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eBook Category: Historical Fiction/Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: The tragic enigma of the Beautiful Stranger instantly became a national crime-mystery sensation in 1892. It also became the subject of a famous ghost legend at the fabulous Hotel del Coronado, persisting to this very day. Solved at last, the enigma proves that truth is far stranger than fiction. It is not only a story of passion and violence, conspiracy and betrayal. It is an epic tragedy that transcends times and cultures, and strikes as hard today as it might have in the 19th Century, had anyone realized the truth back then. As it was, she became the epitome of that greatest of Victorian heroines, the Fallen Angel. Mourned by millions around the nation, she ended up in a humble and unmarked grave outside of San Diego. The Beautiful Stranger checked into the Hotel del Coronado on Thanksgiving Day 1892. Gorgeous and dressed like an actress, she was found dead five days later of a gunshot to the head. She had checked in under an alias, and nobody knew who she was or what her business at the great resort had been. Why did she die, alone and suffering, at the tender age of 24? John T. Cullen published his scholarly analysis, Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, in 2008. Now he has released a fictional, noir thriller that combines the best elements of his scholarly analysis of the true story, and the traditional legend of Tom and Kate Morgan. It's a riveting and dark tale that will stun readers with the force of its blunt tragedy and soaring drama. The author reveals the gripping details of a wild blackmail plot gone wrong. The target of the plot, the mega-wealthy John D. Spreckels, who owned the Hotel del Coronado, was at that very moment negotiating with President Benjamin Harrison and the Congress over the fate of the Hawaiian monarchy and the future of his family's fabulous sugar cane fortune. The story thus has global implications, and the Hawaiian monarchy fell just five weeks after the plot at the Hotel del Coronado. The tragedy of Lottie A. Bernard--the name under which the mystery woman signed in at the hotel--gives us a snapshot of life in late Victorian times, from the writings of Charles Dickens to the royal courts of London and Honolulu, and the government in Washington, D.C.--all because of a beautiful young factory girl who had an affair with her foreman, a married man with children. They eloped together and became involved with the ruthless and scheming Kate Morgan and her violent husband Tom, and what follows is truly a dark and lethal journey. From the author of 'Umnitsa' and 'The Generals of October.'

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: 2009
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2009

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [206 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [282 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [183 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [863 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [204 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [215 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [236 KB] , hiebook (KML) [457 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [315 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [171 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [214 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [273 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [288 KB]
Words: 62001
Reading time: 177-248 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 9780743310017

1. Kate And Tom Morgan, 1888

Two men, reeking of leather and tobacco, stood in the shade of a wooden awning at the small train station in Las Cruces, New Mexico. On this hot summer day in 1888, with tiny gusts of oven-like wind pushing through the ivy trellises around the wooden train platform, the two men looked as if they were not enjoying themselves much. On the other hand, they looked too busy to care much about their discomfort as they pored over a map together, while one of them held a packet of tear sheets with images and print on them. Wind rattled the paper every few seconds. The land all around was flat and far and baked like painted mud. Both men were tall, about the same height, and lean. Thinning hair stirred in white strands on a browned and blistered head when each removed his head gear to scratch. One man had a salt-and-pepper beard; the other, gray stubble over a mass of wrinkles around his mouth. Beard had dark brown eyes. The other was gray-eyed.

Each man, under his rumpled black suit, wore a shiny brass badge discreetly on his leather belt under a flap of his jacket. Each man's badge bore a plain, engraved personal number in the center. Fancy scrollwork, around the number, read Union Pacific and Railroad Police. On the other side of the leather belt, under the opposite jacket flap, each man wore a shiny, nickel-plated 1888 Remington New Model Pocket Army Revolver with .44 caliber Winchester rounds in the cylinder, and a short 5.5 inch barrel. Each man wore a broad-brimmed hat covered with dust from a long ride on horseback, but they had traded their riding boots for stiff-soled city shoes. The men were on the hunt, just the same, only their hunting territory was coming toward them. They heard a distant train whistle, and were eager to get on board and search for quarry. Each good arrest meant a bonus. They worked hard for their money.

"I'll send the boots out for cleaning," hollered an elderly black man in shirtsleeves and great big galoshes, who puffed a corncob pipe and moved at a leisurely pace as he led the two tired horses toward a barn to be wiped down and watered. Man and horses both looked husky and sun-beaten.

The bearded detective gave a little wave of thanks, as if his every motion must be spare and economical. The hand that waved wore a scuffed, fine chocolate-colored leather glove whose index finger had been removed toleave the business end of his finger exposed, when it needed to be, on the hair-trigger of his six-shooter. Both men were Civil War veterans in their late forties. Each had killed men and faced death enough times to get that dark, lean, haunted look around the eyes that was like a permanent shadow or a veil of nightmares.

