Record of Blood (Ravenwood Mysteries #3)

The Murderer

A LITTLE RAIN AND San Franciscans went mad. So it seemed to Isobel as she watched the interns carrying in a badly mangled old man. There was a great deal of blood under the electric lights in the receiving hospital. His ribcage was off kilter, one rib protruding through his blood-soaked shirt.

Motorcar accident, she surmised in a flash. The Vultures, those noble knights of pen and ink called journalists, swarmed the carnage. But Isobel stayed where she was, sulking with boredom against a shadowed wall near a faulty bulb. She consulted her watch. It was near to eight o'clock. The night was busy, but the cases were mundane: one man bitten by a rattler; another man had tripped and fallen on a crack into an open basement hatch, hitting his head and dislocating a shoulder (the cappers were swarming that case); and, mildly entertaining, two old women who had beaten each other bloody. They were still screeching at one another from their hospital cots. Isobel pinned them as long-time roommates, or sapphic lovers.

The night looked to be a bust by all accounts. Certainly nothing that sparked her investigative instincts. She'd have to invent another story if she were to be paid.

As Isobel watched the chaos of physicians, police, and flustered family members, she began to wonder if it weren't the obvious crimes and accidents making her restless, but rather her own mind. Her thoughts kept traveling to a large chair by a warm fire, and a pair of warmer eyes across the way. And to two days before, to the hours spent with that distracting man Atticus Riot.

Her heart swelled at the memory, but as fast as it had come, the memory disappeared, as the weight of her life came crashing down on her shoulders. She was married for one; dead for another. Her life was a mess, and love was the most complicated, wretched tangle of them all.

"I'm telling you he was dying—dead. I killed a man! You have to go back." The frantic words snapped her out of bleakness. Ears bristling, she sought the source like a hound on the hunt.

What kind of man would confess to murder?

She pinned the self-proclaimed murderer in her sights, and sidled up to the attending physician.

"Calm yourself, Mr. Sinclair," the doctor ordered. "There was no one else on the road. The conductor already checked."

"I saw him," Edward persisted. "He was bleeding—in the throes of death. Look!" He lifted his hand, but it was only slick with mud and water. When he realized his proof had washed away with the rain, he tried to rise despite a broken leg, and the physician pushed him back down.

"If you don't calm yourself, I'll have to strap you to the cot."

"At least summon the police."

Mr. Sinclair was persistent. His leg was broken, but other than pain turning his voice raw, he looked a respectable sort—if drugged. The physician was about to make good on his threat, when Isobel inserted herself into the scene.

"I might be of some help, sir. Mr. Morgan at your service." She tipped her cap, and produced an official looking Ravenwood Detective Agency card. She carried an ample supply since she would never pass for anything other than a young man between hay and grass, and the heavy cards added respectability to her male disguise.

Edward latched on to the embossed card like a drowning man. "You'll go back? You'll look for him?"

"I've just finished up my business here," she said. "It's only neighborly. If I find anything I'll go straightaway to the police." Her offer seemed to calm the patient, so the physician let her be, while Edward unburdened his soul to her eager ears.

✥

"Not a soul was out here, except that fellow with the broken leg," J.P. Humphrey told her. Isobel had met the conductor only two weeks ago, both as Mr. Morgan and Miss Bonnie. He ran the Park and Ocean line, and he was the sort of gentleman who was always keen to help someone in need.