Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “A gift he gave himself,” said his butler.

  Ransom had to speak to others less knowledgeable about how the fair was built over the lake and what blueprints might exist. He wound up at the Cook County Building Inspector’s Office, where they had no record of anything beyond the buildings at the fair, nothing whatsoever of a network of tunnels below the fair. He then tried the Chicago Public Library on Michigan Avenue, researching Burnham’s baby, again without discovery.

  Alastair was told by more than one official that it was not unusual for final “specs” and blueprints to be turned over years after the fact, and that there had been so many new buildings going up this year that what he sought might well be somewhere in-house but below a stack in someone’s office.

  For hours, he got the runaround.

  During the day, he’d contacted Jane and Gabby by phone, insisting that if either heard anything from Audra, that he wanted to see her and talk to her. He did not go into why he wanted to talk to Audra.

  He secretly wondered if Audra knew about the tunnels; if indeed, she knew every inch of the tunnels. He wondered if Audra was one of them—one of the Leather Apron gang. A child cannibal. Daughter trained to it. Sister who shared in the spoils—human spoils. The girl in the family photo, her hair matted and dirty, had been obscured, her face buried in a mother’s apron. But she could be taken for Audra.

  As night moved over Chicago with darkening clouds and a threat of storm, Alastair missed Bosch; he needed the little gimp to run down leads. Who had Ransom left to draw on? Samuel, but Sam had disappeared, likely terrified at what he and Ransom had discovered at the warehouse.

  Reports from Behan and Logan turned up nothing new. Once again they stood at a dead end. The tunnels mentioned by Christian Fenger seemed the only avenue left. He debriefed the other two detectives on the possibility that the Leather Apron monsters might well be hiding out below the fair.

  The three inspectors, Logan, Behan, and Ransom now took a cab to the Science and Industry exhibit, a centrally located permanent structure at the fair. They arrived at an hour when this enormous Greek-styled building was closing for the evening. Displaying their badges, the three Chicago plainclothes cops fanned out, each following a separate guide who took the detectives to separate areas of the sub-basement, each area cut off from the other at the point of entry.

  Each inspector was on his own.

  They had discussed bringing in whole search parties of uniformed police, but in the end, realizing that their plan was based entirely on smoke, they talked one another into doing the manly thing until which time as they actually turned up evidence that the Leather Apron family had in fact taken up residence here.

  “For all we know, it’s got too hot for ’em, and so they mighta moved on,” suggested Ken Behan.

  “They’re homeless and without resources,” Alastair replied to Ken.

  “If they did shove off,” replied Logan, “they did so afoot or by jumping onto a freight car.”

  Alastair had passed through marvels of modern technology, exhibits showcasing such amazing inventions as the steam engine and the McCormick Reaper, machines that revolutionized production and agriculture.

  The guard who had ushered Ransom to his point of departure was given strict orders that if he did not return to this door within twenty minutes, he was to alert police and organize a search party—ostensibly for Alastair or his dead body. Behan and Logan made the same demand of their guides.

  Most definitely, Christian Fenger knew what he’d been talking about. Before Alastair lay a fluctuating chasm of darkness, a tunnel that seemingly led to Hades itself. It was at once in stark contrast to the brightly lit exhibits upstairs and in consort with them, for huge steam-driven machines had created these tunnels. “And you say it goes from here to the Natural History exhibit building?”

  “It does, sir.”

  Working with the wick, his cane dangling on his forearm, Alastair lit the lantern he’d brought with him. It had a several-hour’s-long wick and reservoir. Immediately on lighting the lamp, the odor of kerosene filled the small space here as light flooded the tunnel ahead of him.

  “Nothing like announcing yourself,” he muttered to the museum guard.

  “Are you sure you want to make this trek alone, sir?”

  “Why?” he asked. “Is there something in there to fear? What do you know of it, man?”

  “I’ve not seen anything, no! But I’ve heard noises on occasion, noises I’ve taken for rats.”

