Shadows in the White City (4 page)

All trains, all carriages, all foot traffic—or very nearly all—made for the fair. All save a killer and the man who pursued him.

It had been two weeks since the operation, and Ransom felt and looked exhausted from his vigil to be on hand when Waldo Denton slipped up. Ransom's presence wherever Denton showed up had led the young killer to change his routes, to change his times, and now to change his main location with his hack and horse from the fair to here. No more deaths had occurred since the double murder at the lagoon inside the World's Fair grounds, and this had led some to speculate that the real Phantom of the Fair had left the area altogether, while it only led Ransom to a sense of vindication; instinct told him that he was correct about Denton. And he had the deaths of seven victims—one an unborn child—to avenge.

Alastair's driving new obsession, then, was Denton, and no one could dissuade him from his crusade. In fact, all attempts had failed. He'd tried without success to order Denton to come in to again test his hand against the two bloody handprints. This time with a print expert, Theopolis Harris.

Ransom's harassing of Denton now had continued daily. It might cost him his job, and it had already cost him friends and colleagues like Griffin Drimmer and even Dr. Fenger—the only family he had ever known. The chase had in fact eclipsed Ransom's previous obsession, his years-long search
for the truth surrounding the mystery of who bombed Haymarket Square in 1886.

Philo Keane, police photographer, artist, and friend had come along with Ransom tonight, and now the two stood in a juniper thicket mid-park, shadowing a man Ransom believed to be a repeat killer. Philo had come for fear of leaving his friend Alastair alone, a strange feeling having gripped Philo. This faith and cocksureness Ransom felt in his own cunning in the matter of the Phantom overtook all else. They had argued about it only an hour earlier at Philo's studio, and Keane kept up his steady barrage of concern even now.

“Give this madness up, at least long enough to take some sleep, man, and remind yourself what is good in life! Look at you!”

“I won't rest until I have my hands around that punk's throat and can justifiably choke a confession out of him.”

“Some people would call you cunning, a master detective, but not anymore. Here you are…on the verge of hallucination from fatigue. Come back to my place. Just lie down on my sofa to catch some rest. I'll wake you in an hour or two.”

“Cunning…yes, I can be cunning, but this boy killer now he is
cunning
.”

“To think him so near me all those weeks he apprenticed with me,” began the pencil-thin Philo, his knitted brow twitching. “And he still has my Night Hawk, you know. Weird thing is…I never once considered him a threat of any sort, much less a camera thief and a murderer. Still, he did leave me with an uneasy feeling the time I caught him with his hands where they oughtn't've been.”

“As when he dropped a victim's ring in your pocket just to frame you?”

“Ironic, I was in jail when Griffin drags him in. And Griff so damned sure at the time you two had your man. He even had the damn garrote in his hand; held it up to me as proof positive.”

“Griff is like a reed in the wind. Whatever the prevailing winds.”

“At least Chief Kohler didn't come back after me for the killings.”

“Don't be so sure he won't.”

“What've you heard?” Philo gasped.

“He's working closely with the city prosecutor to charge you again, while everyone else—including the mayor—is content to leave it alone.”

“Leave it alone?”

“Glad simply that the killings've ended, and that their precious White City boondoggle continues without further stain.”

“Then I say the mayor is a rational man.”

“Quite.”

“Afraid I can't say the same for you. Have you considered all that you've forfeited for this business with Denton? How others've distanced themselves from you? That woman I ran into at the hospital who sat at your bedside night and day, and her niece, is it?—whom you claim as your friend despite the fact it was she who shot you? And your partner, Griffin, to whom you refuse to speak. Not to mention Dr. Fenger? Who next will abandon you?”

“You. I am sure of it. So good-bye. Make haste!”

“I'll not leave you here in the darkness contemplating murder.”

“You'll miss your booze.”

Philo held up a flask of whiskey. “Portable. Have some! You need it more'n I.”