The two men rifled through their assortment of Wanted posters, trying to memorize faces and read details. They had just ridden in from Santa Fe, where they had delivered two bank robbers and collected a hefty fee aside from their regular salary. Now they were ready for a new hunt.

"These two," said Gray-Eyes as he pulled a fresh tear sheet from Beard's gloved hand. "They're new."

"Ah-yuh," said Beard. "That's a new one. Should be easy to spot if they're working as a pair."

They looked at the lithographic reproductions of the profiles of a young man and woman. Under the pictures were their names in bold, black print: Thomas E. Morgan and Kate Morgan, born Farmer. Under that was printed, in smaller letters, a list of charges, including that they were cardsharps and thieves. Missing was the next line that appeared in some other sheets:Caution! Armed!--so evidently these were light-weights. Then came the small print, citing any known details about the two. As Beard and Gray-Eyes read, the distant train whistle drew near. Already, they could hear the chuffing of the engine as the coal-burner came racing through a distant mountain range. From experience, they could assemble a small drama in their imaginations.

Thomas Edward Morgan and his wife, Kate Morgan, were grifters who worked the Transcontinental Railroad trains. Tom was in his early 30s, while Kate was nearly ten years his junior. They hailed from the wheat belt in southwest Iowa, children of well-to-do farming and miller families. Somehow, they hadn't set well--the land apparently had no lure for them, and they preferred to travel. Once the railroad bug got you, there was no turning back. Typically, Kate would find a mark--some young man with a few whiskeys in him already, a gullible mind, and a fat wallet. She'd entice him into a deserted forward car, where the spider waited in his web: Tom Morgan, grinning easily under his short black hair, riffling a deck of cards. Tom would give the impression of sipping at a shot of Red Canary Straight Rye Whiskey from a colorful bottle that stood nearly full and invitingly at his elbow. "I want you to meet my brother," Kate would tell their intended victim as she ushered him into the compartment. "I hope he will like you, because he is a good judge of men, and you seem like a fine gentleman." She had the poor fool thinking, in his muddled mind, that he would somehow have his way with her in the next few days as the train clattered monotonously through the endless Continental United States. As the mark slid into his seat opposite Tom Morgan, the latter would reach into his coat for a silver etui and offer him a fresh cigar. Kate would sit in a corner and continue flirting with the man while Tom invited him to a friendly little game of poker. "You get to know a man when you play cards with him," Tom would say. "Looks like my sister here has taken a shine to you." Then he'd riffle the deck some more, and the game was on.

The two railroad policemen folded away their posters and stepped out to the edge of the platform, each carrying a dark and ornately decorated cloth valise. Gray-Eyes' was dark green with maroon swirls, while Beard's was dark blue with gold lines in a Romanesque motif. The train was growing louder now, and its smoke filled the sky in quick, energetic bursts. The smoke stack on the front of the dark-green locomotive was a wide cinder-catcher type, designed to prevent hot ashes from flying back and setting the cars on fire. Meanwhile, the grating in front was designed to toss aside the carcass of any stray cow unlucky enough to be wandering on the tracks. The train emitted a series of piercing steam-whistle notes, rising and falling, while the wheels chattered happily until the last mile or so, when they started to slow and the train started sounding tired. The old black man came from the stable, in that same lethargic middle-of-nowhere walk, and pulled the hose pipe around on a high wooden water tower. A trio of young Indian lads, wearing good cotton shirts and Levi Strauss work pants with suspenders, and top hats with feathers and beaded designs, pulled a wagon of coal and wood on a narrow-gauge side track.

A Mexican vendor appeared on the platform with cigars, sandwiches, and fruits, while his wife and children struggled alongside with a clay coffee urn and tin cups. The train's great steel wheels screeched on the steel rails as the train chuffed slowly to a halt on air brakes. The engineers leaned from their cab, and a conductor in a dark blue uniform waved to them. The two surreptitious detectives might have been traveling salesmen as they quietly boarded amid two dozen or so passengers milling about, some getting on, others getting off. A woman cried and waved her hankie as she spoke in Spanish to two brown-skinned boys with big eyes in school uniforms. A young wife waved to her Army officer husband who leaned from a window throwing kisses. Arms reached out to the Mexican, placing coins in his hand and accepting coffee, food, tobacco, even tiny paper flags with local motifs for souvenirs.

