Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“Zoroaster is a deity, Alastair, one that Audra believes is running loose and unchecked here in Chicago, at work and behind the Vanishings-telling other individuals, according to Audra, to bring him sacrifices. She also says some strange old sick-in-the-head bird named Bloody Mary procures for Zoroaster.”

“Oh, great…our killer is a deity, a supernatural being who talks to that old crone, Bloody Mary.”

“You know her?” Jane’s look was incredulity at its zenith.

“Not a cop in Chicago doesn’t know Bloody Mary or has arrested her at one time or another. Frankly, Jane, this doesn’t feel like a useful lead. More like a frightened girl’s tale.”

“Then you know where to find this so-called Bloody Mary, but you’re not going to look into this allegation that she is somehow connected to the Vanishings?” asked Jane.

“Why not at least pick her up for questioning!” said an excited Gabby.

Alastair took Jane into the hallway and whispered, “Look, the old bat is out of her head. A complete loon. From day to day, she doesn’t even know who she is, but I’ve known her for years. Can find her almost any night in the drunk tank.”

“Perhaps she has graduated to more serious crime than public intoxication.”

“No…no…you amateur detectives…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I think this is a dead end.”

“No! Don’t shut down on this just yet. Hear the girl out.”

“Bloody Mary’s a vagrant, a regular at the station house.”

“And like the Phantom has remained invisible until you opened your eyes to him and proved him a fiend.”

“Bloody Mary is hardly invisible. She’s a public nuisance and a beggar.”

“But she sounds like she has the habits of a weasel.”

“More like a rat and smells it. Lice ridden…nobody wants to go near her.”

“Just hear the girl out, Alastair.”

“OK…OK…”

They returned to join Gabby and Audra. Gabby was in midsentence, “And besides, I did some research and Zoroaster is not all bad; in fact, he’s a she and she’s a he, Mother. Ironic, huh?”

“Whatever do you mean?” asked Jane, blinking.

“Zoroaster is both good and evil. I showed Audra where it says so in my book on mythology, and she’s accepting us as all from the good Zoroaster.”

“Sounds promising,” replied Alastair. “Now listen, little girl,” he said, “I have arrested this Bloody Mary on occasion, so don’t go suspecting she’s anything but human, and if she is in any way involved in carving up little kids, she will pay dearly once I have her in my jail again.” He displayed his enormous handcuffs. “So stop your worrying. Just tell me what you’ve seen.”

She looked, big-eyed, all about the room, from face to face, still reluctant to speak. Gabby tried to dispel the tension with a joke. “If you at any time feel it necessary, you can always shoot Inspector Ransom.”

Jane and Ransom both glared at Gabrielle, who instantly gasped, realizing what she’d said was not at all funny as she’d intended. “I didn’t really mean…I mean…no Audra, there’s no shooting the inspector.”

Ransom pulled forth a photo of Anne Chapman in her yellow print dress. “Look, child, did you ever see Anne Chapman-this girl”-he put the photo in her hand-“with Bloody Mary?”

“ Ahhh …no, I didn’t but-”

Already skeptical of learning anything from the child, Alastair placed another photo and another and another before her. All the remaining victims, some still missing. “Have you ever seen Bloody Mary kicking about with any of these children?”

“They aren’t street kids like me. They all had homes.”

“I am aware of that, but did you or didn’t you see them with Bloody Mary?”

Like a little one-man judge and jury, Audra looked from the photos and up at Alastair, sizing him up, reevaluating him. “I think I ought to take you to my king,” she blurted out.

“Your king?”

“Yes, Robin. He’ll tell you; they’ll all tell you who the killer is, that it’s Bloody Mary and no one else.”

“The same old beggar lady who sells stolen stuff from windowsills and clotheslines?” asked Ransom.

“That’s her, all right. But her real job is butchering children like me.”

“And you say you can back this up with others like this Robin fellow’s testimony?”

“The whole lot of us know it’s her. She’s been after us for months.”

“Well, then, Audra, dear,” came Jane’s soothing voice, “why don’t you take us to your king and his court?”

“They’ll beat me if they don’t go for it, they will…but I told King Robin that we gotta trust somebody, and when Miss Jane was so kind to me…I began to tell. Trouble is…if you tell everything, the demons-the bad Zoroaster’s people-they’ll kill you for it.”

“She told me the demons don’t want adults to know they’re here,” Gabby added.

Audra clutched her doll tighter. “Zoroasters’re afraid of adults.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“Be-because until adults see them, they stay, like, invisible.”

Alastair sat on the edge of his chair at this last remark, so prophetic. It was almost word for word what he had said of Leather Apron and the Phantom. So long as they went unseen even in plain sight, they remained powerful and capable of what seemed damn near supernatural.

“Tomorrow, will you take me to this king of yours, Audra?” said Alastair.

Secretly, Alastair believed it a wild goose chase, and he expected this would be a monumental waste of time, but it would score points with Jane and with Gabby, he supposed. At the very least, he hoped to make more recruits of the homeless children, convert them into that many more eyes and ears for the police. But they’d have to give him a great deal more than the tattered old, addle-brained, lice-infested Bloody Mary to interest him.

The following day

Below the train viaduct at Ravenswood and Ogden, the Southside of Chicago, as far from the gaiety of the White City as one could be, a ragtag king and court looked Gabby, Jane, and Alastair up and down, some making jokes, some making threats, one lifting Gabby’s skirt with a crooked cane his scepter-and all of them painted with the dirt of Chicago back alleys. The tall, gaunt one with the wooden-crutch scepter was Robin the King, their avowed and respected leader. King Robin of Nightmare Alley, it would seem.

Robin glared at Audra while he spoke to the strangers in their midst, coolly saying, “What business ’ave you here, you pretty people?” He let Gabby’s skirt fall into place, sat on a rickety orange crate, and raised his scepter overhead.

One shorter and dirtier boy, calling himself Noel, seemed fearless. “See that green sign over there?”

“Yes,” replied Jane, following the pointed finger. “It’s a little hard to miss.”

“Angels love the color green, ’specially dark-as-grass green.”

“And why do you suppose?” she asked Noel.

“It’s the best color.”

“Shut up, all of you!” ordered Robin, oldest in the family.

“No, blue is,” countered a smaller girl. “Blue’s the color of the Lady of the Lake.”

Another said, “After night falls on the city is when the angels come out and argue the prettiest color.”

“A-a-angels come out?” asked Gabby.

“En masse.”

“To-to make war on the red armies, not to fuss over colors,” said another girl.

“Red armies?” Alastair’s tone reeked of skepticism.

“Armies of the devil Zoroaster,” explained Noel.

King Robin tempered the others like a storyteller whose audience has gotten away from him. “But sometimes the angels just come out to play.”