City for Ransom (9 page)

And to hell with that creepy little bastard Tewes
, he thought, his hatred of the man rising with his passion. He said aloud as she came in multiple orgasms, “Promise you'll never see that quack again, Polly baby. And give me the name of the blackheart who hurt you! Now or else I will never stop this!” He taunted her with each thrust. “Tell me…tell me now…now…now…now!”

“Damn fine…
in-ter-ro-ga-t
ion tech-technique! Ran…som…style, damn! Said you'd…get it outta…out of me…one way…or another…”

In a darkened Chicago flophouse, same time

In the waking vision, the killer sees the dead
unborn eyes alight with a strange preternatural recognition of who has killed him. The unborn one stares into his soul from somewhere the other side of Styx.

The killer sits up, sweating in the dark, a storm of hatred raging inside. He stares at the black eyes in the mirror. “Have a tumbler of that elixer that Dr. Tewes sold you,” the voice in his brain tells him. He'd purchased the concoction a week ago from the little doctor of phrenology and magnetic healing. He'd wondered now for hours about Dr. Tewes's having shown up at the train station, wondered at his taking the victim's head off to the stationmaster's office and doing a mystical
reading
of it. Ransom amused him, while Tewes frightened him.

How much did Tewes know of him and his private business?

“God blind me! 'Twas a regular cockfight between the big inspector and the little dandy!”

But what of this strange new science—phrenology? What had Tewes learned from the dead cranium? Did he cross a line into the spectral world, or was he a consummate con
artist? But suppose…just suppose the dead man had revealed something to Dr. James Phineas Tewes? What then?

 

Dr.
James Phineas
Tewes knew that one day the mask must go to reveal
Dr. Jane Francis-Tewes
beneath, so that she could come forward, if for no other than for herself and for Gabby. The balancing act, always difficult for her, was, she believed, even harder for her daughter, Gabrielle, conceived with her French lover and dead common law husband, the real Dr. Tewes. The real Tewes had been her first major heartbreak; finding herself pregnant and alone in a foreign country had been her second. Returning to America as a surgeon unable to work due to her gender, proved Jane's third major disappointment.

All the same, she refused to cling to remorse or regrets. Jane Francis-Tewes instinctively knew that an out-of-wedlock pregnancy could end her professional career faster than any preconceived notions of the American public about women practicing medicine. So James Tewes had become Jane Francis-Tewes's cover, and the phrenological exam and diagnosis his/her unorthodox answer to creating a clientele in her medical practice—a practice that failed when she'd attempted to set up shop in New York, then Philadelphia, then Indianapolis as herself.

Unable to feed Gabby and finally tiring of the world's idiocy, she traded for a world she would mold instead. Thus, she began dressing as a male doctor of magnetic medicine and phrenology. As a result, her practice here flourished.

On arriving here, as Gabby turned eleven, the widower physician, now “James Phineas Tewes” had gotten himself a bank loan! Something Dr. Jane had never accomplished.

And so it went.

The longer she was Dr. James Phineas Tewes, the better their lives, and the more independent she and Gabby were. Clients here in Chicago, having come with
his
fliers in hand,
flocked to Tewes's promises of relief from all manner of mental and nervous disorder.

And in fact, Dr. Tewes—Jane and James working in tandem—did indeed do good and not harm as people like Inspector Ransom believed. So what if the patient believed J. Phineas's hands those of a man touched by God, that his fingertips conveyed some sort of magic that could actually read mental states from mere touch alone?

The plight of women in general and female doctors in particular hadn't much changed even now in 1893—seven years before century's end. They still hadn't the vote, nor the confidence of the medical community men that they were worthy of professional training. The man's world within the man's world was the male bastion of medicine and surgery.

Her father had been the exception to the rule, encouraging her curious spirit, despite the medical establishment's barriers. To make a living as a female surgeon in 1893 proved difficult to impossible. The few women Jane knew who actually got work only did so as doctor's assistants or midwives, and even these only in the loneliest outposts of the West where anyone knowing
anything
about medicine was prized.

Now Jane, acting as Dr. James Tewes, had enrolled her child at Northwestern University Medical, and in the meantime, Gabby was an indispensable secretary and accountant. For long years now Gabby had gone through stages: not understanding to enjoying the charade to, at age eighteen, questioning her mother's actions on grounds of ethics.

