City for Ransom (24 page)

“Prove me a murderer, Nathan, and I'll willingly sit for shackles. Until such time, I'd appreciate your not characterizing me as this evil bastard's counterpart.”

“But you just did so yourself!”

“Aye…I did, but I've not given you carte blanche to do so.” Ransom knew Kohler guilty of at least as much evil as himself, but in a time of war, men did evil for a greater good, or at least what they perceive a greater good. During the “war” with labor, Alastair had interrogated an arsonist and anarchist, a known killer of men who set bombs off to make a political point, a refugee of such activities in France. He'd transplanted to America and had drifted to Chicago when news got out about the labor dissidents at Pullman. All this,
days before Haymarket and the riot and the bomb that exploded in the square, killing Ransom's fellow officers and doing its best to kill him.

Ransom meant to get information out of the man, and in a warehouse owned by a friend of the police, he'd sweated and beaten the fellow for information. Rumor abounded of a bomb having been planted somewhere in the city. He'd taken extreme measures to get the information he wanted out of Oleander, the man's code name, and the only name he'd disclosed until he screamed his real name from within the flames.

The matchstick slowly burned toward Ransom's fingers as he'd held it to the man's half-opened eyes, blood in his pupils making focusing impossible. No doubt, from the blows to the head. Alastair and the other cops present had pummeled the man's cranium. His bloodied features might've told Ransom that Oleander was, by this time, unable to formulate words much less inform on his comrades.

Then Kohler tossed his lit cigar into the fumes rising off the man. While Alastair's eyebrows and the hair on his hands curled and blackened, Oleander went up like a rag doll tossed into the hearth. As much as Alastair attempted to kill the flames and stop the death, the flames fought harder than he, claiming what was theirs.

Irony of it,
he
and not Kohler had earned a reputation that night. No one had seen Kohler's action. Ransom's reputation had remained intact since then, and word on the street, spread by the grapevine of lowlifes, toughs, snitches like his own Dot'n'Carry, all had him down as a cold-blooded bastard who'd do anything—
anything
—to gain what he wanted. As Dot'n'Carry put it: “If a man finds himself in custody of Alastair, then the only ransom worth talking about was payment in full.”

Interrogation meant beatings as a matter of course, routine, expected by those arrested. Certain indigents in particular, when taken into custody and
not
questioned on the latest atrocities in the city, demanded it of their jailers. They demanded a beating regardless, as a beating behind jail walls
proved a badge of honor. Further, to leave a Chicago jail without a beating marked a man as a snitch. But in the case of one Inspector Alastair Ransom, the word beating had taken on new meaning in a mix of myth and legend.

“Alastair…I think you're so right about this,” said Dr. Fenger, bringing him out of his reverie. “The kill…the kill being anticlimactic, our boy sets them ablaze for one final rush of excitement. Theoretically, the kill's
not
enough.”

Kohler loudly pandered to the press. “So, Inspector, you have no clue as to why a man would set a dead body aflame?”

The pointedness of
aflame
used by the chief made everyone within hearing squirm. It addressed the rumors about Ransom as much as the killer. Alastair's fists clenched, and he took a threatening step toward Kohler.

Griffin, hand raised, stepped between the two larger men, while hazarding a reply, “Fire has always held significance to people…”

Fenger agreed as if on cue, “Full of symbolism and mysticism.”

“Hmmm…Tewes said something similar in his report,” began Kohler. “That fire is or may have some weighty import in his head, in a symbolic sense, say of victory or some such…” Nathan stepped back from the threat in Ransom's eyes.

“More likely he holds us
all
in contempt,” weighed in Dr. Fenger. “It is the act of a contemptuous man, an angry man. I believe Tewes said it best in a brief discussion I had with him.”

“Go on,” said Kohler.

“Dr. Tewes believes the killer has a fire fetish.”

“A fire fetish.”

“A fire bug, yes,” added Griffin.

“Pyromania is how he put it, a deep-seated insatiable need. Damn, I'm inadequate to the task. Tewes knows the jargon of mental disorder far better than I. I'm, after all, a surgeon.”

“Well, if it is some aberration of the brain, a disorder in here,” Kohler pointed to his wide forehead, “then he cer
tainly has given into it, carrying about his own portable vial of kerosene.”

“He takes their lives and utterly disfigures them. He not only wants them dead, but to control what happens to them afterward—”

“Afterward?” Kohler's features crinkled in confusion.

