Dru Faust and the Devil's Due

Part 20

The police station where my mother worked wasn't large. Only about a dozen officers worked there, plus one detective. Mother was one of only three policewomen in the entire department, and thus the only woman working at that station other than the secretary.

Mrs. Hughes greeted me with a smile when she saw me enter. A matronly woman with steel grey hair and spectacles that hung from a chain, she looked more like a librarian than the type of person one would find in a police station.

"Druscilla! Hello, dear. If you're looking for your mother, I'm afraid she's out on patrol right now," she said, peering at me over the spectacles.

"I'm actually doing a little research, and I thought you might be able to help me. Do you mind if I take a look at the map?" I asked, pointing to a giant map of the city pinned to the wall.

"Certainly, dear. Go right ahead." She raised a section of the counter dividing the public waiting area from the desks beyond and allowed me to pass.

The map showed the entire city and the outlying areas, all parceled up to show ownership of the individual lots. Here and there a name had been crossed out or erased, and another penciled in when a major tract of land was bought and sold. I traced a finger along the river, tracking High Street north until I was at the outskirts of town. A little further north, and I found the turn off for George's picnic spot. Right below it was a large, lopsided rectangle with the name Thibault scrawled neatly in the middle.

I was about to move away when the sound of a raised voice from Detective Reiss's office caught my attention. At first, I was going to back away, to offer some small measure of privacy that the thin walls of the station did not afford, but something in his tone made me stop. Instead, I crept a little closer to his office door, which was cracked open just a few inches, under the pretext of examining the western edge of the map.

"Do you have any idea how hard French is breathing down my neck right now?" the detective snapped. From the pause, I could only assume he was on the telephone. "No, I don't care. Just find it. Do you have any idea what kind of hell there will be if word gets out that much industrial alcohol is missing? The Chief and the Mayor and the goddamn Governor have been bragging about how we've shut down the bootlegging industry in Columbus for months, and now over a thousand gallons has gone missing in a single night? I don't care what you have to do, just bring them in...Well do something about it, then! I can't cover for you...No. Absolutely not."

"Did you find what you needed?"

"Oh!" I jumped, nearly dropping my handbag.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you," Mrs. Hughes laughed. When Detective Reiss's voice raised once again, she reached over and gently pulled the office door shut. "There, now. I'm afraid the Detective has a bit of a temper. He's been under a lot of stress."

"I can imagine, with the push to enforce the Volstead act. I know a lot of people have been very eager to see it enforced." To read the local papers, you would think Columbus was the last bastion of moral behavior between New York and Chicago. It was all bunk, of course. We had our share of crime, and people still drank and listened to Jazz, it simply wasn't on the scale of those larger cities. Columbus was an industrial town, staunchly protestant. And of course, Ohio was the home of the Anti Saloon League. It simply wouldn't do for us to port forth anything but the purest, most virtuous front to the world.

"Yes, well. I can tell you there have been a lot of long hours put in the last two years, and we aren't done yet. Now, is there anything else you need?"

"May I see the log book?"

Surprised, Mrs. Hughes blinked at me several times, but she stepped aside so I could view the heavy ledger spread open on the counter where all the arrests were recorded. "What exactly are you researching?" she asked, leaning on the counter next to me as I searched the pages for the entries from Friday night.