Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 13

The following day

A phone call awakened Alastair after a long night of drinking and swapping stories with others on the police force and a few hangers-on at Muldoon’s where Ransom held court at his back booth. Alastair had decided to take Muldoon up on his “generous” offer. After all, there was nothing in Chicago that was not for sale, not even a man’s reputation. Part of his decision had to do with his having had no effect on changing Jane’s decision to continue to work as Dr. Tewes and to her having added séances to the doctor’s repertoire of diagnostic tools. If a highly educated surgeon could behave in such a manner, then why not a Chicago police inspector-if it were for a good and righteous cause? Why not bank on his infamy and reputation if it was for another means to an end-a way to help kids like Audra, Sam, and countless others? But no one must know.

As a result, people had bought him beer and whiskey shots all night. As added result, this a.m. ringing phone sounded like a fire alarm in his head. He rolled from bed and had to cross the room and go out into the front room to get the phone. It felt like a journey to India by foot.

Each time the phone rang, his headache throbbed at a lower decimal. He finally clutched the receiver in his paw and growled, “What is it?”

Alastair was stunned at what Inspector Logan conveyed. He’d hoped with the news of Thomas Crutcheon’s death by pitchfork that the Leather Apron killings had ended. Even if Crutcheon wasn’t the butcher, Ransom hoped the killer would take this opportunity to become “Crutcheon” to end his murderous attacks. Not so, as Logan related the fact of another child’s body turning up. This time in an alleyway back of Loomis and Jackson, an area infested with tinderbox clapboard one-room shacks in which whole families lived atop one another. The entire area was slated for clearing and rebuilding-a thing they called beautifying in political speeches and in higher circles.

“I’m on my way.”

“Sorry to bring such news, Alastair, but there it is. I’ve sent a police wagon for you.”

“Well done, Logan. I’ll be as quick as I can be.”

Alastair drank down a concoction of juices and whiskey to fight the hangover, swallowed some pills that Jane’d prescribed for headache, and dressed at once. He was soon going across the city in an official horse-drawn police carriage. When he arrived at the scene, a large, ugly crowd had already gathered. A threatening atmosphere was evident, palpable. The police proved an easy target to the people’s collective fear and frustration.

Alastair waved his cane and shouted over the jeers, “What’ve ya in mind here, people? Are you going to hang me to a tree and burn me in effigy?”

“Not you, Ransom!” shouted one.

“Hang ’em all!” shouted another.

“Do you have enough fellas to lift me?” replied Alastair, drawing a laugh and defusing the anger somewhat. “And can you afford enough petro to burn me?” His last words sent up more laughter among the crowd.

Logan and Behan signaled for him to join them. Alastair had to pick his way through the overbearing crowd. More uniformed cops arrived to hold the concerned neighbors at bay so that the inspectors could do their job.

Alastair also had to pick his way through a minefield of discarded trash, bottles, castoff bedsprings, mattresses, boards, and scattered debris. Among all the trash one child’s body, whole strips of flesh torn away from the fleshiest sections. Nude, the child had gone an ashen bluish color under the elements.

“Despite the butchering, Rance,” began a jittery Behan, “the bastard who did this left her face pretty much intact and didn’t take the eyes this time. Not sure why….”

Logan added, “She’s not been dead so long as the others, Alastair.”

“Is that right?” he asked.

“Dr. Fenger’s come and gone, leaving his opinion,” added Logan, a cigar hanging from his mouth. Using the cigar to point, he indicated the meat wagon and Dr. Fenger’s body snatchers, as some called Shanks and Gwinn. Ransom openly gritted his teeth at the two death mongers. While they filled a need, transporting the dead, they did so with an enthusiasm far outdistancing their professional acumen. Dr. Fenger, for some odd, unknown reason kept them on as a kind of pet project, as he had bailed them out of jail when under suspicion of actual body-snatching to sell bodies unearthed from cemeteries to local medical schools. Alastair never quite understood Fenger’s involvement, but the appearance was not good-bailing out two men accused of such a heinous crime and making them legitimate ambulance attendants while they awaited the fury of Judge Grimes. Then the charges just dissipated, became watered down, and Grimes had turned the pair of ghouls over to Dr. Fenger’s care to keep them on at Cook County Hospital and its adjacent asylum, and to keep them out of Cook County cemeteries, where they had been nabbed in the first place. They claimed not to be unearthing a body at the time but burying some beloved dog named Cecil. As outrageous as it all was, something going on behind the scenes, even in the judge’s chambers, between Dr. Fenger and Grimes-two men normally thought of as enjoying the highest moral character-had agreed on the new state of affairs with regard to Shanks and Gwinn.

