Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Alastair needed a clear idea who this mystery man and his mystery family might be, and what proof he’d used to convince Mary that he was in fact her evil spawn. Or was it all a fiction from her addled mind, a cunning one to create and build her own dangerous reputation, to ward off evil befalling her? Who in his right mind, man, woman or child would attack Satan’s mother?

Alastair now manipulated the other two inspectors from the room without the least difficulty before he showed Mary the photo that he’d been given by Philo Keane that morning. He must assume either Behan or Logan or both were working in consort with Nathan Kohler.

When he laid the photo before Bloody Mary, she gasped and said, “How? How did you get the demon and his demon brood and his damned wife in a picture?”

“Have you seen your grandchildren, Mary Grace?”

“I…he said he was my son…that he’d been born of Satan, and that his offspring were the grandsons of Satan, and that I laid with Satan to begin the bloodline between human and Devil.”

“And you’ve told children this?”

“They need to know. It’s the truth. Only the strongest survive.”

“And this man in the photograph, is he familiar to you?”

She near gasped and her eyes widened, but she immediately controlled herself. “Who is he?”

“Mary Grace, if he is Leather Apron, he is the one behind the Vanishings?”

“What do I get if I tell you?”

He promised her a warm, dry place with daily meals and a bed. He made it sound heavenly.

Finally, she said, “He is my lost son, yes, but he’s not the only Leather Apron.”

“Who then is his accomplice?”

She pointed at the woman in the photo and said, “She-his wifey.”

“Really?”

“And them others.”

“Others?”

“In the picture. The children. They’re all Aprons, all meat eaters, trained to it. The Devil’s own child and grandchildren’re this brood, and I pleaded with Danielle to stay away from ’em.”

“Where are they now, Mary Grace?”

“Like I told you, under the parks and under the water! They come up through the ground and sometimes through the bloody lake and the river.”

He gave up, calling in Behan and Logan to take her to Cook County and turn her over to Christian Fenger.

“But what’ll Chief Kohler say?” asked Logan.

“Put it on me, boys. The woman is too far gone to organize a single planned abduction and murder, much less a series of disappearances and butcherings.”

Logan and Behan looked from Alastair to one another again. Finally, Ransom said, “Concentrate on it, boys. Mull it over as you make your way to Cook County, where this woman’s to be committed.”

“You know what a pain in the ass it was to get her here?”

Behan added, “What about Judge Grimes?”

“He will bless you. Now find a phone and call for Shanks and Gwinn to come get her. Those boys know how to deal with troublesome types.” Alastair laughed. “Hell, they transported me once in that meat wagon of theirs.”

“Yeah, when you were half dead.” The three laughed together.

“Fools rush in where wise men…well the truly wise would not go near that old bat,” said Behan.

“For a price, Shanks and Gwinn will get her to the asylum.”

“You think she’ll be better off in that snake pit?”

“No, but she will be off the streets, and there are far more people living on the streets in needless fear of her than you can count, among them children. And if returned to the street, she’ll wind up another Timothy Crutcheon or worse.”

“Do you think her in any way complicit in the murders, Rance?” asked Logan.

“Something strange connects her to all this, to the children, to the killings, to the killer, I suspect, but exactly what…who can say?” lied Ransom.

“Yeah, just can’t put a finger on it, right?” Logan winked as if a conspirator.

“But it’s inside her, right?” added Behan.

Alastair thought about this long. “Yes, but so deeply locked away inside that lunatic brain, inside one of her personalities, that it’s useless, lads.”

“I got no sense of that whatsoever,” Logan sarcastically replied. “Guess that’s what makes you Alastair Ransom, heh?”

Behan agreed, “Yeah, all I got was a morass of meaningless gibberish going on at all times.”

“Yeah…kinda sad, really,” agreed Logan. “Hell, at some time she might’ve been someone’s mum and maybe human.”

Ransom nodded. “Some sort of odd continuous parade of lost memories and a head full of confusing voices, lads. She definitely marches to a different drum.”

“Surprise is she’s not marched off into Lake Michigan to end it all,” said Behan.

“’Nough bodies out that way already, heh, Alastair?” Logan’s remark was meant to say that he knew where at least one body was buried.

Alastair ignored the remark, however, saying, “Let’s do the right thing by Grace, gentlemen.”

“And that would be to shoot her?” asked Logan, causing Behan to erupt in laughter.

“No, that being treat her as you might your own mum if she were out of her head.”

Behan frowned and nodded, while Logan said, “That’ll never come to pass. My mother’s as sharp as tacks.”

Ransom gave them a cold stare. It was enough to send them off in search of a government phone to call in Shanks and Gwinn.

The following day

Jane Francis had come to Cook County in search of Dr. Fenger, and she had not come as Dr. Tewes but herself. She had come to learn his feeling about something she’d discovered only this morning, that the woman arrested as Leather Apron-Bloody Mary-had been sent to Cook County Asylum, where she supposedly had been admitted against her will. From what Jane could piece together, the lunatic fought her “captors” the entire way and that she had bitten one of the ambulance men, Shanks, in his shank, and that she’d somehow, while yet shackled, bloodied Gwinn’s nose. She’d screamed that they had attempted to rape and kill her. Shanks and Gwinn denied they did anything whatsoever untoward, but rather had to restrain her, and in that attempt, she became even more violent.

Jane believed that Alastair, from his account of having faced down Bloody Mary at the courthouse, had been premature in shipping her off to a cell at the asylum. She believed that with careful probing-after winning the confidence of the woman-the aged woman might lead them to some clues to the Vanishings.

For this reason she’d not come as a man, as Dr. Tewes, but rather as Dr. Jane Francis, to ask her good friend and confidant, Dr. Fenger, if she could interview the so-called madwoman. All of the children spoke of Bloody Mary’s being an accomplice, somehow connected to these horrendous crimes, that she perhaps procured for the killer, and yet Alastair had shrugged off any part she might play in this horrific opera, having made a medieval diagnosis about her sanity. “Insane people can be as immoral and as wicked as sane people, Alastair!” she had shouted at him when he made the ridiculous statement that the woman was too mad to be of any real danger. “And since when did you become a medical expert?”

Alastair had telephoned her from his home the night before, telling her of his day, and she’d informed him of how she and Gabby had gone again among the shelter children to gather more information. He’d then pleaded with her to not place herself and Gabby in danger, and next he mentioned the arrest and release of Bloody Mary as an afterthought. His cavalier remarks about having made the decision to institutionalize the suspect had set her off.

So now here she was, hoping that Christian Fenger would allow her an audience with the woman. Perhaps she could speak to this Bloody Mary woman-to-woman, to appeal to whatever motherly and natural impulses and instincts might be buried below her outward appearance and behavior.