Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  Obviously, she’d fallen back on her usual method of relating to men. “Look at her teeth,” said Ransom.

  “God save us,” muttered Behan.

  Logan joked, “You want some time alone with her, Ken?”

  “Let’s make a deal,” she repeated.

  “Mary…we do not want a magic carpet ride,” Ransom assured her.

  “What teeth are you talking about, Rance?” asked Behan, talking over him. “She’s got none.”

  “That’s just the point. If she did barter with this Leather Apron devil in these vanishings, what did he pay her? She have any cash on her?”

  “Not a nickel.”

  “And boys, I tell ya, she wasn’t tearing at human flesh, not with her gums, so what motive has she?”

  Twenty minutes and they learned nothing from Mary. She kept wanting to talk about an amusement park and a ride she had once taken, presumably as a child, deep in the bowels of a haunted castle. Then she slipped back into barter mode, her eyes lighting up with a cackling laugh. All her words came out of her toothless, cryptlike mouth along with spittle and froth that both sickened and amazed the three Chicago inspectors.

  Finally, unable to take her voice—like a nail through the head, or her stench—like a spike of sewage through each nostril, or her frothy mouth—like a rabid dog—Behan pleaded that Alastair take over.

  “There’s nothing but mayhem inside your head, right, Mary? You don’t know why you’re here, do you, Mary?” asked Alastair, replacing Behan at the “front.” “If she knows anything at all,” he said to Logan and Behan, “about the Vanishings, she’s likely forgotten it. Or it’s locked away in her sponge.” Alastair indicated his head.

  But Mary exploded at the word Vanishings. “It’s the work of the Anti-Christ himself! Nothing I had a hand in; nothing I could do anything about.”

  “Where do I find this Anti-Christ, Mary? Where?”

  “Under the water…under the lake, under the fair.”

  “Under the fire?”

  “Fair…I said fair! Under the bleedin’ fair!”

  “Now we know for sure she’s batty,” said Logan.

  “I already knew that before you two nabbed her.” Alastair turned his attention back to Mary. “Is there anything else you wish to tell us, Mary?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing you wish to say in your defense?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your real name, Mary?”

  She stared at him but said nothing.

  “Your secret name?”

  “I’ll not tell.”

  “Is it full of Grace, as in Hail Mary, full of Grace?”

  “I am full of Grace. My name…my real name is Grace. Grace Sheffield, originally from Shrewsbury, England.”

  Ransom jotted this down. He’d recalled it from arrests ten years prior.

  “Whatya doing with that?” she asked, fixated on the moving pen over the notepad.

  “Just going to check to see if it’s true.”

  “Ohhh…’tis true enough.”

  Alastair stood and slipped from the room, the other two inspectors doing likewise. Outside, they began a group coughing-sneezing-hacking-snorting jag, filling their white handkerchiefs with the result of their combined interrogation.

  Alastair said, “I believe she’s a dead end, and that we’re railroading a mindless old crone.”

  Behan shrugged, his mustache bobbing with his tie. “We’re just following orders.”

  Frustrated, Logan blurted out, “We oughta take a g’damn club to the old witch and beat it outta her.”

  “That kinda talk in the face of what you just saw in there? Now, I can just imagine where the orders came from, but fellas, this old girl…she’s got nothing but loose marbles and bird fodder for brains.”

  From where they stood out in the hallway, they heard Mary being Bloody Mary, shouting lunacies at some invisible demons in her head and inside Room 148. “My goddamn real name is Grace! You know ’cause I have a friend who digs earthworms in the cemetery! She ties ’em tail to head, head to tail and makes jewelry outta worms—living worms! Living jewelry! Says it’s eatable jewels and the idea will sell in the thousands! Won’t make her any less mad, but it will make her rich and mad! But she damn well ate ’em all! Now that’s sick! Her name is Grace, but she’s got none! Same as me. I had an accident with her, an accident with Grace…just like she had an accident with me. Her accident with Grace was with me!”

  “The woman is battling the DTs,” declared Ransom. “She’s sick in too many ways to count—not unlike the charge brought against her.”

