City for Ransom (28 page)

“In his pocket, Rance,” began Griff, “as he was brought in, as you always taught me—log all possessions taken.”

Ransom grabbed Philo roughly by the lapels, lifting his friend from his seat with the sudden surge of power. “Where did you come by the ring?”

“She owed me…money…she must've slipped it into my coat pocket without my knowing. She offered it up once, but Ransom, I refused it, reminding her that I was your friend and could not accept it.”

“Why did she owe you money?”

“She was constantly borrowing. She played the horses every weekend.”

“With whom did she book the races?”

“That scum-bucket Jervis…her old keeper, Ransom.”

“Damn that ugly man. He's back? Bastard's ten times more likely your killer, Griff!”

“I checked early on, and Jervis is not in the city but back at his old haunts in Alton, Illinois.”

Ransom felt his back to the wall. He grabbed up the pieces of the confession and threw them into the air. Then he added, “Send men after that prick Jervis, now you've your explanation for the ring, and if this is all the nonsense you have to book Philo on, you'll be fined for a nuisance, Nathan. Judge Artemis'll dismiss it before it sees a jury, I tell you.”

“You are not taking him out of here,” Kohler coldly responded. “We have put it out. We have our man. I am not about to send him skipping out the door with you on his arm like a pair of faggots. And as for going to Alton, you do that…go right ahead.”

“What bloody fools you are, giving it out to the papers, holding a man on evidence of dubious value out of some sense of
embarrassment
?”

“He stays in jail until he is arraigned, bail is set—if any—and then you can have him if you can make his bail, but not before!”

Ransom looked from Kohler to Drimmer, finding both resolute and standing firm and covering the only door out. He
looked back at Philo, who appeared about to fall off his chair from fatigue. “At least”—began Ransom—“find the man a cot to lie down on and show him a modicum of decency and—”

“We're not running a juvenile detention center here,” interrupted Kohler.

“Fine…fine…but if I hear this man has been further mistreated, this cane”—he slammed it flat on the table, a gunshot result—“this sir'll find its way into a dark cavity.” He lifted the tip toward Kohler, “And you'll look as twirly as a pinwheel. As for you, Philo, not another word to these two! Speak to no one but your lawyer.”

“Lawyer? What lawyer?” asked Philo.

“He's on his way!” Ransom stormed past Kohler and Griff and out, slamming the door, in search of a moment's peace. Then he realized he still had Merielle's ring in his hand. He'd just accidentally removed the most damaging piece of evidence against Keane. He pocketed the ring, believing Philo's story, and should the ring disappear, it could only help his friend's cause. He felt no compunction about making the ring disappear since he knew in his heart two truths: Philo was the wrong man for the killings, and Kohler only went after Philo to piss on Alastair. The investigation into Philo Keane was on its face bogus.

But where to put the ring?

No doubt Kohler would be sending a frantic Griffin after him within minutes.

He saw Jane as Tewes with a lawyer in tow coming toward the doors. He rushed to greet them. “
Ahhh,
Dr. Tewes, so good of you to fetch Mr. McCumbler, the best defense in the city.”

McCumbler, a hefty red-faced man, had held the jail doors open to many a criminal. Ransom and McCumbler knew one another well. “Usually, you and I are on opposite sides,” the barrister commented.

“Not today. Interrogation Room number two, upstairs,
Esquire
, and don't be dissuaded by Nathan Kohler or
his
title, damn him! Our man is innocent and the so-called evidence
against him is as weak as the chance of women voting in the next election.”

Jane frowned at this.

Ransom then asked her, “Dr. Tewes, any chance you might have a headache powder in that bag of yours?”

“Let me dig about,” and as she did so, Ransom dropped the ring into Dr. Tewes's coat pocket.

Griffin showed up just as Ransom was draining a dry headache powder from a folded wrapper, choking it down.

“All right, Alastair, where the deuce is the ring?”

Alastair continued to choke, pointing to his throat.

“My God, man, are you saying you swallowed it?”