No matter, Alastair could not stand the pair, and not because they were homosexuals but because they undoubtedly scavenged bodies for jewelry and tickets and cash and coin and any shiny object, like a pair of vultures. Dr. Fenger insisted that he had broken the two of any such habits, and that he had trained them well, and that Cook County paid them a good wage, so they need not rob bodies they were put in charge of.

Alastair still had nightmares about when he’d been thrown unconscious into that stench-filled hell-hole they called an ambulance-literally a meat wagon. The whitewash given the old dram had not completely obscured the old Oscar Mayer Meat Company sign along each side.

Alastair put aside such thoughts and kneeled close in on the dead child, guessing from the size of the girl that she was about the age of young Audra or slightly older. Ransom lifted the broken neck, wondering if it’d been broken before or after death, or during some horrendous torture or struggle. “Didja fight the devil, lass?” he asked the small corpse.

Ransom then looked at the girl’s features, and despite chunks of flesh slit from her cheeks, the face and eyes shocked him. He let the face drop away, gasping. “It’s Danielle…Queen Danielle…”

“You know the victim, Alastair?” asked Logan, eyes wide.

Behan came closer, saying, “Keep it down. We don’t need any more agitation from this crowd.”

Logan whispered in his ear. “How do you know this Danielle?”

“I…I interviewed her just two days ago regarding…about what the word on the street was with regards to the case.”

“Do you think it a coincidence then she’s dead?”

“She becomes a victim immediately after my interviewing her?

“And the bastard left the eyes and face so’s to be recognized.” Behan swallowed hard and wiped his brow.

“I’ve never trusted coincidence, lads.”

“So why start now?” Logan patted Ransom on the back.

“It mayn’t be prudent to inform press or public of your connection with the girl, Ransom,” suggested Behan.

Ransom looked Inspector Ken Behan in the eye. “I merely talked with her about the case, not even the case, really. About how she and other shelter and homeless children view the world, and who they fear, and why. I was looking for any kind of lead.”

“Like any cop, you put your ear to the street.” The thin-faced Logan swiped at a shock of unruly hair.

“Yeah…basic information gathering,” agreed Behan, “but people don’t know that. They only know what they wanna know.”

“On the ground information gathering, Behan,” Alastair said, “exactly.”

“All the same, people can twist things, so keep it quiet, your connection to the victim,” Behan continued to caution.

Alastair now glared openly at Behan, and then his glare took in Logan. “I did not say I slept with the child!”

Behan shushed him. “We…I didn’t mean to imply-”

But Alastair loudly proclaimed, “Those two ghouls over there with their meat wagon won’t get their hands on Danielle.”

“Alastair! What’re you doing?”

Ransom lifted her up into his arms. “No one cared for her in life, not anyone. In death, she’ll be cared for.” With that he carried Danielle’s brutalized and butchered body to the police dram that had brought him here.

Shanks and Gwinn started to rush in, demanding to know what Ransom was doing. Cook County Morgue paid Shanks and Gwinn only for the numbers of bodies they brought in. Logan and Behan stepped in, running interference for Ransom, backing Shanks and Gwinn off.

“Sorry, boys, but the CPD has this one,” said Logan.

“Back off,” added Behan.

Ransom laid the body in the police carriage and ordered the uniformed driver to take him and Danielle’s remains to the morgue. As the driver pulled away with Ransom and the unusual cargo, Alastair heard Shanks spit out a curse under his breath, while Gwinn toyed with a six-inch blade, cleaning his dirty nails. Both of the reputed resurrection men had sternly eye-balled Inspector Ransom as he’d closed the carriage door on himself and the body.

“Never seen a grown man cry,” Behan muttered to his partner.