  “Rats? Why’d it have to be rats. I hate rats, but tell me, how can rats’ve gotten down in here?”

  “There are vents, and where there are vents—”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “One purpose of the tunnels is to take runoff as well.”

  “Runoff?”

  “Water from the lake during bad weather, sir, so that any overflow is run away from the Midway and the pavilions.”

  “Aye…so no one at the fair should be inconvenienced. Wouldn’t want anyone getting her Buster Browns wet.”

  “It’s a complicated system, but it has to do with the creation of the lagoon.”

  “Of course, of course.” Alastair again cursed the fact that the man most knowledgeable in all this was out of the country. He’d even tried to locate the man’s assistant on the project and his foreman, but not too surprising everyone “responsible” for the fair had abandoned the city for some peace.

  In a month or two, the fair would be shut down permanently.

  “You will be careful, Inspector, as there is a storm brewing overhead,” said the guard when they both heard rumblings of thunder.

  “Who mans the gates on the locks controlling the water?” asked Ransom. “I certainly have no desire to drown down here.”

  “Actually, sir, no one mans the gates.”

  “What do you mean, no one—”

  “The marvels of modern technology at work, sir.”

  “You mean, they open automatically when the lake rises to a certain level?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “I see.” Ransom sighed heavily, turned and started down the tunnel he had chosen, the largest of the three, wondering if Behan and Logan were as well informed as he, and wondering if both or either would balk at this game when faced with the enormity of it all. “Look, those vents, are they large enough for a full-grown man to clamber down into?” he asked the guard where he turned for a final look out into the safe confines of the sub-basement.

  “They are indeed, but wire mesh prevents—”

  “And are there such vents in all three networks?”

  “There are, sir.”

  “I see, then there well could be people living down here.”

  “If so, their eyes will have adjusted to the lack of light.” The guard indicated the police lamp in Ransom’s hand. “They’ll know you’re approaching well in advance.”

  He cut down the intensity of the lamp by controlling the window. “I’ll not stumble about in pitch dark,” he said and ambled down the subterranean corridor with its wet, earthen walls lathered as if sweating, breathing, reflecting the light. Ransom thought it looked like a lot of his nightmares, like he’d stepped into the maw of Hell itself. The floor here added to his disorientation as it was on a gradual incline that increased with each step.

  The reflected lamplight off the stone floor glowed copper red and blood orange. Perhaps I am on the path to Hell, he thought.

  Not far from Alastair another tunnel wall radiated off in another direction and in it Jedidiah Logan slowly descended. He too had heard the rumblings of an imminent storm out in the world overhead, as it reverberated underground, making him feel as if he were inside a drum or a human heart when his police lamp turned the walls a garish purple-red hue. Silly, he told himself. Steady.

  For a long stretch of his search, his light held before him, Logan thought of how little he had upstairs in the world both at the office and at home. He felt an overwhelming loneliness creeping in w
ith the dampness here, and he wondered if he were to die tonight, if anyone in Chicago would care, and further if anyone at all would recall his name or his face.

  He’d had poor luck all his life with making friends of a lasting nature, especially with women. Yes, he was married but theirs was a childless marriage and a loveless one at that. He and Molly simply tolerated one another’s existence in the cramped quarters of their small apartment. She took in washing, and he brought home a cop’s salary. Not much to show for a life, he was thinking; then he thought how she’d give him hell if he came home with muck and grime on his pants or coat, and here he was faced with wading in brackish water that looked only deeper ahead. He saw no way around it, if he were to do a thorough job here. Else he could lie to Alastair and tell him he’d done the job, but Ransom was observant; he’d notice if he returned too clean. Molly be damned, he told himself and started into the ankle deep water, black and shiny as oil against his lamplight.

  Two steps farther and he could not understand how the water had seeped through his shirt and coat at his abdomen. Out of nowhere came a thick wetness smelling of acrid copper, and it struck him that his stomach was in pain, aching.

