Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 3

The following day in Ransom’s hospital room

“Now that we’re alone and out of earshot of everyone, Jane,” Alastair whispered, “please, undo Christian’s damned horse cinches.” He pulled at the hospital bed restraints.

“Alastair…please.”

“What do you say? I promise I’ll not go for my clothes.”

“Then you’d run out and down the avenue naked. I know you by now, Alastair Ransom.”

“I’d never insinuate my nudity on the public.”

“I’m sure.”

“Jane, if ever you cared a wit about me, and since you have not left my side for a moment, from the opening cut till now-yes, I heard you there in the operating theater dressing down McKinnette for doing a botched job of the anesthetic.”

“You were dreaming. No such thing happened.”

“But it seemed so real.”

She laughed. “Imagine a woman with no standing in the hospital or the college telling a Chicago doctor how to do his job! Horror of horrors!”

“You did so, as Dr. Tewes.”

“Preposterous-a phrenologist telling an anesthesiologist what to do during an operation.” Uncanny, she thought, as she’d wanted to do exactly that-had thought it-but she’d held herself in check.

“Are you of the same mind as Griff? Regarding Denton being the murderer?”

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, flesh for flesh? If we all lived by that rule of ancient times, where would civilization be now, Alastair?”

“Then you think I am drunk on vengeance?”

“It has crossed my mind. After all, Waldo Denton hardly looks capable of multiple murder of a hand-to-hand nature.”

“Nonsense, Jane, even a petite woman like you could kill with a garrote, and it was no coincidence that Denton attacked and killed Gabby’s boyfriend.”

“You’ll not terrify me into untying you.”

“Then it’d be a useless exercise for me to again ask that you remove the restraints?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

“You fear my pursuing Denton?”

“When you are healed and stronger, but not now…not in a weakened state of mind and body. Whatever you decide, it should be done when you’re fully recovered, a hundred percent.”

“I feel just fine now. Please, undo the straps.”

She feared doing so, feared he’d come up like a shark, tearing at everyone in his path, and what would become of him in the bargain? She thought of the old fairytale of the beauty and the beast.

“Do it for me,” he said.

She moved her hands to the strap closest to her.

“Undo it.”

“Will you kill Denton when everyone thinks him your mistake?”

“Do you have an opinion of Waldo Denton? An impression?”

“The night he came to the house, the night you were shot, I…we talked, and I convinced him to sit for a phrenological examination.”

“All while he had me chasing phantoms at the fair.”

“Alastair, I’ve never touched a more quivering bundle of nervous energy in my entire practice.”

“Which tells you what?”

“That he feared me-ahhh, actually Dr. Tewes.”

“He thought you the doctor?”

“I was on my way out to a call, but then I didn’t want to leave Gabby alone with him.”

“Aha! So, you did think him a deviant!”

“Not deviant but troubled. The feeling I got from him was…I don’t know…a mind that never stops planning, working, ticking?”

“You mean plotting, I think.”

“A con artist, crossed my mind.”

“Plotting your and Gabby’s murder.”

“I didn’t get that, Alastair, no.”

“But you said you got a…a confused mind. Suppose he is right this moment plotting your death or rather the death of Dr. Tewes? Suspicious and unnerved by your mind-reading act, that the great Tewes might unmask him?”

“That’s just such a stretch.”

“And Gabby? Take no chances. You must get her and yourself out of the city, unless you undo these bindings!”

“I got some anger during the reading, but murdering Gabby was not coming through.”

“My God…then it is Tewes he’s after! Don’t you see?”

“Due to my readings of the earlier victim’s skull? Well…at least someone ‘believes’!”

“Yes, the last one you want to believe! Jane, it’s so clear now. He’s been sniffing about Gabby to test Tewes, to learn if you-Tewes-is a fraud or the genuine article, capable of seeing into the Invisible World and straight through his lies and secrets using your pseudoscience of phrenology.”

“I-I did come away with some fear of the young man.”

“Aha!”

“Not for myself but for Gabby. After, the sitting, I pulled her aside.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“And I made the mistake of asking her to get rid of him.”

“And her response was to sit him down to tea?”

“I was in the process of talking him out the door when she guided him in for tea.”

“She can be contrary.”

“Moments after this, moments after, you charged in, Gabby shot you, and I feared Griffin might shoot her. By the way, you owe me for two kicked-in doors, two ruined locks, and a demoralized French parlor table.” She paused, taking a deep breath, holding firm to his huge hand. “Frankly, I felt something strangely odd about that young man from the moment he walked in with Gabby’s umbrella.”

“Gabby’s umbrella?”

