City for Ransom
Authors: Robert W. Walker
Robert W. Walker
Yanked from a heated card game to investigate another murder,â¦
Ransom recalled how an army of stone masons had workedâ¦
His work required Ransom's mind, but the old shrapnel woundâ¦
Griffin Drimmer had pushed back the police line to aâ¦
Chicago had almost as many train terminals as police districts,â¦
The seared, blistered, fire-blackened head told Dr. James Phineas Tewesâ¦
Still in the train station, going mad inside his head,â¦
Philo Keane had packed up what he could carry, leavingâ¦
In the waking vision, the killer sees the dead unbornâ¦
Philo Keane had fallen asleep to the sound of aâ¦
Dr. Tewes had rejoined the world, and as quickly asâ¦
Christian Fenger went in search of Alastair Ransomâ¦knowing one, thatâ¦
They had brought their voices down and spoke under theâ¦
Jane gasped, startled to find Alastair Ransom on Dr. Tewes'sâ¦
Fire alarms from several directions sounded a distress that wouldâ¦
Griffin Drimmer stumbled amid still smoldering ashes of the fireâ¦
Some anonymous benefactor had paid his bail, but for nowâ¦
His father's name was Campaneua, his mother Jarno, and togetherâ¦
Guiding Jane Francis by the hand, Ransom rushed from theâ¦
Ransom found a park bench where he'd collapsed, fully expectingâ¦
“I'm done with it! No more James Phineas Murdock Tewes,â¦
Awaking in Dr. Tewes's chair, half on, half off andâ¦
Dr. Tewes's daughter's infatuation with the burgeoning police sciencesâfrom fingerprintingâ¦
It was an awkward passing thought Ransom had as heâ¦
The hansom coach nearly toppled over as it came aroundâ¦
Growing up in Chicago in the fifties and sixties, I found a friendâa second mother, reallyâin Miss Evelyn Page, an extraordinary teacher of language and speech at Wells High, and when she made a gift of a small bookcase that I admired, she said, “You can thank me by filling it with books you've read.”
I arrogantly replied, “How âbout I fill it with books I write?”
She answered simply, “That'll do as well. Fill it with your characters.”
“Deal.”
“Deal.”
Before she passed away, Evelyn Page knew I'd filled that bookcase twice over. She also knew that I was living my dreamsâdreams she nurtured. A theater major and graduate of Northwestern University, she'd studied with Karl Malden, but she chose to become a teacher instead of Malden's co-star. My good fortune, for she championed me and gave me the opportunity to go to NU when it was my turn. But more importantly, she gave me a license to be myself and the courage, early on, to believe in myself; to believe myself a writer of purpose. For this reason, wherever her soul resides, I send out this dedication to find herâ¦for she so loved Chicago and her house on Chase and Sheridan Road, and no doubt, she would've treasured a copy of
City for Ransom.
Illinois Central Train Station, Chicago, June 1, 1893
Yanked from a heated card game to investigate
another murder, the third garroting in as many weeks, Inspector Alastair Ransom arrived angry. The rhythm his cane beat across the marble floor stopped when he hit a wall of odorsâthe winner: charred flesh. The smell dredged up memories of the Haymarket Riot and bombing, some seven years ago. The odors brought up another memory as wellâone of a particularly grueling botched interrogation he'd conducted just before the infamous riot in Haymarket Square, a memory he'd hoped to have forgotten even more so than the labor riot itself.
But here it sat upon his mind, full-blown as if yesterday, thanks to this victim's fetid demise.
In an irritatingly gruff voice that made Inspector Alastair Ransom's hair stand on end, Dr. James Phineas Tewes shouted, “Inspector Ransom, finally, someone in charge.”
“Can I help you?”
“I insist on a scientifically accurate, thorough phrenological diagnosis on the dead boy's cranium to determine his magnetic levels at the time of death.”
“Phrenological what?”
“I'm conducting a study, you see andâ”
“Magnetic levels? What nonsense! Read the dead boy's charred cranium? What possible good could your questionable art of reading skulls do either him or my investigation? He's dead, for God'sâ”
“But Chief Kohler approved and aâ”
“His head's smoldering yet from being torched! G'damn you, Tewes! This is a murder investigation. You've no busiâ”
“And your superiors, sir, sent me to examineâ” Tewes stopped to catch another glimpse of the body, now half hidden by Ransom's considerable girth. Despite the black, smoldering lump of flesh leaning against the column, Dr. Tewes forged on. “I will make my observations and complete my mission here, Inspector! We're conducting an experiment.”
Ransom tightened his teeth around an unlit pipe and tapped the floor with his cane. He scratched at his day-old stubble and stared long at the scrawny, parasitic scavenger everyone called a doctor, James Phineas Tewesâa little man of whom he thought little. He turned his back on Tewes to shout instead for his second in command. “Griff! Griffin.”
“Yes, Inspector!” Griffin Drimmer called back.
