Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “What?” asked Philo.

  Logan inched closer.

  Behan swallowed hard.

  Philo Keane stepped back and snapped a photo of what Ransom held in his hands.

  Kohler erupted. “What in God’s name does this mean, Ransom? Who the hell is Grace?”

  Alastair dropped everything back into the cedar box and painfully got back to his feet, using his cane to steady himself. How long since I’ve had sleep? How much of an attack on my sensibilities can I absorb?

  “Well, man! Spit it out!” ordered Kohler.

  Ransom casually went toward a window and opened it, allowing in more air, and in the light, he produced the photo that Philo Keane had given him, the photo of an entire homeless family of five—mother, father, and three children. He held it up to the waiting, anxious group of detectives, cops, newsmen, and Philo.

  “What’re you saying, Ransom?” demanded Kohler.

  “This is what Leather Apron looks like. Take a good look.”

  Every eye was focused on the desperate faces of the homeless family.

  “Are you saying…” began Logan.

  “…that Leather Apron?” continued Behan.

  “…is not just two killers but a mother and a father?” asked Thom Carmichael.

  “The knives…the many cuts that Dr. Fenger speaks of,” said Philo, a realization coming over him. “There could be as many as five separate attackers?”

  “It’s a family affair, yes. And this is no chest of souvenirs of their victims, but souvenirs from the killer’s childhood, maybe the old homestead.”

  “Family heirlooms,” croaked Philo.

  “Father, mother, and children?” asked Logan, eyes wide.

  “All murderous, all cannibals?”

  “This is a helluva story,” muttered Carmichael.

  “Some story, and one of our own making.” Ransom turned to the window and breathed in fresh air off the river. Morning sun had burned off all fog but a dampness remained in the air.

  “Whataya mean one of our own making?” asked Kohler, pursuing him.

  “Same as Stead means in his book?” asked Carmichael.

  This alerted Ransom, and he faced Thom. “You’ve read William Stead’s book?”

  “I am perhaps the first to do so.”

  “Has it found a publisher?”

  “It has.”

  “Good…good.”

  “What in blazes does a book have to do with all this?” shouted Kohler. “And who the devil is this woman in the tintype?”

  The irony was lost on Kohler, that they stood in a graveyard of dead books amid a city full of illiterates, amid the remains of this horror, only now learning that William Stead’s exhaustive exposé of the treatment of indigent and homeless in Chicago, entitled If Christ Came to Chicago, had been published. The question remained who would read it, and who might care? Further irony lost on Nathan was the subject of the ancient picture.

  “I don’t see that a book has anything to do with any of this butchery,” added Kohler in his ear. “And who the bloody hell is this?” he demanded, pushing the old picture into Ransom’s face.

  Ransom glared at Nathan. “We oft create our own monsters, Nathan—you among them!” He grabbed the tintype and held it overhead, shouting, “It’s Bloody Mary when she was young! Now step off.”

  Nathan smiled. “Then that old witch indeed had something to do with the Vanishings after all.”

  Philo weighed in, asking, “Do you think this cannibalistic family was pushed to it by our ignoring them, Alastair, until desperation and hunger drove them to…to cannibalizing children?”

  “Throwaway children, yes. Nameless, faceless ones even in death. Then came Anne Chapman and Alice Cadin, two not homeless, two with names and faces.”

  “No one asked for this,” countered Behan.

  “Disposable children,” added Ransom. “Until Chapman.”

  Philo snapped a photo of Ransom. He’d secretly begun to compile a kind of photographic history of Alastair Ransom. Some were photos of Alastair in various undercover disguises, but this time Philo had caught in a moment of time the rage on Ransom’s face as he muttered through clenched teeth, “Now we’ve got to hunt down and kill the monsters we’ve spawned.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Philo Keane did exactly as his good friend and police detective boss told him to do, and so he now stood over the remains of the unknown child being autopsied by Dr. Christian Fenger. Philo took pictures of the carved up body as Fenger and his most senior assistants worked to create an autopsy report. The coroner for the City of Chicago worked in what appeared weary fatigue, his findings corroborating all that Alastair had concluded regarding the number of suspects being perhaps as many as five, all with separate knives, a view that Fenger had early on suspected from the few clues left them. Once again, Christian proved a remarkable medical genius.

