Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 19

Alastair pushed on through the black void, determined to gain as many footsteps in this underworld as possible before having to return to his starting point. In the semi-dark near the vent, he’d read his clock, opening it on its chime-the music being “Green Sleeves.” The time read 8:44 p.m. Complete darkness in the storm outside only made the passageway he stood in blacker as he’d continued on.

Silence here proved complete save for the gay sounds of the fair overhead, noises filtering in through the same vents as the light. “Light…sound…OK…water not so good,” he said to himself, trying to dispel the gloom. His own voice seemed the only warmth here, the only tie with a world outside of this place. If these tunnels were built for a purpose, he could not tell; he imagined they must’ve been useful during the winter months of preparation for the fair to move goods, lumber, and materials to work sites.

He had only thirteen minutes to be back at the sub-basement door. Having decided to keep the lantern turned off, he now held it in his cane hand, thus freeing up his gun hand, should he need it.

His eyes had grown more accustomed to the dark, and he could make out the shape of the walls as he moved through the passageway, going toward the next vent, where a smidge more light filtered into this dungeon.

The downward slope on the floor had steadily increased, and now he stood in water up to his ankles.

“What the hell else?” he asked of the problems he faced here. “Pour on the misery.”

Ahead of him, he saw a slick shiny surface of what looked to be black ice. Not so, more water…deeper. Deep enough to have a current.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Time to turn around. Nothing here to see.”

Alastair was in midturn, prepared to go back the way he’d come, when something floating in the water caught his peripheral vision. At first he thought it trash, perhaps washed in from the drains, perhaps Thom Carmichael’s Herald-and a fitting place for it too, he inwardly laughed.

He took a step toward leaving when something in his brain said, No, that’s not a newspaper floating there but clothing, a coat, perhaps. He moved in for a closer look, and he relit the lantern, opening it full. The light created huge black swaths of darkness and shadow, the biggest being his own. It also illuminated the bloody clothing floating by from a secondary passageway.

Alastair waded into the water here, up to his thigh, and using his cane, he pulled in the clothing. It did not look like something long in the water, and in fact, it appeared a somewhat expensive tweed coat and there were snatches of linen from a shirt. As he examined the ripped coat, he smelled the blood even as his hands became painted with it. His reflex was to drop it but one hand had hit a hard metal object that pricked his finger-a badge.

Under the grim light, Alastair studied the badge number: CPD-1438. Jedidiah’s badge, his coat, his bloodied shirt.

He immediately doused the light, and he carefully waded his way toward the direction from which the bloody clothes had drifted. The blood had been fresh, coming off in his hands. Whoever had killed Logan could not be far away.

Ransom knew he must proceed with great caution and haste at once.

Even the noise of wading through the water was too great, as it could alert someone waiting in the shadows ahead.

He recalled telling the guard to send for help after twenty minutes if he should not return by then. Time had already run beyond that, so someone would be alerted. He prayed backup was on the way.

More rats went past, swimming this time.

As Alastair continued on, the incline here was going uphill, the water subsiding behind him as a result. Overhead, out in the larger world, he could hear claps of thunder that the humorist Mark Twain would call a real sock-dollopper! Nature’s riotous calamity. Most certainly the clouds had burst.

Whoever was in the passageway ahead of him, they-for there was whispering now-must be aware of the storm overhead as well, and that the passages here could become a deathtrap if Lake Michigan swelled beyond her breakers. The resounding splash of waves slapping into the bowl-vents clearly announced this danger as a growing threat.

Ransom could not let whoever had killed Logan find their way to the nearest vent or to an open entryway into the museum exhibits. He must act quickly.

Another sound came to his ears as he inched closer to the whispering voices. It was the sound of feeding as of rabid animals devouring a carcass. Ransom feared the worst. The family he had been tracking all this time were here en masse, and they had descended on Logan, killed him many times over, and were now feeding on his remains like a pack of hyenas.

The thought infuriated Ransom almost as much as it terrified him.

He had come out of the water and feared that he could be seen by these rabid animals whose eyes surely, even supernaturally, worked more efficiently in pitch than in light, like the eyes of a pack of unholy dogs. He rested his cane against the wall, careful not to allow it to fall or clatter. He then took out his flint box lighter, and opening the lantern, he lit it.

Five pairs of eyes met his at once. They were some twenty yards off, the entire coven, all situated over Logan’s nude, mutilated corpse, some off to the side, nursing hunks of flesh cut from Jedidiah’s flanks and backside.

