Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

“Which is?”

  “A series of similar Vanishings in London, not five years ago.”

  “Really? Let me have a look.”

  Gabby spread the materials out for his perusal. She’d marked specific items from various police gazettes and reports.

  “I had no idea you’d planned to continue working here.”

  “And why not?”

  “I guess it was an assumption you would rush back to Northwestern and continue your studies in medicine there.”

  “A safe cozy plan indeed, one Mother wants for me. But, no. I love working with Dr. Fenger at Rush on my medical studies and on cases with Dr. Fenger. He put me to researching this one.”

  “You should share this with your mother.”

  “I may…when she settles into the notion that I am my own person and not a copy of her.”

  “I see.” He really did not wish to get between mother and daughter on the issue, although it had been Alastair who had first encouraged her to pursue working with Christian Fenger in police medicine.

  “Look, I have a meeting to get to,” she informed him. “I’ll leave this with you so you can get on the trail of this monster.”

  “A meeting?”

  “Yes, a meeting.”

  “The drum-and-fife corps of ladies?”

  “We are suffrage advocates and only want simple justice.”

  “You’ll become a fine spokesperson for the cause.”

  “Well, I am terrible at marching, so perhaps I will brave the podium someday. For now, I am content to stand with my sisters in this noble cause.”

  “I wish you all the best.”

  “Persistence is the key according to our leaders. Do you know we are petitioning the president as we speak? Thousands and thousands have signed.”

  “Good luck, Gabby, but do be careful.”

  “I have a key to a police phone box now, and should I need you, I can call.”

  “Do not hesitate.”

  She left with a bounce in her step. He smiled after her, a strange concern coming over him. A fleeting emotion of fear should anything befall Gabby.

  Logan leaned forward in his chair and said, “You act the part of father quite well, old chap.”

  “What’re you fellows doing here so late?”

  Behan laughed and Alastair shrugged it off, his attention going to the reports that Gabby had unearthed. Slowly Behan, followed by Logan, moved in and stood over each of Inspector Ransom’s hefty shoulders.

  The report he read in the London Police Gazette dated 1889 put forth yet another theory of the exact identity of Jack the Ripper, an American actor named Richard Mansfield, who’d terrified playgoers as Mr. Hyde, changing from Jekyll without makeup or leaving stage. The man sent ladies into a swoon and men running from the theater. But the story so riveting for these three Chicago cops was a tale of the Vanishings. It read in part:

  As near as this detective has ascertained, the Vanishings began in 1881 and continued until this past year of 1891, when they abruptly ended. The case represents for me, personally, the strangest case of my career, and the most frustrating and heart-rending, as I was called into each inquest to view the most horrid sights of my career—the remains of the victims, each barely of age. They began in Ham, and records are scarce, but I have pieced together a clear trail that leads from East and West Ham to London’s East Side.

  “Eerie, isn’t it?” asked Behan over Alastair’s right shoulder.

  “Damned spooky, if you ask me,” agreed Logan at his left.

  Both men were smaller than Alastair. Compactly built like a prize fighter was Ken Behan, whereas the other was rail-thin and gaunt, his eyes sunken, yet Jedidiah Logan had hands as large as griddles. Pale as December snow, Logan looked as if death might claim him at any time. He smoked without end the strongest cigars made. Others joked that one day at the morgue, when Logan dozed against a wall, Dr. Fenger took him for an upright corpse and began shouting orders at his men about maltreatment of the dead.

  The three inspectors next skimmed an account of an eleven-year-old girl who went missing after going out to plow a row in a field for her mother. Her name was Eliza Carter, and she simply vanished out of that field. Her yellow dress was found days later on the East Ham football field. No one ever saw her again. The Chicago detectives read on from the account of the London investigator. The next paragraph read:

  Charles Wagner, son of a West Ham butcher, vanished next, only a few weeks after the Carter girl. His body had been got at by animals, found seventy-five miles away at the bottom of a ravine at Ramsgate. The animals had got at him bad, tearing away all his face and much of his body. Oddly, neither the fall nor the drowning had caused death, according to the medical men. There was not one murderous abrasion or puncture mark that alone killed the boy but thirty-seven by count of the medical men.

