Shadows in the White City (14 page)

At the moment, Alastair's attention was taken off the homeless, drifting back to the singular idea of going into questionable partnership with Muldoon, making himself a
kind of local attraction at the man's tavern. The proposal coming from Muldoon, however absurd, he respected more than that offered up by Senator Chapman, Chief Kohler, and Dr. Fenger. At least with Muldoon there were no surprises; in fact, the man was, as always—transparent. He had but one bone to gnaw on, one purpose in life, to make more money each week than he did the week before. Such motive was easy to gauge, but when a man like Kohler used the same argument, that he was purely interested in the money, Alastair knew better. Somewhere in back of that fevered brain of Nathan Kohler's, he had a plan, a plan to destroy Alastair even as he benefited from the outlawry he proposed. And make no mistake about it, Kohler, Fenger, Chapman, and Ransom would be engaging in illegal activity should they go through with this dark conspiracy to see Leather Apron turned over to the senator for his personal vengeance. It would be no less an act of outlawry as had been Alastair's conspiring with Harry Stratemeyer and his two men to abduct and kill that weasel that had gone about the World's Fair murdering innocent people in the vain hope of ultimately destroying Alastair Ransom.

No doubt remained in Alastair's mind now; Kohler, in some Machiavellian manner, meant to enter into this agreement only to nab Alastair at the precise moment of ultimate vulnerability—and most likely to bring down Dr. Fenger in the bargain as well—in order to install new people around him in both the department and at County Morgue. Why Christian could not see this was beyond Alastair, but the doctor must be made to see. It dawned on Ransom that he must thank Muldoon some time for helping him clarify his feelings and instincts on this matter, but of course neither Muldoon—nor anyone—could know about the Chapman proposal or Christian Fenger's part in it. Alastair wondered how he could counter whatever plot Kohler had in mind with his own and still keep Christian's name out of it.

Life and chaos in Chicago had not changed noticeably since his return.

 

“Remember Haymarket, Nathan?” Ransom dropped into the seat the other side of Kohler's desk. “If I am to agree to this deal you've struck with Chapman and Fenger, I want full access to all files on the riot at Haymarket turned over for my examination. Full disclosure.”

“That's impossible, Alastair, and you know it.”

“Then we have no deal.” He stood to go, nothing to lose. At the door, he felt Kohler breathing down his neck and holding the door pinned against him.

“Wait.”

“We have nothing further to discuss. I have thought this over thoroughly, and it is all that will calm my mind about either situation.”

“Look…you are talking about sealed documents, locked away in places
I
have no access to. What in bloody hell do you expect to learn from digging up the dead past?”

“I won't know that until I see it, now will I?”

“Are you sure, Ransom, there is nothing else I…we can offer you?”

“Nothing whatever.”

“Bastard.”

Ransom pulled the door open, readying to leave. “Give it some thought; sleep on it as I did. Perhaps tomorrow, you may see it differently. Have a talk with your newfound friend, the senator. Hell, Prosecutor Kehoe. He is in a position to get his hands on those files.”

“Hiram would lose his job as a result, along with all of us.”

“Does the corruption go that high up?”

“Damn it, man, leave it in the grave!”

“My scars are not yet in the grave.”

“They can be, Alastair,” Kohler said with a curled smile. “There's an old proverb goes something like ‘the scars of his past will determine his future,' but in your case, they may determine you have no future.”

This stopped Ransom, whose stern eyes met Kohler's in a cold duel. “Is that a threat, Nathan?”

“Call it what you will. Chicago remains a dangerous place, and everyone knows you have more enemies than friends.”

“Send my request on, Nathan. Send it on, and we'll talk about the future on the other side.”

Kohler's tough features scrunched in consternation, attempting to mine the depths of Ransom's words. But Inspector Ransom walked away from his dumbfounded chief and closed the door behind him.

Kohler gnashed his teeth and muttered to his empty office, “Stubborn bastard's like a g'damn Jack Bull with his teeth sunk deep.”

Alastair found himself at his old wooden swivel
desk chair and dropped into it with a heaviness that raised a resounding squeal. He sat for a moment, feeling extremely tired and as if every year of his life weighed heavy. He sat staring at the empty desk pushed against his own, Griffin's desk. While others in the department pretended busy work, he sensed them watching him now. No one could miss the subdued anger spilling out of Chief Kohler's office when Alastair had come down those steps.

Feeling like a bug here, Alastair located a pot of coffee kept on brew for Chicago's finest on skeleton crew. The grand World's Fair had siphoned off many a cop. Faithfuls were being asked to work double shifts, and why else hire on the first woman civilian in the department—Gabrielle Tewes?