Ransom's limp and need for the cane was now even more pronounced. His fatigue only added to his leaning on the new one, which Philo had gifted him at his hospital bed when he was still in a coma—and the steady thumping of that cane now felt like some sort of Chinese water torture to Philo.

“Why're we standing in the drizzle, Ransom?”

“Bosch got word on where Denton has relocated his carriage.”

“How much did that bit cost you?”

“Denton's picked out a new killing ground, Lincoln Park. I'm sure of it.”

“And you're going to catch him in the act?”

“I have my own flask to keep me company. You needn't've come, Philo.”

“You've a strange sense of duty, Alastair. Duty to yourself.”

“Duty to Polly, to Purvis, Trelaine, Chesley, all the victims, even that unborn child that Denton killed.”

They had earlier climbed from a hansom cab a block away from the park's cabstand, and now cautiously approached, in a roundabout fashion, through the dense woods of Lincoln Park, named for the fallen president.

The park, Ransom said at one point, reminded him of a place he'd dreamed about while in the hospital fighting for his life. A place ever reminiscent of a somewhereland in Michigan where his parents had taken him as a child. “You're not going to get all maudlin on me, are you, Rance?”

“Just something about the two shores of the lagoon here…just like in the dream. Only in the dream, I was with a beautiful woman.”

“Well, don't look for me to help you out there, old friend.”

Again Philo Keane thought of the terrible price a man like Ransom paid to the public at large. This determination to catch the Phantom for the safety of all Chicagoans had become a personal affair, a single-minded obsession to be sure, and yet if he were to succeed, it benefited all of the city. Benefited the lowliest street person to the Potter Palmers and the Marshal Fields. But at what price to Ransom? To his peace of mind? To his sleep? It had already cost Ransom dearly in so many ways. Worst of all, it could eventually cost him Jane Francis and any opportunity along those lines. It had cost Alastair friends as well, but Philo understood obsessions, and he understood his friend's need for vengeance.

In fact, Philo guessed it'd been vengeance that kept him alive.

Philo wondered now if he and Alastair would be arrested at any moment for loitering and lurking, or worse if a copper came along and saw them amid the trees, two grown men playing hide-and-seek. Philo could ill-afford being arrested again. “If we're arrested for pandering,” he complained, “it's on you, Alastair.”

But Alastair's full concentration remained on the row of horse-drawn buggies and covered cabs at the cabstand, where Waldo Denton casually awaited the Lincoln Park strollers who weaved about the pathways, amid the greenery, locked in embrace, their eyes interested only in one another. Watching the strolling couples, Ransom realized how easily the Phantom of the Fair operated, using his hansom cab as central headquarters. He'd move about the paths of the park in his black uniform, strike like a shadow, murder with that garrote of his, set the body aflame, and be sitting atop his hack, an invisible man, all in a matter of minutes. Orchestrated murder.

The lakefront Lincoln Park was a killer's dream, a place where people allowed their common sense and justifiable fears and natural defenses to drop like stones one after another. A place to distract one from the horrors at one's shoulder. Unlike the fair, this place kissed the senses with solitude and privacy and peace, whereas the fair rang loud with the sound of multiple calliopes, the barkers, and the hawkers, amid which worked the street prostitutes. Here the noises were of nature, squirrels, and chipmunks chasing one another, birds chirping in the trees, leaves rustling a languid whisper.

“What the hell keeps you on your feet?” Philo whispered in Ransom's ear.

Ransom took a long pull on his flask of whiskey. “I've stayed off the opium and cut back on the Quinine. Feel like…like a…
ahhh
…”

“New man?”

“Feel like a man who's stepped out of Hell's furthest jaw.”

“Why don't you ask more of life for Alastair Ransom?” Philo then drank.

“You ask enough for the both of us, Philo.” Ransom tripped on his own shoe.

“Do you think you can keep your feet? You, my friend, are no longer making any g'damn sense.”

