Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  Purvis had been Gabby’s one-time boyfriend.

  “The others were intended less to wound me personally than to wound my pride, my confidence, the public trust in my reputation.”

  “Yes, to…to wound you professionally.”

  “Denton has succeeded on both counts. And as for Purvis, I suspect it had to do with you, Gabby.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “He’s pervertedly infatuated with you, and the Purvis boy showed an interest in you, Gabby.”

  Tears welled up unbidden as Gabby’s eyes traced the top-sail of a merchant ship out on Lake Michigan making its approach to the city. She swallowed hard. “I hardly knew Cliffton. We’d just met in fact, yet I feel some small measure of how you must be feeling right now. And it makes for more understanding of this report from France, the Sûreté police—your response to the measurements taken of one Dr. James Phineas Tewes, sir. The night you’d gotten mother intoxicated.”

  “I do apologize for the suspicion and chicanery on my part, but with her Tewes part played so well, she brought suspicion on herself.”

  “But it took you to get her stewed!”

  “Frankly, she managed to get herself stewed.”

  “The report details exactly who Dr. Tewes was.”

  “Was?” He took the report and began studying it.

  “It details my father’s crimes—a true con artist indeed—and his death in a prison. It’s why Mother has hidden him from me all these years. Allain Tewes.”

  “I’m sorry, Gabrielle. I believed that…I thought it the right thing at the time.”

  “You have nothing to apologize for. You were onto a fraud, and you were right in a sense. You are a good detective, after all. Both my parents have now lived false lives.”

  She stood as if to go but lingered, awkwardly shaking.

  He stood and held her to him. “It’s all right,” he muttered.

  They held in a moment of silence. “I was so shocked to learn of Inspector Drimmer’s murder.”

  “Think what is in Denton’s mind now, Gabby. You. So you must leave the city. I am sending you and your mother to a safe place.”

  “I won’t go.”

  “Yes, you will, young lady. You’ll do as I say.”

  She smiled up at him.

  “Think now as Denton is thinking, Gabby.”

  “Think like a killer?”

  “Precisely, if you are to survive.”

  “Or if you are to catch him?”

  “Now you have it.”

  “It’s difficult…to think such dark thoughts.”

  “Denton means to celebrate when all this vengeance he’s taken out on me is over, when finally it is my body burned and garroted and laid low in my grave.”

  “So this’s been the plan hatched by the younger Campaneua—”

  “Denton—he means to be with you, Gabby Tewes, to have you—possess you.”

  She shakily repeated it. “Possess me?”

  “He has set his mind for you.”

  “The purpose of his returning my umbrella that night was to gain entry to our home?”

  “You tell me, Inspector Tewes.”

  She sniffed and blew her nose and looked terribly young doing it.

  “Gabrielle, you now have some idea how close you and your mother came to dying that night.”

  “And how you sacrificed for us.”

  He shrugged this off. “One slight, one offense can set a deviant like him off.”

  “All of this you know, and yet Denton freely roams the streets of Chicago right this moment.”

  “All of this the two of us know as a matter of a cop’s innate intuition. We have that edge, and yet we can’t touch the man, not legally at any rate.”

  “All this we know, yet a mystery remains. How a person like Denton can bring on himself so much black-hearted dementia in the first place?”

  “And why? Why—the question all this time that I’ve been blind to comes clear at last. Why this sick boy holds such an enormous hatred for me. Jane was right on that score.”

  “It has to do with who you are, the stories about you, sir, your own black reputation.”

  “My stock and trade, but I’d thought the incident with Campaneua long buried.”

  “Cremated perhaps. Look, it has all to do with your being called the ‘hero’ of Haymarket. Mother held suspicions of it all along.”

  “You and your mother have formidable minds, young lady.”

  “Ahhh… thank you. Formidable…” Gabby giggled at the word no one had ever leveled at her before.

  “Waldo Denton…an alias,” Ransom mused. “And Griff was onto it.”

  “He was indeed.”