Alastair was not about to give up his search for the truth surrounding what really happened that day at Haymarket, not for any avowed reason. The issue remained burning in his gut and in his heart; he couldn't let got so easily as others. He had lost six fellow officers and friends that day to a bomb no one had taken credit for. Historians already called it a defining moment in Illinois and U.S. labor-relations his
tory, but it was also a defining moment in exactly who Alastair Ransom was. Perhaps he was chasing ghosts, phantom information that did not exist, but by the same token, he could not let any chance to get at the records on the subject go by. Too many good men had died for this, one having pulled Ransom to safety before keeling over with a severed femoral artery.

The riot was a benchmark for the establishment of new laws governing the conduct of police officials, a turning point in public opinion regarding unionist workers and unions, plus it forged the first labor laws with teeth. As a result, Illinois led the rest of the nation in this politically charged arena. The cost in human life was too great to ignore and a statue in a hidden cove outside a small police district was not enough for Ransom.

When he'd returned to his desk, coffee in hand, Ransom began cleaning away flyers and papers and files, only to discover an anonymous note printed in large letters, reading,

 

REMEMBER HAYMARKET

 

He took in the room. It could have been the sergeant who looked up at him, or Logan, or Behan, or any number of others. In a sense, Ransom's crusade to keep the memory of that day alive and fresh in every foot soldier's mind was perhaps sinking in with some of the lads. Still the prevailing winds kept saying, let the dead bury the dead.

Just then, coming through a doorway that led into the archives of dead cases and documents, came Gabrielle Tewes, Jane's daughter, her eyes wide, coming straight for Alastair. “I'm so glad I found you on duty and what a shock!”

“That I'm on duty?”

“Well, no…I'm referring to what I've uncovered.”

“Which is?”

“A series of similar Vanishings in London, not five years ago.”

“Really? Let me have a look.”

Gabby spread the materials out for his perusal. She'd marked specific items from various police gazettes and reports.

“I had no idea you'd planned to continue working here.”

“And why not?”

“I guess it was an assumption you would rush back to Northwestern and continue your studies in medicine there.”

“A safe cozy plan indeed, one Mother wants for me. But, no. I love working with Dr. Fenger at Rush on my medical studies and on cases with Dr. Fenger. He put me to researching this one.”

“You should share this with your mother.”

“I may…when she settles into the notion that I am my own person and not a copy of her.”

“I see.” He really did not wish to get between mother and daughter on the issue, although it had been Alastair who had first encouraged her to pursue working with Christian Fenger in police medicine.

“Look, I have a meeting to get to,” she informed him. “I'll leave this with you so you can get on the trail of this monster.”

“A meeting?”

“Yes, a meeting.”

“The drum-and-fife corps of ladies?”

“We are suffrage advocates and only want simple justice.”

“You'll become a fine spokesperson for the cause.”

“Well, I am terrible at marching, so perhaps I will brave the podium someday. For now, I am content to stand with my sisters in this noble cause.”

“I wish you all the best.”

“Persistence is the key according to our leaders. Do you know we are petitioning the president as we speak? Thousands and thousands have signed.”

“Good luck, Gabby, but do be careful.”

“I have a key to a police phone box now, and should I need you, I can call.”

“Do not hesitate.”

She left with a bounce in her step. He smiled after her, a strange concern coming over him. A fleeting emotion of fear should anything befall Gabby.

Logan leaned forward in his chair and said, “You act the part of father quite well, old chap.”

“What're you fellows doing here so late?”

Behan laughed and Alastair shrugged it off, his attention going to the reports that Gabby had unearthed. Slowly Behan, followed by Logan, moved in and stood over each of Inspector Ransom's hefty shoulders.

The report he read in the London
Police Gazette
dated 1889 put forth yet another theory of the exact identity of Jack the Ripper, an American actor named Richard Mansfield, who'd terrified playgoers as Mr. Hyde, changing from Jekyll without makeup or leaving stage. The man sent ladies into a swoon and men running from the theater. But the story so riveting for these three Chicago cops was a tale of the Vanishings. It read in part:

“Eerie, isn't it?” asked Behan over Alastair's right shoulder.

“Damned spooky, if you ask me,” agreed Logan at his left.

Both men were smaller than Alastair. Compactly built like a prize fighter was Ken Behan, whereas the other was rail-thin and gaunt, his eyes sunken, yet Jedidiah Logan had hands as large as griddles. Pale as December snow, Logan looked as if death might claim him at any time. He smoked without end the strongest cigars made. Others joked that one day at the morgue, when Logan dozed against a wall, Dr. Fenger took him for an upright corpse and began shouting orders at his men about maltreatment of the dead.

