Shadows in the White City

by Robert W. Walker

  “My worst fear,” muttered Ransom.

  “How can men do such a thing?” She made out the one as a hefty woman from her bloodied, skin-stripped breasts, the crotch, and the long gray matted hair like a tangled mop head, the strands touching the ground. From here Bloody Mary looked the part of a cow that had been removed of its hide. The second destroyed body hanging from the rafters was male. Whoever he was, he had not been spared Bloody Mary’s fate.

  His privates were also missing.

  Arms gone, lobbed off.

  Bloody stumps.

  Head gone.

  Internal organs—all gone.

  Eye sockets turned to empty black holes.

  “Nice of them to take the horses out to the pasture so they wouldn’t witness this,” Ransom said. “Shows concern for the sensibilities of an animal.”

  “What kind of sickness could motivate this? Christian can’t possibly be a part of this anymore than…than you or I, Alastair.”

  “You forget, however, that you were negotiating to get in on this…this deal…through Christian.”

  “I was never in for this, and neither is Christian, damn you!”

  “The senator is obviously gone mad with grief for his granddaughter. No sane man could do this. So what is Nathan Kohler’s excuse or rationalization?” he wondered aloud.

  “What do you suppose they’ve done with the organs and the missing parts?”

  At the other end of the stables, beyond the opposite doors, the only noise they had heard since arriving rose and fell—the stuttering grunts of pigs.

  Ransom could not help but recall Christian’s suggestion when discussing the disappearance of Waldo Denton—to feed him to the hogs at the slaughter yards. Still, like Jane, he could not believe that Christian would have any part in such butchery.

  He went toward the sound of hogs and found the pigsty. Leaning in over the rail, finding their stench easier to take than the odor of death inside the stable, Ransom saw the scattered, trampled, half-buried bones. “Obviously human,” he said, pointing them out to Jane.

  Alastair tried to imagine what had gone on here. They’d obviously conspired to get Bloody Mary here. Chapman had long before prepared the stable as his inquisition chamber. He had the old crone stripped and hauled up by her ankles, likely with the help of brawny hands who worked for the senator. Some of whom appeared on their way down the hill from the main house now, having spotted the commotion at the murder scene, for this was murder, pure and simple.

  “These fellows coming toward us could prove dangerous given the situation,” he told Jane, who was staring at the bones being tamped into the pigsty mud.

  “Should we make a run for the coach?” she asked.

  “We’d never make it.”

  “What, then?”

  “I start making arrests, I suppose.”

  “But this is a U.S. senator, and given what’s occurred here and that we’re potential witnesses…perhaps we’d better find cover.”

  “Yes, a man who’s killed two people in his stable won’t balk at dispatching us unless—”

  “How will we manage it, Alastair?”

  “Listen carefully, if you don’t want to wind up fodder for Chapman’s hogs.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Just follow my lead, then.”

  “Talk? You’re going to talk your way out of this?”

  “I suspect it is our only way. I see two armed men with long-barreled rifles coming up from the river. We’re cut off.”

  “But can you do it? Talk your way and mine out of this?” When Alastair did not readily reply, she said, “I know. I’ve got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “Tell them we’ve bloody well come for our share of the loot.”

  “Cute.” He stared at her.

  “But it could work if they thought we had a hand in getting Bloody Mary turned over, and you did arrange to put her into a place where they waltzed her out and to her death. You are entitled to compensation, by the rules of fair play.”

  He laughed in her face. “Let me do the talking.”

  “Just do it,” she said, getting the last word in, when voices from behind them broke out.

  Wheeling for a look, Alastair cursed, “Damn! It’s Kohler and Chapman with the rifles coming up the rise from the river. A fitting end to my career…” Ransom’s lament had her turn about to see the men with guns. Ransom added, “We’re surrounded by killers.”

  “But no sign of Christian.”

  “Keep still and play the dutiful girl without a brain, Doctor, as my woman, do you understand? As for how I will manage these fellows, just watch me. Stand clear and watch me.”