Ransom felt as if he’d gotten a glimpse into the last rung of Dante’s Inferno, but there was not a moment to think. He hurled the lantern at the enemy, and it hit the woman hunched over Logan’s flanks, its contents spilling over her and setting her aflame. Two of the children leapt back into shadow, while the oldest struggled to save its mother only to catch its own clothes afire.

The father hurled himself at Ransom, his huge knife extended like a lance, his mouth bloody with feeding on raw flesh. Ransom raised his blue gun and fired at the same instant the inhuman creature fell atop him, sending him into the water. Ransom went under with the dead weight of the man he’d shot threatening to drown him even in death, but in fact, the monster was yet alive, stabbing at him with the knife to the end. Just as the hyena-man had held on to the knife, Ransom had held firm to his weapon. The knife came down, tearing into Alastair’s left shoulder, as the fiend was going for his heart. At the same time, Ransom fired twice more, and the second and third shot ended any movement in the madman. Only three bullets remained in his weapon.

Ransom clambered to his knees in the blackness, and he remained in the water when the woman and eldest child, sharing flames, leapt into the muddy sewage together to save themselves. Ransom aimed and fired, putting a bullet through the woman’s brain when suddenly he was hit with a powerful blow to one leg where another child had stabbed him. The final child leapt on his chest and tore at his face with its knife, slashing wildly even as Ransom pounded the little hyena in the face with his gun.

Ransom sustained cuts to his cheek, forehead, leg, and the wound to his left shoulder. The three remaining fiends had regrouped somewhere in the black tunnel beyond the water’s edge. It seemed, for the moment, that he owned the water and they owned dry ground. Where the infant might be, dead or alive, was anyone’s guess. It flashed through Alastair’s brain that one or more of the other may’ve succumbed to a liking for young human flesh just a little too much.

As the water began to rise, a chilling cold came over Ransom. He’d bled out badly at several of the wounds, particularly the one dealt him by the alpha wolf-the father. It flit through his mind that the cold in his bones could be the onset of trauma, that he could pass out at any moment, and this would leave him victim to the deadly children, and not one of them would show him any mercy whatsoever; in fact, if he passed out, they’d be feeding on his body for a long time. He was as good as dead, as good as Logan.

He gave a momentary thought to Behan. Where in hell’s Behan? Can I count on Ken? Or is he dead as well down here in this hellhole?

He imagined Thom Carmichael’s headline in the papers: three of cpd’s finest found dead below the fair. How fitting…

How will Philo Keane get through life without me, he wondered. Then he thought of the future he will have lost with Jane, of watching Gabby mature, marry and have a child of her own some day. But all such thoughts were dispelled when his instincts took hold on hearing the animals in the dark begin a slow-building keening, a kind of animal mantra, preparing to strike again.

The cane, he thought. Need to get to my cane.

He struggled to his feet, stumbled, weaved, his dizziness threatening to take him. But he made it to his cane, and he grabbed hold of it. The firmness of it, the solid shaft and silver handle gave him a grounding that filled him with a sense of something in this nightmare to hold on to. Still, his head swirled, his mind gyrated, and his ears rang out with a silent cry from his soul.

Somehow, Ransom fought off the disorientation and the inner turmoil that wanted to bring him down. He slowly gathered up every ounce of remaining strength and charged into the black, inky passageway where he could hear them but not see the remaining three beasts with long knives. The one who’d leapt into the water afire, while badly burned, had joined his siblings, one of whom had the long hair of a girl, Audra, he wondered. Ransom rushed in at the feral children screaming and madly swinging his cane, the deadly silver wolf’s-head hoping to tear into the trio of vultures. At the same time, Ransom blindly fired his gun nonstop, hoping to further even the odds.

He saw winking deadly blades reflected by each gunshot flash, and he felt a glancing blow to the head where another knife struck out at him, then another cut him in the side, and a third jabbed him in the back as the whirlwind of maniacal children dodged his cane and survived his bullets and somehow got past him and were splashing down the tunnel in the water, escaping.

He wheeled and reloaded and fired and fired until his gun clicked empty again. Then he went to his knees again, the cane crumbling under his weight, and Alastair Ransom passed out, his blood running the incline and mingling with the two dead adult cannibals in the sewage.

Ransom’s last thoughts were of Jane and Gabby and how much time and pleasure of their company he will have lost. Dead here…cold and alone and dead, he thought.