The three inspectors next skimmed an account of an eleven-year-old girl who went missing after going out to plow a row in a field for her mother. Her name was Eliza Carter, and she simply vanished out of that field. Her yellow dress was found days later on the East Ham football field. No one ever saw her again. The Chicago detectives read on from the account of the London investigator. The next paragraph read:

Ransom stopped reading and said, “The work of multiple knifings? And as for cause of death…Fenger's determined our man uses a cleaver and a number of blades, and it's theorized there could be more than one madman doing the deed.”

“Really? More than one doing the stabbing?” asked Logan.

“And carving, perhaps. And cannibalizing, perhaps.”

Behan shivered at the idea.

Logan asked, “Rance, do you suspect one of these lunatic religious cults we've been seeing more and more of?”

“Maybe one begun in London, but moved to Chicago?” asked Behan.

“We've kicked over the thought, yes, of a cult sacrifice, but a London transport? No.”

“Do you for a moment think our killer…or,
ahhh
, killers…” began Behan, “that he could be one and the same as in England?”

“Long way to come to harvest children,” said Ransom, “especially when London's got plenty of her own.”

“But then why not, Rance?” countered Logan. “Everyone else is coming to Chicago.”

“Creepy is what it is,” muttered Behan.

Ransom read on:

“So what do you make of it, lads?” asked Ransom of the other two inspectors.

“Are you asking our opinion of these circumstances?” asked Logan, hands gesturing with a wide swath. “Your eminence?”

“Cut out the foolishness.”

Behan too was doing a bit of a pirouette before him, ending with a bow. “After all, it was our case before we became your dotes and gophers.”

“Which am I,” asked Logan, “dote or gopher?”

“Both!” announced Ransom. “Lads, we're working on equal footing here. We're a team.”

“Like you and the kid?” asked Logan, indicating the empty desk across.

“That was different.”

“Really?”

“How so?”

“He was young, green, and—” He stopped short of telling
them that Griffin Drimmer had been put on him by Kohler, not wishing to despoil Griff's memory.

“And…?”

“And you fellows are old farts like myself, well versed in the ways of the detective,” finished Ransom. “I suspect our combined years on the force
may
do better than this fellow Heise working alone in London.”

“Do you think there is a link between his killer and ours?” asked Behan.

“Dunno. Interesting bit on perverted female suspects, heh?”

“Do you think there's a woman involved?” asked Logan.

“Dunno, but it's often true; you hear it in every lament and song—a woman made me do it.”

“You think?”

“It's what we get paid for, to think.”

Logan pulled at his beard. “Imagine if it's so…that the Vanishings is done by a woman.”

“Women are more readily accepted by children, less threatening,” Ransom suggested.

“Imagine it,” repeated Logan.

“A lotta shell games are begun by a pretty woman,” said Behan.

Logan laughed. “You well know it, too, don'tcha, lover?”

Alastair laughed at this. “We shouldn't discard the notion out of hand, Logan.”

“True enough, we've all seen tough bitches in our time, but a cannibalizing woman? What're you thinking, Alastair?

“The Phantom went invisible because we didn't see him, and who is more invisible in our society than—”

“Than a woman!” It was Dr. James Phineas Tewes standing over his desk now, looking straight in his eye.

“And how, Dr. Tewes, did you arrive at this conclusion?”

“I interviewed a child who was nearly snatched by a woman.”

“What child? What woman?”

“A rag-and-bottle lady who makes her rounds pretty regularly in the child's neighborhood.”

He took Jane aside. “How did you come by this information in the first place?”

“I intercepted your man.”

“What man?”

“Bosch.”

“Bosch? He spilled information to you meant for me?”

“Says I pay better.”

“The little weasel.”

“He's rather cute when you get to know him.”

“All right, tell me what he said.”

“I can do better than that.”

“How so?”

“I have the child at my home. Gabby is with her now.”

“Why didn't you bring her with you?”

“To this place? It'd only terrify her, and she's plenty terrified enough as is.”

“I see…but she has no fear of Dr. Tewes?”

“None whatever; I am, after all, a gentle soul and children—”

“Know a gentle soul, yes.”

Ransom found his cane and pressed on his bowler hat, checked his pocket watch, and joined Tewes at the door, telling the other detectives, “I'm off lads to interview this child that Dr. Tewes feels may have some useful information.”

“Meantime, what would you like us to do, boss?” asked Behan.

“I may've been put on as lead investigator, Ken, but I'm no one's boss. Let's be clear on that.”

“But Ken's question still remains, boss,” countered Logan. “Whataya expectin' us to do meanwhile?”