Shadows in the White City (7 page)

Prosecutor Kehoe stood dumbfounded at this outburst. “Careful, man, or you will be up on libel charges, and I will happily stand witness.”

“Screw you, Kehoe! What hole did you dig your head out of now that all hell's broke loose, thanks to the failure of your office in all this!”

“That's insulting!”

“Damn straight it is!” Alastair banged his cane on the pavilion steps. “But not so insulting as your order releasing a multiple murderer to the street.”

“There's no proof of any such—”

“To again terrorize the city and make a mockery of your precious, grandiose fair!” Ransom clutched his cane until his knuckles bled white. His raised voice attracted media attention, while the boisterous, even rowdy crowds continued along the fairways as if it were just another day of jolliness and sunshine.

“Curb your bloody tongue, Ransom!” ordered Kohler.

“How could you let a killer go just to spite me, Nathan?”

 

Thom Carmichael had obviously been given special privileges, as he'd come in Kohler's company and was this side of the police barricade. The
Herald
reporter began furiously taking notes when Kohler said, “Thom, none of this sees light of day, understood?”

Other reporters had begun to take notes as well. “You getting this?” shouted Ransom to the hungry press, salivating for a scandal.

“This man's ranting nonsense, Carmichael.” Kohler glared at Ransom. “Another word, and I'll have your badge, Inspector!”

“Is it my bloody badge you want, Kohler? Is that it?” Ransom shouted, raising his cane. “Is that why Griff is dead?”

Several of the gray-uniformed World's Fair cops moved in to take hold of Alastair, to pull him away. Their concern rested with returning the fair to its former peaceful atmosphere. But even in their grasp, Ransom kept up his rant: “Is that why you let a killer walk free? All to make me look incompetent?”

The fair brigade coppers tugged him farther, but he only raised his voice to reach across the chasm. “Like the stories you've supplied the press? Giving Carmichael an exclusive on my breakdown?” He snatched his inspector's badge from a breast pocket and threw it at Kohler's feet. “You've wanted this for so long and so badly that you got Griffin killed for it, so by God take it!”

The crowd close enough to hear all of this rose up in a single-minded cheer for Ransom's resigning. He could not be sure if they were for it, against it, or simply glad to see the Chief of Police shouted down and embarrassed in public.

Ransom then pulled free of the men holding him back. He went to where Shanks and Gwinn held the meat wagon for Dr. Christian, the stretcher with Griffin's mutilated body in the rear. “You two take extra care with this man. He was a good cop.”

“Whatever you say, Inspector.” Gwinn's tone was solemn, practiced.

“We'll be as gentle with 'im as me own mum,” added Shanks.

Shanks's tongue itself is larcenous,
Ransom thought. “You're to do better than your mum. Do you hear?”

“How so?” crowed Gwinn.

“We've harshly limited resources, Inspector,” replied the second crow.

Ransom pushed a silver dollar into each attendant's hand. “Should I hear otherwise, I'll take that two dollars back, but I'll taken it outta your flesh, the both of you! Now, where is the man's wedding ring?”

“The killer, he must've got hol't of it.”

“There were none,” said the second crow.

“His wallet? His effects?”

“Every pocket emptied. Not so much as a watch.” Gwinn's hands rose in unconscious supplication.

Shanks cranked his head from side to side, saying, “I swear, Inspector, on me dear departed—”

“All right, all right, take him to the morgue.”

Fenger gave the two ghoulish characters the nod. Like two hungry men of one mind, they rushed to the rear, each slamming a door on Griffin's body. In a moment, they were trundling off with the body in tow, their converted meat wagon pulled by two unhealthy horses. The image of the interior of that filthy wagon stuck in Ransom's craw and brain. It hadn't been so long ago that he'd awakened locked inside this same so-called ambulance.

“Piece of work, those two,” came a thick voice in his ear.

“No doubt, some day I'll be on their stretcher again, too,” Ransom muttered to Thom Carmichael who'd joined him.