Logan looked from the retreating carriage to the ambulance men. “Yeah…just look at the vultures.”

“I meant Rance.”

“Rance? I saw no tears.”

“Look a little deeper next time.”

“They get paid by the number of bodies transported to County, Alastair, and those fellows, no matter what you think of them, have a right to a living as anyone,” Dr. Fenger chastised him on learning that Ransom was in his morgue with the young woman’s body. Fenger had guessed her age at thirteen, perhaps fourteen.

“Damn Shanks and Gwinn, Christian! I talk to this girl and two days later she’s brutally murdered!”

“You knew the child?”

“Not really, no. I was following a lead…a lead that began with Jane and a young girl now in as much danger, a street urchin named Audra, who led us to Danielle.”

“I have coffee in my office. Come, let’s talk.”

It was not long before Alastair downed his second cup of Irish coffee and had explained the religion of the street children he had run into. Fenger had listened with awe at the revelations both from the children and from Philo Keane.

“I had not known Philo was an orphan as a child.”

“He had it pretty rough in Montreal.”

“You know, Alastair…not that it has anything to do with Philo, but some people who grow up on the streets like that…as adults or older children, they begin bullying others, and it is not unusual for some to escalate to violence. Some escalating to murder of the very thing that reminds them of their past.”

“Are you saying-”

“Just theorizing.”

“Are you theorizing that the bastard behind these butcherings and vanishings was once a street child?”

“Was and perhaps still is-even if older!”

“Gone over to the dark side of that religion they preach, yes,” agreed Ransom with himself. “Of course. Acting on the belief in this war between Heaven and Hell, and doing Satan’s bidding.”

“A strong possibility, yes.”

“There’re literally thousands of homeless here.”

“And more flooding into the city every day.”

Alastair declined a third cup of the potent, bourbon-spiked coffee. He stared, glassy-eyed, at Fenger’s wall of degrees and awards.

“So what will you do now, Alastair?”

“I’m gonna hunt this predator down like the animal he is.”

“And when you catch him?”

Inspector and doctor stared at one another for a long moment. Finally, Alastair said, “Nathan has surely informed you by now that I refuse to be a pawn in Senator Chapman’s plan of vengeance.”

“And nothing will dissuade you?”

“Even I have my standards, Doctor.”

“We all must find the line we’re unwilling to cross.”

“Look, climbing into this pact with Kohler is a sure step toward hell; you can only regret it in the end, Christian.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“There has to be another way. With your reputation, you should be capable of naming your loan.”

“I’m afraid not…not anymore. Have borrowed from all of ’em.”

“I don’t understand it, Christian. You don’t gamble anymore than Philo or I, so where is all this money going?”

“I can’t say.”

“Secrets. Everybody’s got secrets.”

“This could ruin me.”

Alastair shook his head. “Nothing you could do, old friend, could possibly ruin you in my eyes, unless you turn out to be the madman going about butchering children.”

“Some in the press are saying he is a medical man.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Saying Leather Apron makes incisions, makes surgical cuts. Damn fools. I made Carmichael sit through the last autopsy, and I showed him the difference between butchery and surgery.”

“Did it take? Did he get it?”

“Like the fools in London who called Jack the Ripper’s twenty-nine or thirty insane slashes precision, and why? Because he ripped out a woman’s uterus and other organs?” Fenger had stood and was now pacing, angry at the thought of it. “Damn fools. Sometimes I feel we are surrounded on all sides by imbeciles.”

“Any copper can see these cuts have no similarity to surgery,” agreed Ransom. “But it does not rule out that the killer could be a cagey medical fellow who wants it to look like anything but precision.”

“Oh, please, not you, too.”

“Doctor, I don’t have the luxury of ruling out whole classes of people; I am in the business of suspecting everyone until they are cleared.”

“Guilty till proven innocent?”

“’Fraid so. How else do you expect me to operate?”

“Alastair…my instincts tell me this man has had no training whatsoever, and this latest of his kills is some sort of message.”

“Message?”

“Either to you or to those street children you spoke of.”

“Hmmm…I’ve said as much to Behan and Logan.”

“So again, I ask,” began Frenger, “what will your next move be?”