“She’d left it in his cab.”

“So he seized the opportunity.”

“I’d seen him hanging about the house before, in that cab of his, but I’d thought nothing of it.”

“He counts on his invisibility,” replied Ransom, a grunt of pain escaping him. “And the gun that was so ready at hand? Would you care to explain that?”

“Yes…the gun that shot you.”

“Guns do not in and of themselves shoot people.”

“All right…OK. I had excused myself. Retrieved it, placed it on the table so that he could clearly see it.”

“Then you did feel threatened by him?”

“Absolutely, but he’d done nothing overt to warrant my fears, and I did not want to alarm Gabby. I told them both there’d been a prowler at the back door.”

“Don’t tell me-Bosch?”

“Well, no. I lied.”

“Then you came back as Jane with the gun because you suspected something dangerous about Denton?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on. Just eerie, creepy, odd, awkward…nothing you could use in a court of law anymore than you might use phrenology or magnetism-or your cop’s intuition for that matter.”

“So it was you this time who hauled out the weapon and not Gabby?”

“Yes, but…but all the time, I thought it unloaded as usual. I hadn’t the slightest idea, and had I known, I would’ve emptied it, and you…you wouldn’t be on your back strapped down to this bed like a-”

“Like some sort of wild boar ready for the pit?”

“I was about to say like a prisoner.”

“Aye, that too.” He paused and with his left hand locked in the leather bracelet at her breast, Ransom’s finger stretched to touch her there. She responded with a little gasp, then leaned in over him and they kissed.

He did not understand it, but being helpless and unable to put his arms around her while she passionately kissed him over many times, made him want her the more. “Lock the door,” he whispered in her ear.

“What?”

“It’s a private room Christian’s given me.”

“You want to test just how private?”

“Do it.”

She went to the door, closed and locked it.

She made love to him while in the restraints, and it was the best lovemaking he’d ever known, as Jane Francis turned it into a sensuous dance, a dance of light and life and wonder. No woman had ever made him feel so unreservedly wanted before.

Their passion consumed them, blotting out all but their mutual caresses, although his were limited to lips and eyes. Their mutual kisses and movements seemed of one mind, one body. When she finished, Jane fell into him, sated, without ever removing her skirt.

After a moment’s tidying up, her cheeks flushed, Jane became all business again-the doctor. She examined his bandages and found a good result. “You didn’t break your stitches,” she informed him. “Had you not been strapped down-”

“You’d have not found me so attractive? You do like taking control.”

“There is that, but I was pointing out that you may well’ve broken your stitches and opened that horrid wound.”

“I like you, Jane…I like your touch, the way you smell, your hair. The only thing I don’t like about you is when you are that man Tewes!”

“Hey, that man feeds my family.”

“All right, touché.” He returned to his bonds. “Since you’ve determined rigorous exercise has not ripped my wound open, it can do no harm if you let me up from this confounded bed.”

“But I like you tied to the bed.”

“Jane, please.”

“Why? So you can go shoot down Denton? Make it look like an accident?”

“Why do you think so ill of me that I would kill a man in bushwhack fashion?”

“Things I’ve heard all my life.”

“All your life? About me?”

“You really don’t remember me as a child, do you?”

“No. I am sorry, but I do not.”

“But my father, Dr. Francis. He was well known even then.”

“I’m sorry. As I said…my childhood was bitter…too bitter to store away as memory.”

“That’s so…so sad. And when you were out of your head with fever, you said something about a stillborn child.”

“My twin at birth. One of us died, one lived.”

“I am so terribly sorry.”

“It’s really quite all right now. I tell people my parents attempted to drown me at birth because I was not the other one.” He lightly laughed at this. “Other times, I tell people that no one in the family knew which of us died in the womb, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.” He laughed again.

She realized his laughter and jokes covered his true feelings of guilt. She hugged him to her. “Do you ever…”

“Visit his grave?” He avoided her eyes.

“Yes.”

“No…not since it was moved.”

“The grave was moved?”

“Along with hundreds to make way for Lincoln Park.”

“Still…perhaps you should make an effort. I’d go with.”

Instead of answering, he whispered, “Undo me.”

“I thought I had.”

“I am speaking of the cuffs.”

“All right, if you promise to do nothing foolish, and remember your promise to Dr. Fenger.”

“You were on hand when he operated, weren’t you?”

“I was.” She loosed his left hand, and it went to her cheek, caressing her. They again kissed. A long, lazy, dreamy, indolent kiss, fully alive with passion on both sides. She was petite enough that he hefted her atop him again with one hand. But even as he held her, his left hand went about her waist to the second strap, and he undid himself while they continued kissing.