  “Have you an extra gun at least?” she asked.

  “My ankle…in a holster under my pants-leg, but it has a hair trigger. Do not go for it.”

  “Then why tell me about it?”

  “You’ve my permission if they kill me.”

  “Ahhh…thank you.”

  Ransom stood like a wall between three approaching farmhands, who’d obviously had a hand in the killings in the stable—their overalls painted in the brown burnished color of dried blood. Varnish stains they’d tell a judge and jury, and no way to refute it.

  Jane’s only thoughts went to Gabrielle and what her daughter’s life would be like without her mother; wondered how Gabby would cope on her own; wondered if she’d have to drop out of Rush Medical College; wondered if Dr. Christian Fenger would take her under wing, to see that she stretch to her full potential; finally, Jane wondered if dying here and now would be painful or quick.

  Alastair had but one thought: save Jane.

  The carriage driver had seen the approaching men as well, and he leapt to his seat, turned the cab round and attempted to make a dash for it when one of the farmers threw a heavy harness into his face, sending him over the side. He lay in the dust, unconscious, his carriage and horses startled but caught by a second brawny fellow.

  Then, as if the two men had come up from a nearby turkey shoot down at the river, Senator Chapman and Chief Nathan Kohler, guns in hand, materialized at Jane’s and Ransom’s back.

  “Wonderful time of year, don’t you agree, Inspector Ransom?” asked Chapman, all smiles. “Love to go out on a hunt just after finishing a prickly job.”

  “Nathan,” said Alastair, his hand white-knuckled around his blue gun, which he’d rested along his leg.

  “Fancy seeing you here, Alastair,” replied Kohler, “and with Miss Francis is it?”

  “I came for my share.”

  Nathan laughed. “I’m sure you did. Smart move getting the old witch committed. With Christian being uncooperative, it was up to us, Alastair.”

  “I have a hefty check made out to you, Inspector Ransom,” began the senator, a grim smile on his face as he narrowed the distance between them. “One you will be pleased with.”

  “Check?” asked Jane, her eyes going from Chapman and Kohler to Ransom who glared at her to be silent.

  “Yes, Jane, a check,” said Alastair, “one that will keep me from the poor house in my old age. Thank you, Senator Chapman.”

  “You knew about this? Then you were part of it all along?” Jane asked.

  “I know how this must look to you, Jane,” said Kohler, his hands extended in a gesture that swept her eyes back to the business in the barn. “But it does save the lives of countless children in our city, now doesn’t it? You can’t argue with that, and with your recent interest in helping homeless street kids, well…”

  Senator Chapman pumped Alastair’s hand. “Getting that rabid foul old bitch out of the court system and into McKinnette’s control on a medical adjournment, that was brilliant, Inspector.”

  Alastair smiled woodenly and jokingly asked if Kohler and Chapman had had poor luck hunting along the river. He imagined they had escorted someone into the woods but had come back alone. He prayed it’d not been Christian.

  Chapman talked as if among friends, a calm about him. “Too m
uch rain this season out this way, everything swollen.”

  “Washes away the grime,” commented Kohler, hefting the scoped rifle. Had Chapman wanted them dead, Nathan could have killed them from a hundred yards off.

  Grime or crime, Alastair wondered. He also wondered at the shovels being carried by the three farmhands. Likely, they had come to bury all those identifying parts from hands to heads and teeth along with the personal effects of the second victim, as Mary Grace didn’t have any. However, asking about this would not endear him to Chapman, and he really wanted Chapman to like him and Jane at the moment when he saw Jane’s eyes and realized she was going to say more.

  “How could you keep me outta the deal? You knew I wanted to be a part of this?” she persisted.

  He took her aside and whispered, “If you want to get out of here alive, I suggest you follow my lead.”

  “I am I thought.”

  “If I negotiate a deal for you, and Chapman writes you a check, you will take it, too.”

  “Never. There I draw the line.”

  “To accomplish getting us both killed. We are both dead otherwise, Jane.” He then returned to Chapman and Kohler, saying, “It was Christian’s idea, the whole thing—getting the old crone committed.”

