Shadows in the White City (20 page)

“But he is at peace now and holds no animosity toward anyone,” said Tewes.

“He said that?” asked the elder son.

“He wants you all to be at peace as he is at peace.”

“You mean dead?” asked the younger man.

“You've got it all wrong Tewes,” said the elder son. “What he's saying is he'd as soon see us all dead as to find that will of his!”

“Charles! You'll frighten his spirit off!” chastised the woman.

“I'm afraid it is too late,” announced Tewes, breaking the chain of hands and standing. “I have lost his presence. He is gone.”

“Gone?”

“Just like that?”

“Afraid we will have to try again, perhaps at another time,” said Tewes as Gabby lit a gas lamp, and the disgruntled family began leaving, accusing one another of lousing up the reading and getting them nowhere.

Some of the family members recognized Ransom as they filed out, one asking if he were here to arrest “that charlatan Tewes.”

“Oh, but we can appeal to the spirits again, Mr. Pelham, Mrs. Pelham?” said Dr. Tewes to his clients. “Do not despair. Call again.”

With a good deal of grumbling, the Pelhams were gone. Jane dropped back into the cushioned chair and let out a long breath of air as she pulled away her mustache, ascot, and wig.

“Are you mad?” Alastair asked her.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Jane…spiritualism? Atop phrenology and magnetic healing?”

“Hey, my therapy worked on you, didn't it?”

“Don't change the subject. You seem bent on getting yourself thrown into jail or shot as a flimflam artist.”

“Oh, please! You can be as dramatic as Mrs. Pelham!”

“And how long do you think your disguise would fool anyone behind bars? Ever hear of a strip search?”

“Tewes serves a purpose, Alastair, both for me and the community.”

“Yes, to line your pockets while revealing lost wills of testament for ingrates.”

“I don't know that they are ingrates, or that they won't use newfound wealth to, say, contribute to Hull House or the Salvation Army, now do I?”

“Either way Tewes gets his fee?”

“Yes, and why not? He performs a service.”

“It's fraud, Jane, pure and simple.”

“I don't see it that way.”

“Are you a mentalist now, a medium, a gifted who speaks to the dead? No, you are a highly educated woman taking advantage of the less educated.”

Gabby had vacated the moment voices were raised, but now she'd returned with steeping hot tea. “There's no arguing with her, Inspector. I've tired of trying.” Gabby poured tea into cups as she spoke. “She means to have the capital at all cost.”

“It's the only way to see you through Rush, young lady. They don't give women scholarship funds, I assure you.”

“All I have…all you've given me, Mother, since…well, since meeting Audra and her street family, I feel guilty.”

“For what?”

“For all we have, and all they will never have.”

“And it is my avowed purpose in life, Gabrielle Tewes, to make sure you never become one of them! Do you understand? Do both of you understand?”

“Noble reasons for duping others out of their money, Jane.”

“I carefully screen my clients in the séance end of things, Alastair, and those who get this far, as you saw, deserve a good fleecing.”

“Then you admit to fraud?”

“What merchant in the city isn't a fraud? Have you seen the costs of medical insurance recently?”

“Call it what you will, it appears very bad.”

“We are at a crossroads, and we're not to discuss it since none of us will agree,” said Jane. “Besides, I'm exhausted.”

“I'm sure after a long day, and now this business with Grandfather Pelham.”

Gabby piped in. “It takes a great deal out of one to hold a séance, results or no.”

They sipped at tea in silence, each lost in thought.

“I've spoken to Philo Keane about what we learned from the street children,” Ransom said to the ladies between sips.

“Oh? And did he find it amusing?” Jane asked.

“On the contrary. He is and has been planning an unusual move with regard to the sheltered and homeless children. Contemplating it for some time, in fact.”

“Would you care to give us some details?” Jane asked.

“Yes, do,” added Gabby, curious.

Alastair related all that had transpired between Philo Keane and himself on the subject. The ladies were duly impressed with Keane's insights and his desire to help the children through his art.

“It's this sort of thing that restores my faith in the human heart,” said Jane. She then stood and began pacing before turning to the others. “All right, I have a confession to make regarding the séances.”

“What is it, Mother?”

