City of the Absent (16 page)

Was it possible? After what he had seen in his city, the perversions and cannibalism and blood-taking, anything could happen here, he told himself.

Insbruckton showed him a collection of withered limbs and organs in jars, the most powerful to assault Ransom's senses being an unborn child.

“How is it you came by this?”

“An abortion. Mother's life was in jeopardy, and if you look closely at the head, you'll see the child had encephalitis.”

The head looked normal to Ransom. All the same, there were no fresh hearts, lungs, kidneys, or livers. The whole of the place seemed a sad museum of lost souls, and nowhere could the word “vital” or “fresh” be found.

“You have no other rooms down here?”

“None. You've seen all save my private quarters and the half-dozen rooms for the surgical students.”

“Have you a half-dozen students?”

“I have five using the residence hall. One left me. Others arrive from off campus.”

“I'd like to see any records kept on the five on hand.”

“Records?”

“Yes, including the one that got 'way.”

“I keep them in my office.”

“I will be discreet.”

“But why do you need to know about our young men?”

Ransom handed Insbruckton back his money. Startled, the man looked into Alastair's eyes, his amazement like an enormous question mark sitting atop his head. “I'm not interested in working for you, Dr. Insbruckton.”

“But the bodies you promised!”

“I came here as a police detective, Doctor, in search of—”

“Murdered men!”

“And now a woman, yes.”

“My God, and you…you suspect me?”

“Your name came up in conversations.”

“Horrible to think that someone could imagine that I…I could be any part of what I'm reading about in the papers! The very idea that someone was murdered in order to provide a cadaver for study appalls me.”

“It's why I must see your records, rule out your boys, sir.”

“Rule out, yes. There is not a lad among them who'd stoop so low, I can attest.”

“Including the one who left you?”

“Including Michael, yes.”

“Let me at the records, and I will be the judge of it, sir.”

He nodded and led Ransom back up the winding stairs, Alastair glad to escape the odors here. They passed the doctor's operating theater where yet another overripe, overcut cadaver lay in wait for the a.m. class.

Somehow Ransom's nose, pores, and brain became frozen against the musty odors of this so-called surgical school and Dr. White Insbruckton's river of endless words. The man blabbed nonstop as to his reasons for “setting up shop,” as he put it, in the “Prairie City,” as there could be nothing but growth in its future. No doubt the man's palaver covered for an inward nervousness, almost to distraction.
Tewes's hands
,
that's what the man needs
,
if there was any hope for him at all
. Certainly, he had a rubber mouth and mind as each continuously flexed, and neither had a shut off valve.

The entire time Insbruckton talked, Ransom tried to determine if there was an inkling whatsoever that any of his current students could be construed as a murderer. The doctor talked ceaselessly without the ability to edit or come to the end of a thought without leaping to another and another.

When Ransom finally left Insbruckton, who stood waving from the top stair like a grandmother saying good-bye to a child she'd never again see, Alastair filled his lungs with a Chicago breeze. He'd been too long inside there, and he felt as if he'd been through a bizarre nightmarish sauna of sorts in that place over his shoulder. In fact, he'd been
saturated
with meaningless words that'd rained down in an incessant
storm. Besides this, he'd had to deal with his own perspiration over a useless effort, alongside a clinging decay.

“God damn Bill Pinkerton…sending me to this caterwauling idiot, thinking I'd be kept busy, sidetracked. Sending me on a wild goose chase! But why? What reason had he? You'd think
him
guilty of killing Nell.”

Alastair hadn't time to get back to Pinkerton
before reporting into headquarters on Des Plaines Street, as it had been a long while since last he reported in. However, the moment he stepped inside the noisy, bustling station house, he had to rush out again, as Hogan, the desk sergeant, advised him, “Chief Kohler wants you at the home of Calvin Dodge, 178 Belmont.”