  “But Denton’s entire bloody plan must’ve been hatched years ago, perhaps as a child.”

  “So now you’re worried about Mother and me?”

  “Gabby, if you value your life and your mother’s life, you’ll go to her now and with Philo Keane’s help, convince her to leave Chicago until I send word. Until this is over.”

  She nodded. “I will follow your wishes, Inspector.”

  He hugged her once more, and together they felt a father-daughter concern that had evolved between them. Parting, he wished her hail and well-being, waving her off, adding, “Take every precaution!”

  Surgeon and coroner, Dr. Christian Fenger, joined Ransom only after Gabby had gone. “What’ll you do now, Alastair? Now that he’s killed Drimmer?”

  “Walk with me, Doctor.”

  They took a little-used footpath toward the lake. For a time, they remained in silence until Fenger said, “I want you to know something, Alastair.”

  “And that is?”

  “My morgue is not a stone’s throw from the stockyards where cattle and swine are kept and slaughtered.”

  “And this fact is of what importance?”

  “It would not be a small matter, but Shanks and Gwinn have been known to dispose of a body there. Pigs are one of the few animals on earth that will eat human flesh in quantity, and while Waldo Denton is slight, I am sure they might enjoy a nice appetizer.”

  Ransom looked at the doctor as if he’d never seen him before. At one time the two of them had halfheartedly spoken of making Dr. Tewes disappear, when Ransom only knew James Phineas Tewes as a man, and that Tewes was blackmailing Fenger. Christian had backed off the idea, but here was no equivocation whatsoever. “I—I will take that under advisement, Christian.”

  “There also exists a pit where the hospital disposes of severed limbs.”

  “I will handle this my way, Doctor, and I do not want you or your hospital involved.”

  “To be sure, Denton has ransomed his body and soul to you. No pun intended.”

  “Griff would’ve enjoyed the pun.”

  “I realize you don’t trust Shanks and Gwinn, but please, Alastair, you must trust me.”

  “One can’t be too careful, but Christian, I know your heart.”

  “Good.”

  “And conspiracy to murder does not become you, Doctor. So let us just say that this particular execution is a one-man operation—and no pun intended.”

  “All the same, should you need ’em, I can put Shanks and Gwinn at your disposal.”

  “Daft idea! Neither of those maggot-eaters could keep their mouths shut for more’n a night. And which of the two sells information to Kohler do you guess?”

  “All right, then, but like I said, I know some pigs need feeding.”

  Alastair looked deep into the doctor’s eyes and found him dead serious.

  Christian added, “I was quite fond of Griffin.”

  “As I. Fret not, Dr. Christian. Something will come of the ripple this monster has made in our pond. In the meantime, you sir, you should take a holiday.”

  “I see…for my health, say Springfield or Missouri?”

  “Good choice, sir.”

  “All right, Ransom. Perhaps I will.”

  “Without delay.”

  “Then you
intend on seeing to this little matter of the little man soon?”

  “I will waste no more time.”

  “Careful of your back, then, Rance, as there is so much of it back there!” He tapped Ransom’s shoulder. “You’d never see Denton coming.”

  “I am not so old and fat that I can’t take care of myself in a fight.”

  “I’d’ve said the same of Griffin, before today.” Fenger bid him good-bye and good luck. They’d come full circle, the path having led them back to the steps of the museum.

  Fenger and Ransom watched Kehoe and Kohler approaching now—the men who’d allowed Denton his freedom while Alastair lay on his back in hospital. “Speaking of swine,” said Dr. Fenger.

  “The two men—other than myself—responsible for Griff’s death,” muttered Ransom, working hard to control his temper and to curb his tongue.

  “Gentlemen,” said Fenger to Kohler and Kehoe. “A brave new day and again the viper strikes—and this time at one of our own.”

  “All bets’re come to this,” began Ransom in icy voice. “What’ll the papers make of it, Chief? Mr. Prosecutor?”

  “People seem to be dying around you at every turn, Inspector Ransom,” began Kohler. “That’s what’s to be made of it.”

