City for Ransom

by Robert W. Walker

  “Why would you trade a medical practice that dealt with health and life for one dealing entirely with cadavers?” she pleaded with Gabby.

  “Cadavers don’t talk back?” she quipped.

  “Give it up, this notion! Along with the insufferable suffragettes.”

  Finally, Gabby had lost her patience, shouting she’d do neither. Her mother followed her into her room. “You’ll finish your studies at NU, young lady.”

  “No! I’ll either work with Dr. Fenger or I’ll quit medicine altogether!”

  “And do what?”

  “Help the cause of women’s suffrage!”

  This only heightened the tension. Mother and daughter glared at one another—Jane having just left Alastair, and having again dressed as Tewes. Gabby, losing all patience, shouted, “I do not intend going through life as a man! And what good’ve you done, Mother, for women in medicine or—”

  “What are you saying?”

  “—or for women’s suffrage in living a lie like this?”

  Her voice shaking, hurt, Jane said, “If you’re going to throw away your chance at NU…and you believe you would prefer working under Dr. Fenger’s tutelage, then I—I’ll not stand in your way. But—”

  “Naturally, there’s a but—”

  “But this is the deal: You do not parade about this city in a show of bras, breasts, bloomers, and buttocks in public. Is that understood?”

  Gabby frowned. “Really, Mother, you understand so little of public opinion, and you’ve fallen for the popular view against us.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “But, Mother, you make it sound as if we’ll be stoned as prostitutes in biblical times.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Iiii-yyyeah, I guess…”

  “Then I guess I’d best get out and drum up some work for Dr. Tewes.”

  “But I thought…I mean, with a police inspector knowing, and Chief Kohler knowing…that you’d be arrested if you went back to impersonating a male doctor.”

  “I’ve checked. There is no law on the books to stop me, as I am not impersonating a doctor, as I am a doctor, and I have a lawyer now who tells me that in fact, a legal suit against me could bring publicity, and publicity could be made to work for me. So for now, Dr. Tewes is a fixture, my corporate figurehead if you will, and that makes it all quite legal.”

  “But why?”

  “Foolish child, how else can I afford the famous Dr. Fenger and Rush Medical School?”

  That is how they’d ended it. Now Gabby crept out while Dr. Tewes was on errand. Gabby’d made a beeline for the suffrage meeting. The group intended a march straight through the fairway at the Columbian Exposition. Their leader had made a stirring speech a few days before, printed in two papers daring to support a woman’s right to the vote—one in Ukrainian, one in Polish. The speech spoke of the irony of Chicago’s hosting a world’s fair when women in Chicago, and all across America, were denied equality and equal voting rights. “And how barbaric it all is,” Gabby confided to a sympathetic cabbie who’d gotten her to the meeting on time.

  Gabby felt strongly about suffrage. Nothing—not her word, not her deal, not her chances of working with Dr. Fenger, and not even her mother—could keep her from her appointed destiny.

  “Philo, what the hell’ve you done? Get up!” Ransom slammed his cane into the bars to wake the sleeping man. “An innocent man doesn’t sleep in a holding cell, Philo! Get up and at least act agitated and appalled and outraged!” But it wasn’t Philo who turned over in the bunk, but a derelict, in fact the man from the train station who’d been their only eyewitness. “Orion Saville, right? It’s you!”

  “They run me down, said I was a material witness. Said I should cooperate. Had me up all night. Told me I must’ve seen this here fella.”

  “The hell you say? Chicago police planting the seeds of evidence?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did they put up men before you? A lineup?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they called it.”

  “Not a photo array? Real men?”

  “Yes, a lot of different looking fellas I never seen before.”

  “Did you point one out?”

  “I did.”

  “But man, you just said you had seen none of them before.”

  “They wanted me to point to one.”

  “They pressed you to choose one?”

  “They did.”

  “And did you already know which one they wanted you to point out?”

  “I knew.”

  “How did you know which one would please them?”

  “How’s a man know when a deef and dumb fellow wants to barter?”