This was close to Jane's place, and Dodge was a local character Ransom knew well enough to avoid. Alastair's alarm only showed in a quick flare of the eyes and a tick about the jaw. “What's happened?”

“Dodge's son says he's gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“Vanished.”

“Damn…perhaps he hurt himself, became disoriented, and wandered off.”

“There's that possibility,” replied Hogan, nodding. “Still, what with all that's been going on, maybe there's more to it. Enough to get the chief out.”

Ransom wondered why the chief had so quickly gotten involved in so low level a matter, until he recalled that old
Dodge's son, who went by his real name, Jared Killough, was a politico with some clout.

“So Kohler's personal touch, this is…”

“Payback.” Hogan was born and raised a cop.

Ransom tried to picture the scene. Nathan Kohler couldn't ignore Dodge's disappearing from his bed if the son had called, distraught.

“I'll get right over there. If the chief calls, tell 'im I'm on my way.”

“Will do, Inspector.”

When Ransom arrived at the supposed scene of the crime, he felt an immediate sense of violation—some voice deep within telling him that whoever had come and gone with the old man didn't have the best interest of the “Colonel” at heart. Most glaring, aside from the bright blood against the pillowcasing and sheets, were the turned out drawers and opened cabinets. A botched robbery, was Ransom's first impulse. A second story man working catlike around the old duffer as he slept, but something awoke Dodge, perhaps an opened music box, a single clumsy move on the part of the burglar? Awake now, Dodge posed a threat. He might've reached for a gun kept at his bedside, but no reports of gunshots had been made.

The odor of blood wafted to Alastair's nostrils, and the blood on the old man's pillow was an unmistakable giveaway of some violence having occurred here. This was no nosebleed. Most certainly, Dodge had met with a bad end.

Ransom took immediate charge, saying, “Alderman Killough, your father didn't walk off of his own volition.”

“Are you sure?”

“The blood on the pillowcase and sheets tells me so, and for my money, the old man wouldn't've left without his slippers or shoes, not if some benign fellow lifted him to a carriage and made off to hospital.”

Killough gasped at the unspoken suggestion from Ransom. Kohler shook his head, frowning. “We can't know it was foul play. He may've cut himself shaving for all we—”

But Ransom pointed to the neatly placed slippers and shoes tucked at the foot of the bed as if awaiting the old man.

“He's a tidy old fellow, so?” asked Kohler, his doughy face pinched in thought.

“In addition,” continued Ransom, “there's no bloody tracks whatsoever. If he harmed himself, why he'd be going to the lavatory, and it's odd but there's no blood trail anywhere in the room.” He pointed to the rug at his feet, a dark paisley. The others hadn't noticed the stain against the burgundy. Ransom dropped a white handkerchief over it, and they watched the white cloth turn to a brackish red wine stain. “Felt it the moment I entered,” he said.

“My God, Nathan,” said Killough, “we've been standing in his blood the whole time! And Father was keen on cleanliness next to godliness, all that.”

Chief Kohler assured Killough, “It's most likely your father's simply wandered off, perhaps in a daze. I have officers canvassing the neighborhood for any sign.”

Never make a promise you can't keep to a politician and a grieving family member all rolled into one
, thought Ransom, but he kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself.

“We've got our best man on it now, just as you requested,” Nathan told the son, indicating Alastair.

“Word's been sent all 'round the neighborhood for people to be on the lookout for Mr. Dodge,” added Mike O'Malley, who'd come in from the hallway and into the bedroom to assume a position beside Ransom, “but no one's seen him since last evening.”

“We'll find him,” Kohler chanted. “With any luck at all, we'll find him.”

Ransom exchanged a look with O'Malley, both men fearing otherwise. “Has anything been touched in here, Mike?” Alastair asked him.

“Everything was left just as we found it, Rance, till you could get here.”

“You call for Philo Keane? Dr. Fenger?”

“Mr. Keane, yes, Dr. Fenger, no.”

“Really?”