“I’m dying in this rat’s nest,” he muttered aloud in a final attempt to call out to Behan or anyone within hearing. Ransom then rolled over onto his back, his watch in his hand, thinking One more thing to do before giving in…passing out…

Alastair was unconscious when they found him, his rescuers locating him by the sound of chimes playing the old English tune “Green Sleeves.” When Jane, Gabby, Behan, and Fenger, and the uniforms got to him, they saw his watch had been opened and thrown toward dry ground.

And in fact the first uniformed police to locate him had followed Logan’s original route because he’d heard the music, unsure what it meant. Jane, who’d heard the chimes before, had shouted, “It’s him! It’s Ransom!”

What they came across after the watch terrified Jane and Gabby, for at first what was left of Jed Logan, everyone took for what was left of Alastair Ransom. All this excitement happened before officers, led by a shaken Ken Behan, pushed ahead, finding Alastair bleeding out. These officers encircled Ransom’s inert body half in, half out of the water, with lanterns, and Behan shouted back to the others, “Down here! It’s Ransom! He’s here!”

Behan had dropped to his knees there in the water, tearful, his nerves shot, seeing the big man bleeding and dying on top of having seen his partner, Logan, butchered like a ham on a spit. “Dr. Fenger! Come quick!”

Everyone getting a first look at Alastair assumed from the blood loss and his position that Ransom was dead, until Ken Behan, soaked and leaning in over Ransom, placed his hands on Alastair and felt life. He erupted with the news: “He’s alive and breathing!”

Behan continued shouting for medical help. Other officers had held the civilians, Dr. Fenger, Jane, and Gabby back, but now they burst down the lantern-lit corridor to where Alastair lay soaked in blood and sewage in the rising water. Someone estimated that if he hadn’t been found, that he’d’ve surely drowned in the next few minutes, proclaiming Behan a hero for having turned him over and having gotten his head out of the water when he did-all exaggerations Behan tried to deny. Others waded in and weighed in, the CPD closing ranks for one of their own, and together they heaved their huge cargo onto the dry floor.

Jane took in the fact that two other bodies floated in the water, both shabbily dressed adults, one woman, one man. She mentally reconstructed what had happened here, seeing that Fenger was doing likewise. She imagined how Alastair had been attacked by the dead couple in the water, and that just before he gave into his blood loss and faintness, Alastair had had presence of mind to open his chiming watch and toss it as far down the corridor as possible as a kind of beacon to others who might come in search of him.

With a great deal of disgust and outrage, Mike O’Malley and other officers worked the other bodies to dry ground, pronouncing both dead, the woman badly burned, gunshot wounds evident in both. The two dead people appeared a wretched pair indeed, from clothing to the lice crawling over them. In a moment, someone produced a huge curved knife with a hilt, the sort of thing one imagined pirates to use. “No telling what else we’ll turn up from these two,” said one officer.

A second held up a cleaver and said, “You think Ransom got the Leather Apron here?”

“Ransom always gets his man,” said a third, and this seemed to settle the question.

“You’re right. He got ’em,” said Behan to the others. “Inspector Alastair Ransom’s killed the Leather Aprons!”

A half-hearted cheer filled the underground passageway, but no one was ready yet to party, not with Ransom lying at their feet so near death.

“It’ll have to be sorted out,” said Dr. Christian Fenger who’d come behind the others, pushing cops out of his way, his medical bag in hand. From it, he snatched out surgical scissors and cut away at Ransom’s clothing, searching for the worst of the wounds. “He’s been stabbed multiple times, but I see no bullet wounds.”

Fenger next ripped away at his pants-legs and found several wounds to the big man’s legs, but none life-threatening in and of itself. He ripped away at his shirt and located a nasty wound to the left kidney area that would require surgery on his back, and another wound to his right side, not quite so deep. Fenger turned all attention to the worst of the knife wounds, the one to his shoulder, just above the heart.

He noted that Alastair’s forehead and cheek had also sustained slashes and abrasions.

Jane had dropped to her knees on the other side of Ransom, while Gabby kneeled alongside Fenger, each wanting to help. They shared items out of Fenger’s bag, tying off tourniquets, wrapping his lesser wounds as Fenger concentrated on the major problem.

“He’s been stabbed at least seven, eight times, and he’s got several cuts to the face,” Jane informed Behan, who, hovering close, whispered that the lads wanted to know the prognosis.

