Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 10

Alastair found himself at his old wooden swivel desk chair and dropped into it with a heaviness that raised a resounding squeal. He sat for a moment, feeling extremely tired and as if every year of his life weighed heavy. He sat staring at the empty desk pushed against his own, Griffin’s desk. While others in the department pretended busy work, he sensed them watching him now. No one could miss the subdued anger spilling out of Chief Kohler’s office when Alastair had come down those steps.

Feeling like a bug here, Alastair located a pot of coffee kept on brew for Chicago’s finest on skeleton crew. The grand World’s Fair had siphoned off many a cop. Faithfuls were being asked to work double shifts, and why else hire on the first woman civilian in the department-Gabrielle Tewes?

Alastair was not about to give up his search for the truth surrounding what really happened that day at Haymarket, not for any avowed reason. The issue remained burning in his gut and in his heart; he couldn’t let got so easily as others. He had lost six fellow officers and friends that day to a bomb no one had taken credit for. Historians already called it a defining moment in Illinois and U.S. labor-relations history, but it was also a defining moment in exactly who Alastair Ransom was. Perhaps he was chasing ghosts, phantom information that did not exist, but by the same token, he could not let any chance to get at the records on the subject go by. Too many good men had died for this, one having pulled Ransom to safety before keeling over with a severed femoral artery.

The riot was a benchmark for the establishment of new laws governing the conduct of police officials, a turning point in public opinion regarding unionist workers and unions, plus it forged the first labor laws with teeth. As a result, Illinois led the rest of the nation in this politically charged arena. The cost in human life was too great to ignore and a statue in a hidden cove outside a small police district was not enough for Ransom.

When he’d returned to his desk, coffee in hand, Ransom began cleaning away flyers and papers and files, only to discover an anonymous note printed in large letters, reading,

REMEMBER HAYMARKET

He took in the room. It could have been the sergeant who looked up at him, or Logan, or Behan, or any number of others. In a sense, Ransom’s crusade to keep the memory of that day alive and fresh in every foot soldier’s mind was perhaps sinking in with some of the lads. Still the prevailing winds kept saying, let the dead bury the dead.

Just then, coming through a doorway that led into the archives of dead cases and documents, came Gabrielle Tewes, Jane’s daughter, her eyes wide, coming straight for Alastair. “I’m so glad I found you on duty and what a shock!”

“That I’m on duty?”

“Well, no…I’m referring to what I’ve uncovered.”

“Which is?”

“A series of similar Vanishings in London, not five years ago.”

“Really? Let me have a look.”

Gabby spread the materials out for his perusal. She’d marked specific items from various police gazettes and reports.

“I had no idea you’d planned to continue working here.”

“And why not?”

“I guess it was an assumption you would rush back to Northwestern and continue your studies in medicine there.”

“A safe cozy plan indeed, one Mother wants for me. But, no. I love working with Dr. Fenger at Rush on my medical studies and on cases with Dr. Fenger. He put me to researching this one.”

“You should share this with your mother.”

“I may…when she settles into the notion that I am my own person and not a copy of her.”

“I see.” He really did not wish to get between mother and daughter on the issue, although it had been Alastair who had first encouraged her to pursue working with Christian Fenger in police medicine.

“Look, I have a meeting to get to,” she informed him. “I’ll leave this with you so you can get on the trail of this monster.”

“A meeting?”

“Yes, a meeting.”

“The drum-and-fife corps of ladies?”

“We are suffrage advocates and only want simple justice.”

“You’ll become a fine spokesperson for the cause.”

“Well, I am terrible at marching, so perhaps I will brave the podium someday. For now, I am content to stand with my sisters in this noble cause.”

“I wish you all the best.”

“Persistence is the key according to our leaders. Do you know we are petitioning the president as we speak? Thousands and thousands have signed.”

“Good luck, Gabby, but do be careful.”

“I have a key to a police phone box now, and should I need you, I can call.”

“Do not hesitate.”

She left with a bounce in her step. He smiled after her, a strange concern coming over him. A fleeting emotion of fear should anything befall Gabby.

Logan leaned forward in his chair and said, “You act the part of father quite well, old chap.”

“What’re you fellows doing here so late?”

Behan laughed and Alastair shrugged it off, his attention going to the reports that Gabby had unearthed. Slowly Behan, followed by Logan, moved in and stood over each of Inspector Ransom’s hefty shoulders.

