City for Ransom ar-1

by Robert Harris Walker

  Guiding Jane Francis by the hand, Ransom rushed from the Ferris wheel the moment the gondola stopped. His cane beating an anthem, Alastair shouted over the noise of the fairway. “We need to find a cab stand, get you home! Something’s amiss at the lagoon, and I fear the worst.” “God, not another murder!”

  “I pray I’m wrong. But to be safe, you must be off.”

  “But Alastair—”

  “I don’t want you seeing anything upsetting.”

  “I’m no shrinking violet! I’m a midwife; perhaps I can help.”

  They failed to notice a man in shadow across from them watching their every move, reading their lips as best he could.

  “I will not allow it, Jane.”

  “Did you not hear a word I said?”

  He relented. “OK, if you’re quite sure. I must get there as quickly as possible.”

  “Then why are we wasting time?”

  The boat lay half in, half out of the lagoon, the charred remains of the corpse partially covered in the waterlogged 212

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  bottom. As Jane began to see the truth of it, the eerily fired body like a discarded heap of trash along the keel of the rowboat, seared clothing did a danse macabre along the surface. She only half heard Ransom’s order: “Jane, stay back . . . do not move from this spot. Promise me.” She held herself in check, saying nothing, her body trembling at the sight that he tried to shield using his frame. Stop trying to spare me, damn you!

  Someone foolishly shouted, “Is’re a doctor here?”

  Jane wondered at the emotional cost of being Ransom.

  And what of being with Ransom as Polly’d been? Still, she instinctively remained close to Alastair, seeing him take charge, ordering reluctant men into the water to grab the gunwales on each side and guide what remained of the boat onto firmer ground. “Easy! Easy! Don’t lose her!” came Ransom’s encouragement to the younger men.

  One last thrust grounded the boat, and the waterlogged, burnt bottom split apart.

  “Get her outta the muck! Lift below the arms and at the ankles. Use your gloves if you must, but do it.” The uniformed police obeyed, but they seemed Ransom’s children in need of chastising and scolding. “I’ll take a stick to every last one of ya! Do it, do it now.” Together, the younger men lifted her out.

  Jane wondered how many killings he’d seen and overseen, and who this latest victim might be.

  “Outta the tunnel aflame all on its own, I tell yous,” the shaken attendant kept shouting.

  Alastair grabbed the ride attendant by each shoulder, holding him like a plow. “But going out on the water, man!

  Who’d she get in the boat with?”

  “Fine-looking gent, but he didn’t come back.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  His description fit the Phantom, but the attendant ended with, “But they looked so in love.”

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  “Allow me to help the man with his memory,” came a feminine voice from behind Ransom. He turned to find Jane beside him.

  “I told you to stay put.”

  “But I’m trained in hypnosis, and we . . . I mean you . . .

  you could greatly enhance someone’s memory if—”

  “I hardly believe a parlor trick is going to be of any—”

  “Give it a chance. No one’s come forward with any useful information. No witnesses beyond this rum-soaked attendant.” She near whispered, “The killer has declared war on us all, Alastair. That could as well be Gabby or me in that flambéed condition!” Even on quinine and opium gotten from Dr. McKinnette, Alastair feels Jane’s sincerity, her genuine desire to help.

  Here stands a woman who understands the complexities and vagaries of a cop’s life and work and is accepting of them.

  Not only accepting but supporting.

  It was a new and odd thing for Ransom.

  He felt unsure what to do with it. With her.

  What to do with the feelings she imbued in him.

  Just how to behave.

  Just what to say.

  Should I kiss her?

  Thank her?

  Hold her?

  All three?

  Say nothing, do nothing, oaf, Jane thought but said, “I’ll get that cab now.” To herself, she muttered, “Had you shown one sign, I’d’ve told you—confessed everything. Men!” “Y-yes . . . get home. Tomorrow, I’ll call ’round.”

  “Whether you know it or not, you’ve just lost the best thing you never had,” she shouted back.

  “Griffin!” he shouted over her on seeing his young partner push through the crowd. “See that my lady gets home by cab.”

