete his task before returning to his other duties.

To start, he removed his outer layer of clothing and set it next to the ice pile, remaining inside of his sealed suit. Then he plucked an oil lantern from a peg near the door and headed straight back to the special body basin, the one that held an icy-cool corpse that somebody in Chinatown had wrapped in far too much covering for any normal purpose.

Whoever was inside of the layered shrouds, Tommie was certain, had died of the Black Plague. He would know the truth soon enough.

When he reached the rearmost body basin, he set down the lantern and went straight to work, pulling the heavy-bladed knife from his rigged pocket and unsheathing the blade. He had spent hours sharpening it to an edge far thinner than needed, so that now as he sliced away the bottom of the body’s fabric cocoon, the knife passed through the thick layers of cloth with almost no effort. At the foot, he made a perfect cut five or six inches long, separating layer after layer as he worked toward the corpse itself.

His moves were well studied. In Tommie’s judgment, the best thing about independent wealth was the time it gave one for read-
ing and reflection. Such things were paying him well in this tingly quest, providing bits of knowledge more powerful than a sidearm. He now knew, for instance, that while a rat bite could infect a human if the rat was carrying plague, the devil in the disease was that the fleas on an infected rat could also carry the plague. And not only are fleas practically invisible, they can jump several feet. Though it might be possible to successfully avoid the rats, once plague is on the loose, avoiding contact with fleas was much more difficult.

He only needed a minute of contact with the body, perhaps less. The self-sealed clothing, silk hood, and gloves would keep him safe enough, and by now any fleas that might still be on the body should have been stunned by the cold. The Chinese Oriental Rat Flea thrived on the hides of black rats, but it became inactive in the cold and it was easily destroyed by fire. Thus he felt confident that with only a few seconds of exposure, and with the immediate burning of his clothing afterward, he could dodge the disease.

As for any remaining danger, what was life without risk?

The sliced wraps finally parted to reveal the corpse’s lower leg. Tommie picked up the lantern and shined it close to the opening to get a good look.
Perfect!
The purplish, blackened skin was also covered with red-and-brown circles. It made no difference if there were any fleas to carry this disease. Here, the tissue itself was infectious.

He set the lantern aside, picked up his lunch pail, unsealed the lid and reached inside. From the box, he pulled a small black rat by the tail, then took the animal firmly in his other hand. In a single, swift move, he stuffed the rat into the corpse’s thick wrappings, making sure to push it all the way down to the flesh, then yanked his arm out and pinched the opening tightly shut. All he needed to do now was to place another large block of ice directly over the opening, and nobody would see anything. He moved the largest remaining ice block and set it in place to cover the opening and hold it tightly closed.

Between the rat’s frenzy of fear and desire to escape, it would gnaw on the body. It would draw the plague into itself. An hour or two, he thought, should be plenty. In the meantime, he would lug more fresh ice over and completely cover the corpse, making sure the rat had nowhere else to go but into the body, which would be warmer than the ice surrounding it.

Tommie walked back toward the spot where the fresh ice sat waiting for him, stopping halfway between it and the body to set the lantern down on the floor. Then he stepped over to the pile of ice and picked up the top block, using the same section of newspaper left behind with it. It was the financial section, full of grim indicators that Tommie didn’t bother to read. He carried the block back to the body and rested it against the one that already covered the slit. There were a few half-melted blocks still in place, but he thought that the corpse could use four or five more.

He went back to the ice and picked up another block, this one covered by the section of the paper that showed Shane’s article. He didn’t bother to look at it, just used the paper to make it easier to lift the block and carry it back to the body. When he was finished, he collected the papers, with Shane’s article on the top, still not noticing the story. He carried them out to the fire pit to burn them along with his clothing after the entire job was done. He tossed a few of the papers into the pit after wadding each one. Just as he reached for the page with Shane’s article, the name “Nightingale” caught his eye.

Tommie became utterly still, as unmoving as the surrounding corpses.

No.

His denial began its automatic responses—there were others with that name, unrelated others. He had seen the name before. The question could be answered in an instant. All he had to do was pick up the page and read the article.

Finally, with a slow and deep breath, he broke the spell holding him and reached forward to pick up the damp page. He held it close. There was the name, there was the article containing
it, along with the drawing of the twelve-year-old boy, captioned “Shane Nightingale.” The first name of “Shane” sent up another red flag. Tommie’s hands grew so shaky that it annoyed him. Still, he began to decipher the smeared words on the page.

Something about the boy helping the police to solve a High Society murder. Police Sergeant Randall Blackburn tells all about this amazing boy who blah, blah, blah . . .

And then there it was. It hit him like a nail to the forehead.

“Shane Nightingale” was some throwaway kid. He wasn’t really a Nightingale; he only took the name of the family who adopted him. A year earlier, he was taken in by the Nightingale family of the renowned
Nightingale Dry Goods Consortium,
all of whom had perished in the earthquake and fires, except for Shane.

“. . . except for Shane.”

There was one Nightingale still left. Tommie missed one.

“. . . except for Shane.”

Shane. The human bad penny. Tommie screamed silently in frustration, wondering how such a thing could have happened. Although even as he asked himself, he knew the only possible answer: Friar John. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, the Headmaster had not only sold out Tommie’s patronage, but he had set Tommie up for an inevitable encounter between him and the boy. Another Nightingale was out there. And because of that,
incompleteness
now marred the memory of Tommie’s special work.

