Shadows in the White City (6 page)

“Cook County Asylum, where at everyone's expense Christian Fenger will be his keeper to study him like a zoological wonder.”

“And what justice for the dead?”

The question hung in the air between the two men, both of whom had lost people they'd loved to the fiend.

“You naive wonder, Philo.”

“Naive? How so?”

“Whenever have you seen real justice meted out?”

“I—I…dunno, really.”

“You haven't. Few have! When does it happen? True justice found in this life?”

As he spoke, Ransom had watched Denton take on a new fare. The hansom cab carrying a new passenger from this section of the fair to another with Waldo Denton sitting taller, prouder atop it. Alastair then saw Chief Kohler closely watching Ransom's reaction to facing his dead partner. Kohler had been made curious of the whispers passing between Ransom and the former suspect, Philo Keane.
What scheme is Nathan now hatching?

Philo asked, “What do you want, Rance?”

“What do I want?”

“Yes, in the best possible world?”

Ransom shook inside with what he wanted as an outcome. He walked in a small circle, contemplating the depth of his hatred for the so-called Phantom. His new wolf's-head cane tapped at the pavement like small-caliber fire.

Finally, Ransom answered his friend. “What do I want to see happen? Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. And it shall come to pass in a time of my choosing.”

Just then Dr. Tewes himself stood alongside Ransom, pushing between him and Philo. She saw Griffin Drimmer's body being eased down by Shanks and Gwinn, and she saw Dr. Christian Fenger crossing himself where he stood alongside as the body was laid on a stretcher. Fenger leaned in so close, while the county prosecutor, Hiram Kehoe, stood off to one side, whispering in Nathan Kohler's ear. Carmichael, the
Herald
reporter, and a small army of others of his profession were crawling all over this new fresh kill, headlines in their eyes: the phantom returns. A spectacular return it was, too, and obviously meant to strike at Ransom.

Something about the scene reminded Jane of a crucifixion and a sacrifice, as though it had been inevitable that young Griffin give up his life on the altar of these men's egos and their political wrangling, and to some degree she could not
help but blame Alastair Ransom as well. The war between him and Nathan Kohler had brought this about, and young Griff had died a horrible death as a result of their petty differences and the hatred between Ransom and Kohler—which after all had contributed to Denton's release.

Her voice broke when she shouted, “This is all your faults! All of you!”

She pulled from Alastair's attempted touch meant to calm Dr. Tewes here in public. She saw that he wanted to console her, take her in his arms and hold her.

She rushed off after her own carriage, and he looked for Gabrielle to be hanging from the window, giving Ransom a slight wave of one hand, two fingers extended as was her habit, but Gabby did not appear. Perhaps young Gabby was the only one in the city who truly did not judge him…up till now. If she were with Jane, perhaps Gabby could not face him, knowing that Griffin had been killed just after taking
his
place.

“Follow Tewes, Philo. Convince him that he must get his women out of the city.”

“You'd have me baby-sitting Dr. Tewes as well?”

“Tewes as well, yes! Tell Tewes that I confided in you everything. She will understand.”

“You mean
he
will understand, don't you?”

“Philo, just do it.”

“Of course. But how safe are you with those jackals there?” His eyes indicated Kehoe, Kohler, and Carmichael. “And when did Carmichael stop being a reporter and turn into a lackey?”

“Philo…go. Pack a few things and quietly get them down to the train station and out of harm's way. If I'm right, it could've been any one of you left disfigured and dangling here.”

“But if you're right about Denton, and what you say about his infatuation with Gabrielle Tewes is correct, then—”

“No! I will not use her to bait this monster. Now do as I bloody well said!”

“All right, all right, calm down.” Philo finally started off for his assignment.

“Use the girl for bait,” Ransom muttered. The awful idea
had
crossed his mind but was at once instantly rejected. It'd be like using his own daughter to lure a fiend out of hiding. He would not place her in such jeopardy, and if left in the city much longer, she would likely come to think of doing just that on her own. No, he must relocate her and her mother to a far place.