  He forced a silver dollar into Griffin Drimmer’s palm. Griffin stared from coin to Alastair to the woman he didn’t know.

  “I came as quickly as—”

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  “Get the lady to a cab and safely off.” Ransom remained adamant.

  “Sure . . . sure . . .”

  “I’ll come ’round tomorrow,” Ransom repeated to her.

  “Now please, go along with Griff—my right-hand—”

  “Dismissed like a pet!” her anger surfaced further.

  She went out of view on Griff’s arm, swallowed by the crowds, as Ransom watched, rapt in thoughts of her, a vague idea of life with a woman of substance, but this notion lost out to the moment. Over his shoulder the murder victim stared at him, an obvious connection to the ones before. Maniac’s stepped up his timetable.

  Like a man shackled, he studied the victim’s features—not so mangled as to be unrecognizable. He called out to the crowd, “Anyone know her?”

  “Here sir, a purse,” offered one uniformed officer dripping from the waist down.

  Ransom pulled out papers, letters. Love letters addressed to a Chesley Mandor, from a suitor named Joseph Trelaine.

  “Chicago address. Where is he now?” Is he our Phantom?

  And if not and she got into a boat with a man . . . ” Then it occurred to him. What if Trelaine were still out there in the black lagoon? “You fellows, get a useable boat and some gas lamps and go up in the tunnel there and look for anything . . .

  unusual.”

  Ransom’s latest homicide became a double-homicide as he watched a second body float just beyond the tunnel entrance, facedown if he had one—for as the weak lamplight played over the corpse, searchers could not tell. Using an oar to bring the body, like a lost vessel, into the gunwale of his boat, Alastair found it difficult to get a fix on the man, his size, weight, cut of his jib; impossible with his body floating half under, waterlogged. Ransom and the uniformed policeman on the oars worked to turn the floater in the water, almost flipping the drift boat in which they knelt. The corpse CITY FOR RANSOM

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  rolled like a log, and the soggy three-piece suit and best shoes tugged heavily back, as if some submerged creature held sway. Then the body hit the boat—hard—and both oarsman and inspector gasped to find it a headless torso.

  “Did it fall off—the head, I mean—when we turned him?” asked the oarsman.

  “I think not. Likely separated sometime earlier.”

  “In the depths of the lagoon is it?”

  “I suspect so.”

  Ransom lashed the body to the side with hemp, not wanting to haul it aboard or scuttle the boat. “Fodder for Shanks and Gwinn he is,” said the cop turned oarsman.

  “Not before we bag all personal effects, do you understand? Your name, Officer?”

  “Callahan, sir.”

  “Callahan, I’m personally holding you responsible for Trelaine’s effects, if this be Trelaine—and Mandor’s. Understood?”

  “Ahhh . . . yes, sir. Yes sir.”

  After securing Trelaine, they started to shore with the body. Young Callahan, his blond hair lifting with each stroke, perspired until his hair flattened.

  “Bastard this one is . . . a true blackhearted monster,”

&n
bsp; commented Ransom.

  “Aye, sir, indeed.”

  Trelaine, like the woman, had tasted of the killer’s favorite weapon, but how, here out on the water? Was the monster telling them no place in the city was safe? Nothing sacred? Ransom must know how. How had the killer gotten so near a courting couple out here on the lagoon? The entire crime must be recreated to make sense of it.

  Soon, Griffin had rowed out to join them. Ransom put him in charge of the reenactment, awkward as it was in boats to recreate. He himself played the killer, each of the others playing a part. The one playing Chesley cursed, disgruntled that he’d drawn a woman’s role. By now they began in earnest to get it done. And as they walked—or rather 216

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  boated—through it, Ransom looked for opportunity, imagining himself the killer up to mischief here, and he looked to locate clues, when Griff pointed out a strange mark against the tunnel wall. It turned out to be a black-gray smoky bloody handprint.

  “The bastard’s teasing us!” said Griff.

  “It’s sure his hand again, his mark as it were.”

  “But why would he—”

  “Wants us to choke on it.”

