Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“Get the hell off.”

“I’ll keep working on it, Inspector. I’ll get you something other than the nonsense about Mary.”

“Do that! And in the meantime, work a little harder to keep us both from being killed. You think you can manage that?” he shouted as Bosch disappeared into the crowd, going for the payout window.

The music had resumed somewhere overhead. “Dance boatman dance…”

Alastair made his way back into the city streets, his carriage ride solemn. He ordered the driver to take him down to the Levy district. It was time to confront Bloody Mary and possibly arrest her before the mob took it into its collective mind to hang her as Leather Apron. In fact, the madwoman might decide to tout this newly acquired reputation-Ransom would not put it past the crone to revel in the notoriety-to even go about in a leather apron. If so, she’d be ripped apart before the mob hung her by the heels and set her aflame.

Alastair knew her as a dirty, lice-infested lunatic, addled and belonging in Cook County Asylum, but she’d proven even too much for officials there, who did not want her back, as she caused serious problems and upset other inmates due to her raw language and actions. She’d once created a riot there during which the inmates demanded better care and better food and better materials such as paper and wax crayons.

Alone now in the back of the carriage, Alastair felt a great weight on his shoulders and chest as if some nightmare gargoyle or incubus had perched atop him, and he felt a great sadness for young Danielle and her orphaned little band. He tightened his grip on his wolf’s-head cane, and he said a silent prayer for help. A growing sense of urgency to locate the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings welled up and filled him with bile and hatred for Leather Apron and any others who conspired with him or her. Her…

The notion it could be a woman recalled the caution of the London detective, Heise, who’d chased a similar killer for a decade to no avail. Alastair must consider the possibility, remote as it was, that Leather Apron could as well be Bloody Mary and that a woman could, as well as any man, butcher and consume the flesh of children.

Instead of finding Bloody Mary in the Levy section, he found Samuel, the boy he’d paid for any information floating about regarding the vanishings. “I got some news for you, Inspector,” the boy informed him. “But you’re not going to believe it unless Sara tells it.”

“Sara?”

“She’s a friend of mine.”

“Who is Sara, Sam?”

“She’s got a place in the park.”

“She’s a homeless?”

“Yes.”

They found the little black girl named Sara Victoria Meghan Walters in a five foot clearing amid thick brush in Lake Park. Sam guided Alastair to sit on the grass here, and he introduced the Chicago Police inspector. Sara, unlike Robin or Danielle, had no qualms about talking to an adult and a police inspector. She sounded like a grown-up, but Alastair guessed her age at perhaps fifteen, possibly sixteen. She had eyes that looked through people. She said, “I hate what is happening…children going missing and found cut apart.”

“Do you know something about these happenings? Can you help us put an end to it?” Alastair asked.

“First, let me tell you that Satan wears ratty human clothes that he finds in the trash, so he can go among us unseen or unnoticed.”

“I see.” Alastair felt an instant disappointment. He hadn’t expected this to be about demons and angels, but rather about human forces. He had heard enough about celestial wars and God and Evil in battle. He so wanted to put a human face to the monster behind Leather Apron.

“He uses his supernatural powers to make any human shirt, coat, or pants fit him. His clothes always fit him, or one of his little demons.”

“Little demons?”

“Satan likes to make babies.”

“ Ahhh …yes, yes, so I’ve heard.”

“And the clothes for the little ones, it all helps the demons just fit right in. Who’s going to know?”

“Smokes cigars, drinks brandy, he does,” said Sam.

“None of you people in authority with all your money and power, none of you know how close he is, and how he wants to end the world come nineteen hundred.”

“Really? Can you tell me where I can find him?”

She laughed. “Can I? He’s dug a tunnel, and he’s found a big hole right here in Chicago.”

She sounded on the one hand like a lunatic, but something about her conviction and those eyes kept Ransom wondering. Was there some sort of twisted truth to what she had to say? “Where,” he asked. “Where is this place?”

“Under your feet most of the day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Under the street…in the sewers.”

“They like the sewers,” added Sam.

“Lives there with his wife and children,” said Sara. “The bad spirits come walking into our world right out of the tunnels below us.”

“How do you recognize them?”

“You don’t! That’s the problem. But they recognize you!”

“They’re living off human flesh. They’re using knives forged in Hell and cutting off the flesh and cooking it with their fire-breathing, and then they eat it-eating little kids.”

“ Ahhh …but they cook it first.” Ransom didn’t mask his sarcasm.

What Sara was saying harkened back to what Jane had said about Jonathan Swift’s sarcastic essay on how to rid London of the homeless. Could it be that someone had set out to do just that in real life and not simply in a book? Here and now in Chicago?

“How does Bloody Mary figure in all this?” Alastair asked, wanting to bring odd Mary into the discussion before Sara did.

“She shows the demons where we sleep, where to best grab children.”

“She’s procuring for the demons?”

“They’re like a family or a gang,” Sara clarified. “They only protect one another and feed one another. They hate everyone else, especially people who still pray to God and the angels for help.”

“There’s no helping it,” Alastair said aloud. “I’ve got to locate Bloody Mary and take her in for questioning.”

“She’ll give you a fight,” said Sara.

“A big fight,” agreed Sam.

“Come on, Sam, I’m a lot bigger than Bloody Mary.”

“Yeah…you’re the Bear.”

“The Bear?”

“That’s what all the kids’re calling you.”

“Do they think me a demon?”

“Some do…but most don’t. Most think you’re a good Bear.”

“So you think I can take down Bloody Mary?”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Then help me find her. I suspect she’s somewhere close.”

“She naps in the sewer,” said Sara. “She could be there.”

“Do you know exactly where she goes? Can you show me?”

Sara visibly shook at the suggestion. “I do but I won’t go there.”

“Draw me a map, then.”

“She’ll know it was me.”

“I’ll take you,” said Sam. “I ain’t afraid of no one, not so long as I’m with you, sir.”

Alastair smiled at the boy, recalling the picture Philo had taken of him. “All right. Perhaps tomorrow, during the day, huh? You can lead the way then.”

Alastair looked from Sara to Sam and then out into the night-blackened lake nearby. He spied a handful of people moving about the lanes here in the park where everything was slowly being engulfed in fog. Trees in the distance began disappearing as had anyone on a stroll along the lakefront. Soon the fog had even blotted out the gigantean lake only thirty or forty yards away.

Alastair realized the full weight of his situation. Leather Apron and any followers of the madman or his cult might be as large as this now invisible lake, and he would not see it; he would miss it. He’d taken this overwhelming weight onto his shoulders alone, and he wanted some semblance of normalcy back, returned to his city. And he wanted to help them all-the Sams and Saras, the Audras and the Robins, and whole families like the one he’d just glimpsed out there in the gloom. But he could hardly do it alone. It would take a huge influx of money and effort put to a cause no one in this city wanted to even acknowledge much less set up a trust fund for unless…. Unless some profit could be had. Unless some scam motivated it-as had happened in 1871 with all those bogus charitable organizations collecting for the displaced victims of the Great Chicago Fire. It seemed only hoax and crookery worked here. Perhaps Jane Francis understood this even more than Alastair with her boundless optimism for change, and her James Phineas Tewes routine.