Carnival of Shadows Read online

  Before Travis had a chance to lock the car and make his way up the steps to the front door of the building, the sheriff appeared.

  Travis introduced himself, felt a certain pride in giving his new title of senior special agent.

  The sheriff’s greeting was at once welcoming and unaffected, almost at variance to the impression Travis had received upon arrival. Travis had suspected that there might be a degree of resistance to federal involvement, but there was certainly no indication of this in the sheriff’s manner.

  Sheriff Charles Rourke was—at a guess—in his late thirties or early forties. He was slim of build, but broad in the shoulders. He had the kind of open and uncomplicated features found so predominantly in the Midwest, at once trusting without being naive, perhaps believing that other folks should always be afforded the benefit of the doubt until there was reason enough to afford them something else.

  “Charles Rourke,” the sheriff said, “though everyone here knows me as Chas.”

  Travis shook hands with Rourke. “Here to assist you with your situation,” he said.

  “Well, that was fast. You guys are really on the ball, eh? Glad to have you, Agent Travis, and don’t let anyone else suggest otherwise,” Rourke said. “Folks around here can be a mite suspicious of strangers, and they sure as hell weren’t happy when this crowd of gypsies and freaks showed up, but they’re a good sort in the main.” Rourke nodded back and to the left as if indicating the location of the gypsies and freaks.

  “The carnival people,” Travis said.

  “Hell,” Rourke replied, “that’ll do for want of a better description. Looks like something from the end of last century if you ask me, kind of thing you’d see show up around the edges of the County Fair. Kind of thing we’d encourage to move on, if you know what I mean.”

  “When did they arrive, exactly?” Travis asked.

  “You come on in,” Rourke said. “Let’s get you a desk and a chair and a cup of coffee and whatever else you need, and then I can give you a full rundown of what’s been goin’ on.”

  “Appreciated, Sheriff,” Travis said.

  “Oh hell, just call me Chas like everyone else does.”

  “I think it’s better if we stay official,” Travis replied, smiling. “You’re the sheriff, and as such should be afforded the due respect of your position.”

  “Well, I ain’t never heard it put that-a-ways, but whatever you say. And what should I be callin’ you?”

  “Agent Travis, Mr. Travis, either one will do.”

  “Well, Mr. Travis, let me welcome you to Seneca Falls, and I can assure you that you are welcome, and the facilities and personnel of the Sheriff’s Department are at your disposal. We don’t make a habit of havin’ a murder here, and though some folks around here consider it’s exciting and scandalous, still the fact remains that someone got killed, and though that’s mighty bad news for him, it ain’t such good news for us either.”

  “Let’s go inside,” Travis said, “and you can get me up to speed.”

  Rourke led the way, introduced Travis to the deputy at the front desk with, “This here’s Lester McCaffrey. His brother, Danny, and his sister, Laura, run the hotel down the street, which is as good a place as any for you to stay.”

  Rourke told Deputy McCaffrey to call ahead, to arrange things for Travis at the hotel, and then Travis was shown through to the offices in the rear of the building.

  “This here’s the throbbing nerve center of the whole operation,” Rourke said, a sardonic grin on his face. He showed Travis his own office, nothing more than a plain-deal desk, a chair on either side, against the right-hand wall a half dozen file cabinets, the drawers labeled alphabetically—AA–CA, CE–FA, FE–KI, and so on. On the wall was a photograph of Rourke with another man.

  “That’s George Docking,” Rourke explained. “Governor of Kansas. Met him while he was doing his rounds before the election. Nice enough feller for a Democrat.”

  Rourke sat behind his desk, indicated the second chair for Travis.

  “You a political man, Mr. Travis?”

  “The Bureau operates in the same way regardless of who’s in the Oval Office,” Travis said. “The director’s answerable to the president, of course, but I think some of those conversations might be a little one-sided.”

