Terror at the Fair

Chapter Eight

I leapt from my seat and, ignoring the cries of two blue-and-gold-uniformed Andy Frain ushers, sprinted onto the stage and was the first person to reach the man who lay motionless on his back.

“Sir, sir, you can’t be out there,” one of the young ushers yelled as I knelt over the prone figure, pressing my fingers against his carotid.

“I’m a newspaper reporter, dammit,” I shouted over my shoulder. “Get medical help right now! Get the police!”

Even as I barked orders, though, I knew this man was beyond help. His face froze into a grimace and his open eyes wore the sightless glaze of death. A dark stain had begun to spread over his suede vest, and his forehead sported an eggplant-colored bruise where he had hit the pavement.

For those first few moments, I was only vaguely conscious of the growing intensity of the crowd noise and the stares from members of the suddenly shocked troupe, who looked down from their horses and from the stagecoach. One of the “bandits,” rifle in hand, began to sob, perhaps in the realization he may have fired the fatal shot.

Siren wailing, an ambulance screeched onto the stage, lurching to a stop as two white-jacketed medics jumped out. I stepped away and backed into the crowd of gapers who had edged onto the stage despite the efforts of the beleaguered ushers to keep them back.

A pair of uniformed policemen arrived and had better success in keeping the onlookers at bay. “What’s going on here?” one asked hoarsely after I had identified myself.

“Guy got shot,” I told him. “Fell from the top of a stagecoach.”

The cop’s ruddy Irish face registered outrage. “Holy Mary, mother of God, there’s way more guns bein’ used in this show than is necessary; I said so right from the start to anyone who would take the time to listen to me,” he snarled. “Too easy to have a live round get mixed in with the blanks when you’ve got this much ammo to play with.”

“So you think this was an accident?” I asked the cop.

“Of course it was an accident,” Fred Metzger said as he tried to get between me and the patrolman, whose nametag read “O’Brien.” The PR man panted, beads of sweat materializing across his forehead. “You don’t have to write about this, do you?” he pleaded, arms outstretched.

“You darned well know the answer to that,” I snapped at him. “First thing I need is an ID on the poor bastard.”

“You wouldn’t be tryin’ to get in our way now, would you?” Officer O’Brien asked, puffing out his already ample chest.

“Not at all. Just doing my job, same as you. Are more of your men on the way?”

“Yeah, some dicks will be here soon enough,” the burly copper said, shaking his head in disgust. “And they’ll want to be talking to all the actors in this cussed show. Christ almighty, I figured this was going to be an easy detail, like last summer. Now don’t you go quoting me,” he quickly added.

“I won’t, don’t worry. I’ve got other things on my mind, and so do you.” By this time, the two medics, although out of earshot, had made it clear by their actions that there was nothing more to be done. As they covered the body with a sheet, the loudspeaker crackled, “Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, because of an unfortunate accident, this presentation of ‘Wheels-a-Rolling’ has been cut short. However, there will be two more performances today. Thank you, and enjoy your time at the Chicago Railroad Fair.”

As the crowd descended silently and somberly from the grandstands, many of them cast furtive, almost guilty glances at the grim tableau of the medics loading the body into the ambulance and driving off. Several of the actors, still in costume, gathered in small groups on the stage talking in hushed tones. I joined one group of three young men in their twenties wearing Stetson hats, Levi’s, buckskin vests, cowboy boots, and chaps and introduced myself as a Tribune reporter, flashing my press card.

“Did any of you know the... uh, victim?” I asked them, glancing from face to face.

“A little bit. Yeah,” the one with a goatee muttered, looking down and scuffing his boot on the concrete.

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Name is—was—Vic. Never knew the last name.”

“I did, it’s Trevor,” said the tallest of the three. “We were both in the same small theater company up on the North Side. Trying to get a foothold into the business, you know?”

“We’re all actors—or attempting to be,” the third guy added sheepishly. He wore an eye patch that turned out to be a prop.

“Would you say you know most of the other performers in this pageant?” I directed the question at all three of them.

“Not really,” the bearded one said. “At least I don’t. Oh, I’ve talked to a few of them backstage, mostly idle chatter. Some of the older ones are retired railroad workers. Others just like being on the stage. For instance, I met one woman who’s in the Harvey Girls scene, has three kids, and lives up in one of the northern suburbs, Northbrook, I think it is. Used to act in community theater groups before she became a mom.”

“Harvey Girls?”

“You know, those girls who have worked in Santa Fe railroad station restaurants in the Southwest since way back when.”

“Guess that was going to come later in the show, right?”

“Oh—yeah. We didn’t get far enough today. You haven’t seen the show before, huh?”

“No. You know anything more about this Trevor?” I asked.

“Came from someplace in Minnesota or maybe Wisconsin,” said the tall one. “I only talked to him a few times, but I think he had a small apartment up in Lakeview or maybe Rogers Park.”

“Do you have any idea how long he had been in Chicago?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. At least six or more months, though. We were in a play together in January at a small theater, which was the first time I saw him.”

“Any of you know anything about the guy who fired the shot at him?”

They all shook their heads. “I rode inside the stagecoach with three others,” Eye Patch said, “and never saw what happened.”

“And I sat up on the roof with Vic, but facing the other way firing my rifle when he got... you know,” the tall one put in.

“And me, I was driving the darn coach,” added the goateed lad. “Never knew what happened till I got a jab in the ribs from the guy riding shotgun next to me, who pointed down at—what was his name... Vic?”

I thanked all three and scribbled their names in my notebook as Officer O’Brien came over to us. “We’re askin’ all of you who had a role in the pageant to stay here until the detectives have had a chance to talk to you,” he said, addressing the three and then going off and telling other actors to hang around for questioning.