  His legs still continued ahead, but he felt a sudden faintness. At first, he thought it some sort of annoying stomach problem, but the immediate wetness, like pissing himself on a drunk, struck him as so odd as this was at his abdomen, while the wetness only increased. Trouble like a rupture. He held tight to the lantern like a lifeline with his right hand, while his left investigated the cause of the wetness. His left hand hit the strange hilt of a knife sticking from his gut, and this came as a surprise, like finding something completely out of place. He’d not heard it fly into him; he had not felt it slice through his coat, and a part of his mind refused to believe it’d happened.

  It makes no sense, and yet it made all the sense, he thought, not realizing he’d gone to his knees, his legs having buckled.

  Still Jedidiah held firm to the lantern. In fact, some mad notion inside his dying brain had his hands tearing at the lantern, ripping apart its metal casing to get at the kerosene screw nut, tear it open and with the flame taking on the fumes and kerosene licking the surface of the water around him, Logan covered himself in fire, choosing his death by fire, refusing to allow the dirty bastard who’d knifed him the pleasure of saying his blade had killed Jedidiah Logan.

  Logan began screaming this but it was unintelligible by now, his clothing and body covered in licking flames. His burning form created a ball of light and fire that illuminated the grime-covered faces of his killers. Five pairs of eyes watched his body finally fall facedown, snuffing the flames in his fall. The broken lantern had wheeled away and once more the corridor was thrown into darkness.

  Amid the pitch black crept people wading through the water toward Logan’s body. The man who had wielded the knife, followed by a woman in rags, and she followed by three voracious children of varying ages. The woman and her children attacked Logan’s remains, taking whatever clothing and jewelry that might be useful, ripping away burnt and useless clothing, finally getting down to the bare back and gleefully, as in a ritual of pleasure, all of them began stabbing repeatedly.

  With Logan beyond dead, and with the initial excitement of the kill over, the cannibals began cutting away fleshy portions of Jedidiah Logan’s corpse. Logan was the largest prey the family had ever brought down…so far.

  Inspector Ken Behan had not gotten sixty yards down his tunnel when he decided to hell with it, that he was going no farther until he could bring a small army of men with him, and that what Alastair and Logan had decided with little to no input from him was in effect madness. Besides, he thought he’d heard something vibrating through the walls of his tunnel, sounds like those of a man crying out in pain.

  In his head, he tried to understand how so muffled a sound could reverberate through rock walls here in the curiously damp, black hole he stood in. The damn lantern he had was threatening to go out as well. Some kind of malfunction. This alone seemed good enough excuse to return to the museum, and why not?

  Behan thought of his wife and kids; imagined what their lives would be without him. He started back for the light at the end of the tunnel, the one that marked his entry.

  As he neared the place where he had begun, he saw the guard looking down the corridor at him, and it made him feel as if he were in an endless, bottomless shaft that could turn into a labyrinth inside of which, if a man became lost, he might never surface. He panicked for a moment, thinking, what if the guard, for whatever reason, is going to close and lock that door against me?

  He felt a clinging, clawing feeling in his chest, and his skin began to prickle, and his head felt fuzzy—dizzy as a midnight drunk, as if he might faint. What if I were to faint here? Wake up with five beasties chomping away at my flesh?

  “Let me the hell outta here!” he shouted now, running back toward the door and the guard, not caring if the museum man called him a coward or not.

  Behan found himself rushing, tripping headlong down the shaft the way he’d come. The odor of sewage, earth, and mold still dizzying, filling his nostrils and brain, Behan fell headfirst into the light the other side of the door.

  “Are you all right?” asked his guide, helping him to his feet.

  “I…I must have a condition.”

  “Yes, and you left the lamp down in there. Shall I fetch it, Inspector?”

  “You do that. I’m going for men and dogs.”

  “Whatever did you see, sir?”

