THE SUN WAS low when Francis left the station, the park even more crowded. Bennie’s story would have hit the streets by now: People who’d never been to Riverview, or who might have been there the day before, would stream through the gates and make a beeline for Hell Gate to gawk at the site of a child’s murder. The ride hadn’t reopened yet—the commissioner had quashed that—but the minute the police detectives completed their investigation, Francis knew there’d be hundreds of people lined up, gaping at the devil guarding his gimcrack palace.

He wandered in that direction, brooding. There was no way Clyde Smithson could have killed that girl, but the park employed nearly a thousand men who might have—groundskeepers, carpenters, mechanics, concessionaires, performers, animal trainers, ticket takers. It was likely the murderer was someone who’d specifically visited the park to commit his crime—Cue’s account of the Wonderland killing suggested that.

But what if it was a man who worked here, someone who’d familiarized himself with the rides, so he’d know precisely when and where he could defile a child, then disappear into the crowd? No one who worked at Hell Gate would be so stupid, but someone from one of the other dark rides might easily have figured out the precise place and timing in the canal tunnel.

Yet it didn’t need to be someone from a dark ride, or any ride: everywhere he looked, he saw men in boater hats with money to spend, and little oversight as to how they spent it. Just a month ago, two policewomen from the Chicago force had been assigned to Riverview, specifically to arrest men who came here to pick up girls no older than fifteen, plying them with alcohol at one of the beer gardens, then spiriting them off to a nearby hotel. After two weeks, the policewomen were detailed to the beach, and the mashers resumed their pleasure as before.

Francis passed Hell Gate, where sawhorses and a makeshift rope fence kept the rubberneckers at bay. He wandered along the path toward Fairyland and the Woodland Cabaret: the shadowy side of Riverview, with its booths selling seedy postcards and the ragged hootchy-kootchy tents.

But he saw no policemen here: once Clyde was taken into custody, there was no need to question anyone else. Francis sighed in frustration, elbowing past a line of men who watched the Dancing Dolls, young women in skimpy dresses who flounced around pretending to be life-size toys.