R. J. Jagger
A Way With Murder
1
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
Monday morning everything in Bryson Wilde’s life changed. It happened when he was in his office, pacing next to the windows with coffee in one hand and a smoke in the other. It happened when the door opened and a woman walked in.
She wasn’t dressed to impress.
Down below were sandals and up top was a baseball cap, slightly tilted to the side, with a dishwater blond ponytail hanging out the back. Between the two was an uneventful pair of loose cotton pants and a plain white blouse.
She looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four.
Her eyes were lagoon blue.
Her face was mysteriously hypnotic.
Her body was curvy.
“I’m in trouble,” she said. “I was hoping you could help me.”
Wilde tapped a smoke out of the pack and handed it to her.
She took it and said, “Thanks.”
He lit her up from his.
“What’s your name?”
“Secret,” she said. “Secret St. Rain.”
“I’ve never seen you around town.”
“I’m not from here.”
“Too bad. So what kind of trouble are you in, Secret St. Rain?”
She blew smoke.
It was the sexiest thing Wilde had ever seen.
“I guess I should rephrase it,” she said. “I’m not sure if I’m in trouble or not. I guess that’s what I want you to find out-whether I am or not.”
Wilde took one last drag on the Camel, which brought the fire as close to his fingertips as the law allowed, then flicked the butt out the window.
Damn it.
That was a bad habit.
Alabama had told him a hundred times to not do that.
He leaned out to be sure it hadn’t landed on anyone down at street level.
To his disbelief, there it was smack dab on the top of a gray Fedora, moving down the street compliments of a man who didn’t have a clue.
“Hey, you!”
The man looked around but not up.
“Your hat’s on fire.”
Wilde ducked out of sight as the man looked up.
“Sorry about that,” he told Secret. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Secret pulled a paper out of her purse, unfolded it and handed it to Wilde. It was a page out of the Rocky Mountain News, Saturday edition. She tapped her finger on an article titled, “Woman Falls to Death.”
“Did you hear about this?”
No.
He hadn’t.
“Read it,” she said.
He did.
It was a short piece about a woman in a red dress who was found horribly smashed at the base of a building on Curtis Street, the victim of a fall Friday night. Police were investigating the incident as a possible homicide.
When Wilde looked up, Secret said, “I was there when it happened, down below on the sidewalk.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“So what happened? Did she jump or what?”
“She didn’t jump,” Secret said. “Someone was dangling her over the edge, holding her by the hands, then he let her go.”
“Ouch.”
“She almost landed on me,” Secret said. “Here’s the problem. It was murder. The guy who dropped her was just a black silhouette to me. There were no lights shining up there. I have no idea who he was.”
“Okay.”
“The opposite isn’t true though,” she said. “I was under a pretty strong streetlight.”
Wilde tapped two more sticks out of the pack, lit them both and handed one to Secret.
She took it, mashed her old one in the ashtray and said, “Thanks.”
“So you’re a witness to a murder,” Wilde said. “That’s what it comes down to.”
She nodded.
“I want to know if the guy saw my face good enough to recognize me,” she said.
Wilde frowned.
“How am I supposed to figure that out?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “First figure out who he is. Then we’ll arrange a situation where I walk past him or get in his vicinity, what I’m talking about is a situation where he looks at me.”
“All right.”
“You’ll be there off to the side,” she said. “When he looks at me, you look at him and see if there’s a reaction. See if he recognizes me.”
Wilde shrugged.
“There will be a reaction,” he said. “I can already tell you that.”
She blew smoke.
“You’re too kind. What we do is see if he tries to follow me. We see if he tries to kill me. If he does, that means he’s the killer. At that point we can tell the police.”
“So you’re looking to trap him?”
“He’ll trap himself is a better way to put it.”
Wilde took a sip of coffee.
“Why me? Why not just do this with the police?”
She shook her head.
“This can’t get screwed up.” She pulled an envelope out of her purse and handed it to him. “That’s a retainer.”
Wilde felt the weight.
It was solid.
2
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
Waverly Paige woke up Monday morning slightly numbed from too much wine and too many wee hours last night. She popped two aspirin, got the coffee pot going and studied her face in the mirror while the shower warmed up.
It was a train wreck.
Her apartment was too.
It was a hole in the wall in the low rent district on the north edge of the city where the buses hardly went. Her particular unit was a fourth-floor walkup with one window that looked directly into the wall of another apartment building thirty feet away. Outside her window was the only good thing about the place, namely a fire escape that was twenty degrees cooler than her couch.
That’s where she drank the wine last night.
That’s where she woke up this morning, on an air mattress next to the only living thing she ever owned, a potted geranium.
She got herself into as good as shape as she could and headed for the bus stop.
She was a reporter with The Metro Beat, which in turn was the third dog in a pack of three, slightly behind the Rocky Mountain News and a long way behind The Denver Post. It had an excuse for being last, namely that it was only two years old. Unfortunately there was only enough local food to keep two dogs alive. One of the three would have to die, probably within the next year.
Waverly didn’t worry about it too much.
She had a few good things going for her.
She was young, only twenty-one.
She was healthy and well proportioned, not too tall, not too short, not too heavy, not too thin. Her thighs and ass were tight and strong. She could run the hundred-yard dash in eleven seconds, faster than most boys.
Her face would never be on the cover of a magazine but it was pretty enough for daily life in Denver.
She got to the morning status conference ten minutes late, which was a big no-no. Fifteen faces looked at her then almost as one turned to see what Shelby Tilt-the owner-would do. The man scrunched his 50-year-old face into a wad and blew cigar smoke.
“Okay guys, that’s it,” he said. Then to Waverly, “Step into my office for a minute.”
She recognized the tone.
This wouldn’t be pretty.
3
Day One
July 21, 1952
Monday Morning
Dayton River lived on a 22-acre railroad spur at the west edge of Denver that he bought from BNSF two years ago. The property had no buildings. It consisted solely of dilapidated excess track that had been unused and unneeded for some time given the movement of industry to the north. Three decommissioned boxcars sat on a track. Three others sat on a parallel track, thirty-feet distant. A canvas canopy, something in the nature of a circus tent, was strung across the middle boxcars.