  “You partnered me with the young man so that he might keep tabs on me, keep close to my investigation of Haymarket, and when he failed you, you failed him by—”

  “I resent the accusation on its surface!” countered Chief Nathan Kohler. “I partnered him with you, so he might learn…so he could be all that he could be under your tutelage, Alastair. To learn from the best in the department.”

  “Kohler, you beset my life with one spy after another. Now you intend on using a young girl, Gabrielle Tewes. Do you have any notion the wrath you are going to stir up in her Aunt Jane Francis and her father, Dr. Tewes, when they learn of this? No, I suppose you don’t have a clue.”

  Kohler stared long into Alastair’s eyes. Each man silently told the other that Dr. Tewes’s disguise as a man was known to them both. Still, Kohler affected a smug look that said “I mean to say nothing on the subject.”

  “Setting spies on me. You are so subtle, and your subtlety got Griff killed as surely as any factor in this horror. When our common enemy surfaced, you should’ve backed me, but I knew early on that you’d fail to draw ranks, even in the face of a multiple murderer.”

  Prosecutor Kehoe stood dumbfounded at this outburst. “Careful, man, or you will be up on libel charges, and I will happily stand witness.”

  “Screw you, Kehoe! What hole did you dig your head out of now that all hell’s broke loose, thanks to the failure of your office in all this!”

  “That’s insulting!”

  “Damn straight it is!” Alastair banged his cane on the pavilion steps. “But not so insulting as your order releasing a multiple murderer to the street.”

  “There’s no proof of any such—”

  “To again terrorize the city and make a mockery of your precious, grandiose fair!” Ransom clutched his cane until his knuckles bled white. His raised voice attracted media attention, while the boisterous, even rowdy crowds continued along the fairways as if it were just another day of jolliness and sunshine.

  “Curb your bloody tongue, Ransom!” ordered Kohler.

  “How could you let a killer go just to spite me, Nathan?”

  Thom Carmichael had obviously been given special privileges, as he’d come in Kohler’s company and was this side of the police barricade. The Herald reporter began furiously taking notes when Kohler said, “Thom, none of this sees light of day, understood?”

  Other reporters had begun to take notes as well. “You getting this?” shouted Ransom to the hungry press, salivating for a scandal.

  “This man’s ranting nonsense, Carmichael.” Kohler glared at Ransom. “Another word, and I’ll have your badge, Inspector!”

  “Is it my bloody badge you want, Kohler? Is that it?” Ransom shouted, raising his cane. “Is that why Griff is dead?”

  Several of the gray-uniformed World’s Fair cops moved in to take hold of Alastair, to pull him away. Their concern rested with returning the fair to its former peaceful atmosphere. But even in their grasp, Ransom kept up his rant: “Is that why you let a killer walk free? All to make me look incompetent?”

  The fair brigade coppers tugged him farther, but he only raised his voice to reach across the chasm. “Like the stories you’ve supplied the press? Giving Carmichael an exclusive on my breakdown?” He snatched his inspector’s badge from a breast pocket and threw it at Kohler’s feet. “You’ve wanted this for so long and so badly that you got Griffin killed for it, so by God take it!”

  The crowd close enough to hear all of this rose up in a single-minded cheer for Ransom’s resigning. He could not be sure if they were for it, against it, or simply glad to see the Chief of Police shouted down and embarrassed in public.

  Ransom then pulled free of the men holding him back. He went to where Shanks and Gwinn held the meat wagon for Dr. Christian, the stretcher with Griffin’s mutilated body in the rear. “You two take extra care with this man. He was a good cop.”

  “Whatever you say, Inspector.” Gwinn’s tone was solemn, practiced.

  “We’ll be as gentle with ’im as me own mum,” added Shanks.

  Shanks’s tongue itself is larcenous, Ransom thought. “You’re to do better than your mum. Do you hear?”

  “How so?” crowed Gwinn.

  “We’ve harshly limited resources, Inspector,” replied the second crow.