  “Give ’im credit in the papers.”

  “Wants us to know it’s his work?” added Alastair. “Like a bloody artist signing a painting.”

  “Aye. Still, we must compare it to the one we found at the train station.”

  “If we can find a sober Philo Keane, get him and his camera on a boat, and to this point.”

  “With daylight . . . he might do best getting this,” replied Griff, sounding optimistic.

  “Body set aflame, shoved through the tunnel while the killer grabbed hold of the grating here and climbed the fieldstone overpass. Crowds coming and going, someone had to’ve seen the bastard come o’er the top.” “People’re wrapped up in their own lives, but sure sixty good citizens’ll be lining up with perfect descriptions.”

  Ransom frowned at Griff. “Sarcasm in the young, Griff, is not a pretty thing. Look, we’ll get Thom’s help, get the papers to claim we have several eyewitnesses who saw the killer exit the water at this point.” “What good would it do?”

  “You tell me.”

  Griff pondered a moment. “Sell papers?”

  “It’ll serve our purposes. To put him on notice, keep him on guard, make him more cautious! All of that, and it may make him take more risks. And hopefully Thom’s story will draw some real witnesses as well.” “Actual witnesses. Sounds too good to be true.”

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  “I’m ’sposed to be the old cynic here, Griff.”

  From all they’d pieced together, the killer had somehow enticed the young couple over to his boat, likely with some pretense of his having trouble with a leak or steerage, anything to lure them close. Perhaps one of the victims or both knew the killer, or at least knew him by sight. He must surely look harmless indeed. Invisible . . . blends, Tewes had insisted.

  Ransom summed it up for Griff. “As the victim affably attempted to look over the problem, he lost his life, garroted in a matter of seconds, dead and dropped into the water. The killer then leapt into her boat and secured the garrote about her neck. No telling how long he made her suffer. At least this is how I see it unfolding.” Griff swallowed hard. “Then there’s a second boat drifting free out here unless . . .”

  “Unless all three had disembarked in the same boat.”

  “And the attendant is of no help on that score?”

  “None whatever. Look, if there is a second boat floating in the darkness, it may contain clues, gentlemen,” he told the others. “Find that boat and get it to me and touch nothing.

  Do you understand?”

  The young officers concurred, excited over the prospect of contributing to locating and bringing this madman to justice, and having their names associated with the famous Alastair Ransom.

  They fanned out, searching for the missing, phantom boat.

  A pair of the fools singing out, “Row-row-row your boat, gently down the stream . . . ”

  “Trelaine’s head could well be lying in that boat, so be prepared, lads!” Ransom’s words silenced the chorus of

  “Merrily, merrily, merrily.”

  Again it was Griffin who’d made the gruesome discovery, alerting the others to the empty boat. When Ransom’s boat came alongside, he stared into Griffin’s eyes, and he said,

  “Quite the bloodhound you’ve become.”

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  “A compliment from you, Rance?”

  Ransom lifted his lantern to search the drifting boat, its oars having been secured by Callahan, who now held his head over the side and noisily retched.

  Ransom looked into a stranger’s eyes, wide and questioning, a man named Trelaine, whose head alone lay at the rear of the boat where he’d been enticed by a killer apparently capable of talking another man into abandoning his boat and a beautiful woman for the privilege of helping out.

  How does a soul rest in peace under such circumstances, Ransom silently wondered.

  “What next, Rance?” asked Griffin.

  Ransom failed to answer, still lost in Trelaine’s accusing gaze; a gaze that asked why hadn’t the collective “they”

  stopped this madman before he could do this horror?

  Griffin spoke. “Callahan, get into the boat with the head and—”

  “Me, sir?”

  “—and row it into the dock, Callahan. Inspector Ransom can use the exercise it’ll take to get himself ashore.”

  This reference to Ransom’s weight caused only cautious laughter as other search boats had gathered in close for a look at the severed head.

  Callahan, tall, angular and fair-skinned blanched whiter, but he shakily made his way into the boat, where the head lay staring up at him. Given its proximity, it lay between his legs where he sat the oars. He could count on its rocking side to side, touching his ankles.