  Rourke smiled knowingly. “Oh, I can imagine that would be the case. I think your Mr. Hoover there is a somewhat forceful and determined individual and not unused to getting his own way. People may know us out here for The Wizard of Oz, but we’ve had our fair share of G-men down here looking for the likes of Alvin Karpis and Ma Barker’s boys. You know Karpis?”

  “I know of him, of course,” Travis replied. “He’s been in Alcatraz since thirty-five or thirty-six, as far as I remember. I know that he was very much at the forefront of the director’s attentions in the early thirties.”

  “Well, your Mr. Hoover got him all right, and got him good.”

  Travis smiled. He didn’t understand why they were talking about Prohibition-era gangsters. Maybe such things were of interest to small-town sheriffs. Travis was interested only to hear the details of this most recent case.

  “So to our current situation,” Rourke said, as if prompted by Travis’s thoughts. “We had this crowd show up early on Thursday morning, like some sort of bizarre motorcade. Half a dozen trucks, a handful of pickups, three or four cars, even a couple of caravans.”

  Travis took his notebook from his jacket pocket and started to write down details.

  “I got everything you need to know already written down in a file,” Rourke said. “But there ain’t much.”

  “Just for my own recollection,” Travis said. “I find it easier if I make my own notes as well.”

  “Anyway, they show up, this troupe of strange-looking characters. At first I think they’re just on a layover for food, a night’s rest perhaps, but then they set themselves to erecting tents and Lord knows what else just on the outskirts of town.”

  “Whose land?”

  “Well, it isn’t land that belongs to anyone as such. It’s town land, I suppose. Just a few acres that run down to the edge of the river. It’s no use for farming, not big enough to build much of anything, and it kind of just sits there. It’s where we sometimes have a livestock market. One time we even tried to get a Christmas sort of festival thing going, but that flew like a dodo. So, like I said, it ain’t anyone’s.”

  “And a cease-and-desist warrant, an order to move on?”

  “Well, that was all in progress. Takes a few days to sort out that kind of thing, making sure it’s all legal and aboveboard, but before we even had a chance to discuss it, this thing happened, and now we got ourselves a crime scene. Until we figure out what the hell happened, the last thing in the world we want ’em to do is move on, right?”

  “Okay, so they showed up on Thursday,” Travis said, aware that Rourke would elaborate and head off course if he wasn’t corralled somewhat. Travis had taken an immediate liking to the man. There was something altogether unassuming in his manner. Travis, both personally and professionally, considered himself a good judge of character, even from initial impressions, and Rourke came across as an honest and decent man.

  “Yes, Thursday, sometime late morning, and then they’re working all day, all night, on into the middle of Friday, and then the late afternoon of Friday there’s about a dozen of them, some of them just the weirdest-looking folk you ever did see—”

  “How so?” Travis asked. “Weird-looking in what way?”

  “Too tall, too thin, too many fingers—”

  “Sorry?”

  “There’s a guy down there with too many fingers, Mr. Travis. I’ve seen some odd things in my time, but that wins a prize somewhere, I’ll tell you.”

  “So we are talking actual physical anomalies here… people who are—”

  “Yo
u’ll see for yourself soon enough,” Rourke said. “So, Friday afternoon, here they come, walking through town, handing out flyers, asking if they can post bills in store windows and whatever. The carnival is opening on Friday night and everyone is welcome, don’t you know? And you know what they call themselves?”

  Travis looked up.

  “The Carnival Diablo, of all things. That’s like Spanish for the devil or some such, and here you got a God-fearing, churchgoing little community, all about getting on with one another and minding each other’s business, and this motley crew of oddballs and misfits descends upon them. Of course, the kids are all electrified, running up and down, laughing and hollering and making a racket, and they all want to go down there and see this freak show. I got phone calls coming in every fifteen minutes. What am I going to do about this? Why haven’t I moved these people on already? I’m trying to explain that the law is the law, that you can’t just throw people out, that even crazies and weirdoes have rights too, but no one wants to hear that. They just want me to get these people out of here, and that’s that.”