“With no body to look over, we figured Dr. Fenger wouldn't take too kindly to—”

“To his being called out. So, we call for a neighborhood doctor instead.”

“Already done so, Rance.”

“So where is the sonofa—”

“That'd be me,” said Dr. James Phineas Tewes, now standing in the doorway. “Came as soon's I got word.”

“All of us have changed since that train station murder, the Phantom's doing,” said Nathan Kohler, trying to smooth over the moment as Ransom glared at Tewes. “I mean Mike here is out of the blue uniform, now a full inspector. Our good Dr. Tewes has earned a reputation as a caring medical professional, and Inspector Ransom has…has…”

“Has defied evolution and change,” said Tewes.

This made Mike and even Kohler laugh, while Killough didn't find anything funny.

“All right, enough with the niceties,” said a frowning Alastair. “Take a good look at your neighbor's bedside and floor, and you tell me, Dr. Tewes, what you think has gone on here.”

“A man was abducted from his bed…or rather, forced.”

Dodge's son gasped and Kohler frowned at this pronouncement.

“How very astute,” Ransom said with a shake of the head. “If he'd wandered off as you suggest, Chief,” Ransom muttered, “he'd have left footprints in blood from the throw rug.”

“Makes sense,” said O'Malley.

Dr. Tewes had kneeled to examine the wine-colored handkerchief that'd revealed the blood soaked into the carpet.

“There was a second rug,” said the son. “A larger one at the foot of the bed.”

“Gone?” asked Kohler.

“What's it mean, Inspector?” Killough turned to Ransom for an answer.

“Means the man didn't walk out of here, but was rolled up
in the larger rug and carried out through the balcony window and down the fire escape.”

“Good God! Then you think he's dead?”

“Met with foul play, sir, yes. My best estimate.”

“And you, Dr. Tewes?” asked Killough. “Do you concur?”

“If the man walked out of here, you'd've bloody prints to follow, but if a rug soaked up the blood…”

No one said another word. There was a long silence as each mind summed up what might've happened. Dodge's habitual brandy toddy remained intact alongside a half-eaten slice of zucchini bread. Nothing on the nightstand was a-kilter, making the scene all the more disturbing.

“I must agree,” said O'Malley, who'd come now to unconsciously stand with Ransom and Tewes on the subject. “We have to begin our investigation as practical men here.”

“Meaning?” asked Killough, standing alongside Kohler.

Tewes cleared his throat and added, “Not likely old Dodge slid down to the end of the bed without leaving a second trail of blood.”

“And it is strange,” continued Ransom, “an entire carpet gone along with him.”

An eerie breeze lifted a sash in the room, as if a spirit revisited the bed. The soft contours of the shadowy wind sifting through the sash and hovering about the bed, a shy whisper of an echo, made a shiver run down their collective spines. It was as if Dodge's spirit cried out,
I am dead! You may leave it at that, and damn you all!

“Was he in the habit of sleeping with his windows cast open?” asked Ransom.

“No…it is another mystery atop the mystery that the balcony window was open when we got here.”

Ransom considered the younger man's pain. It was evident in his face that he felt great regret over the loss of his father.

“Put it to me straight, Inspector Ransom. What is your truthful assessment of this room?”

“The man's bedroom was routinely locked, his windows
routinely locked, and yet someone entered and attacked him.”

“But who?”

“Did your father have any enemies?” pressed Ransom.

“A city full, yes, an absolute city full.”

“That narrows it down considerably.”

“His company left him poor, but it also left a lot of others poorer still.”

“Shareholders? You think one could have killed him?” Ransom kept at the younger man.

“No…none I know would murder him and rob his body.”

“I think the operative questions here might well be,” began Tewes in that irritatingly high-pitched voice of his, “who would rob his body? Who would have need of it? Who'd consider it worth anything?”

“There'll surface a ransom note,” Kohler suggested. “Killough here has money, and whoever's behind this, they know it!”

“A ransom note's not going to surface,” countered Ransom.

