“Dr. Tewes, I want you to stay on Ransom till I get my warrant, and should he pass anything, I want you to still his hand from any flushing away of the evidence.”
She stared, her mouth dropping.
“Will you do it?” asked Griffin.
“Do your own dirty work, Inspector Griffin.” A smirk on her face, Jane rushed off, unaware of the ring in her pocket.
“Guess, old partner, it’ll have to be you sifting through my shit then,” Ransom said, pounding Griffin on the back. He then pointed to the streets. “I’m going out there to find the real killer. Keep up if you can.”
Ransom rushed out, leaving Griff to his quandary. Ransom imagined what must be going through Griff’s mind: Should I go direct to Grimes to secure a warrant on Ransom’s bodily functions, or go back upstairs to ask the boss, or should I keep on Ransom’s ass…literally?
Griffin decided to first return to Kohler to tell him the news that Ransom had swallowed the ring. When he entered, the lawyer was taking Kohler through the evidence again, and Philo Keane lay sprawled out over the table, snoring.
“Trelaine employed Keane?” asked Philo’s lawyer now.
“And he personally knew three, possibly four of the victims.”
“And had nude photos of several victims in a hidden box in his studio?” Defense attorney Malachi Q. McCumbler spoke solemnly, in polite tone. He did so while glancing from the nudes to his snoring client. “Well, on the surface of it, gentlemen, it would appear you have some small reason to suspect my client. I will see you at the arraignment.”
“That won’t be until day after tomorrow.”
“Why so long?”
“Ask the court, not me.”
“I’ll send a man round with fresh clothing. See to it he has uninterrupted sleep and a shower, and any further questioning you do, you do so with me present. I will myself call round this evening to have a word with my client.”
“We don’t Molly-coddle murderers here, sir,” Kohler coldly replied.
“No, I daresay not from the condition of the innocent!” Malachi’s voice rose an octave and held in dramatic pause…“As, gentlemen, my client is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
“Trust me, he is guilty of multiple murder and does not deserve your time!” said Kohler.
“And you chaps, officers of the court that you are, you have some distance to go before that is a reality, sir.” Even as McCumbler said this, he knew it true only in some fantasy world. Certainly, the notion of innocent until proven guilty—the reversal of the British Legal system in which a man was guilty till proven innocent—was in itself an ideal to which the American legal system aspired, but the notion could never be wholly attained, not when dealing with human nature. Men condemned first, apologized—if at all—later. Many a man in America and the world over had been lynched by a mob thanks to human nature. It was by no coincidence that every other hamlet dotting the American landscape was named Lynchburg. Malachi had practiced law for almost twenty-five years now in Chicago, and he’d seen a lot of men beaten and broken and convinced of their own guilt by brutal treatment. Torturing a suspect as they had Philo Keane, in Chicago police circles, had a name—routine questioning. Most certainly human nature was well at work here in the Des Plaines Street police house. Well and good and intact, unfortunately.
Griffin waited for McCumbler to leave before he dared tell Chief Kohler of the ring’s being lost to the big man’s stomach.
From just outside the door, as McCumbler stopped to adjust his glasses before negotiating the stairs, he heard Kohler’s gargantuan bellow, a stretched-out Nooooooo streaming through the closed door.
He wondered what it might be about when he heard Kohler repeatedly shout the name Ransom. McCumbler knowingly smiled.
“I had thought, and happily so, that you were finished with this…this disguise of yours,” Ransom said on catching up to Dr. Tewes at a cabstand. Several well-fed horses stood harnessed at Union Station.
“Come now, Inspector. Certainly, at times you must use disguises in your line of work—when it suits your purpose?”
Concentrating on her eyes and trying to ignore her mustache, Ransom replied, “Yes, I’ve used disguises in my work, but Jane…what more purpose can this serve you now?”