I then looked up to see two plainclothes men on the far side of the stage talking to another of the actors—the shooter. I walked over and introduced myself to them.

“We’re sort of busy right now,” one of the dicks snapped at me. “Oh... I remember you now. Yeah, Smart Aleck Malek, isn’t it? Kindly don’t bother reminding me you’re a buddy of Chief Fahey. I’ve heard that crap from you before. It didn’t cut any ice then, and it won’t now. Why don’t you just beat it, scandal-monger?”

It was none other than Detective Jack Prentiss, whom I’d had a run-in with before. He didn’t like reporters, which made us even, because I didn’t like him. But you’ve got to pick your fights, and this seemed hardly the time. I retreated to a spot several yards away and watched as Prentiss and his partner, whom I didn’t recognize, questioned the shaken young man who still gripped the fatal rifle.

Every so often, Prentiss glared in my direction, as if willing me to disappear. It didn’t work. After about fifteen minutes of conversation, in which both detectives scribbled notes, they started to walk away, taking the rifle with them.

“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I’d like a couple of minutes of your time,” I said to the pair, pulling out my own notebook.

“I thought I told you before to beat it,” Prentiss snarled, “and I meant it, Malek. Since you’re such a buddy of the chief’s, go and talk to him. You have an in there, as you’ve told me. We got work to do here, people to talk to. Lots of people.” His partner graced me with a sneer similar to Prentiss’s. They must practice it in detectives’ school.

The young man had headed quickly into the wings after his talk with the detectives, and I sprinted until I caught up with him, immediately identifying myself as a Trib reporter.

“Go ’way. Don’t wanna talk to anybody,” he muttered, head down. Like the others I had spoken to, he was lean and dressed in Western garb and looked to be in his early-to-mid-twenties.

“I’ll just take a couple of minutes,” I said. “I know this is a tough time for you. Those cops didn’t charge you with anything, did they?”

He shook his head, tears welling in his eyes.

“I didn’t think so. No reason they should. Any idea how your rifle happened to have a live round in it? Or was it more than one round?”

“No idea, mister. Look, I already told those policemen everything I know. And they told me make sure to stay around here where I can be reached, for an inquest or something like that. I got nothing more to say to anybody.”

“Well, it’s important we make our readers—by far the largest audience in the Chicago area—aware of your story. Otherwise, well... people might always wonder…”

I could see him wavering, so I pushed on. “Look. I’m giving you a chance to tell your story to more than a million people. They need to know you are completely without blame in this terrible tragedy. I’m here to help you. You can see that, can’t you?”

He stared down at his boots and nodded, jamming his hands into the pockets of his Levi’s and sniffling.

“Okay, good. First, tell me your name and how you came to be part of this pageant.”

“It’s... Todd Forrest.”

“How old are you, Todd?”

“Twenty-three. I’m a part-time waiter at a little café up on Belmont near Halsted. I’m trying to break in as an actor, like a lot of the others in the cast here. I answered an ad for a part in this... show, and got cast as one of the stagecoach robbers.”

“Uh-huh. Where are you from?”

“River town out in Iowa, Muscatine. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“There’s a lot of places I’ve never heard of, but that doesn’t make them bad. Have you been in Chicago long?”

“’Bout two years now, ever since... ever since I graduated from the University of Iowa.”

“I’ve heard all sorts of good things about the school. So, you auditioned for a role in the pageant, right?”

He finally looked up and made eye contact. “Yeah, I did.”

“Any particular reason you got picked to be a bandit?”

Todd took a deep breath. “I’m... fairly good with guns. Used to go duck hunting a lot with my dad along the Mississippi River as a kid. They—the people who did the casting for the pageant—liked that. They wanted at least some of us to look like we knew how to handle firearms, although we all were told to aim at the other guys to make it look realistic. Some of ’em just fired into the air, though.”

I nodded as I continued taking notes. “So, Todd, exactly where did you get the rifle you used today?”

“Same place as always. At the start of every performance, each of us gets issued a replica of the Sharps 44-caliber rifles they say got used on the frontier back in the 1800s. There are six blanks in each weapon. And we fire all of them during the attack on the stagecoach. The men riding on the stagecoach do the same.”

“Who passes out the guns?”

“Guys on the backstage crew. Then they—the rifles—get collected after our act.”

“How many of these guys are there?”

“I dunno, two or three, I guess. I never paid much attention to them.”

“Who loads the rifles?”

“Afraid I couldn’t tell you. Maybe the same crew that gives them out.”

“Do you always get the same rifle?”

He shook his head. “Naw. The guys passing them out don’t even bother to look at us. We just line up and get handed a weapon. They usually don’t say a word, except maybe ’here you are, buddy’ or something like that.”

“Do you have any idea how many of your shells were live?”

Todd began tearing up again. “Only one, I think, although ’course I didn’t know it at the time. Live rounds have a slightly different sound and a stronger recoil, too. Wish I wasn’t such a good shot. As I said, a lot of the actors just fire without aiming.”

“Did you know the one who…?”

“Only to say hi to. I didn’t even know his name. This was only his third or fourth performance. People are changing all the time in the cast. Some get moved to other acts in the pageant, depending on if anybody’s sick or something. Others quit if they land a role in some local play. God, this is awful.”

“On that we’re agreed, Todd,” I said putting a hand on his shoulder. “A photographer for the paper may be taking your picture.”

“Well, I’m not going to be around here much longer,” he said in a listless tone. “After I get done testifying, or whatever it is I have to do, I’m getting a one-way ticket back home to Muscatine. You can have this darn city of yours. I don’t care if I never see it again.”