Shadows in the White City

CHAPTER 8

Ransom felt privileged to own one of the first indoor plumbing facilities in the city, where he could shower and shave in peace, as well as relieve himself without having to go down a flight of stairs to an outdoor privy.

After cleaning up, he listened to a Bach symphony on his phonograph while perusing the paperwork that he’d had a messenger bring to him from the station house.

He learned little from the information save that Logan and Behan had padded their murder book with a great deal of useless anecdotal testimony and a lot of pointing fingers, most of them pointing in the direction of the slaughterhouses along Market Street and farther south at the Chicago Stock Yards. There was no lack of suspicious characters in the bovine and hog-slaughtering business or among the horse knackers-all of whom wore the obligatory leather apron. Once a hue and cry had gone up that the killer was a leather-apron man, there was no stopping the flood of informers and invectives.

There also came the typical outcry against foreigners. At once fear the “other tribe,” particularly the Jews among them. Arm in arm with accusation came the usual bigotry and outlandish charges that even seeped into the newspapers. It was well known that Jews routinely sacrificed children to their god, so why not abduct gentile children with red and blond curls and blue eyes and cut them to ribbons to appease a Jewish custom and to feed their sadistic cannibalistic needs? Yes, a Jewish knacker would do nicely…wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. Alastair had heard it in many permutations and in every venue at every level of society since his return.

Actually anyone unable to succinctly speak English had become suspect to his neighbors. There had already been mob attacks on individuals who were thought to be the one and only Leather Apron. One hefty Austrian fellow had bloodied the noses and bruised the eyes of twenty men when he was attacked, but he was himself hospitalized with multiple contusions at Cook County before police could end the violence.

Another theory had it that a now dead-killed-horse butcher by the name of Timothy Crutcheon was the man behind the Vanishings. Crutcheon sold rags and bottles when he could not find a dead horse in need of butchering. Most knackers were independent, and if they did not work at the yards, then they must drum up their own business by finding someone wanting to rid the farm of a useless aged animal. A lot of locals suspected Crutcheon of many a local crime, especially when a horse came up lame or too suddenly off his feet. People suspected this particular Leather Apron of poisoning a horse in order to generate revenue. A knacker normally purchased a sick or aged animal for a scant price and butchered it for parts, hide, and flesh, which he then turned around and sold at a handy profit. It was grueling, cruel work indeed; not the sort of career path people wanted for their children.

Aside from his unfortunate profession, Crutcheon traded on his unfortunate looks, having boils all over his body and face. It was rumored he’d once been a sideshow attraction. People called him a cunning man, a male witch of the black arts, and to make a living, he traded on his notoriety. Possibly another offshoot victim of the real killer, Crutcheon had turned up dead. Logan and Behan had investigated and declared that old Crutcheon had died of multiple stab wounds with a pitchfork where he lay sleeping in a barn well within the city limits, a barn owning to a family with ten children afoot. The pitchfork also belonged to the farmer, and it’d somehow become buried in Crutcheon’s chest, discovered when the eldest son had come out to feed stock and milk the family cow.

No one knew why Crutcheon chose this place to sleep; he’d come in the night, uninvited. Most likely, if pursued, the case of Crutcheon would unravel quickly and surround the fears a mother and father had for their children on seeing the boil-infested wizard waddle into their barn. Alastair imagined the man waking with a scream due to a sharp three-pronged pain in his aged chest.

Other such outbreaks of fear would continue citywide until the killer was caught and the Vanishings ended.

His phone rang. He’d finally taken the step to have one installed since the fiasco of being unable to contact Jane and Gabby at the moment they were in the most danger from the Phantom, the night he and Griff had had to navigate the city in a hansom cab going full tilt during a thunderstorm as the only means of getting to Jane’s in time. He now lifted the phone to learn it was Nathan Kohler calling.

“You have had time to think it over. What do you say? Think of it as an opportunity for the two of us to work toward a common goal and to bury old hatchets, Alastair.”

Alastair said nothing.

“Alastair?”

Since when has Nathan my best interest at heart?”

“Alastair?”

And when did I become Alastair instead of Inspector or simply Ransom to this man?