“It’s back to the streets, and I must find a way to get word to every child in this city, because this maniac doesn’t care if you have a home or not, are monied or poor, black or white, parentless or the child of a senator.”

“He appears to have only one thing in mind.”

“He wants your flesh.”

“Yes,” agreed Fenger, “a flesh vampire, who feeds off the carcass over time, generally, but with your last victim, he did not continue feeding but rather left the body in a well-traveled area, where cops routinely patrol, to be found early…soon-like now.”

“Sending a message.”

“Using a child’s body to send a message, yes.”

“Perhaps due to me.”

“We don’t know that, Alastair…not for certain.”

“I should’ve bloody well stayed on Mackinac Island and not come back,” Alastair said on his way out the door. “Fiends and monsters-I attract fiends and monsters.”

Fenger shouted down the hall after him. “We don’t know that the message is directed at you! Don’t be so self-serving even in this, Ransom! Suppose the message is being sent to the other children?”

Ransom stopped and wheeled and lifted his cane at Fenger. “And that message is to dare not speak to me!” Ransom then stalked from the hospital morgue, finding the stone stairwell up to the first floor, sorely in need of feeling sunshine on his face, a breeze against his skin, and air enough to swell his lungs with anything other than formaldehyde and death.

Ransom wondered how he could break the news of Danielle’s murder to Jane and Gabby, but he knew he wanted to get to them before they saw it in the Herald or Tribune. While none of them had actually known Danielle beyond that first meeting, everyone nonetheless had bonded with Audra, and Audra was connected to Danielle and all those little kids they’d met two days before. Some of them so small and young as to look the part of those stuffed animals won by fairgoers.

Traveling across the city from Cook County Hospital to Jane’s northside home, Alastairs’s cab seemed the only one going away from the great fair. Cab after cab rushed past his, all making for the opposite direction. He had the feel of the only fish going upstream as the throngs flooded toward the lake and the sound of merriment.

Gabby met him at the door, smiling, happy, telling him she’d had a wonderful day, and that the suffragettes had made a dent. She held up a local neighborhood newspaper called the Polishka Polityka. While the story was in Polish, it supported the right of all women to vote.

“It’s a coup, Alastair! We’re making headway!”

“Congratulations, Gabby. You ladies deserve all the press and success you can get. Now, is your mother at home?”

Gabby immediately felt his cool abruptness. “She’s in the clinic but as Dr. Tewes.”

He frowned at this.

“Gabby pulled him into an alcove and conspiratorially whispered, “We must band together to get her to put an end to Tewes, and to these séances and phrenology. It’s too much.”

“I am your man.”

“Despite her wrapping it all in a cloak of nobility, Mother’d be so much happier being herself.”

“I know…yes, who she is, agreed, Gabby, but for the moment, I’m afraid I have some bad news to impart.”

Her face turned grim in the half-light. “Please not another vanishing?”

“’Fraid it’s worse than that, and it’s come close to home.”

“Close to home?” she asked, a little gasp escaping her.

He absently asked, “Have you seen any more of Audra since we visited her street family?”

“Oh, God, tell me she’s not gone the way of the Vanished, please!”

“No, no! Not Audra. I am hoping to speak to her again. To warn her and the others.”

“Something dreadful has happened, hasn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Mother’s going to want to know. Come.”

They found Jane in Tewes’s clinic, and while busy, the good doctor left a patient in the chair beneath the brass pipe pyramid. In fact, the patient was snoring, asleep under Tewes’s touch during his phrenological exam. What a perfect scam, Alastair thought, cloaked as it was in the respectability of “science” and medication and this thing Jane called magnetic healing. And how many massage parlors are there in this town, he silently asked himself. Still her “exam” worked on me.

Jane reacted immediately to the look on Gabby’s face. She followed them into the kitchen where Alastair began to explain, “You’re going to want to sit for this, both of you.”

Due the tone of his voice, the ladies sat at the table. Alastair said, “Our latest victim is Danielle, the girl we met through Audra. She’s…she is at Fenger’s morgue now.”

They sat stunned, silence filling the room. After a long pause, Alastair began providing some details as to where Queen Danielle was found, how she had been left in a trash heap, ending with, “It was unlike all the other killings.”

