Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “Six levels of men atop you!”

  “A pecking order?”

  “Aye…even in the yards.” He stopped in his tracks long enough to give a shake of the head, then launched into butchering a dead horse at his feet. “The ones doing beef, now they’re at the top, then comes swine—the real money-makers, you see.” He’d already removed the horse’s head. “Then it trickles down to your lamb and chicken and veal, down to goat meat, you see, but horse meat…” He paused, lifting his bloody mallet-sized hatchet and using it to punctuate his words, blood dribbling from it as he did so. “Well, now you see horse meat’s tough as hell, and it’s not so savory nor wanted, and as most of the cutting we do ends in food for other animals—dogs, cats, and then there’s the soap-makers buying a ton of it. You see, then, we knackers, we’re the bottom of the rung ’round here, so I say again, you can’t have no opinion of yourself in this business.”

  Ransom asked Jack if he knew anyone around the yards who was strange or eccentric, and he immediately knew it was a ridiculous question to ask under the circumstances.

  “You mean someone capable of taking one of these”—he held up the cleaver this time—“to a human being?”

  “Yes, I believe it’s what I’m asking.”

  Jack thought long and hard about this as he continued to butcher the dead horse, working off the limbs one joint at a time. “There’s old Hatch, maybe Quinn…even Sharkey, but I gotta tell you, even those fellows, bloody crazy as they are…even they’d have to be pushed to considerable limit to chop up a senator’s lass.”

  Jack never stopped talking, even as Alastair started away, unable to take the stench of the yards any longer. Alastair understood Jack’s excitement. It was most assuredly the first time anyone had ever come asking questions of his profession or the men in it.

  Ransom could still hear Jack talking as he closed the last gate on the last stall he must pass through to get clear of this place. It would take a carriage ride of several blocks to get clear of the odors that daily hovered over the entire area of the Southside Stock Yards. Even so, the stench in his nostrils and throat remained.

  He had the cabbie pull over at a neighborhood grocery and got out. He went inside and purchased a sarsaparilla to wash down the clinging odors in his throat. The label on the drink made amazing claims, that it could settle the mind and provide a mental state for making enormous sums of money among other things. The label had three paragraphs of text touting the wonderful properties of cocaine, which made up two thirds of the drink’s marvelous ingredients, and the rest was sugar. But the label made no claim of effectiveness against horrid odors, and it did nothing for odors clinging to his clothes.

  He stepped from the store, having drained half the bottle, when he saw a homeless street urchin, dirty and hungry-looking, staring up at him. The boy was missing his front teeth, and Ransom hoped this was due to natural causes. The boy appeared perhaps eight or nine—same age as some of the Vanished.

  “Say, Mister, you got a penny?”

  Alastair saw such children about the streets of Chicago every day; the number of homeless families and the growing population of children on the street like this boy represented a staggering problem that seemed without answer. The city fathers had begun talking about it, but no one had done anything about it.

  “Mind drinking after me, son?” Alastair asked, handing him the remainder of his soft drink.

  “No, sir! Thank you, sir!” The boy took hold of the bottle as if it were a lifeline, and before Ransom could ask his name, he’d scurried off with the drink as if to find a secret place to relax and enjoy its contents.

  Alastair had intentionally gone to work on the Vanishings case by hitting the streets, in an effort to avoid going into the station house, to avoid another confrontation with Chief Kohler and to buy time. He’d earlier arranged to meet with his street snitch, and he did not have a long wait before Bosch—otherwise known as Dot ’n’ Carry—showed up. They got into the cab, and the driver was told to drift about the area.

  “It’s the Vanishings, isn’t it?” Bosch asked. “They put you onto the case, didn’t they? I’m not surprised. Told me mates the other night they gotta put Ransom onto the case.”

  “Never mind butterin’ me up, Bosch. What’ve you got?”

  “Got?”

  “Your ear’s always to the ground. So, what’ve you got?” Alastair repeated.

  “Sometimes an ear to the ground ain’t enough.”