  Philo also informed his good friend Dr. Fenger of the box of heirlooms discovered at the warehouse. He also explained the significance of Ransom’s having seen Philo’s photo of the homeless family—“A representation of desperation,” Philo finished.

  “What about Alastair?” asked the doctor, not looking up from his work.

  “What about Alastair?” asked Philo.

  “How is he holding up?”

  “Ahhh…yes, well, he is the strongest man I know in all regards but this…well this had him reeling, I can tell you.”

  “I must see him and soon.”

  “To medicate him?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “I suspect he is home by now, but most certainly unconscious.”

  “Thanks, Philo. I’ll catch up with him.”

  “So what do you make of the latest victim?”

  “Sixteen, maybe fifteen. Bit older than the others. Male…weight about—”

  “Hold on! Male? Ransom believes her…ahhh, him…ahhh, it a female.”

  “It’s rather impossible to tell when the chest and private parts are removed, now isn’t it?” asked Fenger.

  One of his assistants quietly said, “Trust us, Mr. Keane, we would know.”

  Fenger continued aloud dictating as another assistant took down his every word. “Ninety pounds, long blond hair—seemingly that of a girl’s.” He stopped to give Philo a nod. “Missing every appendage and major organ, excluding the brain. Bones show normal growth, no obvious disorders, multiple stab wounds and multiple carvings after death.”

  Alastair had indeed found his home and his bed; he calculated he had not had any sleep for thirty-six hours, and his last sleep had been disturbed at best. He showered, shaved, and went to bed, drawing the heavy burgundy curtains around his bedroom like a cloak. In the semi-dark, he struggled to find sleep, fitful of mind, feeling guilty at his humble comforts, knowing that a killing family in the manner of a coven of wolves continued to hunt its prey in Ransom’s city.

  His attempt at sleep was disturbed, jolted by his ringing phone, and he cursed his ever having got connected, as everyone called it. By the time he managed to roll over, climb from bed, and stagger to the phone near the door in the foyer, whoever was calling had given up. He imagined it to be Chief Kohler or Behan or Logan or someone else at the Des Plaines station house, but there was no telling; else it could be someone with the morgue, Christian himself, or Philo, or perhaps Jane or Gabby.

  Just as he climbed back into bed, the phone again rang. Just as he got back to the phone, it stopped ringing, but it was replaced by the tinkle of the doorbell, followed by someone’s knocking as he gathered a robe.

  When he threw the door open, it was Jane staring back at him. She rushed in and past him, going for his bedroom. She’d never been in his home before, and so it took her a moment to locate the bedroom but she did. He followed her in and found her disrobing, saying, “I want you to make love to me, Alastair.”

  Saying nothing in return, he took her in his arms, his robe coming open. She reached round him with arms extended, kissing him passionat
ely and with vigor. Between kisses, she said, “I so admire you, Alastair. I do…I do.”

  “What’s brought this on?” he asked.

  “I’ve realized what you’ve done.”

  “About what?”

  “How Gabrielle is so happy and come into her own because you encouraged her to drop out of Northwestern and work under Christian Fenger, and to pursue what she finds of true interest and fascination—postmortem work of the sort left to the coroner.”

  “I did not take those actions. She did.”

  “You saw what was in her heart, and you encouraged her, and she is the love of my life, and I’ve never seen her more inspired,” she replied. “She loves Christian and the work.”

  “He’s intentionally kept her off the Leather Apron case, you know,” he said, kissing Jane again. “Christian’s fearful of losing her.”

  “Losing her how?”

