Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Did Denton intend to use the weapon as a weapon or as a mere tool, as he’d calmly explained. “I raise chickens on a rooftop, and when things become particularly bleak and there’s no food, I’ll kill a chicken.”

“Using a garrote? On chickens?”

“It works wonderfully well-quick and painless. I cannot abide seeing an animal suffer.”

Griff thought, My God, if there’s any truth in it, then we have no case . Denton next quoted chapter and verse of the recently inaugurated law governing deadly intent and weapons use. If there could be shown any doubt whatsoever that Denton indeed used the garrote in the manner described, then the garrote found in his pocket-with what he claimed to be chicken blood adhering to it-was no longer a weapon but rather a tool used in a fowl business rather than a foul business, and must be treated as such. There was no science on earth that could separate and identify animal from human blood. Reasonable doubt had begun to spring up like so many freckles turning to boils.

Thus went the smoking evidence-the bloody garrote found on Waldo Denton.

A good lawyer like McCumbler would tear their case to shreds if Denton could afford him, but even with a court-appointed lawyer, the result might be the same. What did they have alongside the suspicions and assumptions held by Inspector Ransom? If asked to back Alastair Ransom a hundred percent, or if asked to swear to it in a court of law, Griff knew he’d have to do so, but that it would be at great peril to his job. However, it might never come to that. Sad as it might be, the law did not allow for tenuous connections made in the mind of a detective or policeman as evidence in a case-certainly not since Haymarket. There was a time-Alastair’s time-when a cop’s word alone could send a man to prison or to the gallows, but the “good old golden days,” as many a cop called them, were long gone by 1893.

Already the city prosecutor’s office disliked the “thinness” of the case, characterizing it as a “helluva stretch in credulity” to think that they must prosecute Denton-a mere boy without a criminal record, and without the least athletic appearance as a multiple killer. How could Denton possibly be the Phantom of the Fair? To parade Denton before the public as the infamous monster? This could turn them all into laughingstocks, God forbid! Given the lack of physical evidence, and the lack of catching the killer in the act-rather he was at tea with his supposed next victim-did not help Ransom’s cause. Still, Griffin tried as best he could to stand in for Alastair and to argue Ransom’s reasoning.

Unfortunately, by now Griff had little belief in it himself, and this likely showed as Prosecutor Hiram Kehoe had stopped at one point in his questioning of Griffin on the particulars to ask point blank, “Inspector Drimmer, are you convinced of the boy’s guilt?”

“I…I well not at first, but…”

“Go on.”

“-but Inspector Ransom has an uncanny ability at sniffing out the truth and tracking down felons-a thing proven many times over.”

“I’m not asking your opinion on Ransom. God knows we all have an opinion on Ransom. I am asking for your conviction.”

“The evidence points to Denton. He’d decoyed Inspector Ransom, you see.”

“Decoyed?” asked Kehoe.

“Ahhh…led him astray-to the lagoon in the park-while Denton went straight for the Tewes’s home.”

“Led Ransom on a wild-goose chase? That could be construed as a prank, a joke.”

“Yes, sir, but, but-”

“Was anyone in the Tewes home harmed?”

“None but Alastair, no. But you see, Inspector Ransom’s emotions…ahhh…that is, as he has affections for Dr. Tewes’s sister and daughter, and fearing for their safety, he rushed headlong-”

“Precisely…all this I’ve heard from the ladies and bystanders nearly run over by the coach you two shared!”

“Haste was of the utmost-”

“The city is having to replace a Chinaman’s hand lorry, a vegetable kiosk, and a broken axle!”

“I am sorry for all inconven-”

“I think all concur,” Kehoe stated while jotting notes in a small book he kept, “including you, from your words that Inspector Ransom acted rashly, foolishly!” He stopped to jot more notes on this. “Embarrassing not only himself but the Chicago Police Department. Being led astray on a prank amid the most horrific case the city has known…his emotions swaying in the proverbial wind…a fear gripping him-and he literally broke into the Tewes residence without a warrant, without provocation.”

Griff kept his silence.

Kehoe finished the interview, saying, “I’ll have to examine the case in light of all that Inspector Griffin has said.”

A fear gripped Drimmer now. His words, meant to uphold Ransom had somehow permutated in Kehoe’s hands, each becoming twisted around. What’ve I said? What has Kehoe heard me say? Damn it, I’d meant everything in support of Ransom. Now I’ll be leading the Ransom defense fund.

Griffin did not want to be around when Alastair Ransom learned of all this. If they allowed Waldo Denton to go merrily on his way, and should Alastair survive his wound, the operation, and recuperation to one day sit up in his hospital bed, what would the inspector’s rage do?

Cook County Hospital emergency surgery recovery room, same night

Anesthetized Alastair Ransom dreams of being under Jane Francis’s touch, once again, sitting in her curing chair below that pyramidal scaffold of “healing magnetized brass,” which she designed herself in order to maximize the magnetic power of Earth to body.

“You’re here about the case, aren’t you?” asks Jane Francis, a ghostly apparition in Dr. Tewes’s clothes.

“Brilliant deduction, Dr. Tewes,” Alastair’s dream self replies, as smug as his corporeal self, a certainty, a swagger, an arrogance that comes with confidence and skill.

“My God, Inspector, you must try to relax.” Jane Francis’s voice comes out of Tewes’s now. “Allow the magnetism of my hands and the pyramid, and the magnetic rivers of your own arteries and veins to flow freely through you.”

“I thought we’d agreed you’d call me Alastair.”

“Concentrate on what is important.” She’s in a dress now.

“I really don’t think this is going to work on me. I’m a…a…”

“Non-believer, I know. But your hat’s off now, and you’re in my hands. Relax. It won’t hurt a bit, and who knows, you might actually learn something useful.”

“Useful? About magnetic and phrenological practice?”

“God, man, relax. You’re as stiff as the walls.”

“I’d like to relax. I’d like my opium pipe!”

“Imagine you are elsewhere and not in the hands of a fraud.” She’s in her ladies’ fineries now, her petticoat and bustier. She looks to him so touchable, so like a prize.

“A detective without an imagination is as useless as a bird without wings.”

“Well, then, use it. Picture yourself in the most exotic, most pleasant place you’ve ever known.”

Under Tewes’s soothing guidance and hand, Ransom releases all his pent up anger, rage, and tension. He feels it draining from him, replaced by Jane’s touch and a calm that Alastair has not known since before Haymarket. Ransom recalls an island at the northern tip of Michigan, a place called Mackinac across from Sault Ste. Marie and Canada. He’d gone there in his youth at a time when he’d thought working with his hands a good idea; perhaps the life of a fisherman on the Great Lakes. The life of a sailor held out great romantic possibilities.

He felt the warmth of a summer rain on his body, and he looked down to find himself nude and young and virile as he was before they nearly blew his leg off with a bomb. He felt the cool green grass of this place beneath him, and the bluest blue sky and the whitest white clouds overhead, and on a distant shore, he saw people fishing and laughing and lounging, picnicking and dancing. Lots of dancing. Among the partying throng, he saw himself. As if he belonged. As if in fact he were welcome and known, and it was all right that everyone knew his name. Then she was alongside him. Jane.