Philo looked all about their surroundings, uneasy. Here was the newly created lagoon. The lovely grand lake ever in the eye, here in this park, which only a few years before had been the cemetery where Alastair's twin had reposed. The graves had long been relocated in the effort of city fathers to keep pristine all of the lakefront coastal property, purchasing it for the use of the common good—
common ground meant common green.
Denton had removed his theater of operations to here, thinking that perhaps Ransom could be outdone or outrun or outfoxed; thinking, at least for a night, he had ditched his constant new shadow, a shadow that accosted him with accusation at every turn. A shadow the size of a standing bear.

Some said Denton had gone to Chief Kohler and Prosecutor Kehoe to ask that they muzzle the big man's mouth, take his gun and badge away, and remove him from the Chicago Police Department.

Some rumors had it that the two men, chief and prosecutor, had hired Denton to continue on as normal, and to report any and all bad conduct of one Inspector Alastair Ransom directly to them. Ransom's snitch, Bosch, had informed him that “The powers that be're after you, Ransom; working up a case against you.”

“Don't hold back, Bosch. Give me the full story,” he'd said.

Stunted Henry Bosch screwed up his features until his face was a dried-up potato. “It's about that
poor
harassed citizen, Denton, wrongfully accused, wrongfully jailed, and wrongly hounded after being released for lack of evidence.”

And so here they were, Ransom in full knowledge of this “trap” set for him, but like any dumb bear, he forged straight into the snare. They stood in the snare now, Philo and Ransom observing, watching, studying the hansom cabstand, staring across at the youngest cabbie in the group—Denton—listening to banter and laughter wafting over, under, and through the park leaves.

All the hansom drivers saw to their own stock, feeding bits of cabbage, carrots, and corn to their mares. All stood about a barrel they used for shucking corn and oysters, and for tossing bones and cigarette butts, and a second barrel used as a cooking fire. This pair of barrels created a fulcrum along with a newsstand for the
Herald,
the
Tribune,
and other papers—common ground for the common man. The cabbies busily discussed the rising cost of grain feed, cigarettes, beer, wine, coal oil, and whatever else came to mind from a broken horseshoe to a tear in a cloak. Some of them joked with Denton about being the infamous Phantom of the Fair, and he joked back—actually prancing about and using his garrote, making a mock attack on another driver's horse! Then in a chillingly ironic voice, Denton laughingly asked, “What'd you boys give to know where the Phantom can be found?”

“I hear that is what you asked Inspector Ransom the night he arrested you for the killer!” shouted another, and they all burst into laughter.

“You know the rumor now as to the killer being a prostitute,” said Denton. “It might well be. I can tell you that with a garrote, a woman can take down that fat tub of lard, Ransom!”

“Is that true?” Philo asked Ransom where they stood in the bush.

“Manys-a-prostitute chooses the garrote over the blade. The great equalizer, a way to overpower someone twice your size,” Alastair replied. “And manys-a-poor-bloke's had his penis sheared off by a whore's garrote.”

“Ouch! That happens? Damn, but you see some awful things.”

“Can you imagine waking up to your little head being garroted?”

“I can imagine…you've no idea how I can imagine.” He protectively crossed his legs.

“Yes, same weapon as Denton carries.”

“But what does Waldo get from…get out of…”

“Murder? It makes Denton feel our equal, Philo—”

“Our equal is it?”

“—you and me, and every man with a larger, ahhh, body, and a rank of some sort in Chicago.”

The men at the cabstand got up an impromptu lottery on the question of whether the true Phantom, once caught, would prove male or female. Denton had named a name they all knew, the infamous Pekinese-faced Chicago madame, Laveeda Grimaldi. They laughed at the notion.