  “Should she see the worst cases before she’s been prepared, before she’s ready. Says the Vanishings case is the worst he has witnessed in all his years, and it’s disturbed him to his core.”

  “As it must anyone. Look, Gabby knows what he’s doing and why, and we’ve talked about this old-fashioned nonsense, this idea a woman doctor must be Molly-coddled.”

  “He’s only got her best interest at heart.”

  “No, he’s got his own best interest at heart!” she countered. “Gabby is a woman, and she’s my daughter, and I tell you she can handle any medical job thrown at her, including a postmortem on a child.”

  “I believe it.”

  “And Fenger’s just discovering it today.”

  “How so?”

  “She’s storming his office to tell him how she feels.”

  “Good for her.”

  “She’s stronger than any of us knew, and one day she’ll be the coroner for Chicago, and if not for Chicago then another major city.”

  “Good for her. Now kiss me again.”

  She did so. Their passion rose, and soon they were in his bed, a bed he had shared with no other woman, and Jane proved far more amorous than any woman he had ever lain with. Their lovemaking unfolded like a flower at first, growing in intensity, each lover picking up on clues from the other. Soon both aware of the other’s needs, wants, desires, and their most sensitive areas, each playing to the escaping sounds and movements of the other until a kind of orchestrated dance evolved, a dance of bodies wrapped about one another.

  Afterward, Ransom found the kind of sleep that had so long eluded him. He awoke eight hours later to find himself alone again, Jane gone, and for some moments, he wondered if it’d happened at all. An avid reader, he felt like the lead character in Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown. Had his bride been there or not? Was Jane “his” or not? Or had it all been an amazing illusion, a trick of his addled, fatigued brain…or not?

  But the confusion was settled when he smelled her presence yet in the room, along with other telling clues. The disarray of his bed for one, the tossed robe and nightshirt, not to mention his own deepest inner pleasure on reliving the moment as the odors of their lovemaking filled his nostrils.

  “We make an excellent pair,” she’d whispered in his ear, to which he scratched and replied, “And we make excellent chemistry together.”

  “Magical…electrical,” she said to this.

  He laughed. “Phrenologically phenomenal.”

  Now he heard someone coming through the door in the other room, and a peek told him she had returned with a sack filled with groceries. She went straight to the kitchen, believing him still asleep. He threw on his sleepwear and combed his thinning hair, looked critically, at himself in the mirror and wondered what Jane saw in him. He took a long moment to gauge his girth and his clumsy hands, as well as turning a jaundiced eye to every wrinkle, every smile line, every tooth in his head that remained. Then he got round to his ears, his less than penetrating eyes, his receding hair-line, and the gray, and the thinness of it all. Whatever does Jane see in me, he wondered again even as he heard the crackle and snap of bacon, the smell wafting in to “wake” him.

  Ransom and Jane spent a pleasant morning, but soon Alastair was busy pulling his team of investigators together to canvass Chicago for every hole in the city where a suspected family of cannibals might have set up shop anew, as obviously the book warehouse could no longer cloak such heinous activity. Ken Behan and Jedidiah Logan in turn called on their own network of snitches and connections with other police officers in locating the strange and deadly family. To help in the matter, Ransom had Philo Keane duplicate the photo he’d inadvertently taken—a representation of what the deadly family looked like. The number of stab wounds from different weapons was set at five, so they were looking for a family of five, all old enough to wield a knife. In the photo, the mother cradled an infant in her arms.

  Ransom took a moment to visit Christian, to confront him about the fate of Bloody Mary along with some unknown who just happened to be mistaken for Bosch.

  He caught Christian in his office. “I can’t believe you turned over a madwoman to Chapman and Kohler.”

  “Hold on! I didn’t turn the woman over to anyone.”

  “Don’t hide behind your subordinates. It doesn’t become you, Christian.”

  “Hold your voice down and think, Alastair. How long’ve you known me?”

  “I’m not sure anymore that I do know you.”