  “I see. You read their gestures, and all of them pointed to a man named Philo Keane.”

  “Don’t know ’is name, but he shook when I pointed ’im out.”

  “I gotta go help my friend out of this mudslide he’s in.”

  “Sorry for the part I played, but they had me up all night. Can you get me outta this cell?”

  But Ransom was already gone in search of where they held his friend. He stomped up to the second floor, not willing to wait for the lift. The noise of his cane beat a hasty rhythm along the steps as he ascended. Like a rattler on a snake, some observed, the way he used that cane as a warning of an impending showdown.

  He burst into one interrogation room and found two fellow inspectors interrogating Philo’s landlady, the woman in tears. He slammed the door and moved on to the next bare room, finding Philo half asleep, one hand holding down a piece of paper, the other trying to negotiate his signature.

  Ransom rushed round the table, pushing Griffin into a chair when he dared get in the way, while Kohler shouted, “What kind of ass do you intend making of yourself now, Alastair?”

  Ransom ignored the others, grabbed up the half-scribbled signature on the confession and ripped it to shreds. “You bastards are railroading this man! Look at him! He is in no condition to sign anything!”

  “The man has confessed, Ransom! Confessed to multiple murder!” protested Griffin.

  “And it will stick to the end.” Kohler’s smug look was that of a preening rooster.

  “I’m taking him outta here,” Ransom declared.

  “Try it and you’ll be arrested and stripped of rank!” shouted Kohler.

  “Alastair,” said Griffin, putting up both his hands in a gesture of pleading.

  Kohler pulled out a Smith & Wesson .32 caliber and pointed it at Ransom. “One attempt to take our confessed prisoner from custody, Inspector, and you will be shot.”

  “He needs no further provocation, Ransom,” declared Griffin.

  “Why wasn’t I consulted? Why did I have to learn of this idiocy from Thom only this morning?”

  “We tried to locate you, but afraid—” began Griff.

  “You bloody know Kohler didn’t want me on hand. Else there’d’ve been a fight when you attempted an arrest! Right, Nathan?”

  “Give you enough rope…” Kohler glared across at him, his gun still pointed at Ransom’s chest.

  “You arrest a man for murder just to bait me?”

  “Sheer babbling nonsense from the brook of insanity.”

  “And you, Griff, you Judas!”

  “We have proof, evidence,” Griff countered.

  “Coincidence only cuts so much ice,” said Kohler.

  “What proof? What evidence?”

  Griff grabbed a closed file lying on the table and spilled forth its contents. “Photos of several of the victims in the nude.”

  “Jesus! The man makes his living as a blasted photographer! Women go to him for this express purpose. The girls pay for copies, and they in turn sell them for extra cash.”

  “It’s obscene,” said Kohler. “Disgusting. Against all decency! He’s e’en got the pregnant victim posing in the nude.”

  “Obscene to you, but they fail as evidence in a court of law.”

  “You’re now a lawyer?” challe
nged Kohler, still pointing his gun.

  “Please, Chief, put the gun down,” cautioned Griff, seeing the older man’s finger tighten about the trigger.

  “What other coincidence have you?” challenged Ransom.

  “His words, his own words. Several witnesses heard him at the scene the other night.” Griffin breathed easier seeing that the chief had lowered his weapon.

  “Philo was speaking only of his loss, his grief.” Running both hands through his hair, Ransom paced the room like an angry lion. It looked as if he might break down a wall.

  Kohler countered with, “He spoke of his involvement with two victims, and now we know of a third.”

  “I know what he said!”

  “You’ve not sat and read his confession. You ripped it up instead! Pick it up, piece it together and bloody read it, Inspector!” Nathan shouted across the table at him.

  Ransom reluctantly found the scattered pieces and puzzled it back together, then scanned the bogus document. “This is crap,” he challenged Kohler.

  “Crap? What do you mean, crap?”

  “What else do you have on Philo?”

  “He knew Trelaine and they argued—repeatedly—on each occasion of their meeting, according to the landlord.”

  Griffin added, “At the top of their lungs.”