In an instant, she felt both his hands wrap round her and squeeze her into him. “It feels so good, so right.

“You feel good atop me.” He smoothed her cheek with his hand.

“And you feel good below me.”

“But I have to go now.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“To work?”

“To work.”

“Despite doctor’s orders?”

“Despite, yes.”

“You will be careful?”

“Yes…I will. I have a reason to take care now.”

She kissed him again. “Yes, you do, so be careful and watch your back.”

“Where Chief Kohler stands ever present?”

“I should say so.”

“As you once said, he fears me.”

“Passionately so. It is eating him alive.”

“Which says he does indeed have something to hide.”

“R-regarding the Haymarket bomb?”

He eased Jane over the edge of the bed now and stood her up like a child’s toy. She acquiesced, sensing his need. He remained true to form. Like a bear, he might hibernate best in his own lair, and he felt most uncomfortable here. She kissed him good-bye with a slight admonition. “Do not-please do not overexert yourself, and please kill no one, and please, if for any unforeseen reason that something should happen, I had nothing whatsoever to do with loosening your bonds.”

“A bargain it is.”

“A bargain with Ransom, I fear, may be a bargain with the Devil.”

“Then kiss the Devil once more.”

She did so. “Promise me you will see me regularly to treat you.”

“Absolutely. I promise.”

Jane watched him dress, and she winced each time he gasped in pain. She knew he’d not heed any further warnings. With mixed feelings, she watched him disappear from the room, fearing she’d made a terrible mistake in allowing Alastair his freedom. But the man was, after all, all about freedom.

Two weeks later…

Alastair Ransom stood on the corner of Lincoln Avenue where it met Lake Michigan, where an entire cemetery had been uprooted and moved for the common good, to make way for the sprawling Lincoln Park, now a common green stretching out before the oceanlike vistas of Lake Michigan. In fact, Alastair stood very near to where his brother’s grave had once been. Beyond the point where the rocks had been laid as a breaker, in the distance beyond, stood the world’s largest lit-up amusement wheel-Mr. Ferris’s wheel rising hundreds of feet into the night sky, a beacon and a marker for the northernmost section of the great fair where the crowds continued to flock daily and nightly. South along the lakefront stood the grand fairway running down the center of the World’s Columbian Exposition like a concrete spine.

All trains, all carriages, all foot traffic-or very nearly all-made for the fair. All save a killer and the man who pursued him.

It had been two weeks since the operation, and Ransom felt and looked exhausted from his vigil to be on hand when Waldo Denton slipped up. Ransom’s presence wherever Denton showed up had led the young killer to change his routes, to change his times, and now to change his main location with his hack and horse from the fair to here. No more deaths had occurred since the double murder at the lagoon inside the World’s Fair grounds, and this had led some to speculate that the real Phantom of the Fair had left the area altogether, while it only led Ransom to a sense of vindication; instinct told him that he was correct about Denton. And he had the deaths of seven victims-one an unborn child-to avenge.

Alastair’s driving new obsession, then, was Denton, and no one could dissuade him from his crusade. In fact, all attempts had failed. He’d tried without success to order Denton to come in to again test his hand against the two bloody handprints. This time with a print expert, Theopolis Harris.

Ransom’s harassing of Denton now had continued daily. It might cost him his job, and it had already cost him friends and colleagues like Griffin Drimmer and even Dr. Fenger-the only family he had ever known. The chase had in fact eclipsed Ransom’s previous obsession, his years-long search for the truth surrounding the mystery of who bombed Haymarket Square in 1886.

Philo Keane, police photographer, artist, and friend had come along with Ransom tonight, and now the two stood in a juniper thicket mid-park, shadowing a man Ransom believed to be a repeat killer. Philo had come for fear of leaving his friend Alastair alone, a strange feeling having gripped Philo. This faith and cocksureness Ransom felt in his own cunning in the matter of the Phantom overtook all else. They had argued about it only an hour earlier at Philo’s studio, and Keane kept up his steady barrage of concern even now.

“Give this madness up, at least long enough to take some sleep, man, and remind yourself what is good in life! Look at you!”

“I won’t rest until I have my hands around that punk’s throat and can justifiably choke a confession out of him.”

“Some people would call you cunning, a master detective, but not anymore. Here you are…on the verge of hallucination from fatigue. Come back to my place. Just lie down on my sofa to catch some rest. I’ll wake you in an hour or two.”

“Cunning…yes, I can be cunning, but this boy killer now he is cunning.”