They'd arrived in Chicago at the outbreak of Haymarket, when the papers were filled with those arrested and on trial for killing seven policemen. Jane paid little heed to the papers then, set on her new stratagem and determined on success. A lot of fliers had been printed and circulated since 1886, but her patience had paid off.

She'd had a patient today under her touch who'd reminded her how fragile was her ruse. A strange young fellow she'd seen at the train station, assisting the photographer. Denton was his name and he'd commented how lithe and
sweet the doctor's fingers had felt over his scalp. He'd almost fallen asleep in the chair as Jane probed the calming centers just behind each ear where a bit of pressure and rhythmic action could put a grown man to sleep. She'd curtailed the diagnosis and provided him with some particulars of his condition—after gleaning some anecdotal information about what precisely had been troubling him, where his aches and pains lie, and how long he'd been suffering. Denton happily allowed Tewes to place “his” hand on the area of his abdomen where the real complaint might be diagnosed.

Before it was over, Dr. Tewes told Denton, “Sir, your mental malaise has a quite physical and banal cause—”

“Really?”

“A hernia from lifting that huge tripod.”

“What do you propose?”

“Find other work.”

“But I wish to learn photography from the best.”

“I can give you an elixir for the pulled muscle, but you really must see a surgeon like Dr. Fenger.”

“A surgeon! But I fear going under the knife.”

“It is a simple procedure.” She could perform the surgery herself, but to do so would end her ruse as a man. Any new surgeon coming to Chicago was instantly spotlighted by the medical establishment, his credentials gruelingly questioned. And not without good reason. Many a cruel hoax was perpetrated in the name of surgery these days.

She now sat at her elaborate makeup mirror. The bright lights were the same as those any actress required for makeup. In a sense, she'd become the consummate actress. She began wiping away the makeup. Gabby would soon be home, and office hours were over. She gave a moment's feeling of pride in Gabby. The promise of children, to see one's love come radiant, full-bloom, and for her to become Jane's closest, dearest friend…all a blessing.
My greatest accomplishment
, she thought. Gabby, along with her professional success, pleased her greatly.

This new direction Jane'd taken—getting work in police
circles as some sort of mentalist—this her father would condemn completely, wholly, royally as far too risky and nervy, a fool's show of bravado.
How ultimate was this,
she silently asked herself of the subject…
to step into the world of police detection in this guise and walk out with not a one of them recognizing a ruse?
How wicked to pull it off before the disturbed eyes of Inspector Ransom, and he once a childhood sweetheart? They had gone to the same schools together in those far ago early years of their lives in the Prairie City.

As a child, she'd loved him unreservedly. But what'd he become? Jane knew well that reputation, however blown out of proportion, was based on a core reality. Perhaps he didn't beat people he arrested with quite the gusto or vigor depicted in the lurid street tales, but he did engender fear in all who thought Ransom interested in talking to them. He seemed also desperately lonely—hence Polly-Merielle, who'd confided far more in Dr. Tewes than Jane'd wished. Polly, addicted to a need deeply imbedded, had in fact begun a heavy petting session with Dr. Tewes, who blocked her overtures and had insisted on a purely professional relationship. Taken aback, Polly actually showed signs of rehabilitation after all sexual advances had been refused.

Jane now stepped to her bed and pulled forth a black valise, one that'd been her father's. She spread out the tools of her buried trade—most of her father's surgical instruments. She ritualistically handled each surgical instrument in turn. She did so swearing to her image in the mirror, “One day…one day I'll again hang out a shingle as Dr. Jane Francis—Surgeon.” Some day when Chicago—
and the rest of the world
—might accept a female surgeon without reservation. In the meantime, poor Gabby'd had to memorize a pack of lies associated with being the daughter of Dr. Tewes as Dr. Tewes's “wife” had died giving birth to Gabrielle. It proved increasingly maddening for the child.

Perhaps we should've stayed in Paris
was a phrase that'd become a mantra. So often did she say this to Gabby as a
child that Gabby had made up a lyrical song around the phrase.
Perhaps…oh, perhaps…we Pariii…we Pariii
. Perhaps.

For now, she remained the mysterious Doctor Tewes. “What would Father say about all this waste of talent?” she asked the empty room.