  “What the bloody hell else do you have? Because you take this garbage into a Chicago courtroom, this flimsy bull, and you, Chief, you’ll be laughed out of the building. You’d be lucky to land a job selling plumbing fixtures.”

  Suddenly, Philo shouted out, “I’ve pleaded with them all night and all day, Alastair. I could not kill my love, never! Trelaine, yes, but never—”

  “Shut up, Philo! You’ll dig your own grave with these fools!”

  The room fell into a deep silence at this.

  Still, Ransom saw that Philo had been beaten, and that he’d been deprived of sleep, food, water, facilities. He could well imagine what they’d been telling Philo. Lies, half-truths, and deception in the hands of a skilled interrogator proved powerful tools. What might normally seem absolute nonsense—like elves born of drink and hallucination—became absolute fact over the course of rough interrogation. Ransom knew this too well. He’d employed the same methods to win a much wanted confession and subsequent conviction. These men were trained so well that they could convince an innocent man of any guilt they wished.

  Seeing the result of this type of pressure applied to a man he loved, Ransom felt a pang of guilt and shame in himself. Further, he condemned himself on Philo’s behalf. Why in the name of all that was holy hadn’t he seen this subterfuge reaching toward Philo in its snaking course toward Ransom himself? Foresight appeared to have abandoned him.

  Looking across the bare table now at Philo, seeing him stripped of all personal dignity this way—stripped of his cameras, his shield in a sense, and stripped of his gift and his confident manner, left without his calling, without his art—the man looked a child. This image tore at Ransom like a pair of horns coming out of nowhere; terribly disheartening as it was, he could not imagine the depth of Philo’s own feelings at what he’d endured here. How much fear Philo must be harboring. Fear not so much over losing his life on the gallows, but losing his art and all future time with his craft.

  Ransom stared into Kohler’s eyes and spoke to him. “Unless you have some more compelling evidence, I’m taking this man home.”

  “Home,” Philo repeated the single word, his dry throat cracking.

  “He blackmailed Trelaine with a series of disgusting nude photos of Miss Mandor. She did not have them made for duplicating, but he kept the negatives, and without her consent or knowledge, he sent a set to Trelaine and attempted to extort money.”

  Ransom gritted his teeth and recalled Philo’s new camera. For a moment he thought of lashing out at Philo, but it would serve no purpose here and now.

  “I swear it is a lie,” said Philo, sensing Ransom’s disappointment. “It is all a lie, all of it, including my bogus confession starved and sweated from me!”

  “Don’t you see, Ransom,” said Griffin. “He knew Polly…knew Miss Mandor…knew Trelaine.”

  “And the Polish girl, likely pregnant with his seed!” added Kohler.

  “So he is guilty of knowing too many people?”

  “Too many dead people, yes.”

  “Two of whom he admits to having had sex with!” added Kohler.

  Ransom’s eyes did a saber dance with his one-time trusted partner, Griffin. “Do you have one thing, one document, one fingerprint match, one object, anything to link him to the killings? Does his handprint match the two we found?”

  “What of this?” asked Kohler, shaking a small envelope and letting its contents, a ring, roll free. This act surprised everyone in the room.

  “Whose is it?” asked Philo.

  Nathan dug in. “I trust you can identify the ring, Inspector Ransom.”

  Ransom had frozen in place, staring at the ring. His mind trying to wrap around the power of this incriminating diamond ring.

  Kohler dug in deeper. “After all, it belonged to your Polly Pureheart, your Merielle, did it not?”

  “You found this where?” he croaked, lifting the ring.

  “In your friend’s pocket.” Kohler’s look of triumph was clean and cold. Ransom hated him for it.

  “In his pocket, Rance,” began Griff, “as he was brought in, as you always taught me—log all possessions taken.”

  Ransom grabbed Philo roughly by the lapels, lifting his friend from his seat with the sudden surge of power. “Where did you come by the ring?”

  “She owed me…money…she must’ve slipped it into my coat pocket without my knowing. She offered it up once, but Ransom, I refused it, reminding her that I was your friend and could not accept it.”