The report he read in the London Police Gazette dated 1889 put forth yet another theory of the exact identity of Jack the Ripper, an American actor named Richard Mansfield, who’d terrified playgoers as Mr. Hyde, changing from Jekyll without makeup or leaving stage. The man sent ladies into a swoon and men running from the theater. But the story so riveting for these three Chicago cops was a tale of the Vanishings. It read in part:

As near as this detective has ascertained, the Vanishings began in 1881 and continued until this past year of 1891, when they abruptly ended. The case represents for me, personally, the strangest case of my career, and the most frustrating and heart-rending, as I was called into each inquest to view the most horrid sights of my career-the remains of the victims, each barely of age. They began in Ham, and records are scarce, but I have pieced together a clear trail that leads from East and West Ham to London’s East Side.

“Eerie, isn’t it?” asked Behan over Alastair’s right shoulder.

“Damned spooky, if you ask me,” agreed Logan at his left.

Both men were smaller than Alastair. Compactly built like a prize fighter was Ken Behan, whereas the other was rail-thin and gaunt, his eyes sunken, yet Jedidiah Logan had hands as large as griddles. Pale as December snow, Logan looked as if death might claim him at any time. He smoked without end the strongest cigars made. Others joked that one day at the morgue, when Logan dozed against a wall, Dr. Fenger took him for an upright corpse and began shouting orders at his men about maltreatment of the dead.

The three inspectors next skimmed an account of an eleven-year-old girl who went missing after going out to plow a row in a field for her mother. Her name was Eliza Carter, and she simply vanished out of that field. Her yellow dress was found days later on the East Ham football field. No one ever saw her again. The Chicago detectives read on from the account of the London investigator. The next paragraph read:

Charles Wagner, son of a West Ham butcher, vanished next, only a few weeks after the Carter girl. His body had been got at by animals, found seventy-five miles away at the bottom of a ravine at Ramsgate. The animals had got at him bad, tearing away all his face and much of his body. Oddly, neither the fall nor the drowning had caused death, according to the medical men. There was not one murderous abrasion or puncture mark that alone killed the boy but thirty-seven by count of the medical men.

Ransom stopped reading and said, “The work of multiple knifings? And as for cause of death…Fenger’s determined our man uses a cleaver and a number of blades, and it’s theorized there could be more than one madman doing the deed.”

“Really? More than one doing the stabbing?” asked Logan.

“And carving, perhaps. And cannibalizing, perhaps.”

Behan shivered at the idea.

Logan asked, “Rance, do you suspect one of these lunatic religious cults we’ve been seeing more and more of?”

“Maybe one begun in London, but moved to Chicago?” asked Behan.

“We’ve kicked over the thought, yes, of a cult sacrifice, but a London transport? No.”

“Do you for a moment think our killer…or, ahhh, killers…” began Behan, “that he could be one and the same as in England?”

“Long way to come to harvest children,” said Ransom, “especially when London’s got plenty of her own.”

“But then why not, Rance?” countered Logan. “Everyone else is coming to Chicago.”

“Creepy is what it is,” muttered Behan.

Ransom read on:

Next it was three girls in a row disappeared from West Ham all in January 1890. Only one of these dears was ever found, Amelia Jeffs, in West Ham Park. It’s surmised that Amelia made a getaway as there were signs of a struggle, and she had been bruised over the right eye and stabbed through stomach and ribs multiple times.

In every case of the missing where there was anything in the way of eyewitness reports, all the girls involved had been seen talking to and in some cases walking off with a woman. A cautious coroner whispered in me ear that we are fools to think that women are less susceptible to the lowest forms of mania and sexual perversions.

What with the Ripper murders on London’s East side in 1888 and ’89, when new Vanishings began here in the city, they were overshadowed by the mutilations left behind by that fiend Jack. Six prostitutes in all that we know of. Meantime, dozens upon dozens of children going missing, and no one in authority or the press caring as they were focused on when the next Ripper letter might appear. The disappearances ended on the cusp of 1890 becoming ’91. These Vanishings I speak of, and for ten years chased, to my disgrace, have never been solved.

Sincerely,

Inspector Kenan Heise, London, April 14, 1891

“So what do you make of it, lads?” asked Ransom of the other two inspectors.

“Are you asking our opinion of these circumstances?” asked Logan, hands gesturing with a wide swath. “Your eminence?”

“Cut out the foolishness.”

Behan too was doing a bit of a pirouette before him, ending with a bow. “After all, it was our case before we became your dotes and gophers.”

“Which am I,” asked Logan, “dote or gopher?”

“Both!” announced Ransom. “Lads, we’re working on equal footing here. We’re a team.”