  “I had second thoughts on the whole matter,” said Christian. “Told Kohler I’m out, and he could expect no assistance from me.”

  “Are you saying—”

  “I turned over no one to appease Senator Chapman’s bloodlust. To that end, I admitted the woman to County.”

  “Then who released her to those butchers? McKinnette?”

  “I don’t know; someone who was paid well, I assume.”

  “Then you may want to find out who on your staff was bought off.”

  “I will handle it in-house.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll be back.”

  “You do that, Inspector.”

  “I will, Doctor.”

  “Where is she now? The madwoman?”

  “Damn it, man, she and Bosch’s stand-in are both dead. I do not exaggerate when calling Kohler and Chapman butchers equal to this Leather Apron team.”

  “My God.” Fenger sunk into his chair as Ransom calmed down, found a seat, and related the scene out at Chapman’s stables. Finally, Ransom asked, “Are you sure you had nothing to do with it?”

  “Absolutely, Rance!”

  “They thanked me, Christian! Kohler and Chapman actually thanked me in front of Jane for getting the woman out of the court system and into the asylum, and they even paid me for my part in it all.”

  “And you took the money?”

  “I did! I had no bloody choice. I was in no position to take the high ground. I had Jane to think of.”

  “What in the name of God were you thinking, taking Jane out there?”

  “Damn it, Christian, have you ever tried to control that woman?”

  “Yes, yes, once or twice I’ve made the attempt.”

  Ransom looked long into his friend’s eyes. He erupted in laughter over the famous doctor’s last remark. Dr. Fenger laughed now.

  People going by the office thought it odd how these two men could switch from shouting to laughter so quickly.

  Still sitting, Ransom said, “No one will miss Bloody Mary, and we may never know who the other victim was.”

  “How will you proceed? Or rather, will you proceed against Chapman, Kohler?”

  “I have no evidence beyond Jane, and I would not jeopardize her life.”

  “There is the coachman.”

  “Not bloody likely to ever see him again. He was paid well enough to be in Denver by now.”

  Inspector and surgeon sat in gloomy silence for a long moment.

  “What’ll you do now, Alastair? About the Vanishings…Leather Apron?”

  Alastair shared the plan he was putting into op
eration.

  Christian breathed deeply, giving thought to what Alastair proposed. “Have you given any thought to the tunnels below the fair?”

  “Tunnels below the fair?”

  “Talk to the architect of the fair, Daniel Hudson Burnham.”

  “I’ve read about him in the papers, yes, but—”

  “I tell you, Alastair, the workers cleared away acres ’pon acres.”

  “I realize that, but still—”

  “Land that was here is now over there, built out onto the lake even, and the fair builders wanted a lagoon, so they built a lagoon, you know. That takes a lot of subterranean work.”

  “I suppose you’re right, now that you mention it…”

  “The builders had to create some pylons for the permanent structures, and this means ever more subterranean work.” Fenger leaned in over his desk.

  “Then you’re suggesting there are networks of tunnels connecting the museums?”

  “No, I am not suggesting. I am telling you.”

  “How accessible are these passages?”

  “Given the resourcefulness of this killer or killers, I suggest they could find a way in.”

  “Where is Burnham? Where can I find him?”

  “He has a mansion on North Michigan Avenue, I believe. I’ve only met him at various affairs.”

  “He will have blueprints that’ll include these areas below the Columbian Exposition pavilions?”

  “He will know them inside and out. He is your guide, and if not, he will send you to his foreman. I suspect someone is in charge.”

  They parted in a handshake.

  “Good luck, Alastair.”

  But luck failed Ransom.

  It would not come.

  Everything that could go wrong did.

  Alastair had gone directly in search of the architect of Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, a man in global demand now, only to learn that Daniel Burnham, with his major work completed, had gotten out of town, and in fact out of the country. With the fair of fairs in its waning days, its chief architect was aboard a Cunard cruise ship bound for Europe.