“To think him so near me all those weeks he apprenticed with me,” began the pencil-thin Philo, his knitted brow twitching. “And he still has my Night Hawk, you know. Weird thing is…I never once considered him a threat of any sort, much less a camera thief and a murderer. Still, he did leave me with an uneasy feeling the time I caught him with his hands where they oughtn’t’ve been.”

“As when he dropped a victim’s ring in your pocket just to frame you?”

“Ironic, I was in jail when Griffin drags him in. And Griff so damned sure at the time you two had your man. He even had the damn garrote in his hand; held it up to me as proof positive.”

“Griff is like a reed in the wind. Whatever the prevailing winds.”

“At least Chief Kohler didn’t come back after me for the killings.”

“Don’t be so sure he won’t.”

“What’ve you heard?” Philo gasped.

“He’s working closely with the city prosecutor to charge you again, while everyone else-including the mayor-is content to leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone?”

“Glad simply that the killings’ve ended, and that their precious White City boondoggle continues without further stain.”

“Then I say the mayor is a rational man.”

“Quite.”

“Afraid I can’t say the same for you. Have you considered all that you’ve forfeited for this business with Denton? How others’ve distanced themselves from you? That woman I ran into at the hospital who sat at your bedside night and day, and her niece, is it?-whom you claim as your friend despite the fact it was she who shot you? And your partner, Griffin, to whom you refuse to speak. Not to mention Dr. Fenger? Who next will abandon you?”

“You. I am sure of it. So good-bye. Make haste!”

“I’ll not leave you here in the darkness contemplating murder.”

“You’ll miss your booze.”

Philo held up a flask of whiskey. “Portable. Have some! You need it more’n I.”

Ransom’s limp and need for the cane was now even more pronounced. His fatigue only added to his leaning on the new one, which Philo had gifted him at his hospital bed when he was still in a coma-and the steady thumping of that cane now felt like some sort of Chinese water torture to Philo.

“Why’re we standing in the drizzle, Ransom?”

“Bosch got word on where Denton has relocated his carriage.”

“How much did that bit cost you?”

“Denton’s picked out a new killing ground, Lincoln Park. I’m sure of it.”

“And you’re going to catch him in the act?”

“I have my own flask to keep me company. You needn’t’ve come, Philo.”

“You’ve a strange sense of duty, Alastair. Duty to yourself.”

“Duty to Polly, to Purvis, Trelaine, Chesley, all the victims, even that unborn child that Denton killed.”

They had earlier climbed from a hansom cab a block away from the park’s cabstand, and now cautiously approached, in a roundabout fashion, through the dense woods of Lincoln Park, named for the fallen president.

The park, Ransom said at one point, reminded him of a place he’d dreamed about while in the hospital fighting for his life. A place ever reminiscent of a somewhereland in Michigan where his parents had taken him as a child. “You’re not going to get all maudlin on me, are you, Rance?”

“Just something about the two shores of the lagoon here…just like in the dream. Only in the dream, I was with a beautiful woman.”

“Well, don’t look for me to help you out there, old friend.”

Again Philo Keane thought of the terrible price a man like Ransom paid to the public at large. This determination to catch the Phantom for the safety of all Chicagoans had become a personal affair, a single-minded obsession to be sure, and yet if he were to succeed, it benefited all of the city. Benefited the lowliest street person to the Potter Palmers and the Marshal Fields. But at what price to Ransom? To his peace of mind? To his sleep? It had already cost Ransom dearly in so many ways. Worst of all, it could eventually cost him Jane Francis and any opportunity along those lines. It had cost Alastair friends as well, but Philo understood obsessions, and he understood his friend’s need for vengeance.

In fact, Philo guessed it’d been vengeance that kept him alive.

Philo wondered now if he and Alastair would be arrested at any moment for loitering and lurking, or worse if a copper came along and saw them amid the trees, two grown men playing hide-and-seek. Philo could ill-afford being arrested again. “If we’re arrested for pandering,” he complained, “it’s on you, Alastair.”

But Alastair’s full concentration remained on the row of horse-drawn buggies and covered cabs at the cabstand, where Waldo Denton casually awaited the Lincoln Park strollers who weaved about the pathways, amid the greenery, locked in embrace, their eyes interested only in one another. Watching the strolling couples, Ransom realized how easily the Phantom of the Fair operated, using his hansom cab as central headquarters. He’d move about the paths of the park in his black uniform, strike like a shadow, murder with that garrote of his, set the body aflame, and be sitting atop his hack, an invisible man, all in a matter of minutes. Orchestrated murder.