She backed to within inches of a horse at the cabstand. The horse reacted instinctively, nuzzling her into Ransom’s arms. They had a laugh over this when Alastair caught her. To passersby and to anyone standing nearby, they seemed a pair of men quite infatuated with one another. Realizing this, Alastair quickly pulled away.
“Do you know how it’s going to look when all comes to light?”
“It might begin to chip away at that brute image you’ve maintained.”
“That image has saved my life on occasion.”
“I’m sure I’d faint to hear just how.”
“You failed to answer my question.”
“The horse did not like the question.”
He repeated it. “What more purpose can your disguise serve you? A beautiful woman like you?”
“Thank you for the compliment.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Deflect the question.”
She stepped away from him and sat on a street bench. Busy people passed in and out of the train station. Ransom hovered and, out of one eye, he saw the cab at the front of the line begin its journey. This set off a domino effect, as each horse-drawn cab moved up one space in the line of seven, the exchange creating a soothing cadence of hooves against brick-laid road.
He wanted to hold her hand, but not like this…not so long as she looked the part of a man.
“Do you have any idea how long it would’ve taken me, as a woman, to interest Mr. Malachi McCumbler in taking Philo’s case? So, being Dr. Tewes, he hopped right out of his seat and came.”
“OK, point taken.”
“And walking into a police station, a lone woman? I’d likely have been taken for a prostitute complaining of being robbed by my—”
“All right, point taken. Now I’ll be needing my ring back.”
“Your ring? What ring?”
“In your pocket.”
She reached in, found the ring, and lifted it to the light. “It’s beautiful.”
“They found it somehow in Philo’s possession. Merielle had promised under no circumstance to ever part with it, and the last time I saw her alive, she had it on, and next they find it in Philo’s pocket.”
“What?”
“Made me, for a moment, believe Keane murdered my Mere, the way Kohler sprung it.”
“Nathan’s good at that.”
“Sure is. Hey, look…I wanna thank you for the other night when you eased my pain.”
“Easing a headache, ahhh…that’s nothing. To ease a broken heart, now there…anyone capable of that will make a fortune and have patients galore. Have I told you how very sorry Gabby and I are for your loss? It was evident you loved Merielle.”
“I’ve arranged for a small wake—Donegan’s on Halsted, tomorrow night. If you can be there.”
“If you’re sure you want me.”
“As yourself, yes…not the doctor. He will be unwelcome.”
He placed the diamond ring onto his pinky finger. “Won it in a card game,” he lied, “same as Polly Pete. Thought she and it belonged together.”
“How’d Keane come by it?”
“Philo was in no condition to discuss it; he thinks she slipped it to him on the sly, something about repaying a debt.”
“Keane seems to value your friendship.” Jane lifted his hand, again examining the ring’s beauty in the sun when a dark cloud came over. “A lovely setting. This could have purchased a lot of photographic plates, film, even a new camera.”
“He came the other evening with his newest baby in hand, talked nonstop about it, but when he saw the victim was someone he cared for—”
“The Mandor girl?”
“Yes, dropped
his new camera, fell to his knees. It proved the start of this trouble for him, that show of weakness.”
“Like when the vultures threw you in the Bridewell?”
“Thanks again for getting me out.”
She ignored this. “Right now our getting him out of that cell takes priority. I’m sure McCumbler will be successful, and we’ll buy Keane’s freedom.”
“What is all this we talk? We’ve got a problem…and we buy his freedom?”
“I want to help you, Alastair.”
“And why is that?”
“Because, damn you, I just want to.”
“Why?”
“Who knows?”
He looked long into her eyes, until waiting cabbies began staring. “I want to see Dr. Jane Francis open a practice here in Chicago and soon…and an end to Dr. James Phineas Tewes for good and all.”
She smiled wide, the mustache curling. “I hear a rumor that Tewes has plans to return to New York.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the rumor clackin’ about. To catch a frigate to California, start anew there.”
“In time…in time, Alastair.”