  Even as he said this, Alastair thought, How fitting that she, like the Mother of God—according to the street children—had fallen so far from “Grace”…Perhaps there was some small truth in the street beliefs after all. But it all seemed so tenuous.

  Behan and Logan reluctantly followed Alastair back into 148, returning to the scolding Bloody Mary in her chains. Alastair asked, “When you were Grace, Mary, did you ever have a child?”

  “Yes…yes, several.”

  “Whatever happened to your children?”

  “Dead, all dead.”

  “All dead?”

  “Cruel world.”

  “Not one survived?”

  “Well…all that I knew of.”

  “Meaning?”

  She began crying. “’Cept one I left with the sisters.”

  “The sisters? What sisters?”

  “The Sisters of the Holy Cross Convent.”

  “On South Michigan Avenue?”

  “Yes, but Grace was just a child then.”

  “And how old would your son be today if alive?”

  “I dunno. How should I know? Can’t keep my head round numbers.”

  “Take a wild guess then.”

  “’B-bout your age, I suspect.”

  “Ahhh…and have you seen him, Mary Grace, recently?”

  She thought long and hard on this. “No…not ’im…that could not be him. Not that evil thing!”

  “The street children say that you’re the mother of Zoroaster’s child. Any truth to it, Mary Grace?”

  She smiled wide at this. “If I spawned a demon from me womb…I’m penitent sorry.” A smirk on her face said otherwise. “And I’ve asked God’s blessin’ and forgiveness at the church’s back door, ’cause the likes of you won’t have me come through the front! And as I’ve God’s forgiveness, I don’t need none from murderers like you!”

  “Well now, Mary, now we know where you stand,” Logan said and chuckled.

  “Don’t hold back,” added Behan.

  But Alastair was intrigued by this and the image of her at the back door of a church, perhaps the same as Samuel had said where holy water was being sold; he imagined the same fellow could sell forgiveness to a fallen angel such as Mary Grace for the right price as well. He’d filed this away for a time when he could visit St. Alexis. Have a chat with the priests there. But for now, he wondered what connection Bloody Mary had with this man the children called Zoroaster—or the son of Zoroaster—and whether he was her son or not, and then she’d have motive…if she believed Leather Apron was indeed her son.

  Alastair needed a clear idea who this mystery man and his mystery family might be, and what proof he’d used to convince Mary that he was in fact her evil spawn. Or was it all a fiction from her addled mind, a cunning one to create and build her own dangerous reputation, to ward off evil befalling her? Who in his right mind, man, woman or child would attack Satan’s mother?

  Alastair now manipulated the other two inspectors from the room without the least difficulty before he showed Mary the photo that he’d been given by Philo Keane that morning. He must assume either Behan or Logan or both were working in consort with Nathan Kohler.

  When he laid the photo before Bloody Mary, she gasped and said, “How? How did you get the demon and his demon brood and his damned wife in a picture?”

  “Have you seen your grandchildren, Mary G
race?”

  “I…he said he was my son…that he’d been born of Satan, and that his offspring were the grandsons of Satan, and that I laid with Satan to begin the bloodline between human and Devil.”

  “And you’ve told children this?”

  “They need to know. It’s the truth. Only the strongest survive.”

  “And this man in the photograph, is he familiar to you?”

  She near gasped and her eyes widened, but she immediately controlled herself. “Who is he?”

  “Mary Grace, if he is Leather Apron, he is the one behind the Vanishings?”

  “What do I get if I tell you?”

  He promised her a warm, dry place with daily meals and a bed. He made it sound heavenly.

  Finally, she said, “He is my lost son, yes, but he’s not the only Leather Apron.”

  “Who then is his accomplice?”

  She pointed at the woman in the photo and said, “She—his wifey.”

  “Really?”

  “And them others.”

  “Others?”

  “In the picture. The children. They’re all Aprons, all meat eaters, trained to it. The Devil’s own child and grandchildren’re this brood, and I pleaded with Danielle to stay away from ’em.”

