“So, what? You think this is someone who watches the movies, gets titillated, then goes out looking to murder a kid?” Bennie polished off one of his sausages and started in on the other. “I don’t buy it.”

“All I’m saying, it’s not necessarily crazy that someone might look at them as women, not girls. I mean, it is crazy,” Francis quickly added, “there’s no doubt about that.”

Bennie sipped his beer. “Well, maybe,” he allowed. “I heard they’re going to question Charlie Chaplin—he was with the Walewski girl before she was killed, did you know that? And everyone knows Chaplin likes young girls. Not this young, maybe, but fourteen, fifteen. And you’ve heard the rumors about Beery? There’ve been complaints about him and underage girls at Essanay for a while now. He may have to leave the studio and head west.”

“How do you know all this?”

Bennie grinned. “That’s my job.”

“So you think it’s a movie actor?”

“Nope. I think it’s probably a vagrant. Or a Gypsy. Gypsies travel, and a caravan can cover a lot of ground in a year. Some of them join sideshows for the season—whoever this is, he could have worked at Dreamland, then Wonderland, and now Riverview. I heard there’s some Gyppo fortune-teller working there now.”

“It’s not goddamned Gypsies,” Francis said heatedly. “And it’s a woman working at Riverview, not a man. And she’s not really a Gypsy.”

“A sensitive point, I gather,” observed Bennie. “Well, there you have my contribution. How about introducing me to the kid who found the girl’s body?”

“I have another bit of news.” Francis leaned across the table, lowered his voice, and told Bennie about the notebook. When he finished, Bennie whistled softly.

“Did you copy down the contents?”

“No. I had to turn it in as evidence.”

“Too bad. Can you remember what was in it?”

“Records of horrible crimes. Decapitations, women being buried alive.”

“Anything specific about young girls? Or amusement parks?”

Francis nodded. “The word Hellgate—it was the last thing he wrote in the book.”

“And you found it in the fortune-teller’s booth? The same woman whose son came across the body in Hell Gate? The evidence seems to point straight at him, Francis.”

Francis struggled to keep his temper. “The boy’s so underfed, he couldn’t strangle a chicken. His mother says he’s starting high school in a month, but he looks about twelve. And others can vouch for his whereabouts at the time.”

“Who?”

“A man associated with a detective agency called Gemini, who also claims to have seen a man entering Hell Gate with the Walewski girl.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“No. We haven’t questioned him. But the boy spoke to him and—”