Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  McKinnette did not once check his own steps, even down to a look at his damnable leeches. He claimed that his patient’s mind was gone, that she was brain dead and would never recover herself again. He spoke of it as a matter of time, and he remarked that had he a race horse or a pet in the same condition, that he would put it out of its misery. It was an undisguised invitation to any nurse who wanted to do both patient and doctor a favor to “take action” on behalf of mercy.

  Meanwhile, Dr. McKinnette was told that Jane had sat with the supposed brain dead, had talked nonstop to the patient, holding her hand. Jane’s instinct told her this woman was not ready to go, that she had unfinished business, and Jane always went with her first instinct. After much frustration even with Christian Fenger, who Jane had brought to Eloise to show him that she was not only out of coma, but lucid—talking and touching Jane—and that Eloise had started to open her eyes and was trying to focus on Jane when Dr. Fenger had entered in the room. Christian, who’d been monitoring the situation and who’d had a shouting match with McKinnette in his office over his arcane practices, his esoteric handwriting, and his ill-treatment of this patient, was amazed at what Jane had accomplished. After a lot of aggressive therapies and ideas, Jane had talked them into pulling McKinnette off the case and allowing Dr. Tewes to come in and work with Eloise, calling Tewes a homeopathic healer as well as a phrenologist and magnetic healer.

  Jane as Tewes combated dangerous infection created by McKinnette’s sloppiness. Tewes was soon credited with what Jane had accomplished, getting Eloise’s breathing to slow with thirty-minute hourly suctioning. When Jane as Tewes left Eloise, the elderly woman insisted on a hug, and she squeezed her with some strength in her arms, and she could keep her eyes open for a long period, and her gag reflex was good, and she responded well to Tewes’s voice. She also exhibited a normal pain response. She wanted to know where that sweet woman—a nurse, she believed—had disappeared to. Dr. Fenger was amazed at the stark difference between McKinnette’s patient and Jane’s patient at this point. He walked with her outside and in the hallway, he shook her hand and praised her skills, drawing stares.

  “So fire the quack and hire Dr. Jane Francis, then, Christian.”

  “I am going to work on it.”

  “And how long will that take?”

  “There are bridges yet to build, but I am going to build them.”

  They stood staring at one another, she in men’s clothing, he in his smeared white frock. Around them Cook County hospital was alive with activity.

  “You saved that woman from a certain death.”

  “I’ve seen this before—too often—but I had a feeling from the first touch between us that I could help Eloise far, far better than Caine McKinnette.”

  “But how did you know you could bring the woman back?”

  “Initially, I didn’t, but I knew that I wouldn’t turn over my dog to McKinnette and his leeches.” She thought a moment. “But honestly, I had hope and she knew that, and so together she and I guided Eloise back.”

  “You should go home. Get some rest.”

  “No…not just yet, Christian. I want to talk to that woman they call Bloody Mary who’s here in your asylum, but I want to do it as a woman, not as Tewes. Can I change in your office?”

  “Jane, Bloody Mary is no longer here.”

  “No longer here?”

  “She was discharged.”

  “I don’t understand. How?”

  “She has been in before, Jane, and no one…no one here can deal with her.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She literally bites, kicks, and fistfights the staff and other patients. Furthermore, she refuses help and thinks we’re trying to poison her.”

  “Isn’t that what an asylum is for? People with delusions?”

  “There is no cure for her madness, and I refuse to operate on the insane. It’s against my principles.”

  “Agreed. Enough experimental surgery on the insane.” She paced. “So you simply release a so-called lunatic and murder suspect to the streets?”

  “She was not charged with any crime. Besides, according to her primary physician, she refused help, she attacked other inmates, and she made a habit of biting everyone.”

  “Let me guess—McKinnette!”

  “Yes, you have me there.”

  “Damn, damn, damn, Christian, what hold does that man have on you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, hold. He works for the hospital.”

  “Only so long as you suffer him! When is Cook County going to get it right?”

  “Easy now, Jane!”