  “Where are they now, Mary Grace?”

  “Like I told you, under the parks and under the water! They come up through the ground and sometimes through the bloody lake and the river.”

  He gave up, calling in Behan and Logan to take her to Cook County and turn her over to Christian Fenger.

  “But what’ll Chief Kohler say?” asked Logan.

  “Put it on me, boys. The woman is too far gone to organize a single planned abduction and murder, much less a series of disappearances and butcherings.”

  Logan and Behan looked from Alastair to one another again. Finally, Ransom said, “Concentrate on it, boys. Mull it over as you make your way to Cook County, where this woman’s to be committed.”

  “You know what a pain in the ass it was to get her here?”

  Behan added, “What about Judge Grimes?”

  “He will bless you. Now find a phone and call for Shanks and Gwinn to come get her. Those boys know how to deal with troublesome types.” Alastair laughed. “Hell, they transported me once in that meat wagon of theirs.”

  “Yeah, when you were half dead.” The three laughed together.

  “Fools rush in where wise men…well the truly wise would not go near that old bat,” said Behan.

  “For a price, Shanks and Gwinn will get her to the asylum.”

  “You think she’ll be better off in that snake pit?”

  “No, but she will be off the streets, and there are far more people living on the streets in needless fear of her than you can count, among them children. And if returned to the street, she’ll wind up another Timothy Crutcheon or worse.”

  “Do you think her in any way complicit in the murders, Rance?” asked Logan.

  “Something strange connects her to all this, to the children, to the killings, to the killer, I suspect, but exactly what…who can say?” lied Ransom.

  “Yeah, just can’t put a finger on it, right?” Logan winked as if a conspirator.

  “But it’s inside her, right?” added Behan.

  Alastair thought about this long. “Yes, but so deeply locked away inside that lunatic brain, inside one of her personalities, that it’s useless, lads.”

  “I got no sense of that whatsoever,” Logan sarcastically replied. “Guess that’s what makes you Alastair Ransom, heh?”

  Behan agreed, “Yeah, all I got was a morass of meaningless gibberish going on at all times.”

  “Yeah…kinda sad, really,” agreed Logan. “Hell, at some time she might’ve been someone’s mum and maybe human.”

  Ransom nodded. “Some sort of odd continuous parade of lost memories and a head full of confusing voices, lads. She definitely marches to a different drum.”

  “Surprise is she’s not marched off into Lake Michigan to end it all,” said Behan.

  “’Nough bodies out that way already, heh, Alastair?” Logan’s remark was meant to say that he knew where at least one body was buried.

  Alastair ignored the remark, however, saying, “Let’s do the right thing by Grace, gentlemen.”

  “And that would be to shoot her?” asked Logan, causing Behan to erupt in laughter.

  “No, that being treat her as you might your own mum if she were out of her head.”

  Behan frowned and nodded, while Logan said, “That’ll never come to pass. My mother’s as sharp as tacks.”

  Ransom gave them a cold stare. It was enough to send them off in search of a government phone to call in Shanks and Gwinn.

  The following day

  Jane Francis had come to Cook County in search of Dr. Fenger, and she had not come as Dr. Tewes but herself. She had come to learn his feeling about something she’d discovered only this morning, that the woman arrested as Leather Apron—Bloody Mary—had been sent to Cook County Asylum, where she supposedly had been admitted against her will. From what Jane could piece together, the lunatic fought her “captors” the entire way and that she had bitten one of the ambulance men, Shanks, in his shank, and that she’d somehow, while yet shackled, bloodied Gwinn’s nose. She’d screamed that they had attempted to rape and kill her. Shanks and Gwinn denied they did anything whatsoever untoward, but rather had to restrain her, and in that attempt, she became even more violent.

  Jane believed that Alastair, from his account of having faced down Bloody Mary at the courthouse, had been premature in shipping her off to a cell at the asylum. She believed that with careful probing—after winning the confidence of the woman—the aged woman might lead them to some clues to the Vanishings.