  “Why did she owe you money?”

  “She was constantly borrowing. She played the horses every weekend.”

  “With whom did she book the races?”

  “That scum-bucket Jervis…her old keeper, Ransom.”

  “Damn that ugly man. He’s back? Bastard’s ten times more likely your killer, Griff!”

  “I checked early on, and Jervis is not in the city but back at his old haunts in Alton, Illinois.”

  Ransom felt his back to the wall. He grabbed up the pieces of the confession and threw them into the air. Then he added, “Send men after that prick Jervis, now you’ve your explanation for the ring, and if this is all the nonsense you have to book Philo on, you’ll be fined for a nuisance, Nathan. Judge Artemis’ll dismiss it before it sees a jury, I tell you.”

  “You are not taking him out of here,” Kohler coldly responded. “We have put it out. We have our man. I am not about to send him skipping out the door with you on his arm like a pair of faggots. And as for going to Alton, you do that…go right ahead.”

  “What bloody fools you are, giving it out to the papers, holding a man on evidence of dubious value out of some sense of embarrassment?”

  “He stays in jail until he is arraigned, bail is set—if any—and then you can have him if you can make his bail, but not before!”

  Ransom looked from Kohler to Drimmer, finding both resolute and standing firm and covering the only door out. He looked back at Philo, who appeared about to fall off his chair from fatigue. “At least”—began Ransom—“find the man a cot to lie down on and show him a modicum of decency and—”

  “We’re not running a juvenile detention center here,” interrupted Kohler.

  “Fine…fine…but if I hear this man has been further mistreated, this cane”—he slammed it flat on the table, a gunshot result—“this sir’ll find its way into a dark cavity.” He lifted the tip toward Kohler, “And you’ll look as twirly as a pinwheel. As for you, Philo, not another word to these two! Speak to no one but your lawyer.”

  “Lawyer? What lawyer?” asked Philo.

  “He’s on his way!” Ransom stormed past Kohler and Griff and out, slamming the door, in sea
rch of a moment’s peace. Then he realized he still had Merielle’s ring in his hand. He’d just accidentally removed the most damaging piece of evidence against Keane. He pocketed the ring, believing Philo’s story, and should the ring disappear, it could only help his friend’s cause. He felt no compunction about making the ring disappear since he knew in his heart two truths: Philo was the wrong man for the killings, and Kohler only went after Philo to piss on Alastair. The investigation into Philo Keane was on its face bogus.

  But where to put the ring?

  No doubt Kohler would be sending a frantic Griffin after him within minutes.

  He saw Jane as Tewes with a lawyer in tow coming toward the doors. He rushed to greet them. “Ahhh, Dr. Tewes, so good of you to fetch Mr. McCumbler, the best defense in the city.”

  McCumbler, a hefty red-faced man, had held the jail doors open to many a criminal. Ransom and McCumbler knew one another well. “Usually, you and I are on opposite sides,” the barrister commented.

  “Not today. Interrogation Room number two, upstairs, Esquire, and don’t be dissuaded by Nathan Kohler or his title, damn him! Our man is innocent and the so-called evidence against him is as weak as the chance of women voting in the next election.”

  Jane frowned at this.

  Ransom then asked her, “Dr. Tewes, any chance you might have a headache powder in that bag of yours?”

  “Let me dig about,” and as she did so, Ransom dropped the ring into Dr. Tewes’s coat pocket.

  Griffin showed up just as Ransom was draining a dry headache powder from a folded wrapper, choking it down.

  “All right, Alastair, where the deuce is the ring?”

  Alastair continued to choke, pointing to his throat.

  “My God, man, are you saying you swallowed it?”

  “That’s right, and to get it from my excrement, you’ll need a warrant for search and seizure, and a pair of gloves.”

  Tewes had seen no ring and attested to the fact the stubborn inspector had indeed swallowed it whole. How he did any of it without a cup of water, Jane could not fathom. But then he had the neck and throat of a bear.