“That's right, and to get it from my excrement, you'll need a warrant for search and seizure, and a pair of gloves.”

Tewes had seen no ring and attested to the fact the stubborn inspector had indeed swallowed it whole. How he did any of it without a cup of water, Jane could not fathom. But then he had the neck and throat of a bear.

“Dr. Tewes, I want you to stay on Ransom till I get my warrant, and should he pass anything, I want you to still his hand from any flushing away of the evidence.”

She stared, her mouth dropping.

“Will you do it?” asked Griffin.

“Do your own dirty work, Inspector Griffin.” A smirk on her face, Jane rushed off, unaware of the ring in her pocket.

“Guess, old partner, it'll have to be you sifting through my shit then,” Ransom said, pounding Griffin on the back. He then pointed to the streets. “I'm going out there to find the real killer. Keep up if you can.”

Ransom rushed out, leaving Griff to his quandary. Ransom imagined what must be going through Griff's mind:
Should I go direct to Grimes to secure a warrant on Ransom's bodily functions, or go back upstairs to ask the boss, or should I keep on Ransom's ass…literally?

Griffin decided to first return to Kohler to tell him the news that Ransom had swallowed the ring. When he entered, the lawyer was taking Kohler through the evidence
again, and Philo Keane lay sprawled out over the table, snoring.

“Trelaine employed Keane?” asked Philo's lawyer now.

“And he personally knew three, possibly four of the victims.”

“And had nude photos of several victims in a hidden box in his studio?” Defense attorney Malachi Q. McCumbler spoke solemnly, in polite tone. He did so while glancing from the nudes to his snoring client. “Well, on the surface of it, gentlemen, it would appear you have
some
small reason to suspect my client. I will see you at the arraignment.”

“That won't be until day after tomorrow.”

“Why so long?”

“Ask the court, not me.”

“I'll send a man round with fresh clothing. See to it he has uninterrupted sleep and a shower, and any further questioning you do, you do so with me present. I will myself call round this evening to have a word with my client.”

“We don't Molly-coddle murderers here, sir,” Kohler coldly replied.

“No, I daresay not from the condition of the innocent!” Malachi's voice rose an octave and held in dramatic pause…“As, gentlemen, my client is presumed innocent until
proven
guilty.”

“Trust me, he is guilty of multiple murder and does not deserve your time!” said Kohler.

“And you chaps, officers of the court that you are, you have some distance to go before that is a reality, sir.” Even as McCumbler said this, he knew it true only in some fantasy world. Certainly, the notion of innocent until proven guilty—the reversal of the British Legal system in which a man was guilty till proven innocent—was in itself an ideal to which the American legal system aspired, but the notion could never be wholly attained, not when dealing with human nature. Men condemned first, apologized—if at all—later. Many a man in America and the world over had been lynched by a mob thanks to human nature. It was by no co
incidence that every other hamlet dotting the American landscape was named Lynchburg. Malachi had practiced law for almost twenty-five years now in Chicago, and he'd seen a lot of men beaten and broken and convinced of their own guilt by brutal treatment. Torturing a suspect as they had Philo Keane, in Chicago police circles, had a name—routine questioning. Most certainly human nature was well at work here in the Des Plaines Street police house. Well and good and intact, unfortunately.

Griffin waited for McCumbler to leave before he dared tell Chief Kohler of the ring's being lost to the big man's stomach.

From just outside the door, as McCumbler stopped to adjust his glasses before negotiating the stairs, he heard Kohler's gargantuan bellow, a stretched-out
Nooooooo
streaming through the closed door.

He wondered what it might be about when he heard Kohler repeatedly shout the name
Ransom
. McCumbler knowingly smiled.

 

“I had thought, and happily so, that you were finished with this…this disguise of yours,” Ransom said on catching up to Dr. Tewes at a cabstand. Several well-fed horses stood harnessed at Union Station.

“Come now, Inspector. Certainly, at times you must use disguises in your line of work—when it suits your purpose?”