“Like you and the kid?” asked Logan, indicating the empty desk across.

“That was different.”

“Really?”

“How so?”

“He was young, green, and-” He stopped short of telling them that Griffin Drimmer had been put on him by Kohler, not wishing to despoil Griff’s memory.

“And…?”

“And you fellows are old farts like myself, well versed in the ways of the detective,” finished Ransom. “I suspect our combined years on the force may do better than this fellow Heise working alone in London.”

“Do you think there is a link between his killer and ours?” asked Behan.

“Dunno. Interesting bit on perverted female suspects, heh?”

“Do you think there’s a woman involved?” asked Logan.

“Dunno, but it’s often true; you hear it in every lament and song-a woman made me do it.”

“You think?”

“It’s what we get paid for, to think.”

Logan pulled at his beard. “Imagine if it’s so…that the Vanishings is done by a woman.”

“Women are more readily accepted by children, less threatening,” Ransom suggested.

“Imagine it,” repeated Logan.

“A lotta shell games are begun by a pretty woman,” said Behan.

Logan laughed. “You well know it, too, don’tcha, lover?”

Alastair laughed at this. “We shouldn’t discard the notion out of hand, Logan.”

“True enough, we’ve all seen tough bitches in our time, but a cannibalizing woman? What’re you thinking, Alastair?

“The Phantom went invisible because we didn’t see him, and who is more invisible in our society than-”

“Than a woman!” It was Dr. James Phineas Tewes standing over his desk now, looking straight in his eye.

“And how, Dr. Tewes, did you arrive at this conclusion?”

“I interviewed a child who was nearly snatched by a woman.”

“What child? What woman?”

“A rag-and-bottle lady who makes her rounds pretty regularly in the child’s neighborhood.”

He took Jane aside. “How did you come by this information in the first place?”

“I intercepted your man.”

“What man?”

“Bosch.”

“Bosch? He spilled information to you meant for me?”

“Says I pay better.”

“The little weasel.”

“He’s rather cute when you get to know him.”

“All right, tell me what he said.”

“I can do better than that.”

“How so?”

“I have the child at my home. Gabby is with her now.”

“Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

“To this place? It’d only terrify her, and she’s plenty terrified enough as is.”

“I see…but she has no fear of Dr. Tewes?”

“None whatever; I am, after all, a gentle soul and children-”

“Know a gentle soul, yes.”

Ransom found his cane and pressed on his bowler hat, checked his pocket watch, and joined Tewes at the door, telling the other detectives, “I’m off lads to interview this child that Dr. Tewes feels may have some useful information.”

“Meantime, what would you like us to do, boss?” asked Behan.

“I may’ve been put on as lead investigator, Ken, but I’m no one’s boss. Let’s be clear on that.”

“But Ken’s question still remains, boss,” countered Logan. “Whataya expectin’ us to do meanwhile?”

He thought to say, Carry on as you were before I was thrust in on your case. But he saw that this was not going to do. “Go down to the yards tomorrow and speak with a fellow named Jack Houston, and-”

“A butcher?”

“A knacker to be specific.”

“A g’damn horse cutter?” Behan erupted.

“You know my constitution doesn’t permit such odors,” said Logan.

“Meanwhile,” Alastair emphasized the word meanwhile, “you’re to interview three others at the yards.”

“Four? Conduct four interviews at the yards?” Behan sounded stupefied.

Alastair flipped open his notes and rattled off the names. “Hatch…Quinn…and Sharkey. Houston can point you to Hatch, then on and on.”

“Butchers? Our killer’s not likely a butcher, Ransom, and you know it.”

“Still…we have to cover the bases, boys.”

“Cover the what?” asked Behan.

Logan explained, “It’s an expression, comes out of cricket, and now that new game people are betting on, base on balls.”

“Gotta look at the usual suspects and any leads,” Alastair added.

“What lead?”

“Houston says that these other three are queer fellows, even for butchers.”

“And you believe him?”

“Houston’ll tell you all about it when you get out to the knacker stalls.”

Logan gave a last verbal balk. “Look here, we’re interviewing people who live in the areas where the children’ve disappeared.”

“Continue that as well. Don’t let me stop you.” As Alastair was about to turn and exit with Tewes, he and Jane noticed Nathan Kohler atop the stairwell, staring down at them, his features unreadable. Ransom gave him a little wave of the hand and said, “Night, Chief.”