“Are you there?”

“I said I wanted to sleep on it.”

“Make the right decision, man.” Kohler hung up.

“Now that’s the Nathan I know,” he said to the silent phone.

“You can ’ave no kinna self-worth in such a business, even though it keeps bread on ye table,” the horse knacker named Houston told Alastair as he kept moving about the Chicago Stock Yards, pulling on his leather gloves and apron, snatching for his tools. “Bloody truth of it is, even round here there’s a hexarchy.”

“What do you mean, Jack, a hexarchy?” Alastair, while not a friend knew Jack Houston from the pubs.

“Six levels of men atop you!”

“A pecking order?”

“Aye…even in the yards.” He stopped in his tracks long enough to give a shake of the head, then launched into butchering a dead horse at his feet. “The ones doing beef, now they’re at the top, then comes swine-the real money-makers, you see.” He’d already removed the horse’s head. “Then it trickles down to your lamb and chicken and veal, down to goat meat, you see, but horse meat…” He paused, lifting his bloody mallet-sized hatchet and using it to punctuate his words, blood dribbling from it as he did so. “Well, now you see horse meat’s tough as hell, and it’s not so savory nor wanted, and as most of the cutting we do ends in food for other animals-dogs, cats, and then there’s the soap-makers buying a ton of it. You see, then, we knackers, we’re the bottom of the rung ’round here, so I say again, you can’t have no opinion of yourself in this business.”

Ransom asked Jack if he knew anyone around the yards who was strange or eccentric, and he immediately knew it was a ridiculous question to ask under the circumstances.

“You mean someone capable of taking one of these”-he held up the cleaver this time-“to a human being?”

“Yes, I believe it’s what I’m asking.”

Jack thought long and hard about this as he continued to butcher the dead horse, working off the limbs one joint at a time. “There’s old Hatch, maybe Quinn…even Sharkey, but I gotta tell you, even those fellows, bloody crazy as they are…even they’d have to be pushed to considerable limit to chop up a senator’s lass.”

Jack never stopped talking, even as Alastair started away, unable to take the stench of the yards any longer. Alastair understood Jack’s excitement. It was most assuredly the first time anyone had ever come asking questions of his profession or the men in it.

Ransom could still hear Jack talking as he closed the last gate on the last stall he must pass through to get clear of this place. It would take a carriage ride of several blocks to get clear of the odors that daily hovered over the entire area of the Southside Stock Yards. Even so, the stench in his nostrils and throat remained.

He had the cabbie pull over at a neighborhood grocery and got out. He went inside and purchased a sarsaparilla to wash down the clinging odors in his throat. The label on the drink made amazing claims, that it could settle the mind and provide a mental state for making enormous sums of money among other things. The label had three paragraphs of text touting the wonderful properties of cocaine, which made up two thirds of the drink’s marvelous ingredients, and the rest was sugar. But the label made no claim of effectiveness against horrid odors, and it did nothing for odors clinging to his clothes.

He stepped from the store, having drained half the bottle, when he saw a homeless street urchin, dirty and hungry-looking, staring up at him. The boy was missing his front teeth, and Ransom hoped this was due to natural causes. The boy appeared perhaps eight or nine-same age as some of the Vanished.

“Say, Mister, you got a penny?”

Alastair saw such children about the streets of Chicago every day; the number of homeless families and the growing population of children on the street like this boy represented a staggering problem that seemed without answer. The city fathers had begun talking about it, but no one had done anything about it.

“Mind drinking after me, son?” Alastair asked, handing him the remainder of his soft drink.

“No, sir! Thank you, sir!” The boy took hold of the bottle as if it were a lifeline, and before Ransom could ask his name, he’d scurried off with the drink as if to find a secret place to relax and enjoy its contents.

Alastair had intentionally gone to work on the Vanishings case by hitting the streets, in an effort to avoid going into the station house, to avoid another confrontation with Chief Kohler and to buy time. He’d earlier arranged to meet with his street snitch, and he did not have a long wait before Bosch-otherwise known as Dot ’n’ Carry-showed up. They got into the cab, and the driver was told to drift about the area.

