Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

“What? Are you insane?” he asked Kohler and then he moaned to the corpse in the barn. “ Ahhh …Bosch…”

Jane felt the depth of his pained response.

“The old bitty was quite clear on who was butchering and eating the children,” said Chapman, “and she named your man.”

“It makes sense, Ransom,” said Kohler. “Think of it. He knows not only the ins and outs and ups and downs of the homeless children, but he knows the workings of our department. In a sense, you yourself furnished him with information and-”

“But Bosch?” Ransom still could not believe it, and he imagined that the old wild woman, Mary, simply drew on the first notorious name leaping to mind, perhaps the only one she had known for any length of time in Chicago, Henry “Dot ’n’ Carry” Bosch.

“A cripple like Bosch…you really think he was behind your granddaughter’s death, Senator Chapman?” asked Ransom.

“Whataya mean, a cripple?”

“Bosch had a wooden leg.”

“W-wooden leg?” The senator glared at Chief Kohler. “What’s he talking about?”

Jane realized one of the missing parts of what hung beside Bloody Mary from the barn rafters had no peg leg.

Nathan said, “I-I was told your men picked up Bosch.”

“At the address you provided, yes.”

Kohler raised his gun and hand in a gesture of innocence. “By time I got here, he was unrecognizable. I assumed it Bosch.”

Chapman looked Kohler hard in the eye, “Shut up, Kohler! You bloody well sent us to the wrong address, and you said nothing about a goddamn wooden leg!”

“I had no idea it wasn’t the gimp! It was handled by your men! If you’d allowed me to call in my fellows, they surely would’ve known to get the right man!”

“All right! All right!” countered Chapman. “We have Inspector Ransom now, and he obviously knows how to find this Bosch creature.” Chapman turned to Alastair. “Come along, Inspector, up to the house. We’ll have a cognac and consider the circumstances, and you may have an advance on your turning this Henry Bosch over to me.”

“But who is it, then, you’ve skinned alive?” asked Jane.

“A street person; no one of consequence,” replied the senator.

“Certainly no one who will be missed,” agreed the chief.

“Come with me, Jane,” Ransom told her.

Jane now did precisely as Alastair asked.

As they straggled behind, Jane asked Ransom who besides Bloody Mary had been butchered back at the stables. Behind them, they heard Senator Chapman’s men bring to life a huge, steam-engine operated saw, and the piercing sounds it was making in the stables could mean only one thing. They were doing the finer work of feeding the rest of the body parts to the hogs. “Purchased that remarkable saw at the agricultural pavilion at the fair,” Chapman proudly announced, keeping pace ahead of Alastair and Jane.

“You know as much as I do,” whispered Alastair in Jane’s ear. “I’ve no idea who stood in for Bosch.”

“And do you believe for a moment Bosch is Leather Apron?”

“Not for a moment.”

“Then you are a champion at charades?”

“I wish it were all a charade.”

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” she cautioned.

“It’s not the woods I fear. It’s those two.” He indicated Kohler and Chapman ahead of them.

“You were left with your weapons. It would appear they believed you back there. And frankly, you were quite convincing.”

“I swear to you, Jane, I never seriously considered Mary a part of the Vanishings, and I still don’t. The kids’ stories were built around her because she scared hell out of them.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, until I can prove otherwise, yes.” He felt a judicious lie at this point might just keep her alive. Ransom feared telling her of Bloody Mary’s last admission to him, and he wondered if the old loon had died thinking that he’d used that information to turn her over to Chapman and Kohler. For now, he felt keeping old Mary’s secret a kind of justice, the fact of her son, the man in the picture with the grim brood. Besides, if he were to share this information with Jane just now, she’d surely believe him a liar and a part of this carnage.

Better to let her believe as she did, that Mary was an innocent victim here, too, caught up for no better reason than the stories children told on the street.

Ransom and Jane got free of Chapman and Kohler as quickly as possible, Ransom given a timetable in which to return with Bosch, bound, gagged, and prepared for the slaughter. The coachman was well paid to keep silent, and Alastair imagined he had also been threatened that if any word of what he’d seen at the farmstead should get out, that he would be the next man flayed and filleted and fed to Chapman’s prize-winning hogs. In fact, the bulk of their cognac visit was taken up by his showing them photos of each prize winner and rattling off the vital statistics of each hog and sow.

“What will you do now, Alastair?” she asked. “You’ve managed to implicate yourself in two murders back there by taking that check, and checks leave money trails.”

“Not if I tear it up.”

“Will you?” she asked, staring into his eyes, awaiting an answer.

“Will I?”

“Rip up a check for a fortune?”

“Imagine having that much to play with at the racetrack.”

“Are you going to destroy the check or become a part of this bloody conspiracy?”

“I’m walking a sensitive tightrope here, Jane.”

“What sensitive rope?”

“Suppose Christian is, like they say, part of this? Suppose he turned Mary over to them for a sum like this?”

She signed heavily and leaned back into the cushions. “Damn you, you’re wrong. It wasn’t Christian who did it. It had to’ve been McKinnette.”

“We don’t know how deep either of them’re in, but from the outset, the senator has been throwing his money around.”

“He’s blinded by his hatred and desire for vengeance.”

“He’s fixed on one path, most certainly.”

“An obsession. Suppose he does not get what he wants? Will he come after you, me, Gabby, anyone he can hurt?”

“There is little telling.”

“And as you’ve pointed out, without a body in the possession of authorities, there is no crime.”

“Hogs don’t eat bones,” he replied.

“You’re not thinking of going back out there, are you?”

“Not right away, but when I do, it will be with a gunnysack. At which time, this untendered check becomes evidence.”

Overhead, they heard the shaken coachman talking to himself, something about jumping the next ship or train out of the city.

“Perhaps we should take a clue from this fellow,” Ransom suggested.

“Nonsense. It’s not in your blood to run from a fight or a case.”

“Jane, you know me too well.”

“Well enough to know that if I’d gone out there to Chapman’s funhouse with any other man, I’d be as dead as Bloody Mary right now, and no one would ever have known,” she said, shivering a bit. “And I haven’t even sufficiently thanked you.”

“I’ll take out thanks in this manner,” he said and pressed his lips to hers, and they embraced to the lulling motion of the hansom cab, returning to Chicago by gaslight.

Ransom returned Jane to her home, angry with himself that he’d allowed her to go anywhere near Chapman’s estate. It had taken all his powers of persuasion to convince Chapman and Kohler that she was harmless and would do as told, using such phrases as “a man who can’t control his woman ain’t no kinda man” and “she knows her place if she wants to eat and wear nice jewelry.” Of course, Jane rankled at each such remark, but by then, she realized she must play her part to make it off the death farm alive.