“That was rash, tossing your badge at Kohler.”

“What do you want from me, Thom?”

“We're old poker buddies, you and I. I wanted you to know that I had little choice in presenting the news as I did, given the lack of evidence against Denton. Do you really think Denton murdered Griffin?”

“Who but?”

“So, the killer stays true to form in every aspect, doing precisely the same thing over and over. He has to know he leaves his mark.”

“Like a rutting deer or a dog in heat, spraying his trail, leading to…to—”

“To Waldo Denton?”

“You know where I stand. What is it, Thom?”

“It's what Dr. Tewes's sister pointed out to me earlier, that the killer cannot seem to help but repeat his act in a kind of ritualistic fashion.”

“We call it in police circles a pattern.”

“A pattern crime—like leaving a byline?”

“Some call it his signature mark, yes—his modus operandi.”

“
Ahhh
…method of operation. I get it. But, Rance, doing the same thing over an' over with the same result, is that not a definition of insanity?”

“It is.”

“Then he is insane?”

“Insane with his obsessive needs, yes. But make no mistake, he knows right from wrong. He's not completely gone.”

“Down to taking wallets, purses, pocket watches, rings, jewels, and necklaces.”

“Yes, taking jewelry like some damned crow whose eye is caught by a shining bauble. Someplace that creep Denton has to have all those jewels he's pilfered from his victims, and now he adds Griff's wedding band.”

“What will you do now, Alastair? Now as citizen Ransom?”

“Off the record?”

“Off the record.”

“On or off, I can't tell you what I will do next. Frankly, it is not my problem any longer.” The lie fell flat with Thom Carmichael. He knew Ransom too well.

“Come now, any problem for Chicago is a problem for Ransom. Goes hand in hand.”

“No longer. No longer on the payroll. So as far as I'm concerned, it's over.”

“You lie magnificently; it is what marks you as the consummate poker player, Alastair. I look forward, then, to reporting on the mysterious death or disappearance of one Waldo Denton.”

“Have you now become convinced of his guilt? Or are you still working for Kohler? Trying to dirty my name any more is, at best, superfluous.”

“Trust me. I can't stand Kohler, or Kehoe for that matter, and am done with them. For a reporter, being in the inner
circle…given first crack at the story…well, there's always conditions.”

“You mean it's not all that it's ‘cracked up' to be?”

“Funny…but correct. I know of no reporter worth his salt who'd not take the gamble.”

“But?” Ransom lit his pipe.

“But I know no reporter who's won against the house, the city in this case.”

“So now you're on the outs with them
and
me, so save your confounded questions for someone who gives a damn. But I will ask
you
a question.”

“Go right ahead.”

“All right, just when did you decide that Denton was in fact the Phantom?”

“Last night.”

“Last night?”

“I ran into Denton last night.”

Alastair was instantly on this. “Was it late?”

“Quite. Coming from Muldoon's, I was.”

“And he came out of the dark?”

“No…cloppin' alongside me atop his hack.”

“Just like that?”

“Said he was looking for you.”

“Really? In the fog?”

“Said he had a message for you.”

“Really, now.”

“I thought it all quite odd.”

“Odd? Odd how?”

“Odd, Ransom, that he'd want anything whatever to do with you after all that's transpired between you two!”

“All this last night? In the fog? As you walked the curb?”

“I wasn't walking so well on the curb but in the roadway. Weavin' a bit, you might say.”

“Put a scare into you, did he?”

“Some, yeah…I admit to it, knowing your suspicions of him, yes.”

Where did he find you? Near Lincoln Park?”

“Yes, just off the park. I was making my way home…maybe round midnight. Just left the Red Lion.”

“You said Muldoon's.” Ransom knew the Red Lion as a favorite watering hole for reporters, down-and-out poets, writers, and artists.

“All right…I was between the two places.”

Bar crawling, Ransom realized. “He flagged you down, or you him?”

“He was grinning like a madman, saying that
your day
—Ransom's time had come.”

