Beyond the Pale Read online

  Beyond the Pale

  A Ravenwood Mystery

  Sabrina Flynn

  BEYOND THE PALE is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s overactive imagination or are chimerical delusions of a tired mind. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely due to the reader’s wild imagination (that’s you).

  Copyright © 2021 by Sabrina Flynn

  All rights reserved.

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  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Published by Ink & Sea Publishing

  www.sabrinaflynn.com

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  Book 8 of Ravenwood Mysteries.

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  ISBN 978-1-955207-01-0

  eBook ISBN 978-1-955207-00-3

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  Book cover by MerryBookRound

  www.MerryBookRound.com

  to the fallen

  My every impulse bends to what is right - Homer

  Contents

  1. Crime Scene

  2. No Rest For the Weary

  3. Schemes

  4. A Warm Welcome

  5. The Nymphia

  6. Interrogation

  7. Consulting Detective

  8. Good Intentions

  9. Room 136

  10. The Suspect

  11. The Bullpen

  12. Behind the Curtain

  13. Sideways

  14. Bail

  15. Warrant

  16. A Nose for News

  17. Reflections

  18. The Trouble With Twins

  19. Woman in Black

  20. What The Dead Say

  21. Pinkertons

  22. The Art of Deduction

  23. Riddles and Warnings

  24. Rag and Bone

  25. The Unknown

  26. Heavenly Gods

  27. Time and Trinkets

  28. Garbage Duty

  29. Scientific Method

  30. Paranoid Lawmen

  31. Friends

  32. Changing of the Guard

  33. To Catch A Thief

  34. Muddy Morris

  35. A Cliff

  36. Knights of Chastity

  37. The Line

  38. Rachel Wall

  39. Undercover

  40. Nightwork

  41. The Guest

  42. A Lively Theater

  43. Virtuous Lies

  44. Witching Hour

  45. The Racetrack

  46. Going Courting

  47. Proper Introductions

  48. A Shot in the Dark

  49. The Clinic

  50. Bullseye

  51. Flying Cloud

  52. Proof of Divinity

  53. Connections

  54. Playing God

  55. A Dangerous Turn

  56. All Action

  57. Tigress

  58. A Sly One

  59. Death and Delusion

  60. Time to Fold

  61. The Art of Cussing

  62. Dark Places

  63. Hold On

  64. Frantic

  65. Out to Sea

  66. A Hasty Message

  67. The Tempest

  68. A Tidy Bow

  69. The Plea

  Connect with Author

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Sabrina Flynn

  About the Author

  Glossary

  1

  Crime Scene

  “Suicide. Really?” Liam Taft stared across a corpse at a patrolman.

  Officer Finley turned red and shrugged.

  There was a perfect little hole between the dead man’s eyes. No burn residue. Liam shifted the corpse’s head to look for an exit wound. Blood matted the hair at the base of the skull.

  “Was a gun found nearby?” Liam asked.

  “No. This fellow was picked clean. He wasn’t in nothin’ but his long johns,” Finley said.

  “A robbery maybe?” Sam Batten asked. Where Liam Taft was middle-aged and tall with a physique his wife referred to as ‘squeezable,’ his partner Sam was half his age and size, and threw a mean left hook.

  “That’s what I said,” Finley stood straighter, “but the coroner said otherwise.”

  Life was cheap in San Francisco. Even cheaper in Mission Bay, where the dead man had been discovered. “Though the body pickers down that way aren’t so much the murdering kind. More like opportunists.”

  Liam squinted at the dead man’s bruised and roughened knuckles. Surely he’d been a prize-fighter in life.

  “I seen this fellow before, coming out of a boxing club around the warehouses. I went over there to ask after him. Close-lipped bunch. But I got it out of an old man that our corpse here had a fierce row with some other fellow a few weeks back. I asked to see his locker and I found this, so I told your lot.”

  Officer Finley held up a six-pointed bronze star with black lettering: Pinkerton’s U.S. Detective Agency.

  Liam took the bronze star and curled his fingers around it until the points dug into his skin. “I want to see where this dead fellow was found.”

  “Found him right here under some garbage,” Finley said.

  Liam frowned at the refuse-strewn alleyway. Not a pleasant place to meet your end. Sam signaled his agreement by turning his head to spit between his teeth. This was the type of neighborhood where that was acceptable.

  Officer Finley glanced over his shoulder towards the gray light. Finley, a short, broad-shouldered man with a mushroomed ear, kept fondling his billy club like he enjoyed using it. And yet he seemed uneasy on his own beat.

  “No wallet, no cash or coin, and stripped down to his long johns like every other unlucky soul I find around here.”

  “Happen much?” Liam asked.

  Finley chuckled. “Every week.”

