Fenger took in a deep breath and exhaled. “All right, you’ve found me out, Rance. I’ve not ever handled a case like this, but I am reading up on it, you can bet.”
“Rampant cannibalism of children. God…what has the world come to?” asked Ransom, not expecting an answer.
“Actually, it was not so very long ago that Jonathan Swift wrote his answer to the problem of the homeless children of London,” began Jane, “that the government should round them up and feed them to the populace.”
“Swift was satirizing,” said Christian, “to bring the problem to the attention of Parliament and the Crown.”
“Well, the Vanishings is not satire,” replied Alastair. “This is real.”
Alastair asked again, “OK, so what do you think you know about this madman?”
She ticked off a number of beliefs. “He is ingratiating, charming, luring the victim; he lives in the city and knows every avenue and byway.”
“He likely uses candy or a drink possibly laced with some narcotic we can’t detect,” added Fenger.
“That’s any soft drink on the market,” Ransom said, recalling the boy, Sam, who so easily gulped down the soft drink that he’d been offered.
Jane continued, stating the obvious. “As he uses multiple blades, he is either in a profession relying on blades or is a collector.”
“That narrows it down for us,” he chided. “Look, Jane, have you given thought to the notion that since there’re multiple blades used, that there just might be a violent gang or nutty religious cult using cannibalism as a kind of badge of honor or an initiation, or both? Each gang or cultist with his own blade, racking up points with their leaders.”
“I confess,” began Fenger, “it has crossed our collective minds, yes. Haven’t ruled anything out at this point.”
“Then we are no closer to knowing the truth about Leather Apron or his possible followers, are we?”
Fenger looked tired, his emotion on his face. “What I earlier suggested, some sort of religious cult sacrificing these lambs; perhaps it’s a collective mind at work here?”
“Like a very, very dark mob or lynching party?” asked Alastair, helping secure Tewes’s mustache back into place. “Only this mob likes the blades and cleavers.”
“It is as old as mankind, ritual sacrifice,” said Jane, shivering, “and if it is symbolism you’re out for…well, there you have it. Trust me, the phrase Blood of the Lamb predates Christ.”
“These lambs-our Chicago lambs-are silent witnesses, if that is the case,” replied Ransom. “But do you really think there’s some ancient cult operating here in Chicago, drinking the blood and eating the flesh of these disappearing children?”
Jane fielded the question. “Some pagan cult, something out of Romania or Eastern Europe, Druids perhaps?”
Alastair breathed deeply of the night air. Lights had gone on all across the city and they stood beneath a gaslight at the bridge. The fire boat that’d taken Denton out to the depths tugged by beneath them. He stared back at the little weed patch far below at river’s edge where Dr. Fenger’s attendants finished up, readying to cart the pitiful remains to County Morgue. “I have people in the city working to find out and find out quickly. If there is a sick religious cult at work here, I’ll soon know it, and we’ll hang them all in a public square.”
Even as he said it, he wondered how Kohler, Fenger, and he would deliver an entire religious sect to the senator’s farm to be boiled in oil and skinned alive in the manner of butchering swine. The senator certainly had the equipment out there on that big farm of his, the cauldron, the oil, the tools, and the know-how.
But it had been Alastair’s experience with religious cults that there were more than just men and women involved but whole families, children. He tried to imagine a cultist ritual involving drinking human blood and feeding human organs and chunks of flesh to children-items torn from other children.
He prayed they were all wrong.
He imagined Christian and Jane must also have problems wrapping their minds around the notion, but apparently, they had discussed it at length sometime earlier.
This new victim had not looked in any better shape than had the Chapman girl, but this one had not been in the water as long and more of her clothing had survived. It seemed someone had made a feeble attempt to dress her before laying her into her watery grave.
Dr. Fenger, his sad eyes downcast, grumbled, “I have to leave you two. Must give Shanks and Gwinn strict orders regarding transportation of the body.”
“Do they take directions well, Christian?” Ransom held back a snicker.
“I’m sick to death of seeing attendant bruises and especially broken necks postmortem.” Fenger rushed off on this odious duty. Ransom glanced at Shanks and Gwinn where they stood sharing a stogie.
“Well, Jane…Dr. Tewes,” said Ransom, “have you eaten lately?”
“Don’t think I could swallow a thing save some ale.”
“Then you’ve taken a liking to red ale, have you?” He recalled the night he’d gotten her drunk on ale while investigating her alias, Dr. Tewes. How he’d had to carry her home to Gabby. The same night as he had become attached to Gabby, who was so fiercely protective of her “father,” Dr. Tewes.
“Well, I think a pint would not hurt.”
“I know a nearby place. Shall we?”
After the single pint, Dr. Tewes wanted a refill, but Jane held him to one. Instead she and Ransom enjoyed a horse-drawn cab ride through Lincoln Park and down tree-lined Clark Street. While passing the scenery, he dared ask, “Jane, I thought you finished with this Tewes act. I thought we agreed-made a pact-on the train back from Mackinaw City…remember Mackinac Island? Our getaway?”
“You agreed with yourself, Alastair. Look, first and foremost, I have Gabby to think of, and Tewes is beginning to rake in too much cash right now for me to simply drop the act.”
“And besides, you like it, don’t you? Playing police-adviser.”
“I’m no longer on Nathan’s payroll, if that’s what you mean. I’m being paid by Christian through his Cook County budget.”
“But Christian draws partial payment from the Chicago Police Department. So he actually still works for Nathan, and so then does Dr. J. P. Tewes.”
She laughed lightly at this, her femininity showing through. “And who do you answer to directly at the end of the day?”
Alastair frowned and changed the subject in rapid fashion, asking, “You know what it will sound like among the men at the station house if it gets out I am having moonlight rides through the park with James Phineas Tewes?”
“Oh…please. It may soften your reputation a bit.”
“Will you ever learn? I don’t want some things softened…ever, and my reputation ranks high on that list.”
“Kiss me, Alastair, and shut up.”
He considered following her order but stopped short. “I can’t do it with that mustache on your face. You look too much like my Uncle Fred.”
“You are incorrigible. Take me home.”
“If it is your wish, Doctor.”
They traveled along in silence for a time save for the hooves on bricks outside and the occasional row at a corner tavern. Ransom peeked from behind the window sash and mentally began counting the number of children he saw wandering about so late. Where were the parents. Didn’t they read? Didn’t they have ears? How could they not know of the danger afoot in the city now, the danger lurking for their children. He saw a smaller boy than the one he’d put on his payroll panhandling at one pub. When he had gotten a coin, he shuffled off to a black recessed doorway and handed his beggings to a man, someone who then set him on his mission for another coin, possibly his father or stepfather, reasoned Ransom. Poor bloke was likely down on his luck and had to use his kid to beg a pittance.
It had become brutally competitive to find the least job in the city nowadays. Whole families had wandered in from the various states all around, many from the Illinois prairie land in a bad crop year. There had been destructive weather all round the city and serious flooding in areas along the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, as well as the Kankakee.