“Go on, Jane.”

“I'm setting aside all proceeds from Dr. Tewes's forays into the supernatural for a sizable donation, I hope, to Jane Addams's settlement community.”

Gabby smiled wide. “For the shelter children, oh, Mother, how wonderful.”

Ransom dropped his head and shook it from side to side as Gabby embraced her mother. “Isn't she wonderful, Alastair?” Gabby said.

“Aye, she is that and bravo, Jane. I'll have to come in and have you contact my uncle Faraday sometime so's I can contribute.”

“Do that, Alastair. You do that.” She toasted his health with an upraised teacup.

The following day

A phone call awakened Alastair after a long night
of drinking and swapping stories with others on the police force and a few hangers-on at Muldoon's where Ransom held court at
his
back booth. Alastair had decided to take Muldoon up on his “generous” offer. After all, there was nothing in Chicago that was not for sale, not even a man's reputation. Part of his decision had to do with his having had no effect on changing Jane's decision to continue to work as Dr. Tewes and to her having added séances to the doctor's repertoire of diagnostic tools. If a highly educated surgeon could behave in such a manner, then why not a Chicago police inspector—if it were for a good and righteous cause? Why not bank on his infamy and reputation if it was for
another
means to an end—a way to help kids like Audra, Sam, and countless others? But no one must know.

As a result, people had bought him beer and whiskey shots all night. As added result, this a.m. ringing phone sounded like a fire alarm in his head. He rolled from bed and had to cross the room and go out into the front room to get the phone. It felt like a journey to India by foot.

Each time the phone rang, his headache throbbed at a lower decimal. He finally clutched the receiver in his paw and growled, “What is it?”

Alastair was stunned at what Inspector Logan conveyed. He'd hoped with the news of Thomas Crutcheon's death by pitchfork that the Leather Apron killings had ended. Even if Crutcheon wasn't the butcher, Ransom hoped the killer would take this opportunity to become “Crutcheon” to end his murderous attacks. Not so, as Logan related the fact of another child's body turning up. This time in an alleyway back of Loomis and Jackson, an area infested with tinderbox clapboard one-room shacks in which whole families lived atop one another. The entire area was slated for clearing and rebuilding—a thing they called beautifying in political speeches and in higher circles.

“I'm on my way.”

“Sorry to bring such news, Alastair, but there it is. I've sent a police wagon for you.”

“Well done, Logan. I'll be as quick as I can be.”

Alastair drank down a concoction of juices and whiskey to fight the hangover, swallowed some pills that Jane'd prescribed for headache, and dressed at once. He was soon going across the city in an official horse-drawn police carriage. When he arrived at the scene, a large, ugly crowd had already gathered. A threatening atmosphere was evident, palpable. The police proved an easy target to the people's collective fear and frustration.

Alastair waved his cane and shouted over the jeers, “What've ya in mind here, people? Are you going to hang me to a tree and burn me in effigy?”

“Not you, Ransom!” shouted one.

“Hang 'em all!” shouted another.

“Do you have enough fellas to lift me?” replied Alastair, drawing a laugh and defusing the anger somewhat. “And can you afford enough petro to burn me?” His last words sent up more laughter among the crowd.

Logan and Behan signaled for him to join them. Alastair
had to pick his way through the overbearing crowd. More uniformed cops arrived to hold the concerned neighbors at bay so that the inspectors could do their job.

Alastair also had to pick his way through a minefield of discarded trash, bottles, castoff bedsprings, mattresses, boards, and scattered debris. Among all the trash one child's body, whole strips of flesh torn away from the fleshiest sections. Nude, the child had gone an ashen bluish color under the elements.

“Despite the butchering, Rance,” began a jittery Behan, “the bastard who did this left her face pretty much intact and didn't take the eyes this time. Not sure why….”

Logan added, “She's not been dead so long as the others, Alastair.”

