Likely means money, well-to-do family, I fear and so—”
“Yes, has his own carriage and driver.” Ransom brightened. “They theorized old Jack the Ripper did it that way.”
“Blends.”
“And is well versed on our city terrain.”
“He’s cunning and quite possibly enjoys working with his hands. Perhaps likes to make things . . . as with his garrote.
It is unique to him. He loves his weapon. It grants him power.”
“Ahhh . . . but it’s not so unique after all.” Ransom held up the same garrote—crisscrossed with a diamond center.
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“There is then something unique about this man’s relationship with the weapon, I tell you. It’s that twisted.”
“All right, perhaps he talks to it. I won’t argue the point.”
“And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“While he may be as well off as Mr. Field himself, he is small in stature.”
“How can you possibly know his stature, Doctor?”
“The angle of the garrote—the force—pulling downward.
Polly was as tall as you, yet—”
“Yes, he’d pulled downward even on Purvis. It appears the killer is rather short. Clever of you to’ve noticed, and right.”
“I find the so-called investigation full of holes.”
“Ahhh . . . you would. Look, we’ll soon have a break in the case. I get reports daily from Dot’n’Carry.”
“Dot and who?”
“My street snitch. My most reliable spy. If ever I write my memoir, my homeless friend will have to be acknowledged.
The poor wretched gimp.”
“Gimp?”
“He has been with you for days, Doctor, so unobtrusive you’ve not noticed. Blends as you put it.”
Jane did a 360-degree turn, taking in everyone here and on the street through the window where Chicago’s teeming life passed by. Commerce continued unabated. Vendors rolled portable carts, selling anything imaginable. A number of people with canes limped by, along with black hansom cabs rolling in and out of the window frame.
The fiddler in the corner had stopped to swill his ale, halving the glass before starting up a lively rendition of “Comin’
Through the Rye.” The tune livened up the patrons all round, and even Ransom’s toe began to tap, although he seemed unaware of this, as his thoughts remained on the killings, how the only witness they had said the killer was whistling this same popular tune.
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ROBERT W. WALKER
Dr. Tewes was not unaware of Ransom’s toe-tapping, as he was tapping on Tewes’s shoe—a man’s size seven, stuffed at the toes. A man with a harmonica joined in with the fiddler. Patrons began to clap as if clawing their way from a dull hell.
Young Waldo Denton entered and ordered up a bucket of beer. “Fetchin’ for Philo, no doubt,” said Ransom to Tewes.
Waldo gave a glance in Ransom’s direction and nodded at him and Tewes, grinned before rushing out again, the bucket of beer slopping along his pants leg. “Boy acts as if Philo might beat him if he dallies.” Ransom then looked with a mix of disdain and admiration at those having fun.
“Garroting’s a cowardly method of dispatching someone, catching ’im from behind, not facing your victim, eye to eye,” he began. “And yet twice now he’s killed victims before a mirror.”
“If you’re right . . . he likes to watch ’em die—”
“And to see himself in the act.”
“Behavior says something about who he is,” Jane explained.
“I believe a lot of what you say about the makeup of this monster is well . . . useful information.”
“Almost sounded like a compliment in there somewhere.
Now . . . with whom do I speak about recompense?”
“Recompense?”
“Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard the word before. I expect pay as an independent consultant to you, Inspector.”
“Aha . . . like any other leech on the Chicago payroll.”
“Have you seen the cost of bread lately? Been to the fair?”
“I’ve no time for such trivialities.”
“Perhaps had you taken time . . .”
“Go on.”
“. . . you’d’ve been on that wheel in the sky with Merielle last night instead of pumping me for information.”
“Damn your hide, Doctor! What about your daughter, Gabrielle? Have you given a moment’s thought to the possibility that she, rather than Purvis, could’ve been killed that night they were at the fair?”
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“It has indeed kept me awake nights.”
“Perhaps had you bothered taking Gabby to the fair, she’d not’ve been with Purvis that night! And what about your sister, the one you treat like a housemaid?”
“Leave Jane out of this, and Gabby as well. They’re none of your affair.” Jane sensed her ruse was finally up with him, but she could not be certain. She held her silence. She wanted so much to reveal her true self to Alastair, as she had Dr. Fenger, before he read about it in one of Chicago’s twenty-six newspapers, or heard it from Fenger, or got it between the eyes from Kohler, or his snitch!
As if taking up a challenge, Ransom boldly replied, “I just may call on your sister, Dr. Tewes.”
“What?” Tewes was clearly stunned by this.
“She’s new to the city. She must be curious about the fair.”
“Is this some sort of threat, Alastair?”
“Threat?”
“Worm information out of my sister to get—”
“I’m merely wondering if she’s curious about the wheel, the fair, the pavilions?”
“Of course she is but—”
“But you’ve had no time to show Jane the city or the fair?”
“Yes . . . I mean, no, but—”
“Someone should.”
“She is seeing a fellow who intends just that,” Jane lied.
“Ahhh . . . that’s good.”
“I will take my leave of you now, sir,” said a more composed Dr. Tewes.
Ransom watched the funny little doctor saunter from the tavern as if a sudden fear had overtaken him.
CHAPTER 18
His father’s name was Campaneua, his mother Jarno, and together they straddled the earth, wreaking havoc in both Europe and America as anarchists. Mother had kept a scrapbook, clippings on train derailments, bombings, bank robberies, and even assassinations they’d carried out. They’d been lovers in a war against established government, communists of a sort, and they had a son born of their union, but wedlock in their estimation amounted to just another social contract meant to make sheep of people, right alongside religion and centralized government. Just another fabrication, a contract with myth—another tool of the enemy. They purposefully abstained from marriage as just another form of mind-slavery, a ritualized cultural iconoclastic opiate. As such, marriage looked, felt, tasted, sounded, and smelled like just another part of the cultural bag of tricks undermining true opinion and intellect. A conspiracy to keep the common man in place, from the Bible to the U.S. Constitution—all designed to keep a harmonious peace among the sheep.
His anarchist parents had named him Roberre Jarno-Campaneua the Second, and his mother had brought him up to believe in himself entirely and in the causes of anarchy.
But anarchy appeared on the wane, and he could find no compatriots this side of the ocean—someone not brain
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washed in the mores and values of capitalism, someone who might appreciate him—men willing to die for the cause, as his father had seven years ago at the hands of one small-minded, now crippled police detective here in Chicago. Another killer like himself—one he hated with all the venom inside him—Alastair Ransom.