“Get Keane in here to do the photographic work, so we can mop up this mess.” Ransom indicated a blackened, charred faceless body propped against a pillar at the Baltimore and Ohio side of the building, second-floor balustrade. The marble floor around the body, also charred and blackened, told a tale in blood as it trailed from the men's room to the pillar.
The corpse's still smoldering head flopped forward, a quiet but echoing snap telegraphing a bone-cracking eruption at the terminus of the spine, incrementally giving way to the weight of the skull. The head had very nearly been cut off.
“You may ignore me, Inspector, but you can't ignore this!” Tewes, a dapper man in topcoat, suit ascot, his mustache twitching, claimed to psychically read people's heads
as Gypsies read tea leaves or palms. But Tewes went to the extreme, claiming to diagnose illnesses and render cures to melancholia and other mental maladies with some sort of magnetic mumbo-jumbo in association with
laying-on-of-hands.
Little more than a snake-oil salesman.
Despite Ransom's attempts to stifle Tewes, the so-called phrenologist continued to wave a note. The note had the expensive watermark representing Kohler's office.
“Don't be a fool, Ransom,” Tewes warned.
“Never, sir.”
“Don't dare stand in my way. Not with this in my hand! An express order from your superior.”
“You use the term
superior
too loosely, sir, and I don't react well to threats,
Doctor
.” Ransom made the word
doctor
sound like
quack
.
“I know about you. Every law-abiding citizen in Chicago wants Kohler to give you the boot for your extravagant interpretations of the law,” Tewes began in a more sour tone. “Your ill-treatment of prisoners, your questionable interrogation techniques.”
“Really now?”
“The stuff of dark legend. Everyone fearing you!”
“Makes my job easier.” Ransom gave a moment's thought to his ill-gotten,
half-deserved
reputationâthe half that remained in people's minds. Tewes had kindly left out his addiction to gambling, tobacco, whiskey, quinine, and women.
“You can't stop the march of science or progress, Inspector!”
“Science? Progress?”
“Police science, yes.”
“Really now?”
“I represent the hope that police operations improve evidence-gathering techâ”
“By paying out a handsome fee to the likes of you, Doctor?”
“You're as rough a fellow as I was warned!”
“Aye, I am that.”
“And stubborn! Knowing that Kohler himself wishes my
participation on this case!” Tewes again waved the note in Alastair's face. “For God's sake, man. Read it!”
“Why? You've already revealed its content.” Ransom punctuated his words with the unlit pipe, jabbing at Tewes. “Look here, my patience is in short supply, and you've no business here, mister!”
“This says otherwise!”
“You're not affiliated with the Chicago Police force or Dr. Christian Fenger's Coroner's Office. And if you dare get in my way again, I'll have you arrested for obstructing an ongoing investigation.”
Tewes's curled handlebar mustache twitched anew like a tadpole under the muted train station gaslight.
Ransom saw a uniformed copper and shouted, “O'Malley! Take Dr. Tewes here out of my sight.” Ransom turned his back on Tewes's raised hand, the note still flourishing birdlike over his head as O'Malley gently guided Tewes off. “You damned, daft fool!” Tewes shouted to no avail.
Inspector Ransom returned to the still-smoldering body that'd been doused with either petrol or kerosene, and then with water. In two previous such cases, the fire investigator had determined kerosene the accelerant.
Ransom immediately noticed a bloody handprint, left on the marble floor; the trail of blood led him to inspect the men's room. Drimmer pointed out the sliced off digits in the sink. Ransom went over to the body again, studying the handprint more closely. “The print has all its fingers. It isn't the boy's, unless the killer snipped off his fingers here and returned to the men's room to deposit each digit in the sink, but that feels counterintuitive.”
Griffin Drimmer replied, “Then the print belongs to the killer!”
“If so, it needs to be photographically recorded, preserved. For should a suspect come aboutâdistinguishable from the city's hundreds of likely verminâthen we can match said murderer to something tangible. How is that for scientific progress in police work?”
“Yeah, I overheard what Dr. Tewes said to you, Inspector.”
Ransom continued to study the bloody handprint as if it recalled some secret memory.
A short, gaunt, angular- and grim-faced Griffin Drimmer, in a three-piece suit, fond of showing pictures of his children, looked more the part of Ransom's coachman than his partner. Their ages stood a generation apart as did their choice of clothing. His energy and diligence that of a river otter, while Alastair might more appropriately be called a pachyderm. Alastair believed his partner more enthusiastic than clever, more excitable than analytical, but he was young yet. There appeared much to recommend the new man, despite that Nathan Kohler had pushed Drimmer on Ransom.
“When we get the boy to the morgue,” Alastair said to Griffin, “we'll stamp his palm and place it against Philo's photo.”
“Easier than ripping up the floor tile and hauling it off.”
“That'd upset people in high places.”
“You mean along with Chief Kohler?”
Drimmer hadn't once had words with his partner about Kohler, but Ransom knew he was dying to do soâpreferably after getting Ransom drunk enough to tell the whole sordid story as to why he and Kohler so intently hated one another from the inside out. Alastair considered Drimmer's position, its delicateness, working under him but ultimately for Kohler. “According to our good Dr. Tewes, Griff, we've already managed to piss Nathan.” Alastair stared anew at the inexplicable mystery lying at his feet; three times the mystery now. It represented a third body that the coroner, Fenger, would have to separate from itselfâlike disentangling a melted sculpture created of limbs by the intense heat.