  Ransom pushed a silver dollar into each attendant’s hand. “Should I hear otherwise, I’ll take that two dollars back, but I’ll taken it outta your flesh, the both of you! Now, where is the man’s wedding ring?”

  “The killer, he must’ve got hol’t of it.”

  “There were none,” said the second crow.

  “His wallet? His effects?”

  “Every pocket emptied. Not so much as a watch.” Gwinn’s hands rose in unconscious supplication.

  Shanks cranked his head from side to side, saying, “I swear, Inspector, on me dear departed—”

  “All right, all right, take him to the morgue.”

  Fenger gave the two ghoulish characters the nod. Like two hungry men of one mind, they rushed to the rear, each slamming a door on Griffin’s body. In a moment, they were trundling off with the body in tow, their converted meat wagon pulled by two unhealthy horses. The image of the interior of that filthy wagon stuck in Ransom’s craw and brain. It hadn’t been so long ago that he’d awakened locked inside this same so-called ambulance.

  “Piece of work, those two,” came a thick voice in his ear.

  “No doubt, some day I’ll be on their stretcher again, too,” Ransom muttered to Thom Carmichael who’d joined him.

  “That was rash, tossing your badge at Kohler.”

  “What do you want from me, Thom?”

  “We’re old poker buddies, you and I. I wanted you to know that I had little choice in presenting the news as I did, given the lack of evidence against Denton. Do you really think Denton murdered Griffin?”

  “Who but?”

  “So, the killer stays true to form in every aspect, doing precisely the same thing over and over. He has to know he leaves his mark.”

  “Like a rutting deer or a dog in heat, spraying his trail, leading to…to—”

  “To Waldo Denton?”

  “You know where I stand. What is it, Thom?”

  “It’s what Dr. Tewes’s sister pointed out to me earlier, that the killer cannot seem to help but repeat his act in a kind of ritualistic fashion.”

  “We call it in police circles a pattern.”

  “A pattern crime—like leaving a byline?”

  “Some call it his signature mark, yes—his modus operandi.”

  “Ahhh…method of operation. I get it. But, Rance, doing the same thing over an’ over with the same result, is that not a definition of insanity?”

>   “It is.”

  “Then he is insane?”

  “Insane with his obsessive needs, yes. But make no mistake, he knows right from wrong. He’s not completely gone.”

  “Down to taking wallets, purses, pocket watches, rings, jewels, and necklaces.”

  “Yes, taking jewelry like some damned crow whose eye is caught by a shining bauble. Someplace that creep Denton has to have all those jewels he’s pilfered from his victims, and now he adds Griff’s wedding band.”

  “What will you do now, Alastair? Now as citizen Ransom?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Off the record.”

  “On or off, I can’t tell you what I will do next. Frankly, it is not my problem any longer.” The lie fell flat with Thom Carmichael. He knew Ransom too well.

  “Come now, any problem for Chicago is a problem for Ransom. Goes hand in hand.”

  “No longer. No longer on the payroll. So as far as I’m concerned, it’s over.”

  “You lie magnificently; it is what marks you as the consummate poker player, Alastair. I look forward, then, to reporting on the mysterious death or disappearance of one Waldo Denton.”

  “Have you now become convinced of his guilt? Or are you still working for Kohler? Trying to dirty my name any more is, at best, superfluous.”

  “Trust me. I can’t stand Kohler, or Kehoe for that matter, and am done with them. For a reporter, being in the inner circle…given first crack at the story…well, there’s always conditions.”

  “You mean it’s not all that it’s ‘cracked up’ to be?”

  “Funny…but correct. I know of no reporter worth his salt who’d not take the gamble.”

  “But?” Ransom lit his pipe.

  “But I know no reporter who’s won against the house, the city in this case.”

  “So now you’re on the outs with them and me, so save your confounded questions for someone who gives a damn. But I will ask you a question.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “All right, just when did you decide that Denton was in fact the Phantom?”

  “Last night.”

  “Last night?”

  “I ran into Denton last night.”

  Alastair was instantly on this. “Was it late?”