  “I’d bite that man, myself! It’s ridiculous to put such a man in the care of the mentally diseased. Why not hire some good people in pathological conditions of the mind.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes, like me!” Jane let out a gasp. “I cannot believe you released that woman back onto the streets.”

  “She was put on a train bound for family we found in Iowa.”

  “Really?” Jane watched his eyes and body for any sign of chicanery, unhappy that they had arrived at this juncture. “Please tell me you didn’t turn her over to Kohler and Chapman, Christian.”

  “I did nothing of the kind. I opted out of the whole entire business days ago. Afraid I still have a conscience.”

  She saw no reason to doubt him. “You’re the better man for it, dear Christian.”

  “Yes, really very little call for that sort of thing nowadays, however…”

  Jane decided there was no help for it. She went home with a splitting headache to be with Gabby and to find some corner of peace. Once home, Gabby found her agitated, and she became worried in turn, making her mother undress and go to bed to fend off any worse headache.

  The following morning

  “Hold on! Are you telling me that Christian just let her go?” asked Alastair at the kitchen table where this morning he’d joined Jane and Gabby for breakfast. “I tell you, the woman is absolutely daft and belongs in a place where she can do no harm either to herself or others.”

  “Apparently, she does only that—harm others,” countered Jane. “Besides, you didn’t charge her with any crime,” countered Jane. As Christian wasn’t here to defend himself, Jane took his side.

  “She sounds perfectly dreadful,” added Gabby, pouring more coffee into each cup.

  Alastair’s expression changed from one of surprise at Christian’s letting the woman walk to one of shock, horror even. “My God, he’s turned her over to Kohler, who has in turn—”

  “Whatever do you mean?” asked Jane, confused. “No, no, you see Christian assured me that he’d have no part in this business between Nathan Kohler and Chapman, Alastair.”

  “So he’s told you, and you believe him?”

  “I do.”

  “She’s been put on a train according to records. Bound for Iowa.”

  “Not simply turned back out on the streets, as I was told by Shanks and Gwinn when I went asking?”

  “No, nor given over to Chief Kohler, Alastair.”

  “Is that what you fear?” asked Gabby.

  Alastair rushed from the room as best he could with his stiff leg and cane, fighting to exit the door, the ladies on his heels. He was stopped when Jane shouted for him to explain.

  “I must go and go now!” he replied, tearing the door from her hand and clamoring out onto the porch in the morning sunlight. He immediately shouted for a passing cab with a frightened couple inside as this bear of a man descended on their carriage. The man inside shouted for the driver to pull off and do it immediately even as Alastair waved down the driver. “Halt in the name of the law!”

  The hansom coach stopped, the two horses lifting on hindlegs, fearful. As Ransom ordered everyone out, saying the cab was commandeered in the name of the Chicago Police Department, Jane shouted, “I am going with you, Alastair!”

  “This will not be pleasant, Jane,” he firmly said, shaking his head.

&nb
sp; “Since when did you begin treating me as if I am some shrinking violet?”

  “I haven’t time to argue with her, Gabby! You do it!” he was half in the cab, half out on the running board when he shouted to the driver, “The Chapman estate north of the city, my good man, and make haste!”

  “Haste, sir?”

  “All due haste, yes! Time is of the essence!”

  The smile on the face of the horseman presaged his pleasure at opening up his team of horses from here to Evanston, Illinois.

  Jane leapt in after Ransom and from the window, she shouted to Gabby, “Don’t forget the roast I put in the oven, dear!”

  Gabby stared after the dust cloud crafted of debris as the hansom lifted a whirlwind in its wake, the pair of horses pulling it thundering down the dust-laden street for the northern farms region where the wealthy Chapman family lived.

  Inside the cab, Jane clung to Alastair where he sat braced with his cane as the coach squealed, its shocks bouncing, wheels revolving below them at an alarming rate, whip snapping, horses crying out in hysteria and bolting along, controlled only by the skill of the hackman.