  Ransom stopped reading and said, “The work of multiple knifings? And as for cause of death…Fenger’s determined our man uses a cleaver and a number of blades, and it’s theorized there could be more than one madman doing the deed.”

  “Really? More than one doing the stabbing?” asked Logan.

  “And carving, perhaps. And cannibalizing, perhaps.”

  Behan shivered at the idea.

  Logan asked, “Rance, do you suspect one of these lunatic religious cults we’ve been seeing more and more of?”

  “Maybe one begun in London, but moved to Chicago?” asked Behan.

  “We’ve kicked over the thought, yes, of a cult sacrifice, but a London transport? No.”

  “Do you for a moment think our killer…or, ahhh, killers…” began Behan, “that he could be one and the same as in England?”

  “Long way to come to harvest children,” said Ransom, “especially when London’s got plenty of her own.”

  “But then why not, Rance?” countered Logan. “Everyone else is coming to Chicago.”

  “Creepy is what it is,” muttered Behan.

  Ransom read on:

  Next it was three girls in a row disappeared from West Ham all in January 1890. Only one of these dears was ever found, Amelia Jeffs, in West Ham Park. It’s surmised that Amelia made a getaway as there were signs of a struggle, and she had been bruised over the right eye and stabbed through stomach and ribs multiple times.

  In every case of the missing where there was anything in the way of eyewitness reports, all the girls involved had been seen talking to and in some cases walking off with a woman. A cautious coroner whispered in me ear that we are fools to think that women are less susceptible to the lowest forms of mania and sexual perversions.

  What with the Ripper murders on London’s East side in 1888 and ’89, when new Vanishings began here in the city, they were overshadowed by the mutilations left behind by that fiend Jack. Six prostitutes in all that we know of. Meantime, dozens upon dozens of children going missing, and no one in authority or the press caring as they were focused on when the next Ripper letter might appear. The disappearances ended on the cusp of 1890 becoming ’91. These Vanishings I speak of, and for ten years chased, to my disgrace, have never been solved.

  Sincerely,

  Inspector Kenan Heise, London, April 14, 1891

  “So what do you make of it, lads?” asked Ransom of the other two inspectors.

  “Are you asking our opinion of these circumstances?” asked Logan, hands gesturing with a wide swath. “Your eminence?”

  “Cut out the foolishness.”

  Behan too was doing a bit of a pirouette before him, ending with a bow. “After all, it was our case before we became your dotes and gophers.”

  “Which am I,” asked Logan, “dote or gopher?”

  “Both!” announced Ransom. “Lads, we’re working on equal footing here. We’re a team.”

  “Like you and the kid?” asked Logan, indicating the empty desk across.

  “That was different.”

  “Really?”

  “How so?”

  “He was young, green, and—” He sto
pped short of telling them that Griffin Drimmer had been put on him by Kohler, not wishing to despoil Griff’s memory.

  “And…?”

  “And you fellows are old farts like myself, well versed in the ways of the detective,” finished Ransom. “I suspect our combined years on the force may do better than this fellow Heise working alone in London.”

  “Do you think there is a link between his killer and ours?” asked Behan.

  “Dunno. Interesting bit on perverted female suspects, heh?”

  “Do you think there’s a woman involved?” asked Logan.

  “Dunno, but it’s often true; you hear it in every lament and song—a woman made me do it.”

  “You think?”

  “It’s what we get paid for, to think.”

  Logan pulled at his beard. “Imagine if it’s so…that the Vanishings is done by a woman.”

  “Women are more readily accepted by children, less threatening,” Ransom suggested.

  “Imagine it,” repeated Logan.

  “A lotta shell games are begun by a pretty woman,” said Behan.

  Logan laughed. “You well know it, too, don’tcha, lover?”

  Alastair laughed at this. “We shouldn’t discard the notion out of hand, Logan.”