At the World's Fair, the chaos of hundreds of
thousands continued unabated as though nothing untoward had occurred in the least here, and the increased numbers of uniformed police stationed about the fair also went unnoticed, but for some the police presence was much appreciated, especially the monied men backing the fair and the merchants working it for all they might. In fact, the fair had its own private police force, partially reinforced by part-timers moonlighting from the CPD. The fair cops worked independently of city government, however, answering only to their private employers—Chicago's elite, and this smacked of the old days when private enforcers and police ran amuck in their zeal to please private business interests and put down any strike or talk of strike as in the days of Haymarket. The sense they'd taken two steps back in police enforcement with this untrained crew stuck in Griffin Drimmer's craw, aside from their namby-pamby uniforms.

In fitting with the fabulous White City, this specialized army wore a light gray uniform, approximating an off-white, with fake mother-of-pearl rather than copper-toned buttons, a far cry from the traditional blues. Even so, there were never enough of the “Pearly Gate coppers,” as some
called them, to cover the massive fairgrounds and huge pavilions, each of which looked in scale and appearance like Roman and Greek halls of learning where Euripides and Socrates might appear in heated debate at any moment amid the fountains and the boats and the columns. Each major exhibit hall looked from a distance like some giant dragon that crawled up out of Lake Michigan to curl up and go to sleep here.

Griffin Drimmer had been assigned here, but he'd gotten lucky. He must wear his old CPD uniform as the fair force had run out of grays. On the other hand, he'd been unlucky. He missed working real detective cases. This was, to be sure, his comeuppance for having, in the end, sided with Alastair and in helping clear Philo's good name, and for not further supporting Chief Nathan Kohler. Busted to rank of a footman is what must be on his horizon, unless…unless he himself could catch the Phantom.

Although he strolled amid the throngs of fairgoers, revisiting known areas where the killer had struck, he came up empty. Nothing doing.

He decided to make inquiries to determine where everyone had got off to. What was Ransom doing right this moment? Keane? Dr. Tewes? He located the same call box he and Ransom had used the night they were so cocksure they had Denton by the shorthairs. He called in to inquire if there'd been any calls for him at the station he worked out of. It took an interminably long time to get a reply. When he did, there was a message for him to call Dr. James Phineas Tewes.

He had additional difficulty getting the blasted dispatcher to make connections to Dr. Tewes's residence. Something made possible only recently. Still Griffin had to threaten the man with his job as the last dispatcher who caused Inspector Drimmer problems had been fired. He was finally put through.

The good doctor came on to static, a note of concern in his high-pitched voice. “Your friend and colleague is barely
capable of remaining on his feet another hour, yet he's on a stake-outting at Lincoln Park.”

“Do you mean stakeout, Doctor?”

“Whatever! Can you please get over there and relieve him? Please?”

“God, the whining doctor sounded like a woman in his concern for Alastair. “I'm on my way, Doctor, but whereabouts in Lincoln Park is he, and what is he staking out there? The lake?”

“The cabstand. He's shadowing Denton.”

“
Ahhh
…of course. I hadn't seen Denton about the fair all day.”

“He's removed himself from the fair traffic in an attempt to get clear of Ransom, and Ransom, fool that he is, has taken no sleep or rest for two days.”

“Damn…look, I'll try to get him home.”

“He'll only do so if you take over for him, Griff…
ahhh
, Inspector.”

“I understand.”

He rushed from the call box past the stone steps of the newly erected building exhibiting the sciences and industries that had carried America to the forefront of global production of food and manufactured goods. The exhibits here recognized the importance of such inventions as the Cotton Gin, the McCormick Reaper, and other marvels of modern farming, and the wonders of lighting a city, and the telephone, and the phonograph—all among other amazing new instruments, and the newly created machines housed inside the museum. The giant steam engines that powered a huge platform that descended and returned up a mock coal mine-shaft. The massive displays of ocean liners of the
White Star
and
Cunard
class, to mighty generators like those used at Cook County in the event of an electrical shut down, to the mighty train engines of America. All the marvels of mechanical science under one enormous roof.