A cloud burst released a silver rain that suddenly began pelting them. Together, they stepped into the nearest cab and trundled in through the swinging door not built for Ransom’s size. Once inside, laughing, he reached over and informed her that her makeup had begun to run. She leaned into him, preparing to accept a kiss as his large hand touched her cheek, his gentleness causing her pulse to race. But he patted down her mustache instead, telling her, “I’d kiss you if it weren’t for the whiskers.”
He laughed. After a moment, she laughed. Curious of their laughter, the coachman opened his small window on the cab to study his passengers.
Ransom reacted to the sliding door as it opened, staring back at a pair of eyes that he only half recognized, unable to place. The eyes of the coachman proved most certainly familiar but somehow out of place, out of time.
“Ahhh, begging your pardon, sirs, but where’re you off to?” Water dripped in from the open panel that looked out on the coachman’s seat. The sound of an unhappy horse up there came through with the rainwater.
“To the Palmer House, my good fellow,” announced Ransom, and to Jane he added, “where we’ll drink and dine and—”
“No, no! It’s no time for that! Take me straight ’way to my Belmont office. From there, Inspector Ransom can give you his destination.”
She hadn’t given the young fellow an address, and Ransom asked her about this.
“He knows where Dr. Tewes lives. Most everyone this far north knows where he lives.”
“I see. Dr. Tewes tips well.”
“True, but this coachman knows you as well.”
“Really now, and who might that high-pitched voice and those beady eyes belong to?”
“Waldo, of course.”
“Denton?”
“Says he hardly makes a scrapping apprenticed to your friend Keane. Says he makes more money on tips. Afraid he calls your friend a skinflint.”
“Skinflint? Philo?” He laughed.
“Waldo says Keane thinks him his indentured servant!”
“OK, he’s a skinflint. But at heart, a good man.”
“So we haul Denton into the courtroom as a character witness?”
“Perhaps not. The village idiots might draw a straight line between a skinflint and a murderer, as they’ve drawn a line from Philo’s art to murder.”
“Art some are calling pornography.”
“I’ve seen it and I tell you it is art.”
“Have you…ever purchased from him?”
“Yes, photos of Merielle when I only knew her as Polly. Later, I bought up his entire inventory.”
“And you still have these, ahhh…artistic renderings?”
“I do.”
“I’m sure of their artistic merit,” she teased. “Look, if you want my advice, you will burn them.”
“For you, I will do it.”
“No for me.”
“For myself then.”
“Damn it, man, if Nathan can orchestrate Keane’s arrest, and if he turns him over to the right interrogators, men like yourself…your friend Philo can be persuaded to point you out as having an obsession with one or more of the victims, and then you give Nathan the kindling to amass this fire under you in the form of these…artistic renderings?”
“Yes, I take your point.”
“I’m sure you would’ve concluded the same, but even had you…well, I imagine you’d hold on to one or two of the photos.”
“I’ll destroy them all.”
“Else turn them over to the care of someone you trust.”
“That is a rare bird indeed.”
“Someone who’d never betray you.”
“I am at a loss for a name.”
“You thick-headed fool.”
“Dr. Fenger perhaps.”
“As he works for the police department—which is a travesty, as his office ought to be a separate entity so as to remain completely objective and above criticism and complaint—you’d be placing him in an awkward position, Alastair.”
“I can think of no one else.”
She gritted her teeth. “What of Dr. Tewes?”
“What of Dr. Tewes?”
“For a detective, you can be demonstratively thick at times.”
He reached out and leaned into her, about to kiss her regardless of the mustache, but he was stopped by a whoosh-slap sound.
The flap to the coachman had slapped open again. “Tewes’s residence!”
She got out without responding to his last remark, instead whispering so as Waldo could not hear, “Any prints of the girl you can’t bring yourself to burn, get to me.”
“I’m not so sure there is any reason to fret over—”
“Remember who you’re dealing with. Kohler is your worst enemy. If you’ve shots of Merielle you simply can’t destroy, trust them to me.”