“Will he live?” Behan persisted.

“If we can staunch this wound to the shoulder,” Fenger assured him.

“And if we can keep out infection,” added Jane. “The water’s crawling with infectious disease organisms, no doubt.” She realized she sounded like a doctor.

Behan looked into her eyes, silently pleading.

“I believe he’s going to be all right,” she tried to assure Behan. “None of this is your fault, Inspector.”

“He’s so still,” said a tearful Gabby.

Jane added, “I’ve never seen him so white, not even when he was shot.”

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” said Fenger. “Gone into shock, I’m afraid.”

“Need to get him to a warm place.”

Agitated, Fenger agreed. “A clean, well-lit, warm place, yes-my surgery.”

A flash of light, repeated by another and another announced that Philo Keane had arrived. Philo somehow kept shooting even as he feared for Ransom’s life.

Finished with their mending, Dr. Fenger and Jane began shouting for the men standing about to carry Alastair out.

“There’s a waiting ambulance,” said Fenger.

“No, please, use the police wagon,” countered Philo, raising a few eyebrows, including Christian Fenger’s.

“Why not use the medical wagon?” he asked.

“The last time Alastair was hurt, all he talked about afterward was fearing that he would die in the back of that meat wagon of yours, Christian.”

Jane jumped in. “Philo’s right, Christian. You really have to do something about it.”

Fenger looked hurt but said nothing.

“It’s more hearse than ambulance,” Jane added, “and I inspected it and found it a hotbed of disease organisms!”

“Not to mention the stench,” finished Philo Keane.

“We’re not funded for anything better at the moment.”

“Regardless, he goes in the police wagon.”

“I suppose you two are the closest thing to kin he has, so whatever your wish, Mr. Keane, Dr. Francis.”

This was enough for the cops who took Fenger at his word-that it would be Ransom’s last wish to be kept out of the hands of Shanks and Gwinn. Six men lifted Ransom as they might a coffin, and this procession moved toward the entry point like so many pallbearers.

Christian pointed out that Ransom’s cane lay nearby. The wolf’s-head was stained red-ochre with blood. “His attackers felt the sting of his blow, and from the number of wounds all over his body, I’d say there were more than these two maniacs coming at him with knives.”

Jane tried to imagine the life-and-death struggle down here. “He’s got wounds to his legs that, if standing, he’d have taken from midgets or children.”

“Compared to Logan, Ransom did damn well,” said Gabby, turning heads. “I counted twenty-seven stab wounds on Logan’s body before I gave up.”

This silenced them as Jane lifted Ransom’s cane and held firm to the walking stick. “Suppose Christian that you and Alastair were right-that there was an entire family of these cannibals down here?”

Fenger replied, “And so how many little monsters with ice picks and knives have escaped?”

“And what ages are the ones who got away?” Jane wondered aloud.

“Right now, we’ve got to get this man to my surgery and immediately.”

“I think we’ve stopped the worst of the blood flow,” she replied.

Gabby added, “He’s strong. He’ll pull through like before. Won’t he?”

“Keep to your prayers, ladies,” replied Fenger. “He’s damn near bled to death.”

Ransom made a good recovery, but a painful one. Fenger, fearing he’d become a morphine addict, controlled it personally, and on seeing Dr. McKinnette go near Ransom, he ran the man off with a proviso to the nurses at Cook County that no other physician be allowed near Ransom, especially Dr. Tewes and Dr. McKinnette. He made it clear that should it happen, people would lose their jobs.

However, he did allow personal friends visiting hours with his patient, so Jane Francis and Gabby were camped out at his bedside for days during his recovery. When he came back to himself, Gabby had gone home, but Jane had remained, and she now said to him, “This is getting to be an annoying habit with you.”

After drinking a pitcher of water, Alastair asked, “What of Behan? Afraid I know Logan’s fate. When I saw that pack of animals feeding on Jedidiah, I attacked.”

“Ken’s a hero-first to find you. Saved you from drowning in two feet of water and rising.”

“Fool-they’d’ve given ’im a citation had he let me die!”

“As a matter of fact, you’re both up for a citation-you for putting an end to Leather Apron and his gang, and Behan for bravery.”

“Not all are caught, though, and it was no gang, but a family, the parents teaching their young’uns to be man-eaters.”

“Yes, we few know the truth, but newspapers have it only as a gang. A bit less disturbing euphemism for the truth.”

“Perhaps that’s for the better.”

