The Cutthroat

“I know who you are. You thought you could evade me. I want my credit.”

40

The Cutthroat caught a glimpse of long, stringy hair.

He stood up, brushed past Rick Cox, and whispered, “Follow me.”

He pushed through the vestibule door onto the open platform between the cars. Cox caught up with him in the near darkness. Faces lit only by the glow from the cars ahead and behind, ears half deafened by the thunder of the engine and the wheels clattering on track joints, they stared at each other. Cox’s weirdly mobile features reflected a dozen questions. He blurted one.

“Why are you wearing a false beard?” Cox glanced back at the car at the gay crowd in the bright lights and for a second, the Cutthroat saw, he fixed on the petite blonde with the musical voice. It all dawned on the lunatic in a flash. “Oh… No… You!”

He reached to tug the Cutthroat’s beard.

The Cutthroat blocked him with his cane. As he did, he twisted the head, yanked out the blade, and rammed it deep into Cox’s belly. He had murdered many, many more women than men. But their internal anatomy was the same, at least when it came to organs that mattered. He gripped his weapon with both hands and used all his might to drag it up through the sternum.

He checked that no one was coming from either car. Then he stepped over the side chains, pulled the body under them, leaned out into the slipstream and held on with one hand while he pulled Cox with the other. Calling on almost superhuman strength, he lifted Cox’s body beside him, swung it high and far, and yanked it in from the arc of the swing and under the wheels.

You are brilliant.

The lunatic hurled himself under a speeding train.

Brilliant.

He retrieved the cane he had dropped, sheathed his blade, and waited outside in the vestibule while the train slowed for Tuxedo Park. The passengers hurried out of the car. He followed them from the lavish stone station, wrapping his cape tightly closed to cover the blood that soaked his coat and trousers. Ahead, he could hear the blonde laughing with her friends, escaping him again.

Leaving him still hungry.

* * *

“Isaac!” Marion said in the night.

Bell came awake in an instant, reaching under the pillow, eyes glittering like cobalt. She had turned on a light.

“I know why I know the Cutthroat won’t hurt me if he is in the Jekyll and Hyde company.”

Bell let go of the gun, sat up, and put an arm around her shoulder. “Tell me.”

“You think it’s highly likely that the Cutthroat is in the Jekyll and Hyde company.”

“Likely enough to make it too dangerous.”

“He won’t hurt me. He can’t hurt me. Because if he wants to have the movie made, he needs me alive.”

Isaac Bell broke into a broad smile.

“Are you laughing at me?” she asked.

“No. I am, as always, grateful for your wisdom. But this time even you don’t fully understand what you’ve reckoned.”

“I told you, you don’t have to worry about me.”

“Thanks to you, I don’t have to worry about anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve come up with the ideal way to distract him. If the Cutthroat is Barrett or Buchanan or Henry Young, he won’t hurt anyone because he won’t risk getting caught until after you finish the movie in Los Angeles. That gives me the entire tour across the West to nail him before he murders another woman.”

41

“Immortality, Mr. Bell?”

Barrett and Buchanan eyed Isaac Bell skeptically over their coffee cups. Their train had just crossed the Missouri — Kansas line and was passing through oil fields littered with abandoned derricks.

“Next, you’ll sell us the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“On top of Treasure Island.”

The tall detective found no humor in their banter. Not when he knew that these men were two of his three suspects. The odds were, one of them had slaughtered Anna Waterbury and Lillian Lent and Mary Beth Winthrop and how many more girls who had died in terror.

“A movie will make your performances live forever.”

“We weren’t aware you were involved with motion pictures, Mr. Bell.”

“My wife is a filmmaker. Marion Morgan Bell.”

Both actors’ eyebrows shot upward. Buchanan said, “You are married to Marion Morgan? She made The Iron Horse. You saw it, Jackson, about the western railroads.”

Barrett was studying Bell closely. “So you are not a complete stranger to show business, Mr. Bell.”

“I believe I can persuade her to immortalize your production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a big film. Three full reels. Maybe four.”

John Buchanan shook his head. “Absolutely not. If the audience can watch a movie, why would they come to our show?”

“They can read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But they still come to your show.”

“Interesting,” Barrett said. “It is something to consider.”

“Someday in the future,” Buchanan added vaguely.

Bell said, “You would have to do it immediately after your last performance in San Francisco. It can be made fast and inexpensively only while your company is still together, your scenery and costumes intact.”