“One day…Nathan knows that one day…I’ll find the tie that places his hand on the bomb at Haymarket.”
“His greatest fear. You are two men with reason to fear one another.”
“I guess I have not looked at it in quite those terms.”
“Fear is a great motivator, and when a man sucks fear up his nose, it fills his brain. Nathan Kohler will do anything to frame you, and arresting Philo is just his opening salvo.”
“You know a lot about the uncharted territories of the human mind, don’t you, Doctor?”
“I have laid hands on a few.”
“Like mine? Did I tell you…”
“I know you like my touch, Ransom.”
“I can ask Waldo to hold if you’ll call out Jane…two for the Palmer House.”
“Perhaps another night. I promised Gabby a special dinner. It’s her birthday.”
“Ahhh, of course…of course. Then bring her along and we’ll celebrate together.”
She realized just how deep-seated was his loneliness. Like an oak in a clearing…a lone oak. She couldn’t be certain of her feelings for him; she’d not sorted out all of her own fears. He could be so good for her, and she for him, but on the other hand, he could destroy her so easily if he were one of these sorts who preferred the stalking to the catching and the mating. He could leave her as had Tewes in France, again devastating her emotions. “Perhaps if you call round late, you can have coffee and cake on the porch with us.” God, she silently cursed herself for being so cowardly and tentative in such matters—neither adjective something anyone anywhere would ever apply to her.
She quickly rushed onto her front porch, turning in time to see him raise his cane in a little wave. He then tapped his cane against the cab and chortled out “Muldoons!”
Jane was soon watching through a window sash from the safety of her home as the cab carrying Ransom trundled off east for Halsted Street.
CHAPTER 24
It was an awkward passing thought Ransom had as he rode alone in the cab. If some
one were garroted and set aflame tonight, this would prove Kohler’s having arrested Philo as sheer folly. But at what price must folly be proved? Someone would pay dearly—with her life—to see Philo freed, and this vendetta of a chess move that Kohler had made would prove a fool’s undertaking indeed. It must go nowhere.
Ransom felt certain that Philo wouldn’t last a week in a Chicago cell before going stark raving mad, and that Jane was right: This move against Philo was Nathan’s direct assault across his bow. Damn charges’ll go the way of the gutter. But it might take time.
Still, the thought of mopping up after this murdering fiend wandering the Chicago fair, had no appeal. He tried to imagine the next victim, likely another young innocent—the monster’s delicacy now. He didn’t want to inhale the odor of burnt flesh or take in the sight of yet another decapitated body.
“Lay a trap for the bastard, you should, Inspector Ransom,” came a voice reading his mind it seemed.
He looked up through the peep window into the unblinking, glassy eyes of Waldo Denton. “A trap?”
“Yes, a trap, sir, is what we’d use on the farm back home. And who knows, if I was Johnny on the spot with that Night Hawk and was to get pictures, I could make my reputation, I could. Not to mention…well, a photo of the killer! Now that’d sell to all the papers in the city at a handsome price, not to mention it’d make us heroes, it would, you and me, coming in with a likeness of the bastard.”
The boy had soaked up more from Philo than Ransom had realized. “You’d need a damn wheelbarrowful of luck to be on hand when this monster slips out his garrote and slices someone’s throat.”
“I read your remarks in the Herald and you’re going to put ’im in a foul mood with words like that—calling ’im a coward and a weakling, fearful of his own shadow. Words like that, why, you might think he’d come straight for you, and if you were to sort of set yourself up as, say, bait…”
“Bait him, heh?” Ransom recalled giving the exclusive to Thom Carmichael.
Waldo kept talking. “Well, sir, I’m no policeman, but I read Mr. Pinkerton’s spy book.”
“Hasn’t everyone?”
“Pinkerton did a lotta what I’m saying, and you’ve already laid all the groundwork.”
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