“It’s the Vanishings, isn’t it?” Bosch asked. “They put you onto the case, didn’t they? I’m not surprised. Told me mates the other night they gotta put Ransom onto the case.”

“Never mind butterin’ me up, Bosch. What’ve you got?”

“Got?”

“Your ear’s always to the ground. So, what’ve you got?” Alastair repeated.

“Sometimes an ear to the ground ain’t enough.”

Ransom pulled forth a dollar bill, dangling it before Bosch’s sad eyes. “This help your ears out? What can you tell me about these disappearances?”

“I tell you true, nothing.”

“You don’t get paid for nothings, old-timer. Tell me what you hear.”

“I tell you, the street is moot. And oh, by the way, glad to hear that the Phantom is no more. I like to think I played a small part in it.”

“Get me something, Bosch…get me something soon.”

“I’ll keep me eyes and ears open. You know that. In the meantime…you know how scarce money is for me now?”

“I’m not a charity, Bosch.”

“All right, then I got something for you on Haymarket.”

Ransom sat up straight. “Haymarket?”

“Someone who was on the other side.”

“A worker?”

“One who was there, yes.”

“I’ve interviewed every living survivor already, Bosch. This is old ground.”

“Not this survivor.”

“What’s his name.”

“Her name. She was a seamstress, but she got all balled up in the movement.”

“What’s her name?”

“Josephine Lister.”

“Where do I find her?”

“Well…that’s the problem. She’s dead.”

“Get outta my coach, Bosch.”

“No, but you don’t understand.”

“Out!”

“Her daughter’s got a diary Josephine kept.”

“A diary?”

“And there’s a section on the riot and the bomb.”

“How do I get in touch with the daughter?”

“She wants to sell the diary to you, and I’m to broker the deal.”

“I see. And how do I know it isn’t pure fiction, Bosch?”

“Would I fabricate such a thing?”

“Yes, you would if you thought you could get away with it.”

“You hurt a man to the quick, Inspector.”

“I want to meet with the woman.”

“But that cuts me outta the deal.”

“If I find her credible, you’ll be paid handsomely.”

“Ten percent is what she agreed on.”

“Agreed.”

“Till then…what about an advance?” He snatched at the dollar bill, but Ransom was too fast, pulling it out of reach.

“Come on, man! How do you expect me to live?”

Frowning, Ransom put the bill away. As Bosch’s features fell, Alastair reached deep into a coat pocket and dragged out his reluctance in the form of two bits.

“Thanks, Inspector.” He said it sourly, but he knew better than to complain.

“Ten dollars if you bring me something I can use.”

“Ten dollars? On the Haymarket deal, you mean?”

“Haymarket, yes, but also the Vanishings.”

“Lor’ blind me! Twenty dollars. Imagine what I could do with twenty? Have not had hold of that much money in forever.”

“Now get out. My coach is beginning to take on your odor.”

“Hmmm…smells of the stockyards to me.” He sniffed the air like a rodent.

The cab had come full circle to the same corner drugstore. As the crooked, arthritic Henry Bosch climbed from the cab, Alastair saw the same little boy on the street panhandling someone else out front of the store. He called the boy over to the cab.

“Yes, sir?”

“Two dollars for you, son, if you learn anything about the Vanishings,” he told the boy, handing him a nickel. “Any news at all that might help.”

“You’re a copper, sir?”

“You’d best hone your powers of observation, son, if you’re going to work for Inspector Ransom.”

The boy’s eyes went wide. Everyone in Chicago knew the name Ransom. “Yes, sir. I will indeed, Inspector, sir.”

“And your name, son?”

“Sam…Samuel, sir. Everybody knows me as Sam.”

“All right, then, Sam. Put your ear to the ground, nose to the stone.”

“Yes, sir!”

Ransom tapped the roof of the cab with his cane and the carriage was off. “To one-twenty-nine Des Plaines,” he shouted to the driver.

As the carriage picked up the pace, he quietly said to himself, “I need a drink, and I know where I don’t have to pay for it.”