He took a quick look all around and confirmed that the body wagon was nowhere in sight yet, so he hustled off to the station to ask a few casual questions about this Sergeant Randall Blackburn and his special little friend.

Randall Blackburn decided to pay a second visit to the orphanage, unannounced. He went in uniform to avoid misunderstandings, but gave no other consideration to the friars. The thing that he gained from reading Shane’s article in print was the realization of
the huge hole in Shane’s background. Whatever clue to the boy’s ability that there might be, some evidence must have been left at the orphanage during the years he spent there. Blackburn wanted to get a closer look at the place itself.

He closed the distance of the last block before reaching the back gate entrance to St. Adrian’s. A familiar sense of danger manifested beneath his stomach and across his shoulders.

What danger?
It was a place full of kids. There were some unusual people taking care of those kids, but it was necessary work, and it was something that few others wanted to do. What danger?

His mouth instantly soured, realizing that the danger came from whatever it was that prevented a twelve-year-old boy who has been orphaned for the second time from wanting to return to the familiarity of St. Adrian’s. The danger came from whatever persuaded that boy to prefer living all by himself, inside a toolshed at the back of a cemetery.

He reached the gate and saw that it was unlocked and unguarded. That made it easy enough to walk in, but seemed strange. An orphan might not desire a life alone on the street, but most delinquents would prefer it. How were they kept from running off?

He moved quietly, but made no effort to sneak around. The grounds were nicely kept and all traces of the earthquake damage had been eliminated outside. The brick buildings showed a few cracks, but nothing of real concern. Either the place was solidly constructed or the shock wave spared this part of town, another one of those strangely untouched pockets of land that existed here and there.

A cool breeze ran across the manicured grass. There was a quiet dignity to the place, but his anxiety deepened when he moved toward the main building, a long and low two-story structure. The place was full of kids, over a hundred, according to Friar John. Yet even in this close proximity, Blackburn heard nothing. The loudest sound to reach him was the rustle of the breeze in the foliage and bird calls from the upper branches.

He opened the door and stepped inside, quietly pulling it closed behind him. Everything remained quiet. He stood still for a moment, letting his ears adjust the same way his eyes adjusted to a drop in the light. Faint background sounds reached him: a scraping of a chair, a quiet set of footsteps, an indistinguishable voice. Somebody had vomited in there recently.

The bare floorboards squeaked under his weight when he moved along the hallway, passing several classrooms. A small window in each door revealed young students bent low over their desks, reading or writing. In one class, a middle-aged male was delivering an arithmetic lesson and writing on the blackboard. Every student paid strict attention.

He was still watching the class and wondering how the teachers kept such perfect order, when he flinched at the sharp sound of a mop handle falling onto the floor. He turned to see the same young girl who had been cleaning Friar John’s office when he was there last. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. He started to apologize for startling her, but before he got the first word out, she spun on her heels and ran. Her speed was impressive.

Blackburn made one more pass down the hallway, focusing on the classes on the opposite side this time, but learned nothing else. He was just starting up the stairs to the second floor when he was stopped by a sharp voice coming from behind him.

“Hello, Sergeant.”

There was no sound of welcome to it. Blackburn turned to see Friar John, who had managed to get close enough to breathe down his neck without giving himself away. Blackburn was equally surprised by and suspicious of the man’s skills.

Moments later they were back at the door to Friar John’s office. The friar had managed to whisk Blackburn there so quickly that he saw little else along the way.

“Thank you, Mary Kathleen,” the friar said without bothering to turn around and confirm that she was following. “You may go back to class now.”

“Can’t, Friar. I’m kicked out for talking again. Supposed to mop the hall.”

“All right, all right. Just go back to it, then.”

She hurried back to her mop and pail without ever looking at Blackburn, which seemed odd, given her surprise on encountering him. But nothing about the place quite came into full focus for him. He followed Friar John into the office.

Vignette sneaked up to Friar John’s door carrying the mop and bucket as props. She sidled up close enough to listen in without being seen. Then she silently placed the bucket and mop in position so that it might look like she was working if anybody spotted her. It was the surprise sight of the same policeman that initially frightened her, encountering him as she did, right there in the middle of a hallway that she had just been sentenced to clean. It was only moments later that she realized it was time to jump into action. His appearance at St. Adrian’s was clearly fate of some sort. She knew that these were the kinds of things that she was supposed to leave up to the Lord, but she had been finding herself feeling less and less certain about what the Lord seemed to have planned for her future life. Sometimes the feelings were so strong that they overwhelmed her—whether anybody cared for that aspect of her personality or not. And that is just what began happening to her while she listened to the two men talk.

“Sergeant Blackburn, if I had anything else to tell you, I certainly would.”

“I don’t doubt that, sir—”

“Friar John.”

“I don’t doubt that, Friar John, but—”

“I even looked through his permanent file after your first visit, just in case. But there’s just nothing there. Nothing useful.”

“Right, but sometimes people remember things after a few days of thinking it over, so I generally like to—”

“Wander onto their premises without notice?”

“If I need to,” Blackburn replied in a soft and even tone. He held Friar John’s gaze until the headmaster dropped it.