Coaled and watered within a half hour, the train emitted a shrill whistling sound. The engine pumped, and chuffed, and began its pile-driver rhythm to propel tons of steel and wood back to speed. The two detectives deposited their satchels in the railroad caboose at rear, and started a leisurely walk down the train. They kept their coats buttoned to conceal the purpose of their journey. There was no rush now. The several hundred passengers were safely imprisoned in a world of hurtling upholstery and dusty glass windows. Mesilla Valley cotton acreage passed by outside, looking like fields of snow. The sky was a cloudless darkish blue, raked by the summer sun and hot desert winds. Low mountains looked as if they had white cake-patterns baked into them. The rocking motion of the train was steady and hypnotic. The men sidled among passengers who crowded the aisle outside First Class and Second Class compartments. They moved through the bar coach and into the restaurant.

Suddenly, Beard gripped Gray-Eyes' sleeve. They froze in place, looking over the heads of a school of dark-haired children, toward a row of dining seats. Two black men in white coats served coffee and cakes to a white family seated around a long table. Beyond them, seated together in a corner, were the Morgan couple. They were unmistakable from their pictures--he with the slightly bulbous, pale head and short dark hair; she with the piercing black eyes and rather plain features. She did not have a pretty face, but she had the scintillating gaze and golden tongue of a first-class seductress. Their clothing was dark, thin for the summer, and dusty. Under a plaid blouse and ankle-length tan cotton skirt, her figure was full and robust, promising much to a gullible and slightly inebriated man looking for a place to shed his dollars. She wore a little gold locket around her neck, which she often fingered and then stuck down into her blouse for its protection. Her husband, the sibling in their brother-sister act, had the strong, wiry lean build of a Midwest farmer. He had probably been a towheaded youngster, Beard thought as he and Gray-Eyes withdrew into the shadows of the new leather accordion connectors between cars. Morgan glanced toward them for a second, then looked away.

"We'll split up," Beard said quietly. Something in that man's eyes made him nervous. The woman's were just as unsettling. Gray-Eyes nodded. They would be less conspicuous apart. The couple weren't supposed to be dangerous, and the bounty on them would be relatively small. If the detectives could apprehend them, especially in the act, with a witness and complainant, they could turn them in at the sheriff's office in some town up the road and then continue looking for bigger game.

"We're in luck," Beard said in the same low voice. "You go back to the rear and get some rest. We'll spell each other." Gray-Eyes nodded and walked leisurely off without looking around. Both men were very tired, and they were less likely to be noticed if they stayed apart. Beard picked up a discarded, folded newspaper, and shadowed the couple as they made their way forward to an empty first-class carriage. Few riders could afford First class, so the forward sections were empty today. This car did not have wood or glass dividers, but the compartments had fine, plush blue-gray seats with high backs that served like dividers. Half the coach was, in fact, a sleeper with darkened, empty bunk slots. Beard sat in a corner booth and opened his paper on the table. He watched from a distance, in window reflections, as a bottle appeared on a small window table and Tom Morgan set up his gambling ruse. Kate, meanwhile, wandered in search of just the right man with a few itches to scratch. As she passed by, Beard looked up from his newspaper and exchanged looks with her. He made himself seem distant, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. She languidly raked him with a carnal gaze. A chill ran up and down his spine. He felt as if he were being licked by a snake. He shuddered and looked away.

She passed him by because he had not radiated toward her the spark of hunger and gullibility for which she was looking. After a few minutes, he rose. Folding his newspaper under one arm, and pruning a cigar with his pocket knife, he wandered after her. The bar car was crowded with mostly men, a few women joining their husbands at window seats. Women were not allowed at the bar.

Beard watched as Kate approached a fortyish, plump man with short, graying hair parted on one side, and a checkered vest. The man was reading a Denver newspaper and tossing back shots of whiskey while fingering a coffee cup to one side and keeping a cigar going in the smoky car air. The man was florid and had little watery blue eyes as he began to notice Kate. She pretended to be looking for some acquaintance. They caught each other's eyes, and spoke to one another. She probably said she was looking for her 'brother.' After a few more words, he eagerly rose and offered her a seat opposite him at the small table. He was very solicitous, putting his cigar out and using his napkin to dust the glass counter top. He bowed slightly and said something, probably offering her a drink or coffee, and she protested, but he protested more, and she relented as he signaled for a waiter. Soon, one of the black stewards in starchy white linen vest brought a tea service for her, and another stiff drink for him.