“Better for whom?” she challenged.

“The merchants, the developers, the financiers, and politicians.”

She sighed. “The public in general.”

“Yes, what does it serve the public to know that in Chicago homeless are driven to cannibalism to survive?”

“A case of excessive aberrant, abhorrent behavior, and not an epidemic. Look, you’ve evidence the father was Bloody Mary’s son. He came here, used her. Chicago did not spawn him. In fact, Gabby’s learned he was born in London.”

“Aye, home of the original Leather Apron.”

“It came across the Atlantic along with disease and other vermin.”

“It’s him, all right. We’ll have to post a letter to Inspector Heise, Scotland Yard.”

“Look, you brought down the father and mother, Alastair. It’s ended now. Those escaped children can’t last long without their parents.”

“Are they scouring the city for those three kids?”

“They are and in time, I’m sure, they’ll be found as well.”

“And the infant? What of the babe?”

“We may never know. Perhaps when the children are found, we can find out.”

“Then what? What’ll the grand state of Illinois, the County of Cook, and the City of Chicago do with those killer kids when they surface?”

“I can’t say. Place them in an institution, I suspect. Work with them. They’re feral children.”

“Feral is the word, indeed. They have it in their heads now that the best meat is other kids-human flesh. That’ll never change.”

“Your job now is to get plenty of rest, get your health back.”

“Those three, two boys and a girl, they were…Jane, they’d be better off today had I been able to finish ’em all.”

“Alastair, you did everything humanly possible.”

“I suppose…I suppose.” Ransom still felt weak. “My greatest fear is for the homeless.”

“The shelter children, yes, I know.”

“Every child in Chicago remains in danger from those hyenas out there, wherever they are.”

“Don’t be naive, not you, Alastair. Our children have always been in danger from one kind of hyena or another, and after those murderous kids are caught, the homeless children will still be in danger from others.”

“What do you propose?”

“We start up a fund-raiser. If the suffragettes can raise funds for their cause, then, by God, we can raise money for this cause.”

“Whatever I can do, just tell me when and where.”

Just then young Audra stood in the doorway. The young girl was shaking with tears, overcome by grief. Jane went to her and held her close. She broke down and began confessing nonstop. “They made me do it. If I didn’t, Zoroaster-their father-he said they’d slice me up and eat me! So I did it. I did it!”

Jane rushed to Audra and hugged her. Ransom flashed back to what he knew of the girl’s involvement. She procured for Leather Apron. Was one of them, even if that hadn’t been her in that tunnel the night he’d killed the parents.

“Easy…easy, now, Audra!” Jane reassured her. “Whatever did you do that is so horrible?”

Ransom had eased from his bed, and Audra tried to pull away from Jane, fearful of Alastair, who asked, “Do you mean to say, Audra, that you led-lured-some of the children to Leather Apron?” It explained why most victims had not been in Aurdra’s gang. She wouldn’t willingly sacrifice her own, and Danielle’s death may’ve been a warning to Audra to keep silent.

Audra fought to pull away, but Jane held her in a bear hug. She broke down completely, terrified of her fate, terrified of what Ransom might do to her-the man who had slain Zoroaster-and equally terrified of the three children of Zoroaster still at large.

“So this is how Anne Chapman, Alice Cadin, and even your friend Danny disappeared-by trusting you!” Ransom shouted. “Using their trust, your toothy smile and innocent looks.”

“I had no choice! They’d kill me if I didn’t do it!”

“Hell, who wouldn’t follow her into a warehouse or into a bloody drainpipe?”

“Easy on her, Alastair! She’s a victim here, too!” shouted Jane. “Can you imagine the terror she has lived through and the guilt?”

“I suppose not,” replied Alastair, “since I’m not given to leading my friends to slaughter!”

“Bloody Mary made me do it! I didn’t want to!” Audra’s cries only increased.

Jane held her tight. “We’re going to get you help, Audra. None of this was your fault. You’re just a child, a frightened child.”

“Have they contacted you, the other three Aprons?” demanded Alastair.

“No, no!” she blurted out, and between sobs, she added, “I-I came to f-find Miss F-Francis f-for help!”

“I’m going to get you admitted for observation,” said Jane, “and we’ll take one day at a time, Audra. All right? All right?”

“All right.” Audra wiped her tears with a hanky Jane handed her. “Thank you, Miss Francis.”

