Vampires in the White City by Johnny B. Truant

Author:Johnny B. Truant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone

15

NOT CAUGHT

“Tatiana,” said Annabel.

Maurice’s head bobbed.

“The bearded lady.”

“Actually, Tatiana was the painted lady.” He turned to look at her. “You know.” He indicated the length of one arm using the other. “Tattoos?”

“How was ‘the painted lady’ supposed to help anyone against Holmes?”

“I’m getting to that.”

“Why didn’t you just call the police?”

“I told you,” Maurice said. “I couldn’t call the police. What Holmes did — without effort or maybe even conscious awareness — was like glamour to vampires. I couldn’t have ratted him out to the police any more than you could tell the world about me.”

Well, Annabel had told her husband about Maurice. Nobody else. She supposed that was close enough, and not worth a mention.

“If not you,” she said, “how about Tatiana call the cops, or one of the other freaks?”

“Holmes was an upstanding citizen — a pillar of the community. Everyone loved him. Tatiana — or any of the others, for that matter — was a sideshow freak. People didn’t look at tattoos then the way they do now, especially on women. She didn’t have just one or two, you know. She was covered in them. No self-respecting policeman would take her seriously. If she went down to the precinct, they’d have arrested her first and asked questions later.”

“She could have called, then.”

“Phones weren’t common in 1893.”

“You know what I mean, Maurice,” Annabel said, frustrated by what almost felt like an engineered no-win scenario. What, had someone walked around “the Holmes issue” and buttoned up every loose end? Surely there’d been a way. Murder was murder, even back then. She knew they’d eventually convicted and hanged Holmes. For well over 100 years, the case had been as dead and buried as Holmes himself, but thanks to Wikipedia Annabel knew how the intervening times had turned out. She kept wanting Maurice to say he’d done what history said he hadn’t — for his story, here and now, to somehow erase the sad events that had followed. Knowing the story’s truth as she did, the color Maurice added was more frustrating than intriguing to Annabel. Why hadn’t they stopped him? It should have been so easy.

“I do,” he said. He was looking at the ceiling again, lost in guilt. “But at the time, the plan we had in mind felt more likely to succeed. And it’s not like we helped nothing. It’s not like what we did didn’t end up making the world just a tiny bit better. It just … wasn’t enough.”

Annabel listened, reserving comment. He’d said, It’s not like we helped nothing. But given that Holmes had gone right on killing throughout 1894, how could their stupid plan have helped a thing?

“The way we figured,” Maurice went on, "Holmes had an exit plan. He had to, because so far he always had. He used people like pieces on a chess board. Even Pitezel. Especially Pitezel. Did you read about Pitezel? About a year after our tête-à-tête, Holmes got him to take out a life insurance policy on himself, presumably to fake his own death.

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