He’d go home, clean the stockyard stench from himself, send out his clothes to that Chinese place halfway down the block, and once these chores were accomplished, he’d stroll to Philo Keane’s studio home on Kingsbury Lane. Perhaps he might just enjoy the feel of warm sunshine on his face, smell the last blossoms on the wind, watch birds chase one another amid the trees of a neighborhood park, think of Jane out of her Tewes getup, and get his mind off this horrid case…at least for a time.

The word went out and they found Ransom at Philo’s where he was enjoying a brandy, a cigar, and Beethoven on Philo’s phonograph. Philo was talking about a series of photos he’d begun taking of ordinary homeless people all across the city. Ransom was hardly hearing this, but Philo had grown animated and spoke of the possibilities of a montage of such photos, if only he could find a venue for them. He was saying that perhaps if he worked on whatever small conscience Thom Carmichael had left, that perhaps with Thom’s help, he could get the photos placed in the Herald as a poignant exposé, as he called it. “Certainly could use the money.”

“When couldn’t you use extra green, Philo?”

“But, Rance, it’s more than about the money this time.”

Ransom didn’t take this too seriously, and so he grunted at all the appropriate moments, but he really just wanted to drink and hear the music. Then when Philo insisted he listen and Philo repeated that it wasn’t a job for money, Alastair capitulated. “All right, all right. Never known you to minimize the monetary aspects of a job, that’s all.”

But this peaceful time was interrupted when a messenger-a junior officer in uniform and a friend, Mike O’Malley, knocked, knowing he could find Alastair here. O’Malley had bad news to impart.

“Another child found dead?”

“Dead and butchered…like a bloody knacker got at her.”

“Another girl?”

“Aye.”

Philo joined Alastair, grabbing his Night Hawk for photos, and as an afterthought, he slipped a single photo into his breast pocket. Alastair saw this but said nothing. They had then rushed to the scene, as Mike had wisely commandeered transportation for them. Along the way, Philo recalled how Alastair had returned his Night Hawk, evidence of their friendship. Now the two friends traversed the city and soon stood staring over the carnage.

Ransom’s knee-jerk reaction on seeing the dead child was to say, “She’s a local girl.”

“How can you know that?” asked Dr. Tewes, who had arrived on scene after Ransom and Philo. They had sent for Dr. Fenger to come as well to preside over the newly discovered remains; Tewes had come along with Dr. Fenger, apparently with him, when he had learned of the most recent find.

“Her clothing,” Alastair replied to Jane dressed as Tewes.

“You mean the tatters hanging on her?”

“Yeah…what’s left of the blue dress with the yellow buttons. She was wearing that when she vanished. It’s in the missing-persons file.”

“Expensive clothes for a young woman not yet out of her teens.”

“All from Fields, including her shoes,” added Alastair. “Besides, I have seen her on her rounds. She works and lives somewhere in my area, or did.”

“She worked? At her age?”

“Don’t be naive. Half the children in the city work.”

“How can you be sure it’s her? You can’t possibly make out her features.”

“What features?” asked Philo, snapping off another shot with his Night Hawk. “But Alastair is correct. It’s Alice Cadin, all right.”

“It’s her, Cadin, Alice Cadin,” Ransom repeated the name in a tone of eulogy.

Philo then pulled forth a photograph of the girl from his breast pocket. Fenger and Tewes studied the girl in the blue frock with yellow flowers. “I’d asked the family for it. Made duplicates. Takes good professional equipment, but I photographed the photograph, you see, since they had no negatives, and it worked fairly well. I mean from a professional point of view it is appalling and it’s technically-”

“Shut up, Philo,” Ransom put in.

“Did what I could.”

“Don’t be modest, Philo,” said Alastair, who then spoke to Jane and Christian. “He spread the photo to every police district, every station house.”

“She’d gone missing for over a week.” Christian measured the depth of a wound over the heart as he spoke. “Others’ve gone missing as well.

Philo said, “Alice was a hard worker, her parents told me. She wasn’t homeless, but she loved the lakefront and the park. The last time they saw her, she’d gone off with friends to the park. Darkness came on, and she didn’t come home. They never saw her again.”

“What of the friends she went off with?”

“They left her on the path for home, or so they tell it.”

“Still…given the disfigurement, how can you be sure?” asked Tewes.

