City for Ransom ar-1

by Robert Harris Walker

  “Then you can’t seriously go by Lombroso!”

  “Only one technique of many I use. I combine a number of approaches to reach my conclusions.”

  “But deciding a man is guilty by the size of his brow, how deep set the eyes? How many bumps on the head? Isn’t that extreme . . . like stepping back in time, say to . . . to the Salem witchcraft trials and spectral evidence?” “It’s only a starting point to jump off. We’re all of us working in the dark, and thank God for the microscope, so that one day in the not too distant future—in the early 1900s I predict—we’ll be capable of distinguishing animal from human blood.” “To separate the murderer from the neighborhood butcher, yes. That would be a boon. You’ve no idea how many guilty blokes’ve got off claiming chicken blood!”

  Tewes stopped short, realizing Ransom was engaged with the man at the bar, their eyes locked. Jane watched the small drama unfold: Ransom raises a glass to Tug, and Tug offers his up and drains it. Each sizing up the other, each knowing their paths will cross again in a less amiable setting. Tug tosses down a coin and stalks out. Ransom’s eyes never leave him until he is completely gone, but he continues to speak. “If a man is apelike in appearance, perhaps he is a gentle giant. But not your man Tug.”

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  “But suppose others who react to your gentle giant have treated him like an ape all of his life due to his very appearance? Doesn’t it make sense for him to commit a crime to get back at a society that condemns him for his deformities?” “He who is treated like an animal becomes one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like that elephant man in London?”

  “All right, there is an example. When treated with respect and dignity, he became a gentleman, but treated as a sideshow freak, he lived life as a carnival animal.”

  “Hmmm . . . point taken.” Ransom finished his coffee and then downed another beer that’d appeared. “Sounds as if we agree more than we disagree on Lombroso, Doctor. But tell me, why’d you get involved in this case?” “I thought it a quick way to build a reputation, to use my phrenology in a manner . . . well as a way to—”

  “Bombast the public? Scam, hoax?”

  “All right. I was getting desperate, and it does not speak well of me, but I saw or rather felt I must do it, not for myself but for Gabby. Tuition and clothes and all her medical books.”

  “And the whole show with the head, a freak show?”

  “Not entirely. I’ve had more people coming to me for help, and I’ve helped more than I’ve harmed.”

  “Yes . . . well, your dubious services did not take with my Merielle, now in her grave.”

  “She’s not the first patient who’s come to me in a state of deep emotional distress and depression that has lingered for years without relief. Sometimes I don’t get them soon enough.

  Sometimes they come as last resort, when only if they’d come sooner, then perhaps . . . well . . . it’s all supposition.”

  “I’ve some notion of this killer myself. I’ve feelings that are like his, feelings of wanting to kill someone or some thing. And I feel him near.”

  “That’s . . . well frankly . . . frightening.”

  “As well it should be, Doctor. I glimpse only small snatches of Merielle’s attacker. The fellow who once 184

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  pimped her out, Jervis, I hear from my snitch, that he’s left the city fearful I’m coming for ’im.”

  “Do you think this fellow Jervis killed her?”

  “He’d never have the guts. So afraid now, according to O’Malley, that he ran on the assumption I’d be coming for him.”

  “What sense then do you have of this multiple killer, Ransom?”

  “What sense do you have of this killer?”

  “Vague . . . a dark presence at her back, a fleeting glimpse of a cape. Expensive, well-polished boots, something out of a State Street window.”

  “You talked to the homeless fellow who grabbed the wallet, didn’t you, Tewes?”

  Jane confessed she had. “It may not’ve been a coincidence that mirror coming down with her head.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Her place was no larger than the men’s room at the train station.”

  Ransom considered this. “She spent a lot of time before that mirror.”

  “She’d’ve been held against the mirror in the same manner as the boy.”

  “Blind me . . . looking into her eyes as she died.”

  “In top hat and cape, he’d pass for a real gent in Polly’s eyes.”

  “And he whistles tunes.” Ransom held out a small coin but it was no coin. It was a silvery metal button with the letters CPS stamped on it.

  “What is it?”

  “Found in the rubble.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It may mean our killer shops at Carson, Pirie, Scott, the department store.”

  “He shops at Carson’s?” She sounded incredulous.

  “Speak of State Street windows. He may perhaps work there.”

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  “What’s next? How do you proceed to interrogate everyone who walks in and out of a department store on the busiest street in the city?”

  “Maybe . . . just maybe she ripped this from his coat in the hope I’d find it.”

  Jane gave him this fantasy. “Yes . . . most likely.”

  “You think so?”

  “In one fashion or another we’re all interconnected. Her last thoughts were likely of you crashing the door down, saving her.”

  “Connected. Sounds right.”

  Tewes leaned in toward Ransom, sensing he needed to hear more. “Call me a fraud if you like, a spiritualist, a necromancer, but I believe images we retain in our minds that become our personal ghosts are electromagnetic in nature. And I believe that we’re all intertwined with magnetic rays that live in and around us.” “Magnetic rays that live inside us?” He sounded both skeptical and curious.

