Marcia Muller - Crucifixion River

A barker tried to entice Sabina into a wax display of a hanging. No to that, also.

Worn blue velvet wide-brimmed hat, secured by…a Charles Horner hatpin, blue glass overlaid with a gold pattern. Ah! The woman moved through the crowd, head swiveling from side to side.

Sabina waited until the her quarry was several yards ahead of her, then followed.

The woman pretended interest in a miraculous electrified belt filled with cayenne pepper whose purveyor claimed would cure any debilitation. She stopped to listen to the Negro minstrels and clapped appreciatively when their music ended. Considered a temperance pamphlet, but shook her head. Accepted a flyer from the seller of White’s Female Complaint Cure.

All the time, as Sabina covertly watched her, the pickpocket’s head continued to move from side to side-looking for someone in distress. Someone who she could rob.

Sabina seldom had difficulty controlling her temper. True, it rose swiftly, but just as swiftly it turned from hot outrage to cold resolve. She, too, began looking for someone in distress. Someone who she could save from the woman’s thievery.

Before long, she saw him, nearly ten yards away, humped over, leaning on a cane, walking haltingly. She poised to move in, but the woman, who obviously had seen him, too, surprised her by turning the other way.

Another old man, limping, forehead shiny with perspiration in spite of the chill temperature.

The woman passed him by.

Had Sabina been wrong about the pickpocket’s method? No, this dip was clever. She was waiting for the ideal victim.

More wandering. More pretending interest in the shows and wares. No indication that the pickpocket had spied her.

In front of the bright red coach belonging to the purveyor of Dr. Wallmann’s Nerve and Brain Salts, the woman stopped. She spoke to the vendor, examined the bottle, then shook her head. A crowd had pressed in behind her. She stretched her arms up behind her head, then dropped them, and angled through the people.

And in that moment Sabina knew her method.

She pushed forward into the crowd, keeping her eyes on the blue velvet picture hat. It moved diagonally, toward the Chinese herbalist’s wagon. Now, after 10:00 p.m., most of the women had departed, their places taken by Cocktail Route travelers on a postprandial stroll, after which many would visit the establishments of the wicked Barbary Coast. The woman in the blue hat would be there, too, plying her trade upon the unsuspecting-unless Sabina could stop her.

The blue hat now brushed against the shoulder of a tall, blond man clad in an elegant broadloom suit. The perfect victim.

Sabina weaved her way through men who had stopped to hear Rodney Strongheart sing in a loud baritone about how his elixir would keep one’s heart beating forever. A few gave her disapproving glances-she should not be here at this hour, and she certainly shouldn’t be elbowing them aside.

Sabina continued to use her elbows.

Now she was beside the woman. She reached for her arm and missed it just as the man in broadloom groaned and clutched his side. Sabina saw the dip’s right hand move to his inner pocket; she was quick, and the man’s purse was soon in her grasp.

But not soon enough to make her escape.

Sabina grasped the woman’s right hand, which held the purse, and pinned the dip’s arm behind her back. The pickpocket struggled, and Sabina pulled the arm higher until she cried out, and then was still.

The victim had recovered from his pain. He stared at Sabina, then at the thief. Sabina reached down and wrested the blue-and-gold Charles Horner hatpin from the woman’s hand.

“And that,” John Quincannon said, “was the last of the Carville Ghost.” He looked pleased with himself, sitting at his desk, smiling and stroking his freebooter’s beard-a feature that made him appear rakish and dangerous. He fancied himself the world’s finest detective and he always preened a bit when he brought an investigation to a successful conclusion. “And,” he added, “I have collected the fee. A not inconsiderable twenty-five hundred dollars. I would say that justifies dinner for two at Marchand’s and perhaps…”

Sabina interrupted his description of his evening’s plans for them. “I, too, have collected a handsome fee. From Charles Ackerman.”

“Ah, you solved the pickpocketing case.”

“Yes.” She proceeded to tell him about it, finishing: “I thought the woman…Sarah Wilds…was preying upon infirm men, perhaps men in gastric distress. It turned out she was stealing from perfectly healthy men, stabbing them in the side with her needle-thin hatpin to distract them while she picked their pockets.”

“Needle-thin?” John frowned. “I presented you with a silver-and-coral Charles Horner hatpin on your last birthday. As I recall, it was fairly thick.”

“Sarah Wilds had altered hers, so the pin would pass through clothing and flesh, but not cause the victim to bleed much, if at all. Just a painful prick, and she’d withdraw it while reaching for her victim’s valuables.”

“But the man who died…Harry Holbrooke?”

“Henry. The police assume he was unlucky. The pin went in too deeply, punctured an organ, and caused bleeding and an infection. You must remember…Sarah Wilds was using the same pin over and over. Think of the bacteria it carried.”

John nodded. “Another job well done, my dear. Now, about Marchand’s and perhaps…”

“I accept your invitation upon one condition.”

“And that is?”

“You will pay for your evening from the proceeds of your Carville investigation, and I will pay for mine from my proceeds.”

John, as Sabina had known he would, bristled. “A lady paying her own way on a celebratory evening…unthinkable!”

“You had best think about it, because those are my terms.”

He sighed-a long exhalation-and scowled fiercely. But as she knew he would, he said: “An evening out with you, my dear, is acceptable under any terms or conditions.”

As was an evening out with him.

Autumn leaves skittered along the narrow main street of the small town in California’s gold country. They leaped the high curb, rattled down the board sidewalk, and drifted against the bench where I sat dying.

Was this where it was to end-Murphys, population around 300? A hard, wooden-slatted bench my last resting place in this life? Tricked-up shops and polyester-clad tourists my last sight? What was I doing here, anyway? Traveling aimlessly, as my husband and I had done over the past five years, possessed of more time and money than purposes and enthusiasms.

The pain was growing stronger now; if I had any chance to survive, I had better do something soon. But I felt curiously lethargic and resigned. Even the prospect of a painful death didn’t seem to bother me.

It had been a good life up until this past year. I’d accomplished most of the modest things I’d set out to do, had visited most of the places I wanted to see. Of course there were loose ends, but didn’t everyone leave a few of those? There was the emptiness of the past few years, but what were a few out of many? And then there were the events of September and my growing suspicions about the terrible way Jake Hollis had died…

I didn’t want to think about Jake. That was in the past, over now. All over. As my life soon would be.

Strange. I hadn’t expected to feel such detachment at the end. I seemed as little a part of the dying woman on the bench as the leaves that drifted at her feet. They were dying, too, torn by the wind from the trees that had sustained them through the sudden rainstorms of spring, the blistering heat of summer, the first frosts of autumn. Dying like…