Beard hurried to get Gray-Eyes. He picked up his step as soon as he was out of sight, and was fairly trotting by the time he hurried through the crowded Third Class coaches with their teeming families of all races. Entering the caboose, which smelled of sawdust and machine oil--no passenger comforts--he went down the row of canvas bunks hanging on steel poles. He found a bunk with Gray-Eyes' jacket curled as a pillow and still warm--but no Gray-Eyes. A Chinese porter happened by, wearing a chignon and round black hat, and an ankle-length blue apron. Beard pointed to the bunk. The porter pointed to the locked toilet door in a corner and grinned. Beard pounded on the door. "They're starting."

The other shouted back distantly: "I'm going to be busy here for the next few minutes. That Mexican food is going through me like a train."

"Hurry up," Beard said, laughing. "I can hear your train whistle."

"Oh shut up and go do your job."

"Join me when you're able." Beard took his time walking forward to the eerily deserted Tom Morgan coach. He passed through the bar and restaurant coaches. He'd wait for Gray-Eyes to join him. The Morgans would need a while to work their cardsharp game. The trick would be in the timing--they needed the victim as a willing witness.

Beard watched Kate sipping her tea and making pleasant conversation with her mark. Beard studied her, trying to figure out how she worked her magic. It was rather chilling, he found. She was a bit homely, but she could turn up this warm, radiant smile that made her eyes and lips sparkle. She also moved her foot close, so that the man's ankle brushed against hers. The man, for his part, was rapt. He sat forward, with his arms folded under his flabby chest in that suit, and seemed to be inhaling the very essence of her smiles and sweet words. Beard saw the ankle-action and thought to himself, I wonder if he's wondering if she's doing it on purpose, or if she doesn't know, and he's wondering just how far she'll let him go with her, and how much it's going to cost him.

After about twenty minutes of that, they rose. She followed her catch out of the bar car. In the corridor, she stepped ahead to guide him. He was a heavy man, and leaned a bit with one hand against the wall as he navigated in his cups. At one point, he reached out and tried to touch her rear end in its hoop skirt, but stumbled and almost fell on his face. She turned with a look of phony concern and took his arm. With this new, seemingly innocuous body contact, she lured him to the compartment where Tom sat waiting. Beard noticed a reddish bruise on one cheek, as if Morgan had given his wife a black eye recently. Morgan looked the type, Beard thought, a flinty-eyed, mean-spirited confidence artist.

Beard watched from a distance as the heavy-set man sat down opposite Tom, while Kate sat nearby and smiled at the man with that same magical, balmy look that had him eating from her hands. Tom deliberately took his time. He poured the man a shot and pushed it toward him. The victim began to lose his shyness and become part of what must have seemed like a family to him. Brother and sister, they were utterly warm, simple, charming, seductive, and friendly. Tom spread out a hand of cards and tapped the deck with his forefinger. It didn't matter what the game was. Maybe the victim didn't even know how to play cards. The ruse was that the brother must approve of the man before he would allow his sister to become more friendly with him. Beard supposed that the victim by now thought that these two odd ducks were maybe a pair of simpletons (never mind the cigars, booze, and cards) and that a license from Tom would give him entry to the paradise that Kate subliminally promised. Beard could feel it all the way across the coach, from his spy place near the connector--a radiant emanation that snared its victim in a net of coquettish nods, and glances, and smiles, and turning aside of the head in pretended shyness.

Gray-Eyes came up behind Beard and startled him. Beard said: "Just in time. The wolves are closing in on their lamb."

"Looks like the wolves have him cornered."

"They're feeding him whiskey, and I wouldn't be surprised if she's dropped some magic powder in his glass to hurry it up."

Gray-Eyes clutched his stomach. "Oh no."

"Make it quick," Beard said.

Gray-Eyes hurried away to find a toilet.

Within a few minutes, the victim began to seem torpid. First, he stopped moving and just sat like a big frozen slab of lard. His eyes grew confused and the cards tumbled from his fat white fingers. Beard knew then--Tom Morgan had slipped him a dose of something. The heavy man snapped his head upright two or three times, but finally sank into a deep slumber. Kate hurried to his side and helped him lie down on the seat. Both Morgans were all over him in an instant, going through his pockets. As Tom Morgan triumphantly held up the man's black leather wallet, Beard pulled his coat back and stepped into the middle of the cabin, displaying his badge on the left and his gun on the right. "Hold it right there, both of you. You're under arrest."

"What for?" said Kate with a big smile. "Our friend here has had too much to drink."

"With a little help from you two," Beard said.

"What is the matter with you?" Tom asked. "Are you crazy?"

