Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

Alastair tried to imagine what had gone on here. They’d obviously conspired to get Bloody Mary here. Chapman had long before prepared the stable as his inquisition chamber. He had the old crone stripped and hauled up by her ankles, likely with the help of brawny hands who worked for the senator. Some of whom appeared on their way down the hill from the main house now, having spotted the commotion at the murder scene, for this was murder, pure and simple.

“These fellows coming toward us could prove dangerous given the situation,” he told Jane, who was staring at the bones being tamped into the pigsty mud.

“Should we make a run for the coach?” she asked.

“We’d never make it.”

“What, then?”

“I start making arrests, I suppose.”

“But this is a U.S. senator, and given what’s occurred here and that we’re potential witnesses…perhaps we’d better find cover.”

“Yes, a man who’s killed two people in his stable won’t balk at dispatching us unless-”

“How will we manage it, Alastair?”

“Listen carefully, if you don’t want to wind up fodder for Chapman’s hogs.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Just follow my lead, then.”

“Talk? You’re going to talk your way out of this?”

“I suspect it is our only way. I see two armed men with long-barreled rifles coming up from the river. We’re cut off.”

“But can you do it? Talk your way and mine out of this?” When Alastair did not readily reply, she said, “I know. I’ve got it.”

“Got what?”

“Tell them we’ve bloody well come for our share of the loot.”

“Cute.” He stared at her.

“But it could work if they thought we had a hand in getting Bloody Mary turned over, and you did arrange to put her into a place where they waltzed her out and to her death. You are entitled to compensation, by the rules of fair play.”

He laughed in her face. “Let me do the talking.”

“Just do it,” she said, getting the last word in, when voices from behind them broke out.

Wheeling for a look, Alastair cursed, “Damn! It’s Kohler and Chapman with the rifles coming up the rise from the river. A fitting end to my career…” Ransom’s lament had her turn about to see the men with guns. Ransom added, “We’re surrounded by killers.”

“But no sign of Christian.”

“Keep still and play the dutiful girl without a brain, Doctor, as my woman, do you understand? As for how I will manage these fellows, just watch me. Stand clear and watch me.”

“Have you an extra gun at least?” she asked.

“My ankle…in a holster under my pants-leg, but it has a hair trigger. Do not go for it.”

“Then why tell me about it?”

“You’ve my permission if they kill me.”

“ Ahhh …thank you.”

Ransom stood like a wall between three approaching farmhands, who’d obviously had a hand in the killings in the stable-their overalls painted in the brown burnished color of dried blood. Varnish stains they’d tell a judge and jury, and no way to refute it.

Jane’s only thoughts went to Gabrielle and what her daughter’s life would be like without her mother; wondered how Gabby would cope on her own; wondered if she’d have to drop out of Rush Medical College; wondered if Dr. Christian Fenger would take her under wing, to see that she stretch to her full potential; finally, Jane wondered if dying here and now would be painful or quick.

Alastair had but one thought: save Jane .

The carriage driver had seen the approaching men as well, and he leapt to his seat, turned the cab round and attempted to make a dash for it when one of the farmers threw a heavy harness into his face, sending him over the side. He lay in the dust, unconscious, his carriage and horses startled but caught by a second brawny fellow.

Then, as if the two men had come up from a nearby turkey shoot down at the river, Senator Chapman and Chief Nathan Kohler, guns in hand, materialized at Jane’s and Ransom’s back.

“Wonderful time of year, don’t you agree, Inspector Ransom?” asked Chapman, all smiles. “Love to go out on a hunt just after finishing a prickly job.”

“Nathan,” said Alastair, his hand white-knuckled around his blue gun, which he’d rested along his leg.

“Fancy seeing you here, Alastair,” replied Kohler, “and with Miss Francis is it?”

“I came for my share.”

Nathan laughed. “I’m sure you did. Smart move getting the old witch committed. With Christian being uncooperative, it was up to us, Alastair.”

“I have a hefty check made out to you, Inspector Ransom,” began the senator, a grim smile on his face as he narrowed the distance between them. “One you will be pleased with.”

“Check?” asked Jane, her eyes going from Chapman and Kohler to Ransom who glared at her to be silent.

“Yes, Jane, a check,” said Alastair, “one that will keep me from the poor house in my old age. Thank you, Senator Chapman.”

“You knew about this? Then you were part of it all along?” Jane asked.

“I know how this must look to you, Jane,” said Kohler, his hands extended in a gesture that swept her eyes back to the business in the barn. “But it does save the lives of countless children in our city, now doesn’t it? You can’t argue with that, and with your recent interest in helping homeless street kids, well…”

Senator Chapman pumped Alastair’s hand. “Getting that rabid foul old bitch out of the court system and into McKinnette’s control on a medical adjournment, that was brilliant, Inspector.”

Alastair smiled woodenly and jokingly asked if Kohler and Chapman had had poor luck hunting along the river. He imagined they had escorted someone into the woods but had come back alone. He prayed it’d not been Christian.

Chapman talked as if among friends, a calm about him. “Too much rain this season out this way, everything swollen.”

“Washes away the grime,” commented Kohler, hefting the scoped rifle. Had Chapman wanted them dead, Nathan could have killed them from a hundred yards off.

Grime or crime, Alastair wondered. He also wondered at the shovels being carried by the three farmhands. Likely, they had come to bury all those identifying parts from hands to heads and teeth along with the personal effects of the second victim, as Mary Grace didn’t have any. However, asking about this would not endear him to Chapman, and he really wanted Chapman to like him and Jane at the moment when he saw Jane’s eyes and realized she was going to say more.

“How could you keep me outta the deal? You knew I wanted to be a part of this?” she persisted.

He took her aside and whispered, “If you want to get out of here alive, I suggest you follow my lead.”

“I am I thought.”

“If I negotiate a deal for you, and Chapman writes you a check, you will take it, too.”

“Never. There I draw the line.”

“To accomplish getting us both killed. We are both dead otherwise, Jane.” He then returned to Chapman and Kohler, saying, “It was Christian’s idea, the whole thing-getting the old crone committed.”

“But you executed it, and here Nathan called you a hard-nosed bastard who would not go along,” countered Chapman. “I told Nathan, I said, ‘He’ll come round; time and money have a way of greasing the rustiest of skids.’”

Kohler nodded. “You did predict it, sir.”

Chapman said in a near whisper to Alastair, “How about this chief of yours, Inspector? Never seen a man work so hard at kissing ass.” He ended with a laugh.

“So who is the dead man that Mary fingered?” asked Ransom, pointing to the small man’s corpse.

Kohler replied, “Your man…snitch of yours, Bosch.”