The Deadly Mile
"You've certainly got your work cut out for you," Evander Jarvis, one of the museum's trustees, told Daniel Reilly, Ph.D., the new curator.
"I'm always up for a challenge," the young man replied. "I think I'll begin with reviewing the inventory of the museum's existing collections."
"Did your predecessor tell you about the attic?"
Thurman Huxley, the previous curator, had been with the Philadelphia museum for more than fifty years; at age eighty-two, he finally decided to retire.
"No, I don't believe he ever mentioned an attic."
"I'm not surprised," Jarvis said with a laugh. "He probably didn't want to scare you off."
"Why? What's wrong with the attic?" Dr. Reilly asked, his curiosity piqued.
"As Huxley got on in years, he began to slow down and, shall we say, slack off? When collections of papers and books were donated to the museum, he didn't bother to look through them. He just sent the unopened boxes and crates up to the attic."
"That's all right. There must be a record of the exhibits on the computer."
"That's another thing about poor, old Thurman. He wasn't a big fan of computers. I doubt anyone put the items in the inventory."
"What you're saying is that I'll have to go through everything in the attic and make sure there's a record of it on file?"
"That's right."
"About how many boxes are we talking about, roughly?" the curator asked.
"More than I'd care to count," Evander replied truthfully. "May I suggest that once you're settled in and acquainted with your duties, you begin tackling the mess in the attic? But pace yourself. We don't want our new curator burning himself out before his first job performance review."
* * *
The following day, Daniel arrived at the museum one hour before the doors opened to the public. He had two cups of coffee with him: one for himself and one for his assistant, a thirty-year-old divorced mother of two named Christa Dunmore.
"Thank you, Dr. Reilly," the woman said when he handed her the cup with the familiar Starbucks logo.
"Please call me Danny."
"Thank you, Danny. You really didn't have to do that."
"I know, but I wanted to. I thought you and I could have a cup of coffee in the privacy and comfort of my new office while you bring me up to speed on what events are planned for the museum in the upcoming weeks."
For the next hour, the new curator and his assistant discussed plans for the museum's scheduled Civil War Remembrance Week and the annual Children's Fair. Danny was delighted to see that Christa had matters under control.
"Looks like I can spend my time going through some of the stuff in the attic," he said.
"They told you about the attic, did they?" the assistant jokingly asked. "And you took the job anyway? You're a brave man."
"Come on. It can't be as bad as all that!"
"No, it's worse. You'll be applying for retirement benefits before you get through that mess. Although—please don't be offended by my candor—you do look a little young for this job."
The boyish grin on Danny's clean-shaven face seemed to prove Christa's point by making him appear even younger than he actually was.
"What I lack in years, I more than make up for in education. I'm what some people refer to as a child prodigy. I read Moby-Dick at age five, graduated high school at thirteen, got my B.A. in history from Harvard at sixteen and my doctorate at Princeton at eighteen."
"Wow. I suppose with that kind of background you're more than capable of winning the battle of the attic."
"Thanks for your vote of confidence. Now, they say—whoever they may be—that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I'm going to go up to that attic right now and bring the first box down to my office."
"Good luck!" Christa called to him as he headed toward the staircase. "If I don't see you by lunchtime, I'll send up a search party."
The idealistic curator reached into his jacket pocket, removed the set of keys he had inherited from Dr. Huxley and opened a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Beyond this point were four flights of stairs. By the time Danny reached the attic on the fifth floor, he seriously considered going before the museum's board of trustees and requesting money to install an elevator.
Slightly out of breath, he arrived at the top floor landing and opened the door to the attic. Someone—he was later to learn it had been Christa Dunmore's doing——had put up a sign that read: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here."
The smile that had appeared on Danny's face when he read the sign vanished as soon as he opened the door and saw the staggering number of boxes, trunks and wooden crates that were consigned to the attic by the last curator.
Christa wasn't kidding! he thought, momentarily overcome by the overwhelming amount of work he was faced with. It will take me years to weed through all this stuff.