  “In our minds, yes, and our bodies. We’re made up of millions of atoms. This much science tells us, and how are these atoms held together but by a magical magnetism of soul and miniature telepathy between these atoms? They hold our very cells in harmonious bondage.” “I suppose you’re writing a book on all this”—he stopped short of calling it nonsense—“I mean how it all relates to your phrenology, your visions.”

  “Do not tempt me. In this magnetic field I refer to, we all touch upon one another’s thoughts, feelings, aspirations in an empathic field that God wants us one and all to acknowledge but most . . . well most of us are blind to it, blind in sight and touch.” “And I suppose you’re more attuned and open to this field than anyone else?”

  “Than the average, yes. It’s a biochemical connection that holds our thoughts in place and creates the miracle of 186

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  thought leaping across time and space just as there are necessary interstices between cells in the body.”

  “Inter-what?”

  “Damn it, Detective, have you never seen living human tissue below the microscope?”

  “I have . . . at the morgue . . . on occasion, yes.”

  “Tissue in a dead man living on, yes.”

  “I never thought of it quite like that.”

  “And that life can be sustained in a Petri dish indefinitely.”

  “It can? I had no idea.”

  “The magnetism inherent in all life, sir. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. And the human brain, that marvel of nature . . . it’s the single most complex organism in the universe. An electrochemical device not unlike Philo Keane’s camera in that regard, powered by electrochemical energy.” “You’re losing me, Doctor.”

  “I believe the brain somehow stores messages, even after death, in some strange way only the future or God might reveal.”

  “Stores images like a camera, as in memories—even after death? Philo Keane know about this?”

  “Memor
y lives on . . . at least at the cellular level, the level too miniature for the human eye. Cells living on, functioning for a time even after all activity ceases in the body.”

  “Cells living on after . . . continuing to store messages?

  Do you know what this sounds like, Dr. Tewes?”

  “I know what it sounds like, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, the fantastic ravings of some lunatic storyteller, but science has always lagged behind the prophets. Look, if you pluck a leaf from a tree and place it below the microscope, the cells are still alive and active.” “And you think the same is true of the brain?”

  “Yes, on a cellular level, absolutely. Look, I know you could have me committed, but I’m trusting you with my innermost beliefs here. Do you see this table before you, Alastair?”

  “Of course, I do. Why?”

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  “At the microscopic level, the atoms in this tabletop’re spinning about, bombarding one another, electrically charged both positively and negatively, in a constant state of flux—movement, but not to the naked eye! We only see—” “A solid, a cold dead block of wood.”

  “Cut from a long dead tree.”

  “So in a sense . . . it remains alive although in appearance dead.”

  “Take comfort that your Merielle’s soul is at least as active now as this tabletop.”

  He’d meant to entrap this phrenological medium by encouraging him to “read” his sore head, but he hadn’t counted on such talk.

  “Your killer is a man no one suspects; like the table, superficially apparent yet not so apparent.”

  “Taken for granted, you mean. . . . I could go to Carson, Pirie, Scott, stake out the store all day, see him more than once come and go and still not see him?”

  “Precisely. Dead perhaps on the surface, comes alive only when he kills. A man with well-polished boots and his clothing tailored, a cloak, a cane, a top hat.”

  “A description fitting thousands going about our streets.

  It’s not a great help, Doctor.”

  “But it tells you not to focus on the usual suspects like Tug.”

  “Agreed, it’d only be a waste of time.”

  “Comparatively speaking, the Tugs of Chicago’re mere muggers to this monster deviant.”

  “This creep is no known entity.”

  “No anarchist, second-story man, or habitual wife beater, no. This madman is unique, clever, educated, possibly upper crust.”

  “Or plays it well?”

  “He’s interested in shocking us all, Inspector, from the police to the citizen at the fair. It’s a bloody game to ’im.”

  “A game? Of course it’s a game. But what is the goal?

  Why does he kill? Just to shock us? There must be more.”

  “As mundane a motive as it may seem, you must accept it.

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  There’s a strong possibility he’s only interested in the hide-and-seek, the hunt, his mind in some manner captivated . . .

  in rapt awe with the idea of controlling when and where death occurs.”

  “A twisted angel of death.”

  Dr. Tewes finished another lager.

  “Is there any more? Are you withholding anything?”

  “If Fenger’s not told you, you should know that Polly passed out after the carotid artery was compromised. The same moment that the garrote sliced a three hundred and sixty-degree cut around the neck, she was gone. Mercifully, she’d’ve felt no lingering pain from the garrote or the fire.” “Thank you, Doctor.”

  “Trauma of the attack itself would’ve been like an attack of chills to the system, but I suspect her last thoughts were of you.”

  Ransom held back a tear.

  “All guesswork, but I believe we must try to understand both the victim and him—our killer—in order to prevent future killings.”

  They sat in silence, imagining the horror this monster had brought to Chicago. A pair of warriors fighting a ghostly plague they didn’t understand. And they felt alone against the enemy. “What next indeed,” Ransom muttered.