“H-h-how so?” Jane’s lip quivered with each word.

“In that she was left recognizable.”

Gabby openly cried. Jane held her. “What else’ve you come to tell us, Alastair? I know there’s more.”

“You are intuitive. I give you that.”

Gabby wiped away tears on a handkerchief he offered her. “Is she…is her body being taken care of?”

“Yes. I’ve seen to it.”

“What else, Alastair?”

“Christian and I discussed the case, and we are of a mind that the killer may have targeted Danielle as a lesson to the other homeless children.”

“A lesson?” asked Jane.

“Because she talked to us?” asked Gabby.

“We surmise because she talked to me,” he countered. “You are blameless in this.”

“This is awful…terrible,” said Gabby, the tears returning.

“We need to protect those remaining somehow,” said Jane.

“That’s a highly unlikely proposition.”

“What do you mean?”

“This news will spread like wildfire among the street people.”

“Yes, those kids have lost their leader,” began Gabby. “Chaos in the tribe. They’ll be scattered, and likely impossible to find.”

“Perhaps Audra will try to contact you again, Gabby, but finding the others? No.”

“Through Audra,” said Jane, eyes wide, “we could convince them to stay close to the shelters.”

“I suppose, but you have to first find Audra.”

“We must try. I’ll call for a carriage.”

“We can try the area where we last saw her,” suggested Gabby.

Alastair hadn’t the heart to tell them they would likely waste the evening finding no one, especially in the haunts the children had been frequenting. He was about to excuse himself when the patient from the clinic chair appeared in the doorway, asking, “Dr. Tewes? Is my session over?”

“Yes, it is definitely ended, and I am called away, Mr. Moritz.”

Alastair took this moment to slip from the kitchen and the house.

The cool evening air felt good on his brow. He felt a sense of guilt that the ladies had not immediately laid it on his doorstep that Danielle’s death was in fact a direct result of her having dared entertain Alastair Ransom in her court. Still, he worried, for if this were the case, King Robin could easily be next.

Alastair went in search of his snitch, Bosch, and to see if he could find Samuel, the street boy he’d put on his payroll, in hope of turning up something-anything-on Leather Apron, but he knew that Bosch might well have taken leave of Chicago altogether if he were smart. But then this was Bosch, and Ransom had known few snitches, indeed few criminals as well, who were smart enough, or confident enough, to start over elsewhere. The familiar terrain of his very own city, the criminal mind told itself, gave him an advantage; told itself that it knew every nook and cranny better than either the coppers or natives like Alastair. In fact, it was a foolish but recurrent habit of criminals to haunt the same places over and over; furthermore, Alastair knew it a matter of human nature. People held a map of their small, comfortable, manageable universe in their heads, and the older they became, the more trapped and mired were they within that terrain. For this reason, few men who committed crimes could long stay away from family, friends, old haunts. How many times had he shadowed men released from prison who’d returned to their childhood “maps” only to commit some new outrage, only to be rearrested and again incarcerated.

Still, Henry Bosch was a cut above the usual criminal turned snitch. Alastair had first made Bosch a snitch out of some pity for his story of how he’d become a cripple and thus a destitute man, and thus a desperate man, and the final thus: a thief. Ransom and other cops saw him routinely arrested and after serving time released, and each go-around, Bosch regaled the cops with his Civil War stories and opinions on General and later President Grant, with whom he claimed to have had personal contact on the battlefield, claiming they shared a bottle of whiskey in a firefight. Ransom only doubted half the story-the half that Bosch was in. However, as with all the police gathered about the peg-leg vet, Ransom found his storytelling amusing as hell. Ransom had urged him to come to work as his snitch.

“Me? A groundhog, a copper penny, a ferret, a rat?”

“You’ve all the talent for it, and it’ll put your considerable mind and experience and knowledge of the streets to good use,” Ransom had encouraged.

Bosch thought about it for several days, then suddenly agreed but only if an advance of twenty dollars was made.