“After they're dead. A form of necrophilia, Dr. Tewes calls it, but rather than have his way with the dead body,
ahhh,
in a sexual sense, like you earlier spoke of, having some sort of perversion there, you see, he may be getting his sexual excitement from the fire as much as from the garroting and holding another's life in his hands.”

“Tewes said all that?” asked Ransom, impressed.

“That way no one, not even the best surgeon—”

“Not even you, Dr. Fenger,” added Griffin.

“—can put them peacefully at rest for all eternity. No amount of cosmetics or preservation can help, you see? A burned, dehydrated body cannot e'en be given a proper wake.”

“I see,” replied Kohler.

Fenger absently added, “Given that every artery, every vein is collapsed by the heat of fire, the body can't receive formaldehydes, and stuffing rags soaked in formaldehyde into body cavities is not really effective.”

“It's a sick desire to destroy the remains,” suggested Ransom. “By decapitation, then fire. Yet he preserves their features as if they are significant.”

“Like photographs,” Griff added.

Dr. Fenger lit a slim cigar and smoke encircled them. Kohler coughed, Griff rocked on his heels, and Ransom chewed on his unlit pipe. Fenger said, “You fellows could be on to something. But it's what besets the man…the ghosts of his past—according to Tewes—ones gone unfulfilled, ones ne'er put to rest, that have a way of rising from the grave.”

Kohler nodded, his mind racing with Fenger's reply. “Then, by God, Ransom, get on to this madman's trail. Find the ghosts that beset him! But first, I need on my desk tomorrow morning a full report for Mayor Harrison!”

The same night at the Tewes residence

“I'm done with it! No more James Phineas Murdock
Tewes, no more hiding behind this disguise!” Jane Francis announced when she stormed in. She'd just returned from the fair, walking out on Kohler's conspiracy against Alastair and on any hope of helping find a killer. “Who am I kidding? They don't want my help—either of them!”

“Who, Mother?”

“Ransom and Nathan! Alastair at least is honest; he never expected anything of me, Tewes that is. Nathan, on the other hand, lied just to use me. He never believed in the idea of profiling the killer. It was all just part of his ruse.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Mother?” Gabby followed her as she stormed about the clinic.

“Only wanted information on Ransom. And to grind Ransom into the ground 'til he can stand no more. Damnable man wants my affections, too!”

“Isn't Chief Kohler married?”

“Yes, but in a Chicago minute, he'd set me up as his mistress.”

“Mother! Really!” Gabby tried keeping up as Jane stormed each room, lifted something, banged it or tossed it
and continued on. “Slow down, Mother, my God. What has happened?”

She told Gabby of the new horror at the fair. Gabby reacted in sullen silence, a pained look creasing her features. “You were at the fair with Ransom?”

When Jane had left Ransom the first time to come home, Gabby had been away with a study group. It was then that Jane had changed to Dr. Tewes and returned to the scene of the double homicide in Lake Park.

“Never again will I be sucked into doing anything that goes 'gainst my better judgment.”

Gabby clapped. “That's wonderful news!”

“I blame these men 'round me! Kohler, Ransom, Fenger, all of 'em.”

“I like the sound of this.”

“I used to blame your grandfather, for not forcing me to look at reality for what it is! Instead, he taught me to spit in its eye. But too often comes its mocking face, making me the fool!”

“Go ahead, let it all out, dear Mother. You've taken on so much, and you've sacrificed for my—”

“No, I've made my own bed…nightmare really. 'Tisn't any of your doing, child.”

“Please, you're far too harsh on yourself.”

She paced the foyer, wandered the living room to the kitchen again, still fuming. Gabby remained near, recognizing a pivotal moment.

Finally Jane said, “This is it…tonight. I make a resolution.”

“What resolution, Mother?”

“I resolve to end this damnable charade and any further involvement with Nathan and Alastair's feud.” She thought of Kohler's final words to her: “String 'im along, Jane…sleep with him if it'll get 'im talking…. One confession of overstepping the law, and by God, we 'ave the bastard!”

Kohler acted in the cold certainty of righteousness, weeding out anyone who had anything whatever to do with Hay
market. And what of Alastair? Ransom brought scrutiny on himself like a man who, at least secretively, wanted to confess to someone, anyone, and if she were in the right place at the right time, during a vulnerable moment, then perhaps it would be to
her
that he'd confess his sins. She'd be terrified by it, and she was terrified at the idea of standing in a court docket to testify against Alastair.

