I’ll offer you—take the next eighteen days. Find out all you can. But when the twenty-first comes around, I want you to tell me everything you know, so that I can post officers I trust at every potential murder site and avenue of escape.” Roosevelt pounded one beefy fist into his other hand. “I will not have another of these butcheries.”
I turned to Sara, who gave the deal quick consideration and then nodded certainly.
“We can keep the detective sergeants?” I asked.
“Of course,” Roosevelt answered.
“Done.” I put my hand forward and Theodore shook it, taking his pince-nez from his nose.
“I only hope you all
“You planning to quit, Roosevelt?” I jibed. “Has Platt finally made things too warm for you?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he replied gruffly. Then it was his turn to coyly reveal his legion of teeth. “But the conventions are coming up, Moore, and then the election. McKinley will be our party’s man, unless I’m mistaken, while the Democrats look as though they’ll actually be foolish enough to nominate Bryan—victory will be ours this fall.”
I nodded. “Going to campaign, are you?”
Theodore shrugged modestly. “I’ve been told that I can be of some use—in both New York and the western states.”
“And if McKinley should prove grateful for your help…”
“Now, John,” Sara chided sarcastically. “You know how the commissioner feels about such speculation.”
Roosevelt’s eyes went round. “
It was nearly eight o’clock by the time Sara and I got back out onto Madison Avenue; but between the exhilaration of having been allowed to continue our investigation and the warmth of the clear spring night, neither of us felt much like going home. Nor were we in any mood to lock ourselves back up in our headquarters and wait for the Isaacsons to show up, although we were anxious to talk to them as soon as they got back. As we began to stroll downtown a happy compromise occurred to me: we could dine at one of the outdoor tables in front of the St. Denis Hotel, across the avenue from Number 808. Thus positioned, we’d be sure to spot the detective sergeants on their return. This idea suited Sara thoroughly; and as we continued our march down the avenue, she became more thoroughly delighted than I’d ever seen her. There was little of the usual edgy intensity in her manner, though her mind was quite focused and her thoughts were consistently sharp and relevant. The explanation for all this, when it came to me during dinner, wasn’t particularly complicated: despite what Theodore had said about the possible official and public reaction to her involvement in the investigation, Sara was, for the moment, her own woman, a professional detective—in fact if not in name. In the days to come we would face many trials and frustrations, and I would have much cause to be grateful for Sara’s increasingly good spirits—for it was she more than anyone else who became the driving force behind the continuation of our work.
My consumption of wine that night was such that by the time dinner was over, the hedges that separated our table outside the St. Denis from the sidewalk were proving insufficient to contain my ardent attentions to the many lovely women who were innocently drawn to the still-bright windows of McCreery’s store. Sara became quite impatient with my behavior and was on the verge of leaving me to my fate when she caught sight of something across the street. Following her indication I turned around to see a cab pulling up in front of Number 808, from which Marcus and Lucius Isaacson stepped rather wearily. Perhaps it was the wine, or the events of recent days, or even the weather; but I was absolutely overjoyed at the sight of them, and, leaping over the hedges, I dashed across Broadway to offer profuse greetings. Sara followed at a more rational pace. Both Lucius and Marcus had apparently seen a good amount of the sun during their sojourn on the high plains, for their skins had darkened considerably, giving them a warm, healthy look. They seemed very glad to be back, though I wasn’t sure they’d stay that way once they heard about Kreizler’s resignation.
“It’s amazing country out there,” Marcus said, as he pulled their bags off of the hansom. “Puts an entirely different perspective on life in this city, I can tell you that.” He sniffed at the air. “Smells a lot better, too.”
“We were shot at on one train ride,” Lucius added. “A bullet went right through my hat!” He showed us the hole by poking a finger through it. “Marcus says that it wasn’t Indians—”
“It wasn’t Indians,” Marcus said.
“He says that it wasn’t Indians, but I’m not so sure, and Captain Miller at Fort Yates said—”
“Captain Miller was just being polite,” Marcus interrupted again.
“Well, that may be,” Lucius answered. “But he did say—”
“What did he say about Beecham?” Sara asked.
“—he did say that, although most of the larger bands of Indians have been defeated—”
Sara grabbed him. “Lucius. What did he say about Beecham?”
“About Beecham?” Lucius repeated. “Oh. Well. A great deal, actually.”
“A great deal that comes down to one thing,” Marcus said, looking at Sara. He paused, his large brown eyes full of meaning and purpose. “He’s our man—he’s got to be.”
CHAPTER 38
Tipsy as I was, the Isaacsons’ news, related as we got them some food at the St. Denis, sobered me up in a hurry:
Apparently Captain Frederick Miller, now in his early forties, had been assigned to the headquarters of the Army of the West in Chicago as a promising young lieutenant in the late 1870s. He had chafed under the boring strictures of staff life, however, and asked to be sent farther west, where he hoped to see active service. This request was granted and Miller was dispatched to the Dakotas, where he was twice wounded, the second time losing an arm. He returned to Chicago but declined to take up his staff duties again, electing instead to command part of the reserve forces that were kept on hand for civil emergencies. It was in this capacity that, in 1881, he’d first come across a young trooper named John Beecham.
Beecham had told his recruiting officer in New York that he was eighteen at the time of his enlistment, though Miller doubted that this was true—even when the still-green trooper had arrived in Chicago, six months later, he seemed younger than that. However, boys often lie about their age in order to enter the military, and Miller had thought little of it, for Beecham had shown himself to be a good soldier—well disciplined, attentive to detail, and efficient enough to have made corporal within two years. True, his persistent requests to be sent farther west to do some Indian fighting had annoyed Beecham’s superiors in Chicago, who weren’t particularly anxious to have their better noncommissioned officers lost to the frontier; but overall, Lieutenant Miller had been given little reason to be anything but satisfied with the young corporal’s performance until 1885.
In that year, however, a series of incidents in several of Chicago’s poorer sections had exposed a disturbing facet of Beecham’s personality. Never a man with many friends, Beecham had taken to going into immigrant neighborhoods during his off-duty hours and offering his services to charitable organizations that dealt with children, particularly orphans. At first this had seemed an admirable way for a soldier to make use of his time—far better than the usual drinking and fighting with local residents—and Lieutenant Miller had not concerned himself with it. After several months, however, he’d noticed a change in Beecham’s mood, a decided shift toward the sullen. When Miller asked the corporal about it he received no satisfactory explanation; but soon thereafter the head of one of the charities showed up at the post wanting to talk to an officer. Miller listened as the man asked that Corporal Beecham be prohibited from coming near his orphanage again; when asked why he was making such a request, the man declined to say any more than that Beecham had “upset” several of the children. Miller immediately confronted Beecham, who initially became angry and indignant, declaring that the man from the orphanage was only jealous because the children liked and trusted Beecham more than they did him. Lieutenant Miller, however, could see there