  “With a bullet between the eyes?” Liam asked.

  Finley shrugged. “Not so much. Mostly beaten rotten. Some are drunk, though. Found a fellow face down in the creek last month with a knife in his back.”

  “All picked clean?”

  Finley nodded. “Thieves are quick here.”

  Liam studied the star in his palm, tilting it this way and that in the silvery mist. “How do you know thieves aren’t killing these folks?”

  Finley tapped his head with his billy club. “I got the detective instincts. So do you know that dead fellow, then? He one of yours?”

  There was hope in the patrolman’s voice. If Liam claimed the man as one of his own, then it’d fall on the Pinkertons to investigate. That meant less work for the patrolman.

  “We’ll look into it,” Liam said.

  Finley gave his billy club a whirl, clearly pleased that he could wash his hands of the case. “Sorry about your operative. You need anything else?”

  “Let us know if any of his gear turns up.”

  Finley snorted. “Probably scattered to every fence in the city by now.”

  “All the same.”

  Finley touched billy club to hat. “You watch yourselves ’round here.”

  “One more thing, Officer,” Liam said. “Did you drag the body out? Or wait for the dead wagon?”

  “I didn’t touch him. Went straight away to the call box. It’s a good walk, it is.”

  Liam shared a look with his partner, then thanked Finley for his help. After the officer left, Sam Batten spat again. “Lazy bastard.”

  Liam smoothed his drooping mustache in thought. “You reckon he got assigned to Mission Bay for his work ethic?”

  Sam only shook
his head in disgust as he studied the drag marks in the dirt. “Looks like he was shot, then dragged into the alleyway to be divested of his earthly belongings.”

  “Appears so,” Liam said.

  The two spread out to search the area, but thieves, police, and body haulers had trampled it.

  “Not much here,” Sam noted.

  Liam followed the drag marks to the end of the alleyway where he spotted a dubious stain on the boardwalk. He crouched to rub a finger through the grime. Dried blood.

  “Here we are,” Sam said, drawing his Bowie. He used the tip to pry a bit of lead free from a wooden plank. “I wager it’s a forty four.”

  Liam took the mushed bullet and eyed it, then tucked it away in a pocket. He turned to the street. It was more of a dust bowl lined with boardwalks than a street, and one that would fast become a mud pit in the rain.

  “He was a big fellow, wasn’t he?” Liam said aloud. Used to his partner’s rhetorical questions, Sam didn’t reply. “Scarred knuckles, built like a bull… I’d like to meet the man to get in a fight with a fellow that size.”

  Sam shrugged. “Size doesn’t matter.”

  It was true, Liam knew. His partner Sam Batten was a boxer himself, the rangy kind. Having a boxer as a partner suited Liam; he needed young blood at his side. Liam had spent his own youth chasing hell, and now he was well past middle age and hell had caught up to him. He preferred desk work to fieldwork these days.

  “You think this has to do with that other matter?” Sam asked.

  The ‘other matter’ was a thorn in Liam Taft’s side. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  The pair headed for a battered iron sign, hanging but too heavy to swing in the breeze: The Den.

  Liam paused at the entrance. The Den was as dingy as one would expect in Mission Bay. The boxing rings were cobbled together from mooring lines and dirty mats—or in some cases smooth planks sprinkled with sawdust to soak up blood. Heavy bags, split and worn, dangled from rafters.

  Two men sparred in the center ring, as an old man swept the floor, an endless task. The gym smelled of male sweat and rawness. Blood, too. Liam’s wife would say it needed a woman’s touch. Most places he visited needed a heap more women.

  “You lookin’ to get rid of that paunch, old man?” a wiry man called from where he was pummeling a bag. He had a straight nose, and the muscled physique of youth.

  Just you wait, Liam thought. Time has a sense of humor.

  Liam touched the brim of his Stetson. “I’m afraid you’d have your work cut out for you,” he said, giving the fellow a smile.

  “You’re in the wrong place, mister.”

  “Usually am,” Liam said. “Are you the owner of this gym?”

  The young man slammed his taped fist into a punching bag, then stopped to regard him, the bag swinging lazily. “I like the sound of that. But, nah, I’m not fool enough to claim that.” He nodded over to a corner where a bull of a man sat talking with two others. They all looked keen to pummel flesh.

  Liam walked over to the men. “Gentlemen,” he greeted.

  They didn’t return the greeting. No surprise. He was trespassing on their turf. “A member of your gym was killed down the street.”

  “You a lawman?” asked a man with blood on his shirt.

  Liam lifted his coat, revealing a bronze shield with an “all-seeing eye” and the Pinkertons motto “We Never Sleep” below it. “Liam Taft. Pinkerton detective. This is my partner, Sam Batten.”