There is only one problem. When does a working cop find the time? Where does he find the money it would take
to spend a day at the fair? Lucinda kept demanding Griff give more time to her and their children.

The grotesque headless corpse of the beautiful Miss Mandor found burning in a boat here on the lagoon had dissuaded no one from attending the Chicago World's Fair. Odd as that seemed, Griffin imagined it went right along with human nature. A cynical Alastair would have plenty to say.

He pulled out a pipe like the one Alastair used, and as he found a cab to take him to Lincoln Park, he tamped in some tobacco and worked on lighting up. He looked closely at the cab driver of the dram he climbed into to be sure it was neither Denton nor the madman who'd opened up his horses at full gallop with Griff and Ransom on the cushions, bouncing about that night they'd busted into the Tewes's residence to ostensibly save Miss Jane Francis and Gabby Tewes from the clutches of the maniac that Alastair had identified as Waldo Denton.

Griff thought he'd die in a hansom cab accident that night long before arriving at the Tewes home. He now called out an address he knew a block off the park where Ransom must be. He'd disembark a block early; to go unnoticed.

Along with the rhythm of the cab ride, a flitting thought of a future victim struck him as an inevitability. He imagined some poor defenseless woman, her throat cut by the garrote, her body set aflame. When and where would it happen?

Then he gave a good deal more thought to why the killer liked fire. Then he thought of Ransom's history with fire, the awful rumors, the awful truth no doubt embedded there, and he wondered if this killer who seemed to have a penchant for Ransom's circle of friends, if he did not have a quite personal reason for terrorizing Ransom's life and city.

Then he wondered if Waldo Denton might not have an alias. Then he wondered if Waldo Denton
were
an alias. He had the cab stop at another call box, and he got Luther Noble, an able man, to run Denton's name as an alias. It was
not found. Then try Campaneua. If anyone by the name of Campaneua has been arrested at any time in the city in the last say three years.

“That'll take time.”

“Then take time. I'll call you back later.”

“It is already later. I am headed out the door. But there is tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, then, and thanks.”

“Oh hell, look…I will turn it over to our new intern.”

“And does he have a name?”

“She…she has a name.”

“She? A woman on the force?”

“Not yet. She has as yet to go through boot camp.”

“Gotcha, so what do I call her when I call back?”

“Gabby.”

“Gabrielle Tewes?”

“
Ahhh
…then you know her? A friend of yours, Detective?”

“I'd have never guessed her to be interested in police work.”

“Wants to learn it all, she says.”

“Damn surprise is all.”

“Keep an open mind, Inspector.”

“Is she good at it?”

“A natural.”

 

Junior Inspector Griffin Drimmer stared across from his position behind a tree at Philo Keane and Ransom, disbelieving. “Ransom,” he whispered, “what are you doing here?”

“More to the point, Griff, what're you doing here? Are you converted to my cause?”

“A call came in that you were about to make a public nuisance of yourself at this location.”

“Really? And who made the call—prophetic as it was?”

“An anonymous caller,” Griff lied.

“Denton, no doubt. One cheeky bastard.”

“The complaint came from a woman. At least it sounded like a woman.”

“Jane…Jane Francis?”

“Like I said, it came as an anonymous call.”

“She's trying to protect you from yourself,” suggested Philo.

“So I'm to thank her?”

“We are all worried about you, Rance,” added Griffin.

“I should give her a piece of my mind.”

“All right! It wasn't Miss Francis,” said Griff.

“Then who?”

“Dr. Tewes. He's also concerned about you, though I can't understand why.”

“Tewes and Jane, both concerned.” Both Philo and Griffin had as yet to discover that Dr. James Tewes and Jane Francis were one and the same.

“And Gabby,” added Griff.

“And everyone who cares about your hide,” put in Philo.

“I've already given everyone a piece of my mind!” retaliated Ransom.