Gabby's excited voice snatched Jane from her thoughts. “Good for you, Mother. I agree, and I support your action, whatever you decide, you know that.” Gabby hugged Jane, still in Tewes's clothing.

Jane snatched off the mustache and ascot. “Safer to listen to the fairies in my head! The ones that spoke to me as a child.”

“Mother, I'll help you if you'll help me.”

“Help you how?”

“Define the problem in its particulars, and to your own satisfaction, but I cannot engage in another round of emotional tug-o-war.”

Mother and daughter stared into one another's eyes, each seeking answers. Gabrielle nervously laughed.

“Don't laugh. I believe the problem is surmountable, but I'm concerned you hide nothing from me, and that I do likewise, that I should never hide anything, even disturbing, from you if you've a right to know, and I am afraid that…I am guilty of this, my sweet.”

“Guilty how? What're you talking about, Mother?”

“Tewes.”

“My father? But you have told me all about him. How handsome he was, how romantic, how courageously he died for his country in the war.”

“I-I've lied.”

“Lied?”

“All save that he
was
devilishly handsome.”

“But—”

“Let me now tell you the truth about your father, and I do this not to hurt you but to strengthen you. If I'm exposed
here in Chicago as a fraud…well, within that exposure all manner of things will come to light.”

“But how would you be exposed? By whom?”

“Promise to be patient. I will tell you all. In the end, we will regain who we are.”

“Then you plan to expose yourself? Before this other party can?”

“Yes.”

“Inspector Ransom finally onto you, isn't he?”

“No…wish it were so. It's Chief Kohler. Payback, I suppose, for rejecting him.”

“You broke Nathan Kohler's heart?”

“If he ever had one.” Jane finally sat.

“What you said about my father…”

“I started running away from myself a long time ago…when your father left me alone with…when I was pregnant with you. Felt like damaged goods. So much hurt and misunderstanding. Not toward you, my child, but toward myself.”

“So you came back to America to stop the pain?”

“No, to confront it, don't you see? By setting up a practice in New York, but it proved disastrous.”

“So now we're here, and talk about hiding from your feelings. You've become a master at it, Mother, right along with having become Dr. Tewes.”

“Only an expediency…to keep us in—”

“In the money, in the level of comfort to which we've become accustomed? Come on, Mother, out with it. To hide. To hide in plain sight is what you proposed from the beginning.”

Gabby grabbed her mother up from her chair and held her. The hug was long and heartfelt. “It's OK, Mother.”

“But it's not. In New York, I ran into Nathan, there studying some sort of new identification process he wanted in Chicago, this new fingerprinting thing.”

“It is a miracle of discovery this fingerprint business, Mother, and it is all true.”

“I've learned from Inspector Drimmer that Ransom is the
one who pushed Kohler to adopt it, he and Dr. Fenger. Christian's known of it for years from his travels to the Orient, but officials ignored his counsel.”

Gabby nodded. “Always the way with new ideas. Look at the resistance to the Crapper, the telephone, electricity.”

“I so desperately need to calm myself,” said Jane.

“Tea. I'll make us some fresh,” suggested Gabby.

“Would you? Tea will help.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” And Gabby was away.

An unpleasant shrill symphony of terror played out in Jane's head, and she feared. She feared what would happen to Gabby should something happen to her. She consciously willed a respite to the panic attack.
Poor Gabby. This is no way to live for either of us
. “Jane Francis,” she spoke to herself, “you've got to reclaim your true self.” She repeated it until the mantra staved off the attack.

 

Once the tea had brewed, they went into the parlor where the windows overlooked the boulevard. For some time, they people-watched. They spoke of enjoying the house they'd rented. They spoke of the fair. Gabrielle felt that her mother needed time before broaching a larger, distressing matter.

“When you were just a little girl, I was befriended in New York by another woman very like myself she was…her name was Alicia.”

“Alicia…what a lovely name.”

“A lovely soul, and like me, she lived so much inside herself, in her inner world, until…well, she was murdered.”

“Murdered? No…”

“I had hired her in my practice to help keep things in place, to help look after you, to generally take my place when with patients, which, as it happened, was not often, so we spent a lot of time together, and we spoke of ourselves as
problematic
women.”

“Problematic?”

