Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“Of course, of course.”

Alastair felt an attack coming on and tried to determine which sort of attack it might be; it felt more like panic than pain, so he decided it was withdrawal pains as he had abstained from any morphine or opium for the past two days while chasing leads, and with the boy in his home the night before, he’d opted to remain sober, although he’d dosed himself the night before with quinine and antimony to fend off a threatening fever.

“While I dress,” he called over his shoulder, “tell me, how is your photographic study of the street children coming along?”

“Not well!” Philo’s pent up energy kept pace with Alastair, and he stood at his bedroom door now. “Too many paying jobs ahead of it, I’m afraid. Matter of finding time. But Alastair, there is something I brought to show you. It struck me anew when I’d returned to the notion of doing such an exhibit.”

“Oh? And what is that?” Alastair had reemerged with most of his clothes intact but buttons yet in need of latching, tie dangling over his shoulder, shoes in hand.

“Well, have a look.” Philo laid out a large photo that was grim and peculiar, and beautifully rendered.

Ransom gasped at the sight of a family in a smoky fog standing in an alley entranceway-all sullen-eyed, sunken-featured, gaunt, and looking like a family of starved wolves. It was a heart-wrenching shot, this “cut” of Keane’s, tearing at the soul until you looked more closely.

Mother held an infant in her arms while three others, ranging in ages that appeared between four and eleven, hung on to her dress, save the older boy who stood opposite, alongside his father. The older boy held a dead cat by the tail, a curled smile on his lips. In his other hand, he held a deboning knife. On closer inspection, the father, too had a blade in a scabbard protruding from beneath his moth-eaten coat.

“The happy family,” said Philo in dark jest. “Something about the whole picture is horribly disturbing, in light of developments.”

“Funny thing is…last night, I was stalking what I have become convinced is our killer-a family described to me just like this-but a family of cannibalistic butchers.”

“Too hideous to contemplate.”

“And so long as it is not contemplated, evil triumphs, Philo.”

“Agreed. And so it goes among us invisible, as the Phantom so recently proved.”

“Invisibility is effective.”

Philo nodded. “Requiring only our complacency.”

“Look, I must get down to the station house, see what Logan and Behan are up to, and if I feel I can trust them, I’ll share your photo and my new theory with them, and we can all proceed from there.”

“Understood. The photo is yours to do with as needed, my friend.”

Alastair snapped the last of his shoe buttons in place, stood and made for the door, where he grabbed his cane. “Good day, Philo.”

“Alastair!” The tone of Philo’s voice stopped him at the door.

“What is it?”

“Be…be careful out there!”

Alastair breathed deeply, tipped his hat, and replied, “Always…always,” as he ushered Philo out and bid him a final adieu.

Alastair made all due haste to the Des Plaines station house where he assumed Bloody Mary was being held, but once there, he learned that she was already being arraigned before Judge Grimes. He spoke to the desk sergeant, discovering that Logan and Behan were at the arraignment. He rushed to join them.

A large crowd had gathered outside the courthouse downtown, and feelings were running high. Most assuredly, the old crone was being thrown to the proverbial dogs, Alastair reasoned, as Chief Kohler most assuredly would’ve secreted her off to Senator Chapman’s farmstead outside the city for the reward if he really thought her in any way guilty or implicated in the death of Anne Chapman.

Hooting and cheers and “atta-boy”s trailed Alastair all the way up the steps through the crowd. On the inside, he went for Judge Grimes’s courtroom. He quietly pushed through a door on hearing Bloody Mary cursing at the beefy, morose Judge Grimes.

Ransom immediately recognized the tall, stoop-shouldered, scraggly-haired, wild-eyed, feral looking woman who could easily pass for a stevedore down at the wharves. Bloody Mary was being gaveled down by the judge, and she suddenly fell silent, her curses on judge and court at an abrupt end; and so fascinated had she become with the judge’s pounding gavel, which sounded like a series of angry gunshots. Grunting and cursing under her breath in animal fashion, her gaze taking in everything while in a pretense of blindness, drool came over her lips in globs that fell to the floor or splatted onto her curled, aged shoes.

Alastair noticed Behan and Logan sitting up front. The two looked as if they’d had a rough night’s sleep, their clothes filthy, hair wild, but Alastair knew the cause: transporting Mary.

Alastair found a wall and leaned against it, watching, listening, and realizing here was a woman who represented everything that the city leaders and merchants most loathed and feared. She was a walking billboard for the underbelly of the city, and she lived by instinct alone.

Bloody Mary, under the harsh courtroom lights, was as out of place as any fish tossed ashore or any bird with a hole in its wing.

Ransom felt a wave of empathy and sadness wash over him for the ugly old woman-the penultimate outcast-the social excommunicant.

The judge held a handkerchief over his nose, so rancid was the odor rising off Mary. Keeping a safe distance from the accused, Grimes asked his bailiff to escort her to Room 148.

Her hands were cuffed to chains attached to ankle bracelets, all of it rattling like ship’s rigging as she stomped, heavy footed, from the room, head slumped forward like some new species of captive animal with a strange curve to its spine, a species yet to be given a name. As she filed past, Alastair’s eyes met hers, but there was no light and no recognition there. Only an emptiness.

Her chains rattled along the floor all the way through the door, the sound like sandpaper over the spine.

“It may well be a dead end,” said Behan who, on seeing Alastair enter, had joined him at the rear.

Logan came next, adding, “But we won’t know that till we get’er talking and to trust us-now will we?”

“I got an instinct about her,” Ransom replied.

“We all know she’s addled in the head.”

“Exactly, so…”

“So what, Rance?”

“Damn it, man, so how can we trust a word she tells us?”

Behan raised his hands. “We’ll never know unless she opens up.”

“So I say we ‘open’ her head for her,” joked Logan, deadpan.

Behan put in, “You can wait outside if you wish.”

“I’m in the room for as long as I can stand it,” Ransom said.

They located 148.

“We hadda wrestle her in cuffs and chains, and I can tell you,” said Behan, “it was no fun.”

“The woman needs a good delousing and bathing,” said Logan.

“You two can draws straws, but I’m outta that one,” said Ransom.

A light laugh accompanied the three of them into 148. Once inside, and with the bailiff stepping out, Behan sat across the table from Bloody Mary. He introduced himself with his title, and added, “And you know Inspector Logan and everyone knows Inspector Ransom.”

Ransom remained standing and imposing nearby, nodding perfunctorily when introduced.

“Aye, the Big Bear they call ’im these days.”

“Mary and me,” began Ransom, “we go way back, don’t we, my lovely girl?”

“I need my medicines,” the woman replied. “Did yous two bring me my mendications? I got a magic blanket, you know, one I can spread out on command and ask it to fly. A flying carpet. Give it to you for some medicines. You want my magic blanket?”