  Ransom pulled forth a dollar bill, dangling it before Bosch’s sad eyes. “This help your ears out? What can you tell me about these disappearances?”

  “I tell you true, nothing.”

  “You don’t get paid for nothings, old-timer. Tell me what you hear.”

  “I tell you, the street is moot. And oh, by the way, glad to hear that the Phantom is no more. I like to think I played a small part in it.”

  “Get me something, Bosch…get me something soon.”

  “I’ll keep me eyes and ears open. You know that. In the meantime…you know how scarce money is for me now?”

  “I’m not a charity, Bosch.”

  “All right, then I got something for you on Haymarket.”

  Ransom sat up straight. “Haymarket?”

  “Someone who was on the other side.”

  “A worker?”

  “One who was there, yes.”

  “I’ve interviewed every living survivor already, Bosch. This is old ground.”

  “Not this survivor.”

  “What’s his name.”

  “Her name. She was a seamstress, but she got all balled up in the movement.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Josephine Lister.”

  “Where do I find her?”

  “Well…that’s the problem. She’s dead.”

  “Get outta my coach, Bosch.”

  “No, but you don’t understand.”

  “Out!”

  “Her daughter’s got a diary Josephine kept.”

  “A diary?”

  “And there’s a section on the riot and the bomb.”

  “How do I get in touch with the daughter?”

  “She wants to sell the diary to you, and I’m to broker the deal.”

  “I see. And how do I know it isn’t pure fiction, Bosch?”

  “Would I fabricate such a thing?”

  “Yes, you would if you thought you could get away with it.”

  “You hurt a man to the quick, Inspector.”

  “I want to meet with the woman.”

  “But that cuts me outta the deal.”

  “If I find her credible, you’ll be paid handsomely.”

  “Ten percent is what she agreed on.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Till then…what about an advance?” He snatched at the dollar bill, but Ransom was too fast, pulling it out of reach.

  “Come on, man! How do you expect me to live?”

  Frowning, Ransom put the bill away. As Bosch’s features fell, Alastair reached deep into a coat pocket and dragged out his reluctance in the form of two bits.

  “Thanks, Inspector.” He said it sourly, but he knew better than to complain.

  “Ten dollars if you bring me something I can use.”

  “Ten dollars? On the Haymarket deal, you mean?”

  “Haymarket, yes, but also the Vanishings.”

  “Lor’ blind me! Twenty dollars. Imagine what I could do with twenty? Have not had hold of that much money in forever.”

  “Now get out. My coach is beginning to take on your odor.”

  “Hmmm…smells of the stockyards to me.” He sniffed the air like a rodent.

  The cab had come full circle to the same corner drugstore. As the crooked, arthritic Henry Bosch climbed from the cab, Alastair saw the same little boy on the street panhandling someone else out front of the store. He called the boy over to the cab.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Two dollars for you, son, if you learn anything about th
e Vanishings,” he told the boy, handing him a nickel. “Any news at all that might help.”

  “You’re a copper, sir?”

  “You’d best hone your powers of observation, son, if you’re going to work for Inspector Ransom.”

  The boy’s eyes went wide. Everyone in Chicago knew the name Ransom. “Yes, sir. I will indeed, Inspector, sir.”

  “And your name, son?”

  “Sam…Samuel, sir. Everybody knows me as Sam.”

  “All right, then, Sam. Put your ear to the ground, nose to the stone.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Ransom tapped the roof of the cab with his cane and the carriage was off. “To one-twenty-nine Des Plaines,” he shouted to the driver.

  As the carriage picked up the pace, he quietly said to himself, “I need a drink, and I know where I don’t have to pay for it.”

  He’d go home, clean the stockyard stench from himself, send out his clothes to that Chinese place halfway down the block, and once these chores were accomplished, he’d stroll to Philo Keane’s studio home on Kingsbury Lane. Perhaps he might just enjoy the feel of warm sunshine on his face, smell the last blossoms on the wind, watch birds chase one another amid the trees of a neighborhood park, think of Jane out of her Tewes getup, and get his mind off this horrid case…at least for a time.