She heard his resonant bass voice now saying, “Take heart, Jane.”

Her father'd had to deal with his own generation and problems endemic to it…or rather
epidemic
to it. Ailments like malaria, typhoid fever, and digestive malaise when Chicago had been Fort Dearborn. The military base, finally unnecessary, evacuated in 1836, four years after the Black Hawk War but not the threat of disease. And so Dr. William Francis stayed on and started a private practice. How crude medicine and surgery were then. The diseases that laid men low in those days—all across the continent—such as pneumonia and “graveyard” malarial fevers, sometimes called miasmatic fevers wiped out 80 percent of one Illinois county in the 1820s. Attacks from these fever diseases continued almost unabated for decades after. Her father had once told her that in each case where a doctor could not determine the cause of the disease, he invoked the word
malaise.

In Chicago, cholera and small pox inspired the greatest dread. Even rumor of such pestilence roused officials to pay heed to her father and other medical men to make sanitary reforms, appropriate money for the neglected Board of Health, and to enact laws designed to reduce the incidence of fever diseases. No one else in the country believed Chicago a safe place for his wallet, but worse yet, no one on the continent believed it a place for one's good health. No sewage system worthy of the name existed before 1851. Garbage and refuse continued to be tossed willy-nilly into the Chicago River or allowed to accumulate in filthy alleyways. Drinking water came either from shallow wells or from the lakeshore. Her father had himself succumbed to pneumonia during a ravaging epidemic.

Jane had grown up self-reliant, as her mother had died of a brain tumor when Jane was only six, and her father, William Francis, left Chicago for Europe in a fit of self-doubt, wishing to learn far more. Death and pestilence in Chicago had frustrated all his efforts. When he returned, Jane, living with her aunt, was four years older. By now she'd been estranged from her father, which suited his needs, as he was a workaholic and as she was a painful reminder of Charlotte, her mother.

William had returned with plans for a serviceable system of sewers to rid Chicago of pestilence. He'd studied with Dr. Xavier Bichat, the man who'd demonstrated that tissues and not organs were the seat of disease. A decisive step in the localized pathology movement. The concept of disease invading the solid parts of the body implied a revolution in medical theory and practice. But even now, 1893, many a medical professor clung to the mad notion that blood was the carrier as well as the starting point of disease—thus a lot of old fools calling themselves doctors still insisted on leeches and bleeding a patient to “remove bad blood.”

When Jane had gone through medical school, she'd been taught that to combat disease, she must “treat the blood” either withdrawing it through venesection, or by purifying the “life's blood” with medicine.

Thanks to the new pathology, what men like Bichat and her father insisted upon challenged this classical, centuries-upon-centuries held notion. The French medical community also began the meaningful application of statistical techniques to clinical data. The value of postmortem records, vital statistical studies, and using clinical tests in the diagnosis of illness had been embraced by forward-thinking men and women. Her father's return to Chicago to reacquaint himself with Jane was also to
acquaint
the established medical community with Bichat's methods. With the acceptance of the localized concept of disease, and with modern surgery just coming into being in the second half of the century, surgeons began doing far more than setting fractures, treating
flesh wounds, abscesses, bladder stones, and hernias, as the idea of surgery as a last resort faded.

As far as Jane Francis-Tewes was concerned, this new belief in Bichat's localized pathology of disease had, even more than the discovery of anesthesia, marked the turning point of modern surgery. It initiated the kind of surgery the now famous Dr. Christian Fenger performed daily at Cook County Hospital, where he also took charge of the dissection of the murdered and the victims of questionable deaths for the CPD as chief coroner. Working through Kohler, Jane as Tewes, had made it her business to get something on Dr. Fenger, to blackmail him, so as to get a close look at the reports on the first two victims and a firsthand look at the next victim—who happened to be the Purvis boy.

She felt badly at having gotten Fenger's cooperation in the manner she had. He'd come to see Dr. Tewes on Nathan Kohler's urging, but even more out of desperation. He'd come with a brain full of racing circuitry and stress and recurrent headache and depression, and Dr. Tewes being who
he
is, could not be expected to disregard an opportunity to leverage a small favor from the infamous Dr. Fenger. One word of Fenger's level of intense mental stress, and Cook County Hospital would put him out to pasture, as might the CPD.