Robert Walker - Shadows in the White City

So he felt about the windowsill with his bare hands in the pitch dark. The sill itself was old and worn and loose from years of rainwater and weather. Ransom grabbed hold of the loose frame in each hand. He then tore away the entire framework until nothing but stone and cement remained, along with a gaping hole large enough to accommodate Ransom’s size. If anyone were inside and if Ransom had hoped to have surprise on his side, he could forget about it now.

Alastair eased himself down into the basement of the warehouse, this side of the building facing a paved road over which wagons traversed, and where men loaded and unloaded goods. His eyes came to street level as he dropped into the pit. It felt good to plant his feet firmly on the ground below, as it made him less susceptible to attack.

Ransom now used his flint lighter, and it was immediately refracted by the damp stone walls that seemed to bleed in the weak illumination. Ransom moved along, and as he did so, the light moved with him. Darkness filled the spaces behind Alastair just as light filled the spaces ahead. He was painfully aware that his own features and body stood outlined by the light like a man standing before a campfire. All that lay beyond him was a potential fright, a potential attack.

However, with the stillness so complete as it felt both outside him and deep within, Alastair guessed himself alone here…alone save for the source of the blood odor. He turned a corner and filled it with his light and all at once got the full shock of what he’d so fatefully come to find.

Rats.

A horde of them.

Feeding on something dead.

The industrious little beasts having created a kind of vertical bridge of one another’s bodies so as to climb several feet up to their prize, the discarded remains of yet another child that had been carved on like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Ransom’s boot sent rats flying, and he stomped and shouted and sent the rats skittering in every direction, leaving what appeared to be a bloody ham hock dangling from an overhead pipe. Little wonder he’d seen so many river rats gnawing and clawing their way in from the other side of the building.

“Nobody here but the dead,” Ransom announced to himself just to hear the sound of his own voice, and just to break the spell of horror.

Alastair didn’t know what to do; if he left to call for help, he must leave the body to the rats again, and he was not prepared to do that. He instead took off his coat and wrapped it about the body, and working with shaking hands, he unhooked the small body from a stevedore’s tenterhook. He next wrapped his arms around what was left of the carcass. He refused to leave it alone again.

He went out through the front doors, unlatching them and kicking them open. He made his way out into the night air and for the first time since he could recall, he allowed himself a deep breath of oxygen. He made his way out toward the gaslit street, shouted down a cab. He then laid the precious cargo onto the cushion over the coachman’s protests, and climbed in. “Cook County Morgue!” he shouted to the driver. “Now.”

“With haste, yes sir!” the man replied.

“No…no rush. She’s long dead.”

“My God! It’s the work of Leather Apron, isn’t it, sir?”

“Aye…aye, it is that.”

“Then he’s still afoot, despite what the papers’ve said about it being that madwoman, Bloody Mary?”

“Afraid so.”

The driver climbed back onto his seat and Ransom rode with the body, quietly speaking to the unknown victim. “This is probably the only time you’ve ever ridden in a hansom cab, and it’s your hearse.”

Ransom banged his cane on the top of the hansom cab, shouting for the driver to stop. He alighted from the cab at a police phone booth and made a call into the regional district headquarters, pressing the key designating murder. After a brief explanation, he was assured of twenty-four police officers in uniform, a paddy wagon, and all the equipment he might need to collect evidence on the scene.

“I’m to await the wagon here,” he told the cabbie.

“But what am I to do with what’s in me cab?” asked the driver.

“Continue on to Cook County and deliver it to Dr. Christian Fenger or his stand-in.”

“Are you sure they won’t take me for the killer? I hear rumors you killed a hackman once you believed to be a killer.”

“That hackman was killed because he failed to follow orders!”

“Yes, sir…yes, indeed.”

With that the cabman and the decaying body continued on for the morgue.

Out of the silent darkness and fog, a noisy police wagon arrived at the call booth. Ransom clambered aboard with his cane. Soon after, the police had cordoned off the book warehouse, Ransom giving them jobs to do-most canvassing the wharf as Chicago awoke and workers began filtering into the area and boats and wagons and people began their duties-Chicago stretching and awakening to dawn.

Difficult as it was, after hot coffee, Ransom returned to where he’d discovered the body. He asked the uniformed men remaining to fan out and search for anything whatsoever that looked out of order or out of place. The search for clues was on as light from outside began filtering through the dingy book repository. The row upon row of books collecting dust here gave silent testimony to the popularly held belief that the Threepenny Opera, the Lyceum stage, and sports events had made the bound book dead as diversions go.

Behan and Logan showed up, getting word of the discovery, and they were followed by Philo Keane who had come to take photographs. Soon after, Chief Kohler arrived to “take charge” and to “oversee” the investigation.

“Where is the body I’m to photograph?” asked Philo.

“You’ll find her at the morgue.”

“Sent off?”

“I sent her to the morgue, yes. You can photograph her there.”

“Sure…sure, Alastair.”

“You have any idea how long ago…that is when this butchery happened, Inspector?” asked Chief Kohler.

“About the same time as you and Chapman murdered that homeless fellow along with Bloody Mary is my guess.”

“Hold your voice down!”

“My source heard her screams only last night. Sometime after that, the rats got to her, and I refused to allow them a single ’nother nibble. They’d got to the bone as it was. So I sent her off to Christian’s care.”

“So the work of Leather Apron continues,” said Thom Carmichael, standing now behind them. “I’d like to hear your take on all this, Alastair, and about the mysterious disappearance of Bloody Mary and Dot ’n’ Carry-Bosch.”

Alastair took the reporter aside. “In time, Thom…in time.”

A uniformed copper cried out from the second floor of the warehouse, “Up here! Up here!”

Everyone rushed the stairs and made their way to where the officer stood staring down at an obvious “living and sleeping area” for a number of homeless. Amid the usual debris of bedding and filth, there lay a horrid knife with a protective hilt and a curved blade like a pirate’s dagger. Scattered pieces of flesh-small but noticeable-were also found about the dirty bedding, a ratty tick mattress, bits and pieces of a destroyed teddy bear, a top, marbles, ball ’n’ jacks, a yo-yo, and a broken wooden doll, alongside scattered cigar and cigarette butts, ripped out pages of the Herald and the Tribune -stories about Leather Apron. A large part of the horrid odor proved to be filthy cans used for toilets.

“My God,” cried out Ken Behan from a dark corner, his lantern light revealing a discarded leather apron, beside a small human skull denuded of all but a few stringy swatches of flesh.

“More than one person was using this area,” said Ransom, his cane picking about the debris, “and that’s not fish pieces we’re looking at but cannibalized human flesh. This is the lair of the beast…or rather beasts. ”