  Alastair pulled Jane Francis close to him and held her firmly against the mad rocking carriage interior.

  “You could have at least warned me!” she shouted over the roar, deafening inside the cab, of frenetic hooves over stone. “My God, Alastair! Even on the Ferris wheel at the fair they’re smart enough to give you a bar to hold on to.”

  “There wasn’t time and is no time now, Jane! Christ, I should’ve seen this coming! Fool! But I know where they’ve taken Mary Grace, and it is not to a good end!”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “Chapman will kill her if she does not talk.”

  “Chapman? Kill? Talk?”

  “Chapman will gouge it out of her one way or another who Leather Apron “could be,” and she will confess after a little pain, and for all I know, they’ve cornered a suspect and have drawn and quartered him by now.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Chapman, Kohler, Fenger.”

  “Fenger? No! He would not be party to such—”

  “Barbarity?”

  “Yes, barbarity.”

  “Perhaps he has no idea the extent to which men like Kohler and Chapman will go to get what they want out of a suspect or a material witness.”

  “I’ve heard that you’ve interrogated suspects into the grave.”

  This momentarily silenced him. “Not you, too, and not now.”

  “Will you then please tell me what you know of this conspiracy between Christian and the other two. The details?” She wanted to hear it from him.

  “If you’ve the stomach for it.”

  “I have.”

  He told her the whole sordid tale of how Kohler and Christian had cornered him in Nathan’s office with Chapman, and how much money was involved, and how Christian saw it as his last chance to end his debts and his talk of a new wing on the hospital. The story fit with what Christian had relayed earlier.

  “When he asked for my help, Christian didn’t tell me the entire truth, and together, we led them to Bloody Mary, didn’t we?”

  “None of this is your fault, Jane. Truth be told, Christian is, while shrewd in his field, naive about men.”

  “Naive like me? Naive in what way?”

  “In how men of power operate. Jane, I once witnessed Nathan Kohler burn a man alive while the poor devil was strapped to a chair.”

  “I’ve heard the same story told of you, Alastair.”

  “Which story is the more comfortable fit? I was there. I couldn’t stop it, but I didn’t throw the match. Nathan did.”

  “Jane shivered at these revelations. All well and true, I’m sure of the other two, but I can’t believe it of Christian.”

  “He rammed his shiny new wolf’s-head cane into the top of the cab, beating out a code to the driver that said, “Faster, faster, faster!” He then looked into her eyes.

  She returned his gaze as much as possible for one who was so bounced about. “What?” she asked.

  “I fear we may be too late.”

  The carriage now jostled and quaked over a rough, yet-to-be unpaved road. “Why? Why risk their reputations, their careers?”

  “Money is a great motivator, Jane, and who knows that better than Dr. Tewes?”

  She glared at him but said, “It’s hardly the same.”

  “Do you think for a moment Christian and Nathan haven’t rationalized their crimes down to misdemeanors as well?”

  “Damn it, Alastair, I’ve harmed no one, and this is torture and perhaps murder. How do they hope to keep it hushed up?”

  “For the same reason men post trunks to Canada under assumed names.”

  “Habeas corpus.” She said the Latin legalese for what he meant.

  “Last time I looked, if there’s no body…there’s no crime, and therefore, no prosecutor will touch it.” Ransom squeezed her hand. “God only knows what’s gone on out there at the Chapman estate the past few days. Wish you’d told me about Bloody Mary’s being removed before this, Jane.”

  “But if you knew that she’d be taken, why’d you send her to Cook County Asylum to begin with?”

  “I never would’ve believed it of Christian, that he could do such a thing.” Ransom again pounded with his cane.

  “Perhaps not…perhaps it was McKinnette, Shanks and Gwinn surely…”

  “Caine would take a payoff sure as that pair of ghouls.”

  “Perhaps the Christian is innocent of this?”

  “We’ll know for sure if and when a Chapman wing is added to Cook County.”

  “It will never happen. Christian could not go through with such nefarious actions, not him, not if he knew.”

