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They looked for sight lines. They climbed to the roof of the boiler house, four hundred yards’ distance, then to the roof of the barrel house. Both offered uninterrupted shots at the tank. The barrel house had its own freight siding to receive the lumber trains that delivered wood for the staves.
“Rides in and out,” said Archie.
“I’d go for the boiler house,” said Bell. “They’d never hear a shot over the roar of the furnaces.”
“If there was a shot.”
“I told you,” said Bell. “Albert Hill’s number two cervical vertebra appeared to have been nicked.”
Archie said, “Based on how he killed Spike Hopewell, the assassin is capable of hitting both Hill and Riggs. But he’s one lucky assassin that no one saw him. Or coolly deliberate in choosing his moment.”
Isaac Bell disagreed. “That may be true of Albert Hill. But when Riggs was shot, the timing was dictated by the approach of the locomotive. In both cases, the shots were fired by a marksman as calculating and accurate as the killer who shot Spike Hopewell.”
“If there were shots fired at all,” said Archie, and Wally Kisley agreed, saying, “There could have been shots, and shots would explain how the victims happened to fall, but they could have just as easily fallen as Spike Hopewell suggested to Isaac: one drunk, one overcome by fumes.”
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.”