But as soon as Jane relaxed her hold on Audra, the child fled out and down the corridor, past people Jane shouted at to stop her. With the speed and agility of a sewer rat, Audra was out of the hospital in moments. Out front of the hospital, Jane gave chase, but it was no use. Audra had disappeared back into the streets. Jane scanned every direction. Nothing. She wondered if she’d ever see Audra again.

News of Audra’s visit and her betrayal spread among all of Jane’s closest friends. Gabby, of course, took the news the hardest, disbelieving. Alastair retold the story to Philo, Christian, and to the man who purportedly saved his life down in that black hole-Ken Behan-when he came to visit at the hospital. Soon everyone in officialdom knew to be on the lookout for this poor child, and in the meantime, Jane remained angry at Alastair for frightening the child off as he had. “You big…bear,” she’d spoken her last to him as she stormed away.

A few weeks later, Alastair had arrived home from the hospital, and an hour into a nap, someone rang his doorbell. He made his groggy way along on his cane to the door, and when he opened it, he found Philo Keane and Dr. Christian Fenger looking stern and grim on his doorstep.

“We have a matter to discuss,” said Christian, “you and I, Alastair, and I brought your best friend along to…well, frankly, to keep you from killing me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Doctor. Come in, the both of you. I’ll put on water to boil, and we’ll find some tea.”

“That would be good.”

Philo shot Alastair a look that only puzzled him.

Once everyone was seated with a cup of tea, the three old friends stared from one to another, until Ransom said, “Well, what’s this about?”

“The good news, Ransom, is that those three feral children, the ones who got away, will never again feed on human flesh.”

“Then they’ve been caught? Great! When…by whom?”

“Not caught-killled.”

“Killed? How? What happened? A manhunt uncovered them, and they came out swinging, heh?”

“Not exactly.”

“How did they die, then?”

“Kohler’s involved.”

“Kohler? Damn the man. He’s taking credit for it all, isn’t he? No public release of this information.”

“Actually, no one else knows, and it’s to stay that way.”

“Christian, will you stop talking in cryptic code and tell me what the hell you’re driving at?”

“It began with that girl Audra’s confessing in your room. Seems she tried confessional at a church, but all she got from the priest was raped-according to her.”

“Raped by a priest? Impossible.”

Philo hadn’t said a word.

“What’s happened, Philo?”

“They got wind of Audra-Kohler and Chapman!” Christian blurted out.

Ransom digested this, his face bleeding white. “They got their hands on Audra, didn’t they?”

“They made her talk, yes.”

“Is she…is she alive?” He recalled Bloody Mary and Bosch’s double.

Philo piped in. “They let her live.”

“But she’s no longer the same and never will be again,” muttered Christian. “In fact, she is now a permanent resident at the asylum.”

“Those bastards!” exploded Ransom. “They tortured her until her mind snapped, didn’t they?”

“Not before she led them to the feral children,” replied Christian.

Philo choked out, “That maniac Chapman made her watch as he fed those kids to…to…”

“Let me guess. Fed them alive to the senator’s starved pigs.”

“Only after skinning them alive.” Dr. Fenger then tossed a small bundle tied with twine into Alastair’s lap, causing him to spill his tea.

“What the hell? What is this?”

“Final payment. The two of them, Chapman and Kohler, insisted.”

“Said you took a down payment to go after Leather Apron for the senator,” Philo near whispered.

Ransom gritted his teeth. “I told you what happened, Christian, and Jane was in danger. I had no choice.”

“Well, now, it would appear you are paid in full and the senator is happy, and Kohler is the richer for it, as are you.”

“And you?” asked Alastair.

Fenger shook his head. “Not a dime.”

“You have the joy of a clean conscious, then.”

“Not that it will save me from my debts.”

Ransom threw the bundle back at Fenger. “You told Kohler about Audra, didn’t you?”

Fenger lifted the bundle and shook it at Ransom. “I have no idea in hell how that got out! Do you?” The accusation hung in the air.

Again the bundle was thrown to Ransom.

“Build that damn wing you want!” Ransom threw the money back at him.

“Give it to Jane for her plans for the homeless children!” shouted Fenger, tossing the stack of bills back.

“Are the two of you blind?” asked Philo. “Don’t you see? This is Kohler’s idea, all of it!”

“What’re you talking about?” asked Fenger.

“Giving you, Christian, blood money to give to you, Alastair!” Philo shouted. “He wants to drive a wedge between you, a permanent one. And I am left to watch this pissing contest!”