  “I…I’m not sure but there was movement, and I heard strange noises. Someone is down in there and it could be—”

  “Not Leather Apron? Really?”

  “We need a thorough search with a lot more men.”

  “Aye…if that is the rascal that you fellows are after, I agree one hundred percent.”

  “What about the lantern?” asked Behan, indicating the light some forty or so yards in.

  “It’s not my lantern,” said the guard.

  “Shut it up and lock the door, then,” replied Behan, getting to his feet and going for the stairwell, shaken and wondering how his best friend, Logan, might be faring about now, and wondering too about Alastair Ransom’s progress.

  Alastair also heard the strange noise that Behan hadn’t been able to decipher. Neither man could know it’d been the death throes of Jedidiah Logan, but Ransom’s instincts were sharp enough to insist that he douse his light when he’d heard the bizarre sounds that had lazily wafted down the corridor toward him. He doused the light by dropping the door that acted as a gauge, allowing air into the glass and metal casing of the handheld lantern, a Chicago Police issue and regardless of its clumsiness, a wonderful improvement on earlier cop lights.

  Now Alastair stood in near absolute darkness, but somewhere in the distance ahead of him, he saw some small light source. He imagined it one of the vents mentioned by the guard. How long ago had he had that conversation? A few minutes before? It felt like a week.

  He checked his pocket watch to note how much time had elapsed, but even before popping the cover, he realized he’d not be able to read it in this blackness. So he moved on toward the light source ahead.

  Ransom felt his way along, hand over hand, following the earthen walls that’d been cut out by men and machines. As a result, his hands became dirty and cold, but there was no help for it—except his cane. He began using his cane to tap his way along the side wall. Between his cane and the lantern, which he most certainly would need coming back, he realized his hands were literally full. If he must pull his gun at any time, he’d have to drop either the cane or the lantern, and he loved his cane.

  These thoughts filled his mind as he continued down the now too quiet passage. If there were rats down here, why hadn’t he heard rodent sounds? Not so much as a rodent peep—only that odd, all-too-human cry he’d earlier heard. He’d also heard muffled laughter and shouting that seemed to be filtering in from above at the fair, crowded to capaci
ty.

  The absence of a large rat population meant one of three things. The guard had exaggerated? The rats had run ahead of Ransom? Or had the rats run ahead of others lurking here?

  Perhaps the most deadly animal scurrying about here was man and woman, and children born of them.

  Another hundred yards and he found the source of weak light. Indeed a vent built into the wall on lakeside. He peered out through the mechanism to see only grim darkness outside, roiling, angry clouds out over the lake. The vent was a concrete bowl meant to fill up and spill into the tunnel should the lake rise over its banks, and indeed a metal mesh cover had been ripped away by human hands. Pranksters or monsters, he wondered, sizing up the vandalism. Getting out this way, especially with water rushing in, appeared unlikely and at best a difficult battle. He imagined a series of such vents filled to the brim could create a drowning pool where he stood.

  A strange noise commanded his attention, and he wheeled, his wolf’s-head cane raised to strike out at a rat scurrying toward him. The creature barely acknowledged him as a threat and moved to the grillwork and climbed out into the world.

  “Smart fellow…knows when to walk away,” Alastair said of the rat as his tail disappeared over the lip of the vent. “Perhaps smarter than I.”

  Cook County Morgue same time

  “Where is he, Christian?” Jane had come to Cook County in a state of terror. She had not seen Alastair the entire day, and she sensed he was in trouble. Her daughter Gabrielle was with Dr. Fenger, the two of them doing an autopsy on an unidentified body found in the river. Fenger was determined to create as complete a description of the unknown victim as possible, regardless of the likelihood of the John Doe going off to Chicago’s potter’s field to be buried at city expense. Christian remained determined to keep Gabby Tewes away from the Leather Apron victims, and to do so, he kept her busy with more run-of-the-mill autopsies such as this.