  “True enough, we’ve all seen tough bitches in our time, but a cannibalizing woman? What’re you thinking, Alastair?

  “The Phantom went invisible because we didn’t see him, and who is more invisible in our society than—”

  “Than a woman!” It was Dr. James Phineas Tewes standing over his desk now, looking straight in his eye.

  “And how, Dr. Tewes, did you arrive at this conclusion?”

  “I interviewed a child who was nearly snatched by a woman.”

  “What child? What woman?”

  “A rag-and-bottle lady who makes her rounds pretty regularly in the child’s neighborhood.”

  He took Jane aside. “How did you come by this information in the first place?”

  “I intercepted your man.”

  “What man?”

  “Bosch.”

  “Bosch? He spilled information to you meant for me?”

  “Says I pay better.”

  “The little weasel.”

  “He’s rather cute when you get to know him.”

  “All right, tell me what he said.”

  “I can do better than that.”

  “How so?”

  “I have the child at my home. Gabby is with her now.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

  “To this place? It’d only terrify her, and she’s plenty terrified enough as is.”

  “I see…but she has no fear of Dr. Tewes?”

  “None whatever; I am, after all, a gentle soul and children—”

  “Know a gentle soul, yes.”

  Ransom found his cane and pressed on his bowler hat, checked his pocket watch, and joined Tewes at the door, telling the other detectives, “I’m off lads to interview this child that Dr. Tewes feels may have some useful information.”

  “Meantime, what would you like us to do, boss?” asked Behan.

  “I may’ve been put on as lead investigator, Ken, but I’m no one’s boss. Let’s be clear on that.”

  “But Ken’s question still remains, boss,” countered Logan. “Whataya expectin’ us to do meanwhile?”

  He thought to say, Carry on as you were before I was thrust in on your case. But he saw that this was not going to do. “Go down to the yards tomorrow and speak with a fellow named Jack Houston, and—”

  “A butcher?”

  “A knacker to be specific.”

  “A g’damn horse cutter?” Behan erupted.

  “You know my constitution doesn’t permit such odors,” said Logan.

  “Meanwhile,” Alastair emphasized the word meanwhile, “you’re to interview three others at the yards.”

  “Four? Conduct four interviews at the yards?” Behan sounded stupefied.

  Alastair flipped open his notes and rattled off the names. “Hatch…Quinn…and Sharkey. Houston can point you to Hatch, then on and on.”

  “Butchers? Our killer’s not likely a butcher, Ransom, and you know it.”

  “Still…we have to cover the bases, boys.”

  “Cover the what?” asked Behan.

  Logan explained, “It’s an expression, comes out of cricket, and now that new game people are betting on, base on balls.”

  “Gotta look at the usual suspects and any leads,” Alastair added.

  “What lead?”

  “Houston says that these other three are queer fellows, even for butchers.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “Houston’ll tell you all about it when you get out to the knacker stalls.”

  Logan gave a last verbal balk. “Look here, we’re interviewing people who live in the areas where the children’ve disappeared.”

  “Continue that as well. Don’t let me stop you.” As Alastair was about to turn and exit with Tewes, he and Jane noticed Nathan Kohler atop the stairwell, staring down at them, his features unreadable. Ransom gave him a little wave of the hand and said, “Night, Chief.”

  On arriving at the Tewes home on Belmont, Jane quickly explained to Ransom, “I’ve a temporary house guest, now being kept occupied by Gabby, “Someone you must meet. It could be crucial to our case,” she was going on in that practiced whining male voice of Tewes’s that always got on Alastair’s last nerve. Jane also pointed toward Gabby’s room where the door stood partially open. “She’s in there with her now, giving her things. Old clothes, old dolls, whatever the child wants.”

  “You say she’s a homeless child?”

  “’Fraid so, yes. Her name’s Audra. Sweetest face you ever saw.” Alastair caught snatches of giggling and words between Gabrielle and her guest.

  “She won’t talk at all to Dr. Tewes. For some reason, this personae frightens her. I suspect men have used her badly.”

