STABBED TO DEATH!

The headline was glaring and to the point. It was interesting to Sara that she had assumed media coverage of murder and other crimes had grown more sensationalist in the TV and Internet era, but from what she’d seen of the Anne Donovan case, nineteenth-century journalists had been just as salacious.

October 7, 1849—Anne Donovan, age 23, a lewd and unfortunate woman, was found MURDERED in her bed at the House of Rest For Weary Men, Dauphine Street, a den of gambling, drink, and other unsavory activities. Stabbed seventeen times with a bowie knife, her facial features obliterated, and her breasts mutilated, the violent nature of the crime has shocked even the hardened Madame Conti, who sent a girl for the coroner after being alerted of the victim’s state. Miss Donovan was last seen alive by Mr. Jonathon Thiroux, her LOVER, who maintains he heard or saw nothing of her death, even though he was in her room at the time. There have been no arrests, and we must ask, Ladies and Gentlemen, if this is what our fine city has fallen to. Are murders so commonplace and the reach of wealth so deep into our city officials that our police do not even bother to investigate such a horrific death? If Miss Donovan were murdered in a better address would justice be sought in her case?

That is perhaps a question for the mayor.

So obviously the journalist had used Anne Donovan’s murder as a platform for airing political grievances, but Sara figured any attention given the case was a positive. It meant more articles, more court papers, more documents, and more physical evidence had been gathered and had survived through the decades, which meant a higher probability that together with Gabriel St. John she could solve the crime. Which mattered to her, because if she would never see her mother’s killer behind bars, which, despite Gabriel’s opinion, seemed likely, it would give her a certain sense of satisfaction to know she had solved her great-great-grandmother’s murder.

For four generations in her family, a woman had been brutally murdered, starting with Anne Donovan. Ending with her mother. It was a fear that had plagued her all her life—the bogeyman, the family curse, the toxic press of mortality clouding everything she did, every decision, every long-term goal—that she would die young, suffer a brutal death at the hands of a stranger. Her mother had laughed at it. Disregarded it.

But her mother was dead now.

And Sara was afraid that, one way or another, she would be the next to die.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two