"I was just about to ask you that," Beard said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a chain with a shiny steel handcuff on each end. The very next instant, he knew he had terribly miscalculated.

Tom Morgan had two Deringers, one in each hand, now aimed at Beard's head and torso. They were Colt No. 2 'New Deringers,' single-shot, .41 caliber. Tom stood at a slight crouch, holding the pistols at slightly different angles with a practiced stance. "Mister, I don't know who you are, but you're looking at the Angel of Death."

"Take it easy," said Beard as he raised his gloved hands halfway and opened them in hapless surrender.

"Now we just have minutes here, don't we? Before a porter comes through, or your friend returns. I thought you two looked suspicious. Kate, put the manacles on him."

"You are digging yourself a hole," Beard said.

"Stow the big talk. I'll kill you right here, right now, if I have to. Got nothing to lose if it comes to that."

As he spoke, Beard could feel the woman move around him. He heard the chain rattle, and felt the sharp bite of a manacle on his right wrist. "Hands behind you," she snapped. He offered his other wrist to cuff.

"Okay, Mister," said Tom Morgan. "You can avoid meeting Jesus today if you don't waste any more of my time and just do what I say."'

"Fair enough," Beard said, knowing he was licked.

"Kate," Tom said. She pushed Beard toward Tom. Morgan pocketed one gun and kept the other trained on Beard's head. The man and woman led Beard toward the door, and Beard understood what was coming next. Tom said: "You play along, you just got yourself a long, thirsty walk to the nearest town. You screw with me, and I'll throw you out there with a bullet in your head. Make up your mind."

The door swung open at Kate's push. Wind howled by, and made their hair and clothes rattle. Beard's hat flew away. Dusty grit swirled in circles that made all three persons blink. They spat harsh dust from between their teeth. As Kate and Tom watched, Beard walked straight-up, as if he were stepping onto a train platform, out into the air, and instantly disappeared in a roar of wind. A glance behind told the two that their victim had landed, rolling, somewhere on the rocks and grit. "He'll be okay," Tom said as he kicked the hat after the man and pulled the door shut. "A little banged up and worse for wear, but he'll live. I shamed him. He won't say what happened to him here."

"He'll be looking for us, though," she said. "There is another one, too."

"Yeah, I saw them both. You got the wallet?"

They looked at the sleeper. She said: "We got his watch, his money, his gold tie clip, his cuffs, his collar pin. We've cleaned him out."

"Good. Not a minute to waste. Act natural." Leaving the sleeper where he lay, they walked slowly back to the dining coaches. Tom kept his hands in his pockets, a Deringer in each fist. Kate clung to him, and he shook her off with an elbow to the ribs. "Woman, don't dog me now."

She held her side and grimaced in pain. "One day, I'm going to throw you off a train, you son of a bitch."

"You try me, woman, and you'll join that tin horn copper."

For a minute or two of menacing silence, they walked down the corridor of an empty car that was probably expected to fill up in some city ahead. On their left were windows overlooking desert and irrigated farm land. Several of the dusty windows were slightly open. In-rushing wind freshened the hallway's stale air, but brought with it dust and pollen, and a boiled-coal smell from the locomotive. On their right were closed and darkened cabins. Far ahead were the noise and laughter of the bar car.

As Tom and Kate approached a door marked W.C. on the right, the toilet door opened, with the hand of Gray-Eyes on the door handle. The man had finished his business, pulled up his pants, and was about to step out. One could hear the rattling of tracks under the open-bottomed box that dumped its contents on the ties as the train flew onward.

Tom saw the man's badge and gun and brought one of his Deringers up.

The lawman, from years of experience, took his all in during an instant. Lurching back, he reached for his gun. A collection of Wanted posters fluttered from under his elbow.

Tom shot him in the chest, and the policeman keeled over backwards onto the toilet seat. Tom glanced left and right, and saw that nobody had witnessed this. He put the Deringer in his pocket. He took the key from inside the door. The man sprawled, looking away with dull eyes, dying in a pool of blood, with his long legs crumpled and his arms extended to the sides as on a cross. Grabbing the Wanted posters, Tom pulled the door shut. He locked it from outside so that the white enamel sign said Occupied. He threw the key and the posters out the window.

Kate pointed ahead. "We're pulling into a town."

"Good. Let's lose ourselves. We got the fat guy's money, and we'll figure out something--quickly hop a train going somewhere else." He put her arm under his elbow and grinned. "You still want to throw me off a train?"

She sighed, wrapped her arm around his, and gave him a rueful smile. Together, they waited by the nearest door for the train to stop so they could vanish into the enormous, empty continent that was their playground.