Concentrating on her eyes and trying to ignore her mustache, Ransom replied, “Yes, I've used disguises in my work, but Jane…what more purpose can this serve you now?”

She backed to within inches of a horse at the cabstand. The horse reacted instinctively, nuzzling her into Ransom's arms. They had a laugh over this when Alastair caught her. To passersby and to anyone standing nearby, they seemed a pair of men quite infatuated with one another. Realizing this, Alastair quickly pulled away.

“Do you know how it's going to look when all comes to light?”

“It might begin to chip away at that brute image you've maintained.”

“That image has saved my life on occasion.”

“I'm sure I'd faint to hear just how.”

“You failed to answer my question.”

“The horse did not like the question.”

He repeated it. “What more purpose can your disguise serve you? A beautiful woman like you?”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

“Don't do that.”

“Do what?”

“Deflect the question.”

She stepped away from him and sat on a street bench. Busy people passed in and out of the train station. Ransom hovered and, out of one eye, he saw the cab at the front of the line begin its journey. This set off a domino effect, as each horse-drawn cab moved up one space in the line of seven, the exchange creating a soothing cadence of hooves against brick-laid road.

He wanted to hold her hand, but not like this…not so long as she looked the part of a man.

“Do you have any idea how long it would've taken me, as a woman, to interest Mr. Malachi McCumbler in taking Philo's case? So, being Dr. Tewes, he hopped right out of his seat and came.”

“OK, point taken.”

“And walking into a police station, a lone woman? I'd likely have been taken for a prostitute complaining of being robbed by my—”

“All right, point taken. Now I'll be needing my ring back.”

“Your ring? What ring?”

“In your pocket.”

She reached in, found the ring, and lifted it to the light. “It's beautiful.”

“They found it somehow in Philo's possession. Merielle had promised under no circumstance to ever part with it, and
the last time I saw her alive, she had it on, and next they find it in Philo's pocket.”

“What?”

“Made me, for a moment, believe Keane murdered my Mere, the way Kohler sprung it.”

“Nathan's good at that.”

“Sure is. Hey, look…I wanna thank you for the other night when you eased my pain.”

“Easing a headache,
ahhh
…that's nothing. To ease a broken heart, now there…anyone capable of that will make a fortune and have patients galore. Have I told you how very sorry Gabby and I are for your loss? It was evident you loved Merielle.”

“I've arranged for a small wake—Donegan's on Halsted, tomorrow night. If you can be there.”

“If you're sure you want me.”

“As yourself, yes…not the doctor. He will be unwelcome.”

He placed the diamond ring onto his pinky finger. “Won it in a card game,” he lied, “same as Polly Pete. Thought she and it belonged together.”

“How'd Keane come by it?”

“Philo was in no condition to discuss it; he
thinks
she slipped it to him on the sly, something about repaying a debt.”

“Keane seems to value your friendship.” Jane lifted his hand, again examining the ring's beauty in the sun when a dark cloud came over. “A lovely setting. This could have purchased a lot of photographic plates, film, even a new camera.”

“He came the other evening with his newest
baby
in hand, talked nonstop about it, but when he saw the victim was someone he cared for—”

“The Mandor girl?”

“Yes, dropped his new camera, fell to his knees. It proved the start of this trouble for him, that show of weakness.”

“Like when the vultures threw you in the Bridewell?”

“Thanks again for getting me out.”

She ignored this. “Right now our getting him out of that cell takes priority. I'm sure McCumbler will be successful, and we'll buy Keane's freedom.”

“What is all this
we
talk? We've got a problem…and we buy his freedom?”

“I want to help you, Alastair.”

“And why is that?”

“Because, damn you, I just want to.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?”

He looked long into her eyes, until waiting cabbies began staring. “I want to see Dr. Jane Francis open a practice here in Chicago and soon…and an end to Dr. James Phineas Tewes for good and all.”

She smiled wide, the mustache curling. “I hear a rumor that Tewes has plans to return to New York.”

“Yes, I've heard the rumor clackin' about. To catch a frigate to California, start anew there.”