Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

The following day

A phone call awakened Alastair after a long night of drinking and swapping stories with others on the police force and a few hangers-on at Muldoon’s where Ransom held court at his back booth. Alastair had decided to take Muldoon up on his “generous” offer. After all, there was nothing in Chicago that was not for sale, not even a man’s reputation. Part of his decision had to do with his having had no effect on changing Jane’s decision to continue to work as Dr. Tewes and to her having added séances to the doctor’s repertoire of diagnostic tools. If a highly educated surgeon could behave in such a manner, then why not a Chicago police inspector-if it were for a good and righteous cause? Why not bank on his infamy and reputation if it was for another means to an end-a way to help kids like Audra, Sam, and countless others? But no one must know.

As a result, people had bought him beer and whiskey shots all night. As added result, this a.m. ringing phone sounded like a fire alarm in his head. He rolled from bed and had to cross the room and go out into the front room to get the phone. It felt like a journey to India by foot.

Each time the phone rang, his headache throbbed at a lower decimal. He finally clutched the receiver in his paw and growled, “What is it?”

Alastair was stunned at what Inspector Logan conveyed. He’d hoped with the news of Thomas Crutcheon’s death by pitchfork that the Leather Apron killings had ended. Even if Crutcheon wasn’t the butcher, Ransom hoped the killer would take this opportunity to become “Crutcheon” to end his murderous attacks. Not so, as Logan related the fact of another child’s body turning up. This time in an alleyway back of Loomis and Jackson, an area infested with tinderbox clapboard one-room shacks in which whole families lived atop one another. The entire area was slated for clearing and rebuilding-a thing they called beautifying in political speeches and in higher circles.

“I’m on my way.”

“Sorry to bring such news, Alastair, but there it is. I’ve sent a police wagon for you.”

“Well done, Logan. I’ll be as quick as I can be.”

Alastair drank down a concoction of juices and whiskey to fight the hangover, swallowed some pills that Jane’d prescribed for headache, and dressed at once. He was soon going across the city in an official horse-drawn police carriage. When he arrived at the scene, a large, ugly crowd had already gathered. A threatening atmosphere was evident, palpable. The police proved an easy target to the people’s collective fear and frustration.

Alastair waved his cane and shouted over the jeers, “What’ve ya in mind here, people? Are you going to hang me to a tree and burn me in effigy?”

“Not you, Ransom!” shouted one.

“Hang ’em all!” shouted another.

“Do you have enough fellas to lift me?” replied Alastair, drawing a laugh and defusing the anger somewhat. “And can you afford enough petro to burn me?” His last words sent up more laughter among the crowd.

Logan and Behan signaled for him to join them. Alastair had to pick his way through the overbearing crowd. More uniformed cops arrived to hold the concerned neighbors at bay so that the inspectors could do their job.

Alastair also had to pick his way through a minefield of discarded trash, bottles, castoff bedsprings, mattresses, boards, and scattered debris. Among all the trash one child’s body, whole strips of flesh torn away from the fleshiest sections. Nude, the child had gone an ashen bluish color under the elements.

“Despite the butchering, Rance,” began a jittery Behan, “the bastard who did this left her face pretty much intact and didn’t take the eyes this time. Not sure why….”

Logan added, “She’s not been dead so long as the others, Alastair.”

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Dr. Fenger’s come and gone, leaving his opinion,” added Logan, a cigar hanging from his mouth. Using the cigar to point, he indicated the meat wagon and Dr. Fenger’s body snatchers, as some called Shanks and Gwinn. Ransom openly gritted his teeth at the two death mongers. While they filled a need, transporting the dead, they did so with an enthusiasm far outdistancing their professional acumen. Dr. Fenger, for some odd, unknown reason kept them on as a kind of pet project, as he had bailed them out of jail when under suspicion of actual body-snatching to sell bodies unearthed from cemeteries to local medical schools. Alastair never quite understood Fenger’s involvement, but the appearance was not good-bailing out two men accused of such a heinous crime and making them legitimate ambulance attendants while they awaited the fury of Judge Grimes. Then the charges just dissipated, became watered down, and Grimes had turned the pair of ghouls over to Dr. Fenger’s care to keep them on at Cook County Hospital and its adjacent asylum, and to keep them out of Cook County cemeteries, where they had been nabbed in the first place. They claimed not to be unearthing a body at the time but burying some beloved dog named Cecil. As outrageous as it all was, something going on behind the scenes, even in the judge’s chambers, between Dr. Fenger and Grimes-two men normally thought of as enjoying the highest moral character-had agreed on the new state of affairs with regard to Shanks and Gwinn.

No matter, Alastair could not stand the pair, and not because they were homosexuals but because they undoubtedly scavenged bodies for jewelry and tickets and cash and coin and any shiny object, like a pair of vultures. Dr. Fenger insisted that he had broken the two of any such habits, and that he had trained them well, and that Cook County paid them a good wage, so they need not rob bodies they were put in charge of.

Alastair still had nightmares about when he’d been thrown unconscious into that stench-filled hell-hole they called an ambulance- literally a meat wagon. The whitewash given the old dram had not completely obscured the old Oscar Mayer Meat Company sign along each side.

Alastair put aside such thoughts and kneeled close in on the dead child, guessing from the size of the girl that she was about the age of young Audra or slightly older. Ransom lifted the broken neck, wondering if it’d been broken before or after death, or during some horrendous torture or struggle. “Didja fight the devil, lass?” he asked the small corpse.

Ransom then looked at the girl’s features, and despite chunks of flesh slit from her cheeks, the face and eyes shocked him. He let the face drop away, gasping. “It’s Danielle…Queen Danielle…”

“You know the victim, Alastair?” asked Logan, eyes wide.

Behan came closer, saying, “Keep it down. We don’t need any more agitation from this crowd.”

Logan whispered in his ear. “How do you know this Danielle?”

“I…I interviewed her just two days ago regarding…about what the word on the street was with regards to the case.”

“Do you think it a coincidence then she’s dead?”

“She becomes a victim immediately after my interviewing her?

“And the bastard left the eyes and face so’s to be recognized.” Behan swallowed hard and wiped his brow.

“I’ve never trusted coincidence, lads.”

“So why start now?” Logan patted Ransom on the back.

“It mayn’t be prudent to inform press or public of your connection with the girl, Ransom,” suggested Behan.

Ransom looked Inspector Ken Behan in the eye. “I merely talked with her about the case, not even the case, really. About how she and other shelter and homeless children view the world, and who they fear, and why. I was looking for any kind of lead.”

“Like any cop, you put your ear to the street.” The thin-faced Logan swiped at a shock of unruly hair.