With a heavy sigh of grim determination, Dr. Reilly blew a thick layer of dust off a cardboard carton to his immediate right and then carried the heavy box to a small freight elevator located in the corner of the attic.
Always one to look for the silver lining in any cloud, he thought optimistically, At least I don't have to carry all these heavy boxes down four flights of stairs!
* * *
When Danny walked into his office, Christa surprised him with a cup of coffee and a cupcake.
"Happy anniversary!" the assistant said.
"Thank you. I can't believe I've been working here five years already."
"Time flies when you're having fun. Speaking of having fun, how are you coming along with the mess in the attic?"
"I'm making progress. I'd say I'm roughly three quarters of the way through."
For the next two hours, the curator and his assistant discussed plans for the addition of a new wing onto the existing building.
"I'll send these suggestions to the architect," Christa offered as she stood to leave.
"Good. You take care of that, and we can meet after lunch and go over the acquisition of the Hamilton collection."
When his assistant returned to her own office, Dr. Reilly headed toward the stairs. After five years, he had completely given up the idea of installing an elevator. His waistline was two inches thinner, thanks to the four flights he climbed on a regular basis. In fact, he was in such good physical shape that he was now able to take the stairs at a brisk pace and not be winded when he reached the top floor.
After selecting two boxes from the dwindling pile, he put them in the freight elevator and returned to his office where he placed the first sealed box near his desk. He then turned on his computer and opened the museum's inventory database.
When Danny cut the old, brittle packing tape with his box cutter and removed the lid, he discovered the carton was filled with old file folders. He took one from the box and opened it.
"Minutes of the annual board of directors meeting of the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad," he read aloud.
He thumbed through the papers in the files and found more of the same. After a cursory examination of the other folders, he discovered that they contained correspondence, memoranda, contracts, reports and miscellaneous documents relating to the railroad company, which had gone out of business back in 1857. Although the majority of the museum's patrons would not be interested in such papers, he might be able to auction them off to someone who collected railroad memorabilia and then put the proceeds of the sale into the new acquisitions fund.
Before sending the box to the temporary storage room, however, he would carefully go through the files in search of any old photographs they might contain. People, he had learned during the previous five years, loved old pictures.
Among the many files, he found a folder that contained several sheets of handwritten notes. The curator did not bother to read any of them until he came upon an old newspaper clipping in the same folder. His own name in the headline caught his attention.
"Railroad worker struck down by cholera," he read.
A chill encompassed his entire body as he read about the tragic death of an eighteen-year-old Irish immigrant who had died in 1832 during the second cholera pandemic.
Wondering why such an obituary would be included with the official railroad papers, Danny began reading the handwritten notes contained in the file. They were, he later learned, written in the 1960s by Dr. Hollis Schiffelin, the grandson of the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had purchased the bankrupt Philadelphia and Columbia. Apparently, Dr. Schiffelin had discovered the boxes of records in the basement of the family estate when his mother passed away.
As Danny was trying to decipher the doctor's handwriting, Christa popped her head inside his office door.
"I'm going down to the deli to get a cheese steak before our afternoon meeting. Can I pick you up something?"
"Yeah, I'll take a large Italian sub with everything and a can of Coke. Have them charge both our lunches to my account."
Twenty minutes later the assistant returned with the sandwiches.
"What's that you're looking at?" she asked.
"Old files from the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad."
"Find anything interesting?"
"Just some handwritten notes that someone made a century after the railroad went under."
"Sounds fascinating," Christa said facetiously as she put her feet up on Danny's coffee table and opened her bottle of Snapple iced tea.
"It is. From what I can determine, there were fifty-seven railroad workers, all recent immigrants from Ireland, who died of cholera while laying track along a certain stretch of the line, one this doctor refers to as the Deadly Mile."
"That's sad but hardly surprising. Death by cholera was fairly common back then."