“What’re you suggesting, Philo?” Ransom’s nostrils flared.

“I know he gave you the impression that Chapman was running things, but no, Nathan is and has been from the start.”

“You mean he started this whole thing with Chapman in motion?” asked Fenger.

“When have you ever known Kohler to relinquish control? Either of you?”

Christian and Alastair looked across the chasm that Kohler had created between them. Fenger finally said, “Philo’s right. Giving this money to me to deliver to you…it’s his design.”

Alastair agreed. “Part of his goal from the outset.”

Philo Keane felt as if he could breathe again. “That sounds a proper end to it-give the money to the fund Jane Francis has established for the homeless.”

“Aye, a fitting end to it,” Alastair poured himself another cup of tea, then raised his cup, and all three toasted this conclusion. Then Ransom asked, “Did they get the right murderous children? Tell me they didn’t get it wrong this time.”

“They were caught while sleeping, and their own knives were used on them,” explained Christian.

“They were bred to it like animals by their own parents,” said Philo.

Fenger added, “They were children turned into Frankenstein monsters.”

“What justice is there in this end?” asked Ransom.

“Those children would’ve continued on, butchering other children, Rance-we all know that.” Philo sipped the last of his spiked tea.

“They damn near killed you, Alastair,” added Christian.

“Still…I was out there at those stables. I saw the kind of justice Chapman and Kohler meted out on Bloody Mary, an insane woman, and a complete other innocent man. I can’t say any of this sits well with me.”

“Still, you’ve got to take the money, Alastair.” Fenger stood to leave.

“What’re you now, Christian? Nathan’s errand boy?”

Philo leapt to his feet and placed a firm hand against Alastair’s chest, trying to calm him. “You two are allowing Kohler to win if you end like this.”

Christian stopped at the door and looked deep into Ransom’s eyes. “Until you lay the man low, Alastair, we all have him as a cross to bear, and we all have to work with him.”

“That’s it, isn’t it, Christian? He holds your notes-bought up all your debts, hasn’t he? Makes a mockery of your office as impartial coroner.”

Christian’s jaw twitched with the anger of this kind of information being shouted to the world where he stood at the open door. The two old friends held one another in a grim stare.

Philo determined to end this before more was said. He joined Christian at his side, shook Alastair’s hand, and gave him a brief hug. “Don’t you be led by Kohler, either of you! You are both better than that. Now we’re going, Rance, and…and well…don’t be a stranger. Come round to the studio, both of you. I have some of that whiskey left.”

Ransom nodded and relaxed, bidding them good-bye and raising the money bundle overhead. He knew why Kohler had gotten his two best friends to bring the cash. Anyone else and he’d have shot them. This way, at some future date, Nathan Kohler might be able to use this blood money against him. He imagined that one of Nathan’s spies was not too far from his door, closely watching everything. Unless he missed his guess, it’d be Henry Bosch.

A week later

More time had passed and Chicago returned to what most people termed “normal” and all commerce doubled and quadrupled daily, prices skyrocketing, and the homeless population, both adult and child, only increased, putting an even greater strain on the city shelters and jails. No one questioned the mystery of where Jane Francis’s funds, or those of her brother, Dr. Tewes, had come from, and when asked, each was quick to reply, “A donor whose greatest wish was to remain anonymous.”

Other than a program begun by a Dr. Jane Francis to find a home for every parentless child, and a roof for every homeless child, little had changed, despite the sheer terror of a story that was so horrendous that it would never see full play in the mainstream press. Word on the street had it that Inspector Alastair Ransom, with help from the deceased Jed Logan, and a heroic Ken Behan, had pretty much single-handedly taken on the entire family of beasts in their own lair and had wiped them out, one and all.

The legend of Beowulf recounted.

As for Audra, she could be found any day in the Cook County Asylum-seen daily by Gabby Tewes, and from time to time, Gabby’s father, Dr. J. P. Tewes, whose phrenological exams, Audra looked forward to, although she could not voice this or any other fact. Another and final victim of the Leather Apron gang? Or Chapman and Kohler’s inquisition?

As in all things he touched, no matter the twisted outcome, Alastair Ransom had landed on his feet. Most beat cops, firemen, and even most of the petty criminals and burglars and pickpockets had only more respect and greater fear of the Bear. But one man, Nathan Kohler, uneasy with all that Alastair knew of his true nature, lived now to destroy Inspector Ransom at all costs.