  “But you executed it, and here Nathan called you a hard-nosed bastard who would not go along,” countered Chapman. “I told Nathan, I said, ‘He’ll come round; time and money have a way of greasing the rustiest of skids.’”

  Kohler nodded. “You did predict it, sir.”

  Chapman said in a near whisper to Alastair, “How about this chief of yours, Inspector? Never seen a man work so hard at kissing ass.” He ended with a laugh.

  “So who is the dead man that Mary fingered?” asked Ransom, pointing to the small man’s corpse.

  Kohler replied, “Your man…snitch of yours, Bosch.”

  “What? Are you insane?” he asked Kohler and then he moaned to the corpse in the barn. “Ahhh…Bosch…”

  Jane felt the depth of his pained response.

  “The old bitty was quite clear on who was butchering and eating the children,” said Chapman, “and she named your man.”

  “It makes sense, Ransom,” said Kohler. “Think of it. He knows not only the ins and outs and ups and downs of the homeless children, but he knows the workings of our department. In a sense, you yourself furnished him with information and—”

  “But Bosch?” Ransom still could not believe it, and he imagined that the old wild woman, Mary, simply drew on the first notorious name leaping to mind, perhaps the only one she had known for any length of time in Chicago, Henry “Dot ’n’ Carry” Bosch.

  “A cripple like Bosch…you really think he was behind your granddaughter’s death, Senator Chapman?” asked Ransom.

  “Whataya mean, a cripple?”

  “Bosch had a wooden leg.”

  “W-wooden leg?” The senator glared at Chief Kohler. “What’s he talking about?”

  Jane realized one of the missing parts of what hung beside Bloody Mary from the barn rafters had no peg leg.

  Nathan said, “I—I was told your men picked up Bosch.”

  “At the address you provided, yes.”

  Kohler raised his gun and hand in a gesture of innocence. “By time I got here, he was unrecognizable. I assumed it Bosch.”

  Chapman looked Kohler hard in the eye, “Shut up, Kohler! You bloody well sent us to the wrong address, and you said nothing about a goddamn wooden leg!”

  “I had no idea it wasn’t the gimp! It was handled by your men! If you’d allowed me to call in my fellows, they surely would’ve known to get the right man!”

  “All right! All right!” countered Chapman. “We have Inspector Ransom now, and he obviously knows how to find this Bosch creature.” Chapman turned to Alastair. “Come along, Inspector, up to the house. We’ll have a cognac and consider the circumstances, and you may have an advance on your turning this Henry Bosch over to me.”

  “But who is it, then, you’ve skinned alive?” asked Jane.

  “A street person; no one of consequence,” replied the senator.

  “Certainly no one who will be missed,” agreed the chief.

  “Come with me, Jane,” Ransom told her.

  Jane now did precisely as Alastair asked.

  As they straggled behind, Jane asked Ransom who besides Bloody Mary had been butchered back at the stables. Behind them, they heard Senator Chapman’s men bring to life a huge, steam-engine operated saw, and the piercing sounds it was making in the stables could mean only one thing. They were doing the finer work of feeding the rest of the body parts to the hogs. “Purchased that remarkable saw at the agricultural pavilion at the fair,” Chapman proudly announced, keeping pace ahead of Alastair and Jane.

  “You know as much as I do,” whispered Alastair in Jane’s ear. “I’ve no idea who stood in for Bosch.”

  “And do you believe for a moment Bosch is Leather Apron?”

  “Not for a moment.”

  “Then you are a champion at charades?”

  “I wish it were all a charade.”

  “We’re not out of the woods yet,” she cautioned.

  “It’s not the woods I fear. It’s those two.” He indicated Kohler and Chapman ahead of them.

  “You were left with your weapons. It would appear they believed you back there. And frankly, you were quite convincing.”