Alastair quickly located a carriage and was soon west of the city. He found Bosch where he knew Bosch would be-at the racetrack-losing whatever money the leprechaun managed to gain from the ill-fated incident that almost got Ransom killed. After all, it was Sunday so the races were in full swing. With the beer garden open and ale mugs filled to spilling over, the crowd was as jovial as if at the World’s Fair. The numbers looked to be in the upper hundreds, perhaps a thousand, all in high spirits, save for the recent losers, who could be picked out at a glance. Bosch was not hard to find within this congregation; one need only listen for the familiar dot ’n’ carry sound of his peg leg and cane as he pushed along.

“Canya advance me, Inspector?” Bosch immediately asked, astonishing Ransom with his sheer nerve.

Ransom yanked him into the recessed area between two ticket booths not being used. Somewhere through a bullhorn speaker, a minstrel song played, the lyrics wafting over the track: “Dance boatman dance, dance all night till the broad daylight, go home with a gal in the morning. Dance boatman dance, dance boatman dance.”

“You damn near got me killed, you gimp fool!”

“Oh, that. Now, Rance…it tweren’t my fault in the least, you see-”

“Dance boatman dance…”

“It was Kohler set me up, wasn’t it?”

“I only shouted that cause…cause I knew you’d jump.”

“Dance boatman dance…”

“Lying little weasel! I know it was Nathan Kohler, and you’re going to say so in a court of law.”

He laughed at this. Ransom grabbed him roughly by the throat. A passing pair of friends in frock coats and bowler hats noticed the ruckus, but they quickly glanced away and moved off elsewhere to place their bets.

“You think this is funny, Bosch? You see me laughing?”

“I only laugh,” he choked out, “cause I’m sick with nerves at the thought. Me in a courta law. Imagine anyone believing me on a stack-a-Bibles!”

“Are you saying Elias Jervis acted on his own? That Jervis himself paid you?”

“Yes, but what would you’ve done at that instant if I’d’ve yelled out Jervis’s name instead of Kohler, you see? Human nature, see. I am a student of it.”

“Dance boatman dance…”

Ransom had not removed his hand from Bosch’s scrawny neck.

“I saved your life, Inspector.”

“And collected from both sides,” added Ransom.

“Well ahhh yeah…I did collect both sides on the deal, but that’s the mark of a good businessman now, isn’t it?”

“Bosch, I ought to crack your head open.”

“H-hey, at first, I didn’t know anymore than you did.”

“No?” Ransom had to remember this man weaved with words.

“Elias was wantin’ to set up shop again in Chicago.”

“Still buying and selling women?”

“Still dealin’ women, like your Polly Pete once.”

“Leave Polly to her grave, old man!”

“But Jervis, he sent a woman to stand in as this young lady with a diary, knowing that I was your, ahhh…associate, see? I was fooled for a time, too, so you needn’t feel as if you were the only one made a fool of, Inspector.”

“That’s a real comfort to me, Bosch.” Ransom released his hold on his “associate.”

“If you’ve got something for me, you know, like a bonus for saving your hide, young man!” said Bosch as he straightened his clothes, his hand out. “I could use some wagerin’ capital.”

“Something for you?” Ransome laughed now, thinking it weird someone calling him “young man.” “Damn it, Bosch, where’ve you been? Do you know another child’s been killed?”

“Ohhh…it’s a horror, what’s happening on the streets, isn’t it? I mean children! I know, but it’s a stone-cold mystery, and nobody seems to know nothing whatsoever, but there is something in the wind.” Bosch looked about to be certain no one was near enough to overhear this. “Still, I can’t vouch for its validity, you see, only that it’s blowin’ ’bout.”

Then Bosch heard the race begin, and he looked out longingly toward the gate, salivating. Ransom pushed him out of the booth area for the racetrack, following the old man as he ambled toward the free spectator’s area, his cane and wooden leg silent on the turf.

They soon found a section of fence and Bosch’s horse came thundering by in a neck-to-neck with another animal. Bosch leapt onto the fence, disregarding his handicap, slapping the inside of the fence with his cane, shouting, “Come on! Damn you, nag! Come on!” A note of desperation created an edge to his screaming at the dumb animal he’d bet on. Only Ransom was close enough to hear his excitement over the noise of the crowd. He’d never seen Bosch truly happy at any time in their “association” until now, watching him cry out to “his” horse, and for the first time in his life, Ransom realized that for the duration of the race, a guy like Bosch “owned” a piece of that racehorse.