“All they want, you fool,” said Philo, “is your mean heart. Go see Jane and smooth it over.” Philo pulled at him.

“Leave off. Let go.”

“Have you read a paper in the past week, Ransom?” Griffin sternly asked. “They're saying you're spirit possessed, that you fingered Waldo Denton through some sort of drunken occult spiritualism. Séances, they're saying! Even your old friend Carmichael has—”

“Bastard son of a bitch is on Kohler's bribe list?”

Philo and Griff exchanged a look of concern. Philo said, “You are beginning to sound like a raving lunatic, Ransom, and you don't even hear it.”

“Indigestion…just indigestion,” Ransom replied.

“And in the meantime, we wait until the monster strikes again?” complained Griffin.

“In the meantime, we have to rely on our instincts,” countered Ransom. “And my instincts are still screaming that Waldo Denton kills people for the fun of it.”

“Intuition is often all we have left in the last analysis,” agreed Philo. “My own tells me that Denton shrewdly doctored the second photograph, making a comparison of the two handprints impossible.”

“All the while you were whoring, he was doctoring the photo under your nose.” Ransom gritted his teeth and glared.

“In fact, I,
ahhh
…taught him too well every process I know.”

“Sounds like a willing learner, heh?” asked Griff, blinking.

“Crafty, cunning little prick is what he is.” Ransom smothered a cough.

“After all, he was my apprentice.” Philo looked sheepishly at the other two. “Well…think of it. He cops to the first bloody print due to mere clumsiness at the crime scene. Then he exposes the second in development just a bit too soon.”

“Leaving us with nothing, and Fenger testifying on his behalf instead of ours.”

“Galls me to think he himself took the second handprint photo with my Night Hawk, complained Philo. Used my materials and my studio, all while I sat behind bars, arrested as the Phantom! Me!”

Ransom held back a laugh. “As absurd as that Chinaman singing our national anthem at the fair in Chinese.”

“Did you hear about that?” Griff's words dripped with disapproval.

But Ransom returned to the subject of Denton. “Then the weasel doctored the second one to make it inconclusive as evidence. So why can't we get him on evidence tampering?”

“Ransom, it can only be proven a bad job of processing. Even Christian Fenger couldn't testify that it was doctored and not simply fouled up.”

“Fenger should've lied then; should've made it fit.”

The other two remained silent, unsure what to say to
make Alastair feel better. Philo finally muttered, “It'll be a great ally some day—
science
—if you beefy-headed coppers'll ever open your eyes to it. And maybe learn to prize it and to protect scientific evidence.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Griffin's defenses had gone up.

“If you had a processing center kept under lock and key, for instance, Denton could not've handled that photo alone. There'd've been channels, proper procedures, all of it.”

Ransom only grinned at his friend, while Griff firmly replied, “Now hold on, Inspector Ransom's the one got the CPD to go full force into fingerprint collections.”

“And still no headway in that area! Dragging their feet. They don't trust it…don't trust anything new or scientific. You law enforcement types are the worst for it.”

Dr. James Phineas Tewes stepped from nowhere it seemed, and said, “I suggest we have some ale and talk about it at length, sirs, at the nearest establishment for libations.”

“Coffee perhaps,” replied Griffin. “I think Inspector Ransom needs coffee or tea more so than alcohol.”

Philo quickly put in, “Fact is, Griffin and I were just saying that Ransom here could use
your
cure, sir. I understand it worked well for him once before.”

“That can certainly be arranged. My residence is only a few blocks away. Shall we, Inspector Ransom? I know my sister would be pleased beyond measure to see you again at our home.”

“Did I ask for a committee meeting out here? Is everyone following me?” Ransom looked on the verge of collapse.

“You fellows are quite welcome to join us, of course,” said Tewes, ignoring Alastair's complaint.

“Perhaps another time,” said Philo. “I've much work awaiting.” He secretly punched at Griffin's side. Griffin got the message that he needed an exit line.