  Sam raised two fingers in greeting.

  “Do you know the man who was killed? Big fellow. Scarred knuckles, mustache, crooked nose.”

  The others looked to a balding fellow with the jaw of an ironclad. “Sure. That was Monty,” he rumbled. “Montgomery Johnson. Look, we already answered Finley’s questions. We don’t know nothin’.”

  Liam took silent note of Ironclad’s use of the officer’s name. “Did Monty have enemies?” he asked.

  The trio laughed.

  “Monty is a salty sort,” a blond fellow said.

  “Was,” Liam corrected.

  The men sobered.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  They stared. Deadpan. “Rough streets,” Bloody Shirt said.

  “The body was moved, then plundered,” Liam said.

  “Rough streets,” Ironclad repeated.

  “How’d he die?” Blondie asked.

  “A single bullet between the eyes.” Liam hooked a thumb in his belt, and the trio’s eyes were drawn to a row of ammunition. “About those enemies?”

  “Easier to name his friends,” Ironclad said.

  “That would be helpful.”

  “Do we look like the helpful sort?” Bloody Shirt asked.

  “No, but as of now, you’re my only suspects.”

  This got their attention. Blondie and Bloody Shirt stood up to glare. Sam glared back.

  “Thieves, addicts, and drunkards live around here like rats,” Ironclad said. “It’s why I started a gym. To give them something else.”

  “That’s noble of you. Was Monty one of those fellows?”

  “No, but he liked to gamble.”

  “He owe any of you money?”

  Ironclad worked his jaw, but restrained himself. “Yeah, he did. But Monty owed money to rougher men than me. Gambling debts, for one. And sure, he was behind on his membership dues. But half this lot is. Why would I kill him? A dead man can’t pay me back.”

  Blondie looked to his friends. “Who was that fellow he was always going on about? The one he beat to a pulp and rolled out the door?”

  “Monty had a beef with just about everyone, including you,” Ironclad said.

  “Salty bastard he was,” Blondie said fondly. “But no, I’m talking about that pompous ass fellow. Remember him? The one with the fancy walking stick? The one that came in and took a cheap shot with that stick of his.”

  “Andy Ryan, or something close,” Bloody Shirt ventured.

  A fellow at a nearby bag yelled out an answer. “Atticus Riot.”

  Blondie snapped his fingers. “That’s the name. The two of them got into a rumble. Monty cleaned the arrogance right off his noble brow.”

  “And that fellow had a revolver too,” Ironclad said. “Word is he’s a gunfighter.”

  Liam rocked onto his toes and came down. “Now that’s a place to start. Did any of you hear a gunshot a few days ago?”

  Blondie chuckled. “Daily. I don’t pay much mind to them in this part of town.”

  Or any part, Liam thought. He had to agree. Gunfire was commonplace in San Francisco. “Does this Monty have kin?”

  The men gave an appearance of thought.

  “Friends?” Liam asked.

  “I seen him at Dusty’s Place. A saloon down the way.”

  Liam handed over his card. “If you remember anything, I’d be obliged. Do you mind if I chat with some of your regulars?”

  Ironclad shrugged. “I got nothing to hide.”

  Liam touched his brim and went to speak to the old man with the broom. Now that fellow was full of insightful information. And all roads led to Atticus Riot.

  2

  No Rest For the Weary

  Wednesday, November 14, 1900

  “Are you positive she can handle this alone?”

  Isobel Amsel Riot glanced up from her book to the man across the cabin saloon. Atticus Riot, her husband of nearly two months. He had his face pressed to a porthole.

  “Nervous, Riot?”

  “You’re the one holding your book upside down.”

  A hoarse voice shouted orders over the wind, then footsteps scrambled across the overhead deck. The cutter heeled and Isobel braced herself against a table that was bolted to the cabin deck while Riot steadied himself against the bulkhead. He was an odd shade of green.

  “I’m merely conducting an experiment,” she quipped.

  “Which of us will crack first?”

  Isobel sniffed. “No. Whether inverted reading will eventually b
ecome natural.”

  “You mean to say you’re distracting yourself.”

  She gave him a sharp look, and his eyes danced in reply. “Leonardo da Vinci wrote thousands of pages in mirrored script. With his left hand.”

  The cutter slammed back down into the ocean. With their bobbing world set aright, Riot stretched on the settee and placed a cushion under his head. “We could very well be inverted before the day is over.”

  “Jin will manage,” she stated.

  “I’m sure she will.”

  “Lotario has reinforced the Pagan Lady. If she does hit something...”

  “Like the dock?”

  “…then I’m sure the dock will be the one to suffer.” At least she hoped.

  “Just remember, I can’t swim.”

  “I can’t save Tobias, Jin, and you. You really must practice more.”