"According to Dr. Schiffelin's notes, the disease usually claimed forty to sixty percent of a given group, yet in this case all fifty-seven men working on that stretch of the track died—that's a one hundred percent fatality rate. That's not all. The doctor goes on to claim that no death certificates were ever filed. Furthermore, the men were apparently thrown into a mass grave, without a funeral or ceremony of any kind. There was never even a marker to indicate the place where they were buried. What I find most disturbing is this," Danny said, handing one of the sheets of paper to his assistant. "Look at the sentence at the bottom."
"As poor immigrants," Christa read aloud, "these men were considered expendable."
"They came over from Ireland to find a better life, and that's how they were treated," Danny said with undisguised disgust.
"Is there anything in the file other than the doctor's handwritten notes to substantiate his story?"
"There was an old obituary for one of the men. That's what caught my attention in the first place, but I can't seem to find it now," the curator said, searching through the stacks of paper from the box and even looking on the floor beneath his desk. "It was here this morning."
"I'm sure it will turn up. Was there anything else in the files?"
"Yeah, directions to an area where Dr. Schiffelin believes the men's bodies were buried."
* * *
Armed only with Hollis Schiffelin's notes—the obituary had yet to resurface—Danny convinced the trustees of the museum to contact the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for permission to search for the remains of the fifty-seven immigrant workers believed to be buried on government-owned land near the railroad tracks. When consent was eventually given, the curator headed a team of volunteers in digging in the area described by the late doctor.
The excavation, which was financed in part by the museum with contributions from an Irish-American organization and a nearby Catholic university, uncovered personal belongings and signs of an encampment but no bodies. Additional expertise was needed, so Danny sought the assistance of the scientific and academic communities. With the help of ground-penetrating radar, one scientist located anomalies beneath the surface of the earth. Following his advice, the team began to dig in a different location.
After removing only three feet of soil, the team uncovered signs of the first skeleton. A physical anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania was called in to identify the remains. It was her conclusion that the bones belonged to a young male, thirteen to eighteen years of age. Surprisingly, she discovered signs of blunt force trauma in the skull of a sufficiently severe nature as to cause death.
"But according to Dr. Schiffelin, all these men died of cholera," Danny argued.
"The person whose bones I examined may or may not have had the disease, but it didn't kill him. He was bludgeoned to death. But you must realize that there was no cure for the disease back in 1832 and that roughly half of those that contracted it died. It's quite possible whoever killed this young man might have done it to put him out of his misery."
Within a week two more bodies were unearthed. Although the anthropologist determined both men were older than the first one discovered, evidence indicated they also died of blunt force trauma to the head.
"And we think our modern health care system needs revision," Christa joked when she read the doctor's findings. "Who treated these men, Dr. Kevorkian?"
Danny laughed at his assistant's black humor but found the grim discovery far from amusing.
* * *
Word of the excavation team's activities eventually came to the attention of Kayla Waldman, a reporter for a local newspaper. When her editor told her to write a piece on the project, she was less than enthused. After all, it wasn't exactly King Tut the group was digging up.
Wearing an old pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her comfortable Reeboks, she parked her Subaru Forester on a gravelly lot and hiked up the embankment to where the excavators were working. After introducing herself to one of the volunteers, she was referred to Dr. Daniel Reilly.
"Can I help you?" the curator asked.
"My editor sent me to do a story on your team's activities here. Would you mind answering a few questions?"
"No, not at all. I was just about to take a break. Would you like something to drink? Water? Tea? Gatorade?"
Kayla helped herself to a cold bottle of Dasani from the cooler and sat down on a boulder across from the curator. She then removed her microcassette recorder from her backpack and pressed the record button.
"What exactly are you hoping to find here?" she asked.
"Originally, our only goal was to confirm a written account we discovered about a group of railroad workers who supposedly died of cholera and were laid to rest in a mass grave at this site."
"You said originally, Dr. Reilly."
"Call me Danny, please."
"All right, Danny. Has your goal changed?"