Like a patient, all-knowing wolf, at the right moment he would pounce on Denton and tear him to pieces with his bare hands, his bear claws. He would send Denton out of this world and to the Hades from which he'd come, but first he would know why Denton killed as he did, and what possible personal connection they had—why the vendetta aimed at him from the beginning?

From the beginning he'd planned on killing his Polly-Merielle and of framing Philo Keane, the two people closest to Ransom—and now this. Killing young Griff and shoving it into Ransom's face. Public humiliation and private punishment for what wrongs, he could not know for certain, but he'd begun to approach a damned good guess.

He slid to the stones of the Science and Industry Pavilion, one of the few permanent structures built here at the fair, one that would remain forever as a marker and a reminder of the greatest fair the city had ever known. He knew he must sit now or else go to his knees, and he chose to allow no one to see him on his knees, not to this fiend—not a second time.

Gabrielle was suddenly standing before the seated
Inspector Ransom on the pavilion steps below an intense sun. Griffin's body had been hauled off, but the stain of where his remains had been defiled remained nearby. “Inspector Drimmer requested this information, sir, and learning that he…that he is…no longer among us…well, I know he was working in close tandem with you, Inspector.”

“Gabby?” He looked up from where he sat on the hot steps of the museum pavilion. His face telegraphed how stunned he was to see her. “I thought you were in the carriage with your mother. I asked Philo to get the two of you out of the city for a few days while…until there's an end to this madness.”

“I'm not going anywhere, and I
doubt
my mother would agree to it either. She called me at the Des Plaines station house—”

“Called for you at my station house?”

“Yes, I've a job there now.” She handed him one manila file while holding back a second.

“Wait, hold on…what…Just what're you doing with an official police report?” He waved the papers she'd handed him. “And what're you doing here?”

“Look…look at the report, Inspector.”

Ransom read the official police report. It was a list of aliases for a name he had hoped never to see again,
Campaneua.

“Who put you up to this?” His voice startled her.

“I told you. Inspector Drimmer. He requested it last night over the phone.”

“And since when do you take police calls and—”

“Chief Nathan Kohler hired me on the spot when I went to talk to him about working for the Chicago Police Department while I get my degree in pathology through Rush Medical College, working with Dr. Fenger. Dr. Fenger provided me with a wonderful recommendation.”

“Christian sent you into that lair of Kohler's?”

“If you mean the man's office, yes. Dr. Fenger believes in me.”

“OK, OK.” He began studying the list. “There's an arrest here of a year ago of a Campaneua, just south of the city, Joliet, but he was sent on his way.”

“To Chicago…or so he told Joliet authorities.”

A gasp escaped Ransom. “The alias they have on him. Walter Dunston.”

“Yes, not far from Waldo Denton.”

“And if he is really a Campaneua, then he has come to kill me.”

Gabby looked curiously at him when he said this. “If so, he's botched the job like a poor marksman.”

“Agreed…killing everyone around me, purposefully missing me, dragging it out.”

“He's decided you should suffer.”

“Suffer long and hard
before
he kills me.”

“It would appear so.”

“Does Kohler know about this?” He indicated the police report.

“No.”

“Anyone? Did you tell anyone of it?”

“No, but I will tell Mother. You know Jane and I share everything.”

He nodded, understanding. “Get to her. Make her promise as you promise to me now that you tell no one of this. I will handle things from here.”

“It—it has to do with Haymarket…has from the start, hasn't it?”

“I killed a man, or rather a number of us coppers killed a man named Campaneua while attempting to get information from him.”

She looked stricken. “Then the rumors are true?”

“It was in order to save lives, I thought at the time.”

“But if Denton is Campaneua's relative and out to get you…why'd he kill Cliffton Purvis, who had no connection to you…not to mention other victims with no connection to you? People you didn't even know. Why?”

Purvis had been Gabby's one-time boyfriend.

“The others were intended less to wound me personally than to wound my pride, my confidence, the public trust in my reputation.”

“Yes, to…to wound you professionally.”

“Denton has succeeded on both counts. And as for Purvis, I suspect it had to do with you, Gabby.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“He's pervertedly infatuated with you, and the Purvis boy showed an interest in you, Gabby.”

