Carnival of Shadows Read Free Page B

disturbing. They had a giant rat, the Fiji mermaid, the skeleton of a two-headed dog, a midget guy, the guy with too many fingers who turned out to be the best darned magician I ever did see. The whole catalog was there, and they were good. This wasn’t no two-bit, flea-ridden ragtag collection of drunks and conmen. These people were good, Mr. Travis, real good. They entertained the townsfolk, I’ll give them that much, and when Saturday morning came, I never got one phone call of complaint. Not one.”
    “Not even from the Federal Surplus Fingers Department?”
    Rourke hesitated and then smiled again. “You know, Mr. Travis, you should probably go on down there and get yourself a job as resident comedian.”
    “So what happened on Saturday?”
    “Ah well, Saturday was even busier. We had folks comin’ in from Eureka, El Dorado, Augusta, Marion, even as far north as Emporia. Presumably, folks here were making calls, telling their friends and relatives that Seneca Falls had one fine show going on, and they came in like I ain’t never seen before. I mean, this town has a population somewheres in the region of four or five thousand, but Saturday night must have seen maybe a quarter as many again comin’ on by car and busload. Seems like half the state wanted to see what the Carnival Diablo had to say for itself.”
    “And when was the body found?”
    “That was late, maybe eleven o’clock or so. Most folks had gone. They were only the teenagers hangin’ around, some of the younger couples who ain’t got kids to get home to bed, and that’s when they found him.”
    “Where was he found?”
    “Seen, more than found, so to speak. He was sort of under the platform of the carousel. Neck was broken, but the coroner, Jack Farley, thinks that happened postmortem. Cause of death was a single knife wound to the back of the neck, sort of upward into the base of his brain. Jack said that death would have been instantaneous. Couple of people there said they saw the victim on the carousel itself, as if he were up there having a ride, but when I got to asking further, it looked like they was drunk enough to see Santa Claus and Popeye the Sailor Man up theres as well. So I don’t know what to make of it, to tell you the truth.”
    “Who found him?”
    “Well, he was just there, see? It wasn’t like he was hiding anyplace. It was a young woman called Frances Brady. Came up here the few miles from El Dorado. This Brady girl was walking back toward the carousel, says she was looking for her boyfriend who’d wandered off someplace, and she saw this guy under the carousel.”
    “And she saw nothing else… no one approaching, no one leaving, nothing at all?”
    “Not a thing. She just saw the guy down there, started hollering for them to stop the carousel, and then he was pulled out by a couple of the carnival people.”
    “And he has not been identified?”
    Rourke shook his head. “Not as yet. We’ve had him on ice, so to speak, since Saturday night, and no one has come forward. I got a picture and sent it to my contemporaries in half a dozen surrounding towns, see if anyone knew who he was, but nothing has come back as yet.”
    Rourke reached into the drawer of his desk and produced a photograph, no more than five-by-four. It was the same image as that which had been provided by Bishop. He also produced a fingerprint card from the same drawer.
    “And there’s his prints. Understand you boys have some kind of fingerprint archive or some such. Maybe you got him on record somewhere.”
    Travis took the card. “Do you have more copies of the picture?”
    “Sure do,” Rourke replied, and furnished Travis with another photograph of the dead man.
    “Anyway,” Rourke continued. “I have questioned everyone who works for the carnival to see if any of them recognize him, but there’s been nothing. We got ourselves a dead body, no name, no details, nothing in his pockets save a packet of playing cards, a pack of