“Kohler . . . he insisted. Special invite.”
Carmichael, a cagey, crusty fifty-year-old, hard-drinking, hard-working reporter of Irish and English descent allowed nothing past him. “I loved your handing Tewes the head of John-the-Doe out there—only the platter was missing.” “Tewes had it coming, so to speak.”
“You do make my life interesting, Rance.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t for your benefit or the Herald’s, and before you print a word of what you’ve seen, I wanna sit down with you, understood?”
“I am a little short on my rent this month.”
The phrenologist gasped twice in quick succession as if an electric shock had gone through him. The hefty and misshapen, bearded stationmaster, a man named Manfred Parthipans, stood wide-eyed, lashes atwitter in an oversized face, his mouth agape. Ransom imagined him soon at the nearest pub relating all he’d witnessed today. “At least the boy was thinking pleasant thoughts at the end,” Manfred opined.
“Hence the smile,” said Kohler, faking a watery eye.
Ransom could not let it pass. “The constricted smile re
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sults from torched muscle—as a good autopsiest will tell you, Nathan.”
“You can as well wait outside, Alastair,” replied Kohler.
Tewes quickly added, “The boy let go of this earthly coil believing himself reunited with loved ones on the other side.”
“I’m glad you think so, Dr. Tewes,” piped in the cynical and equally skeptical Carmichael. “Reunited now in the ce-lestial realms.”
“That is correct.”
“And precisely what part of his skull told you this, Doctor?” asked Ransom.
“I see through touch, Mr. Carmichael, Inspector Ransom.”
Tewes addressed the skeptics without looking away from the black orbs that’d once been two distinct human eyes. “I saw what was in his heart moments before death.”
Carmichael vigorously pursued. “And just what sort of arrangement do you have with Chief Kohler’s CPD?”
“I hired Dr. Tewes for his special talents, Mr. Carmichael!”
announced Kohler. “As Ransom has brought me no results!”
Tewes had gone back to reading the severed head.
Ransom frowned and thought Tewes a wily con artist indeed—smart. Smart enough to know not to lock verbal horns with Carmichael. Ransom too thought of the corruption in the department, and the sleaze at all levels of city government—politics these days, synonymous with corruption—inviting in every sort of hoax and con game and pork barrel, and hair-brained scheme imaginable, and some not so imaginable like this. He thought of the payoffs he’d himself made over the years to people like Carmichael to keep them in line, and he thought of the bribes he’d himself pocketed over the years—the way of this place called Chicago by the indigenous Indian tribes like the Sauk, the Pottawatomie, and the Blackhawk, all of whom referred to the immense wild onion fields surrounding Fort Dearborn as Chicago—“land of mighty stench.” The stench of wild 50
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onion had been replaced by the stench of slaughterhouses and politics, so that Chicago remained apropos.
Certainly, the story of any city’s development was, after all, a story of crime and corruption, but somehow Chicago had been born in a greater cesspool of greed and on a grander scale of graft than any other before or since. Perhaps it was due to having been reborn in fire in seventy-two in the thick of the Guilded Age.
Still, in all his years in the mud hole, Ransom hadn’t a dime to show for it. He had always meant to rectify this with some large-scale land scheme or venture of his own, but nothing of this nature had ever come about.
Ransom’s thoughts drifted back now to the victim, and how many other ways the foolishly naive and innocent were routinely plucked in Chicago.
Stationmaster Parthipans said, “Train schedules might indicate when the young man got off an inbound train, or if he were boarding an outgoing train, if we had a name.”
“His name is . . . was Cliffton . . . Cliffton Purvis of Davenport, Iowa . . .” said Tewes.
Griffin had stepped into the office at this moment, blinking dumbly, astonished at this assertion. In fact, the room erupted with a collective groan of wonder.
Ransom immediately challenged with, “And just how would you know that?” His mind raced with possible explanations: Tewes must have previous knowledge—as the features were recognizable through the soot and burned portions of flesh, along with portions of clothing, or perhaps some item on the body? Certainly, the dead boy’s head hadn’t imparted a name!
Tewes lifted his smut-covered white gloves and spread-eagled his fingers. “Phrenology told me so.”
“Yeah, and I believe in the tooth fairy.”
Meanwhile, Parthipans had rushed to his records and had begun flipping through ticket stubs. “Sorry, Dr. Tewes.
There’s no Purvis purchasing a ticket either inbound or out-bound according to records.”
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“He must’ve purchased a roundtrip far in advance. Try earlier dates.”
“I’ll give you this much, Dr. Tewes,” began Ransom. “In life, the victim might’ve looked like a farm boy from Davenport . . .”
Carmichael erupted in laughter. This was followed by an epidemic of laughter all round the room, Parthipans and Griffin joining in.
Tewes managed to hold his head high, but his face flushed red. Parthipans then came around from behind his cage. No longer laughing, the burly round man quietly extended a file card to Kohler. “Hold on, sirs, l-l-look at this.” Kohler’s eyes lit up as he read the card: Cliffton Purvis, depart Homerville,
Iowa,
May 6th, destination Chicago.
Return date open.
“Is it . . . is it him?” asked Parthipans. “Homerville is neighbors to Davenport.”
“Coincidence, no doubt,” Kohler said, amazed at the information. “Get on your telegraph and contact Homerville.
Find out if this fellow Purvis ever arrived.”
Carmichael and Griffin surveyed the card after Ransom.
All three men looked at Tewes as if he were the killer.
“What?” asked Tewes.
Ransom bit his pipe hard and squinted.
The other men continued to stare at Tewes.
Tewes dismissed them all, going back to holding gloved hands within a hair’s breadth of the fried cranium. But in a moment, he tore the gloves off and used his bare hands in a show of gaining more information.
For the first time, Ransom noticed how soft and feminine Tewes’s hands were. That’s what it is about this man who is so . . . different. He’s bloody effeminate.
“Registered student . . . university . . .” began Tewes, os
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ROBERT W. WALKER
tensibly reading the head. “No, no! Visiting. Signed on . . .
late summer term . . . Northwestern University . . . months ago. Returned for President’s tea.”
“This is getting us somewhere!” exclaimed Kohler.
Tewes continued. “Stopped to take in the fair . . . lost money . . . barkers and flimflam men . . . gaming . . . left him with only his ticket home. Cashed it in, but too late to get a cab back to the dorm. Fell asleep here. Woke up . . .