Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

The word went out and they found Ransom at Philo’s where he was enjoying a brandy, a cigar, and Beethoven on Philo’s phonograph. Philo was talking about a series of photos he’d begun taking of ordinary homeless people all across the city. Ransom was hardly hearing this, but Philo had grown animated and spoke of the possibilities of a montage of such photos, if only he could find a venue for them. He was saying that perhaps if he worked on whatever small conscience Thom Carmichael had left, that perhaps with Thom’s help, he could get the photos placed in the Herald as a poignant exposé, as he called it. “Certainly could use the money.”

“When couldn’t you use extra green, Philo?”

“But, Rance, it’s more than about the money this time.”

Ransom didn’t take this too seriously, and so he grunted at all the appropriate moments, but he really just wanted to drink and hear the music. Then when Philo insisted he listen and Philo repeated that it wasn’t a job for money, Alastair capitulated. “All right, all right. Never known you to minimize the monetary aspects of a job, that’s all.”

But this peaceful time was interrupted when a messenger-a junior officer in uniform and a friend, Mike O’Malley, knocked, knowing he could find Alastair here. O’Malley had bad news to impart.

“Another child found dead?”

“Dead and butchered…like a bloody knacker got at her.”

“Another girl?”

“Aye.”

Philo joined Alastair, grabbing his Night Hawk for photos, and as an afterthought, he slipped a single photo into his breast pocket. Alastair saw this but said nothing. They had then rushed to the scene, as Mike had wisely commandeered transportation for them. Along the way, Philo recalled how Alastair had returned his Night Hawk, evidence of their friendship. Now the two friends traversed the city and soon stood staring over the carnage.

Ransom’s knee-jerk reaction on seeing the dead child was to say, “She’s a local girl.”

“How can you know that?” asked Dr. Tewes, who had arrived on scene after Ransom and Philo. They had sent for Dr. Fenger to come as well to preside over the newly discovered remains; Tewes had come along with Dr. Fenger, apparently with him, when he had learned of the most recent find.

“Her clothing,” Alastair replied to Jane dressed as Tewes.

“You mean the tatters hanging on her?”

“Yeah…what’s left of the blue dress with the yellow buttons. She was wearing that when she vanished. It’s in the missing-persons file.”

“Expensive clothes for a young woman not yet out of her teens.”

“All from Fields, including her shoes,” added Alastair. “Besides, I have seen her on her rounds. She works and lives somewhere in my area, or did.”

“She worked? At her age?”

“Don’t be naive. Half the children in the city work.”

“How can you be sure it’s her? You can’t possibly make out her features.”

“What features?” asked Philo, snapping off another shot with his Night Hawk. “But Alastair is correct. It’s Alice Cadin, all right.”

“It’s her, Cadin, Alice Cadin,” Ransom repeated the name in a tone of eulogy.

Philo then pulled forth a photograph of the girl from his breast pocket. Fenger and Tewes studied the girl in the blue frock with yellow flowers. “I’d asked the family for it. Made duplicates. Takes good professional equipment, but I photographed the photograph, you see, since they had no negatives, and it worked fairly well. I mean from a professional point of view it is appalling and it’s technically-”

“Shut up, Philo,” Ransom put in.

“Did what I could.”

“Don’t be modest, Philo,” said Alastair, who then spoke to Jane and Christian. “He spread the photo to every police district, every station house.”

“She’d gone missing for over a week.” Christian measured the depth of a wound over the heart as he spoke. “Others’ve gone missing as well.

Philo said, “Alice was a hard worker, her parents told me. She wasn’t homeless, but she loved the lakefront and the park. The last time they saw her, she’d gone off with friends to the park. Darkness came on, and she didn’t come home. They never saw her again.”

“What of the friends she went off with?”

“They left her on the path for home, or so they tell it.”

“Still…given the disfigurement, how can you be sure?” asked Tewes.

“The blond hair,” Ransom replied.

“The flowered blue dress,” Philo repeated. “The yellow buttons, the shoes.”

“It all fits, down to her size,” added Ransom.

“Now I must inform the parents.” Fenger kept his steady hands at work over the corpse.

Philo, over his initial shock, continued taking photos from every angle.

Alastair stood looking out over the Chicago River, the killer’s dumping ground of choice, pacing in a small circle with his cane, favoring a backache. He smelled Tewes’s cologne behind him. “Drops them in the water like so much trash, the bastard.”

“Why not?” she asked, equally angry. “The river’s still seen as the city toilet. Everyone disregarding the law and health issues as if they mean nothing. So what might you expect from a child killer?”

“Turns my stomach what’s happening.”

“We’re going to catch this monster, Alastair.”

“We? Tell me, Dr. Tewes, by what magic do you propose to help this investigation? How do you propose to tell us what is in the mind of a man who would do this to a child-repeatedly so? Will your mind-reading, your phrenology, get us into his bloody mind?” Ransom’s voice had raised more than he’d wanted, and everyone else looked to the pair only momentarily, realizing some things never changed. It was obvious to all that Ransom did not want Dr. Tewes anywhere near his case.

“How will I get into this madman’s mind and help your investigation?” asked Jane as Tewes. “By the clues he leaves.”

“There are none.”

“Wrong,” Jane countered.

“How so?”

“He is leaving observable patterns.”

“All I observe is his butchery.”

“Even his cuts have left patterns, Ransom.”

“Whataya mean?”

“I’ve looked over the autopsies and either this fiend is ambidextrous and slashes and carves with both hands, or there are two of them cutting away at the body, if not more.”

“You can tell that?”

“Christian will verify it; it was his discovery, but I agree.”

Ransom sighed heavily and shook his head and looked out over the city from this perspective, a nearby garbage heap acting as a city for rats.

“Alastair, I am working closely with Christian, and we are prepared to make certain assumptions about the killer based on the very tools he uses and the cuts he has taken out of these…these poor children.”

“Indeed. And how is that progressing? Are you sharing, or is this all for Senator Chapman’s benefit?”

“Chapman? He’s got nothing to do with our teaming up, if that’s what you mean. Look, Alastair, there’ve been several different blades identified by Fenger and myself.”

“Several different blades?”

“And all have varying sizes and lengths. One is more or less a cleaver. Others are smaller blades. One or two have definite large hilts that have left patterns against the skin, meaning some of the stab wounds were so furious as to drive the weapon to the hilt, fracturing bone beneath.”

“This can all be deduced by measurement, I understand, but what does it say about the kind of mental state that can do this kind of turkey carving on children?”

“After the initial attack, the deep tissue stab wounds, Ransom, every cut is meticulous, thought out…and it may have-that is each cut may have some sort of ritualistic purpose or meaning for the killer.”