“The blond hair,” Ransom replied.

“The flowered blue dress,” Philo repeated. “The yellow buttons, the shoes.”

“It all fits, down to her size,” added Ransom.

“Now I must inform the parents.” Fenger kept his steady hands at work over the corpse.

Philo, over his initial shock, continued taking photos from every angle.

Alastair stood looking out over the Chicago River, the killer’s dumping ground of choice, pacing in a small circle with his cane, favoring a backache. He smelled Tewes’s cologne behind him. “Drops them in the water like so much trash, the bastard.”

“Why not?” she asked, equally angry. “The river’s still seen as the city toilet. Everyone disregarding the law and health issues as if they mean nothing. So what might you expect from a child killer?”

“Turns my stomach what’s happening.”

“We’re going to catch this monster, Alastair.”

“We? Tell me, Dr. Tewes, by what magic do you propose to help this investigation? How do you propose to tell us what is in the mind of a man who would do this to a child-repeatedly so? Will your mind-reading, your phrenology, get us into his bloody mind?” Ransom’s voice had raised more than he’d wanted, and everyone else looked to the pair only momentarily, realizing some things never changed. It was obvious to all that Ransom did not want Dr. Tewes anywhere near his case.

“How will I get into this madman’s mind and help your investigation?” asked Jane as Tewes. “By the clues he leaves.”

“There are none.”

“Wrong,” Jane countered.

“How so?”

“He is leaving observable patterns.”

“All I observe is his butchery.”

“Even his cuts have left patterns, Ransom.”

“Whataya mean?”

“I’ve looked over the autopsies and either this fiend is ambidextrous and slashes and carves with both hands, or there are two of them cutting away at the body, if not more.”

“You can tell that?”

“Christian will verify it; it was his discovery, but I agree.”

Ransom sighed heavily and shook his head and looked out over the city from this perspective, a nearby garbage heap acting as a city for rats.

“Alastair, I am working closely with Christian, and we are prepared to make certain assumptions about the killer based on the very tools he uses and the cuts he has taken out of these…these poor children.”

“Indeed. And how is that progressing? Are you sharing, or is this all for Senator Chapman’s benefit?”

“Chapman? He’s got nothing to do with our teaming up, if that’s what you mean. Look, Alastair, there’ve been several different blades identified by Fenger and myself.”

“Several different blades?”

“And all have varying sizes and lengths. One is more or less a cleaver. Others are smaller blades. One or two have definite large hilts that have left patterns against the skin, meaning some of the stab wounds were so furious as to drive the weapon to the hilt, fracturing bone beneath.”

“This can all be deduced by measurement, I understand, but what does it say about the kind of mental state that can do this kind of turkey carving on children?”

“After the initial attack, the deep tissue stab wounds, Ransom, every cut is meticulous, thought out…and it may have-that is each cut may have some sort of ritualistic purpose or meaning for the killer.”

“Do you mean to say each stab wound is symbolic?”

“No, not the stabbing, no. The carving up afterward. They are not all stab wounds.”

“I got that. Hell, I can see that.”

“In fact, none of the killings are what we traditionally call murder by stab wound,” added Dr. Fenger, coming nearer, overhearing.

“What then are they, these killings?”

“We suspect a couple of things: a kind of barbaric ritual from the old world for one.”

“Human sacrifice?”

“Something of that nature, yes.”

“Each killing leads to something in the nature of a carving, and the areas carved from the bodies are…well…edible.”

“Including the entrails?”

“Including the entrails.”

All of them fell silent at the thoughts and images raised by this.

“So, Dr. Fenger, are you telling me now that these children were carved up for their meat, like a knacker does a horse, like a butcher slaughters a sow? Are you definitely confirming this?”

“That is what we are leaning toward, yes.”

“Then you’re saying none of the wounds on the Chapman girl were deadly in and of itself, that she died of multiple stab wounds and was then later, after death, carved up?”

“Evidence tells us that some of the carving up went on before the Chapman girl was completely dead.”

“Like the taking of her nose, ears?”

“Correct.”

“How can you know that?”