"Yes. So far, we've managed to locate four bodies. Evidence indicates that all four of these men died from blows to the head."
"You mean they were murdered?" Kayla asked, immediately interested.
"It appears so. Of course, the men could be the victims of a crude attempt at euthanasia rather than malice, but we don't know. We're hoping now to uncover not only more of the bodies but also the story behind these deaths."
During the remainder of the interview, Danny explained how he had found Dr. Schiffelin's notes in the box of railroad papers and what the doctor had written.
"Have you searched the county or state archives for additional information on these men?" the reporter asked.
"No, I haven't had the opportunity to do that yet. We wanted to proceed immediately with the dig in order to take advantage of the warm weather; otherwise, we would have to put it off until next spring."
"I'll tell you what. I'll do some research and get back to you if I find anything."
After informing her editor of the developments in the story, Kayla stopped at her apartment to shower, shed her dusty jeans and T-shirt and put on an outfit more suitable for an office environment. Then she drove to the county archives with a notebook and a handful of sharpened pencils.
* * *
By the end of the following week, nearly a dozen bodies had been located and carefully removed from a tangle of tree roots, rocks and dirt. The volunteers had just located another skeleton when the reporter returned to the site.
"You think you'll uncover all fifty-seven of the bodies?" she asked Danny.
"I hope so," the curator replied. "I realize we may never know what really happened to these men, but at least we can give them a decent burial instead of leaving them here like so much ground fill."
"While I was at the archives, I found something interesting," Kayla said, taking a photocopy of a document out of her handbag. "It's a newspaper article about the men who died here."
Danny immediately stopped working and reached for the paper.
"This can't be right," he said after reading the first few paragraphs. "It says only eight men died, all victims of cholera."
"Look at the source: the railroad. The official story, according to the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, is that only eight of these men died. That's not surprising. They would hardly want anyone to know about so many fatalities, especially if the men were murdered."
"Someone had to have known the truth. How else could Dr. Schiffelin have known there were so many bodies buried here?"
"I'm sure there was talk. It's hard to keep a thing like this a secret. But it definitely looks as though the railroad did its best to try."
"Well, thanks for your help, Kayla. We all appreciate your assistance."
"Don't thank me yet. I've only just begun. You keep digging in the ground, and I'll continue rummaging through the archives."
* * *
The next time Kayla Waldman showed up at the excavation site, there was no sign of the curator. Instead, Christa Dunmore was in charge of the growing number of volunteers.
"Where's Dr. Reilly?" the reporter asked. "I've got something I have to show him."
"I wish I knew," the assistant curator replied. "I got an email from him last week saying he had urgent personal business to attend to, and I haven't seen or heard from him since."
Anxious to share her recent find with someone, Kayla confided in Christa, "You've got to see this."
"What is it?"
The reporter put a copy of an old legal document into the other woman's hands and explained, "It's a contract dated March 3, 1832 between the railroad and a man named Chauncey Leahy to hire fifty-seven men to complete a one-mile stretch of track, thirty miles west of Philadelphia. And there was a letter attached to the contract. According to Mr. Leahy, it would be difficult to find inexpensive labor to work on this mile because it was so steep and rocky. He informed the railroad that he would have to use immigrant labor. Look at his exact words, 'The Irish are the only ones desperate enough to do such hard work for low wages.'"
"Chauncey Leahy must have been some guy! He was taking advantage of his own people."
"Maybe he thought he was actually doing them a favor by finding them work."
The reporter then handed another sheet of paper to Christa.
"Anyway, I figured Leahy's best bet was to hire a group of people literally right off the boat. So I checked ships coming into Philadelphia in the weeks immediately after the contract was signed. There was only one that arrived from Ireland: the Galway. That's the passenger list."
"Why are most of the names crossed off?"
"I did a global search of all census and vital records in Pennsylvania and the surrounding states: marriage licenses, death certificates and so on. Those names that are crossed off are men who are known to have still been alive after 1833."