  Around him, he heard the nervous twittering and mutterings of others, but Ransom looked him in the eye and said,

  “Callahan, use your coat.”

  Callahan nodded and quickly removed his coat and blot-ted out the staring head. Earlier, Ransom had judged the dead man from his clothes as upper crust. He wore Marshall Field shoes, and his clothes appeared tailored, but the inspector had been surprised on reading the lapel: mont-CITY FOR RANSOM

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  gomery ward. No sign of Carson, Pirie, Scott buttons on the man.

  “Griff, did you send for Philo?”

  “Sent our biggest lads to fetch him, yes.”

  “He’s likely talked them into a drink.”

  “Damn, they’ll be all night.”

  “I’m confident they’ll have ’im back and waiting for us at the dock.”

  “We’ll have to row him out to the tunnel entrance.”

  “I can manage that.”

  “Thanks, Griff, and for earlier . . . for walking my lady friend to a cab.”

  “Do you know the address she gave the cabbie, Alastair?”

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  “She’s Dr. Tewes’s sister.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, keeps house for Tewes, perhaps a bit of nursing . . .

  looks after his daughter.”

  “Ahhh . . . I see, working the relatives, pumping her for information. Smart police work!”

  Ransom bristled but also thought of his having measured Tewes. “Old-fashioned foot-to-heel police work. Which reminds me: Did you send those measurements off?”

  “Telegraphed. Marvelous invention. Phoned New York, too, just to ask around about Tewes. Didn’t he say he spent some time there? But nothing’s come of it, not so far anyway.”

  Back now through the tunnel, where they bobbed beneath the concrete and fieldstone overpass each eyeing the bloody print marking the killer’s escape. Then they were back with Trelaine’s parts. His remains were l
aid out near Chesley Mandor’s.

  Philo showed up, a brawny cop on each side of him. He’d not brought his usual equipment, carrying instead a hefty handheld camera like a small accordion, no doubt his latest acquisition.

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  “Hello, my friend,” Ransom’s weary voice reached Philo.

  “We’ve sad work aplenty for you.”

  “As I heard, but look here, Alastair.” He held up his new camera. “Isn’t she lovely? It’s the latest, a Kombi Night-Hawk detective camera, created for just such work as we engage in, you see?”

  “Well and good, so long as you get the cuts, Philo. One’s gonna require a boat ride and a bit of balancing, so I’m glad you brought the smaller camera.”

  “It possesses all the latest improvements known to modern photography, man.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. It’s a beauty.”

  “Morocco leather, my friend, and further, it’s fitted with the new rapid rectilinear lens.”

  The man speaks his own language, Ransom thought.

  “Let’s just get started, Philo.”

  “It’s fitted with a new regulation timer and instantaneous shutter, Alastair, with bulb attachment and—”

  Philo, who’d followed Ransom to the corpse, suddenly fell silent, staring, shaking. On seeing the woman’s charred remains, he gasped and dropped his camera, and went to his knees.

  The victim has a familiar face, Alastair guessed from Philo’s contrition, and now apologetic words spewed from the photographer, his hands clasped in the universal gesture of prayer, his body wracked with sobbing. “Chesley!

  OhGodno-please-notmysweet Chesley! Please forgive me!

  Please forgive . . . ahhhh-haaa.”

  “My God,” said Nathan Kohler now on scene.

  Ransom whispered in Philo’s ear, a hand on him, trying to get him away and composed, “Tell me she was not one of your models, Philo.”

  Philo shook off Ransom’s touch; he refused help, refused getting up from his kneeling position over the charred body and still lovely face, his hands extended, hovering over the torso and garroted head.

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  Reporters on scene snapped pictures. Others jotted notes, trying to transcribe Philo Keane’s litany of apologies. Ransom knew from experience that a man displaying such vulnerability—beaten and broken in spirit—soon learned how few friends he actually had in this life. Ransom smelled sharks in the water. “Get Philo outta here, Griff,” Alastair barked.