  “No one wants to talk to you until there’s trouble, and then trouble arrives and you’re the best friend they ever had,” Travis said.

  “Oh, you can say that again, Mr. Travis.”

  “You didn’t understand it the first time?” Travis said, his expression deadpan.

  “No, Mr. Travis… that’s just an expression…” Rourke started, and then he saw Travis’s smile. “You’re jokin’ with me.”

  “Go on with what you were saying, Sheriff Rourke. So the carnival opened.”

  “Seven o’clock sharp, Friday evening. I went on down there. I’d seen them putting up the tents, erecting that carousel, and it all looked pretty rundown and shabby, to be honest. The tents were old, the stands and sideshows were pretty bashed up and the whole thing needed a scrubbing brush and a lick of paint, but I have to say that when nightfall came, when they had all those lights out around the field, they had that calliope music playing an’ all, well it was a very impressive sight.”

  “And the carnival ran smoothly that first night?”

  “No trouble at all. Even the adults seemed to take to it. They had all the usual things. Toss-the-hoop, a little shooting range, some guy doing that card-switch trick, a chicken in a cage that could tic-tac-toe like you never did see. There was the usual popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, root beer floats, all that kinda thing. There were a couple fellers doing fire-breathing tricks and an acrobatic troupe made up of five guys that looked exactly the same as one another. It was one busy place, even if I say so myself. I mean, I know about all that sort of thing from the County Fair, where they have the ten-in-one show and you get some guy with elastic skin and some woman with feet the size of suitcases, but this was kind of different. They had the old Bonnie and Clyde death car, you know? Now, if Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had owned as many Fords as I have seen in my time, they’d be wealthier than old man Henry Ford himself, but this one they have here… I don’t know what it is, but it looks spooky as hell. You look in back there, through the broken window, and you expect to see Clyde himself taking his last dying breath. They had that over to one side, and then they had people coming on, like this human skeleton guy, and I have never seen anyone as much a skeleton as that. That was just disturbing. They had a giant rat, the Fiji mermaid, the skeleton of a two-headed dog, a midget guy, the guy with too many fingers who turned out to be the best darned magician I ever did see. The whole catalog was there, and they were good. This wasn’t no two-bit, flea-ridden ragtag collection of drunks and conmen. These people were good, Mr. Travis, real good. They entertained the townsfolk, I’ll give them that much, and when Saturday morning came, I never got one phone call of complaint. Not one.”

  “Not even from the Federal Surplus Fingers Department?”

  Rourke hesitated and then smiled again. “You know, Mr. Travis, you should probably go on down there and get yourself a job as resident comedian.”

  “So what happened on Saturday?”

  “Ah well, Saturday was even busier. We had folks comin’ in from Eureka, El Dorado, Augusta, Marion, even as far north as Emporia. Presumably, folks here were making calls, telling their friends and relatives that Seneca Falls had one fine show going on, and they came in like I ain’t never seen before. I mean, this town has a population somewheres in the region of four or five thousand, but Saturday night must have seen maybe a quarter as many again comin’ on by car and busload. Seems like half the state wanted to see what the Carnival Diablo had to say for itself.”

  “And when was the body found?”

  “That was late, maybe eleven o’clock or so. Most folks had gone. They were only the teenagers hangin’ around, some of the younger couples who ain’t got kids to get home to bed, and that’s when they found him.”

  “Where was he found?”

  “Seen, more than found, so to speak. He was sort of under the platform of the carousel. Neck was broken, but the coroner, Jack Farley, thinks that happened postmortem. Cause of death was a single knife wound to the back of the neck, sort of upward into the base of his brain. Jack said that death would have been instantaneous. Couple of people there said they saw the victim on the carousel itself, as if he were up there having a ride, but when I got to asking further, it looked like they was drunk enough to see Santa Claus and Popeye the Sailor Man up theres as well. So I don’t know what to make of it, to tell you the truth.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Well, he was just there, see? It wasn’t like he was hiding anyplace. It was a young woman called Frances Brady. Came up here the few miles from El Dorado. This Brady girl was walking back toward the carousel, says she was looking for her boyfriend who’d wandered off someplace, and she saw this guy under the carousel.”