"That means the ones that aren't crossed off ...."
"Their paper trail stopped after they arrived in Philadelphia. Don't bother counting, I'll tell you how many there are: fifty-seven."
Christa's eyes scanned the list, stopping three-quarters of the way down the page.
"Donal Reilly. I wonder ...."
"What?"
"Could it have been an ancestor of Danny's who died here? Wouldn't that make for an incredible story if the dead man's descendant is the one who uncovers his remains?"
"Yes, it would, but I don't think that's the case here. According to the Galway's passenger list, Donal Reilly was only eighteen years old, by far the youngest man on the ship."
"Eighteen? The first body we found was that of a young man age thirteen to eighteen. Those must be his remains."
* * *
In early October, with the last of summer weather fading away, the remaining bodies were brought up from the ground. Soon after, Kayla accompanied Christa to a warehouse near the museum where the most recent finds joined the other bodies, all placed in wooden coffins.
"That makes forty-two bodies with visible signs of blunt force trauma, seven with gunshot wounds, and eight that show no sign of violence," the assistant curator announced.
"The railroad was being truthful about that at least. Eight men probably did die of cholera."
"I don't suppose we'll ever know what happened to the others."
"We're fairly certain eight of the men died from cholera, but we don't know if the others were infected. It's possible they all had symptoms. What if someone connected with the railroad learned of the outbreak and decided to kill them all to prevent any further spread of the disease? After all, they did try to cover up the story."
"They did a pretty good job of it, too," Christa said. "If it hadn't been for Dr. Schiffelin finding his grandfather's files, the bodies might never have been discovered."
"What will happen to them now?" the reporter asked.
"The fifty-six unknown men will be buried in the Holy Spirit Cemetery here in Pennsylvania. We've received enough donations to erect one memorial which will have the fifty-six names engraved upon it."
"What about the fifty-seventh?"
"That would be young Donal Reilly. We're taking him home. He's going to be buried in Ireland, in the same cemetery where the rest of his family is interred. We're planning on a formal burial and service, if you'd like to attend."
"I'd love to," Kayla said. "Even if the paper won't cover the cost, I'll pay for the trip myself."
"I only wish ...."
"What?"
"That Danny could be there. He's the one who initiated this whole project."
"You still haven't heard from him?"
"No. It's been more than four months and not a word from him. The trustees have asked me to take over as curator. I agreed, on the condition that Danny will get the job back when he returns."
Kayla noticed that Christa said when, not if. The reporter herself was not as optimistic.
* * *
There were more than a hundred people at the Pennsylvania cemetery, none of whom could actually be called mourners. Some of them were simply curious, but most had read about the tragic fate of the immigrant laborers and came to pay their respects. Kayla Waldman was primarily in attendance to cover the event for her paper, and Christa Dunmore was there out of a sense of duty.
As the new curator looked at the fifty-six mounds of earth, evenly spaced in eight rows of seven graves each, she used a tissue to dab the tears from the corners of her eyes. A priest from the local Catholic church conducted a service and then fifty-six names from the Galway's passenger list were read aloud. Finally, a lone bagpiper played "Amazing Grace," a mournful tune that brought more tears to Christa's eyes.
At the conclusion of the service, the two women decided to go out to lunch, more in need of a drink than of anything to eat.
"It's finally over," Christa announced. "It's hard to believe it was only two years since Danny showed me Dr. Schiffelin's notes. It seems like an eternity ago."
"The service was nice," the reporter added. "I didn't cry nearly as much as I did at the one in Ireland."
"We knew who we were burying then. At least we knew his name and where he came from."
An awkward silence followed, and both women reached for their drinks. After several minutes, Kayla put down her glass and sighed.
"There's something I ought to tell you. I've been putting it off for days because I know you've had your hands full with the funeral service and all."
"What is it?" the curator asked.
"I've been doing some more research, this time into Dr. Daniel Reilly. I couldn't find any record of him at either Princeton or Harvard, nor could I locate a single source to confirm the information he presented on his employment application: not a birth certificate, a social security number, not even a driver's license."
