“It’s my withdrawal from the mayoral race. The reasons I give are personal and undisclosed.”
“You don’t have to withdraw, sir.”
“Yes, I do, Mr. Kelly. Responsibility without consequence is, in fact, no responsibility at all. If I am to be of use to anyone, including myself, in the years to come, I must withdraw. I must reflect. And I must get better. If I am to lead at all.”
I picked up the envelope and wondered at its cost.
“What I ask from you, Mr. Kelly, is one thing and one thing only. But it is significant.”
“Go ahead.”
“I want your silence about this entire matter. Not for my protection. Although I admit, it does help me. But if the story about the fire and this alleged letter was ever given any credence, it would be embarrassing for Mr. Bratton and for the families concerned. Especially, of course, for the mayor.”
“And you would have effectively smeared him?”
Kincaid dropped his head a fraction. “Exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”
“No one will hear a thing from me, Mr. Kincaid. There is, however, the problem of murder.”
Kincaid opened his mouth to speak again. This time I beat him to it.
“I don’t believe your aide had anything to do with the death of Allen Bryant or anyone else. No worries there, sir. But there is someone out there who’s willing to kill.”
“In order to gain control of these documents? To be honest, I just don’t buy it.”
“Why not?”
“There would be some political advantage to obtaining the fire documents,” Kincaid said. “If they exist. But seriously, murder?”
“This isn’t about politics, Mr. Kincaid. And it’s not about the Chicago Fire. At least not in the way you’re thinking.”
“Then what is it about, Mr. Kelly?”
“It’s about money, Mr. Kincaid. A boatload of money.”
I pulled out a copy of Josiah Randolph’s diary from 1871. One more present from my friend Teen.
“This is what your aide was after. Except he didn’t know it.”
Kincaid took the diary in his hands and opened it. “What is this?”
“Pages from a diary. An account of the Great Chicago Fire, written in 1871 by the curator of the Chicago Historical Society.”
Kincaid slipped on a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses and began to skim. I fixed up a pot of coffee and continued to talk.
“His name was Josiah Randolph. His great-grandnephew runs the society today.”
“Did you get this diary from him?”
“Not exactly. Most of the diary was in the public archives. Some of it was a little harder to get a handle on.”
“Go ahead,” Kincaid said, and kept reading.
“There was no agreement between John J. Wilson and Charles Hume regarding the fire. No evidence I could find that they conspired to start anything.”
Kincaid glanced up. “You know that for a fact?”
“I’ll tell you what I know and you decide. Josiah Randolph writes in his diary of the moments just before the fire bore down on the historical society. Sit down, Mr. Kincaid. This might take a while.”
Kincaid sat. I poured us some coffee.
“The historical society was supposed to be one of the city’s ‘fireproof’ buildings,” I said. “On the night of the fire, according to Josiah, most of Chicago’s money was lined up outside his basement door, jewels and furs in hand.”
“Looking for a place to store their valuables?”
“Exactly. Names like Pullman, Palmer, and Ogden. A real Who’s Who. Josiah Randolph took in as much as he could. Then, he heard what sounded like a freight train coming down the block.”
“The fire?”
“According to Josiah, heat from the fire began to melt the inside of the society’s walls. The flames themselves were still blocks away. That’s when Josiah Randolph realized his building wasn’t fireproof. In fact, it was anything but.”
I found a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit up. Kincaid declined. I shrugged. It went well with the coffee. Then I cracked the window, leaned my heels against the sill, and found the line of my story.
“Josiah figured he had maybe ten minutes to get out of Dodge. After that, the building was going to be gone. So he ran back down to the basement and looked around.”
“Trying to figure out what he should save?” Kincaid said.
I nodded. It was good to talk it through out loud. Let me hear how it played, where the holes might be.
“There was one item in particular he tried to take with him.”
I flipped open the diary pages and pointed to a section of underlined text. Now that we had gotten down to it, I noticed just a bit of a shake in my hand. That was okay. Fear keeps most men honest. I was probably no exception.
“Josiah talks about it here,” I said. “The only handwritten copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Given to the society by Illinois’ favorite son, Abraham Lincoln.”
“The New York State Library has Lincoln’s handwritten copy.” Kincaid spoke as he read. “I’ve seen it myself.”
“That was Lincoln’s preliminary copy. The historical society had the final version.”
Kincaid nodded and continued to skim the pages of Josiah’s diary. Then he stopped and looked up.
“Says here Randolph couldn’t save the document.”
“The Proclamation was in a wooden frame,” I said. “Josiah writes that he couldn’t break it and he couldn’t get the frame out the basement window.”
“So the Proclamation burned,” Kincaid said.
“That’s what I thought. Then I found a second portion of the diary. The part I told you wasn’t available to the public.”
I pulled out another sheaf of papers and placed them in front of Kincaid, copies of the diary fragments I had taken from Lawrence Randolph’s locked desk.
“After I read these, I had all the originals looked at by a document examiner. There’s no doubt. The portion that talks about the Proclamation burning was written with a cheaper, carbon-based ink. The rest of the diary features an ink called iron gall. Same color. Different ink.”
“How certain are we?”
“Ink was not mass-produced back then. There were several different qualities and textures. Pretty distinctive. The fragments I am showing you now were written with the original iron-gall ink as well. My expert believes the fragments were clearly part of Josiah Randolph’s original diary. I believe they tell us what really happened to the Proclamation. Why don’t you take a minute.”
I leaned back in my chair and smoked while Kincaid read. After he finished, he put down the diary and took off his glasses. I put out my cigarette and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. Kincaid did the same. Then I laid out on my desk the Sheehan’s Allen Bryant had been killed for and the parchment I had found within.
“I found it inside this book, Mr. Kincaid. Already verified the cursive. It’s Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The final version. Written by the man himself.”
Kincaid’s fingers ran lightly over the document. He began to read the first few lines, lips moving but no sound forthcoming. Then he looked up. I nodded and he kept reading. When he was done, Mitchell Kincaid sat for a moment. Content, it seemed, simply to be with history. After a while he looked up again. This time, with a smile. Then we talked. About what to do with Lincoln’s document. About what to do with Mitchell Kincaid’s future. I packed up the Proclamation and gave it to the soon-to-be-ex-candidate. He called for a car to meet him and left, holding his treasure like a newborn. Kincaid’s run for mayor might be over. His destiny, however, was just starting to take hold. Now it was time to catch a killer.
