Night of the Wolves

Aldridge stared at him and flipped the file shut again. He didn’t have to read from it; he apparently knew what it contained. “A series of bizarre murders took place in northern Alexandria in 1859. You were friends with a certain law enforcement officer, Dean Brentford, and you started patrolling with him at night. You apprehended the murderer when no other constable could catch up with him. And when he tore through the force trying to subdue him, you managed to decapitate him with a single one-handed swing of your sword.” Aldridge pointed a finger at him. “President Lincoln himself asked you to perform intelligence work for him, but you politely refused, saying your remaining kin were in Louisiana, and you couldn’t rightly accept such a position.”

Cody lifted his hands. “My mother died the year after the war started, but I’m sure you understand that … I come from here. I was born here. And as to the … incident to which you refer … The brutality of the murders took everyone by surprise, and I’m simply glad I was able to help.”

Aldridge leaned forward. “Help? Fox, to all intents and purposes you and you alone stopped them. More to the point, we’ve just had a similar case here, down on Conti. My officers are at their wits’ end, and I don’t want this city going mad because the Yanks think the Rebs have gone sick or vice versa. This isn’t a battleground anymore, it’s a city where people are picking up the pieces of their lives. It may take decades before true peace is achieved, but I’ll be damned if I’ll allow the citizens to start killing one another because one man is sick in the head.”

Cody stared straight across the desk at the man and didn’t say a word.

“You got yourself a medical degree, son, then you went off to ride with the cavalry and wound up in intelligence.” Aldridge stared back at Cody, hazel eyes intent. “You can help me. I don’t give a damn where you came from or what your folks did or whose side you fought on. I just want to catch a killer. Because it sounds like a bloodthirsty madman just like the one you killed is on the loose—in my city—and I want him stopped.”

“HOW DID YOU KNOW about the attack?”

Alexandra Gordon was sitting in a hardwood chair, presumably before a desk, but she didn’t have any actual idea where she was, since the officers who had come to her house had thrown a canvas bag over her head, and she was still blinded by it. She was stunned by the treatment she had received and continued to receive, especially since she had put herself in great peril to warn the small scouting contingent that there would be bloodshed if they crossed the Potomac.

Apparently she was a deadly spy.

They had tied her hands behind her back, but the officer in charge had whispered furiously to the others, and her hands were once again free. Despite that small courtesy, he seemed to be the descendent of a member of the Spanish Inquisition. He slammed his hands on the table, and his voice rose as he repeated the question. “How did you know? And don’t say again that it was a dream. You are a spy, and you will tell me where you’re gaining your information!”

She shook her head beneath the canvas bag, praying for the ability to stay calm. “I merely tried to save Union lives, sir, as well as Confederate. What, I ask you, was gained by this raid? Nothing. What was lost? The lives of at least twenty young men. I went to the encampment to speak with the sergeant and tell him that he mustn’t make the foray. He ignored my warning, and now he and his men are dead, along with a number of my Southern brothers.”

“I have the power to imprison you for the rest of your life—or hang you,” her inquisitor warned.

She heard the sound of a door opening. Someone else spoke, a man with a low, well-modulated voice. “Lieutenant Green,” he said, “I would like to speak with Ms. Gordon myself.”

“But, sir!” Green was shocked.

“Please,” the new voice said politely, but there was authority in the tone.

Alex heard a chair scrape back and was aware of the newcomer taking a seat across from her.

“My wife has dreams,” he said after a moment. “In fact, I have had dreams. Please, tell me, what did you see in your dream, and how did you know when and where the slaughter would occur?”

“I know the place,” she said softly. “I used to play in that hollow when I was a child, when we had a farm there. My father worked in Washington then, but we would steal away to the countryside whenever he was free.”

She heard someone snort. Green. “Her father was a traitor,” the lieutenant said. “He went out West and was murdered. Indians, I heard. Good riddance.”

She stiffened at that. “My father was no traitor. He loved the West and chose to move us there to avoid a war he thought unjust. He went looking for a home where everyone was equal. He didn’t care about a man’s birth or color. He was a brilliant man,” she said passionately. “He worked for the government, for the people.”

“It’s all right, I know of him, Miss Gordon,” the newcomer said softly, soothingly. “And I was deeply sorry to hear about his death. Now, tell me, what did you see?”

“I saw the hollow in the woods. I heard the horses coming, and I saw movement in the trees. And then the men stepped out, thin, haggard, like starving dogs. And starving dogs can be desperate. When the horses came, the men were ready to attack. And then … it was as if a fog suddenly settled over the daylight, but the mist was red, the color of the blood being spilled…. I saw … I saw them die. Some were shot, others skewered through by bayonets. Then I saw the riderless horses cantering away, and I saw the ground, strewn with the dead, one atop another, as if in death enemies had at last made amends.”

“Do you dream often?” he asked.

She longed to see the face of the man who had come to speak so kindly to her. “No.”

“But you have done so before?”

“Yes.”

“And when you have these dreams, what you see comes true?”

“Unless it is somehow stopped,” she said. “I tried so hard … but no one would listen.”

She was startled, but not frightened, when he took her hands.

His hands were very large, callused and clumsy, but warm, and offering great strength.

“She’s a Confederate spy,” someone muttered venomously.

“Gentleman, a spy does not warn the enemy in an attempt to prevent death,” he said. “A spy would let the enemy march to their doom. Tell me,” he said to her, “do you wish to bring us down?”

“No. I am not a spy. I came home to marry—”

“A Reb,” the inquisitor interrupted.

“And instead I watched my fiancé and what was left here of my family die. But I do not pray for either side. I pray for an end to war. I teach—”

“Sedition,” the lieutenant stated.

“Piano,” she corrected dryly. “And I run a library and bookshop. My father was a great teacher, and I’m proud to say I learned everything I know from him.”

The gentle man spoke to her again. “Do you consort with the enemy?”

“If I do, I have nothing to tell them. And I consort with those who are not your enemy, as well,” she said, an edge to her tone.

“I believe you,” he said. “But now I would like to return to the subject of your dreams.”

“I believe that dreams come to warn us, but that if we learn to heed them, we can change the course of events.”

She heard the other man sniggering. “Did your dreams warn you about your father’s death, Miss Gordon?” the lieutenant asked, mocking her.

“Dreams do not always tell us what we might most wish to know,” she said.

“Tell me, Miss Gordon, have you ever changed the outcome of events after you dreamed them?”

“Yes. I … stopped a young man who was wounded from rejoining his unit. I had seen him lying on the battlefield, staring up at the sky with sightless eyes on the battlefield. He has since been reassigned to communications work.”

“Spying!” Lieutenant Green said.

She laughed. “He was a Union soldier, so …”

The quiet man spoke again. “What if we are not intended to change fate,” the soft-spoken man said.

“We are creatures of free will,” she said. “I believe that God helps those who help themselves. We read books. Perhaps we can learn to read our dreams, as well,” she said.

“Perhaps.” She heard him move his chair back. “It’s my belief, Lieutenant Green, that we are violating the rights of this young woman,” he said.

She didn’t know what she had said, but she had somehow satisfied him.