"Why would he lie?"
"Maybe he invented the whole child prodigy identity to get the job as curator, hoping no one would actually check into his background. Regardless of his motives, I don't think he'll be coming back to the museum."
"Well, you never know."
"How's the new job going, by the way?" Kayla asked, anxious to change the subject.
"So far, I'm doing the same things I did as an assistant. I haven't gone up to the attic yet."
"Not anxious to go digging through the remaining boxes?"
"I don't mind the work, but to me that's Danny's domain. I know it sounds foolish, but sometimes when I'm working late and the museum is closed, I think I can hear him up there still looking through the cardboard cartons and crates."
* * *
Christa Dunmore arrived at the museum just before seven. She had a busy day ahead of her and wanted to get an early start. Kayla Waldman, who had written a book entitled The Deadly Mile, was going to be giving a talk about the events that inspired her work. It had been more than four years since the two women had seen one another even though they often kept in touch via email.
After preparing a cup of coffee on her Keurig, Christa sat at her desk and picked up the copy of the book she had received in yesterday's mail. It had that pristine feel of a new, unread book. She was flattered to see that her name was prominent among the acknowledgements but disappointed that there was no mention of her predecessor, most likely because the author did not know his true identity.
I suppose Kayla was right, she thought, closing the book and sipping her hot coffee. Danny Reilly isn't ever going to come back here. Even a diehard optimist like me has to eventually face facts.
As the curator finished the last of her Nantucket blend coffee, she heard a sound in the hallway.
"Hello?" she called out. "Is someone there?"
Her question received no answer, just another, louder sound. Summoning her courage, she walked out into the hall to investigate.
"Who's there?"
The main entrance was locked; there was no sign of a break-in. Suddenly, Christa saw the door of the small freight elevator slide open. As she walked closer, she noticed there was a dust-covered box inside, one that had obviously come from the fifth-floor attic.
How did this get here?
Careful not to get dust on her suit, the curator carried the cardboard carton into her office and put it on her desk. When she cut the tape and removed the lid, she discovered the box was filled with issues of a defunct Chester County newspaper. One issue was placed perpendicular to the others as though someone had wanted to call attention to it. Christa could find nothing of interest in the headline, which dealt with an upcoming election for mayor of Coatesville. Curious, she continued looking through the paper. She found something of interest on page six.
"Anti-Irish sentiment blossoming in Chester County," the heading read.
The article went on to describe the growing number of "native-born" protestant Americans who were upset by the recent wave of immigration. Distrustful of papists and fearful of losing their jobs to the Irish who were often willing to work for less money, several of these men formed organizations that distributed anti-Catholic pamphlets and urged local businesses to refrain from hiring Irish workers. There were even scattered instances of violence where "nativists" attacked the immigrant laborers.
Christa was still at her desk, rereading the article when the museum opened.
"Hard at work already?" a familiar voice asked. "Don't tell me you're still going through all those old boxes in the attic."
After hugging her old friend, Christa quickly told the author about discovering the box in the freight elevator.
"Look at this article. What if it wasn't someone connected with the railroad that killed our fifty-seven men? What if it was one of these nativist groups?"
"When was the last time anyone used the freight elevator?" inquired the former reporter, who oddly enough seemed more interested in the box itself than in what it contained.
"Last night, around eleven. The copier on the second floor was out of paper. Rather than carry the heavy box up the stairs, I put it in the elevator."
"What about a nighttime guard?"
"We don't have one. We use an off-site digital security system. No one was here after I left."
Kayla looked at the dusty box on the curator's desk and said, "I think we both know who's responsible."
"Who?"
"The man we know as Daniel Reilly, the one with the mysterious background. I've had my suspicions about him but never wanted to voice them. Now with this box magically appearing out of nowhere, it's pretty hard to deny the obvious."
"What's that?"
"It was Donal who brought this article to our attention."
