Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

She reached across the carriage to hug him, but Robin pulled back, saying, “Look…I have nothing to give you beyond the facts of life on the street, but soon maybe…maybe I will know something. I have my eyes open and my ears to the ground. If you two are willing to pay in goods or coin.”

“We’re budgeted to pay for information that leads to this killer, sure.”

“All right, then you’re going to hear from me again…soon.”

“No, not if it places you in danger, Robin-any of you,” insisted Jane.

The carriage had pulled to a stop at Chicago’s famous Hull House, where Jane Addams herself stood on the steps awaiting their arrival. Dr. Jane Francis had contacted her long-time friend and confidant, asking her to help out and offering a generous check for Hull House in the bargain. Jane had thought about the homeless children since the first day Audra had introduced them, and she’d sat down and asked herself a series of questions: Who would care to know about the homeless children? Who would want to create a program of hope for them? Who would already know that kids need love and perhaps pets as well as books and schooling to help save them from everyday fears and horrors, traumas and the exigencies of life on the street, life without a daily routine, life without a bed and a roof and four walls and a lock on the door?

Who indeed. The revelation coming in at her felt so horrible, so distasteful that she wanted to scream out its impossibility even as it formed in her mind. Chicago, her city, had helped greatly a madman by letting these children down. The Vanishings were nothing new; in a quieter but just as awful way, kids had been vanishing before their eyes since the city’s inception.

Jane Addams had become the fulcrum for the settlement movement that preached for shelter communities in every neighborhood. She was always at the center of anything dealing with destitute women and children. If there were a program in place to put homeless children in physical touch with orphaned and impounded puppies, to give them a warm meal and a place to lay their heads at night, this was the place. If there was any chance whatsoever of finding good foster care for such as Robin, Audra, Stanley, and the others, it was Hull House, as Jane Addams had a sixth sense about people.

Dr. Jane Francis realized that Alastair had a job to do, and must end this slaughtering of the innocent, but it was increasingly clear to her that these children were not a direct path to the killer. They were the lure but could not be used as the bait.

It was possible, yes, that the killer had knowledge of the morbid “religion” professed by the homeless, and used its precepts against them along with enticements, no doubt-food, money, toys, the promise of a pet…or immortality as a follower of Zoroaster!

It was a wild, anxiety-ridden bird of a notion, which now fluttered insanely inside Jane’s brain, and perhaps ought to remain there. She saw herself trying to sit astride the back of this “fowl” idea that had invaded her mind. The idea that Dr. Christian Fenger, Nathan Kohler, and she-as she had entered into a deal with the others-might benefit from all of this horror by delivering up the killer to Senator Chapman’s idea of justice.

Christian had told her of the secret only the day before. She’d been told that Alastair had flatly declined Senator Chapman’s “kind and generous offer,” and she respected him for taking the higher, moral ground, but to her mind there was a difference in her own notions of getting hold of a share of this treasure. How much good it could do in the hands of the caretakers of Hull House to feed and clothe these children. Still, she remained removed from any direct connection even as she’d quietly provided Christian with information gleaned from Audra and the other children.

Jane had not been comfortable with the role that Christian had placed her in, but unlike Alastair, she had no compunction about how this monster they called Leather Apron would meet justice, so long as he did! And if she could cash out a dramatic winner thanks to Chapman’s deep pockets, so be it. Like Christian and Kohler, she could use the money, but now she’d begun thinking any such funds must go to these homeless-these daily survivors.

Still the godawful gnawing at the pit of her stomach and around the edges of her soul about this deal continued inexorably to erode away sane notions and to taunt her. So often good things were done in the name of humanity, religion, love, brotherly concern, fatherly passion, a mother’s love, for god and country, and this for a grandfather’s vengeance. But so often it proved a complete lie, a fabrication, a distortion, an illusion. It was one of life’s tragic comedies, and largely due to her experience and training-she must pay close heed to her instincts and suspicions.

She watched the children line up at the order given them by a stern Jane Addams, whose very tone, icy and firm, the children seemed to welcome, even Robin, as though he would gladly relinquish his crown if someone else, an adult, would please take it.

Jane and Gabby climbed last from the carriage, waving at the heavyset woman on the steps with the unforgettable smile and commanding presence. At the same time, Jane Francis glanced at the topmost coach seat for Robin’s brother, imagining him just there.

“What’d you make of Robin’s story about his dead brother?” Gabby asked in her ear as if reading her thoughts. “You think it true?”

“I’ve no doubt that soldiers, who die a traumatic, violent, and sudden death often are left in limbo. They sometimes send out messages-confusing and vexing and conflicting images, yes, but images nonetheless.”

Gabby and Jane helped settle the children in at Hull House, and once this was accomplished, Jane Addams gave them the full tour and a brief history of her work here. As she listened to the indefatigable Miss Addams, Dr. Jane Francis offered up her services as a physician to bring health care on a regular basis to Hull House.

Miss Addams stared for a moment at Jane Francis, a single tear appearing in the older woman’s eye. The tear swelled and slipped down her cheek. Addams brushed it away. “So good of you, Dr. Francis.”

The following night

Alastair was on a crawl tonight, but not a pub crawl-rather an information-gathering crawl in search of Bosch. Ransom the Bear was afoot, exercising his feet and hips and sweating off some pounds and getting nowhere.

Police work was like that. Hours upon hours of simple hard work leading to nothing, and sitting idle, and making rounds, and asking question after question with little result, and then came the explosion in the face. Some event or happening bursting on the scene to give a shock to the system.

Thus far no shock had come, only an interminable bore amid a lot of filth.

“Where the hell is Bosch?” he must have repeated the question a hundred times in a hundred permutations in a hundred venues tonight.

“’Ave ya seen Bosch?” he addressed the drunks in one alley.

“Seen that gimp, Bosch, tonight?” he inquired at Muldoon’s.

“Heard Dot ’n’ Carry comin’ or goin’ tonight?” he asked at the Red Lion.

“If you fellas see or hear that peg leg, tell ’im I’m looking for him.”

No one had seen him. No one knew where he might be. He failed to appear at any of his normal haunts. It spelled only one thing: fear.

The tune from the racetrack played in Ransom’s brain: Dance boatman dance…dance boatman dance.

Henry Bosch had gone into hiding like a frightened animal, and his brief stint at the track was a bid for much needed cash. Now that he had money, he’d become difficult to find. Normally, he showed up like a bad penny and Alastair did not have to go looking, but the game pieces on the board had changed significantly. With Jervis being shot dead by Alastair Ransom in an old-time gun battle in Hair Trigger Alley-despite a ruling of self-defense-rumors abounded. Rumors surrounding various notions having to do with Ransom’s idea of vengeance; it was a vengeance that’d gone too far, spilled over the brim as it were, and next the rumors had Alastair drunk at the time (drunk with vengeance), despite his requiring a single shot to take down his man. Still, some felt that he had taken down the department with his street hooliganism. A lot of people suddenly liked Elias Jervis as next in line for sainthood. Perhaps Ransom ought be more than reprimanded; perhaps he should be made an example and stripped of his badge and placed on trial for murder.