the other way around better than any of ’em. But that girl, the other night, the one who . . . well, you’re well enough aware of what I’m saying, I suppose. Anyway, he’s got it in his head that she was just a drunkard, and he don’t want to hear nothing about what the doctor thinks, though I tell you right now if it was drink on her breath, it wasn’t no spirit I’ve ever smelled before, and I’ve had my nose in a few.” He chuckled, then glanced back at her. “Sorry, ma’am, if I shouldn’t be saying so.”
Grace shrugged.
Davey ran one hand through his hair, tapping his hat against his hip with the other. “What I’m here for is to say that I was on late shift the other night when we found a whor—when we got a call about a woman who had died in her bed. That bed being located above a brothel, if you take my meaning. She was dead as a doornail and laid out the same way, with her eyes open and looking every second like she’d sit up and tell us to pay up or get out of her room.” He laughed again, then blushed when he realized what he’d said.
“Anyways, the room had that same smell about it. I tried to say as much to George, but there ain’t nobody too interested in a dead woman of ill repute who drunk herself to death. And that’s how it went down in the books. Drunk herself into the dark, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to let that stand so I came here to tell the doctor what I seen, and find you instead.
“Which, I think . . .” He trailed off again, nerves back into his voice now that he’d lost momentum. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I think that you’ve got your own way about you, talking or not. Soon as I knew the doctor couldn’t be had I said I wanted that Grace girl, because I feel that telling you is as good as telling him, and that I done what I came to do.”
Color flushed his whole face, rising up through his neck and filling every pore straight to his hairline. Davey cleared his throat and jammed his hat onto his head.
“And I . . . I wish you a good evening,” he said, bowing awkwardly and jumping onto his horse, the back of his neck as red as the sunset.
TWENTY-THREE
“Dr. Thornhollow, I—” Grace burst into his office, only to stop cold two steps later. “Doctor, are you drunk?”
“Thoroughly.” He mock toasted her with a tumbler from his armchair, which he’d moved to squarely face the blackboard. “And this time there’s no deceit in it. It appears you get to see all my worst traits today, Grace.”
She closed the office door behind her, latching it for both their sakes. “Doctor,” she said slowly. “Davey was here and he—”
“Yes, I heard Janey knocking. She said there was a policeman here but as I’ve found them so totally unhelpful I wasn’t inclined to spare any of my time.” He threw back what was left of his drink and pointed the empty glass at the blackboard. “On the other hand, since my theory has completely collapsed, I suppose that may have been a mistake.”
Grace pulled a chair over next to his, their argument forgotten for the moment. “You were confident in the hypothesis before our trip to town,” she reminded him. “Did the failure of our visits to the doctors’ offices truly constitute a complete collapse?”
“Yes,” Thornhollow said. “The ether indicates a medical man, for sure. But that’s not criminal psychology at work, Grace, that’s a fact any bullheaded policeman could wrap his head around.”
He nodded toward the board again, where their handwriting intersected each other’s, weaving a web of notes in which to capture the killer’s personality. “But our work, the beauty of conjecture we spun here, has failed us. I had hoped to catch our man so easily, but it was presumptuous.” He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, bloodshot eyes darting over the board. “I’ve missed something, or built the entire thing on a false cornerstone. Regardless, our house of cards has fallen.”
“Then we shall pick up the deck and reshuffle,” Grace said. “If the ether points to a doctor, then we still have a narrowed list of suspects. Perhaps he is smart enough not to kill in his own area. He could be