“However can you possibly know that?” asked Griffin, playing into Tewes’s hand.
“The unique nature of the instrument. I’ve studied garroting devices. None that I have seen utilize two strands crossed into a diamond shape of this nature. X’s yes—but using two strands, this is unique to our killer.” “And why the fire?” asked Griffin. “I mean if the victims are already dead . . . why then set the bodies aflame?”
“Usual purpose to set a dead man aflame is to obscure any chance at easy identification. Identification often leads to a killer, but this . . .” began Tewes.
Ransom cut Tewes short, saying, “Seems the fire was clumsily set, mainly to the torso. Features can still be made out, so whoever did this was not interested in throwing us off identification.”
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Tewes nodded. “I am surprised. He is brazen, this killer.
As he was in New York.”
“How can you be sure it’s the same man?” asked Griffin, bursting to hear more.
“He follows the same patterns. In his patterns, his ritual, he leaves a distinctive mark of himself.”
“Dr. Tewes has read some police manuals, I warrant,” said Ransom.
“On that we can surely agree, Inspector Ransom.”
“Perhaps we ought to be looking at anyone recently emigrated from New York to here, Alastair?” Griffin looked to Ransom, but Alastair held Tewes in his steely gray gaze.
“Only if you buy into this snake-oil salesman’s ideas, Griff. Isn’t that right, Dr. Tewes?”
Tewes frowned and said, “Please, just allow me a moment with the body, before it is too late.”
Ransom did not like it when a man failed to answer a direct question. Something a man could not get away with in the U.S. Navy or aboard a whaler—two occupations Alastair had tried on as a young man.
“You may’s well give in to me, Inspector,” Tewes said, getting close enough to breathe on Ransom. “Nathan Kohler is on his way here this minute. He’ll want an accounting if I am not allowed to read the victim’s cranium.” Ransom ran his free hand through his bushy hair. A big man with powerful hands, Alastair went to the corpse. He then placed his cane under his arm to free up both hands. He next grabbed on to the corpse’s blackened, singed hairless head at forehead and base of neck. He easily cranked the cranium from side to side, then front to back. With a sickening squish, the garroted neck released its tenuous hold, the head coming off in Ransom’s now sooty, grimy hands to the chorus of gasping reporters who’d pushed the police line to the top of the stairs. Onlookers, cops, and medical personnel who’d rushed to the murder scene joined in a collective gasp, adding to the groans of seasoned crime reporters.
Photographer Keane flashed his pan and a fiery black CITY FOR RANSOM
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plume appeared with the odor of gunpowder all in a single whoosh, getting a shot of Inspector Ransom holding the dead man’s head in his hands.
“Ransom!” shouted Griff in awe, expecting an oozing gruel to come rushing out of the huge cavity. However, the fire had dehydrated all bodily fluids; nothing but soot lifting and flying off the now completely severed head dirtied Tewes’s white suit. Tewes’s gritted teeth spoke volumes.
Still, the doctor accepted and couched the severed head in the cradle of his arms.
Tewes’s chin quivered like a girl about to burst into tears, his watch fob shivering, as Ransom said, “You wanna read the boy’s skull, Dr. Tewes? Be my guest!”
Under Ransom’s steady glare, the slight doctor refused to show another moment’s emotion, holding his ground, earning more respect from Inspector Ransom than Griffin thought possible.
“I—I’ll take it to the stationmaster’s office,” Tewes shakily said, “place it on a desk . . . for—for stability. You really . . . really should’ve left it intact, Inspector.”
“Yes, find a square foot of privacy. . . . Good idea.” Ransom’s eyes scanned the reporters. “Or have you invited the press as well, Doctor?”
Dr. Tewes stiffly marched off with his dubious prize. Ransom tried to think of something clever to shout after him, but the absolute gall the man had displayed, in a bizarre way, held Ransom in check. “Hmmm, that Tewes fella, Griff, has more backbone than I’d’ve guessed.”
CHAPTER 4
Griffin Drimmer had pushed back the police line to a chorus of questions from reporters, most of them wanting to know who Tewes might be. O’Malley had located a tarp, and crossing himself, the big Irish cop sent the canvas over the now headless, still smoldering corpse. The heavy cloth cascaded over the grim sight and made it disappear, save for the gnarled left hand and foot. Using his police issue boot, O’Malley nudged the errant telltale hand beneath.
“You can’t cover it, O’Malley!” complained Philo. “I’ve still shots to get.”
Ransom by contrast had returned to the body with his pipe lit, puffing calmly, and using his cane, he lifted the tarp for a final look at the dead boy.
“I thought, Rance, what with your having torn off the head . . . the tarp a good idea,” said O’Malley. “Thought Tewes would wet his pants.” O’Malley’s laugh sounded hollow as it resonated off the vaulted ceiling.
“Not so much as a blink outta the little weasel,” replied Ransom, “but his damn teeth chattered a bit.”
Ransom kneeled, holding the tarp up with the scrimshaw tip of his wolf’s-head cane. He stared anew at the once fair-skinned boy’s bony body, imagining a child, hardly past a schoolboy, anxious for the bell to ring. “You did the right CITY FOR RANSOM
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thing, O’Malley. Now keep those reporters at bay so Philo can take his cuts.”
“I mean should Chief of Detectives show up . . . it being unseemly, sir, what with the head off. Not to mention, maybe Keane intends selling that shot of you and Tewes with that ghastly head between yous.” Ransom imagined staring at the scene in the Trib or the Herald. “I’ll see to Philo Keane,” Ransom shot back. “I think I know his game by now.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Still nothing of the young victim found in any nearby trash bin?”
“ ’Fraid not, sir, but our boys’re still on it.”
Ransom knew that a certain amount of deference was paid him simply for being a detective on the force, but men like young, round-faced O’Malley foolishly respected him for his part—so-called—in the Haymarket Riot. “God writes plays for each of us, O’Malley,” he’d drunkenly said to Mike at the bar the night before, “and in my script, he gave me Haymarket to suffer through.” Then he’d shouted to the entire pub, “Who remembers the dead I served with?” No one in the bar could name any of the fallen police at Haymarket.
“They erected a statue to them gallant fellows, do you know?” He lifted his glass. “A toast to ’em now! Erected their statue long ’fore your start of service, lads! Do you know where that statue to the common police officer is, O’Malley?” “No, sir. ’Fraid not, sir.”
“Relocated from its dedication pedestal. Buried amid the city’s sprawling buildings and thriving commerce . . . outside the police station door at the intersection of Jackson and Taylor, where only cops and lowlifes hauled in and out might happen on it. Like a hydrant for dogs to piss on. Like they are ashamed of our boys. From the beginning, top brass, the mayor’s office, didn’t want it on Michigan Avenue, for sure, not in eighty-nine . . . and not now. “Ransom had 30
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heaved a sigh. “Dedicated May fourth in a downpour with a handful of us cripples like me on hand.”
“No one wants reminding of Haymarket, old stick,” said Philo at the end of the bar. “No heroes that day.”