  “I swear to you, Jane, I never seriously considered Mary a part of the Vanishings, and I still don’t. The kids’ stories were built around her because she scared hell out of them.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all, until I can prove otherwise, yes.” He felt a judicious lie at this point might just keep her alive. Ransom feared telling her of Bloody Mary’s last admission to him, and he wondered if the old loon had died thinking that he’d used that information to turn her over to Chapman and Kohler. For now, he felt keeping old Mary’s secret a kind of justice, the fact of her son, the man in the picture with the grim brood. Besides, if he were to share this information with Jane just now, she’d surely believe him a liar and a part of this carnage.

  Better to let her believe as she did, that Mary was an innocent victim here, too, caught up for no better reason than the stories children told on the street.

  Ransom and Jane got free of Chapman and Kohler as quickly as possible, Ransom given a timetable in which to return with Bosch, bound, gagged, and prepared for the slaughter. The coachman was well paid to keep silent, and Alastair imagined he had also been threatened that if any word of what he’d seen at the farmstead should get out, that he would be the next man flayed and filleted and fed to Chapman’s prize-winning hogs. In fact, the bulk of their cognac visit was taken up by his showing them photos of each prize winner and rattling off the vital statistics of each hog and sow.

  “What will you do now, Alastair?” she asked. “You’ve managed to implicate yourself in two murders back there by taking that check, and checks leave money trails.”

  “Not if I tear it up.”

  “Will you?” she asked, staring into his eyes, awaiting an answer.

  “Will I?”

  “Rip up a check for a fortune?”

  “Imagine having that much to play with at the racetrack.”

  “Are you going to destroy the check or become a part of this bloody conspiracy?”

  “I’m walking a sensitive tightrope here, Jane.”

  “What sensitive rope?”

  “Suppose Christian is, like they say, part of this? Suppose he turned Mary over to them for a sum like this?”

  She signed heavily and leaned back into the cushions. “Damn you, you’re wrong. It wasn’t Christian who did it. It had to’ve been McKinnette.”

  “We don’t know how deep either of them’re in, but from the outset, the senator has been throwing his money around.”

  “He’s blinded by his hatred and desire for vengeance.”

  “He’s fixed on one path, most
certainly.”

  “An obsession. Suppose he does not get what he wants? Will he come after you, me, Gabby, anyone he can hurt?”

  “There is little telling.”

  “And as you’ve pointed out, without a body in the possession of authorities, there is no crime.”

  “Hogs don’t eat bones,” he replied.

  “You’re not thinking of going back out there, are you?”

  “Not right away, but when I do, it will be with a gunnysack. At which time, this untendered check becomes evidence.”

  Overhead, they heard the shaken coachman talking to himself, something about jumping the next ship or train out of the city.

  “Perhaps we should take a clue from this fellow,” Ransom suggested.

  “Nonsense. It’s not in your blood to run from a fight or a case.”

  “Jane, you know me too well.”

  “Well enough to know that if I’d gone out there to Chapman’s funhouse with any other man, I’d be as dead as Bloody Mary right now, and no one would ever have known,” she said, shivering a bit. “And I haven’t even sufficiently thanked you.”

  “I’ll take out thanks in this manner,” he said and pressed his lips to hers, and they embraced to the lulling motion of the hansom cab, returning to Chicago by gaslight.

  Ransom returned Jane to her home, angry with himself that he’d allowed her to go anywhere near Chapman’s estate. It had taken all his powers of persuasion to convince Chapman and Kohler that she was harmless and would do as told, using such phrases as “a man who can’t control his woman ain’t no kinda man” and “she knows her place if she wants to eat and wear nice jewelry.” Of course, Jane rankled at each such remark, but by then, she realized she must play her part to make it off the death farm alive.

  They had gleaned that Chapman had to place his wife in a sanitarium, that she had collapsed under the strain of learning of her granddaughter’s death, and that he had gotten his son and daughter-in-law out of the country, on a cruise to Europe for their health…all to plot and carry out his plan of vengeance.

  Jane was glad to be home, met on the porch by Gabby; she held her daughter close. Ransom continued on, staring over his shoulder out the coach window at Jane and Gabby still locked in embrace.