  The word went out and they found Ransom at Philo’s where he was enjoying a brandy, a cigar, and Beethoven on Philo’s phonograph. Philo was talking about a series of photos he’d begun taking of ordinary homeless people all across the city. Ransom was hardly hearing this, but Philo had grown animated and spoke of the possibilities of a montage of such photos, if only he could find a venue for them. He was saying that perhaps if he worked on whatever small conscience Thom Carmichael had left, that perhaps with Thom’s help, he could get the photos placed in the Herald as a poignant exposé, as he called it. “Certainly could use the money.”

  “When couldn’t you use extra green, Philo?”

  “But, Rance, it’s more than about the money this time.”

  Ransom didn’t take this too seriously, and so he grunted at all the appropriate moments, but he really just wanted to drink and hear the music. Then when Philo insisted he listen and Philo repeated that it wasn’t a job for money, Alastair capitulated. “All right, all right. Never known you to minimize the monetary aspects of a job, that’s all.”

  But this peaceful time was interrupted when a messenger—a junior officer in uniform and a friend, Mike O’Malley, knocked, knowing he could find Alastair here. O’Malley had bad news to impart.

  “Another child found dead?”

  “Dead and butchered…like a bloody knacker got at her.”

  “Another girl?”

  “Aye.”

  Philo joined Alastair, grabbing his Night Hawk for photos, and as an afterthought, he slipped a single photo into his breast pocket. Alastair saw this but said nothing. They had then rushed to the scene, as Mike had wisely commandeered transportation for them. Along the way, Philo recalled how Alastair had returned his Night Hawk, evidence of their friendship. Now the two friends traversed the city and soon stood staring over the carnage.

  Ransom’s knee-jerk reaction on seeing the dead child was to say, “She’s a local girl.”

  “How can you know that?” asked Dr. Tewes, who had arrived on scene after Ransom and Philo. They had sent for Dr. Fenger to come as well to preside over the newly discovered remains; Tewes had come along with Dr. Fenger, apparently with him, when he had learned of the most recent find.

  “Her clothing,” Alastair replied to Jane dressed as Tewes.

  “You mean the tatters hanging on her?”

  “Yeah…what’s left of the blue dress with the yellow buttons. She was wearing that when she vanished. It’s in the missing-persons file.”

  “Expensive clothes for a young woman not yet out of her teens.”

  “All from Fields, including her shoes,” added Alastair. “Besides, I have seen her on her rounds. She works and lives somewhere in my area, or did.”

  “She worked? At her age?”

  “Don’t be naive. Half the children in the city work.”

  “How can you be sure it’s her? You can’t possibly make out her features.”

  “What features?” asked Philo, snapping off another shot with his Night Hawk. “But Alastair is correct. It’s Alice Cadin, all right.”

  “It’s her, Cadin, Alice Cadin,” Ransom repeated the name in a tone of eulogy.

  Philo then pulled forth a photograph of the girl from his breast pocket. Fenger and Tewes studied the girl in the blue frock with yellow flowers. “I’d asked the family for it. Made duplicates. Takes good professional equipment, but I photographed the photograph, you see, since they had no negatives, and it worked fairly well. I mean from a professional point of view it is appalling and it’s technically—”

  “Shut up, Philo,” Ransom put in.

  “Did what I could.”

  “Don’t be modest, Philo,” said Alastair, who then spoke to Jane and Christian. “He spread the photo to every police district, every station house.”

  “She’d gone missing for over a week.” Christian measured the depth of a wound over the heart as he spoke. “Others’ve gone missing as well.

  Philo said, “Alice was a hard worker, her parents told me. She wasn’t homeless, but she loved the lakefront and the park. The last time they saw her, she’d gone off with friends to the park. Darkness came on, and she didn’t come home. They never saw her again.”

  “What of the friends she went off with?”