"Donal? But he's been dead for almost two hundred years."
"Donal, a fine Irish name. Do you know what the English equivalency is?"
"Donald."
"Yes, but Donal takes the form of Daniel as well Donald."
"You're saying Danny was the ghost of Donal Reilly? That's absurd!"
"Is it? Not only does Danny have no traceable past but he seems to have vanished in the present, too. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that Donal's was the first body discovered during the dig."
"Just for the sake of argument," Christa said, "if Danny was Donal, why did he pretend to know nothing about what happened at the Deadly Mile?"
"Look, I know next to nothing about metaphysics or the spirit world. If Donal somehow returned in human form, maybe he wasn't even aware of his previous identity."
"Now that you mention it, Danny claimed to have found an obituary for one of the workers, an eighteen-year-old man who we later determined was Donal Reilly. I never read it myself because it seemed to have mysteriously disappeared—just like Danny."
"But that obituary led him to read Dr. Schiffelin's notes, which in turn led to his determination to locate the bodies."
"Then why did he disappear before we'd learned the truth? Before we finished unearthing all the remains?"
"Maybe it's no coincidence that Danny went away the same day I found the passenger list for the Galway. Maybe it's some cosmic law that once his bones had a name to go with them, the physical form of Daniel Reilly ceased to exist."
"This is too much in the realm of science fiction for me."
"You said yourself you sometimes imagined you heard him working in the attic when you were alone in the museum at night."
"Yes, and there are logical reasons for the sounds: rats, the building settling ...."
"How do you logically explain this box being in the elevator or that particular issue of the newspaper being turned to the side?" Kayla pressed.
"I can't," Christa admitted. "But I would need more tangible proof before I'd chalk it up to be the work of Donal Reilly."
* * *
"And now, it's my great pleasure to introduce to you our guest speaker, the author of The Deadly Mile, Kayla Waldman."
After making the introduction, Christa took a seat in the last row of folding chairs in the museum's lecture hall. Although she knew as much about the subject as the reporter did, the curator still wanted to hear the lecture.
The author spoke for thirty-five minutes before asking that the lights be dimmed. She then opened a file of photographs on her tablet that she projected onto a large screen. The members of the audience were fascinated by photographs taken at the dig and in the anthropologist's lab.
"As you can clearly see in this picture," Kayla said, showing an enlarged image of one of the skulls, "there is undeniable evidence of gunshot trauma on the parietal bone. We found this same type of injury on six of the other victims."
Once she had established a case for mass murder, the author concluded with photographs of the funeral of the fifty-six bodies.
"This is the memorial that appears in Holy Spirit Cemetery where these unfortunate men were at last laid to rest. And this," she said, switching photographs, "is the state historical marker placed at the site where the bodies were discovered."
There was a brief pause that allowed the viewers to read the inscription.
"To me, the most poignant image of all is this one. It was taken in Ireland at the funeral of eighteen-year-old Donal Reilly, the youngest and only identified body found at the Deadly Mile. It was to this small cemetery in County Clare that young Donal eventually returned one hundred and eighty-three years after leaving Ireland to make a new life for himself in America. And this ...."
Kayla fell silent when she saw the next image in her slideshow. In place of the photograph of Donal's grave was a picture of Danny Reilly.
"How did that get there?" she said in surprise.
Moments later, however, she found herself looking at the Celtic cross-shaped headstone.
Is my imagination playing tricks on me? she wondered. Am I the only one who saw that picture?
When she noticed Christa Dunmore's bewildered, ashen face in the rear of the room, she knew she was not alone. The picture, she realized, was the evidence the curator needed to prove to her that Donal and Danny were one and the same person.
This story was loosely based on the true story of the deaths of 57 Irish immigrant railroad workers who died in 1832 and were buried near a stretch of track in Pennsylvania, now known as Duffy's Cut.
In his younger, more adventurous days, Salem decided to walk the rails to Boston. I didn't bother to tell him he was heading in the opposite direction!