“You've no way to know that.”

“Did we see a note left on Nell Hartigan's eyes?” asked Ransom. “For her organs?”

“What's this got to do with that Pinkerton woman?” asked Killough, panic in his voice.

Tewes, Mike, Ransom, and Kohler all exchanged a knowing glance. Ransom finally said, “I fear there'll be no ransom notes!”

“Why do you say so?” Killough grew frantic now.

“People don't as a rule ransom the dead except to medical men.”

“Please tell me it can't be! My father on a dissecting table? No, neveeer, neveeeer.”

“Dodge couldn't've—of his own volition and will—gotten up and stepped off from this much blood loss, gone out to that balcony and down a fire escape, and not left evidence of his having wandered off.”

“If you'll allow me to finish,” said Tewes, putting a hand up to Ransom. “He, Dodge, attempted to fight off his attackers, but he took a nasty wound, obviously.”

“Perhaps stabbed like Nell Hartigan,” suggested O'Malley.

“Bled out until…until…”

“Until they wrapped him in that missing carpet,” said Ransom. “And carried him out through the balcony and down to the street.”

“And my father…dead or dying inside that Persian carpet.”

“Persian was it?” asked O'Malley, jotting the detail in his notes.

“Authentic, yes. Bought it at the Istanbul exhibit at the fair.”

“We're all very sorry, sir, but yes, this is essentially how I read it. There are the pillows thrown asunder, as if an attempt to suffocate the man was made; when that failed, he was stabbed—most likely fatally.”

“If it's any consolation, sir,” added Tewes, “I'd say your father put up a worthy fight, forcing his way up to a standing position here when the blade found him.”

“Father was strong for his age,” said Killough.

“I warrant it's the work of the same man who murdered Nell,” said O'Malley.

“On the surface that might look the case,” began Ransom, “but that makes a helluva leap, Mike, as we have no proof of it.”

“Whoever's responsible, I want him caught, and I want to sit front row at his execution,” said Killough. “Do you understand? All of you? And there's a handsome profit in it for you all if you do a thorough and speedy job of it. I want this monster who creeps into an old man's home and kills him in his bed caught and punished!”

“We will do everything in our power, Jared, to take steps to do exactly that,” said Kohler, placing an arm over his political friend's shoulder. “You can count on my people. Right, Inspector Ransom?”

“Absolutely, Mr. Killough. Even if we must go by instinct alone, you may rely on the Chicago Police Department.”

“But not a one of you holds a hope, not a sliver of it, that my father is yet of this earth?”

At that moment, Philo Keane came nosily up the stairs and through the door, asking, “Where's the body? I'm here to photograph a body, so where've they taken it?”

“That we'd all like to know,” Ransom replied.

“No body?”

“None.”

“So what am I here for?”

“Photograph the condition of the room, particularly the bedside area and the blood splatters,” instructed Ransom. “And the pillows where they lay. And the open window. And the broken lock, necessary to get into the room, and this.” Ransom held up the now saturated red handkerchief, and Philo, using his quick flash Night Hawk, shot it.

“Anything else, Inspector?”

“Yes, take a shot from the balcony to the alleyway below, bottom of the fire escape,” suggested Tewes.

Ransom exchanged a glance with Jane. “Yeah, what
he
said, Philo, add to your repertoire.”

“Why am I shooting a dirty alleyway?”

“Just do it.” Ransom looked around like a bear in search of its next meal but saw only expectant faces staring back at him. Oddly enough, everyone had gone along with Jane's alias as Tewes. Big Mike O'Malley and Jared Killough proved the only two in the room who didn't know of it.

Jane had stepped out on the balcony to take in the view of the fair in the distance, where men worked day and night under harsh lights to disassemble the monster buildings and pavilions, Grecian statues, and Mr. Ferris's two-hundred-and-sixty-foot-high wheel.

“Seems a sad end to the fair,” she said in Ransom's ear.