“She drowned in the park, but there was more to it. I pointed
out the bruises on her neck, her legs, her forearms. Whoever did it knocked her down. I found blood on a stone nearby. I tell you this so you know I understand your pain now.”

“Was she…garroted?”

“No…at the very least all her parts were together when they laid her to rest. But the authorities were not going to be led by some
woman
—even if I did hold a medical degree. They resented my
bullying
them, and they
wanted
it to be an accidental drowning, and so it was labeled. But child, that is not the point of my story.”

“What then?”

“Gabby, this poor woman condemned herself for a sense of weakness drilled into her. In fact, we both shared the myth of feminine weakness”—she held up a hand to stop Gabby's protest—“
and,
and shared I daresay with half the female population, even those young women who fall into the abyss of prostitution.”

“Now you're speaking of Ransom's Polly Pete?”

“Yes, I suppose her too. Polly, and my dear friend to whom I so often give a prayer, and
myself
…. None of us ever saw that
how
we lived—inside our feelings—was power. A positive rather than a negative.”

“Women are constantly told this. It's one reason we're uniting. What else are we to do?” Gabby replied, hands flailing like a pair of diving birds.

“We…all of us…are told feelings are a weakness, something we must struggle to combat…to contain if we're to fit into the world—and for how long were we wrong? How horribly wrong in our perceptions?”

“And the other two, dead now, took it into eternity with them.”

“So sad…only one of three learning the lesson of it.”

“I see…I think.”

“Think how in our day, our generation, child, women were taught to believe every step taken, every dream held was foolish, weak, silly, a woman's ranting, a woman's lot, a woman's hysterics.”

“It has not changed so much. I get the same attitude at university!”

“The weaker of the sexes, the highly emotional and volcanic of the sexes, making us out as given more to the animal nature of our evolutionary ancestors. Should we voice an opinion, medical men call it
hysteria femalia
. And only now am I finally
getting it
—”

“Getting what, Mother?”

“That I live with foreign, strange, unfamiliar people around me, like some creature out of one of those mad outer space stories of Jules Verne's, simple as that!”

“You mean as Byron felt…not of this world, born into the wrong place and time perhaps?”

“No, this euphoric epiphany is just the opposite.”

“But how do you mean, Mother?”

She threw her hands up and shouted, “I am
right
for this world! It is the rest of the population that is strange and odd and foreign.”

“Really?”

“Indeed! Look at everyone around you—all the city!”

“I have many times over.”

“Look deeper then—it is made up of—of—”

“—of Martian men? Is that what you're saying?” Gabby genuinely wanted to know.

“Men! Men like Chief Kohler, Christian Fenger, Thomas Carmichael, Mayor Carter Harrison, the governor, Philo Keane, Marshall Field, Alastair Ransom! We are simply
not
like them.”

“Whataya mean to say?” Gabby asked, confused.

“They will stop at nothing to get what they want, to gain what they perceive are their entitlements!”

“Perhaps it's part of the character of a Chicagoan.”

“The character of a man,” Jane countered.

“And you believe, Mother, that you're not at all like them? Frankly, going about as Dr. Tewes…well how
like them
do you think is Tewes?”

“That's what I'm telling you. There's no way we are like
them under our clothes, under our skin! They are takers, pickpockets, boodlers, and Machiavellians.”

“But we're all human, Mother, and—”

“Tewes, for all his faults or due to them,
he is
accepted by Chicagoans—isn't he? Still, you miss my point.”

“It all sounds so very cynical, Mother.”

Jane became thoughtful, speaking in a near whisper. “No, no child, it's not cynicism I feel. My father alone understood the truth about me, but he could not tell me; he knew I had to learn for myself, and I did today.”

“Learned what?”

“Behavior I've thought of as defective—
brainwashed
to think so by men! Behavior that
in fact
keeps me
sane
…and Alicia and Polly, and so many trapped women in our society.”

“So does this mean you'll support our suffrage march?”

Jane gritted her teeth. “I fear for your safety.”

“Oh, come! Who's gonna throw stones and bottles at women standing in their knickers with a brass band playing?”

“I just want you to know how I
feel
now. This is so important.”

“Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt, but the vote's important to me!”

“I pray it's not wasted energy, like the senseless self-loathing that is spoon-fed to women. Imagine, a lifetime of apology for being
different
—but no more.”

Seeing her mother's tears come freely, Gabrielle again wrapped her arms about Jane, saying nothing, just listening.