The Cutthroat

“We have evidence of three similar murders of young girls in three separate cities,” said Bell. “I’m not waiting for a fourth.”

“Two possibly similar murders,” Van Dorn shot back. “And one unlikely link in Boston. I said last week, Isaac, and I’ll say it again, it’s a police case. Let the police handle it.”

“It’s gone beyond the cops.”

“Why?”

“Three murders in three cities,” Bell repeated. “Local cops rarely talk to local cops in the next precinct, much less neighboring cities. And never across state lines.”

“What are you driving at?”

Bell replied to Van Dorn’s question with a question of his own: “How do you get us federal government contracts?”

“By spending ridiculous amounts of time buttering up government officials in Washington while the rest of you have a fine time being private detectives.”

“Those officials are buying something priceless from you. Priceless and unique.”

“What is that, may I ask?”

“The Van Dorn Detective Agency’s broad overview from our field offices all across the country. Cops don’t have that overview. Without it, they can’t see patterns. They can’t connect related crimes. They can’t fit pieces of a puzzle together. They don’t have the pieces.”

“The Justice Department’s—”

“No, sir,” Bell interrupted. “At this moment, there are only two types of national forces that can put the pieces together — newspapers linked by national wire services and private detective agencies with a continental reach like ours.”

“Newspapers?” Van Dorn leveled a meaty finger at the heap of cuttings that Bell had ordered sent to him from Research. “Have you seen this drivel?” He snatched up one and read aloud in a voice steeped in scorn.

“The killings of the Broadway stage actress Anna Waterbury and Springfield church choir singer Mary Beth Winthrop, whose mutilated body was found in the Mohawk River train wreck, appear to be the brutal work of a madman as methodical and cunning as Jack the Ripper.”

Van Dorn crumpled it in his fist and picked up another.

“The case looks like Jack the Ripper all over again, the murderer seemingly affected with an insane mania to mutilate bodies as had the notorious Whitechapel Fiend.”

He threw it down and read from a third.

“The detectives seek a woman hater of the Jack the Ripper type.”

“Natives tom-tomming in the jungle make more sense than journalists.”

“That is precisely why I wanted you to read them,” said Isaac. “The newspapermen are often on the scene. But they report little more than what the cops tell them. While the cops don’t know what’s going on next door. That leaves only the Van Dorn Detective Agency to collect and share evidence that can stop a murderer preying on young girls who are alone. Defenseless orphans.”

“Anna Pape and Mary Beth Winthrop weren’t orphans. Lillian Lent, in Boston, probably wasn’t, either.”

“Any hopeful young woman who leaves the bosom of her family to try to be an actress — or any poor farmer’s daughter who falls to prostitution like Lillian Lent — is, in effect, an orphan. Alone with no protector.”

Joseph Van Dorn said nothing.

“And no one knows that better than you,” said Bell.

The Boss glowered dangerously.

The Chief Investigator and his old mentor knew each other as well as any men who had stood shoulder to shoulder in battle. Van Dorn knew that Bell had not finished arguing his case. Not only not finished but was about to play his “hole” card.

“Orphans,” Bell repeated. “No father, no husband, no big brother to look out for them,” adding with a sudden quirk of his lips, “No Captain Novicki.”

Joseph Van Dorn shook his head, helpless to stifle the smile that softened his flint-hard eye. “Low blow, Isaac.”

Back when Captain David Novicki was a junior officer on a sea-battered steamer jam-packed with immigrants, he had taken the orphan boy Joseph Van Dorn under his wing. When the ship finally landed in Boston, Novicki had found Van Dorn a family to live with outside the slums. He had looked in on him on subsequent voyages back, steering him into school and away from trouble. Nearly four decades after that fateful crossing, they were still fast friends. Joseph Van Dorn credited his immense success in the detective business to David Novicki, as Isaac Bell credited Van Dorn for his.

“Here’s another low blow,” said Bell. “We both know they’re not paying clients.”

“I never thought they would be.”