Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “But the angle of the cut, how small we thought the killer was according to the undeniable angle of the cut…all this we did not release to anyone—and the two handprints?”

  “I made a comparison of the handprints to Denton’s,” said Fenger.

  “And?”

  “Inconclusive; couldn’t say without a doubt that it was Denton’s hand.”

  “Maybe you need a new microscope?”

  “Damn it, man. There were too many variables even under magnification.”

  Griff added, “We can begin surveillance, build a case.”

  “But the garrote! We have a case!”

  “You yourself said the diamond garrote is fairly easy to purchase,” countered Griff. “Kehoe pulled forth three garroting wires, all three with double-wire crisscrossed centers. They’re as easily had as pocketknives, cheap handguns, and opium.”

  Alastair’s consternation showed in his strained features. “Are you saying that the prosecutor determined that Denton is more likely a prostitute than a murderer?”

  “On having interviewed Denton, he came to the conclusion that he might well be a male prostitute, yes, and he is not choosy as to which sex so long as he is paid his price.”

  “Fast-talking weasel-bastard convinced Kehoe he’s a harmless male prostitute?”

  “My God,” interjected Jane, “if that’s true, then what must Mr. Kehoe think of our having him in for tea?”

  Ransom ignored this and spoke to Griffin. “At least Griff here knows we had in hand—had—the right man before the fools turned him loose. May God blind me!”

  “Well yes, I mean, hell yes…” sputtered Griff. “…did believe it firmly at the time when we…when—”

  “Did? Did believe it when? And when did you change your mind, and why?”

  “I believe that you believe it with all the sincerity of—”

  “Get out!”

  “What?”

  “Get out of here and take your sincerity garbage with you, Griffin; and whatever else you do, put in for a change of partners!”

  “I will not, Rance. I tell you, I’m standing by you. God only knows why, but I want to help prove your side of it, and I will.”

  “Do so, then, but do it elsewhere!” He yanked and fought his restraints like a bull with its horns sheared to dull nubs.

  Griffin, ever the shrewd one, sensed it time to leave, and he did so quietly and quickly. Shanks and Gwinn held vigil at the door like a pair of guards. “And you, Christian, how can you justify strapping me to a bed! If you won’t untie me now, then take yourself and your two eunuchs off with you”—he paused to catch his breath—“and by damn, get the hell outta my sight.”

  Jane immediately leaned in over him, literally in his face. “That is enough, Alastair Ransom!” she shouted. “This man saved your life with his hands and his skill, so you will not address him in that tone!”

  “Jane, the man has a right to his anger,” countered Dr. Fenger. “After all, he’s been hurt, along with his pride, shot and nearly killed in an effort to bring in a killer, and all for naught.”

  “Of course, but still—”

  “Imagine it,” continued Dr. Fenger, “if our friend here is correct about Denton? Then that foul-minded gargoyle is just biding his time before he must kill again to feed a satanic appetite.”

  “Then you grasp my point!” said Alastair.

  “Grasp it, yes, but you fail to grasp mine!”

  “Which is?”

  “Yes, murder has become his addiction, his obsession, but what of you?”

  “What of me?”

  “What of your obsession? Will it drive you to kill yourself, literally, here and now? Bed rest and attention to your wounds! That is called for. That is what you need to obsess on right now.”

  “You can stop worrying about me. I’m fine!”

  “Nonsense! If your wound were to go the way of gangrene—” Fenger stopped, sighing. “Alastair, at your age…well then, Shanks and Gwinn will happily see you to your grave this time for sure.”

  Ransom settled, no longer pulling at his restraints. “All right, remove these leather shackles of yours, Doctor, and you’ve my word.”

  “Your word?”

  “That I’ll not make any attempt at finding my clothes.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “We’re friends. Would I lie to a friend, Christian?”

  “I cannot imagine you lying there unrestrained with so much venom pumping through that fevered brain,” replied Fenger, his eyes going from Ransom to Jane. “No, sorry, my friend. I’ll not remove the restraints, not till I see a good measure more healing.”

  “It’s a nasty wound, Alastair,” added Jane.

  “Come on, Christian!” he shouted at the doctor’s back as Fenger goose-stepped from the room. “Christian! Live up to your bloody name! Christian! A little charity, if you will!”

  Nothing. No turnaround, no slowing, no response.

  “Jane, you’ll listen to reason, won’t you?”

  “I am a reasonable person, and I think it time I took Gabrielle home. She’s missed schooling over this, but first my daughter has something to say to you.”

  He looked into Gabby’s eyes, filled now with tears. “I am so sorry I fired on you. It just all happened so fast and, and, and…”

  “You frightened us to wit’s end.” Jane pulled wrinkles from the sheet covering him, tucking it here and there. “But I had thought the gun unloaded.”

  “I might’ve killed you,” continued Gabby, gasping, “just when…just when I was beginning to like you.”

  “It’s all right, child. As the bard says, ‘All’s well that ends well.’”

  “But it hasn’t ended well. You are seriously injured. You may have pain in your innards for the rest of your life due to this injury. You may walk with a limp.”

  “I already do.”

  “A more pronounced limp, then. Just please know that I am dreadfully, terribly, horribly sorry, and I did not mean to fire. It just went off.”

  “I understand. I suppose a bit more caution on entering was called for, after all. Like diving into a hot springs without knowing enough about it. Entirely my fault, Gabby, and none of your own.”

  She reached over and hugged him, still tearful. He did not know how to react, but said, “Had I the use of my arms, I’d hug you.”

  This made Gabby erupt, bawling.

  “It’s all right…it’s all right…it’s all right, Gabby, dear.”

  “You are a fine man, no matter the stories people tell,” she replied.

  He laughed lightly and this hurt too. “Tell no one! And, Gabby, will you be the one to loose my—”

  “Do not ask it of her!” Jane’s face flushed red with anger. “It is not fair to play on her guilt, and you well know it, Alastair Ransom.”

  “It’s all right, Mother. I’m not about to go against Dr. Fenger’s wishes.” Do you take me for a fool?”

  Jane reached out to Gabby, but Gabby rushed for the door.

  “Whatever you do, steer clear of that Waldo Denton!” shouted Ransom to Gabby’s back as she rushed out. He then glared at Jane. “Do you have any idea the danger Gabby is in so long as that maniac lunatic is walking free?”

  “Alastair! Just stop it!”

  “What?”

  “I won’t release you from this bed any more than Christian—not before it’s time.”

  “But Jane, I must be—”

  “You know very well more surgical patients die of infections afterward than from surgery!”

  Jane’s final stern comment acted as a signal to Christian’s two ghouls, Shanks and Gwinn, who left the room now.

  Alastair could hear their scratchy, crowlike mutterings and hyena laughter trailing after.

  “I can’t abide those two anymore than you,” she confided.

  “Yeah…they’re like a pair of grim bookends. How could you allow them to put me into that meat wagon of theirs?”

  “Speed was
of the essence.”

  “Speed in the back of that thing can kill, trust me!” He realized his tone had hurt her. He softened, adding, “Hey…thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Saving my life.”

  “I had my daughter’s future to think of.”

  “And perhaps ours?”

  She blushed.

  “Now undo these damnable straps.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “End of argument, Inspector Ransom.”

  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 understa
nd 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.”