Victoria Thompson - Murder On Astor Place

“I’ll try to find him quick as I can,” O’Brien told her apologetically. “And I’d better lock you in. So nobody can bother you,” he added when Sarah widened her eyes in alarm.

Before she could change her mind and beg him to take her back outside where she could hail a cab and flee, forgetting the insane impulse that had brought her here in the first place, he was turning the key in the lock outside.

THIS WAS A MISTAKE, A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. SARAH knew that now. Her only hope was that Malloy wasn’t so furious with her that he’d leave her here to rot. Or that the desk sergeant upstairs wasn’t so annoyed that he didn’t bother to send for Malloy at all. But surely, someone would come for her sooner or later. This was a police station, after all, and she was an honest citizen who was only trying to help.

If only she didn’t know how little good that would do her if they simply decided to forget about her entirely.

But it was now too late to change her mind. Forcing herself to sit in the cleanest of the chairs, she drew a few deep breaths and managed not to panic. Once she had her control back, she concentrated on her surroundings. This must be one of the rooms they used to interrogate prisoners, she decided. To give them the “third degree,” a term developed by Thomas Byrnes, the longtime chief of the Detective Bureau and until recently the superintendent, whose methods of questioning prisoners were equally violent and effective. He had, they said, actually invented the “third degree.”

As awful as this room was, however, Sarah knew that those on the floor below would be even worse. There, prisoners were held in dank cellar rooms a floor below street level where no ray of sunlight or breath of fresh air ever permeated. They said that after a few hours in one of those cells, a man would confess to anything just to get out.

Until recently, the cellar had also provided housing to the homeless who were too poor even to manage the few cents required for floor space sleeping in a Bowery flophouse. So awful was this space that few people ever actually took advantage of the free lodging except in the worst weather. Still, it was the only place in town where a homeless woman who was not actively engaged in prostitution could stay. But Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt had closed the police department homeless shelters a few months ago, on the advice of newspaper reporter and self-appointed reformer Jacob Riis. Riis seemed to think the shelters were a breeding ground for vice and sin. Sarah wondered if he realized that the people who had once used the shelters now had to sleep in the very streets instead. What kind of a breeding ground would that be?

Having satisfied herself that she had adequately proved Riis wrong, for a while Sarah passed the time by imagining what Malloy would say when he found her here, assuming he ever did. She could even picture the expression he’d have on his face when he came through the door, please God, let him come through very soon. He’d be furious and impatient and even a little smug, thinking she’d gotten herself into a fine fix and wasn’t it just what she deserved for sticking her nose into things that weren’t her business?

When she was finished with that, she rehearsed what she’d say to him, refining and clarifying what she had to tell him, so he wouldn’t have time to cut her off before he’d heard the most important information. He could be a little short, and she was certain he wouldn’t be in the mood for lengthy explanations when he finally arrived, which had better be soon. And when she was satisfied that her speech was perfect, she simply waited, imagining she heard rats scurrying and men moaning and cursing, and trying not to imagine that the spots she saw on the far wall were blood.

More than an hour passed before she finally heard a key turning in the lock, and the door was flung open to reveal Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy. He looked exactly the way she’d expected, which was not at all happy to see her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

Thank heaven he had no idea how genuinely thrilled she was to see him. To see anybody, in fact, who might rescue her from this hellhole. Resisting the impulse to jump up and throw her arms around him in gratitude and carefully keeping all trace of elation from her voice, she said, “Didn’t they tell you? I have some information about Alicia VanDamm’s murder.”

Malloy ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of exasperation. Hair, Sarah noticed, that appeared to be uncombed. Just as his cheeks appeared to be unshaven. And his tie was crooked. Indeed, he looked as if he’d just gotten up and had dressed in a very big hurry. It was early in the morning, but not that early.

“This better be something really important,” he warned her, closing the door behind him with a decisive slam.

Frank couldn’t believe it. Sarah Brandt was sitting in an interrogation room. Had actually been locked in an interrogation room, and for quite a while, if what O‘Brien told him was true. O’Brien was an idiot. He’d been looking all over town for Frank when he’d been right here in the building, sleeping in the officer’s dormitory upstairs after having been up half the night investigating a warehouse robbery. A warehouse robbery that promised to add substantially to Frank’s savings, if he played it right, and he most certainly would.

By the time O’Brien had found him, Frank realized Mrs. Brandt had been locked in the basement for quite a while, more than long enough to reduce a normal female to hysterics, which was how he’d expected to find her. Not that he was looking forward to dealing with an hysterical female, but finding her sitting here looking perfectly calm was even more unsettling. The woman was positively unnatural.

“I’m sure you’ll at least find what I have to tell you interesting,” she said, just as prim and proper as you please. As if she was sitting in her own parlor instead of right where countless criminals had endured countless beatings, all in the cause of justice. He should’ve left her here for another hour before coming to rescue her. Maybe by then she would’ve started acting like a normal woman.

“All right,” he said grudgingly, pulling up a chair to the opposite side of the table and sinking down into it. “What is it, and be quick.” He rubbed his gritty eyes, half hoping that when he opened them again she’d be gone. But she wasn’t. “I’ve been awake all night, and I’d like to get a little more sleep before I get called on another case,” he warned.

“Oh, dear, they should’ve told me. I could come back another time,” she offered, annoying him even more. He didn’t want her to be thoughtful. He wanted her to be gone.

“Just spit it out and get it over with,” he snapped, wondering what evil he’d done to deserve having Sarah Brandt enter his life.

“I’ll try to hurry,” she said, folding her hands on the table in that prissy way she had that set his teeth on edge. “I called on the VanDamm family yesterday. To express my condolences,” she added when Frank scowled his disapproval. “Mina and I are old friends.”

Well, he supposed he couldn’t stop her from calling on an old friend.

“At any rate,” she continued, “she told me something that might be useful. It seems that when Alicia ran away, she took some valuable jewelry with her.”

“We didn’t find any jewelry in her room.” Frank absently began to rub the bridge of his nose. His head was starting to ache, and his eyelids felt like they were lined with gravel.

“It may have been stolen, and the thief may have been the person who killed her.”

Frank frowned again, this time because he was annoyed he hadn’t thought of that himself. He would have in another minute, of course. He was just tired. “You know what this jewelry looked like?”