  “That’s just it. He does not know the level of desperation and the lengths Chapman and Kohler will go to.” Alastair squeezed her to him. “It may be you are correct, and I hope so for all our sakes; there are too few men today with the character to say no to Mammon.”

  “Money is not what Christian lives for…nor…nor do I, Alastair. Nor do I.”

  “But he does live to gamble and to practice medicine, and while owing a few sharks some hundreds, maybe a thousand in cash, he has also gambled large on Rush College and its connection to Cook County. I have a suspicion that even Christian Fenger would look the other way if he thought it would make his chances of beating out Northwestern Medical School for improvements and medical care.”

  “I can’t believe it of him.”

  “Fine…don’t. I am the last man on earth who wishes to defame Christian. No finer surgeon has ever graced this city, but as for his motives, they are cloaked in who he is and what he means for Cook County and Rush.”

  She grabbed his cane and pounded the cab roof beneath where the driver sat. Outside the window, the city streets had vanished behind them, giving way to a dirt road leading north toward Evanston, just outside Chicago. They skirted the massive Lake Michigan, placid and blue this morning as it winked between the forest trees. The expanse of lakefront property here remained pristine; while sold off by developers, it had not as yet been denuded. Sunlight and shadow played tiddledywinks as their coach careened along Chicago’s northern regions and past the quiet little settlement of Evanston and out onto the other side until they turned into a massive estate created by Senator Harold J. Chapman.

  Alastair stuck his head out the coach window, staring about as they approached the buildings here. His face framed in sashes, Ransom trusted that nothing of a criminal nature ending in blood would be permitted in the mansion itself. He shouted to the coachman to make for the outbuildings, the stables in particular.

  When he again looked into Jane’s eyes, he said, “I can almost smell it from here.”

  “Smell what?” she dared ask.

  “The carnage.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The carriage pulled up to the stables, and the hansom cab horses did literally smell the carnage, it seemed, as the
y balked and rose as in fear, whinnying discontent. Alastair leapt from the cab, holding out some thread of hope, but doubtful at once. Behind him Jane climbed from the cab. He turned and signaled for her to stay back and wait. The cab driver, curious, his horses ears and noses flaring, jumped down to soothe his animals.

  Alastair moved ahead, cautious, pulling his blue-burnished steel firearm, holding it ahead of him in one hand, his cane in the other. The driver, sensing danger, located a safe spot behind the cab, inviting Jane to do likewise. Instead, she shakily moved toward the stables behind Ransom, staring at his massive back while attempting to peek around him.

  His complete attention focused on the double doors to the forty-yard long stables, Ransom remained unaware that she was behind him. It felt as silent as it sounded in there. No sounds of horses, that was certain. In a nearby fenced pasture, six or seven horses nibbled at grass below box elder trees, some looking up at the disturbance at the stable.

  Ransom put his cane against one of two swinging doors and forced it open; it swung on silent hinges, opening incrementally with its own weight creating momentum that built as it widened. Now Jane, too, could smell the blood odors that wafted out through the doors like a fetid spirit seeking freedom. Jane covered her nostrils but could not get the stench of death out of her brain.

  Ransom shook his head at the sight filling his eyes, but Jane could not see around him. When he realized she had followed him, he turned and firmly said, “This is no sight for a lady, Jane. Please, go back to the cab.”

  “I am no lady, Alastair. I am a doctor. So stand aside!”

  “Please, Jane!” He held her by both shoulders, his cane pressing into her right arm.

  “I’ve dealt with death and corpses before, Alastair.”

  “Not like this!”

  She pulled from his grasp and stepped past him to see what he had already seen and choked on.

  In the rafters, hanging from tinder hooks, two upside down animal carcasses hung, dripping decaying fluids and blood into a floor matted with the sweet scent of hay. At first, she believed them to be deer skinned and filleted like fish, gutted, their intestines nowhere to be seen. Organs had been eviscerated but again not in sight. The carcasses now came into focus as not animal but human.