Bell smiled. “I’m certain the banking commissioners in San Francisco will be most generous in granting a reward to you and your crew.”
Kaufman was satisfied, his gaze sweping through the car. “This must have been one luxurious palace on wheels before it sank. I’ve never seen a boxcar fixed up like a private Pullman parlor car.”
“No expense was spared,” said Bell, eyeing several bottles of vintage champagne and expensive brandy that were scattered in the sediment on the floor.
Kaufman’s expression turned grim as he nodded at two misshapen mounds protruding from the floor. “These the two you were looking for?”
Bell nodded solemnly. “Jacob Cromwell, the infamous Butcher Bandit, and his sister, Margaret.”
“The Butcher Bandit,” Kaufman said softly in awe. “I always thought he’d disappeared.”
“A legend handed down through the years because the money was never recovered.”
The adipose tissue that once stored Cromwell’s fat had broken down and his body, like the corpses in the cab of the locomotive, had turned waxlike in saponification. The notorious killer looked less than something that had once been a living human being. It was as though he had melted into an indiscernible lump of brown gelatin. His body was twisted, as if he’d died writhing in terror when tons of water gushed into the freight car as it followed the locomotive down to the bottom of the lake. Bell knew better. Cromwell might have struggled to survive, but he would never have been gripped with terror. No longer was he a menacing figure. His reign of robbery and murder had ended forty-four years ago under the cold waters of Flathead Lake.
He waded through the muck to where Margaret’s body lay. Her lustrous hair was fanned out in the silt and tangled with strands from a reedlike weed. The once-lovely face looked like a sculpture an artist had left unfinished. Bell could not help but remember her beauty and vivaciousness the night they met in the elevator of the Brown Palace Hotel.
Kaufman interrupted Bell’s thoughts. “His sister?”
Bell nodded. He felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow and remorse. Her final words before he fell from the car came back to haunt him. He could never explain his feelings toward her. There was no endearing love on his part, more a fondness coated with hatred. There was no forgiving her criminal actions in league with her brother. She deserved to die as surely as he did.
“Can’t tell from the look of her now,” said Kaufman. “She might have been a beautiful woman.”
“Yes, she was that,” said Bell softly. “A beautiful woman full of life but veiled in evil.” He turned away saddened but his eyes dry of tears.
SHORTLY BEFORE midnight, the salvage barge tied up at the old railroad dock in Rollins. Bell made arrangements with Kaufman to see that the bodies were taken care of by the nearest mortuary and the next of kin of Hunt and Carr notified. He recognized Joseph Van Dorn standing on the dock surrounded by four of his agents and was not surprised to see him.
Van Dorn was in his eighties but stood straight, with a full head of gray hair and eyes that never lost their gleam. Although his two sons now ran the detective agency from offices in Washington, D.C., he still worked out of his old office in Chicago and consulted on the cases that had never been solved.
Bell walked up and shook Van Dorn’s hand. “Good to see you, Joseph. It’s been a long time.”
Van Dorn smiled broadly. “My work isn’t as interesting since you retired.”
“Nothing could stop me from coming back on this case.”
Van Dorn stared at the freight car. Under the dim lights on the dock, it looked like some odious monster from the depths. “Was it there?” he asked.
“The money?”
Bell merely nodded.
“And Cromwell?”
“Both he and his sister, Margaret.”
Van Dorn sighed heavily. “Then at long last it’s over. We can write finish to the legend of the Butcher Bandit.”
“Not many of the Cromwell Bank’s depositors,” Bell said slowly, “will still be alive to receive their money.”
“No, but their descendants will be notified of their windfall.”
“I promised Kaufman and his crew a fat finder’s fee.”
“I’ll see that they get it,” Van Dorn promised. He placed a hand on Bell’s shoulder. “Nice work, Isaac. A pity we couldn’t have found the train fifty years ago.”
“The lake is two hundred seventy feet where the train sank,” explained Bell. “The salvage company that was hired by the San Francisco banking commissioners dragged the lake but couldn’t find it back in 1907.”
“How could they have missed it?”
“It had fallen in a depression in the lake bed and the drag lines passed over it.”
Van Dorn turned and nodded toward a car parked by the dock. “I guess you’ll be heading home.”
Bell nodded. “My wife is waiting. We’ll be driving back to California.”
“San Francisco?”
“I fell in love with the town during the investigation and decided to remain after the earthquake and make my home there. We live in Cromwell’s old mansion on Nob Hill.”