  “The killer is mobile. Moves ’bout the city effortlessly.

  Likely means money, well-to-do family, I fear and so—”

  “Yes, has his own carriage and driver.” Ransom brightened. “They theorized old Jack the Ripper did it that way.”

  “Blends.”

  “And is well versed on our city terrain.”

  “He’s cunning and quite possibly enjoys working with his hands. Perhaps likes to make things . . . as with his garrote.

  It is unique to him. He loves his weapon. It grants him power.”

  “Ahhh . . . but it’s not so unique after all.” Ransom held up the same garrote—crisscrossed with a diamond center.

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  “There is then something unique about this man’s relationship with the weapon, I tell you. It’s that twisted.”

  “All right, perhaps he talks to it. I won’t argue the point.”

  “And one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “While he may be as well off as Mr. Field himself, he is small in stature.”

  “How can you possibly know his stature, Doctor?”

  “The angle of the garrote—the force—pulling downward.

  Polly was as tall as you, yet—”

  “Yes, he’d pulled downward even on Purvis. It appears the killer is rather short. Clever of you to’ve noticed, and right.”

  “I find the so-called investigation full of holes.”

  “Ahhh . . . you would. Look, we’ll soon have a break in the case. I get reports daily from Dot’n’Carry.”

  “Dot and who?”

  “My street snitch. My most reliable spy. If ever I write my memoir, my homeless friend will have to be acknowledged.

  The poor wretched gimp.”

  “Gimp?”

  “He has been with you for days, Doctor, so unobtrusive you’ve not noticed. Blends as you put it.”

  Jane did a 360-degree turn, taking in everyone here and on the street through the window where Chicago’s teeming life passed by. Commerce continued unabated. Vendors rolled portable carts, selling anything imaginable. A number of people with canes limped by, along with black hansom cabs rolling in and out of the window frame.

  The fiddler in the corner had stopped to swill his ale, halving the glass before starting up a lively rendition of “Comin’

  Through the Rye.” The tune livened up the patrons all round, and even Ransom’s toe began to tap, although he seemed unaware of this, as his thoughts remained on the killings, how the only witness they had said the killer was whistling this same popular tune.

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  Dr. Tewes was not unaware of Ransom’s toe-tapping, as he was tapping on Tewes’s shoe—a man’s size seven, stuffed at the toes. A man with a harmonica joined in with the fiddler. Patrons began to clap as if clawing their way from a dull hell.

  Young Waldo Denton entered and ordered up a bucket of beer. “Fetchin’ for Philo, no doubt,” said Ransom to Tewes.

  Waldo gave a glance in Ransom’s direction and nodded at him and Tewes, grinned before rushing out again, the bucket of beer slopping along his pants leg. “Boy acts as if Philo might beat him if he dallies.” Ransom then looked with a mix of disdain and admiration at those having fun.

  “Garroting’s a cowardly method of dispatching someone, catching ’im from behind, not facing your victim, eye to eye,” he began. “And yet twice now he’s killed victims before a mirror.”

  “If you’re right . . . he likes to watch ’em die—”

  “And to see himself in the act.”

  “Behavior says something about who he is,” Jane explained.

  “I believe a lot of what you say about the makeup of this monster is well . . . useful information.”

  “Almost sounded like a compliment in there somewhere.

  Now .
. . with whom do I speak about recompense?”

  “Recompense?”

  “Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard the word before. I expect pay as an independent consultant to you, Inspector.”

  “Aha . . . like any other leech on the Chicago payroll.”

  “Have you seen the cost of bread lately? Been to the fair?”

  “I’ve no time for such trivialities.”

  “Perhaps had you taken time . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “. . . you’d’ve been on that wheel in the sky with Merielle last night instead of pumping me for information.”

  “Damn your hide, Doctor! What about your daughter, Gabrielle? Have you given a moment’s thought to the possibility that she, rather than Purvis, could’ve been killed that night they were at the fair?”

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  “It has indeed kept me awake nights.”

  “Perhaps had you bothered taking Gabby to the fair, she’d not’ve been with Purvis that night! And what about your sister, the one you treat like a housemaid?”

  “Leave Jane out of this, and Gabby as well. They’re none of your affair.” Jane sensed her ruse was finally up with him, but she could not be certain. She held her silence. She wanted so much to reveal her true self to Alastair, as she had Dr. Fenger, before he read about it in one of Chicago’s twenty-six newspapers, or heard it from Fenger, or got it between the eyes from Kohler, or his snitch!

  As if taking up a challenge, Ransom boldly replied, “I just may call on your sister, Dr. Tewes.”

  “What?” Tewes was clearly stunned by this.

  “She’s new to the city. She must be curious about the fair.”

  “Is this some sort of threat, Alastair?”

  “Threat?”

  “Worm information out of my sister to get—”

  “I’m merely wondering if she’s curious about the wheel, the fair, the pavilions?”

  “Of course she is but—”