  “They left her on the path for home, or so they tell it.”

  “Still…given the disfigurement, how can you be sure?” asked Tewes.

  “The blond hair,” Ransom replied.

  “The flowered blue dress,” Philo repeated. “The yellow buttons, the shoes.”

  “It all fits, down to her size,” added Ransom.

  “Now I must inform the parents.” Fenger kept his steady hands at work over the corpse.

  Philo, over his initial shock, continued taking photos from every angle.

  Alastair stood looking out over the Chicago River, the killer’s dumping ground of choice, pacing in a small circle with his cane, favoring a backache. He smelled Tewes’s cologne behind him. “Drops them in the water like so much trash, the bastard.”

  “Why not?” she asked, equally angry. “The river’s still seen as the city toilet. Everyone disregarding the law and health issues as if they mean nothing. So what might you expect from a child killer?”

  “Turns my stomach what’s happening.”

  “We’re going to catch this monster, Alastair.”

  “We? Tell me, Dr. Tewes, by what magic do you propose to help this investigation? How do you propose to tell us what is in the mind of a man who would do this to a child—repeatedly so? Will your mind-reading, your phrenology, get us into his bloody mind?” Ransom’s voice had raised more than he’d wanted, and everyone else looked to the pair only momentarily, realizing some things never changed. It was obvious to all that Ransom did not want Dr. Tewes anywhere near his case.

  “How will I get into this madman’s mind and help your investigation?” asked Jane as Tewes. “By the clues he leaves.”

  “There are none.”

  “Wrong,” Jane countered.

  “How so?”

  “He is leaving observable patterns.”

  “All I observe is his butchery.”

  “Even his cuts have left patterns, Ransom.”

  “Whataya mean?”

  “I’ve looked over the autopsies and either this fiend is ambidextrous and slashes and carves with both hands, or there are two of them cutting away at the body, if not more.”

  “You can tell that?”

  “Christian will verify it; it was his discovery, but I agree.”

  Ransom sighed heavily and shook his head and looked out over the city from this perspective, a nearby garbage heap acting as a
city for rats.

  “Alastair, I am working closely with Christian, and we are prepared to make certain assumptions about the killer based on the very tools he uses and the cuts he has taken out of these…these poor children.”

  “Indeed. And how is that progressing? Are you sharing, or is this all for Senator Chapman’s benefit?”

  “Chapman? He’s got nothing to do with our teaming up, if that’s what you mean. Look, Alastair, there’ve been several different blades identified by Fenger and myself.”

  “Several different blades?”

  “And all have varying sizes and lengths. One is more or less a cleaver. Others are smaller blades. One or two have definite large hilts that have left patterns against the skin, meaning some of the stab wounds were so furious as to drive the weapon to the hilt, fracturing bone beneath.”

  “This can all be deduced by measurement, I understand, but what does it say about the kind of mental state that can do this kind of turkey carving on children?”

  “After the initial attack, the deep tissue stab wounds, Ransom, every cut is meticulous, thought out…and it may have—that is each cut may have some sort of ritualistic purpose or meaning for the killer.”

  “Do you mean to say each stab wound is symbolic?”

  “No, not the stabbing, no. The carving up afterward. They are not all stab wounds.”

  “I got that. Hell, I can see that.”

  “In fact, none of the killings are what we traditionally call murder by stab wound,” added Dr. Fenger, coming nearer, overhearing.

  “What then are they, these killings?”

  “We suspect a couple of things: a kind of barbaric ritual from the old world for one.”

  “Human sacrifice?”

  “Something of that nature, yes.”

  “Each killing leads to something in the nature of a carving, and the areas carved from the bodies are…well…edible.”

  “Including the entrails?”

  “Including the entrails.”

  All of them fell silent at the thoughts and images raised by this.

  “So, Dr. Fenger, are you telling me now that these children were carved up for their meat, like a knacker does a horse, like a butcher slaughters a sow? Are you definitely confirming this?”