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Dr. Fenger's come and gone, leaving his opinion,” added Logan, a cigar hanging from his mouth. Using the cigar to point, he indicated the meat wagon and Dr. Fenger's body snatchers, as some called Shanks and Gwinn. Ransom openly gritted his teeth at the two death mongers. While they filled a need, transporting the dead, they did so with an enthusiasm far outdistancing their professional acumen. Dr. Fenger, for some odd, unknown reason kept them on as a kind of pet project, as he had bailed them out of jail when under suspicion of actual body-snatching to sell bodies unearthed from cemeteries to local medical schools. Alastair never quite understood Fenger's involvement, but the appearance was not good—bailing out two men accused of such a heinous crime and making them legitimate ambulance attendants while they awaited the fury of Judge Grimes. Then the charges just dissipated, became watered down, and Grimes had turned the pair of ghouls over to Dr. Fenger's care to keep them on at Cook County Hospital and its adjacent asylum, and to keep them
out
of Cook County cemeteries, where they had been nabbed in the first place. They claimed not to be unearthing a body at the time but burying some beloved dog named Cecil. As outrageous as it all was, something going on behind the
scenes, even in the judge's chambers, between Dr. Fenger and Grimes—two men normally thought of as enjoying the highest moral character—had agreed on the new state of affairs with regard to Shanks and Gwinn.

No matter, Alastair could not stand the pair, and not because they were homosexuals but because they undoubtedly scavenged bodies for jewelry and tickets and cash and coin and any shiny object, like a pair of vultures. Dr. Fenger insisted that he had broken the two of any such habits, and that he had trained them well, and that Cook County paid them a good wage, so they need not rob bodies they were put in charge of.

Alastair still had nightmares about when he'd been thrown unconscious into that stench-filled hell-hole they called an ambulance—
literally
a meat wagon. The whitewash given the old dram had not completely obscured the old Oscar Mayer Meat Company sign along each side.

Alastair put aside such thoughts and kneeled close in on the dead child, guessing from the size of the girl that she was about the age of young Audra or slightly older. Ransom lifted the broken neck, wondering if it'd been broken before or after death, or during some horrendous torture or struggle. “Didja fight the devil, lass?” he asked the small corpse.

Ransom then looked at the girl's features, and despite chunks of flesh slit from her cheeks, the face and eyes shocked him. He let the face drop away, gasping. “It's Danielle…Queen Danielle…”

“You know the victim, Alastair?” asked Logan, eyes wide.

Behan came closer, saying, “Keep it down. We don't need any more agitation from this crowd.”

Logan whispered in his ear. “How do you know this Danielle?”

“I…I interviewed her just two days ago regarding…about what the word on the street was with regards to the case.”

“Do you think it a coincidence then she's dead?”

“She becomes a victim immediately after my interviewing her?

“And the bastard left the eyes and face so's to be recognized.” Behan swallowed hard and wiped his brow.

“I've never trusted coincidence, lads.”

“So why start now?” Logan patted Ransom on the back.

“It mayn't be prudent to inform press or public of your connection with the girl, Ransom,” suggested Behan.

Ransom looked Inspector Ken Behan in the eye. “I merely talked with her about the case, not even the case, really. About how she and other shelter and homeless children view the world, and who they fear, and why. I was looking for any kind of lead.”

“Like any cop, you put your ear to the street.” The thin-faced Logan swiped at a shock of unruly hair.

“Yeah…basic information gathering,” agreed Behan, “but people don't know that. They only know what they wanna know.”

“On the ground information gathering, Behan,” Alastair said, “exactly.”

“All the same, people can twist things, so keep it quiet, your connection to the victim,” Behan continued to caution.

Alastair now glared openly at Behan, and then his glare took in Logan. “I did not say I slept with the child!”

Behan shushed him. “We…I didn't mean to imply—”

But Alastair loudly proclaimed, “Those two ghouls over there with their meat wagon won't get their hands on Danielle.”

“Alastair! What're you doing?”

Ransom lifted her up into his arms. “No one cared for her in life, not anyone. In death, she'll be cared for.” With that he carried Danielle's brutalized and butchered body to the police dram that had brought him here.

Shanks and Gwinn started to rush in, demanding to know what Ransom was doing. Cook County Morgue paid Shanks and Gwinn only for the numbers of bodies they brought in. Logan and Behan stepped in, running interference for Ransom, backing Shanks and Gwinn off.

“Sorry, boys, but the CPD has this one,” said Logan.