  For this reason she’d not come as a man, as Dr. Tewes, but rather as Dr. Jane Francis, to ask her good friend and confidant, Dr. Fenger, if she could interview the so-called madwoman. All of the children spoke of Bloody Mary’s being an accomplice, somehow connected to these horrendous crimes, that she perhaps procured for the killer, and yet Alastair had shrugged off any part she might play in this horrific opera, having made a medieval diagnosis about her sanity. “Insane people can be as immoral and as wicked as sane people, Alastair!” she had shouted at him when he made the ridiculous statement that the woman was too mad to be of any real danger. “And since when did you become a medical expert?”

  Alastair had telephoned her from his home the night before, telling her of his day, and she’d informed him of how she and Gabby had gone again among the shelter children to gather more information. He’d then pleaded with her to not place herself and Gabby in danger, and next he mentioned the arrest and release of Bloody Mary as an afterthought. His cavalier remarks about having made the decision to institutionalize the suspect had set her off.

  So now here she was, hoping that Christian Fenger would allow her an audience with the woman. Perhaps she could speak to this Bloody Mary woman-to-woman, to appeal to whatever motherly and natural impulses and instincts might be buried below her outward appearance and behavior.

  Jane now rushed down the corridor, going for the stairwell and Christian—no doubt in his morgue below—when she heard the irritating voice of Dr. Caine McKinnette, whose reputation, so far as Jane believed, was unfounded. McKinnette represented the old guard who still believed in bleeding his patients, and still believed that all disease rested in the bloodstream. She heard McKinnette tell a nurse to call him when his patient died so that he could fill out the death certificate and in essence be done with the woman in the bed before him.

  Unlike Christian Fenger, Dr. McKinnette did not know Jane; he only knew Dr. James Phineas Tewes, with whom McKinnette had shared ale and spoke on occasion. They had both been involved to some degree in saving Alastair Ransom’s life from a bullet wound. McKinnette seemed to have somehow weaseled his way into Cook County as something other than an anesthesiologist and pill pusher, so that he was now overseeing the last br
eath of a dying patient. How unfortunate for the patient, Jane thought.

  Jane knew she should leave it alone and go on her way. After all, she had her hands full as it were. But on seeing McKinnette disappear down the hall, something made her turn and walk into the patient’s room. She entered quietly and nodded to the nurse, who hand-cranked the dying woman’s bed to flatten it. The nurse assumed Jane to be a relative, so she ducked out to give Jane a moment with her loved one. No words passed between them.

  Jane immediately checked the woman’s medical chart, and she took a pulse at the throat. Yes, the patient was dying. But Jane felt a hand grasp hers as she took the pulse. The woman on the bed, a gray wire-haired lady with a face ashen as stone and etched with wrinkles named Eloise Howe, was desperate to communicate. Jane saw it in her weak eyes, and she felt it in Eloise’s weak but persistent grip.

  The strength in her touch told Jane that while she was weak, Eloise wanted a fight; she was not ready to give up, and Jane believed with proper treatment, Eloise could be turned around.

  Jane pulled forth one of Dr. Tewes’s cigars from her bag, lit it, and used it to burn off the leeches that Dr. McKinnette had placed on Eloise at incisions he had made in the woman. She began to administer other means to help the woman. She did so quietly and as nurses changed bed sheets and replaced water, she engaged them and found that the nurses disagreed in whispering voices with Dr. McKinnette and his care of this woman from the beginning. In fact, one went so far as to say that she felt the old doctor had caused more harm than good, saying that the woman had declined rapidly once he’d taken over her case.

  “She was found on the street, passed out, brought in a week ago. She had fainted from lack of nourishment. Dr. McKinnette began treating her immediately as a dying cause.”

  Two days later and Jane had still not gotten around to Bloody Mary, but as the woman was in the asylum ward, she was going nowhere, and Jane had come to believe she could save a life here at Cook County.

  Still, the nurses, assumed Jane a family member or dear friend, and she did not dissuade the notion. Two days and no more response but rather a comatose state had come over the elderly patient.