Tears welled up unbidden as Gabby's eyes traced the top-sail of a merchant ship out on Lake Michigan making its approach to the city. She swallowed hard. “I hardly knew Cliffton. We'd just met in fact, yet I feel some small measure of how you must be feeling right now. And it makes for more understanding of this report from France, the Sûreté police—your response to the measurements taken of one Dr. James Phineas Tewes, sir. The night you'd gotten mother intoxicated.”

“I do apologize for the suspicion and chicanery on my
part, but with her Tewes part played so well, she brought suspicion on herself.”

“But it took you to get her stewed!”

“Frankly, she managed to get herself stewed.”

“The report details exactly who Dr. Tewes was.”

“Was?”
He took the report and began studying it.

“It details my father's crimes—a true con artist indeed—and his death in a prison. It's why Mother has hidden him from me all these years. Allain Tewes.”

“I'm sorry, Gabrielle. I believed that…I thought it the right thing at the time.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. You were onto a fraud, and you were right in a sense. You are a good detective, after all. Both my parents have now lived false lives.”

She stood as if to go but lingered, awkwardly shaking.

He stood and held her to him. “It's all right,” he muttered.

They held in a moment of silence. “I was so shocked to learn of Inspector Drimmer's murder.”

“Think what is in Denton's mind now, Gabby.
You.
So you must leave the city. I am sending you and your mother to a safe place.”

“I won't go.”

“Yes, you will, young lady. You'll do as I say.”

She smiled up at him.

“Think now as Denton is thinking, Gabby.”

“Think like a killer?”

“Precisely, if you are to survive.”

“Or if you are to catch him?”

“Now you have it.”

“It's difficult…to think such dark thoughts.”

“Denton means to celebrate when all this vengeance he's taken out on me is over, when finally it is my body burned and garroted and laid low in my grave.”

“So this's been the plan hatched by the younger Campaneua—”

“Denton—he means to be with you, Gabby Tewes, to have you—possess you.”

She shakily repeated it. “Possess me?”

“He has set his mind for you.”

“The purpose of his returning my umbrella that night was to gain entry to our home?”

“You tell me,
Inspector
Tewes.”

She sniffed and blew her nose and looked terribly young doing it.

“Gabrielle, you now have some idea how close you and your mother came to dying that night.”

“And how you sacrificed for us.”

He shrugged this off. “One slight, one offense can set a deviant like him off.”

“All of this you know, and yet Denton freely roams the streets of Chicago right this moment.”

“All of this the two of us know as a matter of a cop's innate intuition. We have that edge, and yet we can't touch the man, not legally at any rate.”

“All this we know, yet a mystery remains. How a person like Denton can bring on himself so much black-hearted dementia in the first place?”

“And why?
Why
—the question all this time that I've been blind to comes clear at last. Why this sick boy holds such an enormous hatred for me. Jane was right on that score.”

“It has to do with who you are, the stories about you, sir, your own black reputation.”

“My stock and trade, but I'd thought the incident with Campaneua long buried.”

“
Cremated perhaps.
Look, it has all to do with your being called the ‘hero' of Haymarket. Mother held suspicions of it all along.”

“You and your mother have formidable minds, young lady.”

“
Ahhh…
thank you. Formidable…” Gabby giggled at the word no one had ever leveled at her before.

“Waldo Denton…an alias,” Ransom mused. “And Griff was onto it.”

“He was indeed.”

“But Denton's entire bloody plan must've been hatched years ago, perhaps as a child.”

“So now you're worried about Mother and me?”

“Gabby, if you value your life and your mother's life, you'll go to her now and with Philo Keane's help, convince her to leave Chicago until I send word. Until this is over.”

She nodded. “I will follow your wishes, Inspector.”

He hugged her once more, and together they felt a father-daughter concern that had evolved between them. Parting, he wished her hail and well-being, waving her off, adding, “Take every precaution!”

 

Surgeon and coroner, Dr. Christian Fenger, joined Ransom only after Gabby had gone. “What'll you do now, Alastair? Now that he's killed Drimmer?”

“Walk with me, Doctor.”

They took a little-used footpath toward the lake. For a time, they remained in silence until Fenger said, “I want you to know something, Alastair.”

