The Spook Lights Affair

26

There was a police seal on the door of the empty house in Drifter’s Alley, put there after the body of Jack Travers had been removed. From the look of the yard and what Quincannon could see though cracks in the window shutters, the bluecoats hadn’t done much searching of the premises. As he’d expected. Murders were common occurances in the scruffier parts of the city, and the constabulary was overworked and understaffed, as well as corrupt and generally incompetent. The discovery of an unidentified, commonly dressed man shot to death in a tumbledown back-alley house would have been given short shrift. It was only when prominent citizens were slain, or the victims were young women slaughtered by the likes of the Demon of the Belfry, or families of the deceased applied legal pressure, that the detective squad mounted a serious investigation.

The property and its environs had been deserted when Quincannon arrived, and remained so while he conducted his careful searches. The only signs of recent digging anywhere in the yard were the handful of shallow holes Zeke Crabb had created. There was nothing in the shallow space beneath the front porch except remnants of trash and a nest of spiders. Nor were there any evident burial spots among the bordering trees or in the adjacent vacant lot. If Jack Travers had planted the Wells, Fargo loot, he’d done it undetectably or in some other location.

Quincannon had no qualms about breaking into the house. He left the police seal intact and entered through by picking an unsealed lock on the rear door. If the police had added to the chaos caused by Crabb’s ransacking, there was no indication of it; the interior rooms looked more or less as they had by match light on his first visit. The only apparent difference was the emptiness of the bloodstained cot in the bedroom.

He made an exhaustive search of each room, using a pry bar he’d brought with him to lift floorboards, wallboards, and wainscoting. He looked inside the stove and dismantled the flue, barely escaping a cascade of soot. He dragged the icebox away from the wall so he could check behind it. He inspected cabinets, furniture, light fixtures, ceiling rafters — every conceivable hiding place that Crabb might have overlooked.

The green-and-greasy wasn’t there. Not so much as a dollar of it.

It was not in Quincannon’s nature to give up on a quest, particularly one of such a remunerative nature. But what else could he do now? Only Jack Travers had known the whereabouts of the swag, and his greedy secret had died with him. It could be anywhere, close by or miles away, buried in the ground or tucked inside a hollow tree stump or an abandoned building or dozens of other places. There was simply no way to tell what sort of hiding place the crafty mind of a thief had come up with.

All the detective work Quincannon had done, all the indignities he had been subjected to — beer bath, whizzing bullets, the fight with Zeke Crabb, the unwanted helping hand from the crackbrain — and what did he have to show for it? Shared fees from Joseph St. Ives and Barnaby Meeker, yes, Sabina had reminded him of that. She might be satisfied with them, but he wasn’t. Not when he could have, should have, by Godfrey was entitled to have, added so much more to the agency’s coffers.

Thirty-five thousand dollars in cash — missing, lost, perhaps never to be found.

Thirty-five hundred dollars reward — gone forever.

It was enough to make even a peerless detective weep.