The lakefront Lincoln Park was a killer’s dream, a place where people allowed their common sense and justifiable fears and natural defenses to drop like stones one after another. A place to distract one from the horrors at one’s shoulder. Unlike the fair, this place kissed the senses with solitude and privacy and peace, whereas the fair rang loud with the sound of multiple calliopes, the barkers, and the hawkers, amid which worked the street prostitutes. Here the noises were of nature, squirrels, and chipmunks chasing one another, birds chirping in the trees, leaves rustling a languid whisper.

“What the hell keeps you on your feet?” Philo whispered in Ransom’s ear.

Ransom took a long pull on his flask of whiskey. “I’ve stayed off the opium and cut back on the Quinine. Feel like…like a…ahhh…”

“New man?”

“Feel like a man who’s stepped out of Hell’s furthest jaw.”

“Why don’t you ask more of life for Alastair Ransom?” Philo then drank.

“You ask enough for the both of us, Philo.” Ransom tripped on his own shoe.

“Do you think you can keep your feet? You, my friend, are no longer making any g’damn sense.”

Philo looked all about their surroundings, uneasy. Here was the newly created lagoon. The lovely grand lake ever in the eye, here in this park, which only a few years before had been the cemetery where Alastair’s twin had reposed. The graves had long been relocated in the effort of city fathers to keep pristine all of the lakefront coastal property, purchasing it for the use of the common good-common ground meant common green. Denton had removed his theater of operations to here, thinking that perhaps Ransom could be outdone or outrun or outfoxed; thinking, at least for a night, he had ditched his constant new shadow, a shadow that accosted him with accusation at every turn. A shadow the size of a standing bear.

Some said Denton had gone to Chief Kohler and Prosecutor Kehoe to ask that they muzzle the big man’s mouth, take his gun and badge away, and remove him from the Chicago Police Department.

Some rumors had it that the two men, chief and prosecutor, had hired Denton to continue on as normal, and to report any and all bad conduct of one Inspector Alastair Ransom directly to them. Ransom’s snitch, Bosch, had informed him that “The powers that be’re after you, Ransom; working up a case against you.”

“Don’t hold back, Bosch. Give me the full story,” he’d said.

Stunted Henry Bosch screwed up his features until his face was a dried-up potato. “It’s about that poor harassed citizen, Denton, wrongfully accused, wrongfully jailed, and wrongly hounded after being released for lack of evidence.”

And so here they were, Ransom in full knowledge of this “trap” set for him, but like any dumb bear, he forged straight into the snare. They stood in the snare now, Philo and Ransom observing, watching, studying the hansom cabstand, staring across at the youngest cabbie in the group-Denton-listening to banter and laughter wafting over, under, and through the park leaves.

All the hansom drivers saw to their own stock, feeding bits of cabbage, carrots, and corn to their mares. All stood about a barrel they used for shucking corn and oysters, and for tossing bones and cigarette butts, and a second barrel used as a cooking fire. This pair of barrels created a fulcrum along with a newsstand for the Herald, the Tribune, and other papers-common ground for the common man. The cabbies busily discussed the rising cost of grain feed, cigarettes, beer, wine, coal oil, and whatever else came to mind from a broken horseshoe to a tear in a cloak. Some of them joked with Denton about being the infamous Phantom of the Fair, and he joked back-actually prancing about and using his garrote, making a mock attack on another driver’s horse! Then in a chillingly ironic voice, Denton laughingly asked, “What’d you boys give to know where the Phantom can be found?”

“I hear that is what you asked Inspector Ransom the night he arrested you for the killer!” shouted another, and they all burst into laughter.

“You know the rumor now as to the killer being a prostitute,” said Denton. “It might well be. I can tell you that with a garrote, a woman can take down that fat tub of lard, Ransom!”

“Is that true?” Philo asked Ransom where they stood in the bush.

“Manys-a-prostitute chooses the garrote over the blade. The great equalizer, a way to overpower someone twice your size,” Alastair replied. “And manys-a-poor-bloke’s had his penis sheared off by a whore’s garrote.”

“Ouch! That happens? Damn, but you see some awful things.”

“Can you imagine waking up to your little head being garroted?”

“I can imagine…you’ve no idea how I can imagine.” He protectively crossed his legs.

“Yes, same weapon as Denton carries.”

“But what does Waldo get from…get out of…”

“Murder? It makes Denton feel our equal, Philo-”

“Our equal is it?”

“-you and me, and every man with a larger, ahhh, body, and a rank of some sort in Chicago.”

The men at the cabstand got up an impromptu lottery on the question of whether the true Phantom, once caught, would prove male or female. Denton had named a name they all knew, the infamous Pekinese-faced Chicago madame, Laveeda Grimaldi. They laughed at the notion.