“It’s a theory but it has to do with the coloration around the wounds,” explained the medical genius, Fenger. “Blood in the living rises to meet the knife, but not in a corpse where we’d see no color. In most of the knife wounds found on Anne Chapman, the color isn’t there.”

“As a result,” said Jane, “we theorize death ensued due to a blow to the head-before any of the major cuts.”

“Earlier, I proved to myself that he dispatched them before he cleaved off their flesh,” added Dr. Fenger.

“How then was the last victim killed? A blow to the head, strangulation? What?”

“Alice Cadin over there was stabbed to death.”

“How was she lured into this?”

“Sorry…we haven’t a clue as to that.” Fenger tugged at his beard.

“No intoxication, no poison?”

“Poison is hard to determine without testing her fluids, and that takes time, but I have a fine man on it. Dr. Joseph Konrath.”

Ransom and Jane both knew that Konrath was a rarity, a man who’d pursued the alliance of the study of poisons-toxicology-and crime fighting, a new direction begun in the 1840s with the breakthrough in the infamous Marie Lafarge case, breakthroughs shared by two men working independently of one another-Frenchman Dr. Mathieu Orfila and Englishman Dr. James Marsh, who invented the process that could detect gas arsine, produced when arsenic is heated to the correct temperature. Konrath carried on a fifty-year-old tradition nowadays of seeking out gases in any number of bodily tissues and fluids to determine if poisoning were present in the deceased.

“But such things as belladonna are easily accessed nowadays.”

“There’ve been no sign of any narcotic or poison in earlier victims, Alastair.”

“Whoever this so-called Leather Apron is, we suspect rampant cannibalism,” said Jane. “I suspect most cannibals don’t stop to use poison. Wouldn’t want to spoil the…the meal.”

“Why’d he take her eyes?”

“Usually the first to go…soft tissues, a delicacy for a cannibal,” said Fenger.

Alastair began tamping his unlit pipe. “Christian, what do you know of cases of cannibalism?”

Fenger took in a deep breath and exhaled. “All right, you’ve found me out, Rance. I’ve not ever handled a case like this, but I am reading up on it, you can bet.”

“Rampant cannibalism of children. God…what has the world come to?” asked Ransom, not expecting an answer.

“Actually, it was not so very long ago that Jonathan Swift wrote his answer to the problem of the homeless children of London,” began Jane, “that the government should round them up and feed them to the populace.”

“Swift was satirizing,” said Christian, “to bring the problem to the attention of Parliament and the Crown.”

“Well, the Vanishings is not satire,” replied Alastair. “This is real.”

Alastair asked again, “OK, so what do you think you know about this madman?”

She ticked off a number of beliefs. “He is ingratiating, charming, luring the victim; he lives in the city and knows every avenue and byway.”

“He likely uses candy or a drink possibly laced with some narcotic we can’t detect,” added Fenger.

“That’s any soft drink on the market,” Ransom said, recalling the boy, Sam, who so easily gulped down the soft drink that he’d been offered.

Jane continued, stating the obvious. “As he uses multiple blades, he is either in a profession relying on blades or is a collector.”

“That narrows it down for us,” he chided. “Look, Jane, have you given thought to the notion that since there’re multiple blades used, that there just might be a violent gang or nutty religious cult using cannibalism as a kind of badge of honor or an initiation, or both? Each gang or cultist with his own blade, racking up points with their leaders.”

“I confess,” began Fenger, “it has crossed our collective minds, yes. Haven’t ruled anything out at this point.”

“Then we are no closer to knowing the truth about Leather Apron or his possible followers, are we?”

Fenger looked tired, his emotion on his face. “What I earlier suggested, some sort of religious cult sacrificing these lambs; perhaps it’s a collective mind at work here?”

“Like a very, very dark mob or lynching party?” asked Alastair, helping secure Tewes’s mustache back into place. “Only this mob likes the blades and cleavers.”

“It is as old as mankind, ritual sacrifice,” said Jane, shivering, “and if it is symbolism you’re out for…well, there you have it. Trust me, the phrase Blood of the Lamb predates Christ.”

