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 now—a closer look for photographs and drawings—but 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”—a 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 in-gratiated himself with the press to gain access to their secrets—how 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.
Ransom saw that some enterprising newsmen had found another way up to the third-floor promenade, and they now looked down over the kill scene. One or two photographs were taken from the odd angle, most likely useless.
O’Malley, in his nervous stutter, stood beside Ransom, sputtering, “In-in-insp-spec-tor . . . I think you’ve gotta deal with D-d-d-doc-doctor Tewes, sir.”
Ransom rubbed his grizzled chin and fought the redness of eyes that’d seen too much horror and too little sleep, eyes now staring through O’Malley and Dr. Tewes, who’d joined them.
“You must take a moment to read this or—” began Tewes, the huge signature ascot bobbing with each speech.
“Dr. Tewes, we have standards that must be rigorously adhered to and scrupulously upheld to conduct a proper investigation, and they don’t include the likes of—”
CITY FOR RANSOM
9
“Sir, I respect the vigor and integrity of your investigative procedure, and your long experience in police work.
However . . .”
“Why must every review end in a however?”
“However, Inspector, every new idea to drag police science into keeping with modern knowledge of—”
Ransom dismissed Tewes—this time with the upraised bone-handled wolf’s-head cane, a gift from his close friend, Philo Keane. He’d carried it since Haymarket, the riot that had ended in the deaths of seven of Ransom’s fellow officers. The cane had become Ransom’s trademark. Stories circulated all about Chicago of how Ransom put down any man who showed the least resistance by pummeling him with that cane. Tewes saw that the filigreed bone handle was cracked down one side.
Ignoring Tewes, Alastair called out to Griffin.
“Where’s Philo?”
“I suspect he’s on his way.”
“Have him take pictures of the blood splatters in the men’s room, the trail to here, and close-ups of that lone handprint. Using the modified identification-records kit, we can attempt to match the palm print to our records of known perverts and felons. How is that for modern, Dr. Tewes?” The ID kit he referred to was a modified French police idea. The French believed a simple record of measurements of body parts kept on arrested felons proved as reliable as any eyewitness report. Many a man had been sent to the gallows via such matchmaking.
Ransom’s examination of a crime scene took longer than any man on the force; he had a reputation for thoroughness but a kind of monkish quality of intense meditation as well.
“Zenlike isn’t he?” Tewes, admiration in his voice, asked Drimmer.
“Not sure what that means,” replied Griffin. “All I know is that Inspector Ransom is the man who modified the modern French Bertillon method of cross-identification cards to include fingerprints on known felons and repeat offenders.”
10
ROBERT W. WALKER
Griffin Drimmer took the now infamous note from Dr.
Tewes to examine it.
“The Chicago Police have put to use the Bertillon system?” asked Dr. Tewes. “I’m impressed.”
“As I said, with modifications.”
“Still, you won’t find this killer in your card files.”
“Now look, Dr. Toes is it? We know what we’re doing here, and we need no additional help, I can assure you.”
“Tewes,” the small man corrected. “James, sir, James Phineas Murdoch Tewes.”
Ransom erupted again, shouting for the missing photographer, startling everyone.
“His bark as bad as his bite?” asked Tewes, forcing a squint from Griffin.
Meanwhile, Ransom watched Chicago Police civilian photographer Philo Keane, and his new assistant, young Waldo Denton, struggle through the crowd of reporters on the stairwell, their hands full with the remarkable scientific tools of their trade. Ransom found the new art and science of photography—an invention catapulted to prominence during the Civil War—a godsend to police investigators. It’d become another new source of applied science in police detection. But the jaded crowd of reporters and curious on-lookers rudely shouted at the inconvenience Philo and his assistant caused.
Keane and assistant together had hold of a long-legged specialized enormous tripod, which—once the carriage was assembled—stood twelve feet high on three giant legs. An entire ladder attached to it led to the top. This monster, once upright, allowed Keane special vantage point overtop the prone corpse, so as to photograph from above—the end result creating an effect like the eye of God looking in on death.
Ransom knew Keane’s work and thought him an artist, and his equipment state-of-the-art, but the giant ladder-equipped tripod was the size and bulk of a giraffe. Still, the results—if Philo were not rushed and left to his own CITY FOR RANSOM
11
devises—often proved remarkable, if not uncanny. Ransom had known grown men on the force who did not care to be alone in a room with Philo’s photos.
When Ransom reviewed such photographic evidence, he sometimes felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in response to the eerie appearance of a strange-looking halo effect around the depicted corpse—as if Philo had somehow caught a fleeting glimpse of the departing souls. Regardless of race, creed, religion, character or gender, Philo’s glow—or Philo’s halo as it had come to be known—was never seen on anyone else’s film plates.
Of course, when called on this phenomena over a pint at Moose Muldoon’s, Philo chalked it up to a reflection—flash of gunpowder in the pan—caught at the moment of squeezing off the shot, “Or just a dirty lens,” he’d add.
Philo exchanged a grunt of salutation with Alastair, a glint of knowledge and bonding in each bloodshot eye. What these two men knew and shared of violent, unholy and unhappy endings culminated in a silent array of artistically rendered death photos. Sober, they seldom spoke beyond the necessary. So, Philo immediately began his normal routine of taking “cuts,” confident that he knew precisely what Ransom must have.
Meanwhile, Ransom saw that Drimmer had gotten himself embroiled in a three-way conversation with O’Malley and Tewes; O’Malley quietly reading Kohler’s letter aloud, his lips moving like a fish gaping for air.
“JesusLordGodAlmighty . . . if you want something done right . . .” Ransom muttered.
“Gotta do it yourself,” replied the sloppily dressed police photographer. “I believe in old adages.”
“Too bad you don’t believe in lye soap.”
“Unless I can afford Field’s best perfume, I’ll keep me stench.” Philo’s assistant stifled a laugh, while Philo laughed from the gut. “You’re one to talk, old man.”
“I want plenty of close-ups of the handprint to the side, Philo—see, right here?”
12
ROBERT W. WALKER
“Yah, yah, why’re you badgering today . . . why? I’m way ahead of you.”