“Really?”
“My intellect is just a tool, Nathan.”
“Of course, to make sense of experience.”
She agreed, “All things large and small, corporeal and spectral.”
“Intellect helps us communicate.”
“But my intellect, much as it is my ‘cover,’ isn’t me. So don’t put too much faith in its always being there for you to manipulate.”
He was the picture of perplexity now.
“I don’t live in my intellect. I live elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?”
“Where the heart lives.” Her gaze remained on the ashes.
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“And where is that?” He brushed her hand with his, making another of his crude, awkward passes.
“A place few get to be part of or see, a place that some—like you, Nathan—don’t even know exist.”
“Annnd . . . you’re saying this is a bad thing?”
“I’ve been induced to live outside my feelings in this matter, induced by people like you and circumstances.”
“Get control of yourself, Jane! There’re reporters all around here. At least pretend interest in the current problem we face, and in what I’m saying.”
“Feelings—source of my strength, why people listen to me, trust my deepest felt senses. My father, God rest him, he used to tell people—”
“Perhaps you should be having this conversation with your daughter, Dr. Tewes?”
“Yes, for once Nathan, you’re correct. While I’m at it, I’ll tell her everything. That way no one the likes of you can harm her with your dirty reports.”
“Look here,” he began, snatching at her arm.
“Tewes” pulled away from him, making curious reporters even more curious. She stormed off, wondering where Ransom was at this moment, knowing how hurt he must be, wondering if there wasn’t some way to help him.
CHAPTER 17
The following day at the cold site of the fire . . .
Some anonymous benefactor had paid his bail, but for now Ransom’s concern rested on an enormous egg protruding from the back of his head where that damn fool Muldoon had struck him, sending him into a blinding black light. He gave a fleeting thought to having to face Judge Grimes for misbehaving on a Sunday. Jacob Grimes brooked no chicanery but his own.
As for now, Ransom made a beeline for Cook County morgue and Dr. Christian Fenger. When Fenger heard he was outside his autopsy room, he sent assistants to keep him out.
They did so and forcefully, but Ransom hadn’t the heart to put up much of a fight. Aside from his head killing him, and the back pain from lying so long on a stone cell floor, he felt like one of those bulls in the arena, stabbed full with swords, knives, and lances, bleeding from multiple wounds. Whoever this madman running about the city was, he’d brought police to a standstill, and Alastair Ransom to his knees.
When Fenger came out, his lab coat discolored not with the hues of a blood rainbow but rather soot of Polly’s remains, he asked, “What can I do for you, Alastair? Why’re you here?”
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“Her ring.”
“What ring?”
“One I gave her. I want it.”
“Ring? There was no ring . . . no jewelry whatsoever.”
“Thanks to your men, no doubt.”
“I hate to think—”
“Give those ghouls a clear message: If I don’t have her ring, they’re going to lose something of far more—”
“Look here, Alastair, this is not the wild prairie town of your youth! And you’re not a law unto yourself. If I find Shanks or Gwinn’ve engaged in theft of a body then, by God, they’ll be arrested!”
“I want to hear punished, fired.”
“Any inquiry will follow a civilized course.”
“Civilized course?” Ransom laughed.
“You don’t know that they did this. The killer may’ve taken the ring. Canvass the pawn shops.”
“Why . . . why her, Christian? Just a sweet kid beneath it all . . . for what purpose?”
“Perhaps Tewes can profess to understand the mind of a killer,” said Christian, “but I’ll not attempt it.”
“You talk to Shanks and Gwinn.”
“I personally trained those two, and they know better, Ransom.”
“Human nature being what it is . . . sometimes no amount of training’s going to overcome a theft of opportunity.”
“You’re upset, favoring your head. Let’s have a look.”
Ransom submitted to his impromptu examination.
“You’ve a considerable lump back here.”
“Astute of you, Doctor.”
“God, you can be a surly bastard.”
“I’ve gotta run. Give you the day to locate that ring. I know your men have it.”
“Go home. Rest, and Alastair, I’m truly sorry about your Merielle, and given the circumstances, I’m going to overlook it today, but don’t ever come back to my hospital making threats, or again stretch our friendship to its bounds.”
CITY FOR RANSOM
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“What, no balm for my head?”
“Ground aspirin in water three times a day for the pain.
Nothing else I can do. If you want any further help with it, go to Tewes.”
“Tewes really?”
“Submit to Tewes.”
“Submit?”
“Under his hands, you just might get some relief for that lump, and more importantly, you may get some long-term help with your temper and your suspicious nature and those recurrent headaches.”
“I am gone. Goodbye.”
Fenger called after his retreating figure, “Home, rest, Alastair!” Under his breath, he cursed Shanks and Gwinn, the two who’d transported Merielle’s remains. “Wouldn’t put it past the two of ’em to pawn items from a cadaver.
Scavengers . . . first come, first served.” Fenger went in search of Shanks and Gwinn.
Ransom had no intention of going home, despite the pain in his head, shoulders, and back. He’d caught a cab for the scene of the crime. The ride across the city on a crisp, clear morning, a hint of promise in the air, a hint of the goodness of life just out of reach, and Alastair cursed the illusion—this intangible called happiness. How many years now had he cajoled himself with jokes about it, comforted himself with rationalizations about it. Happiness for him remained a kind of cloud toward which he aspired, but once inside, the thing dissipated. Some old Gypsy woman at the fair would likely tell him he caused his own bad luck, his own suffering, and maybe she’d be right.
Ransom now paid the driver through the slot and painfully climbed from the carriage. He stood before the stark remains of the old tavern and apartment house, made starker by the sunlight beating down on smoldering blackened beams still crackling with heat.
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He went into it, like walking into a grim Rembrandt, filled with odd light and an enormous sadness. Wandering about the ashes, kicking about the debris field for the ring that Fenger said wasn’t on the body, he lamented the loss. It’d been a special gift, an heirloom, once his mother’s. He knew Shanks and Gwinn’s police records. A couple in more ways than he cared to give thought to; their in-tandem, small-time larceny had landed them in jail on frequent occasions. Dr.
Fenger had come to the jail, bailed them out, insisted on their good behavior, and gave the miscreants employment.
They took to the work of coroner’s men like rats to cheese, and on the side, they remained larcenous. Only now, their victims couldn’t report them. And the two deemed anything left on the body, once they got hold of it, fair game, a tip from the dead. Until now, Ransom had cared little about such petty theft. But this was personal.