The Assassin

Bell said, “I have Grady Forrer looking into their backgrounds.” Forrer was head of Van Dorn Research.

—

Isaac Bell went looking for Edna Matters Hock and found her loading her tent onto her buckboard. He gave her a hand. “Where you headed?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“In a wagon?”

“Pittsburgh, Kansas.”

“I was going to ask could you print me that aerial photograph your sister snapped, but you’ve packed your Kodak machine . . .”

“Actually, I made an extra. I thought you’d ask to see it.”

She had it in an envelope. She handed it to Bell. “Oh, there’s a second photograph that Nellie took before the fire. So you have a before the fire and an after.”

“She flew over before?”

“By coincidence. She was hoping to address a convention in Fort Scott, but the wind changed and the balloon drifted over here. I hope the pictures help.”

Bell thanked her warmly. “Speaking of coincidence,” he told her, “my father served as an intelligence officer in the Civil War and he tried to take balloon daguerreotypes of Confederate fortifications.”

“I’ve never seen an aerial of the Civil War.”

“He said that the swaying motion blurred the pictures. When the wind settled down, a rebel shot the camera out of his hands.”

“Quite a different war story.”

“Actually,” Bell smiled, “he rarely talked about the war. The very few times he did, he told a humorous tale, like the balloon.”

“I really must go.”

He helped her onto the wagon. “It was a pleasure meeting you. I hope to see you again.”

Edna Matters Hock gave him a long look with her gray-green eyes. “I would like that, Mr. Bell. Let us hope it happens.”

“Where are you going next?”

“After Pittsburgh, I’m not sure.”

“If I were to wire the paper sometime, perhaps they could put us in touch.”

“I’ll tell them to,” she said.

They shook hands. “Oh, please say good-bye to Mr. Abbott.”

Bell promised he would. Edna spoke to the mule and it trotted off.

Bell took the photographs to Wally Kisley. Wally gave a low whistle.

“Fascinating. I’ve never had a look like this before.”

The photograph Nellie Matters had snapped after the fire looked like raindrops on a mud puddle. All that was left of the storage tanks were circular pockmarks in the ground. The brick furnaces of the refinery stood like ruined castles. The steel pots were warped, staved in, or completely flattened. The remains of the derricks looked like bones scattered by wild animals.

The picture she had taken before the fire was shrouded in smoke, but Spike’s refinery still looked almost as orderly as an architect’s blueprint. What stood out was the logic of Hopewell’s design to efficiently move the crude oil through the process of brewing gasoline.

“Now you see, Isaac, they couldn’t have picked a better tank to blow. Look at this.”

“But their target was the gasoline tank. Why didn’t they blow it first off?”

“Couldn’t get to it. Out in the open like it was, in plain sight, there’s no way to lay the explosives and set up the target duck. But look here. They could not have chosen a tank better positioned for the first explosion to start things rolling. Someone knows his business.”

—

Ice-eyed Mack Fulton, an expert on safecrackers, arrived from New York dressed in funereal black. He had news for Archie Abbott. “Jewel thief the New York cops are calling the Fifth Avenue Flier sounds a lot to me like your Laurence Rosania, in that he’s got an eye for top quality and beauty.”

That caught Archie’s interest because Rosania was known to leave ugly pieces behind regardless of value. They compared notes. Like the discriminating Rosania, Mack’s Fifth Avenue Flier robbed safes on mansions’ upper floors.

“New York cops think he’s scaling walls, but I’m wondering if he’s talking his way upstairs, romancing the ladies and charming the gents, like your guy.”

“How’d he get there so fast?” asked Archie. A recent robbery in New York had taken place less than a day after a Rosania-sounding job in Chicago.

“20th Century Limited?”

“If he’s pulled off half the jobs we think, he can afford it.”

“He gets to play the New York and Chicago fences off each other, too. Bargain up the price. That reminds me, Isaac. I brought you a note from Grady Forrer.”

Bell tore open the envelope from Research.

But to his disappointment, Forrer had not discovered any special co

“O.K.,” said Bell. “The only fact I know for sure is that Spike Hopewell was shot. Two questions, gents. By whom? And why?”

Archie said, “Hopewell had an enemy who hated him enough to kill and just happened to be a crack shot at seven hundred yards.”

“Or,” said Mack Fulton, “Hopewell had an enemy who hated him enough to hire someone to kill him who happened to be a crack shot at seven hundred yards.”

“Or,” said Wally Kisley, “Hopewell had an enemy who hated him enough to hire a professional assassin to kill him whose weapon of choice was a rifle with an effective range of over seven hundred yards.”

Bell said, “I’m betting on Wally’s professional.”

“That’s because a professional makes it more likely that your other two victims were actually shot. But, oh boy, Isaac, you’re talking about amazing shooting.”

“For the moment, let’s agree they were shot. Who’s the mastermind?”

“All three independent oil men were battling Standard Oil.”

“Was Hopewell a Congregationalist by any chance?” Wally Kisley asked. He gri

“Presbyterian.”

“Too bad,” said Wally. “We could have arrested Rockefeller if he was.”

The newspapers were full of stories about a Congregationalist Convocation in Boston that had turned down a million-dollar donation by John D. Rockefeller because Rockefeller’s money was “tainted.”

“That money sure is tainted,” chorused Wally and Mack. “’Tain’t yours! ’Tain’t mine!”

“Listen close,” said Bell, gri

“You got it, Isaac.”

“Archie? Run down Big Pete Straub. Find out where he was when Spike was shot. Find out if maybe I winged him with my Winchester. But watch yourself.”

“Thank you, Mother. But I think I can handle him.”

“That’s your call,” Bell shot back firmly, “if he’s alone. But if he’s ru

“Where you going, Isaac?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“But you don’t have anything to report.”

“I’m not going to report.”

“Then what are you going for?”

“To shake up the Boss.”

7

By 1905 the Van Dorn Detective Agency spa