  “And she saw nothing else… no one approaching, no one leaving, nothing at all?”

  “Not a thing. She just saw the guy down there, started hollering for them to stop the carousel, and then he was pulled out by a couple of the carnival people.”

  “And he has not been identified?”

  Rourke shook his head. “Not as yet. We’ve had him on ice, so to speak, since Saturday night, and no one has come forward. I got a picture and sent it to my contemporaries in half a dozen surrounding towns, see if anyone knew who he was, but nothing has come back as yet.”

  Rourke reached into the drawer of his desk and produced a photograph, no more than five-by-four. It was the same image as that which had been provided by Bishop. He also produced a fingerprint card from the same drawer.

  “And there’s his prints. Understand you boys have some kind of fingerprint archive or some such. Maybe you got him on record somewhere.”

  Travis took the card. “Do you have more copies of the picture?”

  “Sure do,” Rourke replied, and furnished Travis with another photograph of the dead man.

  “Anyway,” Rourke continued. “I have questioned everyone who works for the carnival to see if any of them recognize him, but there’s been nothing. We got ourselves a dead body, no name, no details, nothing in his pockets save a packet of playing cards, a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and all of nine dollars and forty-two cents. I have all his personal effects and his clothes bagged and labeled down at the morgue.”

  Travis made a note on his book. “So, best we go take a look at him, then.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Travis. You want a cup of coffee or anything before we go? You want us to take your stuff to the hotel?”

  “No, that’ll be fine, Sheriff. We’ll deal with all of that later. I just want to see the body. I want to get going on this thing as soon as possible.”

  “Good ’nough. Follow me,” Rourke said. He led the way out of his office to the front of the building.

  They took both cars, Travis following Rourke down the main drag, then left at the end and then a good half mile to
a low building on the right-hand side of the highway. County Morgue the sign on the front said, and a tan-colored dog with one ear missing raised its head dolefully and watched them exit their respective vehicles and come on up to the front door.

  “That’s Wolf,” Rourke said. “Coroner’s dog.”

  “Hell of a wolf,” Travis said, smiling.

  “Animal less like a wolf you could never hope to meet, but that’s his given name,” Rourke replied. “Coroner’s name is Jack Farley, like I said. He’s a little deaf. Was a medic in the war, but they put his station next to an artillery position, and his ears got a hammering.”

  Rourke pushed open the screen and went on through the door.

  “Jack!” he called out. “Jack! It’s Chas Rourke. Got a federal feller here to see our John Doe!”

  There was no response from anywhere within the cool and silent building.

  “He’ll be in back,” Rourke said. “This way.”

  The corridor was painted off-white, the floor was tiled, and the smell of Lysol hung in the air. It reminded Travis of his first day of training at the FBI facility. Everything was sterile, neat, orderly, far more so than it had ever been in the army. There was a comforting element to such surroundings, as if in such a place there was serious work being undertaken.

  Rourke opened the door at the far end of the corridor, and there was music. Dramatic, dark even, perhaps Beethoven, but Travis was not sure. He was no classical aficionado.

  Jack Farley saw them then. He raised his hand and motioned for them to come on in. He took a moment to step back and lift the needle from a record on a small phonograph turntable in the corner of the room.

  Travis placed Farley in his midfifties. He was shorter than both Travis and Rourke by a head, and when he walked, he sort of rocked left to right slightly, as if one leg was rigid at the knee. Farley’s hair was ash gray and scalp short, his shoes were inspection clean, and when he stripped off his glove and came forward to greet Travis, Travis noticed that the fingers of his right hand were badly stained with nicotine.