“Do ya think the horse hears your prayers, Bosch?” Alastair asked.

Bosch’s horse won.

“Damn straight he heard that one!” shouted Bosch, jubilant, dropping from the fence and doing a jig to the delight of people all round them, drawing too much attention so far as Alastair was concerned.

“All right, Bosch, so tell me now, what’s in the wind?”

“I’ve got me winnings to pick up at the window, and that was a long shot. Twenty to one, Inspector. Twenty to one!”

“Damn it Bosch, next week you will be looking for cash again, so tell me now what it is you’ve heard on the bloody wind!”

“I am hearing the killer…well…he ain’t no he. He’s a she, and that it’s Bloody Mary gone so far off her rocker as to do this thing.”

“Bloody Mary, heh? You’re a day late and a dollar short as usual,” he replied, slapping two singles into Bosch’s hands. “Get me something credible, will you? I know Bloody Mary. She’s quite incapable of being Leather Apron.”

“The old battle-ax is daft!” Bosch’s frown shrank his entire face. “Makes her capable of anything.”

“Half the population is daft, including you! Should I arrest you for being daft?”

Bosch’s scrunched face now looked sour. “I didn’t say it was Bloody Mary what done it.”

“That’s what you inferred for money, Bosch.”

“You asked for what’s being touted ’bout the street. I only told you what is going round, what people’re whispering.”

“All right, but it’s no use, man.”

“Didn’t promise no great revelations, now did I?” He pouted.

“Nor have you given any. Look, Bosch, I heard it was Mary from the homeless kids on the street days ago, and I put no more stock in it now as then.”

“And I hear you’re paying homeless kids and cabbies to do my job! And I’m here to tell you that’s a waste of money. You won’t get no straight answer from a snot-nosed shelter kid or a lorry driver.”

“Go claim your winnings, Bosch,” Alastair replied, taking in a deep breath of air. “I’m done with you.”

“Done with me?” Bosch stood his ground, stunned, silent, a look of disbelief coming over his features like a cloud moving in from over the lake.

“For the moment, man! Done for now, so please, just go-outta my sight!”

Bosch smiled at this. “Ahhh…then our association is still intact?” Bosch grabbed his hand and pumped it.

“Get the hell off.”

“I’ll keep working on it, Inspector. I’ll get you something other than the nonsense about Mary.”

“Do that! And in the meantime, work a little harder to keep us both from being killed. You think you can manage that?” he shouted as Bosch disappeared into the crowd, going for the payout window.

The music had resumed somewhere overhead. “Dance boatman dance…”

Alastair made his way back into the city streets, his carriage ride solemn. He ordered the driver to take him down to the Levy district. It was time to confront Bloody Mary and possibly arrest her before the mob took it into its collective mind to hang her as Leather Apron. In fact, the madwoman might decide to tout this newly acquired reputation-Ransom would not put it past the crone to revel in the notoriety-to even go about in a leather apron. If so, she’d be ripped apart before the mob hung her by the heels and set her aflame.

Alastair knew her as a dirty, lice-infested lunatic, addled and belonging in Cook County Asylum, but she’d proven even too much for officials there, who did not want her back, as she caused serious problems and upset other inmates due to her raw language and actions. She’d once created a riot there during which the inmates demanded better care and better food and better materials such as paper and wax crayons.

Alone now in the back of the carriage, Alastair felt a great weight on his shoulders and chest as if some nightmare gargoyle or incubus had perched atop him, and he felt a great sadness for young Danielle and her orphaned little band. He tightened his grip on his wolf’s-head cane, and he said a silent prayer for help. A growing sense of urgency to locate the monster or monsters behind the Vanishings welled up and filled him with bile and hatred for Leather Apron and any others who conspired with him or her. Her…

The notion it could be a woman recalled the caution of the London detective, Heise, who’d chased a similar killer for a decade to no avail. Alastair must consider the possibility, remote as it was, that Leather Apron could as well be Bloody Mary and that a woman could, as well as any man, butcher and consume the flesh of children.