“Back off,” added Behan.

Ransom laid the body in the police carriage and ordered the uniformed driver to take him and Danielle's remains to the morgue. As the driver pulled away with Ransom and the unusual cargo, Alastair heard Shanks spit out a curse under his breath, while Gwinn toyed with a six-inch blade, cleaning his dirty nails. Both of the reputed resurrection men had sternly eye-balled Inspector Ransom as he'd closed the carriage door on himself and the body.

“Never seen a grown man cry,” Behan muttered to his partner.

Logan looked from the retreating carriage to the ambulance men. “Yeah…just look at the vultures.”

“I meant Rance.”

“Rance? I saw no tears.”

“Look a little deeper next time.”

 

“They get paid by the number of bodies transported to County, Alastair, and those fellows, no matter what you think of them, have a right to a living as anyone,” Dr. Fenger chastised him on learning that Ransom was in his morgue with the young woman's body. Fenger had guessed her age at thirteen, perhaps fourteen.

“Damn Shanks and Gwinn, Christian! I talk to this girl and two days later she's brutally murdered!”

“You knew the child?”

“Not really, no. I was following a lead…a lead that began with Jane and a young girl now in as much danger, a street urchin named Audra, who led us to Danielle.”

“I have coffee in my office. Come, let's talk.”

It was not long before Alastair downed his second cup of Irish coffee and had explained the religion of the street children he had run into. Fenger had listened with awe at the revelations both from the children and from Philo Keane.

“I had not known Philo was an orphan as a child.”

“He had it pretty rough in Montreal.”

“You know, Alastair…not that it has anything to do with Philo, but some people who grow up on the streets like that…as adults or older children, they begin bullying others, and it is not unusual for some to escalate to violence. Some escalating to murder of the very thing that reminds them of their past.”

“Are you saying—”

“Just theorizing.”

“Are you theorizing that the bastard behind these butcherings and vanishings was once a street child?”

“Was and perhaps still is—even if older!”

“Gone over to the dark side of that religion they preach, yes,” agreed Ransom with himself. “Of course. Acting on the belief in this war between Heaven and Hell, and doing Satan's bidding.”

“A strong possibility, yes.”

“There're literally thousands of homeless here.”

“And more flooding into the city every day.”

Alastair declined a third cup of the potent, bourbon-spiked coffee. He stared, glassy-eyed, at Fenger's wall of degrees and awards.

“So what will you do now, Alastair?”

“I'm gonna hunt this predator down like the animal he is.”

“And when you catch him?”

Inspector and doctor stared at one another for a long moment. Finally, Alastair said, “Nathan has surely informed you by now that I refuse to be a pawn in Senator Chapman's plan of vengeance.”

“And nothing will dissuade you?”

“Even I have my standards, Doctor.”

“We all must find the line we're unwilling to cross.”

“Look, climbing into this pact with Kohler is a sure step toward hell; you can only regret it in the end, Christian.”

“I'm sure you're right. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“There has to be another way. With your reputation, you should be capable of naming your loan.”

“I'm afraid not…not anymore. Have borrowed from all of 'em.”

“I don't understand it, Christian. You don't gamble anymore than Philo or I, so where is all this money going?”

“I can't say.”

“Secrets. Everybody's got secrets.”

“This could ruin me.”

Alastair shook his head. “Nothing you could do, old friend, could possibly ruin you in my eyes, unless you turn out to be the madman going about butchering children.”

“Some in the press are saying he is a medical man.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Saying Leather Apron makes incisions, makes surgical cuts. Damn fools. I made Carmichael sit through the last autopsy, and I showed him the difference between butchery and surgery.”

“Did it take? Did he get it?”

“Like the fools in London who called Jack the Ripper's twenty-nine or thirty insane slashes precision, and why? Because he ripped out a woman's uterus and other organs?” Fenger had stood and was now pacing, angry at the thought of it. “Damn fools. Sometimes I feel we are surrounded on all sides by imbeciles.”

“Any copper can see these cuts have no similarity to surgery,” agreed Ransom. “But it does not rule out that the killer could be a cagey medical fellow who wants it to
look like
anything but precision.”

“Oh, please, not you, too.”