“These lambs-our Chicago lambs-are silent witnesses, if that is the case,” replied Ransom. “But do you really think there’s some ancient cult operating here in Chicago, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of these disappearing children?”

Jane fielded the question. “Some pagan cult, something out of Romania or Eastern Europe, Druids perhaps?”

Alastair breathed deeply of the night air. Lights had gone on all across the city and they stood beneath a gaslight at the bridge. The fire boat that’d taken Denton out to the depths tugged by beneath them. He stared back at the little weed patch far below at river’s edge where Dr. Fenger’s attendants finished up, readying to cart the pitiful remains to County Morgue. “I have people in the city working to find out and find out quickly. If there is a sick religious cult at work here, I’ll soon know it, and we’ll hang them all in a public square.”

Even as he said it, he wondered how Kohler, Fenger, and he would deliver an entire religious sect to the senator’s farm to be boiled in oil and skinned alive in the manner of butchering swine. The senator certainly had the equipment out there on that big farm of his, the cauldron, the oil, the tools, and the know-how.

But it had been Alastair’s experience with religious cults that there were more than just men and women involved but whole families, children. He tried to imagine a cultist ritual involving drinking human blood and feeding human organs and chunks of flesh to children-items torn from other children.

He prayed they were all wrong.

He imagined Christian and Jane must also have problems wrapping their minds around the notion, but apparently, they had discussed it at length sometime earlier.

This new victim had not looked in any better shape than had the Chapman girl, but this one had not been in the water as long and more of her clothing had survived. It seemed someone had made a feeble attempt to dress her before laying her into her watery grave.

Dr. Fenger, his sad eyes downcast, grumbled, “I have to leave you two. Must give Shanks and Gwinn strict orders regarding transportation of the body.”

“Do they take directions well, Christian?” Ransom held back a snicker.

“I’m sick to death of seeing attendant bruises and especially broken necks postmortem.” Fenger rushed off on this odious duty. Ransom glanced at Shanks and Gwinn where they stood sharing a stogie.

“Well, Jane…Dr. Tewes,” said Ransom, “have you eaten lately?”

“Don’t think I could swallow a thing save some ale.”

“Then you’ve taken a liking to red ale, have you?” He recalled the night he’d gotten her drunk on ale while investigating her alias, Dr. Tewes. How he’d had to carry her home to Gabby. The same night as he had become attached to Gabby, who was so fiercely protective of her “father,” Dr. Tewes.

“Well, I think a pint would not hurt.”

“I know a nearby place. Shall we?”

After the single pint, Dr. Tewes wanted a refill, but Jane held him to one. Instead she and Ransom enjoyed a horse-drawn cab ride through Lincoln Park and down tree-lined Clark Street. While passing the scenery, he dared ask, “Jane, I thought you finished with this Tewes act. I thought we agreed-made a pact-on the train back from Mackinaw City…remember Mackinac Island? Our getaway?”

“You agreed with yourself, Alastair. Look, first and foremost, I have Gabby to think of, and Tewes is beginning to rake in too much cash right now for me to simply drop the act.”

“And besides, you like it, don’t you? Playing police-adviser.”

“I’m no longer on Nathan’s payroll, if that’s what you mean. I’m being paid by Christian through his Cook County budget.”

“But Christian draws partial payment from the Chicago Police Department. So he actually still works for Nathan, and so then does Dr. J. P. Tewes.”

She laughed lightly at this, her femininity showing through. “And who do you answer to directly at the end of the day?”

Alastair frowned and changed the subject in rapid fashion, asking, “You know what it will sound like among the men at the station house if it gets out I am having moonlight rides through the park with James Phineas Tewes?”

“Oh…please. It may soften your reputation a bit.”

“Will you ever learn? I don’t want some things softened…ever, and my reputation ranks high on that list.”

“Kiss me, Alastair, and shut up.”

He considered following her order but stopped short. “I can’t do it with that mustache on your face. You look too much like my Uncle Fred.”

“You are incorrigible. Take me home.”

“If it is your wish, Doctor.”

