Clay’s smile broadened in triumph. “I’ve waited a long time for this.”

He squeezed the trigger. Isaac Bell was already swinging, hoping that the only thing that would slow down the rogue detective would be talking too much. Before the slug had emerged from the barrel, Isaac Bell’s left fist smashed Clay’s jaw.

The shot missed.

Bell feinted with his wounded right hand, punched Clay with another powerful left. It staggered Clay, and he reeled backwards to the edge of the stern.

“Give it up,” said Bell. “It’s over.”

Clay looked at him incredulously. “It’s never over.”

He flew at Bell, cocking his left hand in a powerful fist. He tried to raise the right Bell had wounded and could not. An angry light filled his amber eyes, and he glared at his arm as if it were a traitor.

“I’m taking you in,” said Bell. “We’ll recommend mercy if you reveal who paid for this. Who’s the boss?”

“It’s never over,” Henry Clay repeated. He swung his good arm. Bell took the punch, rolled with it, and counterpunched, rocking Clay back on his heels.

“You can’t fight me with one arm. Give it up.”

“It’s never over,” Clay said again. But even as he spoke, he turned away.

Bell suddenly realized that Clay was so desperate to escape that he would risk certain death by trying to dive into the narrow strait of water between the White Lady’s stern and her churning wheel. Without Henry Clay, he had no case against the man backing him, no way to discover the identity of the true murderer, the real provocateur.

Bell lunged for him, and as fast as Henry Clay was, Isaac Bell was faster. He seized Clay’s militia tunic in his right hand and started to drag him from the edge. But this time, the young detective was the fighter betrayed by a wound. The bullet that had disarmed him had robbed his hand of too much strength. Thumb and fingers feathered apart. Clay tore loose and dived into the seething water.

Isaac Bell watched the wheel wash spewed by the slashing paddle blades. But Henry Clay’s body never broke the surface of that endless rolling wave behind the boat.

Chapter 50

50

I WISH I’D BEEN THERE TO WATCH HIM DROWN,” JOSEPH VAN Dorn said heavily. “I taught that man every trick I knew. It never occurred to me until it was too late that I created a monster.” He shook his head, rubbed his red whiskers, and looked probingly at Isaac Bell. “It makes a man wonder, will he create another?”

“Relax, Joe,” said Mack Fulton. “Isaac’s just a detective.”

“And a pretty good one,” said Wally Kisley, “once he masters the art of bringing criminals in alive.”

“Or at least a corpse.”