Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Acting as city coroner had to take its toll on a man, reasoned Alastair as he pushed through the double doors, his cane against the stone floor along the corridor having announced him before his barging in. Ransom was so often in and out of here that few paid any special attention to him. He’d come on the occasion of every victim of the Phantom. Dr. Fenger’s medical assistants paid him no heed now, save a nod before going back to their various tasks.

“I thought I’d find Dr. Fenger here,” he said to the room.

“He’s had to see to Dr. Tewes,” replied one of the men, his once white apron a rainbow of florid and dull colors.

“Tewes? Tewes was here?”

“They carried him out on a gurney,” explained the man.

“Fell out like a girl when he looked at the Chapman child’s corpse; the mutilation was that horrid.”

“The child…her body.”

“Have you come for a look yourself?” came the obvious question.

“I have, but what bloody business has Tewes in all this? Damn him!”

“I suspect he’s just out to make a name for himself,” came the reply as the attendant wheeled a death gurney before Alastair.

“Oh, he’ll be talked about in the pubs tonight, he will,” chimed in the other man from behind his mask. “How he fell out.”

“Morgan, it’s a normal reaction for most people!” shouted the first attendant. “Not everyone’s got the constitution of a knacker.” He then casually pulled away the sheet that had covered a misshapen lump of flesh beneath.

Alastair audibly gasped. Only the long flowing curling red tresses of her hair looked human. He had now laid eyes on every conceivable horror done a human being. Beheadings of the Phantom did not compare; fire victims did not compare. Nothing in all his career had prepared him for this. “It’s…are you sure it’s human?” he asked.

“Dr. Fenger and a team of us have determined not only is it human but that it is Senator Chapman’s missing grandchild.”

“There’s no face left. No nose…ears…not even eyes.”

“Nor cheek, nor forehead.”

The birthmark alone they had said in Kohler’s office. Ransom saw that whole chunks of flesh had been carved away. It brought to mind an evening at Berghoff’s where the chef stood behind his roast or ham and carved off slices for your plate.

“Cover it…cover it now!” Alastair raced from the room.

Behind him, he heard the man called Morgan snicker and say, “And him the man of the hour.”

“Shut up, Morgan,” said the other.

Alastair went searching the building for Fenger and Jane Francis, who had said she would end Dr. Tewes’s career in Chicago, and now this. She had come as Tewes to view the remains of the Chapman girl. Whatever possessed her to do so?

He went for Christian’s surgery. From there he went to the surgeon’s office, and here he cornered him. “I understand you allowed Jane in to see that awful mess your men are trying to put back together again.”

The senator’s already held a wake without a body; they-he-wants the funeral to come off tonight and the coffin into hallowed ground at the family’s church tomorrow.”

“Look, it’s awful, the whole thing, but Christian, how did you get sucked into this business of accepting money from Chapman for your services? Think what might happen if it got out?”

“I have gambling debts about to eat me alive, Alastair, and…besides, we need a lot of things here at the hospital, and he mentioned a wing in her name.”

“The Anne Chapman wing, heh?”

“Why not?”

“And a trust or a charitable fund set up?”

“Precisely.”

“One that you alone will control?”

“Someone must administer the-” he paused, seeing Ransom’s smirk. “Look, here! Someone’s going to do it, so why shouldn’t those funds come to Rush Medical and Cook County?”

“ Ahhh …it comes down to your age-old rivalry with Northwestern, does it?”

“Regardless, Rance, why shouldn’t something good come of this horror? Why shouldn’t decent people benefit in some manner if we do our jobs right?”

“You have no qualms about it in the least?”

“None! Did you see that child’s body?” Christian’s eyes and jaw were firmly set. “What I’d give for a retirement home and a volume of Kipling right now.”

“Christian, when it comes time for us to deliver up this obvious lunatic to Senator Chapman, are you sure you’ll have the stomach for it?”

“I’ll happily light the fire that’ll boil him alive, yes.”

“And Jane-acting as Tewes again? Was that her idea or yours, coming down here to see this atrocity? Have you cut her in on the deal?”

“She has street contacts I don’t have, contacts you should be cultivating right now instead of harassing me.”

“Damn…then you did call her here.”

“I told her the circumstances of the case, and I am asking her to do a…a psychological mock-up of what kind of mind could concoct such a fate for a child. Don’t for a moment think this is the last of the Vanishings.”

“I see…so you are just playing ‘Catcher in the Rye’ to save the future children from harm’s way.”

“Don’t try to get all moral with me, Alastair. Not you!”

“Next you’ll be marching out the bagpipes and singing verses from Robbie Burns, heh?”

“Bull! I know you too well for this, Rance.”

“Or perhaps Kipling. Do a bit of flag-waving, trumpets, drums, all that?”

“You forget, I did the autopsy on what was left of Anne Chapman.”

This stopped Ransom’s joking, and he nodded to his old friend. “I know that must’ve been…must’ve been hell.” Then he repeated, “I saw her remains just now.”

“Butcher is too kind a word for this madman, but, Alastair, there is something else…something I have to share with you.”

“What is it?”

“At the nape of the neck, right here,” he indicated on himself, his hand going to the base of his neck at the back. “Where the vertebra meet the skull.”

“Spit it out, man.”

“She was kept for some time on a hook, dangling like…like a carcass, and there is some justification in believing…God…hard to even voice it.”

“Say it, Doctor.”

“The missing portions of her-cheeks, torso, appendages.”

“Yes, yes?”

“They were taken from her over time.”

“Over time?”

“This was not a single sit down.”

“Whataya saying that-”

“Not a single one-time carving.”

“Jesus-”

“Mary-”

“-and Joseph. These victims were carved on multiple times at different sittings?”

“Proven by each wound carefully examined. Each carving displays a different time frame.”

“My God. You’re saying she was spiked on a nail or a hook in some godforsaken place and carved on like a leg of lamb.”

“Multiple blades used on her as well. Some well after death set in, obviously. Merciful shock will have killed her before the fiend or fiends could make that many stabs and slashes.”

“Does Kohler know all this?”

“He does.”

“And he informed Chapman of this?”

“He did, against my better judgment. I had to tell someone, and you weren’t here. I could not keep absolutely silent on the matter.”

“So you share with Kohler? And then Kohler rushes off to inform Chapman of these awful details better kept in-house to begin with? That’s not standard procedure, Christian, and you know it.”

“I agree but there’s no fetching it back now.”

Alastair shook his head in disdain. “This is what sent the senator over the edge, correct?”

“Afraid so.”

“And now we’re having to deal with-or deal in -an insane wealthy senator…and there’s a fortune to be had. We could likely name our price, heh?”