On arriving at the Tewes home on Belmont, Jane quickly explained to Ransom, “I’ve a temporary house guest, now being kept occupied by Gabby, “Someone you must meet. It could be crucial to our case,” she was going on in that practiced whining male voice of Tewes’s that always got on Alastair’s last nerve. Jane also pointed toward Gabby’s room where the door stood partially open. “She’s in there with her now, giving her things. Old clothes, old dolls, whatever the child wants.”

“You say she’s a homeless child?”

“’Fraid so, yes. Her name’s Audra. Sweetest face you ever saw.” Alastair caught snatches of giggling and words between Gabrielle and her guest.

“She won’t talk at all to Dr. Tewes. For some reason, this personae frightens her. I suspect men have used her badly.”

“If she fears men and in particular you as a man, she will likely be terrified of me,” Alastair reasoned.

“Not necessarily. Her father was a large man like yourself, who unfortunately died of yellow fever while nursing her mother through it. Both died, leaving her an orphan six years ago, according to records I dug up at Cook.”

“She’s been on the street since then?”

“Not entirely. In and out of foster homes until she went into hiding.”

“Into hiding?”

“OK…into a gang, I gather. She now considers this street gang family.”

Alastair frowned at this as she closed her bedroom door to go change and remove makeup and mustache, ascot and wig. She was a consummate actress as well as a phrenologist and surgeon. He got only a peek at her large makeup lights and mirror.

He heard the soft laughter of Audra and Gabby as he made his way back toward the front of the house. Unsure what to do with himself until she’d return and introduce him to the would-be witness to Leather Apron, or whoever might be behind the Vanishings, Alastair wandered into the parlor, the room where he had been accidentally shot by Gabby. He stood gazing at the room as if in a dream, the memory of that thunder-and-lightning night coming in flashes. What he recalled most was lying over the top of Waldo Denton-the man he believed the garroter-and bleeding over him where he was pinned below Ransom’s 260 pounds.

He looked down at his girth and wondered just how much he weighed these days. He feared what a scale might say about it.

“I am ready to proceed,” said Jane from behind him. “Are you prepared to meet Audra?”

“Where best to conduct the interview?”

“Anywhere but here. What about the kitchen. We’ve nothing but good memories there.”

She led the way, adding, “I’ve prepared the child to meet you. Have shown her photographs. It’s how I first learned of her father and mother, and besides, she knows of you…says she has seen you on the street, knows you as The Bear, she says.”

“You have photographs of me?”

“From newspaper accounts, yes, and one I purchased from Mr. Keane.”

“Hold on! Are you saying Philo charged you for a photo of me, and you were foolish enough to pay?”

“Well, it was a rather memorable photo. I am in it as well,” she replied, smiling. “Imagine a photo of us together.”

“At the fair? On the Ferris wheel? When?”

“At the train station when you snatched that boy’s head off his garroted neck and pushed it into my hands.”

“Tewes’s hands, you mean.”

“Yes, if you wish to get technical. It’s how we met, all the same, isn’t it.”

“Blasted Philo.”

She called for Gabby to bring Audra into the kitchen to meet Inspector Ransom. In a moment, the college-aged Gabby, maternally guiding and hovering about the little girl, stood smiling before them. Although scruffy-haired, Audra’s eyes were constantly working, suspicious. Gabby had bathed the girl and had dressed her in hand-me-downs.

Audra held firm to her newly acquired doll in one hand and Gabby with the other. Gabby introduced her to Alastair, ending with, “And you know my Aunt Jane.”

Alastair smiled his warmest, wanting to get on the child’s good side.

“Are you a Zoroaster?” asked the small girl.

“A what?”

“I forgot to tell you, Alastair, she asks everyone if they are a Zoroaster, a devil.”

“Hmmmf,” he let out a sound. “Do I look like a devil?”

“Ahhh…yeah, you do,” came the small reply half swallowed in Audra’s throat. Jane had not exaggerated; she was a cute little blond thing indeed.

“Zoroaster is a deity, Alastair, one that Audra believes is running loose and unchecked here in Chicago, at work and behind the Vanishings-telling other individuals, according to Audra, to bring him sacrifices. She also says some strange old sick-in-the-head bird named Bloody Mary procures for Zoroaster.”

“Oh, great…our killer is a deity, a supernatural being who talks to that old crone, Bloody Mary.”

“You know her?” Jane’s look was incredulity at its zenith.

“Not a cop in Chicago doesn’t know Bloody Mary or has arrested her at one time or another. Frankly, Jane, this doesn’t feel like a useful lead. More like a frightened girl’s tale.”

