“. . . never giving, never offering a hand, or to buy a cup of coffee, to ask after my day, my family’s health, my take on things, life . . .”
“And you think this is the time?”
Griffin marched off with Philo’s camera, shouting, “Denton! Come with me!”
Ransom realized that the young detective was right about 226
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his having made little time for him, and that he should treat Griffin with more deference and respect. Worrisome. But he hadn’t time at the moment. He had enough on his plate.
Gotta worry about Philo now, he thought, seeing young Denton salivating over the damned new camera handed him.
“Gawd . . . its morocco leather,” Waldo wailed.
CHAPTER 20
Ransom found a park bench where he’d collapsed, fully expecting Nathan Kohler to join him, and he expected a fight, at least an argument. He expected Kohler to tell him that an infusion of fresh perspective was sorely needed as he, Ransom, had gotten not a grain closer.
So when he sensed someone drop onto the bench beside him, he didn’t look up until he heard the irritating voice of Dr. Tewes. “I called Dr. Fenger . . . pleaded with him to come to the scene . . . to examine the bodies immediately, but I fear, he’s exhausted and burnt out on murder.” “Dr. Tewes . . . how good of you to come.” Ransom’s sar-casm sounded harsher than he’d meant.
“Take out all your frustration on me . . . if it gets you onto what you do best.”
“Drinking.”
“No, tracking . . . focus on your gift for the hunt, and trust your instincts.”
“Until recently, that is how I managed, but lately . . . the headaches have become nonstop, the worse since Muldoon’s sap.”
Tewes ran a hand through Ransom’s hair until he found the knot.
“Ouch! Damn!”
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“You’re not kidding. No wonder you’ve a headache.”
“Reduce another man to tears.” Ransom gave in to Tewes’s fingers—both hands now caressing his cranium. Tewes’s touch felt light, his hands caring. Alastair gave in further, submitting, too tired to protest. Strangely, he didn’t wish it to end.
“I could help you.” Ransom only half heard as Tewes continued a light massage, careful not to strike the palpitating bulge. “Left you unconscious. Hope they throw the book at Muldoon.” “For striking down a cop?”
“You’re the most cynical man I’ve ever met.”
“Cynical or realistic?”
“Do you think everyone is out to get you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I’m not your enemy, Inspector.”
“No, you’re only spyin’ for Nathan Kohler?”
“I . . . I’ve read your record. You’re a fine detective.”
“What’ve you got on Kohler?”
“I’ll not say.”
“He expects you to muck up my case.”
“There is that, yes. But Alastair, I’ve not sold you out.”
“How heartening. You only spy for him; you don’t tell him anything.”
“The other day, at the fire scene, I told him I was done with collusion.”
“But you’re here now.”
“I only want to help.”
“To help me?” He began laughing. “Like at the train station?”
“Just catch this bastard before his insanity touches us all in ways unimaginable.”
“He seems bent on . . . on destroying me . . .”
“Question is,” said Nathan Kohler, standing over them now, “who’s next?”
“He’s going for larger game,” said Ransom. “His pattern has been to go up the social scale.”
“We should build a record, Alastair,” said Tewes. “Should CITY FOR RANSOM
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we ever have this monster in custody . . . well, it could act in our favor.”
“Act as a kind of Bertillon measurement of the killer’s mind, you think?” he asked Tewes. “And I ’spose you’d like to run hands over this maniac’s head?”
“Doing so with enough such madmen, who knows, perhaps over time, if diligent records are kept, similarities in the bone structure, or areas of abnormality in the brain—areas of weak magnetism, for instance—” Jane realized that both men only stared. “But who can say without long-term study?” “This is why we at top asked Dr. Tewes’s assistance, Alastair,” Nathan said. “To give our investigation a rigorous scientific, ahhh . . . appearance.”
“I see . . . how blind I’ve been.” Ransom grimaced.
“It could have a bearing on the Lombroso controversy, my study,” she added.
“Really? And another reputation made!”
“Look, Detective, every brain is as different as the fingerprint.”
“It’s a proven fact,” added Kohler.
She went on. “In cases such as this, with no usable print or a match, today you only have Bertillon and Lombroso, but perhaps one day men like you— hunters—will routinely turn to men like me— scientists—for answers.” “Glad you’re concerned with the future, Dr. Tewes,” said Kohler.
“Yeah,” added Ransom, “but as for me, I have to deal with the here and now, and while I find the doctor’s unusual criminal recording interesting, for now I’d best get back to my duties.”
He left Kohler and Tewes to again plot their separate moves in all this. As he turned his back on the odd couple, he felt a definite knife twisting about his spine. Kohler was ever up to no good, and he’d love nothing better than to embarrass Ransom, bring him down, and ultimately put him out to pasture.
In fact, he’d been headhunting Ransom for six years now.
And to this end, he’d enlisted Tewes’s questionable help.
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Ransom also feared that Griffin’d been recruited as well.
It’s a minefield, he thought when he saw that Dr. Christian Fenger had not only arrived but was looking over the murders. It’d become rare—Fenger out of his labs, on scene.
The man had such complete empathy with murdered souls that scenes like this literally hurt him to the quick.
“What of my ring?” Ransom asked him.
“I can assure you, Ransom, my men’re innocent. I skew-ered them, and threatened them.”
“And you’re convinced?”
“They haven’t the ring.”
“And their feelings hurt, I’m sure.” If this were true, then the monster has Merielle’s ring. “I’d hoped to bury her with it.”
“At heart the romantic, heh?” Fenger sadly returned to the corpses and severed heads. “The man was not torched, only the woman. Should we read any significance into that?”
“Trelaine’s body fell straightway into the water, his head into the second boat.”
“Heard you did a reenactment. Good a theory as any.”
“The killer would’ve been busy with the woman,” Ransom added, “no doubt shrieking, but strangely, no one heard screams.”
“She might shriek inside her head, but I have it on reliable authority that Chelsey Mandor is—was a mute.”
“A mute? Damn that Philo. Said they’d talked all night.”
“You’ve never spoken all night without a word?” asked Tewes, joining them. “There’re many ways to ‘talk.’ ”
“Damn that Philo. A mute . . . another handicapped woman,” complained Ransom.
“Says as much about Philo as it does about the women who’re attracted to him,” added Fenger.
“Or to his camera,” agreed Ransom. “I asked Philo once if he got involved with handicapped and disabled women because he thought it less an investment on his part.”
“What’d he say?” asked Tewes, curious.