They traveled along in silence for a time save for the hooves on bricks outside and the occasional row at a corner tavern. Ransom peeked from behind the window sash and mentally began counting the number of children he saw wandering about so late. Where were the parents. Didn’t they read? Didn’t they have ears? How could they not know of the danger afoot in the city now, the danger lurking for their children. He saw a smaller boy than the one he’d put on his payroll panhandling at one pub. When he had gotten a coin, he shuffled off to a black recessed doorway and handed his beggings to a man, someone who then set him on his mission for another coin, possibly his father or stepfather, reasoned Ransom. Poor bloke was likely down on his luck and had to use his kid to beg a pittance.

It had become brutally competitive to find the least job in the city nowadays. Whole families had wandered in from the various states all around, many from the Illinois prairie land in a bad crop year. There had been destructive weather all round the city and serious flooding in areas along the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, as well as the Kankakee.

It all conspired to swell the streets of the city with an out-of-control transient population beyond the municipality’s capacity to cope. Chicago, the Gem of the Prairie, was like a beacon to all comers. Stories of land speculation and endless work and new construction and a better life according to advertisements in national magazines had brought about a deluge until the population numbers outstripped any hope of a newcomer making a living here. Many a family went straight to the few churches and shelters about, and many slept on the floor of City Hall, and many wound up in lockups all across Chicago. Meanwhile, the number of police remained woefully inadequate, and many on the force secretly worked for private companies-moonlighting-despite new laws enacted against this.

“Has Christian promised you any, ahhh…unusual bonus…or special remuneration for working on the Vanishings case with him?” Ransom finally asked the question burning inside.

“No…no more than normal.”

“Ahhh…I see.”

“See what?”

“I just mean that…ahhh…” Ransom did not want to tell her about Christian’s meeting with Kohler and Chapman, and if Fenger hadn’t offered to cut her in on the scheme, he certainly did not wish to spill it to her this way. “It’s going to take some time, perhaps a lot of time, away from your-from Tewes’s-practice, so a bit additional seems not out of line, you see.”

“Perhaps I’ll push him on it…next time.”

They arrived at Jane’s door, the sign still proclaiming it to be the clinic and residence of Dr. James Phineas Tewes. She climbed down, and he walked her to the door where, with a glance back at the bored cabbie who was digging out a pipe and feeding an apple to his horse, Alastair kissed her, mustache or no and said, “There…good afternoon and a pleasant good night, then, Doctor.”

“You really know how to charm a girl,” said Jane.

“Get some rest, and we’ll put our heads together on this case tomorrow.”

“Pray there’s not another abducted child by then.”

“Trust me, in some back rooms, Chicago oddsmakers are banking on it. And we both know the Vanishings won’t stop until we put the mad dog down.”

Another good-bye kiss, and Alastair returned to the cabbie, who’d given up on his pipe and had opted for chewing tobacco instead, remaining so intent on his tin that he remained completely oblivious to two kissing men on Tewes’s porch, unlike Gabby at the window.

“Horrible thing, Inspector,” said the cabbie when Alastair began to reboard.

Alastair did a double take, thinking that the man had witnessed him kissing Dr. Tewes after all, and Ransom’s face flushed as red as a Santa Claus advertisement. “Horrible?” he repeated the single word.

“This Vanishing business,” replied the cabbie, scratching his pockmarked face.

“Yes…yes it is horrendous indeed. Look here, you see a lot going about, hear a lot.”

“I do…and am sure this is worse even than the Phantom, I say. I mean this madman’s victims are mere lil’ knickers.”

Ransom pulled forth a five-dollar bill and held it up to the man.

“What’s this?”

“Beyond your charge, Joseph is it?”

“Yes, ’tis my name, but what’s the large tip for?”

“It’s no tip.”

“Then what be it?”

“You’ll have more if you bring me any information you hear on the street regarding these murders.”

“Ahhh…I see, and sure it’s a deal. Where are you off to now?”

“Moose Muldoon’s, just down the-”

“Aye, I know Muldoon’s, Inspector.”

“You’ve learned my habits. Watch the habits of others for me.” Ransom climbed in for the short ride to Muldoon’s, where he intended to drink until midnight to blot out the sight of Alice Cadin’s body so that he might find sleep somewhere in the labyrinth of a horrible struggle going on inside his mind.