“Then you know where to find this so-called Bloody Mary, but you’re not going to look into this allegation that she is somehow connected to the Vanishings?” asked Jane.

“Why not at least pick her up for questioning!” said an excited Gabby.

Alastair took Jane into the hallway and whispered, “Look, the old bat is out of her head. A complete loon. From day to day, she doesn’t even know who she is, but I’ve known her for years. Can find her almost any night in the drunk tank.”

“Perhaps she has graduated to more serious crime than public intoxication.”

“No…no…you amateur detectives…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, I think this is a dead end.”

“No! Don’t shut down on this just yet. Hear the girl out.”

“Bloody Mary’s a vagrant, a regular at the station house.”

“And like the Phantom has remained invisible until you opened your eyes to him and proved him a fiend.”

“Bloody Mary is hardly invisible. She’s a public nuisance and a beggar.”

“But she sounds like she has the habits of a weasel.”

“More like a rat and smells it. Lice ridden…nobody wants to go near her.”

“Just hear the girl out, Alastair.”

“OK…OK…”

They returned to join Gabby and Audra. Gabby was in midsentence, “And besides, I did some research and Zoroaster is not all bad; in fact, he’s a she and she’s a he, Mother. Ironic, huh?”

“Whatever do you mean?” asked Jane, blinking.

“Zoroaster is both good and evil. I showed Audra where it says so in my book on mythology, and she’s accepting us as all from the good Zoroaster.”

“Sounds promising,” replied Alastair. “Now listen, little girl,” he said, “I have arrested this Bloody Mary on occasion, so don’t go suspecting she’s anything but human, and if she is in any way involved in carving up little kids, she will pay dearly once I have her in my jail again.” He displayed his enormous handcuffs. “So stop your worrying. Just tell me what you’ve seen.”

She looked, big-eyed, all about the room, from face to face, still reluctant to speak. Gabby tried to dispel the tension with a joke. “If you at any time feel it necessary, you can always shoot Inspector Ransom.”

Jane and Ransom both glared at Gabrielle, who instantly gasped, realizing what she’d said was not at all funny as she’d intended. “I didn’t really mean…I mean…no Audra, there’s no shooting the inspector.”

Ransom pulled forth a photo of Anne Chapman in her yellow print dress. “Look, child, did you ever see Anne Chapman-this girl”-he put the photo in her hand-“with Bloody Mary?”

“Ahhh…no, I didn’t but-”

Already skeptical of learning anything from the child, Alastair placed another photo and another and another before her. All the remaining victims, some still missing. “Have you ever seen Bloody Mary kicking about with any of these children?”

“They aren’t street kids like me. They all had homes.”

“I am aware of that, but did you or didn’t you see them with Bloody Mary?”

Like a little one-man judge and jury, Audra looked from the photos and up at Alastair, sizing him up, reevaluating him. “I think I ought to take you to my king,” she blurted out.

“Your king?”

“Yes, Robin. He’ll tell you; they’ll all tell you who the killer is, that it’s Bloody Mary and no one else.”

“The same old beggar lady who sells stolen stuff from windowsills and clotheslines?” asked Ransom.

“That’s her, all right. But her real job is butchering children like me.”

“And you say you can back this up with others like this Robin fellow’s testimony?”

“The whole lot of us know it’s her. She’s been after us for months.”

“Well, then, Audra, dear,” came Jane’s soothing voice, “why don’t you take us to your king and his court?”

“They’ll beat me if they don’t go for it, they will…but I told King Robin that we gotta trust somebody, and when Miss Jane was so kind to me…I began to tell. Trouble is…if you tell everything, the demons-the bad Zoroaster’s people-they’ll kill you for it.”

“She told me the demons don’t want adults to know they’re here,” Gabby added.

Audra clutched her doll tighter. “Zoroasters’re afraid of adults.”

“Why?” asked Jane.

“Be-because until adults see them, they stay, like, invisible.”

Alastair sat on the edge of his chair at this last remark, so prophetic. It was almost word for word what he had said of Leather Apron and the Phantom. So long as they went unseen even in plain sight, they remained powerful and capable of what seemed damn near supernatural.

“Tomorrow, will you take me to this king of yours, Audra?” said Alastair.

Secretly, Alastair believed it a wild goose chase, and he expected this would be a monumental waste of time, but it would score points with Jane and with Gabby, he supposed. At the very least, he hoped to make more recruits of the homeless children, convert them into that many more eyes and ears for the police. But they’d have to give him a great deal more than the tattered old, addle-brained, lice-infested Bloody Mary to interest him.