Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(10)
Author: Erin McCarthy

The sight that greeted the stout miss upon repairing to the girl’s room was a scene from a nightmare. “I’ve seen a lot in my life—I’ve seen murdered people before—but this was unlike anything I’ve ever laid eyes on. It was unbelievable. Blood everywhere.” What she saw was Anne Donovan, lying supine on her narrow bed, dressed in a simple chemise, her face and upper body mutilated by stab wounds. A knife rested in her left hand, and blood covered the bed, the floor below, the wall behind her head, and filled the room with a sickly sweet smell.

What did Madame think of Mr. Thiroux? “I never thought of him as a violent sort at all, but he was there, wasn’t he? I figured he must have done it.” When asked if she was afraid to be alone with him at that time, she replied, “Not at all. He had returned to his chair and was starting in on a brand-new bottle, eyes closed. I lit his pipe for him and figured I’d have a good two hours before he so much as stirred.”

Yet when police arrived, they made no attempt to arrest Mr. Thiroux, whom most of our readership will recognize as a wealthy artist, who has contributed greatly to the improvement of the arts in our city. It is also widely recognized that Mr. Thiroux does not pass a day without descending into drink or opium.

MURDER OF LOCAL BAWD HAS FELLOW STRUMPETS IN ARMS

October 8, 1849—“We’re just trying to get along,” maintains Sally Jackson, a resident at the House of Rest, where a fellow bawd was murdered two nights past. “A girl needs a way to survive, and it ain’t safe anymore. It just ain’t right.” While no one appears to question the right of lewd women to hock their wares without enticing death, not everyone agrees that allowing such rowdy residences to exist legally is in the best interest of a city grown notorious for crime. Despite disgruntled area residents, official sources seem disinclined to take any action, and the police more often than not make no attempt whatsoever to seek out culprits in violent crimes. “One less to contend with,” seems to be their philosophy when the life of an unfortunate is snuffed out prematurely.Yet even the police cannot disregard such a bloody and gruesome case as the death of Anne Donovan, slashed in a frenzy so brutal even her own mother would not recognize her in death. “I heard her yell out,” Molly Faye claims, from her position that night in the room next door. “But I didn’t think nothing of it. Figured it was business.”

Like the other girls in residence, Molly is afraid that the killer, still loose, may be wandering in and out of the house unimpeded, and in an effort to have their voices heard, the ladies of 25 Dauphine Street charged en masse into the second district police headquarters and demanded a more thorough investigation. It remains to be seen what the official response to such tactics will be.

October 9, 1849

To The Editor:

I believe I speak on behalf of the vast majority of residentsin what were formerly respectable neighborhoods when I say I have concerns over the direction vice is spreading. At one time contained to the docks and the immediate vicinity of Girod Street, now there is hardly an area in the city that isn’t affected by the rapid and licentiousgrowth of entertainment establishments. On my block alone, there are at least half a dozen homes (that once housed upstanding families) that are now given over to dens of iniquity, with laughter and music pouring out at all hours of night, men in and out, and outbursts of all nature occurring on the street. Now there has been this murder at number twenty-five, only blocks from where decent hardworking citizens live. Alreadyseveral neighbors have sold homes at a loss to escapethe scourge creeping in our direction, and I have no doubt that by week’s end another two or three will make the decision to sell their houses for less than they paid, simply to leave the rapidly declining area.

If left unchecked, the entire city will have the blight of drinking and promiscuity on every street, and there will be nowhere remaining for respectable citizens to live.

Signed,

Suffering Respectable Citizen

Chapter Three

Disturbed by the tenor of the articles, Sara stopped reading for a minute and concentrated on taking slow, even breaths. She felt a panic attack creeping up on her, the kind that before would have had her reaching for the Vicodin. But she couldn’t do that, wouldn’t. She had to learn how to handle emotion on her own, without chemical intervention.

She sucked in another deep pull of air. She hadn’t expected to feel the clawing scratch of anxiety from flipping through these papers, but there was something about the casual disregard of everyone in the articles for Anne Donovan, the woman. She almost seemed an afterthought, a happy means to air their grievances, concerns, but not worth noting beyond the gruesome, sensationalist aspects of her death. They seemed to take delight in mentioning how she’d been mutilated, but no one bothered to say where she came from, how she had found herself in the position of prostitute, or if she had left behind a grieving family.

It was so much like the media coverage of her own mother’s murder that the parallels scared Sara. That had been difficult for her to learn to deal with, to let go of the hatred, disgust, annoyance, when the newspaper turned her mother’s case into an opportunity to blast the prosecutor. It had never been about her mother. It was about the flaws in the police department, the stubborn prosecutor, and his determination to push through a weak case against Rafe. Everyone had their damn agenda, and no one cared that she had lost her mother.

But it bothered her that all of that baggage could resurface so easily, that she couldn’t maintain distance. God, she just wanted everything to be over and done, gone. She wanted to be normal again.

“You okay?”

Sara sat up straight, mortified. Gabriel was looking at her, but she appreciated that instead of pity or horror on his face, he just looked mildly curious.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” She was. She would be okay. If she just willed it enough, it would happen. It would. Because she understood something about herself. Even in the worst, horrific moments, she could still reach out and find hope. It would be better eventually. She just had to fight to get there, to not lose it along the way.

And there was something about Gabriel St. John looking at her, his dark brown eyes assuring her that he had secrets too, that he had suffered, that had her opening her mouth and saying, “There aren’t just physical parallels between this case and my mother’s murder, there are also media similarities. I guess I wasn’t expecting that—it startled me.”

Immediately she regretted speaking. Now would come the questions, the pity, the curiosity, the suspicion of her motives in working on this book with him. Talking about her mother’s death always left her feeling vulnerable, exposed, and she didn’t want that with Gabriel. She didn’t want him thinking she was crazy.