“And that is?”

“My morgue is not a stone's throw from the stockyards where cattle and swine are kept and slaughtered.”

“And this fact is of what importance?”

“It would not be a small matter, but Shanks and Gwinn have been known to dispose of a body there. Pigs are one of the few animals on earth that will eat human flesh in quantity, and while Waldo Denton is slight, I am sure they might enjoy a nice appetizer.”

Ransom looked at the doctor as if he'd never seen him before. At one time the two of them had halfheartedly spoken of making Dr. Tewes disappear, when Ransom only knew James Phineas Tewes as a man, and that Tewes was blackmailing Fenger. Christian had backed off the idea, but
here was no equivocation whatsoever. “I—I will take that under advisement, Christian.”

“There also exists a pit where the hospital disposes of severed limbs.”

“I will handle this my way, Doctor, and I do not want you or your hospital involved.”

“To be sure, Denton has ransomed his body and soul to you. No pun intended.”

“Griff would've enjoyed the pun.”

“I realize you don't trust Shanks and Gwinn, but please, Alastair, you must trust me.”

“One can't be too careful, but Christian, I know your heart.”

“Good.”

“And conspiracy to murder does not become you, Doctor. So let us just say that this particular execution is a one-man
operation
—and no pun intended.”

“All the same, should you need 'em, I can put Shanks and Gwinn at your disposal.”

“Daft idea! Neither of those maggot-eaters could keep their mouths shut for more'n a night. And which of the two sells information to Kohler do you guess?”

“All right, then, but like I said, I know some pigs need feeding.”

Alastair looked deep into the doctor's eyes and found him dead serious.

Christian added, “I was quite fond of Griffin.”

“As I. Fret not, Dr. Christian. Something will come of the ripple this monster has made in our pond. In the meantime, you sir, you should take a holiday.”

“I see…for my health, say Springfield or Missouri?”

“Good choice, sir.”

“All right, Ransom. Perhaps I will.”

“Without delay.”

“Then you intend on seeing to this little matter of the little man soon?”

“I will waste no more time.”

“Careful of your back, then, Rance, as there is
so much of it back there
!” He tapped Ransom's shoulder. “You'd never see Denton coming.”

“I am not so old and fat that I can't take care of myself in a fight.”

“I'd've said the same of Griffin, before today.” Fenger bid him good-bye and good luck. They'd come full circle, the path having led them back to the steps of the museum.

Fenger and Ransom watched Kehoe and Kohler approaching now—the men who'd allowed Denton his freedom while Alastair lay on his back in hospital. “Speaking of swine,” said Dr. Fenger.

“The two men—other than myself—responsible for Griff's death,” muttered Ransom, working hard to control his temper and to curb his tongue.

“Gentlemen,” said Fenger to Kohler and Kehoe. “A brave new day and again the viper strikes—and this time at one of our own.”

“All bets're come to this,” began Ransom in icy voice. “What'll the papers make of it, Chief? Mr. Prosecutor?”

“People seem to be dying around you at every turn, Inspector Ransom,” began Kohler. “That's what's to be made of it.”

“You partnered me with the young man so that he might keep tabs on me, keep close to my investigation of Haymarket, and when he failed you, you failed him by—”

“I resent the accusation on its surface!” countered Chief Nathan Kohler. “I partnered him with you, so he might learn…so he could be all that he could be under your tutelage, Alastair. To learn from the best in the department.”

“Kohler, you beset my life with one spy after another. Now you intend on using a young girl, Gabrielle Tewes. Do you have any notion the wrath you are going to stir up in her Aunt Jane Francis and her father, Dr. Tewes, when they learn of this? No, I suppose you don't have a clue.”

Kohler stared long into Alastair's eyes. Each man silently told the other that Dr. Tewes's disguise as a man was known
to them both. Still, Kohler affected a smug look that said “I mean to say nothing on the subject.”

“Setting spies on me. You are so subtle, and your subtlety got Griff killed as surely as any factor in this horror. When our common enemy surfaced, you should've backed me, but I knew early on that you'd fail to draw ranks, even in the face of a multiple murderer.”