“What else did the ferret say?”

“Spoke of your stalking and shadowing tactics, of your harassing him. He talked nonstop even though I repeatedly asked my leave, albeit in a stupor. I was going in the same direction as he, and I fully expected him to ask if I should like a ride up on the seat with him—so's he might carry on about you to a reporter. But he let me walk off.”

“What has this to do with…wait a moment….”

“Yes, the cab was occupied.”

“He had someone in the cab the whole time?”

“I saw the silhouette of a man.”

“And?”

“I believe now it was Griffin Drimmer.”

“Griffin?”

“Yes, stiff but sitting up, but not really moving the way a man does even asleep. Griffin—if it was him, and I am convinced of what I saw, but at the time, I took him for a drunk. When I finally realized it was Griffin, I got my voice, shouted after the disappearing cab—”

“But it was too late.”

“A few hours later, like you, I learn of this shocking scene involving Drimmer.”

“Of course. He'd used his cab to transport the body here to the museum to make a show of it. Philo was right—said as much.”

“And to make matters even more suspicious and eerie, he was humming a tune.”

“A tune?”

“Yes, the one they play to distraction at the beer gardens till you forget to hear it.”

“What tune, man?”

“‘Comin' through the Rye,' and if I ne'er hear it again, I can die a happy—”

“Same as has been heard by our only witness, Saville.”

“You'd confided as much, but had asked me to not publish it, recall? When it dawned on me, drunk as I was, I went cold to the bone.”

Ransom had gone deep into thought.

Carmichael nudged Alastair, the odor of alcohol wafting off him still. “So what will you do next?”

“What indeed. I think that, sir, must remain between me and my Maker and—”

“I see.”

“—and not between me and the
Herald.
”

“Time to clean the city streets, you mean?”

“They have been gathering a great lot of dirt and blood of late.”

“For too long, yes.”

A deep silence fell over them where the lakeshore breeze lifted their hair, and the warm morning sun bathed them, making them blink. Nearby birds chased one another through the agricultural exhibit meant as an orchard and garden. By night, the modern miracle of electric lampposts lit the paved paths that snaked through the White City wonderland. So much of the fair stood at odds with what they spoke of—
murdering a murderer before he should murder again.

“I want to express my deepest, sincerest apology, Alastair, about Griffin Drimmer.”

“You already said that, my friend.”

“All right damn you, then, I want to say I am in…that I'm sorry in general for ever doubting you.”

“For doubt? It's the most natural of all human—”

“All right, then! Sorry for any libelous, felonious words I may've used against you.”

“In print?”

“Or in the ale houses!”

“Just doing your bloody job. Dirt…it's your business. Words are weapons to a man like you.”

Carmichael fell silent. He looked so contrite. “Aye, my business, and it cost me dearly. I wonder what might've occurred last eve had I opened that cab door?”

“You'd've lost your head along with Griffin, and we'd not be here having this conversation.”

“Yes…difficult to speak if your throat's cut. Just that knowing who Denton was…knowing my own suspicions of him, and even sensing some unease in him as he spoke…I knew I'd not open that door for any reason, not even for a story, not on
any
account.”

“Smart of you, Thom.”

“Do you find me a coward, Alastair?”

“A coward? No…a man of words. No one expects more from you, Thom.”

“But suppose…suppose Denton was alive in there, only stunned? Perhaps I could've done something to…to help him, you see, and—”

“Damn it, man! You do your battles with words. Your sword is language. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.”

“And you? Your weapon of choice?”

“I can tell you it is not a garrote.”

“Yes, I imagine if you used a blade, it'd be a full-blown guillotine.”

“Do you know where I can find one?”

“Gotta be one somewhere at the fair. France's contributions to the world since Columbus discovered America, all that.”

Ransom couldn't help but laugh at Thom's sardonic wit.

“Then you
are
off to outwit the Phantom once again?”

“I am his match, sir.”

“But there is something you want from him first, something you must have or know? Before you kill him?”