  “If she fears men and in particular you as a man, she will likely be terrified of me,” Alastair reasoned.

  “Not necessarily. Her father was a large man like yourself, who unfortunately died of yellow fever while nursing her mother through it. Both died, leaving her an orphan six years ago, according to records I dug up at Cook.”

  “She’s been on the street since then?”

  “Not entirely. In and out of foster homes until she went into hiding.”

  “Into hiding?”

  “OK…into a gang, I gather. She now considers this street gang family.”

  Alastair frowned at this as she closed her bedroom door to go change and remove makeup and mustache, ascot and wig. She was a consummate actress as well as a phrenologist and surgeon. He got only a peek at her large makeup lights and mirror.

  He heard the soft laughter of Audra and Gabby as he made his way back toward the front of the house. Unsure what to do with himself until she’d return and introduce him to the would-be witness to Leather Apron, or whoever might be behind the Vanishings, Alastair wandered into the parlor, the room where he had been accidentally shot by Gabby. He stood gazing at the room as if in a dream, the memory of that thunder-and-lightning night coming in flashes. What he recalled most was lying over the top of Waldo Denton—the man he believed the garroter—and bleeding over him where he was pinned below Ransom’s 260 pounds.

  He looked down at his girth and wondered just how much he weighed these days. He feared what a scale might say about it.

  “I am ready to proceed,” said Jane from behind him. “Are you prepared to meet Audra?”

  “Where best to conduct the interview?”

  “Anywhere but here. What about the kitchen. We’ve nothing but good memories there.”

  She led the way, adding, “I’ve prepared the child to meet you. Have shown her photographs. It’s how I first learned of her father and mother, and besides, she knows of you…says she has seen you on the street, knows you as The Bear, she says.”

&
nbsp; “You have photographs of me?”

  “From newspaper accounts, yes, and one I purchased from Mr. Keane.”

  “Hold on! Are you saying Philo charged you for a photo of me, and you were foolish enough to pay?”

  “Well, it was a rather memorable photo. I am in it as well,” she replied, smiling. “Imagine a photo of us together.”

  “At the fair? On the Ferris wheel? When?”

  “At the train station when you snatched that boy’s head off his garroted neck and pushed it into my hands.”

  “Tewes’s hands, you mean.”

  “Yes, if you wish to get technical. It’s how we met, all the same, isn’t it.”

  “Blasted Philo.”

  She called for Gabby to bring Audra into the kitchen to meet Inspector Ransom. In a moment, the college-aged Gabby, maternally guiding and hovering about the little girl, stood smiling before them. Although scruffy-haired, Audra’s eyes were constantly working, suspicious. Gabby had bathed the girl and had dressed her in hand-me-downs.

  Audra held firm to her newly acquired doll in one hand and Gabby with the other. Gabby introduced her to Alastair, ending with, “And you know my Aunt Jane.”

  Alastair smiled his warmest, wanting to get on the child’s good side.

  “Are you a Zoroaster?” asked the small girl.

  “A what?”

  “I forgot to tell you, Alastair, she asks everyone if they are a Zoroaster, a devil.”

  “Hmmmf,” he let out a sound. “Do I look like a devil?”

  “Ahhh…yeah, you do,” came the small reply half swallowed in Audra’s throat. Jane had not exaggerated; she was a cute little blond thing indeed.

  “Zoroaster is a deity, Alastair, one that Audra believes is running loose and unchecked here in Chicago, at work and behind the Vanishings—telling other individuals, according to Audra, to bring him sacrifices. She also says some strange old sick-in-the-head bird named Bloody Mary procures for Zoroaster.”

  “Oh, great…our killer is a deity, a supernatural being who talks to that old crone, Bloody Mary.”

  “You know her?” Jane’s look was incredulity at its zenith.

  “Not a cop in Chicago doesn’t know Bloody Mary or has arrested her at one time or another. Frankly, Jane, this doesn’t feel like a useful lead. More like a frightened girl’s tale.”