Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) Read Online Free Page A

that Clara was having an affair, but that she was doing so out of
    shame for his having failed to save the President. Henry went upstairs to his
    bedroom. There he found the Derringer and the fighting knife in his top dresser
    drawer where it was stored along with Clara’s blood-stained dress.”
    The portly professor is now making like a pistol with one
    hand and a fist with the other as if gripping a knife.
    “Loading the pistol and pocketing the knife, he headed back
    downstairs where, in front of the children and their Christmas tree, he shot
    his wife in the back of her head. Dropping the pistol, he pulled out his knife
    and proceeded to stab himself in the stomach multiple times. Some say he
    survived and was institutionalized, but many believe he died that night and
    that it took him twelve agonizing hours to die. The exact amount of hours it
    took Lincoln to die, as if Rathbone had made a contract with God for it to
    happen that way. However…” His voice trails off.
    “However what?” I say.
    “No one has ever confirmed the Henry Rathbone/Clara Harris
    murder/suicide story. No police reports were ever filed, and nothing exists in
    the Hall of Records other than a statement about their being buried in the
    Albany Rural Cemetery in a family plot purchased years earlier.”
    “You ask a homicide dick like me,” Miller interjects, “It’s
    a made up bedtime story…that the truth behind their deaths isn’t nearly as
    dramatic.”
    The car goes silent again while once more I stare through
    the glass at the house. Regardless of the truth, it’s hard to believe such a
    peaceful, if not quaint, cottage-looking residence could have sheltered such a
    dysfunctional family. A historical dysfunctional family.
    “It’s been said that as soon as Henry and Clara were buried,
    Henry Riggs Rathbone Jr. handed over the Derringer and the knife to the
    authorities who, in turn, delivered them to the Ford’s Theater Museum. As for
    the dress, however, he wanted to retain it, as if there was a special power
    that went with it. A curse even. In the ensuing years, he stored in the back of
    Clara’s closet, a solid brick wall constructed before it, to hide it away
    forever.
    “But in 1910, Junior is purported to have broken through the
    brick wall in Clara’s bedroom. Convinced the dress had haunted his family long
    enough, he retrieved the bloody dress and burned it, thus destroying the curse.
    But to this day, like so many other aspects of the legend, no evidence of the
    burned remnants have ever been confirmed, leaving some to speculate that the
    dress still exists. There are also rumors that the Derringer and fighting knife
    housed in the Ford’s Theater Museum in Washington are fakes, indicating that
    Junior never did relinquish the true artifacts after the death of his
    parents…that the real McCoys are still out there somewhere waiting to be
    discovered. Perhaps they were both wrapped in Clara’s bloody dress. Now,
    wouldn’t that be the find of the century, Mr. Baker?”
    He puts his hand on my leg again. I shake it away again .
    “This all sounds like folklore, if you ask me,” I say.
    Balkis gives Miller a look like they’re communicating
    without speaking.
    “So what do you want with me?” I go on. “Why am I here and
    not back in New York City, Detective Miller?”
    He says, “The couple who lived in this house up until a few
    weeks ago, have gone missing. Been missing for almost a week now.”
    “So isn’t it your job to find them? You or the FBI?”
    “Sure it is, Baker,” he says. “It’s just that we’ve reached
    a bit of a brick wall, if you’ll pardon the pun, and we just don’t have the
    personnel or the resources right now to break it down. I’m hesitant to involve
    the Feds at this stage of the game.”
    “Sorry, Detective. Still not sure how I can help.”
    “I was hoping you might give the case a try. See what you
    can come up with. Like I said, I can do three hundred per day