Both detectives staring at the bloody handprint felt a new aura surrounding it. “Could be the bastard's gone and got sloppy, Griff?”
“It must be his,” Griff sounded hopeful. “You'll prove it so.”
“Caution. It could as well belong to the night watchman who doused the body with water, or some careless copper got his hand bloody and kneeled here.”
“But O'Malley's hands are too large to make a fit.”
“Aye, it's a man no larger than the victim, from the look of it.”
“Small hands for certain.” Griffin placed his own small hands over the print, creating a shadow fit.
“Keep this between us, Griff. No one else is to know. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely, between us.”
“When Philo gets here with that blasted photographic equipment of his, we'll have to stay on him, Griff.”
“Stay on him?”
“He's coming off a drunk, and he can be a slacker when he's hung over.”
“I'll stay on him.” Griffin winked.
Ransom imagined Griff thought him on the same drinking binge as Philo, and he wasn't wrong. “Judging from the size of the handprintâif indeed it belongs to the monster we seekâour killer is hardly larger than the two women he's killed.”
“About the size of that fella waving the note in O'Malley's face?”
“Tewes? Yesâ¦yesâ¦in that neighborhood. Doesn't take much to overpower a man from behind with a garrote.” Ransom looked from the print to Dr. Tewes, who now waved Kohler's damnable note at Big Mike O'Malley. O'Malley's blue uniform looked purple under the haze of light from a lamppost that flooded in from an overhead window in the semidarkened stairwellâa stairwell down which Ransom would like to throw Tewes. He hoped O'Malley would escort Tewes to the door.
Tewes's silver tongue had gotten him Kohler's blessing and had gotten him past the police barricade, but Ransom's attention returned to the bloody handprint. He toyed with the cruel idea of getting a stonemason to lift it from the marble floor. To intentionally provoke Kohler.
Ransom's thoughts strayed to the so-called new and ingenious art of fingerprint and handprint evidence that was hardly new in other parts of the world. “Everything worth
knowing comes out of the East,” the taciturn medical examiner for Cook County, Dr. Fenger, once told Ransom. Then the spry old doctor added, “Of course, your chief of detectives thinks it's all mumbo-jumbo. Been trying for years to get the Chicago Police Department to invest in fingerprint-gathering techniques and devices.”
Being the holdout of an old vanguard, Chief Nathan Kohler looked the part of Poe's most stolid raven: stocky, short, wrapped in a black coat the way a bird wrapped itself in its wingsâindicative of how close he played his cards to his chest. A most secretive man, Kohler had been skeptical and resistant to the idea, as his custom dictated, distrusting anything new. Kohler finally put his opinions aside when the scientific evidence became too overwhelming to ignoreâin large part due to Ransom's and Dr. Fenger's combined persistence and faith in the new science. In another part, due to the coroner's push for modern techniques and devices, and to wrangling a much larger budget out of the city. Dr. Fenger, one of the founding members of Cook County Hospital and the city's preeminent medical examiner, lent credence to Alastair's war.
And what is Kohler's answer? To hire on a mentalist?
The newsmen, held in check at the stairwell, shouted for comments. Ransom counted on big O'Malley to keep the dogs of the press off his back, and while Alastair liked some reporters, and in fact knew a couple who proved better investigators than cops, today he'd immediately cordoned off the crime scene, and thanks to a Chicago miracleâgreased with greenâthe sensational stories of two earlier garrote victims hadn't been reported in any major paper. All this, ostensibly to safeguard the “integrity of the ongoing world's fair.” Ransom cared little for such concerns, but he did want to preserve what Dr. Fenger called the “amalgamate area wherein murderer and victim danced” or “the killer's parlor.”
Fenger wrote poetry in moments of relaxation, good poetry in fact. And his poetical nature came through in his work. But Ransom took his meaningâkeep undisturbed the
space around the victim in order to do a thorough investigation. A common sense, scientific approach.
So today it was off limits even to his best friends in the press, those he drank with from the
Tribune, Herald,
and
Sun.
Reporters had gotten out of control in previous months. In fact, the sheer number of reporters in Chicago rivaled the vermin and rats. As many as forty-odd newspapers were vying for dominance within the city limits alone.
Naturally, the reporters clamored for a better view of the crime scene nowâa closer look for photographs and drawingsâbut decorum in an investigation of a crime as heinous as this must, in Ransom's opinion, be maintained even at the risk of the public's so-called “right to know”âa card the Chicago press played like a two-dollar whore. When Ransom could, he gave the newsies far more access to the crime scene than Dr. Fenger thought prudent. He ingratiated himself with the press to gain access to their secretsâhow they worked a source, how they got information. The lifeblood of an investigator. But he also nurtured a relationship with good newsmen who held doubts about official details of the city's investigation of the Haymarket Riot.